As ETH Denver 2025 approaches, the excitement in the crypto and Web3 community is at an all-time high. This year’s event promises to be a thrilling fusion of Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, and decentralized innovation, bringing together the brightest minds in the space. Hosted by Richard Carthon, January Jones, and Sheldon Dearr, the event will be packed with insightful discussions, dynamic networking, and, of course, a legendary party night. The Omni Network VIP reception, in collaboration with Super Chief, Nolcha Shows, and Eats Denver, will take over Temple, a four-story nightclub in Denver, transforming it into a multi-layered immersive Web3 experience. With a silent disco, live painting, NFT showcases, and more, ETH Denver will once again prove why it remains the go-to conference for blockchain enthusiasts. If you’re passionate about Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the future of decentralization, this is the event you don’t want to miss!
Key Topics Covered:
- Mastercard’s Tokenization of 30% of Transactions – Exploring the Role of Blockchain in Global Finance and the Impact on Digital Payments.
- Bitcoin & Ordinals in the Web3 Ecosystem – Sheldon Dearr discusses the ongoing evolution of Bitcoin and its role in Web3.
- Omni Network’s VIP Reception at ETH Denver – A deep dive into the biggest NFT and Bitcoin party featuring Super Chief and Nolcha Shows.
- The Growth of Ethereum & Bitcoin Communities – How ETH Denver is bridging the gap between Ethereum and Bitcoin enthusiasts.
- Web3 Networking & Industry Partnerships – How ETH Denver fosters collaboration between blockchain leaders and innovators.
Episode Highlights:
- Richard Carthon: “We’re kicking off ETH Denver with food, knowledge, and a night filled with networking, art, and crypto culture.”
- January Jones: “Temple is going to be transformed into a Web3 paradise – from a silent disco to live NFT showcases!”
- Sheldon Dearr: “ETH Denver remains a critical Mecca for the blockchain space, bringing together the best minds in crypto.”
- Richard Carthon: “Super Chief has been an incredible partner, and we’re excited to have them showcase their art at the Omni event.”
- January Jones: “ETH Denver is a community of communities – and this year, Bitcoiners are bringing their A-game.”
People and Resources Mentioned:
- ETH Denver (Website)
- Omni Network
- Super Chief
- Nolcha Shows
- Mastercard
- Bitcoin Ordinals
- Temple Nightclub, Denver
- Ethereum Community
- Eats Denver
About Our Guest:
Sheldon Dearr is a leading advocate for Web3 and a key player in Omni Network, an initiative driving innovation in blockchain interoperability. With a deep understanding of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and decentralized ecosystems, Sheldon has been at the forefront of bridging the gap between different crypto communities, ensuring that both Ethereum and Bitcoin enthusiasts can collaborate effectively. His work at Omni Network has positioned him as a thought leader in the space, championing decentralization, open-source technology, and the future of blockchain.
LinkedIn Link
Transcript:
January Jones: Welcome to Hot Topics on the Edge of Show. I'm January Jones, joined by my co-host, Richard Carthon.
Richard Carthon: Coming up, we're digging into Mastercard tokenizing 30% of its transactions, runes, ordinals, and Bitcoin developments in Amity's event at ETH Denver. Today, we have a very special guest, Sheldon Dearr from Omnity, who's going to be joining us. Thanks for being here, Sheldon.
Sheldon Dearr: Hey, guys. Thanks for having us. Happy to be here.
January Jones: This is another production of the Edge Up Company, a rapidly growing media ecosystem empowering the pioneers of Web3 culture, technology, and innovation.
Richard Carthon: Let's get into it.
