Numerai

How do stablecoin-first blockchains win distribution? Does TVL actually map to value? And why speculation may become the default language of online culture. In this 3-part episode, we explore three different important stories. Segment 1: CoinFund’s Seth Ginns explains how newly launched stablecoin chain Plasma aims to compete, plus why the “stablecoin race” with Circle and Stripe is just beginning. Segment 2: Solana Foundation president Lily Liu lays out why revenue—not TVL—should be crypto’s north-star metric, whether TVL can be easily gamed, and what a better DeFi metric stack looks like. Segment 3: Figment Capital’s James Parillo makes the case for Pump.fun and “AudienceFi”: how creator coins can financialize streaming, whether token collapses are a feature, and why both perps and memecoins rhyme with gambling. Thank you to our sponsors! TOKEN2049 - Get 15% off with code UNCHAINED Binance Guests: James Parillo, General Partner at Figment Capital Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation Seth Ginns, Managing Partner and Head of Liquid Investments at CoinFund Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Seth Ginns

Managing Partner

CoinFund

Lily Liu

Executive

NumeraiSolana FoundationEarn.com

James Parillo

Partner

Figment Capital

2024 has been a transformative year for Solana. With a surge in developer activity, bold innovations in DePIN, and its ambitions to become a “decentralized Nasdaq,” the ecosystem is making waves. But are these changes enough to differentiate it from competitors like Ethereum and L2 solutions such as Base? In this episode, Lily Liu, president of the Solana Foundation, and Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius, join Unchained to discuss how Solana is carving out its niche. They debate whether Base is a serious contender, why they’re not concerned about the 2025 token unlocks, and how Solana’s unique approach to MEV could shape its future. Plus, they tackle the ecosystem’s broader challenges and why they believe Solana’s vision will endure. Show highlights: Why Mert feels paranoid but also vindicated  Why Lily started working on Solana after being known as a hardcore bitcoiner How Mert’s background in Coinbase led him to found Helius and become the voice of Solana online Whether Solana can become a place where unique innovations are built, rather than copying Ethereum Whether Solana can achieve its vision of a “decentralized Nasdaq” Why the ecosystem has attracted so many developers in 2024  Why Lily believes that Base is no competitor to Solana What network extensions actually mean, according to Mert How Mert responds to the criticisms around Solana’s MEV Why Mert and Lily are not worried about the token unlocks of 2025 How the Solana mobile phone will compete with the giants Why DePIN showcases the real value of blockchain technology Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Kelp DAO Robinhood & Arbitrum Polkadot Guests: Lily Liu, President of the Solana Foundation Mert Mumtaz, CEO of Helius Links Unchained:  Pudgy Penguins See NFT Floor Price Drop Almost 50% After PENGU Launch -  Pump.fun Becomes First Solana DApp to Top $100M in Monthly Revenue How Solana Beat Out Ethereum to Nab New Crypto Developers in 2024 Are Solana's 'Network Extensions' Just Like Ethereum's Layer 2s But by a Different Name? What Are DePINs in Crypto? A Beginner’s Guide Timestamps:  00:00 Intro 02:34 Mert’s mix of paranoia and vindication about Solana 07:08 Why Lily shifted from Bitcoin to working on Solana 09:43 Mert’s journey from Coinbase to becoming Solana’s online advocate 14:47 Can Solana foster unique innovations rather than mimic Ethereum? 19:47 Solana’s vision of a “decentralized Nasdaq” vs. center of memecoin mania  27:54 What’s driving Solana’s surge in developer activity 30:26 Why Lily sees Base as no real competitor 33:04 The meaning and implications of network extensions 37:07 Mert’s take on criticisms of Solana’s MEV approach 42:11 Why they aren’t worried about the 2025 token unlocks 44:26 Competing with tech giants through the Solana mobile phone 50:48 How DePIN highlights blockchain’s true potential Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Lily Liu

Executive

NumeraiSolana FoundationEarn.com

Mert Mumtaz

CEO

Helius LabsHelius

Access Numerai here: http://numer.ai/mlst Michael Oliver is the Chief Scientist at Numerai, a hedge fund that crowdsources machine learning models from data scientists. He has a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from UC Berkeley and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Allen Institute for Brain Science before joining Numerai in 2020. He is also the host of Numerai Quant Club, a YouTube series where he discusses Numerai’s research, data and challenges. YT version: https://youtu.be/61s8lLU7sFg TOC: [00:00:00] Introduction to Michael and Numerai [00:02:03] Understanding / new Bing [00:22:47] Quant vs Neuroscience [00:36:43] Role of language in cognition and planning, and subjective... [00:45:47] Boundaries in finance modelling [00:48:00] Numerai [00:57:37] Aggregation systems [01:00:52] Getting started on Numeral [01:03:21] What models are people using [01:04:23] Numerai Problem Setup [01:05:49] Regimes in financial data and quant talk [01:11:18] Esoteric approaches used on Numeral? [01:13:59] Curse of dimensionality [01:16:32] Metrics [01:19:10] Outro References: Growing Neural Cellular Automata (Alexander Mordvintsev) https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/ A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence (Jeff Hawkins) https://www.amazon.fr/Thousand-Brains-New-Theory-Intelligence/dp/1541675819 Perceptual Neuroscience: The Cerebral Cortex (Vernon B. Mountcastle) https://www.amazon.ca/Perceptual-Neuroscience-Cerebral-Vernon-Mountcastle/dp/0674661885 Numerai Quant Club with Michael Oliver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLIxarbDXuQ&list=PLz3D6SeXhT3tTu8rhZmjwDZpkKi-UPO1F Numerai YT channel https://www.youtube.com/@Numerai/featured Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5

