For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Josh Naftalis, partner at law firm Pallas Partners. He’s a long time attorney who represents companies, boards and executives in cases for white collar criminal defense, regulatory enforcement matters, internal investigations, crisis management and more. Prior to Pallas Partners, Josh was a federal prosecutor and served over a decade as assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. While at the SDNY he led a number of government white collar prosecutions and trials and as a senior member of SDNY’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. Josh handled situations ranging from cryptocurrency to inside trading and market manipulation to corporate and accounting fraud. His work also involved coordination with other agencies like the SEC, CFTC, and FBI. While at the SDNY, Josh secured convictions in every federal criminal trial that he led as an assistant U.S. attorney.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Katherine Dowling, the general counsel and chief compliance officer at Bitwise Asset Management. Bitwise is a crypto asset manager that is known for creating the world’s largest crypto index fund. The firm also filed for a bitcoin spot ETF in the U.S., making it one of a number of firms whose applications are pending after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delayed its decisions. Katherine previously has worked in compliance at True Capital Management and Luminate Capital Partners. Before that, she spent a decade as assistant U.S. attorney, most recently in the economic crimes unit of the U.S. attorney's office for the Northern District of California.

This week, we have a bonus mini episode where Jacquelyn talks with TechCrunch+ editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm to dive back into the Sam Bankman-Fried trial and what has transpired in its second week. Major witnesses who were involved in the downfall of FTX and its sister company Alameda testified like Gary Wang, CTO and cofounder of FTX, and Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda. The two of them plead guilty to a number of charges and could face maximum sentences of 50 to 110 years, respectively. It’s also worth noting Wang and Ellison testified as part of a cooperation agreement for pleading guilty. Jacquelyn and Alex talk about key points from the trial, anecdotes that you can’t read on a transcript and what she anticipates from both the prosecutors and defense going forward.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Grace Torrellas, Polygon Labs’ VP of product and zkEVM product lead and co-founder and executive director of Blockchain for Humanity, at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco. Blockchain for Humanity aims to use Bitcoin and blockchain technology to help social impact projects. Separately, Polygon Labs is focused on the Ethereum blockchain through its own scaling protocols to make the web3 ecosystem more “affordable, secure and sustainable.” The chain also aims to grow the zero-knowledge ethereum virtual machine (zkEVM) space. Breaking it down for you: zkEVM is just fancy jargon for scalable smart contracts that are compatible with Ethereum and supports a type of computation known as “zero-knowledge proofs,” that verify each transaction. Polygon Labs has over 2.9 billion total transactions since inception in 2017. The Polygon network works with web3 organizations like Aave, Uniswap and OpenSea as well as big name brands like Disney and Starbucks.

For this week’s episode, Chain Reaction (and Jacquelyn) did a crossover episode with Alex Wilhelm, editor in chief of TechCrunch+ and co-host of Equity, TechCrunch’s podcast focused on the business of startups. The highly anticipated criminal trial for Sam Bankman-Fried, former CEO of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, started on Tuesday to determine whether he’s guilty of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy. Jacquelyn has been on the ground at the Southern District of New York court house, listening in to the trial in the same room as Bankman-Fried, so there was lots to talk about. We dove deep into what transpired the first two days of Bankman-Fried’s trial, as well as who the jurors are, the first two witnesses and who else is expected to speak. We also got into the nitty gritty details, which you can’t read about on a transcript.

This week, we have a bonus episode where Jacquelyn and TechCrunch+ Editor in Chief Alex Wilhelm interviewed Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins. Pudgy Penguins, originally known for its flagship collection of 8,888 NFTs that began in 2021 has expanded beyond that into a “IP and brand development company” after Luca bought the project for $2.5 million and took over as CEO in April 2022. For context, Pudgy Penguins digital collectibles have generated over $400 million in transaction volume since release. That early success in the NFT market has now been parlayed into the creation of an open-world digital player experience called Pudgy World, which integrates blockchain technology from Ethereum and zkSync Era, and through its toy line, Pudgy Toys, that launched back in May. We discussed with Luca how those toys launched in 2,000 Walmart stores across the U.S. and Smyths, one of the biggest toy stores in the United Kingdom; in addition to prior launches in Five Below, Amazon, Hot Topic and others stores.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Tiago Sada, head of product for Tools for Humanity and core contributor to Worldcoin, at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco. Tools for Humanity, which is the team building Worldcoin, raised $115 million in a Series C round back in May with investors like Blockchain Capital, a16z, Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global. In March 2022, Worldcoin raised $100 million at a $3 billion valuation. The project was co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman with a three part mission to create a global ID, a global currency and an app that enables payments, purchases and transfers with its token. Worldcoin has been on a world tour since April, hitting major cities like Tokyo, Miami, New York City and San Francisco. It has also set up shop in major cities in countries like Kenya, India and China.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn did a live interview with Chris Lehane, chief strategy officer at Haun Ventures, at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco. Prior to joining the firm, Chris was an executive at Airbnb. He also co-founded a strategic consultancy firm, Fabiani & Lehane, that advised political, corporate, technology, entertainment and professional sports clients. In the 1990s, Chris held various government roles like press secretary to Vice President Al Gore and was special assistant counsel to President Bill Clinton. After a number of decades working across different industries, Chris landed in the world of crypto at Haun Ventures, a web3-focused venture capital firm that has two investment vehicles: a $500 million early stage fund and a $1 billion acceleration fund. Aside from Haun, he is also a member of Coinbase's Global Advisory Council.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn is sharing a panel she moderated live at Avalanche House, while she was in Seoul, South Korea for Korea Blockchain Week. The panel focused on the biggest opportunities and challenges facing web3 enterprise and included the following speakers: - Dan Sun, startup success manager for web3 APAC lead at Google Cloud - Gagan Mac, head of product and senior director of web3 services at Circle - Johann Eid, chief business officer at Chainlink Labs - Lihan Lee, co-CEO and founder of Xangle

