MoneyNeverSleeps
Sharp riffs, big ideas and real insights from smart people - all in under 15 minutes. Hosted by early-stage investor Pete Townsend with the people rebuilding money, markets, and the internet from the ground up.
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Sharp riffs, big ideas and real insights from smart people - all in under 15 minutes.
Hosted by early-stage investor Pete Townsend with the people rebuilding money, markets, and the internet from the ground up.
Recommended
Here are some great episodes to start with if you're new to the podcast!
306
March 6, 2026
Why Stablecoins and Banks Will Coexist | Emma Landriault | JPM Coin (EP. 306)
Money doesn’t become digital overnight. It becomes digital when the rails of finance begin to change.
![Making Monzo Irish: The Playbook for a More Human Digital Bank | Monzo Bank Europe | Elaine Deehan [EP. 321]](https://media.podpage.com/showpage/uploads/images/470059cf-4f38-4a66-bf61-2f914cf57b04.jpg "Making Monzo Irish: The Playbook for a More Human Digital Bank | Monzo Bank Europe | Elaine Deehan [EP. 321]")
321
July 10, 2026
Making Monzo Irish: The Playbook for a More Human Digital Bank | Monzo Bank Europe | Elaine Deehan [EP. 321]
Making Monzo Irish: The Playbook for a More Human Digital Bank Elaine Deehan is back on MoneyNeverSleeps for her third appearance, and this one has been a long time coming. As Ireland Country Manager of Monzo Bank Europe, Elaine is doing what she's always done: building something that makes banking feel genuinely human, and genuinely Irish. Out Into the Wild Elaine opens with the moment the banking license came through in December. Euphoria, excitement, and a little bit of fear --because step
![From Lean Startup to Incorruptible | Eric Ries [EP. 316]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/aa8caf1c-8da5-481f-8874-ceb1ee2baf75.jpg "From Lean Startup to Incorruptible | Eric Ries [EP. 316]")
316
May 28, 2026
From Lean Startup to Incorruptible | Eric Ries [EP. 316]
Pete is joined by Eric Ries, author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, for a conversation about the invisible structural forces that corrupt even the most mission-driven companies, and what founders can do about it before it's too late.
![Sell More or Don't Bother - The Hard Truth of Tokenization | Alejandro Gutierrez | Solana Superteam Ireland [EP. 312]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/f9ba1742-7fa9-433f-af6f-f5c33726d134.jpg "Sell More or Don't Bother - The Hard Truth of Tokenization | Alejandro Gutierrez | Solana Superteam Ireland [EP. 312]")
312
April 24, 2026
Sell More or Don't Bother - The Hard Truth of Tokenization | Alejandro Gutierrez | Solana Superteam Ireland [EP. 312]
Tokenization has a perception problem. The industry keeps selling it as an efficiency play — less friction, more transparency, better infrastructure. But if tokenization doesn't help you sell more of whatever you've tokenized, it's irrelevant.
![Who's Watching the Agent? | Rob Viglione | Horizen Labs [EP. 310]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/8c4c1f1a-60b1-4649-90ae-5a345edd403e.jpg "Who's Watching the Agent? | Rob Viglione | Horizen Labs [EP. 310]")
310
April 3, 2026
Who's Watching the Agent? | Rob Viglione | Horizen Labs [EP. 310]
Who's watching the agent? That's the question at the heart of this episode — and it's one that's going to define the next decade of finance.
165
Nov. 26, 2021
165: Matthew Graham | Sino Global Capital, Web3 and Making Your Hobby Your Job
Matthew Graham is the CEO of Ryze Labs (formerly Sino Global Capital), which provides strategic investment to best-in-class companies that are moving the blockchain and digital assets ecosystems forward, and then help them to thrive in the Asia market. Matthew joins Pete Townsend on this episode, originally recorded as part of the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats.
