Best Vikram Ramakrishnan And Faizaan Shamsi Podcasts (2024)

Relational databases versus NoSQL is of interest today given growing data requirements for businesses. Real-time, internet of things, storing geodata, financial data are examples where traditional relational databases don’t make the cut required for modern systems. We discuss the successes and failings of relational databases, and how MongoDB’s app…

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Cloud Computing at the Edge: An Overview of Fastly (FSLY) 39:33

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5y ago39:33

39:33

Edge computing is a topic that isn’t getting enough coverage. We’ve covered CDNs like CloudFlare before, but we wanted to look at Fastly, an edge computing player that went public early in 2019. On this episode, we cover edge computing topics like rapidly purged caching. We run through a few case studies of the value edge computing brings some of F…

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Financial Services APIs and Silvergate Capital 34:12

5y ago34:12

34:12

There has been a lot of interest around developer-first banking APIs recently. On this episode, we go over recent tech IPO Silvergate Capital (ticker $SI), which is a digital currency focused bank and settlement network. We discuss their business, particularly around digital currency initiatives and their Silvergate Exchange Network (or SEN). We ge…

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Chips, Chips, Chips: Canaan Mining, NVIDIA, AMD, ASICs, GPUs, AI and ML chipmakers 41:01

5y ago41:01

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Recently, there has been a lot of recent interest in customized semiconductors. Bitcoin mining has highlighted the interest in ASICs, or application specific chips, and as we move up the customized application layer stack, discussion of AI and ML chips becomes necessary. On this episode, we look at Canaan Mining, a chinese Bitcoin mining chip manuf…

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Discussing a Parallel Financial System with Barney Mannerings from Vega Protocol 38:05

5y ago38:05

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On this episode, we speak with Barney Mannerings, founder of Vega Protocol, which is a blockchain product initially focused on derivatives markets. Barney understands this space really well, and it was a pleasure talking to him about what he’s building at Vega. Broadly, we discuss the DeFi, or Parallel Financial System, space, and Barney talks to u…

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Datadog: A Developer Friendly Monitoring and Analytics Product or Ecosystem? 37:17

5y ago37:17

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On this episode, we dig into Datadog’s (Ticker: DDOG) IPO prospectus. We discuss their approach to analytics and monitoring, and how companies can benefit from using them. We look at a few case studies of how companies derive value from their product, and one in particular, that can generate value from its use. We also run through their developer-f…

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Content Delivery Networks, DDOS Protection and Bot Fighting: CloudFlare as a Web Performance and Security Company 34:30

5y ago34:30

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We go over the CloudFlare IPO prospectus, which calls itself a “Web Performance and Security Company.” We discuss their mission statement, their stated competitive advantages, risks they may face and a quick overview of their financials. Topics: The Web Performance and Security Company Cloudflare's mission Companies putting mission statements int t…

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How Ron Lichty Manages the Unmanageable: Topics on Software Management, Agile Processes, and Making Software Hum 37:57

5y ago37:57

37:57

Software Consultant Ron Lichty joins us to talk about all things software management. Ron has a treasure trove of experience helping teams accelerate and amplify their software practices. We look at the history of waterfall-style projects transitioning to Agile projects. We talk about his time as a product manager at Apple and his work with Charles…

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Interoperability in Cosmos’s IBC Protocol with Tendermint’s Zaki Manian 47:36

5y ago47:36

47:36

On this episode, I speak to Zaki Manian from Tendermint. We get deep into the weeds of interoperability, his notions of interop between fast chains and fast and slow chains. We discuss the IBC protocol, which is a spec for adapters between different chains along with all the complexities when dealing with cross-chain communications. Moreover, we ex…

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A Tour of Blockstack’s Decentralized Computing Network With Aaron Blankstein 44:42

5y ago44:42

44:42

We chatted with Aaron Blankstein, Core Engineer from Blockstack. Blockstack is a decentralized computing network, which makes it simple for developers to build blockchain-based applications. We learn about Blockstack’s incentive system, and what will be changing from v1 to v2. We discuss a few use cases of Blockstack, like the Blockstack Naming Ser…

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Building Scalable Derivatives Trading Platforms with Charles Phan of Interdax 31:21

