IORADIO #18 – In the Garden of Snakes with Stephen Diehl

When cryptocurrency’s malign influence on the software industry began to be felt in 2019, an engineer working in finance took notice. After seeing first hand how public permissionless blockchains could be used to pervert incentives and undermine common interests, Stephen Diehl’s views on the decade old tech changed. What he had previously dismissed, he now saw as dangerous, and Stephen began to write a series of influential blog posts that have helped educate the public about the true nature of crypto.

In the intervening years Stephen’s written dozens of articles and two books on the subject and has become one of crypto’s most prominent critics. He’s also become an activist against the well funded cryptocurrency industry and has challenged those seeking to exploit and defraud the public by organizing with others who are critical of the tech.

We sit down with Stephen to discuss his activism, the ever changing ecosystem of tokenized fraud known as cryptocurrency, and if we should let Sal burn it with fire or apply the law according to Adam. Tune in!

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IORADIO #17 – A conversation with investigative journalist and author Zeke Faux

Investigative journalist Zeke Faux didn’t think very much of crypto, but when his friend Jay bragged about a Dogecoin ‘investment’ paying for a family vacation to Disneyland, he was determined to prove that Jay was not, in fact, Nostradamus. So when Zeke’s editor asked him to look into stablecoins, he yanked at the threads connected to crypto’s greatest mystery… What’s the deal with Tether?

Those threads dragged Zeke down a rabbit hole into a ripoff wonderland filled with colourful con-artists and the horror of human misery. From token luxury superyachts in the Bahamas to crypto’s forced labour camps in Cambodia, the first time author has chronicled the recent history of blockchain’s billionaires and the suffering of the victims on which their wealth depends.

One part detective novel, one part historical non-fiction, one part absurdist comedy. Faux has crafted an immutable ledger of the dark shadow that cryptocurrency has cast across our lives, a portrait that’s exciting, bleak, and funny in equal measure.

We sit down for a conversation with Zeke Faux, author of ‘Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall’.

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You can find Zeke’s new book here.