The Let's Talk Bitcoin Network: Recent Episodes
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The LTB Network provides a tokenized platform for podcasts, articles, and forums about the ideas, people, and projects building the new digital economy and the future of money.
Have you heard about what's happening in Panama? Hint: It has nothing to do with canals. A new bill has been presented to legalize cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, and we are joined by two important figures in this developing story to learn everything we need to know. Gabriel Silva, a congressman in Panama standing behind this bill, and Felipe Echandi, entrepreneur, seeking to propel the Panamanian economy forward, join us for this fascinating conversation. Our two guests approach the topic with practical discernment and understanding, discussing the basics of crypto legalization in the country, the developing geopolitical factors, and why Panama is becoming an increasingly attractive place for foreign residents. Sharing unique insider insights, Silva and Echandi provide a comprehensive view on Panama's laws, rules around banks and legal tender, comparisons to Singapore, and more. Why this bill specifically? What reality could it espouse to bring positive change for Panama and its people? Catch it all in this exciting episode!
Many crypto industry titans - including Vitalik Buterin - believe ZK Rollups are the key to Ethereum's scalability. With DeFi exchange dYdX generating over $2 BILLION in daily volume on Starkware, a ZK Rollup solution, I'm excited to chat with Starkware founders about:
Why ZK-Rollups are the future vs. other Layer 2sStarkware vs. Optimism vs. Arbitrum: who wins?Can Fast Layer 1s like Solana compete with Starkware?Host: Jason Choi @mrjasonchoi . Not financial advice.
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Disclaimer: Jason Choi is a General Partner at Spartan Capital, a subsidiary of The Spartan Group. All opinions expressed by Jason and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Spartan Group and any of its subsidiaries
Show Notes:
On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, we talk Solana node troubles, Evergrande instability, Robinhood crypto withdrawals, how to pronounce Erdogan's first name, and how Ryan Selkis hates when you don't buy tickets to his events.
- BREAKING NEWS Friend of the show Riccardo 'œFluffy Pony' Spagni is out of Jail! Congrats Fuffy. In a tweet, Fuffy says 'œI am very pleased that the U.S. court has released me. I am actively working with my attorneys on a way to return to South Africa as soon as possible so I can address this matter and get it behind me once and for all. That's what I've always wanted to do.'
- On September 14, Solana node operators are coordinating a 'œrestart' of the high-speed blockchain Tuesday in an attempt to bring the stuttering network back online. 'œThe validator community elected to coordinate a restart of the network' and is preparing a 'œnew release' that will right the frozen blockchain, according to an afternoon tweet from the Solana Foundation. In Solana's Discord server, developers distributed restart instructions at 3:21 p.m. Eastern time. The outage began early Tuesday after 'œresource exhaustion' on the network brought blockchain validation to an hours-long halt. On-chain activity froze across Solana's multibillion-dollar ecosystem of trading, staking and lending projects.A source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that the outage 'œimpacts everything built on Solana, but the issue is the underlying [layer 1].'Tuesday's outage came amid booming interest in Solana, a network seeking to attract Wall Street usage whose token has been on fire since late August. Investors have flocked to Solana as a low-fee platform for decentralized finance (DeFi). The disruption was caused by bot trading of Grape Protocol's Tuesday token offering, founder Anatoly Yakovenko said on Twitter. It is the second time in two weeks that Solana's mainnet cluster experienced 'œinstability,' according to a Messari research note reviewed by CoinDesk. A flood of transactions pushed the network past its limits early Tuesday, Solana's status account tweeted shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern time. The activity triggered a forking that knocked multiple nodes offline. Engineers tried and failed to triage the problem, according to Solana. It's not unheard of for blockchain networks to experience service disruptions. Solana's mainnet is still in beta mode; it last experienced an outage in December, another source said. Last week's hiccup was also related to a resource exhaustion event. 'œIt's good for people to understand that Solana mainnet is still clearly in beta,' said a source building one of Solana's popular DeFi protocols interrupted by the outage. 'œI have faith in the Solana core contributors and validators to resolve this issue promptly.' Engineers were rushing to push a patch to Solana node runners, multiple sources told CoinDesk. Once it's ready and running across 66% of validators (a supermajority on the network) Solana is expected to come back online. Until then, the ecosystem with over $11 billion in total value locked (TVL) is in wait-and-see mode. Activity remains frozen at block #96538485. It is unclear what implications the Tuesday outage may have for Solana. One source in the developer community pointed out that some projects have time-sensitive operations, like liquidations and IDO launches. Those could become thorny the longer the network remains down. Colin put together a price quote sheet if you wanted to run a Solana node here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rc43ZdM7ocsGmxf7VgLlXubUyVlxyrj_vZpKNiHbuZU/edit?usp=sharing
- Evergrande is China's largest property developer and was up until recently one of the most valuable companies in the world. However, most analysts now believe Evergrande is on the verge of insolvency and won't be able to meet its mountainous debt obligations without direct government interventions within the next few weeks as it struggles to pay its 4 million subcontractors and is unable to finish properties it is holding deposits on from 1.5 million properties. The crunch occurred because of changes made by the CCP in August of 2020 to the amount of debt Chinese developers could take on. Evergrande was accepting deposits from buyers and was then leveraging that money to borrow more money to expand ops and grow. But with the new rule change, they lost access to the spigot of money. In China, real estate is almost the only asset people invest in, and sometimes it takes generations to save up enough money to make a down payment. Many Chinese people may not get their money back if they invested and put down payments on properties under development by Evergrande. What does this have to do with Bitcoin? Well, the fallout of that collapse is so large that it is affecting large swathes of investors the world over. As Evergrande's fallout affects debt markets, all other markets are affected, especially risky, speculative markets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. At least, that's the theory.
- Robinhood is finally testing Bitcoin and crypto withdrawals, as well as a new digital hot wallet, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The update comes after the past year of broad criticism of Robinhood for, among other things, not allowing users to control their own Bitcoin private keys. The firm repeatedly hinted at enabling such features without delivering any evidence that such products were being developed. Robinhood's new hot wallet and Bitcoin and crypto transfer feature announcement also comes after a mounting demand by customers. Bloomberg reported that evidence of such features has appeared in a beta version of the trading platform's iPhone app. Rather than providing photos or other evidence of such features, Bloomberg stated that 'œThe software includes a hidden image portraying a waitlist page' for users to sign up, and attributed the discovery of said features to software developer Steve Moser.
- Recep Erdogan '" the firebrand Turkish president '" has declared war on Bitcoin. In the aftermath of a sweeping ban on the use of cryptocurrencies back in April, the leader is aiming to assert financial control ahead of launching the digital Lira. While the central bank was not opposed to the utilisation of digital currency, Erdogan believes it faces conflict with cryptocurrencies. 'œWe are in a war against Bitcoin,' he said. 'œBecause we will continue on the road with our money, which is our fundamental identity in this matter.' The president commented during a national youth meeting with representatives from 81 Turkish provinces, following questions about the central bank's perceptions of cryptocurrencies. Many Turks have turned to cryptocurrency as a hedge on the volatility of the Lira in forex markets, and crypto has become a hot topic in Istanbul ahead of the proposal of new legislation aiming to regulate cryptocurrencies. Regulations will pave the way for the full implementation of the digital Lira, which Erdogan's government is aiming to launch by 2023.
- From ZeroHedge, 'œChina's War Against Crypto Is Officially Ramping Up (Again). In several Chinese provinces, inspections of companies have "intensified", with an eye toward targeting illegal mining at places like colleges, research institutions and data centers, according to the report. One miner in China told Bloomberg that his operations "remain intact" because he "regularly switches to new facilities to house his equipment" which is made up of "no more than 100 machines at one location". Hebei province has asked companies for a self-compliance check to ensure they are not mining by September 30. China has said that crypto mining would 'œseriously affect economic and social development and directly threaten national security." The statement says it would "disrupt" financial order. This news follows tighter restrictions in China across the board, from ending most visa's of foreign english teachers, limiting time on tiktok to 40 minutes per day and video game playing to three hours a week among teenagers.
- Self proclaimed 'œTwoBit Idiot' Ryan Selkis is running for Senate. In a tweet he stated, 'œIf you're wondering when I actually decided to run for Senate, it was when these fuckers came to my event, didn't buy a ticket, and served one of the speakers a subpoena. Enough talk. More war on our out of control regulatory state.
'œSandwiched between Guatemala and Honduras, El Salvador '" the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, with an average GDP per capita of around $3,500 '" is a most unlikely ground zero for a financial revolution.' - Alex Gladstein
Gladstein is back with the full story of Bitcoin and El Salvador. What it's like on the ground, the people it all started with, the responsibility we have as a community, & the history that gives much needed perspective to the actions of the political regime. You don't want to miss this one.
Check out the original article and tons of other incredible work by Gladstein & others at Bitcoin Magazine:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/the-polarity-of-bitcoin-in-el-salvador
Endless thanks to Bitcoin Magazine and the LTB Network for the incredible content they bring to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
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My guests are Jeff Gallas and Rootz of Fulmo, an open source company dedicated to the research and development of the Lightning Network. They are the organizers of the Lightning Hackdays and the first Lightning Conference that took place in Berlin in 2019 and are supporters of the RaspiBlitz project, a Lightning and Bitcoin full node.
"If you run a Lightning node you're a part of replacing the VISA and Mastercard networks." - Rootz
Topics:Development of the Lightning Network and the RaspiBlitzAdoption rate of the Lightning NetworkAccessibility improvementsHow many payments will be possible on the Lightning NetworkMost exciting Lightning projectsWhy it's important to run your own nodeRaspiBlitz integrations, LND and c-lightningResources and RaspiBlitz communities
Shownotes on the episode page
My guest is Adam Back the inventor of Hashcash, that was used as the proof-of-work method in Bitcoin. His work is cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper as well as in the Tor Browser whitepaper. Adam is a seasoned cryptographer with a PhD in computer science and distributed systems. As co-founder and CEO of Blockstream he is building the infrastructure for the internet of the future.
Topics:
- Blockstream's funding and future plans
- Decentralization of mining
- Greenlight: Lightning nodes for everyone
- how Bitcoin supports green energy
- Starlink vs. Blockstream satellites
- Bitcoin R & D and innovations in Altcoins
- Inflation bug in Bitcoin
- Simplicity: Bitcoin smart contracts
- Strategies to de-risk ETFs dangers to Bitcoin
- How to make more bitcoin out of your bitcoin
- DeFi on Bitcoin
- What Adam Back is doing in his spare time
- The Future of Blockstream and Bitcoin
- How Bitcoin has changed Adam Back
Shownotes on the episode page
On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, Colin and Mario go off our usual content track and interview Aella Girl, notable internet personality, constructor of insightful Twitter polls, and outspoken sex worker. Aella shares with us the experience of working at OnlyFans, dealing with stigma and taboos, and we explore the intersection of sex work and cryptocurrency.
My guest is Andreas M. Antonopoulos one of the worlds foremost experts on Bitcoin and open blockchains. Andreas is an educator, author of five books and an excellent speaker. His new co-authored book "Mastering the Lightning Network" will be published at the end of 2021. I was especially excited to be able to speak with him in person while we both visited Berlin.
Our topics:
- the state of Bitcoin in 2021
- Taproot and why it's important for Bitcoin
- the battle between regulators and DeFi
- staircase of financial sovereignty
- future of the Lightning Network
- immutability of Bitcoin
- what is sound money? Ethereum or Bitcoin
- will he write another Altcoin book?
Shownotes on the episode page
Would you pay $30-$40,000 for a few lines of text against a black background?
That's precisely what buyers of Loot - the latest NFT to capture the attention of the entire crypto space - are doing.
I'm joined by early Loot adopters and crypto investors Jon Kol (@thePalenimbus) and Angie Dalton (@Daltonan).
We discuss:
Loot's origins and ties to MMORPG games"Meta-games": the new wave of crypto gaming?Will gaming studios contribute to open source games?What's next for Loot------------- Sponsors -------------
PARASWAP is the best place to trade your tokens and get the best price in DeFi today. Get started on paraswap.io/blockcrunch
SOLANA: The Solana ecosystem is growing at a rapid pace and it's a great place to build your project or get involved with the community. Go to solana.com/blockcrunch to learn more!
------------- Disclosures -------------
Musical credits: Underground Stars by Loxbeats https://spoti.fi/34tPBBO Creative Commons '" Attribution 3.0 Unported '" CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/underground-stars Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/vpJDMD2EzkA Disclaimer: Jason Choi is a General Partner at Spartan Capital, a subsidiary of The Spartan Group. All opinions expressed by Jason and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Spartan Group and any of its subsidiaries
As El Salvador announces Bitcoin as legal tender, and the world looks on in wonder at this amazing example of progress, we host a fascinating roundtable conversation on the important aspects of this news. CK, Aaron Van Wirdum, Alex Gladstein, Mike Peterson, Romero Martinez, and several others talk about the rollout, the public reception, Bukele's role, and first impressions of the Chivo Wallet. The conversation also covers some of the background leading up to this momentous time, and a few surprising experiences from our panel, including the ability to pay for a breakfast at McDonald's already! We look at challenges to wider adoption and acceptance of Bitcoin as the main currency, how integration will work with regard to enterprise business, and how the infrastructure and power grid of the country might be able to support Bitcoin mining as it scales. So, to get the latest on these hugely important shifts, and how a small country is leading the charge for the rest of the world to follow, make sure to tune in!
Hosts: Christian Keroles and Ansel Lindner
In this episode of Bitcoin Magazine's 'œFed Watch' podcast, we respond to Chairman Powell's comments at Jackson Hole on 27 August. We listen to several important sound bites and discuss it along the way. Powell was expected to announce a Fed taper, where they begin to shrink their monthly purchase of securities in QE.