![You Can't Code Your Way Out of Risk | Amor Sexton | Blockdaemon [EP. 314]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/3ebbcd30-f24c-465f-bf42-bff25238fd35.jpg "You Can't Code Your Way Out of Risk | Amor Sexton | Blockdaemon [EP. 314]")
314
May 8, 2026
You Can't Code Your Way Out of Risk | Amor Sexton | Blockdaemon [EP. 314]
In the last few weeks, Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO lost $577 million between them. Neither one was a code exploit. Both were operational and governance failures. That's the conversation Pete sits down with Amor Sexton to have on EP 314 of MoneyNeverSleeps — and it's the conversation the industry isn't having loudly enough. Amor is Chief Operating Officer at Blockdaemon, one of the world's leading institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure providers. She was last on the show in October 2
305
Feb. 2, 2026
Digital Yuan: Trade, Gold, and the New Money Rails (EP. 305)
Money doesn’t become geopolitical overnight.It becomes geopolitical when the rails start to change. In this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Pete Townsend is joined by Sean Lee for a deep, practical conversation on what China is actually building with the digital yuan — and why this shift is about infrastructure, not currency replacement. Sean brings first-hand insight from recent meetings with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), explaining how China’s digital yuan efforts are moving beyond a d
166
Dec. 3, 2021
166: Joey Krug | Pantera Capital, Being Early in Crypto and Shipping Fast
Joey Krug is the Co-Chief Investment Officer of Pantera Capital, the first institutional investment firm focused exclusively on bitcoin, other digital currencies, and companies in the blockchain tech ecosystem. Joey joins Pete Townsend on this episode originally recorded as part of the Techstars Web3 Convo Series of fireside chats powered by the Launchpool Web3 Techstars Accelerator program in Ireland.
285
Feb. 22, 2025
285: Startup Smarts & Web3 Wisdom | Highlights from the Past Year
This week, we’re taking a look back at some of my favorite moments from the past year—the conversations that stuck with me long after we hit stop on the recording. If you missed them the first time around, now’s your chance to catch the highlights, chock full of startup smarts and web3 wisdom!
160
Oct. 22, 2021
160: Freedom v2 | Colm Lyon’s Journey through Payments and Fintech
Referring to Colm Lyon as an Irish fintech ‘O.G.’ is just the tip of the iceberg, as at the core, he’s an entrepreneur who’s built indigenous Irish businesses into international players. Currently the CEO and Founder of Fire.com, we walk through Colm’s journey from the early days of banking IT to bootstrapping and scaling his first fintech Realex Payments before it was even called fintech, and building a great culture as an Irish company competing globally. We also talk through how successful ex
241
Dec. 1, 2023
241: Money Talks with Mai Santamaria | Binance and CZ | Argentina's New President | Vitalik's Techno-Optimism Manifesto | Blockchain and AI Intersect
This week I’m joined by guest co-host Mai Santamaria, the Head of the Financial Advisory Unit for the Department of Finance in Ireland. Mai and I riff on where crypto exchange Binance goes from here after being fined $4.3bn, with co-founder and CEO Changpeng Zao stepping down. We also look at the new crypto-friendly Argentinian president, Javier Milei, and what he might do with dollarization and crypto adoption, and then finish up with a mind-opening counterpoint on Ethereum co-founder Vitalk B
248
Feb. 16, 2024
248: Venture Investing and Connecting the Dots
We've remastered and packaged up two of our most popular episodes from 2023 that were originally going to be one episode looking at the venture capital mantra of ‘investing in lines and not dots’ with VC investing insights from Patrick Pinschmidt from Middlegame Ventures and my lessons learned from my first 1,000 deals.
249
Feb. 23, 2024
249: Bridging the Gap | Connor Murphy | One Problem, Two Ventures and Bridging Networks
This week’s guest is Connor Murphy, the CEO of Bridge. I met Connor at a Techstars event in Dublin in 2019 as he was just getting his latest venture off the ground in Bridge, and I started using the Bridge app within seconds of meeting him to help me bridge my network.
