Crypto: Meltdown or Inevitable?

Are we now seeing a crypto meltdown?
Or are we still on a journey toward
decentralized digital commerce?

After peaking at $64,400 on November 12, 2021, Bitcoin has lost more than half its value. One appealing prospect of cryptocurrency was always financial privacy, but regulators and financial industry incumbents have not been enthusiastic about this, and the promise seems to be fading away.

On the other hand, crypto has the potential to free us from central banking, and distributed ledgers with Smart Contracts continue to be an attractive vehicle for developing decentralized and more capital-efficient business models. There is still a tremendous amount of investment going into this.

We will take a hard look at developments in the crypto space over the last year and separate the hype from real progress. We will confront credibility challenges and government obstacles and discuss what solutions will actually work in practice.

Are we now seeing a crypto meltdown? Or are we still on a journey toward decentralized digital commerce?  

Host
Frode Odegard, CEO, Post-Industrial Institute

Guests
Toby Lewis, CEO, Novum Insights
James Haft, Chairman, DLTx
Fred Thiel, Chairman and CEO, Marathon Digital Partners

Biographies

Frode Odegard
Chairman and CEO, Post-Industrial Institute

Frode Odegard studies how enterprises, investors, and policymakers can best navigate the transition to a post-industrial civilization and economy. He is the founder of the Post-Industrial Institute, which provides advisory, educational, and strategic services to corporates and investors to help them turn disruption into opportunity. Frode is also the founder of the Post-Industrial Forum, a global community formed to develop and promote a better understanding of the post-industrial transition and how to navigate it. Its members include investors, executives, founders, and policymakers. 

Toby Lewis
CEO, Novum Insights

Toby Lewis, innovation monitoring company Novum Insights’ founder and CEO, is a highly energetic serial entrepreneur and prolific analyst, straddling the worlds of tokens, technology startups, venture capital and data science. He was one of the co-founders of analyst group Global Corporate Venturing, where he led the analytics team. Lewis has written regularly for the Wall Street Journal and spoken at numerous international technology conferences including during the World Economic Forum, World Economic Forum, Global Technology Symposium, South Summit, White Bull, Tech Tour and Global Corporate Venturing.

 

James Haft
Chairman, DLTx

James is an entrepreneur and merchant banker focused on the scaling of Web 3.0, and adoption of Distributed Ledger Technology and decentralized, secure data platforms and solutions as they are adopted by individuals, enterprises and political entities to improve security, speed, and cost. He is a believer in democratization and self-sovereignty of identity, data and value.

James is the founder of DLTx, PAL Capital, and PAL Genesis Fund, and co-founder of CryptoOracle, CryptoMondays, NXTPLabs, ClimateCoin, and Condo.com. He has advised over 50 Internet and Distributed Ledger startups advised and 100 domestic and cross border transactions consummated in and between US, Asian, LatAm and European markets, including the first listing of a Chinese company on the NYSE and the sale of the largest Spanish language Internet advertising network to FOX (News Corp.) 

Fred Thiel
Chairman and CEO, Marathon Digital Partners

Fred currently runs the largest publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon as CEO, Fred served as senior trusted advisor to management teams, boards of directors, private equity and venture capital firms and their portfolio companies. He has served on a number private and public company boards, includingOptConnect, GateKeeper Systems, Oden Technologies, NoCell Technologies, Sequent Software, and Dorner Manufacturing.

Fred has over 25 years operating experience leading companies in the technology, data communications, Internet, IoT, AI, automation, Big Data, digital media and software industries. As a CEO, he has led companies through rapid growth to IPO, repositioned companies for high value exits to strategic and financial acquirers, led M&A and roll-up strategies, as well as successfully executed corporate turn-arounds and wind downs. Fred has repeatedly driven rapid growth and generated hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value. He is a respected expert and frequent speaker on the digital transformation of companies and industries.