Dec 17, 2021
Ari Paul is co-founder and CIO of BlockTower Capital. BlockTower is a crypto and blockchain investment firm, applying professional trading, investing and portfolio management to this digital asset class. It is funded by well-known investors such as A16z and Union Square Ventures.
Before BlockTower, Ari was a portfolio manager for the University of Chicago's $8 billion endowment, and a derivatives market maker and proprietary trader for Susquehanna International Group (SIG). In this podcast we discuss:
- How to value bitcoin
- Understanding drivers of crypto markets
- What flows have driven crypto in recent years?
- Business for exchanges like UniSwap
- The real benefit of crypto is co-ordination power
- Trends in layer one protocols like Ethereum and Solana
- Will switch to Proof of Stake make a difference?
- What stage of hype cycle are Metaverse and DeFi tokens?
- Risk is about sizing positions
- Books/articles that influenced Ari: Money, blockchains, and social scalability (Nick Szabo), Shelling Out: The Origin Of Money (Szabo), Debt: The First 5000 Years (Graeber)