283
Jan. 31, 2025
283: Arabian Prince | The N.W.A Pioneer Empowering the Next Tech Generation
This week, we’re tapping into the intersection of hip-hop, technology, education and startups with a true pioneer—Arabian Prince. If you know your rap history, you know Arabian Prince as one of the founding members of N.W.A, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rap group that redefined music and culture. But what you might not know is that he’s also a lifelong technologist, entrepreneur and futurist—a kid from Compton who got his hands on a computer early and never looked back.
302
Jan. 5, 2026
2026 Crypto Predictions: Why It All Gets Boring (EP. 302)
Crypto doesn’t win in 2026 by being louder - it wins by becoming boring.
257
April 19, 2024
257: How I Got To Techstars on a Flywheel | Hesus Inoma Interviews Pete Townsend | Venture With Hesus
This week, I’m sharing an episode of the ‘Venture with Hesus’ podcast that I recorded in late 2023 with the unstoppable Hesus Inoma, as he interviews me on lessons learned from being part of the startup ecosystem the last 8 years.
205
Jan. 21, 2023
205: Memory Lane | Sam Williams and Arweave
Sam Williams is co-founder and CEO of Arweave, a blockchain protocol allowing us to remember and preserve valuable information, apps, and history indefinitely. In this episode, Sam shares the inspirational story of how Arweave got started, their life-changing experience with Techstars Berlin in 2018, and how their long-term vision, hope, and resilience have been the foundation of their successes to date.
300
Oct. 10, 2025
The Next Episode - MoneyNeverSleeps 300: One Story Ends, Another Begins
This one was special. Episode 300 of MoneyNeverSleeps was recorded live at the Podcast Studios at HeadStuff HQ in Dublin - the legendary former Westland Studios where artists like U2, Dropkick Murphys, and Hozier have recorded in the past - marking the end of an era for the show’s long-form interview format, and the beginning of a new chapter. Seven years. Three hundred episodes. Hundreds of conversations with founders, operators, investors, regulators, technologists, and dreamers building wh
Recent Episodes
![Grit Don't Quit: How Beezie Got to Yes | Andrea Miele [EP. 323]](https://media.podpage.com/showpage/uploads/images/e2b40bcd-0712-4e54-9695-13ae9dcae398.jpg "Grit Don't Quit: How Beezie Got to Yes | Andrea Miele [EP. 323]")
323
Aug. 21, 2026
Grit Don't Quit: How Beezie Got to Yes | Andrea Miele [EP. 323]
Grit Don't Quit: How Beezie Got to Yes Andrea Miele is co-founder and CEO of Beezie, a gamified commerce platform Pete backed through Techstars in 2024. She's been in crypto since 2015, and before that spent years driving growth in high-tech healthcare. In this episode, Andrea makes the case for why the "TCG" label never captured what Beezie is actually building, what she asks collectors to trade for instant liquidity, and what it takes to raise a second round after some of the best-known funds
![Agentic AI's Least Obvious Takeover Yet | James McCann | Everhaze [EP. 322]](https://media.podpage.com/showpage/uploads/images/d5ef4dd3-c8a8-492d-9f8c-db94e9430205.jpg "Agentic AI's Least Obvious Takeover Yet | James McCann | Everhaze [EP. 322]")
322
Aug. 7, 2026
Agentic AI's Least Obvious Takeover Yet | James McCann | Everhaze [EP. 322]
Agentic AI's Least Obvious Takeover Yet James McCann is CEO and founder of Everhaze, and this is his second time building a company in the PR industry. He ran ClearStory, an international PR agency out of Dublin, for close to nine years before it was acquired last year, then started Everhaze right after. In this episode, James makes the case for where agentic AI shows up next, and it's not where most people are watching. The 80/20 Problem Breaking PR Economics James walks through the economic
321
July 10, 2026
Making Monzo Irish: The Playbook for a More Human Digital Bank | Monzo Bank Europe | Elaine Deehan [EP. 321]
