Tom Lombardi: Catalyzing DeFi & The Beauty of Incentive Systems

The Delphi Podcast co-host and co-founder of Delphi Digital, Kevin Kelly, sits down with Tom Lombardi, Managing Director at 3iQ and adjunct professor of Finance at Pepperdine University, to get his take on several important trends in crypto and markets. The two discuss a wide array of topic areas ranging from the rise of DeFi and its growing popularity among institutional investors to the evolution of liquidity mining programs and how proper token incentives can better align stakeholders to create more valuable products than their centralized counterparts. We would like to thank our sponsors for making this podcast possible. Cosmos: Cosmos is on a mission, link one million blockchains. Name brand projects like Terra, Band, Kava, and Secret use Cosmos and the Cosmos Hub to connect to every other chain in our network. Learn more at cosmos.network. Kava: With a proven track record of delivering successful projects safely, the Kava Platform is DeFi’s most trusted, scalable and secure institutional grade cross-chain engine. Learn more at kava.io.  Celo: Celo is a mobile-first platform that makes financial dApps and crypto payments accessible to anyone with a mobile phone. Celo supports over 1000 projects who are everyday building applications and issuing digital currencies from 100+ countries around the world. Learn more at Celo.org. Every Delphi Podcast is dropped first as an audio interview for Delphi Digital Subscribers. Our members also have access to full interview transcripts. Join today to get our interviews, first. - Show Notes: (03:32) – Updates from Tom. (03:56) – Iron Finance stablecoin debacle. (08:03) – dYdX’s promotion / thoughts on the incentives and leverage in crypto. (12:35) – Thoughts on Uniswap’s AMM model. (16:58) – Tom’s thoughts on incentives – right or wrong? (20:03) – Token models and incentives. (24:44) – Tom’s thoughts on global adoption. (30:58) – What institutional investors really care about. (37:56) – Uneducated narratives against crypto. (48:34) – Tom’s students versus institutional investors. (01:02:13) – Tom’s thoughts on NFTs. (01:06:38) – Thoughts on current developments and the future of crypto. (01:15:42) – Where to find Tom and 3iQ. Resources: Tom Lombardi’s Twitter Referenced Kraken blog post on self-custody  Pepperdine class syllabus 3iQ’s website More Our Video interviews Can Be Viewed Here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9Yy99ZlQIX9-PdG_xHj43Q Access Delphi’s Research Here: https://www.delphidigital.io/ Disclosures: This podcast is strictly informational and educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any tokens or securities or to make any financial decisions. Do not trade or invest in any project, tokens, or securities based upon this podcast episode. The host may personally own tokens that are mentioned on the pod