My guest this week is Yaya Fanusie, former CIA analyst, author of the audio thriller The Jabbari Lincoln Files, and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. On Yaya’s previous visit to TGS, we talked about how he got involved in the world of spies and security. This time we’re focusing on his area of specialization: cryptocurrency security. I can’t claim to understand how cryptocurrency actually works, so I’ve got Yaya here to explain the basics before getting into how nations like North Korea and China are developing their crypto operations and what the average person needs to know about this wild new area of economic development.
We begin with a quiz, as Yaya asks me what I think crypto is. Yaya refines my somewhat vague response, delving into how crypto solves a basic problem in digital data distribution. Republicans and Democrats have taken opposing stances on how and if crypto should be regulated. And regulation is tricky, since crypto trading is both public and semi-anonymous. Nations like North Korea and non-state actors use it as a funding source, and even supposedly secure crypto wallets are vulnerable to hackers. China’s security apparatus appears to be developing ways to use crypto as a form of enhanced surveillance. The public collapse of FTX and the conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried on fraud charges have tarnished crypto’s public image, but Yaya describes how currencies like stablecoins can help citizens of countries with weak and unstable currencies enter financial markets. Then there’s the big question: is it safe for an ordinary person to invest in crypto?
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0:00 Intro
0:50 Glenn takes a shot at defining “cryptocurrency”
5:28 Yaya fills in the gaps
10:15 Solving the double-spending problem
15:58 The partisan divide on crypto
21:27 North Korea’s crypto hackers
26:29 How crypto protocols create value
33:23 The case of Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX
35:13 How stablecoins can open up global financial markets to nations with weak or unstable currency
36:32 Memecoins: Buyer beware
41:07 China’s use of digital currency to expand its surveillance apparatus
47:35 Should a non-expert invest in crypto?
Recorded May 15, 2025
Links and Readings
Yaya’s audio thriller, The Jabbari Lincoln Files
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