Michael Oliver

Chief Scientist

Numerai

On today's episode of Empire, Jason and Mike are joined by Richard Craib, founder of Numerai, to discuss why Richard sold all his ETH. Richard is a prolific investor and has been part of the Ethereum ecosystem since the 2014 ICO. That’s why it was such a big deal when he announced he sold his ETH and that he no longer sees crypto as a good investment. Does crypto have a product outside of speculation? Is crypto’s growth just a result of the Fed? Is crypto more about regulatory arbitrage than the tech? These questions and more are explored in this fascinating conversation (debate!) where Richard holds nothing back. - - Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/JasonYanowitz Follow Mike: https://twitter.com/MikeIppolito_ Follow Empire: https://twitter.com/theempirepod Follow Richard: https://twitter.com/richardcraib Subscribe on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/4fdhhb2j Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://tinyurl.com/mv4frfv7 Subscribe on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/wbaypprw - - Referenced in the show: Richard's video announcing why he sold his ETH https://twitter.com/richardcraib/status/1523513981347848192?s=20&t=qwlN5rWxe5-KWyJOEr4B6Q -- (00:00) Intro (01:52) Why Richard Sold All of His ETH (09:00) The Fed "Created" UST (12:14) Macro Trouble (15:53) A Market Neutral Strategy (19:38) Is Crypto's Only Product Speculation? (32:58) An Overreaction to a Flawed System (36:26) A Massive Misallocation of Capital (40:25) It's Mostly Just Regulatory Arbitrage (43:00) Why People Join The Crypto Industry (47:33) Is There A Real Use Case? (52:28) What Richard First Liked About Crypto

Richard Craib

Founder

Numerai

Richard Craib is the founder of Numerai, a crowd-sourced, AI-run stock trading system. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Audible: https://audible.com/lex to get $9.95 a month for 6 months – Tryolabs: https://tryolabs.com/lex – Blinkist: https://blinkist.com/lex and use code LEX to get 25% off premium – Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil EPISODE LINKS: Richard’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/richardcraib Numerai’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/numerai Numerai’s Website: https://numer.ai PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LexFridmanPage – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (08:12) – WallStreetBets and GameStop saga (22:25) – Evil shorting and chill shorting (24:31) – Hedge funds (30:04) – Vlad (37:00) – Numerai (1:04:16) – Futre of AI in stock trading (1:09:55) – Numerai data (1:13:37) – Is stock trading gambling or investing? (1:17:32) – What is money? (1:20:49) – Cryptocurrency (1:24:06) – Dogecoin (1:28:36) – Advice for startups (1:44:27) – Book recommendations (1:46:29) – Advice for young people (1:50:30) – Meaning of life

Richard Craib

Founder

Numerai

While many companies like to use buzzwords like crypto, blockchain, AI and encryption, Numerai actually combines all these technologies in a novel way. Founder Richard Craib discusses how his hedge fund started off crowdsourcing good financial models from data scientists to optimize its trading strategies in global equities. He then explains how it airdropped a token, the Numeraire, to those data scientists, giving them the option to stake some Numeraire for models they were especially confident in, and how staked models have higher returns. He also describes Numerai's new Erasure protocol, which helps build a marketplace for predictions for sellers who could profit more from selling their predictions than trading on them, and for buyers who can now use the signal of staking to filter between good and bad data. We dive into the protocol's "griefing" process, in which buyers can punish sellers, as well as the thorny issue of whether selling predictions based on proprietary information could constitute insider trading. Plus, we explore whether or not other hedge funds would really want to buy a token created by another hedge fund, and what Numerai's plans are to become more decentralized. Thank you to our sponsor! Onramp: http://www.thinkonramp.com Episode links: Numerai: https://numer.ai Richard Craib: https://twitter.com/richardcraib My Forbes article on the Numeraire: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/02/21/this-is-the-worlds-first-cryptocurrency-issued-by-a-hedge-fund/#3cda45f360b6 Erasure: https://erasure.xxx Announcement about Erasure: https://medium.com/numerai/numerai-reveals-erasure-unstoppable-peer-to-peer-data-feeds-4fbb8d92820a Unchained episode with Olaf Carlson-Wee of Polychain Capital: http://unchainedpodcast.co/why-the-first-employee-of-coinbase-launched-a-hedge-fund Unchained episode with Joey Krug of Augur: http://unchainedpodcast.co/joey-krug-on-how-augur-is-like-any-other-tool-ep79 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Richard Craib

