Builders & Founders

In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with Eric Larcheveque, entrepreneur and one of Europe's most influential voices in Bitcoin, who's now building TBSO - La Société Bitcoin - a publicly listed company co-founded with NBA legend Tony Parker. While our conversation touches on entrepreneurship, artificial intelligence, self-custody, and the future of money, it ultimately explores something much deeper: what does it really mean to own something? Choosing Independenc

In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with Dan Tapiero, Founder of 50T Funds and one of Wall Street's earliest public advocates for digital assets, to discuss why he believes crypto represents the greatest macro investment opportunity of our lifetime, why most investors lose money despite being directionally right, and why his $50 trillion thesis may actually be conservative. At first glance, the conversation appears to be about Bitcoin, crypto markets, and digita

In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of Kalshi, to discuss entrepreneurship, resilience, prediction markets, regulation, and the future of information itself. While Kalshi is now one of the most valuable companies in the world, this conversation is less about valuation and more about the mindset required to build something that takes years to work. It is a discussion about certainty in an uncertain world, the psychological c

In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with Michael Saylor to discuss Bitcoin, wealth creation, monetary collapse, low time preference, and the philosophy that turned a software entrepreneur who once watched his company fall 99.8% into one of the most influential figures in global finance. What begins as a conversation about Bitcoin quickly goes deeper into a reflection on ego, focus, scarcity, survival, and what it actually means to preserve value across generatio

In this episode of When Shift Happens, I sit down with Ben Zhou, co-founder and CEO of Bybit, to discuss how he led the company through the largest security breach in Web3 history, and why he believes the next generation of crypto exchanges will be full financial platforms for the internet age. From Crypto Exchange to Financial Infrastructure Ben’s story goes beyond Bybit surviving a crisis. It is also about how much the role of a crypto exchange has changed. In the early day

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Gracy Chen, CEO of Bitget, to discuss what it truly takes to lead at the highest level, the future of crypto as financial infrastructure, and the personal cost of building a global company while raising a child. Gracy’s story is not a linear climb. It’s shaped by early adversity, unconventional career moves, and a deep conviction about where the world is heading. Today, she leads one of the largest crypto exchanges globa

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Armani Ferrante to discuss what it really means to build in crypto when everything falls apart. From losing nearly his company’s entire balance sheet in the collapse of FTX, to rebuilding Backpack into a regulated global exchange, Armani explores identity under pressure, the philosophical foundations of crypto, and the structural shift happening as blockchain technology begins to merge with traditional finance. The Quest

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Bobby Ong, co-founder and CEO of CoinGecko, to discuss how he bootstrapped one of crypto’s most trusted data platforms with just $200 and no venture capital. Over the course of the conversation, Bobby reflects on discovering Bitcoin in 2013, building CoinGecko through multiple brutal market cycles, resisting the many shortcuts that exist in crypto, and why playing long-term games with long-term people may be the only way

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Evan Cheng to discuss why he believes the architecture behind most major blockchains is fundamentally insufficient, what Sui was built to solve instead, and how the next wave of adoption may come. What makes the conversation especially interesting is that Evan is not simply arguing that Sui is faster or cheaper. He is making a deeper claim: that much of crypto is still built on a mental model of assets and ledgers that w

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Anand Gomes, CEO of Paradex, to discuss what it really takes to survive crypto cycles, how most token launches misalign incentives, why Paradex locked 80% of its team tokens to public performance milestones, and why he believes perpetual exchanges are becoming the financial supercenters of the internet economy. Health as a Founder’s First System The episode opens in an unexpected place, with Anand’s health. Over the pas

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Avichal Garg to discuss why most people lose in crypto, what it really takes to survive long enough to win, and the investing frameworks behind backing more than 25 unicorns. As co-founder and general partner at Electric Capital, and an early backer of companies like Figma, Solana, Kraken, Notion, and Bitwise, Avichal brings a long-term Silicon Valley lens to a simple but uncomfortable question: Are you here because you

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Anthony Pompliano to discuss what real conviction looks like: why he once put 95% of his net worth into Bitcoin, how deep research separates concentration from gambling, and why he would rather risk going to zero than win at what he calls “insider games” that create no real impact. “Relentless” as a way of operating Pompliano describes himself simply: investor, entrepreneur, someone who likes to have fun, but at the same

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Andrej Majcen, co-founder and Group CEO of Bitcoin Suisse, to unpack one central idea: we are living through a narrow, five-year window that may define who preserves and compounds wealth, and who doesn’t. As pension systems strain, trust in institutions erodes, and inflation quietly eats away at savings, Andrej argues that Bitcoin is no longer a speculative trade but a structural response to a broken financial system. Th

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Raagulan Pathy, founder of KAST and the “stablecoin guy”, to discuss what happens when a $100M company goes to zero, what eight years of debt repayment does to a founder’s mindset, and why he now believes stablecoins can power a global bank serving 150+ countries, and possibly a billion people. Raags is direct about the scale of what he’s trying to build. He says, on record, that KAST is a “trillion dollar plus” outcome

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Sandeep Nailwal, founder of Polygon, to discuss what it takes to build through chaos, why he refused to “walk off” when crypto turned ugly in 2022, and what Polygon is really trying to become: not just another blockchain, but a global payments layer powered by stablecoins. Along the way, Sandeep reflects on his childhood, his obsession with individual sovereignty, and the philanthropic moment that turned crypto into a cu

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Brian Armstrong to discuss what it really takes to build something that lasts. We talk about the myth of the “smartest founder in the room,” the unglamorous muscle of unreasonable determination, and the emotional cost of scaling Coinbase over more than a decade. Brian opens up about burnout, loneliness, ambition, and the mindset shifts that helped him keep going when things felt heavy. We also get into why he believes ca

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Seung Yoon Lee to discuss the $80 trillion creative asset class, why creators are shut out of the value they generate, and how Story Protocol aims to tokenise and “programme” intellectual property so anyone can legally remix it while paying royalties automatically. Fixing Creator Economics Seung’s path to this problem began with a long apprenticeship in media economics. Fresh out of Oxford, he tried to fix journalism’s b

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Emin Gün Sirer to discuss his journey from Turkish immigrant to Cornell professor...

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Jordi Alexander, founder of Selini Capital, to unpack one of the most pressing...

In this episode of When Shift Happens , I sit down with Sergey Nazarov, co-founder and CEO of Chainlink, to discuss why crypto has...