The Scoop

Zane Tackett has witnessed some of the crypto industry's biggest moments. And he recently took a post as a sales and business development executive at FTX, giving him a first-hand look at growth occurring in the derivatives market today.

It comes as a notable time for that particular corner of the crypto space, given that more that 100,000 bitcoin options contracts – a historic number totaling over $900 million – is slated to expire this Friday. Tackett will have a front row seat, and he talked about the growth factors for the derivatives market on this week's episode of The Scoop.

He also touched on his history in the space, stretching back to his role in helping found the international team at OKCoin, now OKEx, an early mover in crypto futures.

Tackett moved from OKEx to become director of community and product development at Bitfinex. He was at the forefront of the exchange's response to the 2016 hack in which 119,756 BTC were stolen.

"It was the worst period of my life," he said. "I think the initial 48 hours, I went 40 hours without sleeping, got two or three hours of sleep and was back at it. And you know, pretty much everyone on the team was the exact same way."

After his time at Bitfinex, Tackett became head of OTC sales at B2C2 before moving to FTX this year.

In this week's episode, Tackett discussed how each of these experiences informed his understanding of the market, as well as:

• How crypto businesses can cater to both retail and institutional traders
• Why a more standard user experience has been a key reason for growth in the space
• Why bitcoin resiliency is a sign of growing maturity for the crypto space despite concerns about volatility
• The firewalls in place between Alameda and FTX to mitigate concerns around conflicts of interest
• Why the prime brokerage space is heating up in the U.S. compared to other regions
• Tackett's experience working at Bitfinex during the exchange's biggest hack and what he learned.

Episode 25 of Season 2 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Zane Tackett, a sales and business development executive at crypto derivatives exchange FTX.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to [email protected].

This episode of The Scoop is brought to you by Bitstamp, the original global cryptocurrency exchange. Since 2011, Bitstamp has been a cornerstone of the industry, earning the trust of over four million individuals and top financial institutions looking for a reliable trading venue.

Whether you’re trading on our web platform, mobile app or industry-leading APIs, Bitstamp gives you the professional-grade tools you need to execute your strategy. Download the Bitstamp app or visit Bitstamp.net/Pro to learn more and start trading today!

Before Tarun Chitra built out his company, he spent years doing quantitative research and development for places like D.E. Shaw Research and Vatic Labs. Chitra took his experience in machine learning to create and head a simulation platform for crypto networks — Gauntlet — which garnered backing from companies like Coinbase, Distributed Global and Polychain, among others.

Gauntlet provides tools for crypto developers to forecast security risks, possible governance snags and consensus mechanism issues. By forecasting such problems and showing how they could affect assets or network activity, developers can make more informed decisions about security and governance structures.

In this week's episode of The Scoop, Chitra spoke from his experience in the high-frequency trading (HFT) world. Chitra's appearance coincided with growing concerns surrounding the market activity driven by Robinhood traders, as users of the app continue to buy up stocks that other investors have dumped.

Much of the conversation also coincides with the conversation surrounding brokerage and payment for order flow (PFOF), as some critics object to selling order flow to market makers, claiming it creates a conflict of interest. The Block recently uncovered how Robinhood received more than $90 million in PFOF payments during Q1. Chitra discussed the HFT world's view on PFOF and broke down some of the nuance in the transactions on this week's episode.

Chitra also touched on:

• Why private exchange trade funds aren't that private
• Whether open finance has structural advantages in comparison to legacy market structure
• If those possible advantages are enough to drive volumes in the same league as traditional markets
• The role of transparency in both the Open Finance and traditional finance ecosystems.

This episode of The Scoop is brought to you by Bitstamp, the original global cryptocurrency exchange. Since 2011, Bitstamp has been a cornerstone of the industry, earning the trust of over four million individuals and top financial institutions looking for a reliable trading venue.

Whether you’re trading on our web platform, mobile app or industry-leading APIs, Bitstamp gives you the professional-grade tools you need to execute your strategy. Download the Bitstamp app or visit Bitstamp.net/Pro to learn more and start trading today!

