The WAGMI Ventures Podcast features interviews with the most interesting founders, builders, & investors in web3 from across the world.
Yat Siu is Co-Founder and Chairman of Animoca Brands, a global leader in blockchain gaming, investing and web3, championing digital property rights through decentralized ecosystems. Yat shares his thoughts on stakeholder capitalism, redefining economic models by empowering users as network owners, as well as groundbreaking initiatives like Open Campus, which integrates blockchain into education to revolutionize student loan financing. He discusses the emergence of AI crypto use cases, and its role in enhancing transparency, reflections on the positive developments in the evolving U.S. regulatory landscape, and his vision for a decentralized future where crypto fosters equitable digital economies and cultural innovation. Yat's insights are some of the most valuable in the world.
Deborah Simpier is Co-Founder and CEO of Althea, a decentralized infrastructure platform revolutionizing internet access through blockchain-based, community-driven networks. Deborah shares her journey from advocating for net neutrality and running a rural IT business to co-founding DePIN network, Althea, a company pioneering multi-stakeholder networks with innovative products like KeyLTE and Liquid Infrastructure. She discusses Althea’s milestones, including deploying networks in rural Oregon, powering connectivity in the Arctic Circle, and enabling the first ApplePay transaction on CBRS spectrum. Deborah dives into how Althea’s price-aware routing protocol and blockchain-based payment system empower communities to build affordable, resilient internet infrastructure, challenging legacy telecom models. She also shares her vision for a decentralized future where blockchain and 5G converge to democratize connectivity, foster equitable digital access worldwide, and usher the convergence of DeFi, DePIN, and real-world utility pushing forward the vision of democratized, autonomous infrastructure.
Itai Turbahn is Co-Founder and CEO of Dynamic, a Web3 authentication platform that simplifies wallet-based login and onboarding through a flexible SDK, combining authentication, smart wallets, and secure key management. Itai shares his journey from product management leadership roles and consulting at the Boston Consulting Group to co-founding Dynamic, a company backed by a16z crypto, Founders Fund, and others. He discusses how Dynamic’s growth, milestones, including sponsoring six major hackathons, supporting 400 teams, and powering millions of monthly user logins, has advanced Web3 adoption. Itai dives into the platform’s role in simplifying developer workflows, enhancing user onboarding with features like social logins and Global Identities, and his vision for a more intuitive crypto future where wallet infrastructure empowers seamless cross-chain interactions.
Kurt Larsen is Co-Founder of Rhinestone, a platform revolutionizing Web3 by building modular smart account infrastructure to enhance interoperability, security, and developer accessibility. Kurt shares his journey from a banker to launching markets for Deliveroo and leading a machine learning product division, to co-founding Rhinestone, which recently raised $5 million in a seed round led by 1kx, with support from CoinFund, Lattice, Heartcore, Circle Ventures, among others. He discusses how his early fascination with crypto in 2017, coupled with insights from building Deliveroo’s marketplace algorithms, exposed the flaws of centralized networks and fueled Rhinestone’s mission to create user-friendly, self-sovereign tools that rival Web2 simplicity. Kurt dives into Rhinestone’s platform for developers to build and monetize smart account modules, the challenges of improving Web3 UX, and his vision for smart accounts as the dominant interface for users, AI agents, and blockchain-integrated systems in the next three to five years.
Nirav Murthy is CEO, Co-Founder of Camp Network, a Layer-1 blockchain designed to modernize intellectual property (IP) infrastructure, empower decentralized identity and data sovereignty, and power the next generation of AI Agents on verifiable IP. In this episode, Nirav shares his journey from advising global media and tech brands at The Raine Group to co-founding Camp Network’s modular platform that empowers creators to own and monetize their IP. He discusses how Camp’s Proof of Provenance (PoP) Protocol and zero-knowledge technology tackle scalability and privacy challenges, his insights on bridging social media data with on-chain value creation, and driving innovation to deliver intellectual property (IP) infrastructure, enabling user owned IP.