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In this episode of Hot Topics on Edge of NFT, Richard Carthon, Josh Kriger, and January Jones dive into the latest Web3 developments, including key takeaways from Korea Blockchain Week, Web3 Amplify in Manila, and Token 2049 in Singapore. They highlight BlackRock’s billion-dollar Ethereum ETF milestone and discuss the post-prison pivot of Binance’s former CEO, CZ, toward social impact initiatives. The episode also introduces an exclusive giveaway with Rainmaker, a platform combining AI and crypto to reward engagement.
Please enjoy!
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Key Topics Covered:
- BlackRock’s Ethereum ETF Milestone: With assets surpassing $1 billion, BlackRock’s ETF marks a critical achievement in institutional Ethereum adoption and paves the way for more traditional finance involvement in crypto.
- Asian Web3 Conferences Recap: Insights from Korea Blockchain Week, Web3 Amplify, and Token 2049 on APAC’s emerging role in blockchain, the rise of layer-ones, and the global appeal of Web3 in 2024.
- CZ’s Post-Prison Focus on Social Impact: Binance’s former CEO CZ is back with a focus on Giggle Academy and initiatives in AI, biotech, and blockchain for social good.
- Rainmaker’s AI-Powered Giveaway: Rainmaker’s app offers a unique way to engage with AI and earn crypto rewards in the Edge of Eclipse quest.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/
Episode Highlights:
- Richard Carthon on APAC Conferences: “It’s clear the blockchain ecosystem in Asia is thriving, with projects building resilience and strong communities.
- Josh Kriger on BlackRock’s ETF: “Ethereum’s momentum with BlackRock’s ETF is just the start; this milestone is a gateway for more traditional finance into crypto.
- January Jones on CZ’s New Mission: “CZ’s pivot to social impact after prison shows a compelling shift towards using blockchain for good.
For the full transcript, see further below.
People and Resources Mentioned:
- Peter Thiel Webpage
- Ghostface Killah Webpage
- Crescendo Equity Partners LinkedIn
- Filecoin Website
- Audius LinkedIn
- TuneFM Website
- Korea Blockchain Week Website
- Bitcoin Renaissance Conference Website
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Full Episode Transcript:
Welcome to Hot Topics on the Edge of NFT. I'm Richard Carthon. I'm here with my co host Josh Krieger and January Jones. Join us as we delve into the latest news shaping the landscape of Web3, blockchain, and digital assets. Coming up, we'll share insights from our time at Azure's top crypto conferences, talk about BlackRock's billion dollar Ethereum ETF milestone, and the surprising post prison pivot of Binance's former CEO, CZ.
And we're thrilled to announce our upcoming giveaway with Rainmaker, the innovative app that lets you train AI and earn crypto. Stay tuned for your chance to join the prize pool. It's another production of edge of company, a rapidly growing media ecosystem, empowering the pioneers of web three tech and culture.
Let's dive right in. I know you both have been on quite the crypto conference circuit in Asia.
You've hit Korea blockchain week in Seoul, Web3 AI in Manila. and token 2049 in Singapore, all in September. I would love to hear your thoughts on what you've seen out there. What are some of the key trends, innovative projects or insights that stood out? Yeah, I'm happy to step in here first. At Korea Blockchain Week, one of the, resonating themes is that one, the Bitcoin ecosystem is thriving.
There was a lot of different side of it's going on. And one of the ones that we were happy to go and help, With was both a Bitcoin renaissance that Babylon put on and then our friends over at a pizza ninjas and bit layer had another bar that they ran out bar soul that they had out for the entire week and had various events for both like happy hours and networking events and brunches, et cetera, that were going on.
So that was really cool to see. But then at the core event itself layer ones still coming and thriving. And really doubling down on building in the APAC region. So that was my takeaway from there. I'll then talk about the Philippines. So I went there for the web three amplify with the event with attention live.
It was awesome. First time in Manila and what was really cool to see about that area. It was a fun fact that I learned is that People in the Philippines spend more time on social media than any other country, an average of 11 hours a day or something like that. So for a lot of the people there, they're very receptive to both blockchain and AI, because it gives an opportunity for them to advance and, using tech, but also to increase the income that they're potentially able to get as well.
They're very receptive to using and understanding how all that technology works. And then finally going into token token was insane this year, massive The biggest I've seen over what, 700 side events that was going on as well. And what I saw there was just a surplus of all these projects that survived the bear.
There are now here that are ready to thrive as we go into this next bull market. And. Most of the people that were there, although it was in Singapore, most people were not necessarily from Asia country. So it was a really cool to see all these people come from the West, come from Europe, come from the Middle East, a ton of people coming from Dubai.
Dubai is a huge hot spot, like a huge hotbed for web three. But. The companies that are still here and building are very serious. And we're getting out of the degen territory more into, Hey, let's go build this out. But Josh, what were your takeaways? Yeah, you covered a lot of ground Richard.
I would just add to the fact that this year token 2049 was a real melting pot of the entire industry. It's been a little bit more institutional in my opinion in the past. And there's been silos around the web three NFT community. At this point, I think there's this convergence at the edge that we've been talking about on the show for several years.
