The Blockchain New Zealand Podcast

Ian Woolford has made a career working at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand and presently he's the director of money and cash which is overseeing the CBDC or Digital Cash program. The RBNZ is partway through a series of consultations to get public feedback and opinion on a Reserve Bank issued digital currency. 

In this conversation Ian makes it very clear that the Reserve Bank wants cash to remain as close to regular cash as possible...

Brooke Howard-Smith is the founder of Otterfish that is at the heart of the creator economy and influencer marketing. He's also a cofounder of Non-Fungible Labs which is now a part of Futureverse. Brooke and I broadly cover what's happening with AI and how its affecting everything digital and where Web3 fits in. We jump right in Brooke is talking about everyone leveraging what they love, being commercial and non commercial at the s...

Leo Clark is a documentary filmmaker that is presently working with the Nouns DAO community. His latest film, NON-FUNGIBLE AOTEAROA, is debuting at the American Documentary and Animation Film Festival in Palm Springs with the tagline: See how NFTs and Nouns DAO are transforming people’s lives in New Zealand.

In this conversation Leo and I talk about the Nouns project and what the community is doing with ...

Sam Kamani has lots of experience in tech, from being a founder to a VC, an advisor, and an author. We talk about 3 important aspects to entrepreneurship: talent, ability to raise capital, and access to market. In the back third we get into trends in Web 3 including decentralised physical infrastructure (DePIn) and ETFs.

Timestamps:

00:00 intro 01:12 realestate/density/Dubai  05:22 web3 in Dubai 09:29 capital & market access 15...

Will Remor is a former quantitative risk analysist from traditional banking that got into stablecoins via the maker DAI project. He's consulted on a number of finance, stablecoin, and defi protocols, including New Zealand's newest stablecoin the NZDD, and has been involved with asset tokenization (or RWAs) from the early days. In this conversation Will takes us through some of the key differences between USDC, Tether, and DAI. We t...

Aditya Das is a crypto analyst and writer with a background in applied economics working with Brave New Coin and the Techemy Group analysing macro trends in the crypto and wider markets. In this conversation Aditya and I cover the Bitcoin ETF and it acting as a gateway for an Ethereum ETF, broader Ethereum scaling solutions such as proto danksharding and layer 2 mechanisms. We touch on the halving, US elections, and the tokenisatio...

Darcy Ungaro is the host of the Everyday Investor podcast, and he advises clients in a range of financial matters from mortgages all the way to Bitcoin. In this conversation Darcy and I broadly cover financial advice in the age of digital assets such as the Bitcoin ETF and strategies to modernize that dusty portfolio. 

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00:00 intro 01:00 finite supply & property 07:37 trad-fi advice 13:08 responsibil...

Janine Grainger is the cofounder and CEO of Easy Crypto which is coming up on their 6th anniversary and very well known in New Zealand. In this conversation we talk about growing a crypto company, competition in the New Zealand market, building a wallet and some of the security issues that come with it, and deploying an NZ dollar stablecoin on the main chains. 

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00:00 intro 01:17 hi-tech awards   05:35 W...

Simon Collins is the founder of Stackr.co.nz, a Bitcoin mining company that uses sustainable and renewable energy sources. Simon is also the lead on the fundraising campaign to Orange Pill New Zealand parliament, and that is what we're talking about today. As we lead up to an election here in New Zealand we're listening to a lot of promises from the parties, many of them economic, but none of them are talking of potential alternati...

Joerg Buss is the Cofounder of Timpi, a decentralised search engine. Joerg is a long time cyber security professional that is now playing in the blockchain space. In this conversation we talk about taking on google by incentivising others to index the web, returning unbiased information, as well as some of the ethical issues around AI and ads in search.

---------------- Timestamps:

01:40 darkscope 05:35 cybersecurity  10:33 decentr...

David Ding is a futurist, founder, and tech advisor, and I haven't yet decided if he's a bit mad, or a bit genius. I think its likely he's a bit of both. By day David is an innovation advisor at Callaghan Innovation, he's deep in the start up and founder mindset, and loves the potential that immutable distributed systems have for reformation.

In this conversation we get into the idea of trinity systems - infinity + binary; over-uni...

Mike Bacina is a former software engineer turned lawyer that chairs the blockchain Australia organization. In this conversation we talk about de-banking and the regulatory environment in crypto. We touch on CBDCs, Blackrock, and Coinbase. Mike tells us what a blockchain lawyer does, And he plugs some of the speakers and events lined up for next week's Blockchain Week such as Caitlin Long. You can find the lineup at blockchainweek.c...

Kirsten 'KP' Patterson is the Chief Executive of the Institute of Directors (IoD) New Zealand that has over 10,500 members.

In this conversation we talk about all things governance, corporate and not for profit, climate, some trends in the tech industry including AI and DAOs, and a favourite topic of mine - responsibility - where is the parental supervision?  ---------------- Timestamps: 01:31 IoD; for-profits & NFP 08:00 climate  ...

Steve Vallas is the managing director of Blockchain APAC, previous CEO of Blockchain Australia, and an all around Linkedin Wizard.

Steve came to Auckland to meet with industry discussing aligning incentives and shared interests between Australia and New Zealand.

In this conversation we touch on the scam narrative within crypto, how it has affected the nft space, and crytpo marketing, and of course regulation and where we're at in A...

Paul Salisbury has been around the crypto scene in New Zealand for over a decade. He's been a founding member of BlockchainNZ and BlockchainLabs, and now has a new venture into crypto estate planning with Everlasting to help folks manage their crypto because one day you're not going to be around to sign a message with your private key. 

Paul and I talk about auditing smart contracts, layer 2s & privacy, multi-sig and key recovery m...

Sorel Carr is the Head of FinTech Business at BNZ (Bank of New Zealand). Sorel comes from a decade in corporate banking and has been down the blockchain rabbit hole looking to inject new emerging tech such as defi into the more traditional banking world. 

In this conversation we discuss the centralised networks banks are part of such as SWIFT & CBDCs, and the decentralised competitors that can run stablecoins, and defi protocols li...

Our Year in Review 2022 show brings together Bryan Ventura, Stephen Macaskill, and Paul Quickenden for a panel discussion of the years key events.

We starts with the SBF FTX debacle that is still unwinding, then we discuss the fallout from all the links that led to FTXs collapse. 2022 has been a record year for hacks as well, mostly bridging hacks, and we discuss security and the perception of crypto to the broader community. We fi...

James Bayly is the COO of SubQuery and onfinality which are basically data service providers focussing on non-EVM chains such as Polkadot and Cosmos. In this conversation we talk about indexing blockchain data and making it available for users and apps to query in a manner that’s cost efficient, quick, and reliable. We also touch on the modern evolution of blockchains, the blockchain trilemma, and creating a Web3 data marketplace.

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Ben Rose is the GM of Binance New Zealand. He has a long history of sales, marketing, and growth with New Zealand businesses from start ups to banks like ASB and NIB. 

Last month Binance launched here in the New Zealand market and Ben is tasked with growing the crypto market and *maybe* bringing back our futures trading once Binance is properly licenced. 

In this conversation we touch on marketing, regulation, education and some se...