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The Breakdown

Meltem Demirors on Government Digital Currencies and Why ‘The Halvening’ Gets Weird

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8806 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of CoinDesk’s ten most influential people of 2019, Melem Demirors is a crypto renaissance woman, known best for investing, operating as CSO of CoinShares, and for explaining ‘shitcoins’ to Congress. In this end of year Breakdown, Meltem argues explains why the entrance of governments to the digital asset game is the most significant story of 2019, as well as suggesting that the presence of an entirely new financial infrastructure around bitcoin means the halvening is likely to be unlike what anyone thinks.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to the breakdown, an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond, with your host, NLW.

0:15.0

The Breakdown is distributed by CoinDesk.

0:20.0

Welcome back to the Breakdown's end-of-year extravaganza, and I am super excited today to share

0:26.1

with you this interview with Meltem Demers.

0:28.6

Meltem needs almost no introduction at this point.

0:31.3

She is the chief strategy officer at CoinShare.

0:33.8

She's a prominent investor.

0:35.4

And perhaps most notably this year, she introduced the word

0:38.5

shit coin to the congressional record when she was asked to testify, basically on behalf of our

0:43.1

entire community, during the Libra hearings. Perhaps that's why CoinDesk named her one of the 10

0:48.1

most influential people in crypto this year. Either way, we get into a lot of what she was discussing or the significance of what she

0:56.6

was discussing in those hearings, which is the emergence of governments and corporate actors

1:01.2

into the digital money space, into the digital asset space.

1:05.1

What does it mean that governments are doing their own tokens?

1:08.1

What does it look like for the future that corporations are able to bet on Bitcoin

1:12.5

in new ways? How will that shape the having? All of these are kind of part and parcel of this

1:17.2

interview. So I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, please subscribe so that you don't miss any of these

1:22.4

end of year interviews. We'll be back on January 2nd with normal breakdown episodes. And until then, I hope you have a great time thinking all about what was 2019 and what might be in store for the year to come.

1:32.3

All right, welcome back.

1:36.3

We are joined by one of CoinDesk's most influential 2019.

1:42.3

Melton, welcome. Thanks for hanging out.

1:45.0

Oh, hey, Nathaniel.

...

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