Since the rise of digital currencies and cryptocurrencies, central banks are considering the role these new forms of money may play in our evolving digital economy. One of the ideas studied is the notion of a central bank digital currency. While people and companies can hold central bank liabilities in the form of cash, only licensed banks have access to digital cash accounts with central banks. We’re joined by David Andolfatto, VP of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. David was previously on the podcast to discuss his idea for Fedcoin, a central bank issued cryptocurrency. In a recent paper, he explores the impact central bank digital currencies may have on the monopolistic banking sector. Topics covered in this episode: The state of central bank research on digital currencies and cryptocurrencies The idea that central banks may hold Bitcoin reserves David’s new paper on the impact of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) The potential impacts of CBDC’s on the banking sector and our economy The role of fractional reserve banking in our economy How fractional reserve banking applies to cryptocurrencies The Debreu model and the need for money in an entirely liquid market David’s outlook for the future of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies Episode links: Assessing the Impact of Central Bank Digital Currency on Private Banks (paper) Smart Contracts and Asset Tokenization (article) My perspective on the Bitcoin Project (article) The Trust Machine: The Story of Bitcoin (article) Fedcoin: On the Desirability of a Government Cryptocurrency (article) David's last appearance on the podcast Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Simplify your hiring process & access the best blockchain talent . Get a $1,000 credit on your first hire at toptal.com/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/266

We enter dozens of trust relationships ever time we interact with the Web. Browsers, ISPs, DNS providers, cloud hosting companies, all the way down to the handful of people who control certificate root keys; we rely on the integrity of these intermediaries to serve reliable, and accurate information. The concentration of power by any one of these actors threatens to compromise the very foundational principles of the Web. Decentralized technologies, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tor, and IPFS seek to reverse this trend. We’re joined by Nick Sullivan, Chief Cryptographer at Cloudflare. Founded less than 10 years ago, the company offers content delivery services (CND), DNS, and DDoS protection to over 12 million websites. The company contributes to open source cryptography libraries, some of which are used by Etherum. They recently launched an IPFS gateway and features which allow users to have strong guarantees as to the integrity of the content. Topics covered in this episode: Nick’s background as a cryptographer and previous position at Apple The Internet’s infrastructure and trust model How Cloudflare is experimenting with IPFS The challenges to hosting static websites with IPFS Cloudflare’s Onion routing service (Tor) and the benefits to users The Roughtime protocol and encrypted SNI Cloudflare’s contribution to open-source cryptography libraries The vulnerabilities of DNS and Cloudflare’s free private DNS service (1.1.1.1) Episode links: Welcome to Crypto Week (article) Roughtime: Securing Time with Digital Signatures (article) Introducing CFSSL - CloudFlare's PKI toolkit (article) End-to-End Integrity with IPFS (article) Introducing the Cloudflare Onion Service (article) Cloudflare's Distributed Web Gateway Nick Sullivan's website Thank you to our sponsors for their support: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks. More at aka.ms/epicenter. This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture and Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/264