5y ago31:21

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We chatted with Charles Phan, Chief Technology Officer from Interdax. Interdax is a next generation digital assets exchange with strong engineering roots in High Frequency Trading firms, traditional exchanges, hedge funds, investment banks, market data and liquidity providers. This episode was a lot of fun. We talked about Charles’ background in tr…

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A Tale of New Digital Primitives with Ben DiFrancesco 54:21

5y ago54:21

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Ben DiFrancesco, software consultant and founder of scopelift, joins us on this one. Two things we really respect about Ben are his ability to break down complex technical topics and also his ability to be honest about what crypto and blockchain offer us. He’s at heart, a technologist, and his passion for and dedication to crypto is palpable. This …

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A Recap of Blockchain Training Conference 2019 42:32

5y ago42:32

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We recap our attendance at the Blockchain Training Conference last week. We cover the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4)’s new certifications and their conference’s emphasis on developer and professional education. We also look at the slew of great talks on The Lightning Network, bitcoin privacy, and smart contracts. Topics: What does C4 …

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Dr. Ed Felten and Offchain Labs: Second Layer Solutions for Smart Contracts 40:29

5y ago40:29

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Dr. Ed Felten is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton, he’s served as Chief Technologist at the FTC and Deputy CTO at the White House. He’s also the cofounder of Offchain Labs, a Princeton-based startup that’s focusing on 2nd layer smart contract solutions to improve scalability. This was one of our favorite conversations to date. We discus…

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Domain Driven Design, Language and DevOps for Distributed Systems with CircleCI’s Rob Zuber 51:36

5y ago51:36

51:36

We have Rob Zuber, CTO from CircleCI on. A lot of the projects we work on implement CircleCI, so we were super excited to speak to Rob. We talk about his background and how he became part of CircleCI through an acquisition. We also get into one of his favorite topics: language. Particularly the words that are used in projects, and how important the…

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Opening Up the Black Box of Insurance: Wunderite and Programmatic Data Aggregation 41:24

5y ago41:24

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On this episode, we have Peter MacDonald and Joe Schnare from Wunderite, an insurance startup based in Boston. This was a really interesting conversation around how they are improving insurance workflows for agencies around the country through programmatic data aggregation. We talk about their backgrounds, get into the details of the black box indu…

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Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Blockchain Teaching Pedagogy: The CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium and Blockchain Training Conference 32:57

5+ y ago32:57

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We speak with Andreas Antonopoulos, author of Mastering Bitcoin, The Internet of Money, and Mastering Ethereum, and also board member at the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium, known as C4. C4 will be hosting the Blockchain Training Conference in Denver, Colorado at the end of August. In this conversation, we learn about the conference, how An…

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Chainweb, Pact, and Hybrid Blockchains with Kadena’s Stuart Popejoy 52:21

5+ y ago52:21

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We speak with Stuart Popejoy co-founder from Kadena. This was a really great technical conversation around the hybrid public-private blockchain that Kadena is building with their Chainweb platform and LISP inspired smart contract language Pact. We cover how traditional finance firms incorporate new technologies into their workflow, real world use c…

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The Father Time IPO and the Nuts and Bolts of Building Software Applications From Scratch 38:08

5+ y ago38:08

38:08

On this episode, we look at a recently filed IPO, Father Time. This isn’t a hot IPO. In fact, no bankers are underwriting this. What’s interesting about this one is that it’s entirely self-underwritten by the company founder. They are planning to build a coupon system from scratch, so we talk through how that would look from a technical perspective…

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The SEC and the Sundance Kik or How Alternative Fundraising Schemes Get Squashed 45:33

5+ y ago45:33

45:33

We look at the SEC’s charging of Kik Interactive’s unregulated securities offering. We recap the SEC complaint, outlining their argument that Kik was a deeply underfunded, low-revenue, high-expense company that attempted a “hail mary” by circumventing securities law by running the Kin ICO. Finally, we step through the pieces of evidence the SEC pre…

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High Quality Software Is Worth the Cost 37:04

5+ y ago37:04

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We look at Martin Fowler’s article titled “Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?” We discuss the gives and takes of writing good software and managing technical debt. We look at misconceptions around software quality and cost, and how planning and blueprinting (architecting) up front can save teams money in the future. Moreover, we look at how g…