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Charlie Shrem, founder of the Bitcoin Foundation, general partner at Druid Ventures and host of the Charlie Shrem show. Before all that, he was the co-founder and CEO of BitInstant which was a bitcoin payment processor that started in 2011. Shortly after founding the company, he was charged with operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and for allegedly attempting to launder over $1 million through the now defunct dark web marketplace Silk Road. He spent a little over a year in a low-security prison as a result. Now, Charlie is a vocal advocate for clearer crypto regulation, he’s a crypto investor, podcaster, and even a movie producer.

For this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Craig Salm, chief legal officer at Grayscale Investments. Grayscale is a digital asset investment firm that aims to provide products and services, like its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), to institutional and individual investors. The company was founded in 2014 and is one of the world’s largest digital asset currency managers. It currently owns 3.4% of outstanding bitcoin, “worth tens of billions of dollars,” according to a recent legal filing. The firm was making headlines this week after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Grayscale in a lawsuit against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the matter of a bitcoin ETF. This ruling is in response to the SEC denying Grayscale’s application to convert its GBTC product into a bitcoin spot ETF in June 2022.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Erik Svenson, co-founder, president and chief financial officer at Blockstream, a bitcoin and blockchain-focused infrastructure firm. The company was founded in 2014 and has its own sidechain technology, Liquid Network, as well as bitcoin mining operations and hardware wallets for Bitcoin and other assets. It most recently raised $125 million in January and has raised over $400 million to date. Erik previously worked on Wall Street as a former VP for AIG investments and was a co-founder and consultant of other startups. His last startup he co-founded before Blockstream was Dan’s Plan, a health tech company.

For this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn talks with Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, alongside TechCrunch+ editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm. Balchunas is the author of The Institutional ETF Toolbox and The Bogle Effect. He also co-hosts Bloomberg’s Trillions podcast and ETF IQ show. Spot bitcoin exchange traded funds, or ETFs, have been a hot topic in the crypto community for many years, but have recently gotten more attention due to Jacobi Asset Management listing Europe’s first bitcoin spot ETF, almost two years after its initial approval. Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently delayed deadlines for bitcoin spot ETF applications. We dive into what’s going on with the bitcoin spot ETFs in the U.S., why it matters and the odds of the SEC approving one in the near future. We also talk about Europe’s first bitcoin spot ETF, how these investment vehicles in general could impact crypto exchanges’ trading volumes and what else is in store for them.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Robbie Ferguson, co-founder and president of Immutable. Immutable is a web3 company consisting of two entities: Immutable Platform, a developer platform for building and scaling Ethereum-based web3 games, and Immutable Games, a web3 game developer and publisher. Some traditional gaming studios and IP holders are also building on its platform like GameStop, TikTok, Illuvium and NFT marketplace OpenSea, to name a few. In March 2022, Immutable raised $200 million at a $2.5 billion valuation and last June it launched a $500 million developer and venture investment fund, which TechCrunch covered exclusively.

For this week’s news episode, Jacquelyn sits down with Jesse Pollak, lead for Base and head of protocols at Coinbase. You might remember him from an interview we did with him back in April. Coinbase, which is the second largest crypto exchange by trading volume, launched Base, an Ethereum-focused layer-2 (L2) blockchain, in February. The platform was in testnet, which is a test phase of the blockchain network, until mid-July when it launched its mainnet, the fully live version of a blockchain on the main network (hence the name: mainnet), to developers. Next week, Base is officially launching its mainnet to the public on August 9th, alongside its “Onchain Summer” initiative. We dive into what’s going on, why it matters, where Pollak sees Base going in the future and why he’s keeping an eye on the bigger layer-2 ecosystem.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Deana Burke and Natasha Hoskins, the co-founders of Boys Club. Boys Club is a social decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for the “crypto curious,” originally designed to get women and non-binary people into the web3 world, it now aims to be an open space for anyone looking to get into the space. Although it’s a social DAO, Boys Club has a handful of other ventures like their newsletter and podcast, which I was a guest on, as well as events like crypto conference parties and trivia nights. Before Boys Club, Deana and Natasha were co-founders of a recently acquired travel platform Allcall. Deana was also a communications partner for the blockchain-based Celo Foundation and Natasha previously worked at Fora Travel as a general manager.

