Our Hosts

Stephen Sargeant

co-host

Stephen Sargeant is a recognized leader in the crypto compliance and blockchain investigations space. As the Founder and Chief Wow Officer of Airdropd, he specializes in creating engaging content that helps Web3 and traditional companies become thought leaders while amplifying their brand and community growth.

He is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) and holds certifications in cryptocurrency forensics, fundamentals, and investigation tools from Chainalysis. In addition to his company Airdropd, Stephen hosts the award-winning crypto podcast "Around The Coin".

He is passionate about training professionals for blockchain investigation roles and serves as an instructor for the Canadian Institute for Financial Crime Analysis.

ining for organizations like ACAMS. His expertise spans crypto compliance program development, investigations, policy creation, and upskilling teams.

Stephen is focused on connecting and creating opportunities within the crypto compliance community he serves through educational content, training, and consulting services.

Mike Townsend

co-host

Mike has raised VC money, built, sold, and crashed startups and he uses these experiences to relate to founders about their journey.  

In 2012, Mike founded Zing Checkout, a point of sale iPad app for SMBs, acquired by BigCommerce ($BIGC). He then founded Flowtab, a mobile drink ordering app, and wrote about the full crazy story on Techcrunch. In 2016, he raised $23M for HomeHero, a home care marketplace, which was acquired in 2018. Mike then started crypto marketplace Redeeem which was acquired in 2021 by Troika ($TRKA).

Mike was named to Forbes “30 Under 30” list in Healthcare and LA Business Journal’s “20 in their 20s”. He has appeared in Fortune, Forbes, CNBC, USA Today, Business Insider, Wall Street Journal, L.A. Biz, is a contributing writer at TechCrunch and actively speaks at healthcare and technology events worldwide.

Our beginnings  

Around The Coin was started in 2013 after Mike sent a message on Quora to both Brian Rommele and Faisal Khan asking if they’d join a weekly podcast. For the first 4 years, the podcast was just Brian, Mike, and Faisal philosophizing about the world and payments news. Now Around The Coin has featured 100’s of guests from leading crypto, fintech, and general startups.With an estimated 25,000 listeners per week, Around The Coin is a leading fintech and crypto podcast. Our conversations range from banking, payments, blockchain, crypto, money, economics, entrepreneurship and everything in between, give us a listen, or reach out if we can work together.