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SIM Port Attacks + 2FA Security or How Not To Lose All Your Crypto and a Empex 4 Recap 50:22

5+ y ago50:22

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We look at a recent SIM port hack where a crypto professional lost $100k worth of crypto from his Coinbase account. We discuss in detail how he was attacked and how you can safeguard your crypto assets better. We then do a recap of the one-day Elixir conference, Empex, where topics ranged from OTP to LiveView to functional programming more broadly.…

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A Look at CrowdStrike’s IPO Prospectus and Their Approach to Endpoint Security 45:49

5+ y ago45:49

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We explore the CrowdStrike IPO by delving into its SEC Prospectus: An examination of their technology, and in particular their approach to endpoint security. By wading through the buzzword ocean, we bring you the key areas to focus on in this S-1. We consider their network effects, notably how signing up more customers to their platform improves se…

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On-chain Analysis with TokenAnalyst’s Sid Shekhar: The Valuable Open Ledger 34:01

5+ y ago34:01

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TokenAnalyst’s founder Sid Shekhar joins us on this one to talk about the on-chain analysis tools they’re building for the crypto industry. Particularly, we spoke about the delineation of on-chain versus off-chain and why on-chain data hosts a treasure trove of valuable information. We also talk about how funds can benefit their investors by invest…

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Zilliqa With Edison Lim: Formal Verification of Smart Contracts, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, and Smart Contract Composition. 35:55

5+ y ago35:55

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We spoke with Edison Lim, Application Lead at Zilliqa about their protocol. We consider Zilliqa’s approach to scaling and energy usage. We discuss their proof of work consensus model for miner verification, and their approach to sharded consensus groups. We take a technical look at their smart contract language Scilla and its roots in OCaml, and wh…

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Capital Management with David Baker: Mercadyne Fund’s Founder on Public and Private Investing, Generating Alpha, and Management Team Red Flags 52:22

5+ y ago52:22

52:22

We spoke to David Baker from Mercadyne Funds, my first Portfolio Manager at Vikram’s first Hedge Fund analyst job many years ago. David is a really smart guy and he takes a unique approach to generating alpha by investing in micro and small-cap companies. He joins us to talk about all things investing. We cover a slew of topics: How he started inve…

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Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Santiago Roel Santos from EON, Proof of Stake and Staking as a Service 50:20

5+ y ago50:20

50:20

Hey everyone, this is Vikram from QuantLayer and thanks for listening to our 34th podcast. On this episode, Santiago Roel Santos from EON joins us to talk about proof of stake and staking. We speak about Santiago’s investing background, how he entered crypto, and the Staking as a Service business he’s building now at EON. The discussion covers a lo…

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Oracles, Doug von Kohorn and Jeff Rosen from Rhombus 45:43

5+ y ago45:43

45:43

We speak about the problem around connecting smart contracts to real world data, how oracles solve that problem and the gives and takes around oracles. We walk through some example oracles in gold pricing data and prediction markets. We finally wrap up with an interview with Jeff Rosen and Doug von Kohorn, founders at Rhombus, where we discuss thei…

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Andreas M. Antonopoulos and the State of Cryptocurrency Ten Years In 35:29

5+ y ago35:29

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We have Andreas M. Antonopoulos on, who we were really excited to talk to. With his books The Internet of Money, Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering Ethereum, Andreas has been an amazing ambassador for the cryptocurrency space. On this episode, we get into a lot of interesting topics: What’s changed and surprised him since he published The Internet of …

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#31: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: TokenTax’s Zac McClure and All About Crypto Taxes 54:14

6y ago54:14

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Zac McClure joins us from TokenTax. I was really excited to talk to Zac because it’s great to learn about the kinds of professional SaaS tools that crypto entrepreneurs are building. This was a fun conversation. Zac has had an eclectic career prior to crypto. He’s been an investment banker, taught financial literacy to high school students, and wor…

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#30: Security Researcher Gets Attacked After Vulnerability Disclosure 46:19

6y ago46:19

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What happens when a vendor attacks a security researcher who points out security flaws in their software? On this episode, we talk about two white-hat security researchers who discover multiple vulnerabilities in a vendor’s software system. The vendor initially ignores their concerns until the FBI gets involved. It culminates in a physical attack b…

