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Hidden Forces

Get the edge with Hidden Forces where media entrepreneur and financial analyst Demetri Kofinas gives you access to the people and ideas that matter, so you can build financial security and always stay ahead of the curve.
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Now displaying: January, 2021
Jan 25, 2021

In Episode 176 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas shares his thoughts on a series of interconnected topics including Tether, Bitcoin, domestic terrorism, generational conflict, and foreign interference.

The medium posted cited in this episode is “The Bit Short: Inside Crypto’s Doomsday Machine.

The two Blockchain Debate Podcast episodes cited are (1) "Tether has always been acting in bad faith (Bennett Tomlin vs. Larry Cermak, co-host: Patrick McKenzie)” and (2) "Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practices and defiance against regulators (CasPiancey vs. Matthew Graham)”

The episode of the “What Bitcoin Did Podcast” mentioned in this episode is “Questions for Tether with Paolo Ardoino & Stuart Hoegner.”

You can access the transcript to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 01/22/2021

Jan 18, 2021

In Episode 175 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Kevin Vallier, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University, whose interests lie primarily in political philosophy, ethics, philosophy of religion, and economics.   

In his latest book, “Trust in a Polarized Age,” Kevin draws on empirical data and liberal political philosophy to demonstrate that rising levels of political polarization can be largely attributed to a multi-decade decline in trust. If we want to reduce political polarization, argues Kevin, “we have to start by rebuilding social and political trust.” While this may seem like a tall order during a time in which Americans are less trusting than at any point since at least the 1960’s when measurements began, the situation is not hopeless. 

In this conversation we discuss the causes and consequences of declining social and political trust, the two-way relationship between trust and polarization, and what sorts of practical steps can be taken at both an individual and societal level to begin to restore faith in each other and in our political and legal institutions.  

In the overtime, Kevin and Demetri touch on a number of timely topics, including concerns about domestic terrorism and the parallels that can be drawn between the early 1990’s and today. One of the more interesting parts of the discussion deals with the “mainstreaming” so to speak, of conspiracy theory. Unlike in the early 1990’s where domestic terror groups and individuals were motivated primarily by extreme ideological beliefs, those being monitored today, some of which were involved in the attack on the US Capitol building, combine political violence with mainstream views that are shared by a significant percentage of the American people.

You can access the second part of this conversation, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 01/12/2021

Jan 15, 2021

In Episode 174 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Michael Ippolito and Jason Yanowitz, the founders of Blockworks, a financial media brand that delivers breaking news and premium insights about digital assets to millions of investors.

In this conversation, Jason and Michael share news about the recent launch of their editorial site, including anecdotes from their experience creating a crypto-focused, financial media company from scratch in an industry that has seen explosive growth in investor interest over the last 12 months.

If you are interested in blockchain technology, decentralized finance, cryptocurrencies, or just generally fascinated by the culture in crypto and blockchain, you will love this conversation. Michael and Jason explain how they bootstrapped the company without any outside funding, creating a stable of talented podcast hosts like Ted Seides, Peter McCormack, Preston Pysh, and most famously, Anthony Pompliano, whose podcast they started together and which has since become the most popular podcast in crypto.

The second half of the conversation focuses primarily on understanding the content and business models of BlockWorks and how they compare to their competitors.

You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript to this episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 01/07/2021

Jan 13, 2021

In Episode 173 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Matt Stoller, Director of Research at the American Economic Liberties Project and author of Goliath: The Hundred Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. The two discuss the reaction of Big Tech to the storming of the Capitol building in Washington D.C. this past week, what it reveals about the power that these data monopolies have over their competitors and the government, and how we can use the law and regulation to restore equilibrium between corporate power and governance in American life.

Topics include: Section 230, common carriage laws, the de-platforming of Trump by Facebook & Twitter, the banning of Parler from the Apple iOS & Android app stores and Amazon’s servers, and more.

You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri on Twitter at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 01/11/2021

Jan 11, 2021

In Episode 172 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Grant Williams and Ben Hunt. Ben is the founder of the widely read Epsilon Theory, a newsletter and website that is known for its insights and analysis on markets and society with a particular focus on how narrative drives our perception of the world and our place in it. Grant is the long-time publisher of a popular financial newsletter and the host of the very popular Grant Williams Podcast, which you can find on any major podcast platform.

The three of them discuss the urgent social, political, and economic issues facing the United States and what Americans can do to help themselves and their country in this moment of heightened uncertainty. Topics include equity markets, cryptocurrencies, politics, national security, social media, & more.

You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 01/05/2021

Jan 4, 2021

In Episode 171 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with Katharina Pistor, a leading scholar of corporate governance, money & finance, property rights, and comparative law & legal institutions. She’s also a prominent commentator on cryptocurrencies, has testified before Congress about them, and has written papers dealing with the issues of digital statehood and monetary sovereignty. Her latest book, “The Code of Capital,” is a tour de force that explains in captivating detail how the law is used to code and construct capital, protecting some assets over others, how this creates wealth for society, and how its use and abuse can make the difference between societal cohesion and political revolution.

In today’s conversation, you will learn how the law—a powerful tool for social ordering and wealth creation—has been put to work in the service of private consolidation and political control. This leads us to focus on three, interrelated topics:

The first deals with the nature of property and how the legal system and its network of lawyers turn assets into capital by encoding them with certain, key attributes. One of these attributes, convertibility, has been notably expanded in its application over the last thirteen years, as central banks have accepted an ever broader basket of assets as collateral and used their balance sheets to monetize not only government debt, but mortgages, corporate bonds, and stock ETFs.

The second deals with a knock-on effect of the first, namely, the astronomical growth in the market value of Bitcoin. In this context, Bitcoin can be seen as an exogenous response to the erosion of trust and credibility in the conduct of monetary policy by central banks and in response to questions about the integrity of public money. But questions remain about whether or not a private form of money like Bitcoin can replace state-issued fiat money or if monetary sovereignty even exists without territorial sovereignty.

The third and final area of discussion looks at how creatures of the legal code, like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others, are using that same code to not only control markets but effectively break them and transform the economic space into something that more closely resembles a system of bonded labour.

After listening to today’s episode, you should be better able to understand how the world we live in today came to be, how its code has been altered, and why promises of a frictionless, deterministic future are chimeras; they are designed to divest us of not only our power but of the very agency that makes this experiment in democratic self-governance possible in the first place.

You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

If you enjoyed listening to today’s episode of Hidden Forces you can help support the show by doing the following:

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | CastBox | RSS Feed

Write us a review on Apple Podcasts

Subscribe to our mailing list through the Hidden Forces Website

Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

Subscribe & Support the Podcast at https://patreon.com/hiddenforces

Join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at @hiddenforcespod

Follow Demetri at @Kofinas

Episode Recorded on 12/29/2020

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