Making Monzo Irish: The Playbook for a More Human Digital Bank Elaine Deehan is back on MoneyNeverSleeps for her third appearance, and this one has been a long time coming. As Ireland Country Manager of Monzo Bank Europe, Elaine is doing what she's always done: building something that makes banking feel genuinely human, and genuinely Irish. Out Into the Wild Elaine opens with the moment the banking license came through in December. Euphoria, excitement, and a little bit of fear --because step
![Founder Blind Spots: Hard Legal Lessons From the Edge | Sheila Lynch [EP. 320]](https://media.podpage.com/showpage/uploads/images/ea437616-9a37-454b-b97c-0efc3fe05509.jpg "Founder Blind Spots: Hard Legal Lessons From the Edge | Sheila Lynch [EP. 320]")
320
July 3, 2026
Founder Blind Spots: Hard Legal Lessons From the Edge | Sheila Lynch [EP. 320]
Sheila Lynch has been in the room for three of the biggest financial shocks of the last five years — COVID at CQS, the Russian invasion of Ukraine at BlackRock with live Eastern European assets in the funds, and the SVB collapse. When systems go under stress, what's actually there gets revealed. Culture, training, processes — either they hold or they don't. This episode is about what founders consistently get wrong before those moments arrive. Treasury after a raise, legal as a checkbox, wind
![What Crypto Already Solved for Enterprise AI | Rami Akeela | Nera Systems [EP. 319]](https://media.podpage.com/showpage/uploads/images/9ceb4f95-9fce-4aa0-94aa-466dd6767456.jpg "What Crypto Already Solved for Enterprise AI | Rami Akeela | Nera Systems [EP. 319]")
319
June 26, 2026
What Crypto Already Solved for Enterprise AI | Rami Akeela | Nera Systems [EP. 319]
What Crypto Already Solved for Enterprise AI There's a wall that enterprise AI is running into right now, and it's not a model capability problem. It's a data problem. The most powerful AI tools in the world need access to your most sensitive information to be useful, and the moment that data leaves your environment, you've lost control of it. For banks, hospitals, and accounting firms sitting on exactly the kind of data that AI could transform, that tradeoff has become a quiet, daily standof
![The Drive to Five: Unpacking Citi's $5.5T Tokenization Forecast [EP. 318]](https://media.podpage.com/showpage/uploads/images/ae8b7c75-5d41-484d-87fd-940937341c90.jpg "The Drive to Five: Unpacking Citi's $5.5T Tokenization Forecast [EP. 318]")
318
June 19, 2026
The Drive to Five: Unpacking Citi's $5.5T Tokenization Forecast [EP. 318]
The Drive to Five: Unpacking Citi's $5.5T Tokenization Forecast In June 2026, Citi Institute released "Tokenization 2030: Wall Street On-Chain" — a report that puts a hard number on a question the industry has been circling for years. Their base case: $5.5 trillion in tokenized financial assets by 2030, with a bear case of $2.7 trillion and a bull case of $8.2 trillion. For a market sitting at roughly $17 billion today, that's not an incremental forecast. It's a bet on structural change. A
![The Onramp Bringing TradFi Onchain | Martin Watkins | Montis [EP. 317]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/0edb2bfe-cbe5-431c-9da6-01beefe8d42c.jpg "The Onramp Bringing TradFi Onchain | Martin Watkins | Montis [EP. 317]")
317
June 5, 2026
The Onramp Bringing TradFi Onchain | Martin Watkins | Montis [EP. 317]
Pete Townsend is joined by Martin Watkins, CEO of Montis Group, to discuss what a blockchain-native central securities depository actually does and why it matters for the future of tokenized assets.
316
May 28, 2026
From Lean Startup to Incorruptible | Eric Ries [EP. 316]
Pete is joined by Eric Ries, author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, for a conversation about the invisible structural forces that corrupt even the most mission-driven companies, and what founders can do about it before it's too late.