And it's really happening. It's manifesting. In terms of the cross pollination of different communities and also the depth of each community and what they've been able to create we saw a major push towards decentralized infrastructure the deep end community.
As well as the real world asset community. These are use cases that have been in discussion in the web three sort of narrative for many years. But now with the popularity of AI and the ability to scale faster the infrastructure takes a long time to build these use cases are coming to fruition on the sort of foundational building blocks of Projects like helium that started back in the day and have matured So we're seeing node projects for gaming and cloud computing and all sorts of interesting use cases and a lot more telecom interaction with the web3 community sk telecom A major company in korea was involved there and then you move over to like for example solana breakpoint which is also a really great event.
And you had multiple mobile product solutions not to mention what tends doing, there's a mobile product solution in the time network as well. That's the last insight I would just share is that ton was a conversational topic throughout all these different events, people thinking about different applications for time that sort of can amplify what else they're doing across the network.
So more interoperability conversation there. So definitely a lot of excitement, some cool games that I've now launched as well and games that are launching very soon. So lots happening in the world of web three and blockchain. It's hard to keep up with, but that's why we do what we do here on the show.
It's significant. The amount of effort. Edge of puts into traveling and joining events and hosting all these ideas. It's really appreciated, I think, by a larger audience. Yeah, totally. We really do try to be on the ground and cover what folks need to know and.
Maybe so they have to, take less trips and can enjoy other parts of their life. We'll do the heavy lifting. What else is on the docket January? Let's discuss BlackRock's Ethereum ETF. It surpassed 1 billion in assets just two months after its launch, marking a significant milestone in crypto history.
This achievement comes amid broader recovery in crypto investments with Ethereum ETFs recording some of their highest weekly inflows last week.. Despite the success, BlackRock's ETHA faces challenges in attracting funds compared to the scale of Bitcoin. Ethereum's market capitalization is currently around 318 billion, and while substantial, it still lags considerably behind Bitcoin's nearly 1.
3 trillion market cap. So Josh, what narrative do you think will drive more adoption of Ethereum Josh, what narrative do you think will drive adoption for Ethereum ETFs? And also, is the constant comparison between Bitcoin and Ethereum becoming more valid as we see more building on Bitcoin? Yeah, it's really interesting.
You point out in terms of the broader sort of macro sizing of the Bitcoin ecosystem versus Ethereum. While Ethereum has been chugging along, I think we've seen this massive focus on Bitcoin that Richard alluded to due to untapped liquidity and all the minders out there that are also trying to figure out what to do with these massive, Billion dollar investments in mining equipment and the extra alpha that you can get through the mining process with Bitcoin, if you can use some of these new products that are, Bitcoin defy related where companies like Babylon and bit layer are opening the gates of new possibility is definitely consuming a lot of tension.
We talked about how Bittler got a major investment from the institutional community recently. So I think at the end of the day Ethereum is going to need to. do more to coordinate with the Bitcoin ecosystem and do more crossover work on building those bridges. We saw in cover that Solana announced a BTC equivalent peg in their ecosystem.
I think what Ethereum probably needs to do is think about more ways to play nicely in the same sandbox as folks that are building the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Those are my thoughts. Richard, what do you think? As it relates to just the Ethereum ETF, I think it has a lot more room to grow. So right now on the market for people that are just in trad five, traditional finance, but there's trillions of dollars and you're trying to get
diversification into cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin was your first bet. So Bitcoin and ETFs came out and immediately money poured into it. Your alternative to Bitcoin was in Ethereum. So those are only two in the market. So I think BlackRock's going to see more money flow into Ethereum from a traditional finance standpoint, just looking at it from that lens.
Holistically, as I look at the whole market and what does that mean for What's to come. There used to be this conversation around the flippening and the flippening revolves around the entire market capitalization of Ethereum, flipping the entire market capitalization of Bitcoin. And I used to be very pro that one day will happen.
And as the market has matured, I no longer personally believe that's going to happen. I think Bitcoin is going to be King. I think Ethereum has an opportunity to keep increasing its market capitalization, but just not at the same pace of Bitcoin, or even having the ability to potentially. flip it one day because of alternatives like Solana and so many others that are out there and continue to grow and thrive.
So I think there's going to continue to the two biggest places with the most market capitalization, AKA liquidity that you can pull from are Bitcoin and Ethereum. And if people can continue to see all like people are very familiar with defy decentralized finance, and a lot of that was originally built on top of aetherium.
The problem with that, though, is that a lot of it can be very expensive. And so that's why these other solutions have been built on top of aetherium to help solve some of those problems and tap into that liquidity. And as Josh mentioned, with these Bitcoin layer twos coming out they're now tapping into Bitcoin resources, all this idle Bitcoin, that is defy.
Like not being used at all. So I think there's going to be a really cool synergy that happens as liquidity is going to be starting to be used across both Bitcoin and Ethereum. And as Josh said, Solana and some of these other protocols, and because of it, I think it's going to make. This next bull cycle that we go into extremely bullish.