January Jones: OK, well, our first story, we're talking about MasterCard. multinational payment services giant MasterCard reported that it had tokenized 30% of its transactions in 2024. It also recognized stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies' ability to disrupt traditional financial services. Now this is coming from MasterCard, a traditional financial service. Richard, is this a surprise? Because I don't really remember hearing much about this last year in the news from MasterCard.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, it's interesting. PayPal has been doing a lot in this space to try to integrate more Web3 synergy. You look at even looking at the ability to purchase cryptocurrency directly in PayPal and even Venmo, which is another subsidiary that it owns being able to do these transactions. But MasterCard, Although they are not doing a lot of things outside of like your traditional things like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. They're mostly focused on stable coins. So they are realizing that they can make transactions happen faster and cheaper by utilizing those resources. And when you think about a lot of the international ability to move some of this money, the access to cryptocurrency, is a lot more usable in the sense of most people overseas don't necessarily have a bank account, but a lot of them have phones, and a lot of those phones with access to internet, they're not wallets. And so you then have a means to then act with big banks, aka MasterCard, if you are able to then transfer some of these stable coins. So I am not extremely surprised by this news, but I am surprised that this news is coming from MasterCard. So that was kind of a shocker for me in this one. But Sheldon, what's your take on this?
Sheldon Dearr: I mean, I'm happy to see them rising above Visa's numbers on this because it made a splash when Visa was, you know, making an announcement that they were getting on Ethereum, I think, what, two, three years ago. So it's interesting to see MasterCard sort of supersede them quietly. And, you know, I can imagine how that looks for them as a business, but it's like you said, you know, there's more access to the internet than there is to banks in the world.
January Jones: And just really, what does this mean for people who maybe are, they hear MasterCard, so maybe they're gonna tune in a little bit more to this conversation because it's a little more accessible. What does it mean when it says they've tokenized 30% of their transactions?
Sheldon Dearr: If they're tokenizing 30% of their internal transaction activity, that must mean that a large portion of it is less friction to move between jurisdictions by tokenizing it, by sort of borrowing from themselves, by establishing an initial USDC liquidity. They can save themselves a lot of money and time because a few hundred thousand dollars being trapped in one place instead of being able to reach some money market fund or some other investment vehicle that they keep as part of their liquidity program, You know, it would make a lot of sense for them that they would see an opportunity to lose less money or gain more money by, you know, a faster, higher velocity money like USDC. And I'm assuming of course, that it would be USDC and Circle because that's an easy compliant company for them to work with.
Richard Carthon: Right. I think that definitely is the case. I imagine they're probably utilizing some USDT too. They're probably getting away from USDT. Some of the news that we covered very recently is that in Europe, they're actually stopping to utilize USDT as a stablecoin. So I imagine it's probably USDC as well. But to your point, if you go by the traditional means of moving around money and you're saying that I can save you millions, potentially hundreds of millions of dollars, you're going to take that every time. And I bet because of this news, you're going to see some other big banks look at this and be like, hey, why aren't we doing this? And we should look at doing this even more so. So it just helps with the further adoption of using cryptocurrency.
Sheldon Dearr: There's something else that I saw in the article there that I thought was very interesting. A couple of different places published that MasterCard is also getting into peer-to-peer payment platforms and working a little bit more closely with some of these cryptocurrency wallets that can support stable coins. So I think it's very interesting for MasterCard as a company, instead of trying to choke and strangle their existing business model to look for avenues for more utility for this new liquidity program. It makes a lot of sense to me that they would say, Hey, we're not going to fight the market. We're going to take advantage. We'll make as much money as we can because we're a money services company. You know, I think that's a really big bull flag for crypto.