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#29: NVIDIA’s Pre-announces Terrible Results, Huawei and Political Risk, and Bitcoin’s Predecessors 43:12

6y ago43:12

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We look at NVIDIA’s negative pre-announce, how they stopped blaming crypto and are seeing weakness across the board, especially on the datacenter side. We take a tangent on political risk associated with Huawei, and finally finish up by looking at the slew of predecessors of Bitcoin so the next time someone thinks they’re being clever by calling Bi…

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#28: DevOps and GitHub Opening Up Private Repos 51:37

6y ago51:37

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We look at GitHub’s recent move to give non-paying users unlimited private repositories, and GitLab’s subsequent response. Additionally, we discuss DevOps and how teams can save money and improve deployment processes by implementing DevOps best practices. Topics: GitHub offers free private repos What GitHub is How it was acquired by Microsoft On De…

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#27: Whose Fault Is It Anyways?: On Writing Illegal Smart Contracts 53:56

6y ago53:56

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We discuss comments from the CFTC about developer responsibilities and liabilities. The CFTC posits that there are a few primary groups of users of blockchain networks: (1) core developers of the underlying software; (2) developers of smart contracts on top of the underlying blockchain; (3) miners who validate transactions; and (4) users who transa…

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#26: The New York Nasdaq CTO Summit: How to Manage and Scale Tech Teams 47:43

6y ago47:43

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We discuss our time at the CTO Summit at the NASDAQ Marketsite from a couple weeks back. This was a great conference, because technology leaders from startups to larger companies congregated to talk about managing and scaling tech teams. We talk about software process, distributed teams, how deployment is the main cause of all software failures, an…

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#25: Why We Moved Our Search Infrastructure to Elasticsearch ($ESTC) and a Look-back at Our Podcast Episodes of 2018 56:40

6y ago56:40

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On this episode, we do a recap of our podcast episodes of 2018. We look at how the crypto market has changed since we launched our first episode (things other than just prices being lower) and also all the things that haven’t changed. This was a fun review of half a year of recording with a few glimpses of times ahead. Topics: Reflecting on our pod…

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#24: The Attack of the Attack Vectors: a 51% Attack on Vertcoin & the Demise of ASIC Resistance + a Social Engineering Attack on ETCDEV and npm Libraries 38:38

6y ago38:38

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This episode is all about attack vectors in crypto. We look at a 51% attack on Vertcoin, and how ASIC resistance is turning out to be a massive security bug, not a feature. We also look at Ethereum Classic and a social engineering attack on the ETCDEV team. Finally, we discuss the event-stream attack which robbed crypto wallets that used that npm l…

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#23: Crypto Hangover and Market Downturn?: A Look At Semiconductor Market Cycles, NVIDIA Throwing Crypto Under The Bus, And What Nathaniel Popper Got Wrong In His Recent New York Times Article 50:02

6y ago50:02

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A look at the semiconductor market cycle, and how recent results from NVIDIA, Texas Instruments, and AMD have spooked the tech market. We look at NVIDIA’s most recent conference call where they place all the blame on what they call a “crypto hangover.” We then look at two distinct predictions about this latest semi cycle, one from JAG capital, who …

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#22: Everything is Ded (Bitcoin, “Blockchain,” ICOs, Volatility) and Amazon Takes Over New York City 1:00:59

6y ago1:00:59

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We review the latest proclamations of Bitcoin’s apparent demise: (1) Axios’s report that Corporate blockchain and bitcoin interest is waning; (2) Galaxy Digital dumping their ICO advisory business; and (3) volatility drying up forcing traders to look for alpha elsewhere. We also look at Amazon’s expansion into New York City, right into our backyard…

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#21: A look at Stablecoins, Tether and PwC 39:50

6y ago39:50

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A look at Stablecoins, centralized ones, decentralized ones, what they’re going to be used for and what kinds of risks might arise from them. We discuss exchange listings again, this time with Basic Attention Token getting listed by Coinbase, and finish up with a discussion on Tether. Topics: What Stablecoin is Centralized Stablecoins - What Fiat b…