![Product Before Token | Sal Ternullo | SVRN & A100x Ventures [EP. 315]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/490c9ab7-3b1f-46a5-a4f6-19a82eedc400.jpg "Product Before Token | Sal Ternullo | SVRN & A100x Ventures [EP. 315]")
315
May 22, 2026
Product Before Token | Sal Ternullo | SVRN & A100x Ventures [EP. 315]
Pete Townsend is joined by Sal Ternullo, CEO of SVRN and Managing Partner at A100x Ventures, for a conversation about how to tell the difference between a token that represents ownership of the value-creating thing and one that's an accelerant bolted onto something else.
314
May 8, 2026
You Can't Code Your Way Out of Risk | Amor Sexton | Blockdaemon [EP. 314]
In the last few weeks, Drift Protocol and Kelp DAO lost $577 million between them. Neither one was a code exploit. Both were operational and governance failures. That's the conversation Pete sits down with Amor Sexton to have on EP 314 of MoneyNeverSleeps — and it's the conversation the industry isn't having loudly enough. Amor is Chief Operating Officer at Blockdaemon, one of the world's leading institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure providers. She was last on the show in October 2
![Making Crypto Tax Efficient | Dan Gold | Stratiphy [EP. 313]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/c2872825-3659-4cca-9a52-d3576cf73853.jpg "Making Crypto Tax Efficient | Dan Gold | Stratiphy [EP. 313]")
313
May 1, 2026
Making Crypto Tax Efficient | Dan Gold | Stratiphy [EP. 313]
Dan Gold is founder and CEO of Stratiphy, and as far as anyone knows, the only platform offering tax-efficient crypto exposure to UK retail investors right now.
312
April 24, 2026
Sell More or Don't Bother - The Hard Truth of Tokenization | Alejandro Gutierrez | Solana Superteam Ireland [EP. 312]
Tokenization has a perception problem. The industry keeps selling it as an efficiency play — less friction, more transparency, better infrastructure. But if tokenization doesn't help you sell more of whatever you've tokenized, it's irrelevant.
![VC 3.0: Venture Capital Reimagined | Brian McNulty | Lingfeng Capital [EP. 311]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/ff249535-6737-4151-ad0f-a5f11d9bb994.jpg "VC 3.0: Venture Capital Reimagined | Brian McNulty | Lingfeng Capital [EP. 311]")
311
April 17, 2026
VC 3.0: Venture Capital Reimagined | Brian McNulty | Lingfeng Capital [EP. 311]
Brian McNulty has been building toward this moment for a decade. When he co-founded the Post Trade Distributed Ledger Group with the London Stock Exchange back in 2015, he was helping the industry imagine what tokenized funds might one day look like. On April 21st 2026, he rings the bell at that same exchange to launch DVF — Lingfeng Capital's Digital Venture Fund — and the circle closes.In this episode, Brian and Pete trace the journey from FAC to the Apex exit to DVF, and dig into what VC 3
310
April 3, 2026
Who's Watching the Agent? | Rob Viglione | Horizen Labs [EP. 310]
Who's watching the agent? That's the question at the heart of this episode — and it's one that's going to define the next decade of finance.
![Talent is Equally Distributed, Opportunity is Not | John Hill | Whop [EP. 309]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/b4238711-6b86-42a7-8997-0dda71d42dd6.jpg "Talent is Equally Distributed, Opportunity is Not | John Hill | Whop [EP. 309]")
309
March 27, 2026
Talent is Equally Distributed, Opportunity is Not | John Hill | Whop [EP. 309]
Talent is equally distributed. Opportunity is not. John Hill, VP of Story at Whop, has spent his career watching founders in Cape Town, Lagos, and Medellín build something real — and then hit a wall the moment they try to get paid.