January Jones: Everybody is hearing the song now, right? And 30% of what MasterCard's transactions are. Can you imagine, right? That's a big number. So that's kind of why I was a little surprised because we talk about first and adoption all the time on this show. And certainly that one is a significant for general adoption. All right, well, let's move on. Let's set the stage for a discussion here with Sheldon. And we're kind of digging into how Bitcoin has changed and about since the middle of last year, it's being used in ways that just used to be associated with Ethereum and other chains. Richard, you'd seen the rise of this going through the events from, you know, last year, came up in the summer, really big in the fall. Edge of Company did an event in Japan recently, all around, Ordinals. So give us some context for this.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I just want to start with, I started looking way more heavily into all the amazing things being about on top of Bitcoin, starting at Bitcoin Asia last year in Hong Kong. And it was the very first Bitcoin Asia summit I've been to that also like featured runes, ordinals, which were, for me, very new. topics that were coming up. Even the concept of the year before at Token 2049, we helped with an event in Singapore that were focused on some of the first times that you could get ordinals. And that was back in 2023. So fast forward to 2024, built out more, X-First being used way more readily for wallets for storing both ordinals and runes. And so you started to see more and more marketplaces, even MagicEden. MagicEden made a very big investment in understanding how they could get Bitcoin ecosystem more involved into the craze that was NFTs. And it just made me realize how much potential was in this space. So you fast forward to now 2025, Bitcoin being over $100,000. And now all these Bitcoin maxis have all of this money they've been sitting on that they don't utilize, that can now participate in all the fun things that everybody in the ETH ecosystem, the Solana ecosystems have been playing with from DeFi, where You can do things like that where borrowing against things that you already have or being able to be in ordinals or be able to be in runes with meme coins, et cetera, but all within the Bitcoin ecosystem. And it made me super bullish on where this was headed. So when having someone on like Sheldon, that's super immersed in this space, I was really excited to hear his take on this and then also be able to do something with him, which we'll talk about a little bit later. It's been super exciting. And the last thing I want to just talk about is like, you know, even this weekend, Rich Swap DEX endorsed by Leonidas, who we've had on the show, and Dog Army dropped the Hope You Get Rich token. And it was, you know, the fact that you have DEXs on top of Bitcoin, I don't think people fully understand how awesome and how much transactions are going to be happening within the Bitcoin ecosystem into this next cycle. But Leonidas, I mean, Sheldon, you have so much that you can drop on this.
Sheldon Dearr: It's been a great week, absolutely. The launch was excellent, and we've been getting great feedback. But the runes and ordinal space really has moved forward at an impressive pace. Bitcoin Core has not changed. The Ord protocol, the way that Ord nodes exist and have different features and can be stabilized, that stuff has upgraded very significantly in just the last 45 days. But the idea that we would keep doing these things while depending on something on Bitcoin called OPRETURN means that we can have this column of data on Bitcoin's blockchain that some miners will choose to ignore, and it still is processing transactions. So we're confident that that's a very good business model for us at Omnity, that we can sort of take the best of both worlds from a little bit more of a smart contract environment and a little bit more of a settlement and monetary trust layer So it's been really, really exciting. And we have had our bridge up for the past year or so with, I think, more than 20 blockchains connected. But in the past month and a half, because of this uptick in activity, we've been able to bring on a few more team members and really keep growing the bridge. So I think we've added three bridge connections in the past 45 days. We also launched RichSwap, and we also helped a pump fund for runes launch the same week as we did called Odin.fun. So it's been really exciting to see this new model where folks are appreciating the sort of permanence and value that Bitcoin can have in contributing to Web3. And that doesn't have to be, you know, like just using a terminal and things being really difficult and complicated. You know, that can be a very, very high quality user experience. So we're very excited to see the market respond positively to all this.
Richard Carthon: Absolutely. And so for those who are listening and hearing Omnity for the first time, what is Omnity?