Founder

Numerai

I intentionally avoid the world of quantitative investing on this podcast. The whole point of this format is to learn about many different fields, and the vast majority of my time is already spent in quant world. Occasionally I’ve broken this rule because of something unique, including this week’s conversation with Richard Craib, the founder and CEO of Numerai. If you listen to the podcast often you’ll have heard me reference Numerai, a hedge fund which blends quant investing, cryptocurrencies, crowdsourcing, and machine learning — talk about a PR company’s dream. One important note: Numerai is both incredibly open and very secretive. You may sense a bit of frustration on my part, but that is only because, as a fellow quant who loves details about data and modeling, we couldn’t go deeper into the details on the record. We discuss how Numerai has created an incentive structure to work with data scientists around the world in an attempt to build better investing models. The idea of having data scientists stake cryptocurrency in support of the quality of their models is fascinating. Like many hedge funds, Numerai doesn’t share its track record, so we don’t know if this works—but I hope you, like me, use this conversation as inspiration for how different technologies can intersect. Hash Power is presented by Fidelity Investments Please enjoy my conversation with Richard Craib.   For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 2:32 - (First Question) – How he came up with Numerai and how its related to his background 4:08 – How he works with and models the data for his system 5:24 – Describing machine learning as it relates to his work, and specifically linear regression 7:11 – The important stages in his sequence 8:46 – How the scale in the number of data scientists they use is different from other areas 11:30 – Which is the most important aspect of creating alpha; their data, algorithm work, proprietary ensembling of those algorithms. 14:30 – The idea of staking in blockchain 17:30 – Does the magnitude of the stake matter in blockchain 19:10 – Understanding the full incentive structure for both staked and unstaked work 21:07 – How is the prize pool determined 22:29 – Philosophy on how to source interesting data 26:11 – His thoughts on the crowd model and the wisdom of crowds 27:12 – The size of stakers for Numerai 27:51 – Interpreting the models and knowing when something is broken 30:03 – How they think about people not submitting their models 31:48 – Their model building 32:39 – Most interesting set of things they are working on to improve the overall process             35:38 – The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism 37:11 – How people can come along with their own data 39:00 – His thoughts on the quantitative investment community 40:44 – What else is interesting him in the hedge fund world 44:03 – Building a marketplace and staving off competition 46:16 – Kindest thing anyone has done for him   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on twitter at @patrick_oshag

Richard Craib

Founder

Numerai

In July in San Francisco, I moderated a panel at "Distributed 2018: Unlocking the Global Power of Decentralized Business." The title of our discussion was "Innovate or Reinvent?" and the panelists were Amber Baldet, cofounder and CEO of Clovyr, Matt Roszak, cofounder and chairman of Bloq, and Lily Liu, cofounder of Earn.com. We had a wide-ranging discussion, which included topics such as how the "Crypto 50" combined have more budget for blockchain development services than Fortune 50 companies,  how developing in the blockchain space and revolutionize an existing market requires that the new offering be many times better than existing options, and why enterprise needs to wait to get permission rather than ask for forgiveness, which doesn't hinder new projects. We also discussed how government is also a competitor in the space, that building entities don't include only decentralized projects and corporations, and how regulation could affect the development of the space. Thank you to our sponsors! DACC: https://www.digitalassetcustody.com Quantstamp: https://www.quantstamp.com The Sun Exchange:  https://www.thesunexchange.com Episode links: Distributed conference: https://2018.distributed.com Amber Baldet: https://twitter.com/AmberBaldet Clovyr: https://clovyr.io Matt Roszak: https://twitter.com/MatthewRoszak Bloq: https://www.bloq.com Lily Liu: https://twitter.com/calilyliu Earn.com: https://earn.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amber Baldet

Co-Founder

ClovyrJPMorgan Chase

Matthew Roszak

Cofounder & Chairman

Bloq

Lily Liu

Executive

NumeraiSolana FoundationEarn.com

with Tina Bhatnagar (@tinab), Preethi Kasireddy (@iam_preethi), Lily Liu (@calilyliu), and Kim Milosevich (@kimbatronic) Whether it’s sharing the decision-making behind joining a crypto company to the perspectives of a passionate early adopter (or relative latecomer), this episode of the a16z Podcast -- based on a panel from the “Intro to Crypto” event that Andreessen Horowitz and #Angels put on in April 2018 -- covers what it takes to build companies in crypto, from people to code. You can find other sessions from the event, covering the building blocks of crypto to decentralization to the regulatory landscape, here. Why crypto? What was the biggest surprise in the space? Do the same skills from other domains apply? This discussion, moderated by Kim Milosevich, explores these questions with Coinbase VP of Operations Tina Bhatnagar; CEO and founder of TruStory Preethi Kasireddy; and Lily Liu, co-founder at Earn.com. photo credit: Erin Brethauer The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information. Stay Updated: Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Preethi Kasireddy

Engineer and Entrepreneur

TruStory

Lily Liu

Executive

NumeraiSolana FoundationEarn.com