Around The Coin
Stephen Sargeant and Mike Townsend
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Around The Coin explores the evolving worlds of finance, fintech, and the future of money. Hosted by industry experts, it takes deep dives into payments, cryptocurrency, banking, and the disruptive innovations reshaping the global economy. The show offers insights into how technology is changing the way we handle and think about currency.
Epizode
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From Trading Floors to Onchain Markets - Bart Smith | ATC #629 16.09.2026 46minIn this episode of Around The Coin, Stephen Sargeant speaks with Bart Smith, CEO of Avalanche Treasury Co., to discuss building a regulated digital asset treasury focused on the Avalanche ecosystem. Bart explains why a public treasury vehicle can give investors brokerage-account access to AVAX exposure, staking (over 90% staked), and potential upside from investing in Avalanche-native businesses. They cover U.S. regulatory developments including the CLARITY and GENIUS Acts, shifting SEC/CFTC ... -
What Crypto Investors Look for in Founders - George Christopher | ATC #628 09.09.2026 54minHost Stephen Sargeant welcomes George Christopher, Principal Investor at CoinFund (founded 2015), discussing how CoinFund invests from pre-seed through Series C+ across seed and venture funds in blockchain-focused companies. George shares his background in SaaS growth investing, argues the “SaaSpocalypse” mainly threatens horizontal workflow tools, and outlines defensible moats like proprietary data, security, licenses, and liquidity. He explains early-stage investing centers on founder/team ... -
Why KYC Isn’t Enough for Crypto Compliance - Charlene Cieslik | ATC #627 02.09.2026 33minLive from Futurist, host Stephen Sargeant interviews Charlene Cieslik, an independent financial crime compliance consultant with 26 years in compliance (including early FINTRAC) and 10 years in crypto, about Canada’s crypto compliance landscape. Cieslik argues repeated misconduct by industry players has driven regulatory stagnation and poor laws, and says stablecoins should be treated as payments, not securities, while warning Canada is lagging in innovation. She highlights data sovereignty a... -
Why Banks Are Getting Into Crypto Lending - Andrei Poliakov | ATC #626 26.08.2026 22minLive from Futurist, host Stephen Sargeant interviews Andrei Poliakov, founder and CEO of APX Lending. Poliakov explains why he built a highly regulated, compliant crypto-backed lending business after failures like Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager and FTX, offering loans in Canada and the US against Bitcoin and Ethereum up to 60% LTV with no rehypothecation, segregated insured cold-storage custody and on-chain collateral visibility. He details APX’s second vertical—lending-as-a-service—providing a pl... -
Rethinking Public Relations in the Age of AI - Nikita Sachdev | ATC #625 19.08.2026 12minLive from Futurist, host Stephen Sargeant interviews Nikita Sachdev, owner of Luna PR, about how AI is reshaping public relations in crypto, Web3, and AI. Nikita explains that while AI makes content creation easy, distribution and winning attention are harder, making PR and credible placements more valuable, especially as search shifts from SEO to “GEO” (generative engine optimization) driven by AI recommendations. They discuss balancing digital PR with in-real-life relationship building thro... -
The Next Era of Blockchain Finance - Patrick O'Kain | ATC #624 13.08.2026 52minHost Stephen Sargeant welcomes Patrick O’Kain, partner at Borderless Capital, to discuss cybersecurity, crypto investigations, blockchain analytics, and how AI-driven agentic commerce and stablecoins will reshape payments and finance. O’Kane explains Borderless Capital’s infrastructure-focused investing, his background in counter-terrorism finance and DOJ crypto investigations, and why blockchain security is increasingly treated as a national security priority as institutions move markets ont... -
Investing in AI and Blockchain Startups - Samiz Bayan | ATC #623 05.08.2026 1h 5minHost Stephen Sargeant interviews Samiz Bayan, partner at Draper Dragon, on the state of venture capital and the convergence of AI, blockchain, and tokenization. Bayan outlines Draper Dragon’s early-stage focus on infrastructure, its bridge between Silicon Valley and Asia via the Draper Network, and how that cross-border network supports founders with exchanges, liquidity, and distribution. He shares his path from traditional finance into crypto (via Cardano), lessons from building NFT authent... -
Programmable Compliance for Onchain Finance - Nikhil Raghuveera | ATC #622 29.07.2026 1h 2minHost Stephen Sargeant interviews Nikhil Raghuveera, CEO and co-founder of Predicate, about building real-time, smart-contract-level policy enforcement for onchain finance. Nikhil explains his background in payments and policy, why data from blockchain analytics providers isn’t enough, and how Predicate provides sub-second, non-bypassable “notary”-style approvals for transactions and automated freeze capabilities for assets like stablecoins. They discuss compliance bottlenecks in payments and ... -
From Banking to Stablecoin Payments - Wesley Rios | ATC #621 22.07.2026 59minOn Around The Coin, host Stephen Sargeant interviews Wesley Rios, US & LATAM Partnerships Lead at Morph Network, about the current state of stablecoin infrastructure and merchant payment rails. Rios shares his career path from Citi, JPMorgan, and 13 years at Mastercard into crypto, arguing stablecoins are shifting the conversation from technology to concrete cost and reach benefits. He cites stablecoin market metrics, the impact of regulatory frameworks, and operational adoption by firms ... -
How Blockchain Fixes Ticketing Infrastructure - David Barrick | ATC #620 15.07.2026 58minHost Stephen Sargeant welcomes David Barrick, CTO and co-founder of TIX & KYD Labs, to discuss why ticketing is fundamentally a banking business and how blockchain can fix fees, fraud, and resale chaos. Barrick explains primary vs. secondary ticketing, how venues rely on ticketing companies for underwriting and advances, and why service fees function like “interest” paid by fans. They cover open distribution, speculative ticket listings, and why NFT ticketing failed by ignoring venue fina... -