Sheldon Dearr: So Omnity network is a product of like clients built on the ICP blockchain. Basically, we've been developing like clients for different blockchains for about five years. And we decided when we moved away from our previous business that we needed to do something that was moderately future proof. So we found that ICP could host our light clients as smart contracts, and we'd be able to maintain a very, very high performance level for them at a very good cost and at a very reasonable rate of managing security. So we've turned that first into the OmniHub, which is a bridge that can take runes from any asset on the L1. Feasibly, it's possible to take other Bitcoin assets as well, but we're not doing that now. except for a little bit of BRC20, and you wrap them yourself and take them to another blockchain. So, BASE is the latest chain that we've just announced in the past 24 hours, and that means that any RUNES token holder can take their RUNES, lock them up in their own hash time lock contract on the Bitcoin L1, and because of that lockup, they're able to use them on their own on BASE. Non-custodial, permissionless, we're not administering the protocol, we are sort of proctoring it. So that property being available in advance has been really useful for the dog army and a number of other great runes projects. But this weekend launching the runes decks has led to a whole nother swell of strength with the Operation Dog Domination that Leonidas unleashed in the past few days. And that means that we are not necessarily focused on centralized exchange listings for runes. We're focused on building out a cross-chain ecosystem of runes tokens. Does that mean that runes will always exist on the Bitcoin L1? No, it means that's where they're home. But they should be able to participate in DeFi to, you know, act in other L2 blockchains of different types, as long as they can have a reasonably secure wrapping service. So we are not the only bridge provider. We're very happy to compete with others and, you know, have others also serving the interests of the dog army and others who want to take their runes cross chain. But with Bitcoin becoming more flexible with this ORD software, making runes and ordinals possible, we don't have to fight about Bitcoin Core. We can pretty much leave it as is and still enhance the secondary protocol through the existing OpReturn technology that's already built into Bitcoin Core. So it's very exciting to talk to Bitcoiners about this, even though I don't think that they'll move their sats for ordinals and runes in the immediate future. You know, it takes time to build this up. And part of that process is building a great user experience.
Richard Carthon: Absolutely. It's very important that everything is seamless and secure above all. If there's one thing Bitcoiners are very, very, very sensitive about is security and keeping everything locked up in a safe way.
Sheldon Dearr: Exactly. And it has to be transparent too. You can't lock up in the safest black box ever. I don't care who told you it's safe, or even if it's you telling me it's safe, you have to be able to verify that. So at Omnity, we're very proud that our bridge is non-custodial and permissionless, meaning that anyone can validate that data at any time. And we'll be ready to supply some of that data to third parties who want to use things like APIs to track what tokens are where. And that's a really critical part of infrastructure in a Web3 is that you have to be able to supply data about the token. So we're, we're really excited to be part of building that up. And if I could make one other shout out earlier, cause you mentioned them earlier in the show. Um, we've also submitted a feature request to phantom wallet. If you search runes on phantom, you will find at feedback.phantom.com a feature request because they already have taproot wallets enabled. So we think the market might be about to get bigger by 15 million monthly active users, but if it doesn't, we'll still be here chucking a lot.
January Jones: Sheldon, you mentioned how much progress has happened in the last 45 days in this space, but you were ready for this space. How did you key in on this as going to be needed a year ago when you were building out the business?
Sheldon Dearr: So we had a critical decision to make when we moved from our previous product and namesake. And that decision was simple, we could take on a another secondary type of risk in, you know, going to a new and exciting technology with a different kind of blockchain and, you know, supporting their thesis and their mission. And effectively, in a sense, we did do that by moving to ICP as our tool chain. But our decision to do that was based on their ability and their already existing programs to support Bitcoin and all of our other blockchain-like clients. So we found fitting it with them really well, but our decision to choose Bitcoin was simple. When you start in a risk-on environment, moving to another risk-on environment makes it very hard for people to trust you. You know, I would understand if some people liked that from us, they wanted to see this specific risk on, but there's a much larger market of people who would like to say, okay, we've gone from a risk on model with this product, with this product suite, you know, let's move back to something that is a little bit more risk off. And I tend to think of Bitcoin as being the risk off cryptocurrency. It will change the least, you know, Bitcoin core is going to make revisions a lot slower than Geith or any other Ethereum component. So we thought it was a good idea to focus on Bitcoin as the anchor to our business without abandoning all the other work we did for so many other blockchains like Solana and Polkadot and Cosmos and Near. And we're very happy that we can sort of walk and chew gum in this way, thanks to the great technology on ICP.
January Jones: Well, let's move into then talking about ETH Denver, but also let me have you contextualize. So if you're talking to someone who is heads in ETH, has ignored what's happening in Bitcoin, could you tell me what like kind of an analogy would be for them to see this adoption in the runes and ordinals into Bitcoin? So let's do our ETH translation and then let's talk about what we're doing in Denver soon.