We have often said that Powell is somewhat of a straight shooter relative to other central banks of the past and present. We also are hesitant to ever agree with a Federal Reserve Chairman, but in this case, we find many points to agree on.
Bitcoin is beginning to naturally fit into every discussion on central banks and the international financial system. We touch on bitcoin throughout this episode.
In this week's episode, the tit is moving (again) so Ruben Bryan and Colin walk through the finer points why DeFi insurance DAOs also need insurance, we give another toot to El Sal legal tender law, Tips on Twitter, and, finally, an analysis of the first live Dapp on Cardano testnet! Look out!
- From CoinTelegraph, In a candid open letter, the lead contributor of Cover and Ruler Protocol, 'œDeFi Ted,' announced the protocol will close its virtual doors in the near future, citing a mass developer exit as the primary reason for the project's conclusion. Launched earlier this year, the Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance marketplace enabled users to stake Cover tokens as collateral and receive insurance payouts if their assets in other DeFi protocols are hacked or rug-pulled. In December 2020, the Cover protocol suffered a catastrophic exploit when a hacker minted 40 quintillion tokens, stratospherically increasing the token supply and effectively rendering the project valueless, a hypothesis confirmed with the consequential 97% price plummet. in a drastic turn of events becoming more commonplace in the market, the hacker consciously returned the funds, and attached the stern message, 'œNext time, take care of your own shit.' Despite the compassionate return of funds, serious damage was inflicted on the protocol both in terms of tokenomics value and cultural reputability.
- From FastCompany.com, On Sept. 7, 2021, El Salvador will become the first country to make bitcoin legal tender. The government even went a step further in promoting the cryptocurrency's use by giving $30 in free bitcoins to citizens who sign up for its national digital wallet, known as Chivo, or 'œcool' in English. Foreigners who invest three bitcoins in the country'"currently about $140,000'"will be granted residency. Legal tender refers to money'"typically coins and banknotes'"that must be accepted if offered in payment of a debt. The front of every U.S. banknote states, 'œThis note is legal tender for all debts public and private.' This statement has been enshrined in federal law in various forms since the late 1800s.
- In celebration of the El Sal law, a grassroots twitter effort has started to gain momentum for a market buy of $30 per person. From Michael Saylor, 'œOn September 7, El Salvador will officially begin using #Bitcoin as its national currency alongside the U.S. dollar. Every cyber hornet I know is planning to buy $30 in BTC tomorrow in solidarity with the people of #ElSalvador and their leader @nayibbukele. Will you join us?
- Twitter is now testing the ability to tip users in Bitcoin through Jack Maller's lightning network app Strike, according to The Block and a post on MacRumors. According to The Block, the new lightning service will be Strike enabled and also support Square's forthcoming hardware wallet. The company also lists Blue Wallet and Wallet of Satoshi as examples of custodial wallets and Breez, Muun, Phoenix and Zap as examples of non-custodial wallets. Twitter will also use Strike to produce Bitcoin invoices. For now, Twitter users will need a Strike account to receive tips in Bitcoin. "We use Strike to generate Bitcoin Lightning invoices so you'll need to connect your account to accept Bitcoin tips,' the instructions read. The Bitcoin developments at Twitter follow through with promises by CEO Jack Dorsey made in July. It was implied then that Bitcoin would be enabled in the Tip Jar service. He suggested also that Bitcoin
- From @Sassal0X on twitter, The first dapp went live on Cardano today and ADA fanboys are finally discovering that you can't peer review your way out of fundamental issues. From the r/Cardano reddit, 'œLooks good, but when i try to swap things, all im getting is 'œTransaction Fail: UTXOs are being used this block. Please wait 20-40 seconds and try again' Reply : Unfortunately, and I hate to say it because it might be a bit painful, critic have been discussing this for years trying to understand how in the world Cardano is going to implement smart contracts with a UTXO model (which effectively means an app like Uniswap can only handle one TX per block). They've yet to an answer to this question. ' People need to ask such stuff to Charles on his YouTube AMA streams, rather than his thoughts on Afghanistan or something. Reply: They did and he laughed it off. Said people should learn more about eUTXO and it's a non-issue. --- Reply from @LarsBrunjes, the 'œDirector of Education at @InputOutputHK' and PhD in Pure Mathematics 'œYou are right, this is an issue. But our scientists are already thinking of 'œconcurrent state machines' that can address this.
- The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the startup behind one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, as regulators probe further into parts of the digital-asset market that have resisted oversight, according to people familiar with the matter. Regulators are examining Uniswap Labs, the main developer of the world's largest decentralized exchange, called Uniswap, the people said. Enforcement attorneys are seeking information about how investors use Uniswap and how it is marketed, the people said. A spokesman for Uniswap Labs said the company is 'œcommitted to complying with the laws and regulations governing our industry and to providing information to regulators that will assist them with any inquiry.' An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the agency doesn't confirm or deny investigations. The developers often say they no longer control the protocols, which could diminish their liability under securities laws. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said DeFi projects aren't immune from regulatory scrutiny. They may still be controlled by developers or middlemen that benefit from incentives such as trading fees and digital tokens that give holders governance rights over the program, he has said. '" https://archive.is/ewYN
Today CK sits down with Jose Lemus, the founder of IBEX Mercado, to talk about the exciting developments in the El Salvadorian Bitcoin space! At the time of this recording, Bitcoin is about to be announced as legal tender in the country, and so by the time you listen to this conversation, that will be official! While this is exciting news for El Salvador, its people, and future, there is still some way to go before Bitcoin and the Lightning Network will be able to truly spread in the country and impact its economy on a massive scale. Jose shares some of his insider perspectives on the El Salvadorian situation and we talk about some of the potential hurdles, Bitcoin's scalability, the vision for IBEX, and the forthcoming months following the big announcement about Bitcoin becoming legal tender. Jose is dedicated and passionate about the spread of this technology and his long-term perspective and big picture mentality are hugely inspiring. For all this, be sure to listen in with us today!
Bitcoin can be a daunting thing to learn about. It involves the study of several different fields, from computer science to economics. At Bitcoin Magazine, we always hope to be able to educate our readers on the basics of Bitcoin. We offer a guides section, and have a large selection of books in our store. One of my parts about the magazine are contributor articles designed to simplify complex ideas. Nameless, one of our contributors here at the magazine, has sent in several of these articles, including 'œA Gentle Introduction To The Lightning Network,' 'œSo, What Are Bitcoin Miners Actually Doing?' and 'œAn Overview Of Bitcoin's Cryptography.'
All of these articles are extremely high quality, and they take some of the more difficult to grasp subjects in Bitcoin and simplify them for the reader.
'œFarzan and her family traveled by foot, car and train thousands of miles through Iran and Turkey, finally making it to Germany in 2017. Along the way, dishonest middlemen and common thieves stole everything they brought with them, including their jewelry and cash. At one point, their boat crashed, and more belongings sank to the bottom of the Mediterranean. It's a tragic story familiar to so many refugees. But in this case, something was different. Through it all, Farzan was able to keep her bitcoin, because she hid the seed to her Bitcoin wallet on a piece of tiny, innocuous-looking paper. Thieves could not take what they could not find.' - Alex Gladstein
You don't want to miss another excellent piece in the incredible ongoing works by Alex Gladstein. Thanks to Bitcoin Magazine for this incredible work and continuing to put out so much incredible stuff for the Bitcoin space!
Check out the article below for links to dig further and a huge collection of other excellent works at Bitcoin Magazine:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/bitcoin-financial-freedom-in-afghanistan
Huge thanks to the amazing Bitcoin Magazine & LTBNetwork for the incredible content they produce in the Bitcoin space!
Don't forget to check out our awesome sponsors!
5% off the BitBox02 with code "GUY," your bank grade digital vault for your Bitcoin keys from Shiftcrypto.chAnd secure your Bitcoin future by starting your automatic savings plan at SwanBitcoin.com/guy
On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, we talk Coinbase 2FA slipups, the normalization of Ethereum consensus failures, anti-bitcoin protests in El Salvador, and IMF & CCP critiques of bitcoin. Lastly, we encourage Colin to stop farting on people on planes.
- Customers of leading United States crypto exchange Coinbase have spent the weekend panicking after the exchange mistakenly sent emails to users stating that their two-factor authentication (2FA) settings had been changed. On Friday, Coinbase accidentally sent the email to 125,000 of its customers, resulting in widespread public backlash. Coinbase took to Twitter on Sunday to apologize for the mishap, stating, 'œWe're laser-focused on building trust and security into the crypto community so that the open financial system we all want is a reality. We recognize that issues like this can hurt that trust.' Despite Coinbase's apology, many of its users reported taking significant measures in response to the email while fearing that their accounts were being targeted by hackers, including overhauling security settings and liquidating their crypto holdings. Comments on the exchange's social media also suggest that numerous customers were unable to access the Coinbase app for several days after the incident. 'œWe will continue to work to gain back the trust of every one of our customers who was impacted by those notifications,' Coinbase added. The firm also announced it is reimbursing users with $100 worth of Bitcoin (BTC). '" https://cointelegraph.com/news/users-panic-after-coinbase-mistakenly-sends-2fa-reset-notices-to-customers
- Ethereum experienced a chain split due a number of network validators, also called nodes, failing to upgrade their software. On Aug. 24, the developer team behind the popular Ethereum software client Geth released an emergency hotfix to a security vulnerability in its code that would have prevented certain users from producing blocks. The Go Ethereum team had disclosed a vulnerability on Aug. 18, saying they would release a patch, but did not specify the exact nature of the vulnerability in an effort to prevent an attack: 'œThe exact attack vector will be provided at a later date to give node operators and dependent downstream projects time to update their nodes and software,' wrote Ethereum team lead Pƒter Szilƒgyi in Aug. 24 GitHub patch notes. However, it would seem some users identified the exploit that was hotfixed by the Geth team and are currently exploiting older versions of the Geth software. Though the Geth team emphasized that all users should upgrade their software immediately, only about 30% of users upgraded to the latest version, according to data from ethernodes.org. As background, Geth is the most relied-upon software to connect to the Ethereum blockchain, being run by roughly 75% of the users. This is not the first time Ethereum has experienced a chain split due to users running outdated versions of Geth. In November, the Ethereum network saw a similar disturbance after users failed to upgrade to the latest Geth release, version 1.10.X. At the time, Geth developers said the event was due to a lack of communication about the urgency of the upgrade. '" https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2021/08/27/ethereum-faces-chain-split-as-node-operators-fail-to-update-geth-hotfix/
- Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of El Salvador to raise their voices against President Nayib Bukele's decision to make Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) legal tender. What Happened: On Sept 7, Bukele will introduce the much-debated Bitcoin Law in the country. According to the text of this Law, all economic agents must accept Bitcoin along with the dollar as a means of payment. Bukele says that the Bitcoin Law will benefit the people and save close to $400 million in remittance commissions. In addition, it will guarantee instant and more secure financial transactions. But the people of El Salvador are not entirely convinced with it. Hundreds of protesters, including workers, veterans, and pensioners, marched through San Salvador to voice their concerns about the use of cryptocurrency. They are worried that with the law, they will be paid in crypto for their pensions and welfare instead of the US dollar. There is also a concern that people don't understand the technology needed to use crypto-currency. "We know this coin fluctuates drastically. Its value changes from one second to another, and we will have no control over it," Stanley Quinteros, a member of the Supreme Court of Justice's workers' union, told Reuters. Protesters are wary that the introduction of Bitcoin may encourage corruption which is already seen within its borders. However, as per the law, it does not mean that everyone has to conduct their transactions in the cryptocurrency.
- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) heavily criticized El Salvador's decision to adopt Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) as a legal tender. Alongside a blog post published on Sunday, the IMF tweeted that the risk of "privately issued crypto assets like Bitcoin" makes it so that "making them equivalent to a national currency is an inadvisable shortcut." In its blog post, the IMF admits that digital assets "have the potential to provide cheaper and faster payments, enhance financial inclusion, improve resilience and competition among payment providers, and facilitate cross-border transfers." Still, the institution points out that creating the "requires significant investment as well as difficult policy choices." For this reason, the IMF considers adopting Bitcoin to be a shortcut on El Salvador's part: it adopted a preexistent system instead of creating a custom-made one. The institution admits that many cryptos are secure, easy to access, and cheap to transact but claims that "in most cases risks and costs outweigh potential benefits." For instance, the post claims that crypto's "value is just too volatile and unrelated to the real economy." The IMF also warned that the widespread adoption of a crypto asset such as Bitcoin could hurt macroeconomic stability. The regulator claims that "if goods and services were priced in both a real currency and a crypto asset, households and businesses would spend significant time and resources choosing which money to hold as opposed to engaging in productive activities." Furthermore, adopting crypto exposes exchange rate risk if taxes were quoted in advance in it, while expenditures remained mostly priced in fiat currency or the reverse. Lastly, the IMF raises concern that Bitcoin mining consumes "an enormous amount of electricity" and consequently, "the ecological implications of adopting these crypto assets as a national currency could be dire."
- This week, the People's Bank of China said Bitcoin has no value. Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies "are not legal tenders and have no actual value support," Deputy Director of the Financial Consumer Rights Protection Bureau of the People's Bank of China, Yin Youping, said in the local Chinese language press on August 27. And China is not the only one. On August 13, Russia's Central Bank called it a 'œtechnological financial pyramid scheme.' First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia, Sergey Shvetsov, likened buying Bitcoin to "entering a minefield" and said the local stock exchange should not list any companies that trade in Bitcoin (think the local version of Coinbase). UK central bankers said the same a month earlier, on July 18, when the Bank of England's FinTech Director, Tom Mutton, said 'œBitcoin, given its performance shortcomings and energy inefficiency, is in no way a relevant comparison for the sort of technology we might use in a central bank digital currency,' Coindesk reported him saying. And also...the US - On July 16, Jerome Powell said during testimony to Congress that the Fed's ongoing research into a digital dollar would probably just render Bitcoin obsolete. 'œYou wouldn't need stablecoins, you wouldn't need cryptocurrencies, if you had a digital dollar,' he said. And finally, Japan in late May, Bank of Japan governor Haruhiko Kuroda said Bitcoin was basically a casino chip used for highly speculative gambling - 'œNo one really uses Bitcoin as a means of settlement.'