Yeah, that was definitely a buzz at Bitcoin Nashville this year for sure. What everybody was talking about. Let's switch subjects. Let's talk about CZ, the former CEO of Binance. He recently has been released after spending four months in California in a minimum security prison and a long beach halfway house.
He ended up paying 50 million in fines and pleaded guilty only to failing to prevent money laundering. Now that he's back on X, he shared his plans for the future. He said he's going to focus on Giggle Academy, his nonprofit initiative, providing education for children in developing countries and other quote, charitable efforts.
He says he'll continue investing in blockchain, artificial intelligence and biotech, but with a new emphasis on social impact over financial returns, we're likely to see him back on the crypto event circuit soon. What are your thoughts on CZ's comeback and his new stated priorities? Yeah, I think this is pretty interesting.
I imagine there's a lot of self reflection that goes into the process of having this type of experience like, like he's had. I actually ran into him. Right before he got arrested. There's a picture I think on my Instagram of me, and it was like a week or two later that this happened to him.
And he had a, an energy about him around knowing that, this would happen in the, in, in the future. There might be brighter pastures ahead is my reflection on my brief interaction with him in that moment. And what I would say is that his, He's always been a pioneer and I think he's a little bit of a of an iconic figure in our space to this day, and a lot of fans of his out, out there in, in spite of his sort of polarizing past.
I'm all for more attention on the intersection of a blockchain and biotech and ai. I think we saw that was another sort of key narrative in our Asia roadshow, and there's a lot of potential there. Obviously we have the Rainmaker partnership and we've had a lot of AI blockchain projects.
I think we're figuring out every day more and more utility and how advancing the game and FinTech and AI fit together. And then I love the fact that he's. Spending more attention on social impact. This is an area of opportunity in blockchain that I think has been relatively ignored or under sort of appreciated at the very least over the last several years.
Very proud that at Outer Edge LA this past year we had over 30 different impact projects that we gave tickets and a lot of them had small booths where they're able to present what they're doing. When you think about the challenges on the impact side, micro payments, cross border transactions efficiency around people being able to support the projects that they love.
These are real challenges. The nonprofit sector has struggled for a long time with the fundamental levers of how to make a win and altruism is one of those things where it's it's a fleeting opportunity in that we only have so much focus for so many projects at a time how do you use how do you gamify that?
How do you use blockchain to create more, of a spotlight on more of the world's most Important needs and CZ has done a lot in his career. He's had a lot of success So I think he's moving up Maslow's hierarchy of needs here. Richard. What are your thoughts? I'll be brief. I think he got off very easy.
The money laundering that went on we're talking probably billions of dollars that, took part there and four months in the minimum security prison and also being in a halfway house. Not that bad. And he 50 million fine. He's made way more than that. So all things considered, I'd say.
He got that, 50 million, like it's not an insignificant amount of money. But in the grand scheme of what transpired he'll be fine. So I'm glad that he's going to go focus on the nonprofit side and that he's, he probably will get back into crypto at some point. But yeah I'd say that CZ, I'd say he got out pretty easy. Yeah. And maybe he feels that happened to him and now he wants to do good things in the world to show his appreciation for where is that, I don't know. I'd like to take an optimistic view here that this very iconic figure in our industry can, do good things here on out.
And I hope that comes to fruition. Do you think the industry will hold him accountable for what he said? His big premiere back into the world was giving an absolution for his sins and saying, he's going to do good. I think that the industry is very much scarred by FTX and what happened there and CZ was obviously in, in the midst of that.
I think. It's going to be one of those situations where time will tell. And the more good he does in the space over an extended period of time, the more of the industry. So we'll turn to him. So he has this loyal sort of cult following right now, but I think more and more folks may warm up to him in time, depending on.
The effectiveness of his his campaign from here.
I enjoy those perspectives and I like it when you guys don't agree with each other. So josh coming up next, we have a giveaway. Yes, we're really excited to announce a collaboration with Rainmaker that AI super app that combines web3 and artificial intelligence technologies with no blockchain experience required So you'll be able to download the Rainmaker app today and join the Edge of Eclipse quest for your share of a 600 prize pool.
So you're going to find that app on the iStore or the Android store. Join the Edge of Eclipse quest on Rainmaker once you sign up and you can generate and train AI images by labeling to earn more rewards. You'll also follow us Edge of NFT and at Rainmaker app on X. And then post to socials. So this campaign starts already and ends on October 15th.
So you still have some time, but don't don't sleep on it. And while you're checking out socials, you can catch our latest full episode with JD Serafin the CEO of Rainmaker on your platform of choice. They are one of the sponsors of the show. And we do have a vested interest in their future and are excited about this collaboration.
And that's a wrap. We've covered our September crypto conferences and Asia takeaways, BlackRock's ETF 1 billion milestone, Binance's former CEO's post prison pivot towards social impact, and Rainmaker's giveaway.
So thanks for tuning in today. The edge of NFT hot topics. I'm Josh here with Richard and January signing off. Stay secure. Stay curious and catch you on the flip side.
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