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#20: ZRX & ESTC: A Tale of Exchange Listing Pops, the State of Crypto Reporting (It Sucks) and How You Can Make Money Being Contrarian, and How Monero (XMR) Sliced Up Transaction Fees With Bulletproofs ... 40:13

6y ago40:13

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We do a victory lap for alerting our users to the ZRX add to Coinbase before everyone else. We then get into a discussion of how exchange additions are similar to public market IPO first day trading pops, like what we saw in Elastic Search recently. We then talk about the state of crypto reporting, and how it has created a mix of pay-to-play bad ac…

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#19: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: Amy Wan, Founder and CEO of Sagewise and Building Crypto LegalTech Solutions 39:57

6y ago39:57

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Amy Wan, Sagewise Founder and CEO joins us to discuss the smart contract LegalTech solutions they’re building at Sagewise. We go over her background, how she moved from the traditional legal space and into LegalTech, what smart contracts are, dispute resolution, and the tools they’re building at Sagewise to handle dispute resolution. Another episod…

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#18: Crypto SaaS Spotlight: John Young With Ledj.io and Building Professional Crypto Research Tools 45:07

6y ago45:07

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John Young joins me from ledj.io. John worked at Capital One before starting his first two crypto Software-as-a-Service (or SaaS) businesses in early 2017: Spreadstreet and Cryptosheets. Both these services let users work with crypto pricing data in Google Sheets and Excel. Install a plugin, and you are good to go. Definitely worth checking out. I …

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#17: Crypto Legal Landscape with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law: Securitized Real Assets and Intellectual Goods, Crypto Patents, Hard Forks and “Derivative Works,” Decentralized Exchanges ... 56:31

6y ago56:31

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We talk with Kurt Watkins of MG Miller Intellectual Property Law. Kurt is a lawyer who works with startups and is heavily involved in the crypto space here in New York. We’re glad we were able to talk to Kurt because some of the most interesting things being done in this space are by lawyers. We talk about how he got into crypto, the Reg D offering…

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#16: Zaif Exchange Hack and How We Called It Two Months Ago and the Interplanetary File System (IPFS) 44:10

6y ago44:10

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On this episode, Faizaan and I do a victory lap for calling the Zaif exchange hack over 2 months ago. We also a deep dive into IPFS - what it is, what problem it solves, how it works and how Cloudflare is getting involved in the space. We finally look at some alerts that came through our dashboard. Topics: A victory lap for calling the Zaif exchang…

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#15: Open Source as Revenue Driver: How Elasticsearch Uses Open Source for Revenue Growth, Tech Investing and Crypto, a Cautionary Tale of Bad Crypto Trading Psychology and Flash Crashes 1:04:41

6y ago1:04:41

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We explore the Elastic IPO by doing a deep dive into its SEC Prospectus. We look at their business model and risks, and how open source software has been a giant revenue growth driver for them. We then get into an interesting discussion around tech investing and how it’s related to crypto. We look at some alerts that came through our platform: a ca…

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#14: Turning A Bug Into A Feature: Bugsnag, Why You Shouldn’t Violate Open Source Copyrights (Hint: Your Coin Will Be Down 90% If You Do), The Bitcoin-Dev Mailing List, And Why Crypto UX Is So Bad 50:18

6y ago50:18

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How do you turn a bug into a feature? On this episode, we talk about how we used Bugsnag to do just that. We then get into an interesting discussion around using 3rd party software applications to move software projects more quickly with less risk. We also highlight just how useful the bitcoin-dev mailing list is for learning about how the Bitcoin …

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#13: An Alert Blitzkrieg: Cheap ETH Mining, MANA Land Estate Bug, EOS RAM Vulnerability, Stratis Node Vulnerability, Etherscan Vulnerability, Bitcoin Cash Vulnerability, and How Wall Streeters and Technologists ... 52:49

6y ago52:49

52:49

We discuss the alerting platform we’re building for crypto investors and traders. We then cover how Ethereum miners are rolling in dough, and the gives and takes of Proof of Work. We talk about a few really interesting alerts that hit this week: a Land Estate Bug we found in Decentraland ($MANA), an $EOS Vulnerability that exploits RAM, a Stratis n…

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Vikram Ramakrishnan And Faizaan Shamsi Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

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