- Market Rebellion '" $DOGE accounted for 17% of Robinhood's transactional revenue in Q2 '" https://twitter.com/MarketRebels/status/1428177769855336449
- Tascha '" If you make a NFT of a real diamond, and the diamond itself gets destroyed in a fire tomorrow, you still have the same asset. Because the token still exists and is in limited supply just as before. Nothing has changed. What NFT is doing to the concept of asset, few understand. '" https://twitter.com/RealNatashaChe/status/1429576700346748938
- Mikeinspace '" Ethereum has been engineered to thrive in a permissive regulatory environment while Bitcoin has been engineered to thrive in a restrictive regulatory environment. So the "big bet" on the future of crypto hinges on one's perspective on the future of the regulatory environment. '" https://twitter.com/mikeinspace/status/1429986344487591940
- a void (leaks) '" Wow. Craig Wright is paying for his litigation by taking out a loan against the 'œTulip Trust' coins, to be paid back to Calvin Ayre. Coins for which Craig has testified (and his lawyer confirmed) he does not have the private keys. '" https://twitter.com/Tak_Horigoshi/status/142985715743289344
My guests today are Vitus Zeller and Richard Taylor my team mates at Team Satoshi, a decentralized sports team. We're talking about the interconnections between Bitcoin and sports and how you can participate in this movement.
- Introduction Vitus and Richard
- What is Bitcoin for you?
- Why are you active in the Bitcoin space?
- What is Team Satoshi and its goal
- Bitcoin and sports - where is the connection
- How do you stay healthy? Mental fitness
- First adventure of Vitus, Satoshi Freeathlon
- Road to Bitcoin
- Icebathing
Shownotes on the episode page
After a special guest runs into an unexpected event, Colin Bryan and Mario are left wondering what they should talk about. It's a good thing Bitcoin is never boring. In this weeks UNSCRIPTED episode, we let Mario shill all his bags, including Blockstream's $3.2B valuation, Ledn's Proof of reserves, Coinbase's new phone support line and how a drug dealer got his BTC back from Swedish authorities using this one weird trick.
- Discussion on Blockstream $3.2 B valuation, going to start mining
- Discussion on Ledn Proof of reserve
- Coinbase has announced a new support phone line for customers who believe their account has been compromised by outside actors. Users will be able to speak to a live support agent, who can kick off an investigation immediately. In an industry where support tickets and emails are the standard method of communication, Coinbase expects that this implementation could help users save valuable time when dealing with this type of crisis.
- Man bites dog, crypto edition The Swedish government has been forced to return over $1.5 million in bitcoin to a drug dealer after its value surged while he was in custody. Authorities in Sweden seized 36 BTC from the drug dealer, worth just under $150,000 at the time of his prosecution two years ago, according to a report Friday by U.K. newspaper The Telegraph. By the time the Swedish Enforcement Authority came to auction off the bitcoin, its value had appreciated to the extent that only three needed to be sold for the original value to be recouped. The authority must now return the remaining 33 bitcoin to the drug dealer, which prosecutor Tove Kullberg has described as 'œunfortunate.
Austrian economics is a very common topic of discussion and study within the bitcoin community. Being the base economic theory upon which we find bitcoin resting, it makes sense that understanding this would be a primary lead for someone to get into bitcoin. Josef T„'tek, one of our regular contributors here at Bitcoin Magazine, is an example of this.
T„'tek has written some fantastic articles for us, including 'œYour Financial Data Is Not Private, Bitcoin Can Fix That,' 'œHere's Why Bitcoin Will Rejuvenate Your Hope In Life,' and 'œBitcoin Is The Sustainable Money Europe Deserves.' Bullish on both bitcoin and on life, T„'tek maintains an optimistic outlook that bears witness to the good bitcoin is capable of doing.
In our interview, we discussed how his foundations in Austrian economics lead him to Bitcoin, and how the reverse is often true of bitcoiners. We then discussed how Bitcoin has impacted his life, both in personal preferences and in his career. We touched on what he believes is the most important part of people's bitcoin education '" in his opinion, an understanding of fiat. Finally, we discussed what he is looking forward to in the space, and his bullish price thoughts. He said, 'œin the short term, we are usually too optimistic. In the long term, we are too pessimistic."
Check out the podcast above and be sure to read our written interview.
Fiat cash, aka government-issued currency, may be singing its swan song. The good news? Bitcoin and free markets have the potential to help people claim back their sovereignty. Chris Gimmer joins us on the show to talk about why the state of markets is so dismal, how government intervention has played a major role in this demise, and why Bitcoin is the way forward through the mess. Chris is the Co-founder of Snappa, a top-of-the-range design and templating SaaS product, as well as the creator of the bitcoin dashboard, Bitbo.io. In this episode, Chris dives into how we can transition from a fiat frame of mind into a Bitcoin-centered system. Discussing how Snappa is using BTC as their reserve asset, we hear first hand how this has enabled them to weather the economic downtown caused by COVID-19. In an ever-evolving global situation, Chris shares about why he's moving from Canada to the U.S., and how using a divisible, portable currency allows both brands and individuals to break out of the limitations provided by fiat currency, despite their geographical location. Tune in as we explore why we should be considering a bigger, future-oriented picture by investing in BTC.
Join Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy and Jonathan Mohan for another wide-ranging discussion on the messy reality in which bitcoin and blockchains intersect real life.
Note: We're changing up our distribution as we get ready for our next marathon of growth! subscribe to the show-only subscriber feed today to make sure you don't miss any episodes.
On this episode we discuss the significance of a recent, seemingly innocuous letter released by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency... The now-completed cycle of corporate adoption as a differentiator to the biggest countries and companies in the world getting involved out of fear their competitors will steal a march on them and more.
Shownotes:
Caitlin's twitter threadhttps://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1286226852244160512
Preston's twitter threadhttps://twitter.com/prestonjbyrne/status/1285984029154648064
Andreas's talk on Infrastructure Inversionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ca70mCCf2M
Original PayPal articlehttps://www.coindesk.com/paypal-venmo-to-roll-out-crypto-buying-and-selling
Now-Deleted Twitter Thread on PayPal internal decisionmaking re: Bitcoin buy/sellhttps://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7Cd6geXrYHcJ:https://twitter.com/hodl_american/status/1275231405790728193+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk≷=us
Credits:This episode featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine with editing by Jonas and music by Jared Rubens.
In the aftermath of a major Twitter compromise that impacted a broad swathe of the largest, most influential accounts, join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy and Adam B. Levine for a dive into the crazy series of events, what impact it has on bitcoin, decentralization and more.
This episode is sponsored by eToro.com and The Internet of Money Volume 3.Email adam@ltbshow.com with questions or commentsPhoto bySara KurfeŸonUnsplash
The episode is sponsored byeToro.comandThe Internet of Money Vol. 3On today's show we're going back to basics.While bitcoin and digital bearer assets in general are an incredibly important technology, the reason they're likely to be important to the future has little to do with the token and everything to do with the context surrounding them: The world we live in every day, where government controlled money is abused for the benefit of the few and to the detriment of the many. * "Bitcoin is a way of achieving consensus. And consensus is a way for a bunch of people who may disagree on things to agree to a singular fact that they then execute, so imagine if Congress actually had bipartisan support to unilaterally pass a bill every ten minutes... That's basically what's occurring in Bitcoin.There's nothing more political than money because money affects everything else, and yet Bitcoin works. I think there's a lot of people looking at trying to reform the governance structures of the places that they're in, what they really should be doing is looking at things like Bitcoin and frameworks using blockchains to say "OK, how can we come to consensus over this or that governance issue of which money would be one... But I think the most transformative and phenomenal thing it'll do is, Nakamoto Consensus and then just blockchain governance writ large is a phenomenal way to have self governance.We see these breakdowns and these desires to federate cities and the way decisions are made, [but] maybe rather than turning to a government based political solution, a community based solution using something like a blockchain would be something with a lot greater staying power and impact."- Jonathan MohanTopics:- Who is the economy still working for, and who is it not serving? - What's wrong with money that makes alternatives attractive? - Why and how is Bitcoin disconnected from the current system? - What's the value in the US and western Europe compared to the value in less developed parts of the world? - What role does speculation play in the story of bitcoin? - Bitcoin's been around now for more than ten years.Are we on track to make a difference?What's the normal adoption curve for disruptive or revolutionary technologies? - What IS a disruptive or revolutionary technology? Who is bitcoin potentially disrupting? - Does being part of the bitcoin community make you politically affiliated, or represent a distinct political viewpoint? Selected excerpts from this week's discussion:"Money, because it's central to markets, which are central to the ways we organize societies is on of the most powerful technological tools that exists. If you then put the control of that technological tool in the hands of a monopolistic entity of any kind, whether that's facebook libra or the US dollar under the federal reserve or whatever else it is, what happens is that that tool can be used to exert power on the way society is governed and on the way resources are allocated in a non-transparent way that is not subject to political correction or adjustment by democratic means.And when you take a tool that's that powerful and take it out of the oversight and control of democratic institutions, then it attracts the kinds of sociopaths who want to control that lever of power and they use it to distort the market in their favor. And that's the really dangerous aspect of money, because it's not simply neutral fuel for an economy or some forms of it are not neutral fuel for the economy. I've talked about this in the past as 'Money is a system of control in addition to its function of medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.And when it can be used more effectively as a system of control, then it starts losing it's utility as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value because it's power as a system of control is so intoxicating and so overpowering that it erases all other uses of it.And that's exactly what we see. Centralized money is no longer offering useful signaling of value, no longe offering using unit of account measurement, it's not serving as a good store of value and increasingly not as an open, free, highly liquid medium of exchange because it's use as a system of control has overridden all those considerations." -Andreas M. Antonopoulos * It seems like the past hundred years and the statements made publicly now and in perpetuity is that dollars will always go down and stocks will always go up. So there are fundamentally two types of Americans, those who have their life savings in dollars and those who have it in stocks. And the crazy thing with stocks, unless you're part of the racket every now and then they completely collapse. So even that's a rigged game.What I like about Bitcoin is it's a way to be a part of neither game. I don't get to insider trade like a congressman, and I also don't have all of my life savings stolen from me because that 3% raise I get every year is completely wiped out by money manipulation.- Jonathan Mohan * "This entire experiment and civilization [was] founded on the idea that we have a ladder with rungs on it and a reset button. So you fall down the ladder, you hit the reset button and you can start climbing back up it. And every time the government massively overcorrects or disproportionately gives money out into the ecosystem, they're pulling out a rung from the ladder..."- Jonathan Mohan * "Capitalism without the risk of failure, isn't..."- Andreas M. Antonopoulos * "One of the most phenomenal things that America did was the idea of bankruptcy. This idea that you could fail and that your family wouldn't be debt slaves to try to repay it. This idea of a serial entrepreneur was kind of invented here because the economic concept of a reset button existed here, and what we're seeing is the death of the reset button and the way they're accomplishing that is by pulling up the rungs of the ladder. So it's a failure on two sides at the same time..."- Jonathan MohanCreditsThis episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine and Jonathan Mohan. Music provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.Photo byMacau Photo AgencyonUnsplash
On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! you're invited to join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murpy and special guest Richard Myers for an in-depth look at the past, present and future of 'Mobile Mesh Networking' technology and the open source LOT49 protocol built on top of lightning.
Just as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin don't rely on static infrastructure and professional providers, mobile mesh networking allows the creation of inexpensive, high range, low bandwidth and power consumption ad-hoc networks that'll let your phone send text messages or even bitcoin lightning network micro-transactions, even in areas with no coverage.
According to Richard, Bitcoin's Lightning is a what's needed to make mobile mesh networks catch on by bootstrapping on top of the payment routing infrastructure.
"'the Lightning network currently sends payments from A to B to C and then all those intermediate nodes can connect a small fee if the payment is delivered at the end. All we're doing is saying 'Not only [can you send] a payment, but [you can send] a small message. In our case it'd be a SMS message. So you're sending an SMS message along with a Lightning payment from A to B to C to D, and when D receives that message they return proof that it was delivered and that's what flows back through the network. In the Lightning sense, that's your pre-image. It's computed from the message, that's how the nodes are able to collect payment even if they lose touch with the original person who sent it."
But the way the Lightning network uses data natively isn't ideal for mobile mesh. The open sourceLot49 protocolis another layer on top of lightning that Richard says is necessary to make it work at scale while using mesh devices as an extremely low-bandwidth TOR-like privacy layer.
"In many ways we're not making a new protocol, we're literally using lightning.Lot49is custom communication protocol that's optimized for mesh. For example, right now there's a 1300 byte onion that's used to route messages over the internet and that's very important because you lose a lot of privacy' you lose all your privacy' if you were to just send messages over the internet without onion routing.
We're sending over more or less a physical TOR network since it's going from node to node, not through a central ISP who can associate who you're trying to pay. We're also doing it over a low bandwidth network, so if you were sending 1300 bytes it may not sound like much in the age of the internet but we're talking about devices that [have a maximum data transmission capacity of] about a kilobyte a minute so that's a significant amount of the bandwidth that you have [tied up just in the web's onion routing]
So for example with LOT49, we take out the onion and we use the native routing at the mesh device [level] which is optimized for mesh communications. And there's a few other little changes we make like that in order to reduce the bandwidth by chunking up messages' the ultimate goal is to minimize the lightning protocol overhead so that there is more bandwidth available for data' For things like sending an SMS and as bandwidth increases there may be things like internet protocol'"
Credits
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine and Richard Myers. Music provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Josep Castells on Unsplash
On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! you're invited to join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine, Jonathan Mohan and Stephanie Murpy for an in-depth discussion about the ups and downs, the good and the bad about being your own bank in the modern world of Bitcoin.
