What Grinds My Gears
From Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson, welcome to What Grinds My Gears, a podcast about the bizarre and buzzworthy happenings in the world of cryptocurrency. Each week, we delve into one key theme in crypto, and examine this theme through a broader financial, political, and cultural lens to learn from the past, understand the present, and explore the future.
1
Episode 29: Money Printer Go BRRR
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the options on the table, the policy responses (and lack thereof), and the implications of it all, exploring everything from deflationary crises to inflationary spirals.
74 min
2
Episode 28: Breaking Banks with Bitcoin
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss banking Bitcoin, what a bank really is, and whether or not we're just building the same thing in a different way.
25 min
3
Episode 27: Origin Myth: The Market and Marketi...
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the cypherpunk mailing list to Occupy Wall Street, put bitcoin’s beginnings in context, and discuss their significance.
51 min
4
Episode 26: Death and Taxes
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss death and taxes.
70 min
5
Episode 25: Mesh Much? Telecommunications, Top...
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the origins of mesh networking topologies and innovations in using cryptocurrencies to enhance security, facilitate more complex logical ordering, and incentivize resource sharing in these new networks.
77 min
6
Episode 24: Banning Bitcoin: The Long Arc of an...
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the brink of another type of Crypto War, the one over cryptocurrencies.
64 min
7
Episode 23: Price Predictions: How I Learned to...
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss recent run ups and retracements, and how the valuation of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fit into the larger economic landscape.
56 min
8
Episode 22: Welcome to FaceCoin
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss why Facebook needs FaceCoin, how digital money in a digital world is changing the role of banks, and what does and doesn’t make sense when it comes to tech companies issuing their own tender.
59 min
9
Episode 21: Bonus Round: Blockchain Week Recap
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson provide a retrospective on years past and discuss how this year’s “Blockchain Week” differs.
51 min
10
Episode 20: ETF, F No?
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the history of pooled investment vehicles, why they’ve grown exponentially over the last two decades, and why US firms are so fascinated by making bitcoin, which is friendly to retail, more friendly for institutions.
45 min
11
Episode 19: It’s All about DEX, Baby
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the Buttonwood Agreement, all the way through to Flash Boys, and even Tinder, and ending at decentralized exchange, or DEX.
78 min
12
Episode 18: Tarred and Tethered
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss collateralization, fractional reserve banking, and market liquidity.
89 min
13
Episode 17: Fact or FUD: Crypto in the Media
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss fear, uncertainty, and doubt in crypto media.
63 min
14
Episode 16: Beating the Market: A Game of Geeks...
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the theory and practice of financial performance and measurement, the challenges in applying this theory to crypto markets, and why this matters so much to investors of all stripes.
76 min
15
Episode 15: Fork Yourself
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss forks, great schisms, and evolutionary theory.
77 min
16
Episode 14: This is Water: A Story about Liquidity
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss liquidity and what it actually means in markets, for companies, for individual assets, and the role of market participants and market structure in managing this flow.
66 min
17
Episode 13: You’ve Been Liquidated
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss prediction markets, their applications across governance and finance, and decentralized marketplaces.
50 min
18
Episode 12: The ICO Ice Age: Back to Banking
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss crypto seasons and the dawn of a new age.
57 min
19
Episode 11: Alex, I’ll Take “Blockchain” for $500
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss enterprises and their experimentation with blockchain, where it’s gone wrong in the past and where it might be going in the future.
64 min
20
Episode 10: Surveillance Capitalism
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss the rise of surveillance capitalism and what that might mean for our cypherpunk dreams of privacy.
68 min
21
Episode 9: Initial Country Offering
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss how and why countries raise money, what secures these loans, and how blockchain-based debt could fundamentally change global debt markets.
54 min
22
Episode 8: Living on Borrowed DAI
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss credit, a brief history of lending, credit’s components, and innovation in credit markets.
64 min
23
Episode 7: Money Makes the World Go Round
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss crypto business models, asset classifications, governance, and funding models.
59 min
24
Episode 6: Crypto Cartels
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss crypto governance mechanisms.
59 min
25
Episode 5: Venezuela: Living in a Powder Keg
Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson discuss Venezuela and what fundamental challenges the crypto community has yet to address.
64 min