Trevor McFedries joined us for a fascinating chat about his background in the football and music industries, and how this led him into crypto. Trevor is the cofounder of Brud, a technology startup specializing in artificial intelligence and media. At Brud, they create social media personas with the help of CGI technology, the most well known being Lil Miquela. Lil Miquela is a sentient robot navigating life in LA -- and has millions of followers on instagram. Trevor also started Friends With Benefits, a gated online community on a private discord server with a community token. We talked with Trevor about the increasingly immersive social media experience, the future for creators and the future of organizations. Topics covered in this episode: Trevor's background in football and music, including his time working at SpotifyAn overview of BrudWho is Lil Miquela?How do these fictional characters fit into the 'real world'?How Trevor got into cryptoThe Friends with Benefits communityTrevor's views on the future of DAOsBrud's experience with VCs as opposed to crowdfundingTrevor's take on NFTs and Lil Miquela's NFT dropThe cultural impact of crypto to society and what the future looks likeEpisode links: BrudLil MiquelaFriends with BenefitsFriends with Benefits on TwitterTrevor on TwitterSponsors: Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenterExodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenterParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021*Terms and conditions apply. This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/388

The ability to move Bitcoin on other chains isn't a new idea, and many are trying to overcome the technical limitations which make this a technically challenging feat. The latest representation of Bitcoin on Ethereum is tBTC, a fully-backed ERC-20 token representing bitcoin collateral. tBTC is fully decentralized and relies on Keep Network, a decentralized multi-party computation which enables cross-chain bridging.  We were joined by Matt Luongo, CEO of Thesis (the team behind tBTC and Keep Network) to chat about the tBTC technology, his vision for the future of interoperability and value propositions of different chains. Topics covered in this episode: - Matt's background - how he got into crypto and his experience in the space - The Keep Network - dencetralized multi-party computations - Why trustless minting of tBTC is important - tBTC and its security model - Dark DAOs and vote buying - The merge between Keep Network and NuCypher - What other mergers are being looked at for the future - Matt's views on the idea of BTC existing as tokenized asset on Ethereum and other chains Episode links:  - [Thesis](https://thesis.co/) - [Keep](https://keep.network/) - [tBTC](https://tbtc.network/) - [Keep Discord](https://discord.com/invite/wYezN7v) - [Thesis on Twitter](https://twitter.com/thesis_co) - [Keep on Twitter](https://twitter.com/keep_project) Sponsors:  - ParaSwap: Give ParaSwap a try at paraswap.io/epicenter. This URL will allow you to claim a 50% refund on gas fees for your first swap of at least 1 Eth. This offer is available until May 1st 2021 and refunds will be made every Friday starting April 9th, 2021 - Terms and conditions apply.  - Solana: Solana is the high performance blockchain supporting over 50k transactions per second to power the next generation of decentralized applications. - https://solana.com/epicenter - Exodus: Exodus the easy-to-use crypto wallet available on all platforms and supporting over 100 different assets. - https://exodus.com/epicenter This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: [epicenter.tv/387](https://epicenter.tv/387)