The episode is sponsored byeToro.comandThe Internet of Money Vol. 3
The powerful idea and meme at the core of Bitcoin self-sovereignty is incredibly empowering but has an unspoken element that requires persistent competence and at least for some makes it more trouble than it's worth.
As the world reels from the response to COVID-19 and disorder seems the trend on the rise, we discuss how although Bitcoin makes it possible for anyone to be their own bank, who actuallywantsthe constant vigilance and anxiety that goes along with it? And what happens when things go wrong and there's no-one to blame but ourselves?
"...There is tremendous luxury in having institutions that at least appear to be stable over some period of time where you don't need to worry about the details of how they work and what happens under failure conditions. That luxury is pretty concentrated in just a few places in the world and at some point you can't afford that luxury of apathy. - Andreas M. Antonopoulos, LTB! #437
Credits
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine. Music provided by Jared Rubens, FromEther and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Pathdoc on Shutterstock
The rallying cry of the totalitarian is "He farted first", but if both systems have produced similar outcomes, is there much of a difference? Inspired by a recent article inthe Atlantic, in today's wide-ranging discussion the hosts of Let's Talk Bitcoin! dig deeply into the questions of censorship, propaganda and how things are both better and worse than in years past.
The episode is sponsored byeToro.comandThe Internet of Money Vol. 3
Shownotes:
- Who are they censoring from and how do we unpack this manipulation?
- The rallying cry of the totalitarian is always "He farted first"
- Who gets to decide what is censored?
- The squeaky wheel of child pornography gets the attention, the much more insidious problem of silencing certain voices, or giving preference to other voices.
- Propaganda goes hand-in-hand with censorship
- Propaganda is harder to detect 'reverse censorship'
- Private platform curation have the right to moderate which can be interpreted as censorship.
- You have to choose if you're a publisher or a platform
- What if AT&T listened to your phone calls, sold ads against them and disconnected you whenever you say something that would trouble sponsors?
- Common carriers vs. publishers
- FOSTA, SESTA and turning platforms into publishers
- Crony capitalism will always co-opt government
- The only way to win is not to play
- The only way to not be coopted as a protocol is to have it not be owned by anyone.
- It may be impossible to be a platform if you're not a protocol
- Information overload and compartmentalization
- Are the solutions that are being proposed the solution that we need to solve this problem?
- What kind of side effects does the solution have?
- It's one thing to say "there are idiots out there who have not developed critical thinking and are easily swayed and we need to fix this" and a whole other thing to say "And that's why only the landed gentry should vote"
- Do tech companies think they're helping?
- Benevolent fascism is still fascism
- The public school system was never meant for the average person to be able to form their own opinion, "it is for factory men not philosophers"
- Manufacturing consent with the power to control, censor, frame, set up the base assumptions of belief and then seek to nail them down.
- A dictatorship of the mind is far more effective than a dictatorship of violence.
- If Let's Talk Bitcoin! Were on Youtube, we wouldn't be able to say the word Covid-19.Avoiding totalitarian controlsmeans missing opportunities presented by big would-be platforms.
- Government surveillance vs. private surveillance provided to the government
- What we learned from Edward Snowden
- Does China commercialize surveillance?
- If both systems have produced the same outcome, is there much of a difference between them?
- A virtual prison camp
- Suppression of information does not translate to changing reality
- Biblical verses in the blockchain and
- "A platform puts data out but search is editorialism"
- Phone numbers, the yellow pages, cocaine and liability
- Privacy, anonymity and another form of censorship
- We need 30 different words for different kinds of censorship
- Is it censorship when private companies do it?
- Where did the word censorship come from and what words should we be using?
- "The problem with censorship is not the content, it's the person in which the control is vested"
- Is this worse because of growing polarization and partisanship?
- Was the internet free-er when nobody used it?
- Letters to the editor and platforms that amplify
- Even more insidious than censorship are the algorithms choosing what is seen and by who.
- Geographic boundaries vs. idealogical boundaries and the demise of newspaper monopolies on local discourse
- 5G and Coronavirus: Niche ideas wouldn't propagate if censorship worked
- The Streisand effect, reach and survivor bias
- The influence that Google's page-rank has on congressional primaries
- A generational divide in social media management skills and critical thinking
- Masks, conspiracy theories and narrative control
- Manipulating the wisdom of the crowds as manipulating the wisdom of society
- Censorship by private forces for profit and by government for state control, and the coalition of the two.
- Censorship as controlling access to the publishing of information vs. controlling what is amplified vs. how much reach it has.
- A big difference is visible in implementation of severe consequences for speech
- The chilling effect of harsh penalties and being "disappeared" for speech
- Ostracism, state punishment or private corporate consequences
- What are your favorite words or terms for specific kinds of censorship?Send us an email atadam@ltbshow.com
- If you light your brainfarts on fire, is that flaring?
Credits
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine. Music provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Sebastiaan Stam on Unsplash
Although some believe bitcoin mining is a wasteful activity, on today's show we dig into the relative world of constant fuel production, lumpy demand and bitcoin based load balancing.After years of bitcoin mining domination by china-based miners, some US power producers, both professional and incidental, are beginning to get into the game as a way to be more green. It's a narrative reversal if ever we've seen one and if proven successful by the early players could change the bitcoin mining landscape as we know it.But even without a "Green Bitcoin" narrative in the US, one of China's two major mining advantages has evaporated as Moores Law stretches out the useful lifespan of modern bitcoin miners hardware.Correction: Before installing miners,Greenidge Generationpreviously shut down during off-peak season, during the episode Adam incorrectly stated that it previously shut down during off-peak hours.Today's episode features Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. LevineThis episode features music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats. Today's show is edited by Jonas, and sponsored by eToro.comPhoto byThomas KelleyonUnsplash
On today's show we've got a pair of interviews for you. First we speak withJohn Cantrell, the author ofJuggernaut, a new messaging layer 3 application being built on top of layer 2 lightning network, which is itself built on top of layer one bitcoin.It's a lot of layers, but as a technological concept currently in beta it's a fascinating project, and we talk about it.(Juggernaut on Github)
After the break we're joined again byAlex GladsteinofHRF.orgfor a discussion on political expediency in the age of pandemic and what crisis has revealed about various governments, and different types of governments around the world.Alex is one of my favorite returning guests, with his global human rights focused work taking him to some of the most interesting and most oppressed places around the world
"What's interesting is that citizen journalists I know in Taiwan have pressed the government on this and they've gone to parliament and it's all on record, and they've said 'Have these (...) digital contact tracing or cell phone surveillance things been useful?' And the governments said "Only in one case.... Only in one case was this sort of mass surveillance approach been useful', so they've actually been honest with the people... But at the end of the day it does teach us that even the most progressive governments are going to be lured by the sirens call of using surveillance to tackle problems." -Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer HRF.org
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin is sponsored byeToro.comand features content from John Cantrell, Alex Gladstein and Adam B. Levine. Todays show features music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats with editing by Jonas. Album Art original photo byGoh Rhy YanonUnsplash
In Today's discussion we'll briefly talk about some of the knock-on, or second order affects which the coronavirus disruption is having on our world today, and which may continue into the future. Then for the meat of the show we'll dig into specific areas where bitcoin could, or perhaps is being improved with the creator of one of the most impactful peer to peer technologies in the world today.
Shownotes for LTB! #433
- Topic 1 - Second Order Impacts of Coronavirus Lockdowns
- Social distancing and the revenge of the Hikikomori
- Coronavirus second order effects
- It's an extroverts world but we're all introverts this month
- The AOL moment for Zoom meetings and arguing the potato
- Interpersonal compression, zoomers and enforced quality time
- Will overall deaths go down because of pandemic lockdowns?
- The end of "Bus Mode" for Lyft and Uber
- Autonomous vehicles, grocery deliveries and the last mile problem
- Tampons, cocktail sausages and a very weird month
- This episode is sponsored by eToro
- A friendly government delivery service?
- Opportunities in sterilization and social changes that'll last
- Automated cleansing cycles and Far-UVC
- Internet infrastructure, Netflix social signaling and the recycling dilemma
- Masks, headphones and the changing standard of social isolation
- TOPIC 2 - How the creator of BitTorrent thinks he's created a less wasteful, more distributed, more secure approach to Nakamoto Consensus
- Decentralized systems and the critical success of BitTorrent
- Naming projects, vegetables and a list of grains
- Proof of Space and Time
- Warehouses of computers, competitive money burning and Keynesian stimulus
- Proof of Work works and that's a huge accomplishment, but could be better
- Centralization, Nakamoto consensus and Proof of Stake
- Moats and losing the battle with ASIC-hard consensus algorithms
- "Grinding attacks" as the competitive strategy
- Fundamental economics, storage capacity and the loophole
- Airdrops for something over-resourced and under-provisioned
- Losing money on buying "farming" hardware
- The early days of bitcoin mining with CPUs
- Power and CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs
- Hard Drives ,hard drives, hard drives and hard drives
- Storing data as proof, but not people's data is like Proof of Work; the work isn't useful, it's just a measuring stick that doesn't need your name or a long term commitment
- Printing lottery tickets with ASICs vs. a hard drive full of bingo cards
- Proofs of Space need Proofs of Time
- Less wasteful by using an underutilized resource
- More distributed because excess hard drive capacity is already distributed and there is no "ASIC" equivalent possible for hard drives. Just better or faster hard drives
- More secure because less wasteful and more distributed equal better security in distributed consensus
- Breaking, tweaking and proving proofs of time and space
- Miners don't run data centers
- UTXOs, message passing on-chain programming environments and walking a fine line between Bitcoin and Ethereum
- Rate limiting wallets and reversible paper wallets
- Improving colored coins
- Decentralized exchange doesn't need decentralized exchanges
- Farming, pre-farming, farming rewards and trailing emissions
- Why pre-farm?
- Is it viable to farm with AWS?
- Carrying hundred dollar bills and Chia's business model involves loaning Tokens To Large International Companies
- Covenants replicate many banking system benefits without requiring banks or centralization
- Complexity, Bitcoin Script and Protocol Level Improvements
This episode was sponsored by eToro.com, with music by Jared Rubens, Gurty Beats and Adam B. Levine. Today's show featured Bram Cohen, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine with editing by Jonas.
In the aftermath of the so-called "Black Thursday" crash from several weeks ago, MakerDAO's"DAI" ethereum backed dollar pegged stablecoin came untethered and was, for a time at least, functionally insolvent. In the aftermath, holders of the MKR token which allows holders to participate in governance decisions opted to do a couple of things, including adding the centralized stablecoin USDC to the list of acceptable collateral, which drew both condemnations mostly around centralized risk being added to the system and praise for making the system more robust against sudden ETH collateral price crashes.
And now most recently, the Maker Foundation which had held some centralized control over the protocol completed their long-planned exit with all authorities now transferred to the holders of MKR tokens, removing both a point of control which had been used as a safety check and a point of risk in that centralized control can be co-opted and used to disrupt a system as we've seen in other examples.
On today's show we're digging into:
- What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?
- How does decentralized finance differ from traditional banking?
- Fractional reserve vs over-collateralized loans
- Liberty Dollars's missing collateral and USDC's risky name
- MakerDAO, DAI dollar-pegged stablecoins and how this DeFi stablecoin actually works
- SDAI (Single Collateral DAI) vs. DAI (Multi Collateral DAI)
- Smart contract 'vaults'
- Lending money to yourself: 150%, 300%, insurance and auctions
- What happened on 'Black Thursday' as the price of Ether dropped more than 50%
- What happened when transaction fees went through the roof
- A bug in the collateral auction smart contract
- A surprising crash: as the system became functionally insolvent the price of the dollar pegged stablecoin actually went up.
- Oasis.app vaults are transparent and pretty interesting,take a look!
- Loaning yourself money using your ether (at interest)
- How MakerDAO's approach differs from SALT Lending
- The other half of the DAI system: saving vault smart contracts
- DAI Saving Rate (DSR) and the new certificate of deposit
- The reward for using MKR tokens to administer a good system
- Can savings vaults be liquidated?
- Smart contract risks, consensus risks, systemic risks and response time risks
- Sponsors:eToro.comandPurse.io
- What specifically went wrong with the auction smart contracts?
- Recapitalizing the system by diluting MKR governance stakeholders
- Even with bugs, market mechanisms to fill the solvency hole seemed to work better than government bailout equivalents.
- Completing the transition from foundation-overseen to full tokenized governance.
- Decentralization transition - A necessary step or a natural one?
- Single collateral vs. Multi-collateral stablecoins
- Why would a decentralized stablecoin want to allow a centralized stablecoin for collateral?
- External political risks vs. internal technological risks
- "Life finds a way" and DeFi's natural circuit breakers (also Mt.GOX)
- Whats the point of putting USDC in to get DAI out?
- How does DeFi stablecoin insurance work?
- A modular ecosystem
- How DeFi and traditional finance are similar
- DeFi vs. 2nd layer protocols
Credits
Hosts: Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Jonathan Mohan & Stephanie Murphy
Sponsors:eToro.comandPurse.io
Music: Jared Rubens andGurtyBeats
Editing: Jonas
On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin we're discussing the coming bailout-everything regime in a topicthat's both extremely timely but is also what originally forced many long-term bitcoin enthusiasts to learn about money and become interested in cryptocurrency originally.