This week we have a bonus episode. Jacquelyn interviewed Stu Alderoty, chief legal officer of Ripple Labs. Stu spent most of his career working for traditional financial institutions in legal roles at firms like CIT Group, American Express and HSBC and left that world in 2019 to join Ripple. Ripple has been around since 2012, but has been making headlines lately for the recent federal court ruling that stated the XRP token, which is linked to Ripple, is not a security when sold to the general public but can be treated as a security for past XRP sales to institutional clients.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Maria Shen, a general partner on the investment team at Electric Capital, an early stage venture firm focused on crypto, blockchain, fintech and marketplaces. In March 2022, the firm announced that it closed $1 billion for a pair of crypto funds – a $400 million vehicle for making equity investments in startups and a $600 million fund intended to invest directly in crypto tokens. Its website currently showcases a portfolio with about 75 investments with crypto startups like Magic Eden, ConsenSys and Bitwise, to name a few. Before Electric, Maria was the CTO and co-founder of a startup Bambify that helped small to medium-sized businesses create more efficient supply chains with manufacturers globally. Prior to that, she worked at Microsoft.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Jack Lu, co-founder and CEO of NFT marketplace Magic Eden. This is his second time on Chain Reaction, but the market has evolved a lot since the last time he came on in August 2022, so we’re excited to have him back! Before co-founding Magic Eden in 2021, Lu worked as a product manager at Google and a consultant for Boston Consulting Group. Magic Eden originally began as a Solana-based NFT trading platform, but has expanded its support to other blockchain networks like Polygon, Ethereum and Bitcoin. Today, it has grown into one of the largest NFT marketplaces with over 8,000 collections, about $3 billion in NFT transactions and 22 million unique monthly visitors. In June 2022, Magic Eden raised $130 million in a Series B round that granted it unicorn status.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Patrick Kaminski, the director of digital innovation for web3 and metaverse at L’Oreal, and Manon Cardiel, head of strategic planning and partnerships within web3 and metaverse at L’Oreal. Patrick is the leader behind NYX Professional Makeup’s GORJS DAO, which launched in mid-January with hopes of combining the NFT world and the beauty industry in the metaverse. While Manon worked on the GORJS project, she also helped launch NFT collections for companies like Mugler and Yves Saint Laurent. L’Oreal is best known for its beauty products, but the over 100 year old company is also home to a plethora of brands that many of us use and own like Maybelline, YSL, Armani, Kiehls, Valentino, Prada, CeraVe and more.

This week, we have a bonus episode! Jacquelyn interviewed Paul Grewal, chief legal officer at Coinbase. This week, Grewal has been busy testifying before Congress and addressing recent legal ramifications Coinbase faced. On Tuesday, the SEC sued Coinbase for securities laws violations, just one day after the agency sued Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. Separately, on Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit gave the SEC a deadline to respond to Coinbase to clarify its stance on a rulemaking petition that the exchange asked for in July 2022.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk, better known as Gary Vee. He is the chairman of VaynerX and CEO of VaynerMedia and NFT collection VeeFriends. He’s a five-time New York Times bestselling author and previously created Wine Library, one of the first e-commerce platforms for alcohol in the early 2000s. In 2009, he co-founded VaynerMedia with his younger brother AJ and fast forward today the company services clients like PepsiCo, GE, Johnson and Johnson, Chase and others.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of Chainlink, a protocol that provides an oracle network to power smart contracts. Chainlink is also known as a web3 services platform that connects people, businesses and data with the world of web3. And for good reason - it has enabled over $7 trillion in transaction volume across DeFi, gaming, NFTs and other major industries. Prior to co-founding Chainlink, Nazarov co-founded four other businesses, most recently SmartContract - which focused on smart contracts.

This week we have a bonus episode from a fireside chat Jacquelyn did with Nadya Tolokonnikova, the creator of the protest art collective Pussy Riot, at NFT NYC in April 2023. Tolokonnikova was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in 2012 after being found guilty of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” but was released early under amnesty. Fast forward to 2023 and Tolokonnikova has continued to use the Pussy Riot name to fight in favor of women and LGBTQ people’s rights and against Russia’s control under President Vladimir Putin. As of March, Tolokonnikova was added to Russia’s most wanted criminals list. Tolokonnikova has also spoken before the U.S. Congress, British Parliament, European Parliament and has also appeared on TV shows like House of Cards.

This week Jacquelyn interviewed Jake Chervinsky, the chief policy officer at Blockchain Association, a non-profit organization focused on promoting “pro-innovation” policy for the digital asset world. He is also a board member of the DeFi education fund and advisor for a web3 seed stage fund Variant. Prior to his work with the Blockchain association, Chervinsky began his attorney career in private practice with a focus on anti-money laundering and anti-corruption compliance and investigations, financial services litigation and government enforcement defense. He spends a lot of time in DC, testifying at hearings to help provide clarity on the crypto industry in hopes to guide it in the right direction.