This week on the podcast we spoke to Alan Vey, the founder of Aventus Network. It was our first opportunity to catch up with a cryptocurrency industry insider since the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Aventus Network is a proof of stake blockchain that follows a much more energy efficient model. In the first year of its operation, for example, its power usage was 0.001 kWh per transaction, which stacks up well against Bitcoin’s energy consumption of 1,175 kWh per transaction.
Aventus Network works with a number of big partners, among them Imperial College London, the Global Blockchain Business Council and CoinShares. As Vey himself says, the collapse of FTX has nothing to do with blockchain.
“Some see this series of unfortunate events as indisputable proof that the blockchain industry is rotten to the core,” Vey says. “Broken from the inside out. Doomed for failure. But the fact is, the collapse of FTX has nothing to do with blockchain. It wasn’t crypto (or the principles of blockchain) that failed. It was much more simple than that: a good, old-fashioned centralised scam.”
He is echoed by John Ray, the new CEO of FTX, who was also appointed CEO of Enron during its bankruptcy and helped to recover more than $828m for creditors. Ray said: “This is really old-fashioned embezzlement. This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose, not sophisticated at all.”
On the Podcast
On the podcast we discuss how Vey got interested in blockchain in the first place and assess the overall impact of FTX on the crypto trading industry. We evaluate how so many large investors simply failed to spot many of the big governance issues even a cursory inspection of FTX threw up.
But at the same time many institutions still remain very interested in blockchain. Why is this? Also, with the ripples of FTX still spreading across the sector, what can we expect in terms of further bankruptcies and consolidation within the market as more high flying Icaruses come down to earth.
Binance remains in the news: its own USD Stablecoin – BUSD fell to $15.4 billion this week, that’s down $2bn in a month according to CoinGecko. This follows on from errors involving the Binance wrapped token derivatives (Binance-peg tokens). We discuss Binance’s current travails on the podcast: can it fight its way out of its current situation?
I guess the most exciting thing about blockchain though is how it is poised to transform the way traditional financial markets work. And what will this mean for private investors? Can the technology change the way the man on the street interacts with mainstream financial markets? Will it make things fairer and more transparent? Will the old stock exchanges become dinosaurs?
Download the podcast to find out!
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