As much of the world on an almost uniform and bipartisan basis shuts down to slow the spread of COVID19 and prepares to bail out first financial markets and now basically everything that can't work on a fully remote basis, we're talking about crisis, bailouts, the limits of monetary policy and the real possibility that it's not a straw that breaks the back of our money but rather the whole world suddenly jumping on.
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin is sponsored byeToro.com
If you're a skilled audio editor with deep crypto knowledge consider applying for CoinDesk's Deputy Podcasts Editor role
On this episode we'll discuss:
- The growing bipartisan and global shutdown then bailout everything movement
- The alternative to the bailout path we're on
- The inability of even extraordinary monetary policy to resolve these issues and the markets growing cognitive dissonance
- The revival of the "system is breaking and when it does we'll need something new that doesn't share the same problems of being vulnerable to politically expedient over-reactions" narrative that, frankly, drove my initial interest in bitcoin in the first place.
- And more...
Today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine.
This episode was sponsored by eToro.com and featured music by Jared Rubens and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash
On today's episode we're joined by early investor and entrepreneur David Johnston to discuss:
A new "consensus based" alternative to "reserve based", "game theory based", or trusted oracle based Stablecoins
The growing relevance of DeFi even for those who aren't using it
Johnston's Law six years later, how far we've come and real reasons for optimism on the decentralized evolution of everything.
Further listening:The original panel where Johnston's Law was introduced in 2014
Credits for LTB#430- Anything that can be decentralized will be decentralized 6 years later
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored byPurse.ioandeToro.com.
This episode featuredStephanie Murphy,Jonathan Mohan,David Johnstonand Adam B. Levine
Today's episode was produced by Adam B. Levine, edited by Jonas with music provided byJared Rubensand Adam B. Levine
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Emailadam@ltbshow.com
Earlier this week theLet's Talk Bitcoin! Showgathered to discuss Coronavirus and its potential impacts or disruptions to the decentralized world of bitcoin.
On today's podcast we discussCoronavirusand:
- The bitcoin mining industry and the slowing rate of hash-rate increases in the run-up to the 2020 halving
- Safe haven, uncorrelated and risk asset narratives as the price of bitcoin bounces defies expectations
- The potential for shifts in how society thinks about money in the wake of a highly transmissible global disease
- Plus a brief primer on virus families(skip to 13 minutes for blockchain only content if you're already up to speed)
Later, we hear from correspondent George Ettinger about the indications of a "Dumb Currency Singularity" taking place at the IRS right now (also presented in full text below).
Credits for LTB#429- Coronavirus Impacts on Bitcoin (And the IRS's Dumb Singularity)
- This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored byPurse.ioandeToro.com.
- This episode featuredStephanie Murphy,Andreas M. Antonopoulos, George Ettinger and Adam B. Levine
- Today's episode was produced by Adam B. Levine, edited by Adam B. Levine with music provided byJared Rubensand Adam B. Levine
- Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Emailadam@ltbshow.com
The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week theLet's Talk Bitcoin! Showgathered to discuss catalysts and CEOS in the world of blockchain projects, the organizational and organic structures of decentralization and to wonder whether crypto even needs Satoshi-like catalysts now that the fire of blockchain burns bright.
Episode Sponsors:Brave.comandeToro.com
On today's podcast we continue the discussion, applying concepts and stories from"The Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations", a formational book on pre-blockchain decentralization written in the early 2000's, as the centralized US military struggled to effectively dispatch a much smaller decentralized force in Afghanistan. While the battlefield is different, the insight is perhaps even more relevant to the world of blockchain projects, their decentralized origins and ambitions.
Want more?Catch up on 7 years of Let's Talk Bitcoin!
Credits for LTB#428
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored byBrave.comandeToro.com.
This episode featuredStephanie Murphy,Andreas M. Antonopoulos,Jonathan Mohanand Adam B. Levine for a hot minute.
Today's episode was produced by Adam B. Levine, edited by Jonas with music provided byJared Rubens,From Ether Musicandgeneral fuzz.
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Emailadam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Show...With the price of bitcoin headed up again, the idea of blockchains and digital currencies has never been more palatable to the mainstream. We've seen this cycle before, but could this time be different?
Episode Credits:
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com, eToro.com and Purse.io
This episode featured discussion by Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy, and Andreas M. Antonopoulos.
Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
Have any questions or comments? Email me at adam@ltbshow.com.
On Today's Show...Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss the US tax treatment of "Virtual Currencies" and how scams find a home wherever opportunity exists, at least for a while.
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com, eToro.com and Purse.io
During our first segment, we'll discuss:
Virtual Currency Tax Fairness Act of 2020: The proposed legislation would exempt capital gains taxes if any individual transaction results in a capital gain of $200 or less. Previous versions of the bill proposed a $600 cap. If passed, it would take effect in the 2020 tax year. Link - H.R. 5635
The IRS has a question for you: Tax filers in the U.S. are being asked if At any time during 2019, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency? Link -IRS Form 1040
Yang proposes "Digital Asset Regulation": U.S. Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang wants to Clarify the tax implications of owning, selling, and trading digital assets. Yang says clear policy will allow businesses to invest and innovate in the area without fear of a regulatory shift. Link - Yang 2020
Later on, we'll dig into the "why" of scams as we begin a longer conversation on the topic.
Three main points on scams:
- Ponzi schemes thrive in disrupted spaces with uncertainty, poor credentialing, and poorly understood complexity
- The crypto currency space has these attributes
- The underlying appeal of ponzi scams (and bitcoin) comes from the mythology of redemption, getting something from nothing, the genie in the bottle, etc
Episode Credits:
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com, eToro.com and Purse.io
Photo by Fernando Venzano on Unsplash
This episode was produced by AP's Don and Ned. It featured discussion by Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy, and Jonathan Mohan.
Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens, From Ether and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.comHave any questions or comments? Email me at adam@ltbshow.com.
On Today's Show...Andreas answers the burning question' Has he tried haggis? Just kidding' He shares his thoughts on the recently released Libra whitepaper, as part of a permissioned blockchain project spearheaded by Facebook.
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by http://Brave.com/ltb and http://eToro.ltbshow.com
Years of jokes about 'œFaceCoin' and 'œZuckBucks' have finally come to life '" sort of. In a previous episode, he talked about how some venture capitalists are monkeying around by downplaying the killer applications of open blockchains in favor of' bananas. Now he makes us wonder whether Libra will even survive to become a production network. Is Silicon Valley coming for banking? Will Libra's challenges have any impact on open public blockchains?
This talk took place on June 19th 2019 at the Scottish Blockchain Meetup in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Follow Andreas on Twitter: @aantonop
Andreas's website: aantonop.com/
Andreas's live talks released in podcast form
Episode Credits:
Today's show featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, with a little narration by Stephanie Murphy and Adam B. Levine, as well as the live crowd and that guy with the great laugh about three quarters through.
Original Photo by Anna Tukhfatullina Food Photographer/Stylist on Unsplash
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by http://Brave.com/ltb and http://eToro.ltbshow.com
This episode featured music by Jared Rubens, Orfan and general fuzz. Production support was provided by Erica and Jessica, with sound editing by Dimitris of Sampi Media.
Want to hear more of Andreas's Live talks? Check out new episodes every week on Unscrypted, or just head over to https://aantonop.com .
Have any questions or comments? Email me at adam@ltbshow.com.
‚The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show (Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Jonathan Mohan and Stephanie Murphy) gathered to discuss Lightning Network technology and two innovative approaches at the wallet level which simplify the new-user experience at a tangible, but seemingly minimal cost.
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com, eToro.com and Purse.io.
In today's podcast we zero in on the challenge of "Channel Management", an until-recently-mandatory and manually-managed part of connecting to and utilizing the still-nascent Lightning Network.
A little context: The way Andreas (someone already using Lightning) sends a payment to Stephanie through Lightning is either through a direct channel to her or through a route of hops that can eventually reach Stephanie.
But if a user is brand new to the Lightning network, how do they go about receiving their first payment? - This question has been answered by both ZAP wallet and Phoenix wallet, using different techniques.
Mountain Stairs Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
Lightning Photo by Dominik QN on Unsplash
This episode was produced by James and featured Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, and Jonathan Mohan
Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens, and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
The best Sundays are for long reads and deep conversations. Earlier this week, theLet's Talk Bitcoin! Showgathered to discuss decentralization in blockchain projects, the historical context of decentralized organizations, the robustness it conveys but also the difficulties it engenders.
Episode Sponsors:Brave.comandeToro.com
In today's episode, we apply concepts and stories from"The Spider and the Starfish: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations", a formational book on pre-blockchain decentralization written in the early 2000s, as the centralized US military struggled to effectively dispatch a much smaller decentralized force in Afghanistan. While the battlefield is different, the insight is perhaps even more relevant to the world of blockchain projects, their decentralized origins, and ambitions.
Later, we discuss the similarities betweendecentralized organizations and Buddha's concept of self.
Want more?Catch up on 7 years of Let's Talk Bitcoin!
Credits for LTB#423
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored byBrave.comandeToro.com.
Original Photo byUbaidhulla AdamonUnsplash
This episode featured Adam B. Levine,Stephanie Murphy, andJonathan Mohan
Music for today's episode was provided byJared Rubens, andgeneral fuzz, with editing by Jonas.
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Emailadam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Episode...The Let's Talk Bitcoin! show enlisted CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen and early cypherpunk Zooko Wilcox for a conversation on the history, challenges and long term development path of early, formative technologies. which we often hear modern blockchain movements compared against.
From the pre-internet days, through the free/open-source movement, Linux successes, and challenges on the desktop, the peer-to-peer movement, cypherpunks, Linux maximalism, fundamentalism as a concept as well as some brief excursions through some history and politics of the time... Later, we'll discuss how AI and lawyers have more in common than you'd think, and what kind of protections we may need as autonomous agents become ubiquitous.
Subscribe to the LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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CreditsThis episode was sponsored by Purse.io, Brave.com and eToro.com
Original Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash.
This episode featured CoinDesk Reporter Leigh Cuen and Zooko Wilcox.
Music for today's episode was provided by Jared Rubens, and general fuzz, with editing by Jonas.
Have any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Show...We're listening to echoes of the past. In the midst of the biggest bubble yet, finding ourselves in the "then they laugh at you" phase, and with the china narrative rising for the first time as trade volumes overtook the rest of the world, I was joined by Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos in early 2014 for a conversation that is very different, yet somehow the same as we reacted in real time to all-time high prices of $220,
But first, In the nearly seven years since we started talking Bitcoin, my favorite segment from my favorite writer is without question, the island of stone bitcoins by then-LTB managing editor George Ettinger. Bitingly funny and still one of the easiest ways to accurately explain how blockchains and tokens work without the need for technology at all, even if you know this story you'll learn a thing or two, at least I did.
This episode is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com, and is distributed in partnership with CoinDesk.com
On today's show, we discuss the idea of true privacy on public, transparent blockchains and some of the ways it's working (or not) in Bitcoin or related projects right now.
- How can public blockchains have privacy?
- The decreasing cost of passive surveillance
- MimbleWimble research Attack, Developer Response, and Alternative Implementation Response
- Gossip Protocols and The Stasi Model
- Skin in the game with Proof of Work
- The moving target and the arms race
- Obscuring origins and game theory security
- Breaking links with lightning and other layer-2s
- Adversarial relationships are economic in nature
- Attacks in theory vs. practice
- Security through obscurity?
- Researchers, cryptographers and state level actors
- and more...
Let's Talk Bitcoin! is a long-running independent podcast on the ideas, people and projects powering the cryptocurrency narrative. On this show, we basically talk about everything other than the price.
Since we started this conversation in early 2013, a whole world of blockchains and tokens has sprung up alongside bitcoin, and we talk about those too as real-world events help us see what's real and what's just clever marketing.
Visit LTBShow.com for all 419 of our past episodes or to subscribe directly to the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show.
Episode 420 (How can public blockchains have privacy) Credits:
Sponsors - Brave.com & eToro.com
Hosts:
- Adam B. Levine (http://ltbshow.com)
- Andreas M. Antonopoulos (https://aantonop.com/)
- Stephanie Murphy (https://www.stephaniemurphyvoice.com/)
- Jonathan Mohan ( https://twitter.com/JonathanMohan)
Other Staff
- Producer - Adam B. Levine
- Editor - Jonas
- Music (Theme) - Jared Rubens
- Music (Other) - General Fuzz
On this week's episode'.The hosts are talking "Altcoins and Ancient History" with Early Bitcoin Developer and Litecoin Creator Charlie LeeSelected Topics:* Token Age and Network Effect * Testnet game theory * Founder Anonymity, then and now * Ad-hoc audits in the wake of MtGox's Collapse * Schnorr signatures, Tapscript and Taproot intentions at Litecoin * A "Coinbase mafia?" * and more...
Let's Talk Bitcoin! is a long-running independent podcast on the ideas, people and projects powering the cryptocurrency narrative. On this show, we basically talk about everything other than the price.Since we started this conversation in early 2013, a whole world of blockchains and tokens has sprung up alongside bitcoin, and we talk about those too as real-world events help us see what's real and what's just clever marketing.Episode 419 Credits:Sponsors - Edge.app, Brave.com & eToro.comGuest - Charlie Lee (@SatoshiLite)Hosts - Adam B. Levine (http://ltbshow.com)- Andreas M. Antonopoulos (https://aantonop.com/)- Stephanie Murphy (https://www.stephaniemurphyvoice.com/)- Jonathan Mohan (https://twitter.com/JonathanMohan)Producer - Adam B. LevineEditors - JonasMusic - Jared Rubens (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-a-rubens-099349135)- General Fuzz (https://www.generalfuzz.net/)
On this week's episode'.