![Markets Never Close: The Case for Tokenized ETPs | Alex Pollak | 21Shares [EP. 308]](https://s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/redwood-labs/showpage/uploads/images/c1358785-51cf-4c4e-ad54-04f4cc18fca5.png "Markets Never Close: The Case for Tokenized ETPs | Alex Pollak | 21Shares [EP. 308]")
308
March 20, 2026
Markets Never Close: The Case for Tokenized ETPs | Alex Pollak | 21Shares [EP. 308]
Markets don't close when the exchange does. They just move somewhere else. In this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Pete Townsend speaks with Alex Pollak of 21Shares about why crypto ETPs are not just surviving the rise of onchain finance — they're about to become part of it. Alex Pollak is Managing Director and Head of UK and New Markets at 21Shares, which provides the largest suite of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products in the world. Drawing on over 20 years in the ETF and ETP industry,
307
March 13, 2026
Transparency Equals Liability: Why DeFi Strategies Get Copied | Matteo Manzi | Orion Finance (EP. 307)
DeFi transparency means every onchain trade is visible. Which means the moment a strategy works, the market can copy it. In this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Pete Townsend speaks with Matteo Manzi, co-founder and CEO of Orion Finance, about a structural challenge emerging in onchain asset management: the same transparency that makes blockchain markets verifiable can also expose the intellectual property behind trading strategies. Matteo describes this tension with a simple phrase: “transpa
306
March 6, 2026
Why Stablecoins and Banks Will Coexist | Emma Landriault | JPM Coin (EP. 306)
Money doesn’t become digital overnight. It becomes digital when the rails of finance begin to change.
305
Feb. 2, 2026
Digital Yuan: Trade, Gold, and the New Money Rails (EP. 305)
Money doesn’t become geopolitical overnight.It becomes geopolitical when the rails start to change. In this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Pete Townsend is joined by Sean Lee for a deep, practical conversation on what China is actually building with the digital yuan — and why this shift is about infrastructure, not currency replacement. Sean brings first-hand insight from recent meetings with the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), explaining how China’s digital yuan efforts are moving beyond a d
304
Jan. 26, 2026
Scaling Human Expertise in Crypto and AI (EP. 304)
Scaling human expertise isn’t a technology problem — it’s a trust problem. In this episode of MoneyNeverSleeps, Pete Townsend speaks with Joni Pirovich, founder of Crystal aOS, about where crypto and AI quietly hit their limits — and why human judgment remains the real constraint as systems scale. Joni explains how her background in legal and regulatory work exposed a simple truth early on: expertise doesn’t scale on its own. As crypto firms mature, the challenge isn’t avoiding regulation,
303
Jan. 19, 2026
Why Working Less Saved My Startup (EP. 303)
Surviving the hard days of startup life isn’t about working more - it’s about building the right support around you.
302
Jan. 5, 2026
2026 Crypto Predictions: Why It All Gets Boring (EP. 302)
Crypto doesn’t win in 2026 by being louder - it wins by becoming boring.
301
Dec. 12, 2025
Stablecoin Power Shift? Dollar Dominance, AI, and Europe’s Big Question (EP.301)
Stablecoins aren’t just a crypto story anymore — they’re a geopolitical one.
300
Oct. 10, 2025
The Next Episode - MoneyNeverSleeps 300: One Story Ends, Another Begins
This one was special. Episode 300 of MoneyNeverSleeps was recorded live at the Podcast Studios at HeadStuff HQ in Dublin - the legendary former Westland Studios where artists like U2, Dropkick Murphys, and Hozier have recorded in the past - marking the end of an era for the show’s long-form interview format, and the beginning of a new chapter. Seven years. Three hundred episodes. Hundreds of conversations with founders, operators, investors, regulators, technologists, and dreamers building wh
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About the Host
Pete Townsend
Solo GP at Norio Ventures
Pete Townsend is an early-stage investor, advisor, and long-time operator in crypto, fintech, AI, and onchain finance. After nearly two decades in global financial services with BNP Paribas and Fidelity, he pivoted hard into crypto and venture in 2016, investing in and mentoring founders across Europe, the US, and Asia.
He led the Techstars Web3 Accelerator from 2021-25, reviewing thousands of pitches, helping dozens of founders sharpen their strategy, narrative, and execution, and investing in 40 companies. Today, Pete runs Norio Ventures, a solo GP fund backing unstoppable founders building onchain finance.
Originally from Boston and based in Dublin, Pete spends his time backing the founders building this future and riffing with them about it on the show.