Sheldon Dearr: So the start of the conversation is that the initial mission was to emulate what has been successful, and more recently, ERC-404, the ability to handle fungible and non-fungible assets at the same time. I think I have that EIP correct. That was the initial mission, is to sort of reach some level of parity with the existing market, who understands these concepts, who might want to use products and, you know, try tooling and, you know, degen or do whatever they want. That was the initial thesis. It's not taken a year for the entire ecosystem to realize that UTXOs are really different than Gui. And Gui are more fungible than SaaS, just, you know, pennies to pennies. Ethereum is more fungible because of its account model. However, if you are looking at that lack of fungibility as a tool where you have uniquity, where you have some form of identification, built into somebody who's coming to your platform, there's a lot of benefit to that. You don't have to maintain as many user identification tables. You already have some marker as to who's who and what money is what when you put it into a pool. So there's a lot of features that took time on Ethereum to develop because of the account model that in some ways are built into Bitcoin already. So I would say that there's not a reason to abandon your Ethereum work or to leave that blockchain. I think it's dealing with a tough time right now for a few different reasons, but it's very, very successful. Bitcoin is trying to express a slightly parallel and slightly perpendicular thesis that says, hey, there's some things that we can do the same and there's some things that we can do differently.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, and I think that was a really good way to like, bridge that gap between like, why is there's this gigantic convergence of people within the Ethereum ecosystem that either left and went all in on Bitcoin, or those who like have always been of the mindset that like, both of these can be synergistic, you just have to find a way to bridge them in a way that is ubiquitous and synergistic. And obviously, Omni is one is doing that. And in that regard is why we'll be at Eat Denver. We're also doing a kickoff party. So everyone who's listening to this right now, we have a VIP reception by Omni, which can be at Eat Denver. And so we're kicking off Eat Denver with an exclusive VIP reception with complimentary drinks, food, and awesome art, entertainment, and rare knowledge. We're hosting exclusive reception with high-caliber networking and mixed together with a few interesting presentations and digital art that will make you smile, make you have a great time, and you're gonna be able to connect with developers, KOLs, industry leaders. It's gonna be an intimate forum before heading to the official Eat Denver opening party. It's at the same venue, that's right. You can get in, it's super convenient. You get some knowledge, some networking, and then you get to go party. It's going to be super sick. It's going to be at the Miros Gallery. It's located next door to Temple. And Sheldon, why did you decide to create this event?
Sheldon Dearr: Well, we've had a simple mandate every East Denver since the inception of our company, and that is to show up. The first year that we were there was 2021, and I had a blast. Vitalik was in the suit, the buffa corn suit, and he hugged me. I didn't find out it was him until later. I thought that was hilarious. It was a really interesting time. I was hoping that we would stay at the castle after that. I thought that that was gonna be like that every year, but it's a huge event. It takes place over more than one venue. It just can't all fit. 40,000 people into one venue. So we're really excited to be back and doing something a little bit more significant because typically we will join other people's events. We try to rally and support our technical partners and community partners. But this year we decided that, you know, Runes is a new market and it's still growing and people find interest, but we need to give people a place who are interested in Runes and Ordinals. Not that they won't, make one themselves or have some other event. There's a handful, if not more, of excellent Bitcoin events that are going to be either whole day takeovers or just night parties. I've seen a couple of brunches. And we, before we saw those events, knew that we had to make some contact with our target audience and try to talk about the work that we're doing and ask for feedback as well. It was a really easy business decision to say, okay, we've been, you know, sort of holding the bag, waiting for the right moment to really engage, you know, full on full budget that we can afford with East Denver. And, you know, it's difficult to make those balances when you're a startup company, because you have your runway to manage and all of these things. But we are not a, you know, huge marketing push kind of company. We're a very communal word of mouth, you know, smaller kind of organization. And that means that if we're going to throw a party, it better be good, which is part of why we're so glad to have you all there with us.
Richard Carthon: Definitely. You've been a great partner, and we're excited to be out there with you. And January, I know you've been doing this for quite some time. What are you looking forward to out there?