Segment 1
"Long Bitcoin, Short the World? Trading the Panopticon for Magical Internet Money"
- CoinDesks' Nolan hosts a fascinating Discussion with Eric Weinstein at Invest2019(https://www.coindesk.com/events/invest-2019)
- They talk about embedded growth obligations and the sociopathic companies they engender'
- ...and Tuur Demeester's (https://twitter.com/TuurDemeester) Reformation of Bitcoin (https://docsend.com/view/ijd8qrs)
- Is everything fine, or are we already experiencing a low grade revolution?
- The big value of blockchains is that they replicate real world "It just works", if imperfectly.
- Much more in this wide-ranging "fireside chat"
Segment 2
"New Tools, Layers, and Tradeoffs for scaling Blockchains"
- In Segment 2, the hosts of Let's Talk Bitcoin are joined by Ruben Somsen to dig into his proposal for blockchain agnostic "Statechains"
- A low-trust, low knowledge, high accessibility approach to side chains
- Pairing Statechains with Lightning Networks
- Ruben's journey from podcasting enthusiast (https://www.unhashedpodcast.com/) to scaling innovator
https://twitter.com/SomsenRuben/status/1145738783192600576
Episode 418 Credits:
Sponsors
- Edge.app,
- Brave.com
- eToro
Hosts
- Adam B. Levine (http://ltbshow.com)
- Andreas M. Antonopoulos (https://aantonop.com/)
- Stephanie Murphy (https://www.stephaniemurphyvoice.com/)
- Ruben Somsen ( https://twitter.com/somsenruben?lang=en)
https://twitter.com/SomsenRuben/status/1145738783192600576)
Special thanks to
- Invest2019,
- Nolan
- Eric Weinstein
Producer
- Adam B. Levine
Editors
- Jonas
- Adam B. Levine
Music
- Jared Rubens (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-a-rubens-099349135)
- General Fuzz (https://www.generalfuzz.net/)
On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!, we're jumping back into the deep end with a wide-ranging conversation on Mass Adoption, Cargo Cults, Synthetic Shorts and more...
Subscribe to the LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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CreditsThis episode was sponsored by Purse.io, Brave.com and eToro.com
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! Today's episode featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, and Adam B. Levine, with music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
Adam B. Levine provides a brief update on the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show
Summary:
- Adam is building out a new Podcasts division at Coindesk
- The LTB Show is still 100% independent and will remain so, although we may distribute the show in additional ways
- Your existing RSS feeds will still work, and you don't need to do anything different to keep hearing new episodes of Let's Talk Bitcoin! when we return next week.
- New episode will return next week with a group discussion on Statechains with creator Ruben Somsen
Thanks for listening, please send questions or comments to adam@ltbshow.com
'œIt just keeps getting kicked up to the next level and at some point it'll be the dollar. That's the last thing that got us out of the last emergency and then people will finally realize they got nothing left.' Dr. Robert Murphy, LTB#416**
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy & Jonathan Mohan are joined by Dr. Robert Murphy for an in-depth conversation about reserve currency transitions, statistics, economics, and why things are the way they are.
Selected Excerpts from episode 416 provided courtesy of @ProfessorMeo_w
Subscribe to the LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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CreditsImage Credits: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Earth_Western_Hemisphere_transparent_background.pnghttps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Question_mark_grey.svg/585px-Question_mark_grey.svg.png
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! Today's episode featured Robert Murphy, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine, with music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz. This episode was sponsored by Edge.app
Any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!Adam B. Levine sits down with William K. Santiago to discuss Blockchains, Reserve Assets, Regional Central Banks and more.
Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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CreditsImage by David Mark from Pixabay
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! Today's episode featured William K. Santiago and Adam B. Levine, with music by Jared Rubens. This episode was too short for me to want to add sponsor time, but a big thanks to Purse.io and Edge.app for generally sponsoring the show. Any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
Tune in next week for our conversation about reserve currency transitions with a special guest.
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine are back with part two of our recent live show recorded at BTC2019 in front of a studio audience. This time, we've got nearly an hour of audience Q&A. Enjoy the show!
This episode was sponsored by edge.app
Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
iTunes | Google Podcasts | Breaker | PocketCasts | Podbean | RadioPublic
On Today's Episode, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine are back with part two of our recent live show recorded at BTC2019 in front of a live studio audience. This time, we've got nearly an hour of audience Q&A.
Enjoy the show!
This episode was sponsored by http://edge.app
Selected Excerpts from this episode provided by senior listener ProfessorMeo_W (https://twitter.com/ProfessorMeo_w)
Stephanie Murphy: 'œDo you think Bitcoin will be able to shift from block rewards to transaction fees to maintain security as the block reward approaches zero?'
Andreas M. Antonopoulos: 'œThis is one of the fundamental misunderstandings and dynamics of mining for most people, which is the idea that something suddenly happens sometime at an undescribed future, either at the next halving or in 2141. The truth is on a daily basis, every single miner in the industry looks at six or seven different factors: the efficiency of their mining equipment, the price of electricity in their local fiat, the cost of their operation system, the current price of Bitcoin in fiat, the reward that's available as a block subsidy, the average amount of fees they can get, and the relative proportion of hashing power. They decide based on all of these factors. Do I leave this specific machine on at its current efficiency, or do I turn it off, or do I point it to another coin? That happens every single day. Every single day that decision continues, it's rebalancing all of these dynamic factors. So the shift between block subsidy and fees happened every single day since January 3rd 2009 and it continues to happen today.
Sometimes, the capacity of the blockchain, the number of transactions that are in there, the value of the fees mean that it really attracts miners because there's a lot of fees to take. Other times, the fees decrease, the number of transactions decreases, so they're now more reliant on block subsidy and then it swings back and forth and back and forth. It's gonna oscillate in that way all the way to 2141.
Stephanie Murphy: 'œWhat does everybody's view on Rootstock (RSK)?'
Andreas M. Antonopoulos: I don't think Rootstock is putting smart contracts on Bitcoin. Rootstock is allowing you to use Bitcoin to pay for smart contracts on the Rootstock Drivechain, which you could theoretically do by shifting money into Ethereum. In fact, recently I saw someone who had built a gateway that allowed you to make a Lightning payment that terminated in an Ethereum contract. So there's many ways to bridge different blockchains together. Quite honestly, I don't think we should be doing smart contracts on Bitcoin. Bitcoin doesn't do smart contracts, and it doesn't do smart contracts because it does security. That's not a trade off I think is worth doing. It's much better to leave that to a chain that has a much more experimental culture and can take bigger risks.As to whether we can do smart contracts, that's not a binary question; it's a question of value. So can we do smart contracts that can keep $1,000,000 secure? Yes. $10,000,000? Maybe. $100,000,000? No, the DAO proved that. How about now? DAI is doing more, so maybe yes. So it's basically a moving front. As the the maturity of the smart contract ecosystem expands, we can do bigger and bigger stakes (no pun intended) within the smart contract ecosystem. Every now and then there's gonna be a fairly catastrophic failure that's gonna cause a regression in the amounts of money that's put in them. But essentially it's growing. We're proving this every day, and it's the same thing with Bitcoin. The way you measure security in a smart contract or you measure security in a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin is how secure is Bitcoin? X billion dollars. That's the stake that is sitting on it right now, unhacked so far.
Stephanie Murphy: 'œIf Bitcoin or crypto is going to give power back to the people, how can we help people from sanctioned countries like Iran, North Korea get access to this freedom?'
Andreas M. Antonopoulos: 'œ[...] one of the ways we fix issues of privacy is by using the asymmetry inherent in all societies, which is generally the number of people being watched is much larger than the watchers. The panopticon works both ways. If you surveil people, they can surveil you back. Blockchains give you a really important thing, which is immutability. So for example the next set of leaks of Panama papers, what you do is you embed them in the blockchain so they cannot be erased from history. You can do the same thing with other surveillance technologies. If you want to create a situation where society moves towards protecting privacy and making it stronger, what you do is you strip the powerful people in society of their privacy and suddenly they care.'
CreditsThanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! Content for todays show was provided by Jonathan Mohan, Stephanie Murphy, Andreas Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine.
Music for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz, with light editing by Adam B. Levine.
Transcribed highlights for this episode were provided by ProfessorMeow
Any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com - See you next time.
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!We'll meet Jason, Chris, and Nicholas, all relatively new bitcoin users for a look at the value proposition and paths in for more recent converts.
After the break, Edge.app's Paul Puey and I sit down to discuss what's changed with time in Cryptocurrency, what we've learned or at least think we have...
Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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This episode is sponsored by www.purse.io
CreditsOriginal Album Art: https://pixabay.com/photos/iceberg-ice-cold-sea-winter-sky-4089866/
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! This episode was sponsored by Purse.io, and featured Nicholas, Jason, Chris, Paul and Adam. Special thanks to the Blockchain Training Conference for putting on such a great event.
This episode featured music by Jared Rubens, General Fuzz and Gurty Beats. Today's show was produced by Krystal and edited by Adam. Incidentally, are you a reliable, capable audio editor? I'm looking to expand the team I work with on Let's Talk Bitcoin! and would love to hear from you at adam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!On today's episode, we're jumping into a mostly un-edited live show, which we recorded live, on-stage in Aurora Colorado during the Blockchain Training Conference a few weeks ago...
After the break, we go boldly towards a conversation about the intersection, if there is one, of cryptocurrency and star trek money with an on-stage conversation between Jonathan Mohan and Davi Barker, moderated by Stephanie Murphy.
Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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This episode is sponsored by www.purse.io
CreditsOriginal Album Art: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Krzywy_Las_-_Nowe_Czarnowo_2.JPG
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! This episode was sponsored by Purse.io, and featured Adam, Jonathan, Stephanie, Andreas and Davi. Special thanks to the Blockchain Training Conference for putting on such a great event.
Today's show was produced by Krystal and edited by Adam. Incidentally, are you a reliable, capable audio editor? I'm looking to expand the team I work with on Let's Talk Bitcoin! and would love to hear from you at adam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!We recently returned from the Blockchain Training Conference, where aside from teaching classes and doing a couple of live shows, we set up a Let's Talk Bitcoin! Recording Booth! Over three days, we interviewed about a dozen people, some new to Cryptocurrency and some who have been around longer in a hunt for "What's Interesting" to those newer users and "What's Changed" for those who have been around for multiple cycles.
Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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This episode is sponsored by www.edge.app
TopicsSegment 1: Trixie - Newer User (http://www.trishatrixie.com/)Segment 2: Jameson Lopp - Long Time Bitcoin Developer - Casa CTO (https://keys.casa/)Segment 3: Darrin - Long Time Bitcoin Miner Segment 4: Davi Barker - Long Time Bitcoin User - Bitcoins Not Bombs & Pirates Without Borders (https://pirateswithoutborders.com/)
CreditsOriginal Album Art: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Krzywy_Las_-_Nowe_Czarnowo_2.JPG
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! This episode was sponsored by Edge.app, and featured Adam, Trixie, Jameson Lopp, Darrin, and Davi Barker. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Today's show was produced by Krystal and edited by Steven. Incidentally, are you a reliable, capable audio editor? I'm looking to expand the team I work with on Let's Talk Bitcoin! and would love to hear from you at adam@ltbshow.com
Hey folks,Adam B. Levine here, just returned from the Blockchain Training Conference in Aurora Colorado. For the first time since spring of last year, the other hosts and I found ourselves face to face for three days of classes, shows, and interviews which we'll be sharing with you over the month of September as segments on the LTB show or as bonus content on the new, free subscriber feed at LTBshow.com
You can expect the flood to start with the release of next weeks episode, But today, I've just got a taste for you as I sit down live, and in-person with Jonathan Mohan to discuss our experience.
Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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LTB #410 was too short for me to want to include a Sponsor and Adam B. Levine and Jonathan Mohan. Music for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens. This episode was edited by Adam Levine. Any questions or comments? email adam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy & Jonathan Mohan are joined by Vignesh Sundaresan for a more local perspective on the realities in India and the recently proposed Indian Cryptocurrency Ban. This is a follow-up episode to our India's Catch-22 segment from LTB#407
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LTB #409 was sponsored by Purse.io and featured Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Vignesh and Adam B. Levine. Music for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens, and general fuzz. This episode was edited by Steven Aram. Any questions or comments? email adam@ltbshow.com
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!Join Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy & Jonathan Mohan for a discussion on China, and recent signs of official sentiments thawing towards Bitcoin. We talk incentives, possible end-games, and coffee.
Subscribe for free to get early access on our new LTB Show Only feed using your favorite service
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This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Edge.app
Content for LTB#408 was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, and Adam B. Levine. This episode was edited by Steven and featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz
Any questions or comments? email adam@ltbshow.com
Subscribe to Let's Talk Bitcoin!'s new podcast feed for early releases & bonus episodes
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Adam B. Levine, Andreas Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, and Jonathan Mohan for a first-look at a particularly draconian law that's been proposed in India.
Later, HRF.org director Alex Gladstein joins Adam B. Levine for the latest in the Global Voices series. This week we're talking practical applications in Venezuela with returning guest Alejandro Machado.
Thanks to Purse.io for sponsoring this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!
