In this week’s episode I speak with Mariano Conti, the former head of smart contracts at MakerDAO. Mariano knows the value of having permissionless and uncensorable currencies first hand —he started earning in Bitcoin in 2014 in Argentina because pesos would instantly lose value and it was hard to get dollars. When he learned about Ethereum he went all in and started working at Makerdao before DeFi was even a thing in 2016. When Dai was created, he was one of the first to take out a collateralized loan against his ETH and used that loan to buy a car. It must have been the first DeFi loan used to buy an actual physical thing.

The crypto space has come a long way since with an entire financial system built out of money legos and this week with a huge milestone of El Salvador becoming the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. Mariano talks about this historical moment and why it’s significant that it was a Latin American country to take this step.

Big thanks to our sponsors:

Colony, which makes it easy for people all over the world to build organizations together, online.
Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at https://balancer.finance/!
Enzyme provides an easy way to build, scale and monetize DeFi investment strategies
Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
Aave, an open source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets

"Having Legal Tender in a Currency You Cannot Control Means You Cannot Print Problems Away:" Mariano Conti

The Defiant - DeFi Podcast