Ian Sigalow has been in the venture capital (VC) space for over a decade, launching his firm Greycroft in 2006.

Since then, he's taken some big swings in the fintech space, many of which have paid off. Greycroft manages about $2 billion today.

He was an angel investor in Venmo at a time when people told him that PayPal had already won the race of free peer-to-peer service. On this week's episode of The Scoop, Sigalow discussed how one of the firm's latest investments — Public.com — could build a similar business by combining social elements with trading.

Sigalow sits on the board of Public, which recently garnered Series B investments from the likes of Will Smith and Adobe chief product officer Scott Belsky. It's a social network for traders, allowing users to trade stocks as well as grow their information networks.

"So we believe at Greycroft that there is an opportunity, just like there was when Venmo was founded, to create a multiplayer game inside of a stock brokerage around a feed, and to build the first socially native brokerage application in the world," he said.

In this episode of The Scoop, Sigalow and The Block's Frank Chaparro explored Public's business as well as the VC landscape in the midst of COVID-19. The two also discussed:

• Why companies trying to marry social networking and payment infrastructure have to do so from the outset
• The lessons learned from Robinhood and other trading apps
• The future plans for Public.com, including how the company makes money and executes orders
• What the current economic uncertainty in the world means for the VC market
• How COVID-19 accelerated expected trends in tech business developments, and how a 10-year plan meant Greycroft was already invested in many of these spaces

Institutional crypto exchange LMAX Digital closed out its second year by 10x-ing its trade volumes, trading $75 billion worth of crypto in the past 12 months, the firm revealed exclusively to The Block.

Since its launch two years ago, the firm has facilitated $85 billion in trades, according to a Tuesday press release. Last year's monthly high was $8.6 billion traded in June of 2019, and that month saw the firm's daily record high on June 27, when $1.25 billion was traded on the exchange.

CEO of LMAX Group David Mercer said the firm has become the primary price discovery venue, having grown to command a sizable portion of the spot cryptocurrency market. Still, the firm's growth has stagnated recently and the size of its market is still dwarfed by retail-aimed exchanges like Binance and Coinbase.

Now, with two years of growth under its belt, the firm is looking to expand its reach. Mercer told The Block that the firm is looking to add its trade and market data to more leading market reference indices, as well as expand its product portfolio with the growth of the asset class.

In a recently recorded episode of The Scoop, Mercer discussed the firm's recent growth and what it's been like to operate a digital asset exchange in the midst of the ongoing financial and health crisis. The Block's Frank Chaparro and Mercer also explore:

• How the firm coped with rising volatility and maintained liquidity on its venue in the midst of whipsawing crypto markets
• The differences between how traditional markets have held up during the COVID-19 crisis relative to crypto
• Why LMAX needs more asset managers, fund managers to get involved in crypto for it to go head to head with retail exchanges
• What traditional markets can learn from crypto
• Why banks may not care about crypto yet, but their customers are asking questions

This episode of The Scoop is brought to you by Bitstamp, the original global cryptocurrency exchange. Since 2011, Bitstamp has been a cornerstone of the industry, earning the trust of over four million individuals and top financial institutions looking for a reliable trading venue. Whether you’re trading on our web platform, mobile app or industry-leading APIs, Bitstamp gives you the professional-grade tools you need to execute your strategy. Download the Bitstamp app or visit Bitstamp.net/Pro to learn more and start trading today!

Zaheer Ebtikar is the founder and CIO of Split Capital.

In this episode, Ebtikar discusses the opportunity of liquid crypto investment strategies and the challenges faced by crypto venture firms, including crowded markets and longer lock-up periods.

OUTLINE

00:00 Introduction

05:14 Evolution of Crypto Venture

08:12 Nuances of Liquid Crypto Funds

10:58 Liquid Fund Capital Allocators

13:59 Crypto Market Inefficiencies

17:38 Shifting Fundamentals

20:38 Impact of ETFs

22:49 Market Opportunities

37:02 Closing Thoughts