Join the Let's Talk Bitcoin! team for a live recording at the Blockchain Training conference
Selected Highlights by listener ProfessorMeowLTB #407 India's Catch-22 & How to Work With Money when Money Doesn't Work
On today's show, we're digging into recent disturbing developments out of India with what canonly be described as the most draconian cryptocurrency law we've ever seen proposed.India
'œI have the quote here: whoever directly or indirectly mines, generates, holds, sells, deals andtransfers, disposes of or issues cryptocurrency shall be punished with a fine or imprisonment,which shall not be less than one year, but which may extend up to 10 years or both.' - Adam B.Levine
'œThe maximum penalty for rape in India is 7 years. The maximum penalty for drug crimes is 7years. The maximum penalty for holding a private digital currency is now 10 years. Themonetary fine is approximately $4,000,000 USD.' - Andreas Antonopoulos
'œThis is worse than Venezuela. Worse than North Korea. I mean, it is astonishing. This is not alaw yet. This is a proposal, but there's a very good chance it will become law.' - AndreasAntonopoulos
'œIt's really, really disappointing. [...], It's worse for the billion and a half people who desperatelyneed this type of technology in their country, and the hundreds of thousands of people whoworked in a thriving industry that was doing incredibly good work.' - Andreas Antonopoulos'œ...how it's enforced is intimidation. Selective prosecution. It gives them a mechanism to imposeextremely harsh punishments on people who are political dissidents' - Andreas Antonopoulos'œ..the moment this law passes, every Indian desperately needs Bitcoin. [...] your government issignaling exactly what it's going to do next with money. If you're on a cruise ship and thecaptain says lock down all the bulkhead doors and burn all the lifeboats, you're like, what areyou planning exactly!?' - Andreas Antonopoulos
'œDo you think that this is going to cause Indians to do a monetary rebellion where they all turninto anarcho-capitalists or whatever? Not going to happen. Quite the opposite, in fact. So it'sreally a huge disappointment for an industry that was thriving and is now basically dead in avery important country in the world.' - Andreas Antonopoulos
Venezuela'œBasically, the Venezuelan crisis is a self-inflicted crisis. It's something that for years the policymakers of Chavismo (the ruling party of Venezuela) heard from advisors. If you print moremoney if you spend unlimited amounts of money in social services and social policies that youcan't measure the effectiveness of, [...] you're not going to be able to survive. You're not goingto be able to maintain the economy.' - Alejandro Machado
'œVenezuela has always been a country rife with corruption. So what happened was that most ofthat money was just stolen by individuals, by companies, by people with access to government.'
- Alejandro Machado
'œVenezuela had an oil boom that lasted quite a bit, and especially from 2011 to 2014 or so, thestate had so much surplus of money. They believed they were invincible. So they were recklessabout printing money, but they were also reckless about spending the money that they had,stashing it away in tax havens and so on.' - Alejandro Machado
'œWhen we talk about hyperinflation, we talk about an inflation rate of over 50 percent month overmonth. So if you can imagine something costing you $10 today, next month it costs $15. Now in
Venezuela, it's much more accelerated. Things are doubling in price every couple of weeks orso.' - Alejandro Machado'œIt seems like we're seeing the start of people being able to trade dollars for bolivars more freely.But, there is a big effect of people being afraid of what the government might do.' - AlejandroMachado
'œPeople still use bolivars in Venezuela, because it is the currency that is the most widespread.Ordinary people don't have access to dollar accounts. So it is very hard for them [to] just acceptdollars. There's a perception that the government will crackdown on this. There is fear.' -Alejandro Machado
'œTo give some scope, depending on the day, there's four, five, six, seven, eight times morevolume traded on Localbitcoins in Bolƒvar than on the stock market in Caracas, which is a lowbar because there's not a lot of activity on the Caracas stock market.' - Alex Gladstein'œWhat we would like to do with the Open Money Initiative is to broaden access to the systemsthat exist today that are permissionless, that are available to anyone, and lower the difficulty ofuse.' - Alejandro Machado
'œ[...] because the people that most need this, they have older phones and they don't havecomputers. They're not very tech savvy. So how can you make something like what WhatsAppdid in the product space for money management and sending and receiving money?' -Alejandro Machado
'œInfrastructure is collapsing and we're losing a lot of connectivity and now there's blackouts. Soevery day it gets a little harder. But there is still enough penetration of smartphones and Internetin the country that it would really make a difference.' - Alejandro Machado'œI think people will always remember that relentless money printing and hyperinflation and all ofthese crises was something that could have been avoided by taking responsibility for yourself.' -Alejandro Machado
'œWhat we need is for Bitcoin to be liquid in global markets so that if in one specific country thereis a loss of freedom, there is a loss of ability to trade your money for another arbitrary currency,then there is always at least the option to trade your money for Bitcoin.' - Alejandro Machado'œWhat we need to do is to make sure that this grows from very new and very specialized knowledge to something that everyone can benefit from.' - Alejandro Machado
This episode was sponsored by Purse.io and BlockchainTraining.orgMusic for this episode was provided by Jared Rubens and general Fuzz, with editing by Steven Aram.
Any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com.
Image Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alyssablack/12185839253/
"If ever those two facts diverge, where the agreement is still that it's a reserve currency but the market truth is that it's no longer a good HODL currency... If those diverge... it doesn't matter if you keep calling it a reserve currency, people aren't willing to HODL it. Andreas Antonopoulos - LTB E406**
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!...One of the early stories we discussed, at great length, was the sort of long-term play that Bitcoin and related technologies are making as unstoppable competition for global, regional and national currencies.
On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!, we'll join Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, and Jonathan Mohan for an in-depth discussion on Hyperinflation, Reserve Currencies, Incentives, Bitcoin, and more...
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!
This episode was sponsored by Edge.app and Blockchaintraining.org.
This episode featured content by Jonathan Mohan, Stephanie Murphy, Andreas Antonopoulos, and Adam B. Levine. This episode was edited by Steven, with music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Any questions or comments? Email adam@letstalkbitcoin.com See you next time.
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin!...Adam B. Levine and LTB Global Voices segment host Alex Gladstein are talking Bitcoin in the Philippines with Luis Buenaventura.
Later, having now heard perspectives from bitcoin users in Iran, India, Shanghai, Nigeria, the Philippines and with Venezuela still to air Adam and Alex take a measured look back at the interview series so far.
This episode is sponsored by Purse.io and BlockchainTraining.org
Today's show featured content by Alex Gladstein, Luis Buenaventura, and Adam B. Levine. This episode was edited by Steven Aram and featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz. Have any questions or comments? Email adam@letstalkbitcoin.com. Have a good week!
On Today's Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...In our first segment, we'll join Andreas Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, and Adam B. Levine for a look at the varied approaches being used to connect your Bitcoin to credit card style ease-of-use.
After the break, guest host Alex Gladstein and Adam B. Levine sit down for another installment of LTB Global Voices. This time we talk with Aparna Krishnan about the unique situation brewing in India today.
Today's episode was sponsored by Edge.app and BlockchainTraining.org
Highlights and Selected Excerpts Courtesy of @ProfessorMeow
HIGHLIGHTS (More excerpts below credits)
'œIt's almost as if the entire mechanism is designed to put you into debt, hopefully, to get you to a point where you end up racking up fees to enrich some group of bankers..as if the entire system is designed to not only make you a debt slave, but make sure that you work for a wage salaried position to a giant corporation.' - Andreas Antonopoulos
'œ..if anyone represents themselves as insured, you have to really look into what they mean. I feel like a lot of people are conflating one type of insurance with the other when they're making financial decisions about where they put their money. So when it comes to collateralized lending and engaging in margin, that's the whole point that crypto was trying to escape is that type of understanding of finance' - Jonathan Mohan
'œ..when you say something like 'œbanking the unbanked,' it's important to understand why people are unbanked in the first place. One thing that I found really interesting in India was that a large number of these people who are unbanked don't know how to use the existing financial system. It's not that they don't have access to financial systems.' - Aparna Krishnan
CREDITS
Episode 404 featured content from Andreas Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Adam B. Levine, Alex Gladstein, and Aparna Krishnan. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz, with editing by Steven and Adam.
Any questions or comments? You can either email adam@letstalkbitcoin.com, or now leave a voice message directly through your anchor.fm app, or on the new show page at ltbshow.com
Image credit: CC-SA http://www.picpedia.org/credit-cards/credit-cards09.html
More selected excerpts
Crypto Credit Cards:
Adam B. Levine: I wanted to have a brief conversation about some of the different options that are out there as far as crypto credit cards. We're talking about this in the context of how these things work rather than endorsing them. I don't use any, I don't intend to use any, but I think it's an interesting development in the space.
Andreas Antonopoulos: I've used one. I used 2, actually. I used the shift card from Coinbase back in 2015, and I also used the Bitpay card that same year, and regretted using both of those.
Adam B. Levine: the Bitpay prepaid credit card is the simplest possible way that you could do this, Essentially you buy this debit card from them and it costs 10 bucks or 15 bucks as a one-time fee. Then you get an address that you can make payments to, and whenever you send Bitcoin to the payment address, it sells it and turns it into dollars and then puts that balance onto your card as a prepaid balance. So when you go to a store you can use it and it's basically the equivalent of a gift card more than it is a credit card but, the advantage is that you hold all your cryptocurrency until you actually want to top-up the card.
Stephanie Murphy: I'm curious, I want to know why Andreas regretted using it?
Andreas Antonopoulos: Once my accountant understood the accounting nightmare and then billed me for it, it was obvious that it was not worth using. Inside the United States with the capital gains accounting rules, it's just too much hassle. The other reason was foreign transaction fees and the exchange rate being applied which in both cases was way too expensive
Stephanie Murphy: Wow, okay so the costs add up really quickly and it's just not worth it. So then that means it's only really worth it to use one of these things if you had trouble obtaining credit from more traditional sources.
Andreas Antonopoulos: Or you're outside the US. If you don't have the capital gains burden which doesn't exist in most of the countries, or you live in a country that's not very well banked, or you're trying to do things like buy things from Amazon and you don't have a credit card that works. For example Argentina would be a perfect example
Adam B. Levine: Coinbase allows you to for better or worse, not sell your cryptocurrency until you actually make a purchase in real life. With Coinbase they hold your crypto within your Coinbase account, and then when you make a payment, they make a sale on your behalf of your Bitcoin or whatever crypto you've indicated.
Andreas Antonopoulos: It was the transaction fees, exchange rates, and conversion fees that killed it. I literally ended up paying you know six or seven dollar fees on a $2.00 purchase it was a bit ridiculous.If you can get credit, even better than not spending crypto until you absolutely have to, is not spending crypto until 30 days after you absolutely have to. So you'd use a credit card and then once a month you pay off the credit card with a single crypto transaction 30 days later. So you hodl for 30 days longer. This is more suited for people who can't get credit cards at all.
Credit:
Jonathan Mohan: There's someone who used to be prominent in this space who went from a literal non-existent credit histories to a 710 in one year just because they were holding crypto for so long and didn't believe at all in credit. They just needed to buy a house for their family. Then they realized that they need to play the game just to even have a credit history. And because you're succeeding in a way that doesn't play the game the way that the financial system wants you to, you have a new weird gross type of financial non-inclusion. You have all these assets but they won't really recognize the asset, and you have no credit history so they won't extend you any loans.
Andreas Antonopoulos: It's almost as if the credit reporting system is designed to kind of encourage people to become debt slaves. Here's the thing, it's not just crypto. If you have a bank account full of cash, it's not on your credit report. You actually have to go into debt to build credit history. You could have half a million dollars in a checking account and a credit score of 400 because you don't have any history. You'll call up and say, 'œwell, how can I build better credit?' They'll say, 'œtake out a loan.' But you don't want a loan, you've got half a million in your checking account. You have to take on more debts, and different types of debt. A bit of revolving, a bit of personal, a bit of this secured loan, a bit of them rolling over every now and then. It's almost as if the entire mechanism is designed to put you into debt, hopefully to get you to a point where you end up racking up fees to enrich some group of bankers.
Adam B. Levine: When you start looking at like buying a house or getting a mortgage, income is one of those things that, as a person in the cryptocurrency space, sometimes you make a lot of money off investments, and income is a lot lumpier. On paper you might have no income but you have a lot of wealth.
Andreas Antonopoulos: It's almost as if the entire system is designed to not only make you a debt slave but make sure that you work for a wage salaried position to a giant corporation.
Collateralized Lending:
Adam B. Levine: I found a couple of projects, notably Nexo and Crypto.com(?), that basically say, alright, we're actually gonna do real credit cards where you have a balance and you have to make payments. There's an interest rate that accrues every month and what they do is in order to give you credit, we want you to deposit a certain amount of crypto with us, and then if you deposit $1,000 worth of Bitcoin with us or $1,000 worth of Tether, then we'll give you $400 worth of credit on this card. When you go out and you make a purchase, your crypto isn't actually sold. It's just like a normal credit card. You accrue the interest, but they know that in the event that you default on it, that they effectively have enough assets that they can be made more than whole, and get their money even in a scenario where the value of the cryptocurrency drops by half.
Andreas Antonopoulos: I mean, that's a collateralized debt obligation exactly like how Maker DAO works.
Jonathan Mohan: Nexo's proposed model is very interesting. It's sort of like fire, if you know what you're doing, it's valuable, but you're more often then not going to get burned. They're intending to let you collateralize into a credit card, and then as your Bitcoin increases, they will dynamically increase the credit line that you get in your card, with the loan-to-value ratio of your deposit. So if you put Bitcoin in at $10,000 and they give you a $4,000 credit line, if Bitcoin goes to $20,000, it'll just automatically go to $8000, so you can start spending this thing as if it's free money, but you're decreasing your LTV. If Bitcoin adjust back, it's just it's a very easy way to induce margin calls.
Adam B. Levine: I was gonna say, yeah, the margin call thing seems like the real potential danger here is that if the limit can adjust up, that means it can adjust down as well. And if you had spent $3,000 on that $4,000 balance, and now that balance is $2,000 because crypto is decreased in value, then they're going to margin call you and sell your assets.
Andreas Antonopoulos: I'll just keep playing the same broken record. That's exactly how Dai works. That's how the Maker DAO works. So what you do is you collateralize the CDP, which is the contract, and you put in the principal. If the exchange rates of ETH goes up, then you can draw more Dai against it. You have to have it at a loan-to-value ratio of, you know, 150% or greater, or whatever the current ratio is, otherwise you get a margin call. Interestingly enough, first of all this is decentralized, but what happens next is even more interesting, which is that you can now buy margin call insurance, effectively in a secondary market where other people will top up your account for specific fee, to be protected from margin calls if there's a sudden drop in the value. It's a peer-to-peer a decentralized option market that grows on top of Maker DAO.