January Jones: Yeah, well, the opening night party we've been working on, so I contract with Eats Denver, I work with sponsorships, but I also have met over my crypto conference circuit, Arthur from Nolcha Shows. And so Nolcha has never come to Denver and never threw a party. But like I went to his at Consensus, Austin, and then he did the one Bitcoin Nashville at that movie studio that was so cool and the inscribing events. And so he is throwing down here in Denver. Temple is a four story nightclub here in Denver, where I live, and it's attached to the Art Gallery Miras. And so It's going to be four stories of fun. The top layer, the top level is going to be a silent disco. The other levels have big rooms. There's a huge LED party room. And then there's smaller venues. And then there's nearest gallery that's attached that is very high-end gallery that has a bar and a DJ. And we are going to just pop up our in there. And so your guys' reception will be in there, but we're also inviting other artists from Denver to do some performance art, to have some kind of live painting. We'll have just a mix of things going on that night. And it's kind of exciting how everyone has come together because you guys are also bringing in another partner we work with, with the Super Chiefs. So maybe Richard, you could talk about how you've been working with Super Chief and then Super Chief's going to be there too during Omnibus Party on the 26th.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, just to bring it home and thanks for explaining all that. So, you know, we're kicking off the evening, we'll have some food refreshments. So we want you to come enjoy yourselves, get some knowledge from the speaker panels that we're gonna be having at this event. But then you're gonna get to do all the fun things, you're gonna get to enjoy art, you're gonna get to have amazing conversations, you're gonna get to network, you're gonna get to party if you want to, you get to dance the night away if you want to. Um, but, um, super chiefs been awesome. We recently just did an event with them out and Japan, uh, ordinals, uh, in NFT Japan. Um, and he's going to come out and, you know, share some of his art as well out there. So great to have him as a partner for this event. And, you know, uh, really appreciate being able to partner with, with Sheldon, with all this. So, uh, Sheldon, do you have any final parting words for people on why they should come check us out?
Sheldon Dearr: If you've never heard of East Denver before, if you've never been to East Denver before, it's Ethereum and stuff. Highly, highly recommend. I'm not trying to take away from the Ethereum community, but the Ethereum community knows how ETH was started. It was Metallic's proposal in 2014, falling flat to a bunch of Bitcoiners. So I think it's time that we remind the Bitcoiners that we never stopped. This mission never really gave up. There was always a decentralized, you know, lake of ideas about these different kinds of things. And that means that we want to party with y'all. We want to talk to folks who are both like-minded and not like-minded. And we just want to, you know, discuss with y'all and party with y'all and, you know, soak in the greatness that is a incredibly strong recurring event in the U.S. because You know, crypto has been struggling a little bit in the United States, maybe not anymore. But, you know, it's been a very interesting last four years and ETH Denver has been a critical Mecca through all of it.
January Jones: Yeah, well, as we say, it's a community of communities. And so I think there's going to be such a big presence this year with the Bitcoin community. But just all the cool Bitcoiners, right? Just all the cool ones like Sheldon are coming.
Sheldon Dearr: There'll be a couple, there'll be a couple little fire starters, but that's okay. We'll see what we can do to soothe that concern from them.
Richard Carthon: Awesome. For sure. Well, as a reminder for everyone out there, the event's going to be on February Wednesday, February 26th from six to eight. Make sure you come early before, so you can come and enjoy all the amazing things that we have planned for you that night and then stick around for an amazing party afterwards. That is going to be a wrap for today's discussion. We covered MasterCard tokenizing 30% of its transactions, conversations around the Roots, Orinals and the Bitcoin ecosystem. And of course, Omni's event at ETH Denver. Thanks to Sheldon from Omni for joining us today.
Sheldon Dearr: And thanks so much for having us, guys. We really appreciate it. You know, the VIP reception for Omni Network is a little bit exclusive. You can find it on the main Ethereum Denver events website. We'll be sharing about it on our socials and you'll see a couple of our partners talking about it as well. You know, we're excited to come out and, you know, just have dinner and talk to y'all and have a good time. So hope to see you there.
January Jones: Awesome. Such a fun discussion leading up to Eat Denver. We will see you there. I'm January signing off. Stay curious, stay innovative, and we'll see you next time.
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