The Hidden Problem With Prediction Markets - Seni Thomas | ATC #619 08.07.2026 49minJoin our host, Stephen Sargeant, as he welcomes Seni Thomas, CEO and founder of EDGE Markets, to discuss prediction markets and EDGE’s role in compliant, high-velocity fund movement across regulated venues. Thomas covers EDGE’s $29.2M Series A led by CoinFund, the partnership with Kalshi, and why fragmentation into multiple liquidity pools could drive far higher volumes than current projections. He explains EDGE’s origins in gaming money movement, the pivot from leverage to solving banking co... -
How Crypto Onboarding Finally Gets Easier - Aditi Sriram | ATC #618 01.07.2026 59minOn Around The Coin, host Stephen Sargeant welcomes Aditi Shriram, COO of Para, to discuss her path into crypto from seeing Vitalik speak and starting at ConsenSys, plus her experience as a venture scout for Bain Capital Crypto. Aditi explains Para’s focus on wallet infrastructure for companies building on-chain financial products, highlighting stablecoin-driven use cases like remittances, embedded finance, payouts, treasury, and early agentic commerce. She details Para’s differentiation throu... -
How AI Agents Use Stablecoins - Xen Baynham-Herd | ATC #617 24.06.2026 57minJoin our host Stephen Sargeant with Xen Baynham-Herd, Head of Growth and Marketing at Base, on the Around The Coin podcast to discuss Base’s newest launches. Base Ledgers for enterprise-grade private transactions (shielded from the public but visible to regulators/auditors) and Base MCP, which connects chat interfaces like ChatGPT/Claude to a wallet and Base apps so agents can execute DeFi actions with user approval. Xen shares his path from TradFi and five years at Blockchain.com to working ... -
ATC - Itai Turbahn, Co-Founder & CEO of Dynamic and Tal Zackon, Co-Founder & CEO of TRES Finance 17.06.2026 1h 7minJoin our host Stephen Sargeant with Itai Turbahn from Dynamic and Tal Zackon from TRES Finance, both now under Fireblocks, for a deep dive into agentic AI and what it means for payments, compliance, cybersecurity, and stablecoins. They explain why today’s human-in-the-loop rails like cards and ACH don’t scale for agent-to-agent microtransactions, and why crypto rails and stablecoins can enable instant, low-cost, high-volume programmable payments that should remain invisible to end users. Tal ... -
How Stablecoins Fix Cross-Border Payments - Chris Mason | ATC #615 10.06.2026 51minHost Stephen Sargeant interviews Chris Mason, founder and CEO of Orbital, about building stablecoin infrastructure and how it can improve cross-border payments compared with traditional correspondent banking and SWIFT. Mason explains Orbital’s background processing stablecoins for seven years, its focus on corporate clients, and why transaction controls, authorizations, segregation of client funds, and compliance (including travel rule and blockchain analytics tools) matter as much as speed. ... -
Why Enterprises Need Their Own Blockchain - Kyle Jenke | ATC #614 03.06.2026 22minRecorded live at EthCC in Cannes, Around The Coin with host Stephen Sargeant sits down with Kyle Jenke, Chief Business Officer at Optimism, about how Optimism’s OP Stack and OP Enterprise help large enterprises build and own their own blockchains for customization, revenue economics, and stronger compliance, privacy, and security. Jenke cites over 50 OP Stack chains and major brands building on Optimism, and highlights Bitpanda’s MiCA-compliant Vision Chain as a European example of regulated ... -
Why Institutions Need Confidential Blockchain Transactions - Jeremy Jeremy | ATC #613 27.05.2026 32minLive at EthCC on the Around The Coin podcast, Stephen Sargeant heads to the Zama Villa to speak with Zama COO Jeremy Bradley about fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and why financial institutions need a confidentiality layer to balance blockchain transparency with selective access for regulators and compliance. Jeremy explains “programmable confidentiality,” Europe’s GDPR-driven focus on data sovereignty, and how Zama enables end-to-end encrypted on-chain transactions while allowing authoriz... -
Will AI Agents Dominate DeFi Trading? - Sergej Kunz | ATC #612 20.05.2026 22minJoin host Stephen Sargeant reports live from ECC, where discussions center on wallets, tokenization, real-world assets, regulation, and compliance, and introduces a live Around The Coin episode featuring 1inch co-founder and CEO Sergej Kunz. Kunz recounts 1inch’s start at the 2019 ETHGlobal New York hackathon after conversations with Vitalik Buterin, his early hackathon circuit, and how 1inch grew into a leading DEX aggregator. He explains aggregation, intent-based swaps, limit orders, and a ... -
How Crypto Companies Get Media Coverage? - Otto Jacobsson | ATC #611 13.05.2026 21minJoin host Stephen Sargeant live from EthCC in Cannes for a special episode of the Around The Coin podcast featuring Otto Jacobson, CEO of YAP Global. Otto shares his journey from investment banking and CFO to leading one of the top PR firms in crypto, blockchain, fintech, and AI. Together, they discuss the evolving media landscape in Web3, the rise of niche content creators, and how crypto companies can effectively communicate their stories in an increasingly crowded market. The conversation ... -
Why AI Agents Need Blockchain Identity? - Yat Siu | ATC #610 06.05.2026 1h 9minHost Stephen Sargeant interviews Yat Siu, co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, covering his background (German mother tongue, education work) and views on how AI is changing the purpose of school and future jobs, emphasizing creativity, humanities, and entrepreneurship. Siu connects cycles from the dot-com era to crypto, arguing technologies that are better for society ultimately win, and frames Animoca’s evolution from gaming to NFTs, DeFi, RWAs, and institutional efforts inc...
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