Jonathan Mohan: The thing that does concern me about Maker DAO versus Nexo, is at least Nexo is a company. So they have obligations towards what constitutes a loanshark limit. If you look at how Maker DAO dynamically adjusts with no lower upper limit fee. Now the fees have gone from under 1% to I think they're talking about potentially 11 or even more percent, and how that keeps increasing. It's really scary because it's decentralized. Everyone gets to pretend that they're not the one who increased the rate, where Dai may go to 50%. You know, Dai may be the next be your own loan shark type of payday lending system. Because I don't know if they have any functional controls and what the upper bound is for the variable rate, '˜cause that's the whole process of it, which is whatever price the market will bear. And because it doesn't have those upper or lower bounds, you can open yourself up to very bad positions that you wouldn't have, had you gone with a centralized provider.
Andreas Antonopoulos: One of the things that concerned me about Nexo model versus Maker Dao is Nexo is a company. They hold the keys, and not your keys, not your coins, so they can basically walk away with your collateral, which they can't do in Maker DAO, so it's half a dozen of 1/6 of another.
Jonathan Mohan: A very important thing to discuss which is a conflation of terms that some of the people who are marketing securitized lending and crypto are doing right now. Which is if anyone represents themselves as insured, you have to really look into what they mean. I feel like a lot of people are conflating one type of insurance with the other when they're making financial decisions about where they put their money. So when it comes to collateralized lending and engaging in margin, that's the whole point that crypto was trying to escape is that type of understanding of finance. It's really hard to exist in the in-between phase we're transitioning from one phase to the other. But I think that when it comes to putting leverage against your Bitcoin, it's sort of like stabbing somebody. You can have a very particular set of skills that a very few of us have, and when you stab someone it's called surgery. But for everyone else it's a crime. And when I think about this collateralized lending, it's kinda like that.
Andreas Antonopoulos: Can we just summarize that this plastic is the devil? And if you wrap crypto with plastic, it's just the devil again. Then you realize that your friendly cuddly crypto company, it's a bank.
Bitcoin in India:
Aparna Krishnan: I'm currently based in San Francisco I recently did a study in India to understand the scope of cryptocurrencies in emerging markets. So I got into the crypto space some time in 2015. I was passionate about cryptography, I had just heard about Bitcoin. I wanted to understand what was going on there so I started by reading the Bitcoin whitepaper and that pretty much led me down this rabbit hole.
Adam B. Levine: So when you did get involved with cryptocurrency, it sounds like you took a more academic approach to understanding it. As your interest evolved in it, walk us through your journey here.
Aparna Krishnan: Initially I started by teaching a class at Berkeley on cryptocurrencies. I started blockchain on Berkeley's education team, taught a few different blockchain executive education programs, and all that helped me learn a lot about the space. Something I realize through doing all of that, was that people were trying to build on top of a cryptocurrency that wasn't scalable, or wasn't private, and all the visions that people had laid out in the magic internet money future were not really being built. So that kind of got me to think about the research angle a little bit, which is why I got into proof of stake research. I was doing that for a couple of years primarily because I wanted to build a scalable cryptocurrency. Going from there, I think sometime last year, I started to realize that there were a lot of scalability solutions out there, but very few people actually building on top of these, or very people directly being impacted in their everyday lives. And this kind of got me to a point of almost an intellectual crisis where I was wondering if I was just building these technologies for my own intellectual satisfaction, or there were people out there who were actually going to be impacted by this. And if so, who were these people? How was their life gonna change because of cryptocurrency or blockchain?
Alex Gladstein: How does that connect with your journey to interview folks in India and learn more about what's happening there with regard to cryptocurrency adoption?
Aparna Krishnan: something that people have been talking about for a while in the crypto spaces how cryptocurrencies are going to bank the unbanked. One thing that's actually really interesting that I start to realize as I did this study was that almost 90% of Indians have an identity card issued by the Government of India. So the government of India is issued something called Aadhaar. As part of this, the government's also been opening bank accounts for a large number of people. I would say about 20% of Indians still don't have a bank account, but that is still a very small percentage compared to other countries in the world. That number has been reducing at a very fast pace partly because the government's been taking a lot of different initiatives to bridge that gap. When you have an Aadhaar card, that basically is your identity for everything. From getting discounted groceries, to getting a utility bill, to sometimes I've been having your grades linked to this identity card. That's all you ever need in India and it's all linked to all aspects of your life.
Alex Gladstein: So if the Indian government is on this quest to Bank everybody into this centralized system, then why are people experimenting with things like Bitcoin and cryptocurrency?
Aparna Krishnan: One thing that I started to realize when I was doing this study was when you say something like 'œbanking the unbanked,' it's important to understand why people are unbanked in the first place. One thing that I found really interesting in India was that a large number of these people who are unbanked don't know how to use the existing financial system. It's not that they don't have access to financial systems.
I think where Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies can really help is by providing financial access to people who don't have access to it right now, So even India if you take a look at the unbanked communities, while they might have access to a banking service, they may not have access to other slightly more complex services. Like better loans or being able to insure themselves and products like these I think cryptocurrencies can really help with. Primarily because they're now bridging the gap of providing access where people don't have access.
I realized that the immediate scope of cryptocurrency in foreign exchange remittances markets would actually be pretty huge. I think is an actual problem that a lot of people are currently facing in India and this is something that I've seen a lot of people who are sending money to and from India talked about. Right now the regulation prevents a large amount of money being held in any other currency other than the Indian rupee, and this currently affects not just individuals, but also large businesses.
The conversion both to and from fiat is extremely restricted right now, but despite this, you see a large amount of volume on Localbitcoins.
Alex Gladstein: Why does the Modi government care so much about cracking down on on-ramps and off-ramps? It sounds like there's a vibrant peer-to-peer marketplace, but it sounds like the Democratic Indian government is very fierce, and I think some people even said maybe the most anti-crypto government in the world. Why?
Aparna Krishnan: I think there are a couple of different reasons. They're afraid of people evading taxes and they're afraid of a large amount of money leaving the country. Another reason is they're afraid of large amounts of terrorism being funded through cryptocurrencies and they feel like if it all happened in Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, that's not something that they have the power to control, or the power to even fix in case of a large attack. The third I think and biggest reason is they're afraid that if they open out the marketsm then the government itself won't have any power over the Indian economy.
Adam B. Levine: There's this thesis that transaction fees matter a lot in the developing world because the cost of say a 25 cent or a 50 cent transaction fee to get a transaction put on to the Bitcoin blockchain is pretty expensive in local currency terms. And so I was curious and would like to ask you, does the transaction fee matter?
Aparna Krishnan: I think until the regulation eases up, transaction fees may not be the biggest concern right now in India, if even acquiring cryptocurrency is so hard. I think people are very willing to pay high transaction fees. The people who are currently buying and selling cryptocurrencies tend to be people who are a little technologically savvy, somewhere in their 20s or 30s, males, usually people who are like profit motivated. These tend to be the people who are currently dealing with it in India, and so any transaction see doesn't really affect them buying and selling it right now. I think if we had to expand it into impacting lives of other people, that's when it'll make a difference.
Adam B. Levine: Are there other cryptocurrencies that you see as being more likely to gain popularity or already perhaps more popular than Bitcoin?
Aparna Krishnan: It's already very clearly just Bitcoin.
Adam B. Levine: We've been hearing that from everybody, and honestly it's been a little surprising to me every time. Because in some cases the cost is very high.
Aparna Krishnan: Yeah, when I was talking to a few different exchanges about this, one thing I realized was that most people who are using cryptocurrencies are buying and holding Bitcoin. And even despite regulations, they've been holding on to it they haven't sold any of it, or converted it to fiat, which is really cool. It's almost like a 90% Bitcoin and like 10% other currencies in India.
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy & Jonathan Mohan for an early look at the newly proposed "Erlay" and "Dandelion" transaction relay protocols.
Later, Adam and HRF.org's Alex Gladstein sit down with Hong Kong Bitcoin Users Christina and Leo, in the third of our interview series focused on international perspectives.
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Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie, Adam, Jonathan, Andreas, Alex, Christina, and Leo.
This episode was edited by Steven and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine for an in-depth discussion on the realities, implications and possible speculative motive behind Facebook's recently revealed Libra Protocol.
Bonus Episode: Stephanie and Adam read "How Will Facebook's Libra Blockchain Really Work? An Expert Guide to the Social Media Company's Foray into Cryptocurrency" by Jameson Lopp
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Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine
This episode was edited by Steven and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine for part two of our two-part discussion (listen to part 1 here) with bitcoin developers Sipa (Dr. Pieter Wuille) and Jonas Nick on Tapscript, batch verifiability, signature aggregation, OPSUCCESS, and more.
Later, Adam and HRF.org's Alex Gladstein sit down with Nigerian Bitcoin User Timi in the second of our new interview series focused on international perspectives, and what really matters.
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Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie , Adam , Jonathan, Andreas, Sipa, Jonas, Alex and Timi.
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On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy & Andreas M. Antonopoulos for part one of our two-part discussion with bitcoin developers Sipa (Dr. Pieter Wuille) and Jonas Nick on Schnorr Signatures, Tapscript, Taproot and more.
Later, Adam and HRF.org's Alex Gladstein sit down with Iranian Bitcoin User Ziya in the first of a new interview series focused on international perspectives, and what really matters.
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Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at https://tipltb.tokenly.com/
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Image Credit:https://pixabay.com/photos/tools-construct-craft-repair-864983/
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie , Adam , Jonathan, Andreas, Sipa, Jonas, Alex and Ziya.
This episode was edited by Dave and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats.
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...
Join Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murphy & Andreas M. Antonopoulos for a deep dive into what it would take, both in theory and in practice, adversarially or with full community consensus, to pull off a bitcoin blockchain rollback.
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Sponsored by: www.Purse.io
Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at https://tipltb.tokenly.com/
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Image Credit:https://www.flickr.com/photos/diversey/697043922
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Adam B. Levine, and Andreas M. Antonopoulos.
This episode was edited by Oscar Hamilton and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens.
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Stephanie Murphy & Adam B. Levine for an in-depth discussion on Cryptocurrency & Taxes with CPA, Author and long-time friend of the show Kirk Phillips.
The Ultimate Bitcoin Business Guide (Kirk's Book) is available in all formats on his website, linked below.https://www.thebitcoincpa.com/pages/TUBBG
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Sponsored by: www.Edge.app
Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at https://tipltb.tokenly.com/
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Adam B. Levine, and Kirk Phillips.
This episode was edited by Dave and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens.
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Andreas Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy and Adam B. Levine for a discussion on the realities of base-layer-bitcoin fungibility.
Support the Show!
Sponsored by: www.Edge.app
Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at https://tipltb.tokenly.com/
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Adam B. Levine, and Andreas Antonopoulos.
This episode was edited by Dave and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats.
Album Art Image Credit:
By Colin Brown from Silver Lake, CA, U.S.A - IMG_5096.JPG, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4322776
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Andreas Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine for an exploration of new lightning channel rebalancing service "Loop Out", followed by a round-about discussion of centralized risks within and surrounding decentralized protocols.
Episode Links:https://blog.lightning.engineering/technical/posts/2019/04/15/loop-out-in-depth.html
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Sponsored by: Purse.io!
Check out Bcoin (https://bcoin.io/), Bcash (https://github.com/bcoin-org/bcash) or Handshake (https://handshake.org/)
Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at https://tipltb.tokenly.com/
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Adam B. Levine, and Andreas Antonopoulos.
This episode was edited by Dave and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Album Art Image Credit:https://pixabay.com/photos/pyrenees-mountains-snow-landscape-351266/
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Andreas Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine for a discussion on Stablecoins, Government Dysfunction, and Cryptocurrency Adoption. After the break, we'll share an update from Christian out of Venezuela.
AB953 Text: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB953
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! was Sponsored by purse.io
Tip LTB Venezuelan Correspondent Christian directly:
Bitcoin: 1LzDGA7Xz1CMaBnBJC8W16YXFBhT3UVruL
Support the Show!
Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at https://tipltb.tokenly.com/
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Adam B. Levine, and Andreas Antonopoulos.
This episode was edited by Dave, Krystal, and Adam. This episode featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Album Art Image Credit:https://pixabay.com/photos/pyrenees-mountains-snow-landscape-351266/
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Caitlin Long, Jonathan Mohan, Stephanie Murphy and Adam B. Levine for a discussion on the Supernegotiability alternative to the Bitlicense and other recent progress out of Wyoming
Links referenced in the episode:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/caitlinlong/2019/03/25/seismic-news-about-state-virtual-currency-laws-ulc-urges-states-to-withdraw-model-act/#6598f4775fda
https://www.forbes.com/sites/caitlinlong/2019/03/04/what-do-wyomings-new-blockchain-laws-mean/#3349362d5fde
https://www.bitcoin.kn/2018/08/caitlin-long-financialization/
Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at tipltb.tokenly.com/
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Adam B. Levine, and Andreas Antonopoulos.
This episode was edited by Adam B. Levine and featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Photo via Good Free Photos
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com
On Todays Episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin...Join Adam B. Levine, Andreas Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy and Jonathan Mohan for a full episode of listener questions.
LTB Episode T-shirts now available at http://LTBSHOW.COM
Other ways to support the show:
Tip LTB:1FZGD64BA7B9GdwDhGGGF92amt9X6VH38K
or Via the Lightning Network at tipltb.tokenly.com/
Thanks for listening to this episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin, content for today's show was provided by Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Adam B. Levine, and Andreas Antonopoulos.
This episode was edited by Adam B. Levine and featured music by Jared Rubens and General Fuzz.
Send questions or comments to adam@letstalkbitcoin.com