"It is understandably difficult for most of us to imagine a monetary world aside from the one in which we've lived for generations. After all, the U.S. dollar has served as the world's leading reserve currency since 1919, when Britain was forced off the gold standard. There are only a handful of people living who might recall what the world was like before then. Nevertheless, change is coming." - Avik Roy The fiscal promiscuity of the United States is reaching its end. The bill for the 50 year p...
Oct 22, 2021•1 hr 10 min
"The fight that the cypherpunks mounted was one of the main reasons that the U.S. government lost the Crypto Wars. The authorities tried to stop the code and failed. This realization would loom large in Back’s mind 15 years later, in the summer of 2008, as he worked through that first email from Nakamoto." - Alex Gladstein Today we are reading an incredible article about the decades long quest of the cypherpunks, and the enormous contributions from Adam Back in that journey, to create digital ca...
Oct 20, 2021•1 hr 23 min
"Nodes are the law, and miners are the muscle." - Harry Sudock Harry Sudock, Vice President of Strategy at Griid, and I have a chat about the challenges of energy production, grid capacity, and the energy infrastructure and how so many can be addressed by the incredible opportunity of Bitcoin mining. How and why are energy production and the Bitcoin network merging together, and what does this mean for the future? Don't forget to check out Harry on twitter, and explore the other shows he has bee...
Oct 19, 2021•1 hr 15 min
"The precise magnitude and schedule for the westward move is currently unknown, but all signals seem to be indicating the greatest shakeup in the geographic makeup of bitcoin mining since the start of the industrial mining era.” - Nic Carter Today we cover an article about the largest shift in mining infrastructure the Bitcoin network has ever seen. What does it mean for Bitcoin, for the Us, and for China, and what might be the reasons for this blanket move by the CCP? Find out in today's read f...
Oct 15, 2021•30 min
"Wake up people, this is not a drill. Contagion risks are increasing due to potential global stagflation... The intrinsic value of BTC has increased from the beginning of this year when I originally calculated the value to be over $150,000 per coin." - Greg Foss If we removed the global payments network, we removed the hardest monetary unit in the world, we took out the programmability, and wanted to focus entirely on a key value proposition of Bitcoin - that it is a money external to the fiat s...
Oct 13, 2021•41 min
“Using Bitcoin can level the playing field for the world’s poor as we work toward economic justice.” - Bradley Rettler Author Bradley Rettler returns in today’s read with a concise piece on the nature of our systemic problems of economic inequality, their unjust cause, and why Bitcoin is the key to leveling the playing field. Check out the original article at the link below: https://iai.tv/articles/the-rich-get-richer-the-poor-get-bitcoin-auid-1766 And for Rettler's other work in audio on the po...
Oct 12, 2021•55 min
"Not only is the world experiencing greater dispersion of outcomes, it is also changing at an increasingly faster pace. Raw data is pouring torrentially down upon us, overwhelming our neural capacity more each day. We are confused, overwhelmed and looking for anchors, answers, and authority.” - Aaron Segal Continuing with Part 2 of yesterday's amazing Bitcoin Magazine piece on the major trends of today, the inevitably of the race to zero volatility, the incentives that will lead to infinite frag...
Oct 08, 2021•1 hr 37 min
"The individual investor is professionalizing at the end of one of the biggest, most Homeric blow-out parties of all time. Forgive the cliched baseball metaphor, but this is like a player being called up from the minor leagues right before the off-season, after a seven-game dramatic World Series finale." - Aaron Segal An incredible piece today from Bitcoin Magazine on the major trends of today, the growing and centralization of all markets, and the fall of freed markets to the 20th century insti...
Oct 06, 2021•1 hr 11 min
"In this piece we discuss our concerns around the broader “crypto” space beyond Bitcoin. Our arguments revolve around three primary themes: Philosophical, Technical, and Economic. From a philosophical perspective, we discuss the core properties that make Bitcoin work and that make it unique, in our view. From a technical perspective, we evaluate how these properties are lacking to a greater or lesser extent in alternative “cryptoassets,” having been designed out again on questionable philosophic...
Oct 05, 2021•3 hr 5 min
"The line of differentiation between the masses and the Remnant is set invariably by quality, not by circumstance. The Remnant are those who by force of intellect are able to apprehend these principles, and by force of character are able, at least measurably, to cleave to them. The masses are those who are unable to do either." - Albert Jay Nock Today we read an incredible piece posted in the Atlantic Monthly nearly a century ago, in 1936. Libertarian author Albert Jay Nock explains the nature o...
Oct 01, 2021•1 hr 6 min
“As Gall’s Law suggests, we believe the general principle favoring Bitcoin’s layered architecture is not one of software engineering so much as engineering entirely in general, yet as elegantly applied to software.” - Only the Strong Survive Listen to Part 1 if you haven't yet! https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CSN7556187630.mp3?updated=1632359979 Part 2 https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CSN8589484720.mp3?updated=1632533362 Completing our journey through the incredible piece from Allen Farrington & Bi...
Sep 28, 2021•55 min
"Lyn Alden captured this well in her excellent piece, An Economic Analysis of Ethereum, which we highly recommend in addition to our own. Similarly observing that there does seem to be a lot of “financial” activity on Ethereum, specifically: it’s what you would build if you were trying to replicate finance just by looking at it but not really understanding what the point of it all was" Listen to Part 1 if you haven't yet! https://traffic.megaphone.fm/CSN7556187630.mp3?updated=1632359979 Today we...
Sep 25, 2021•1 hr 40 min
"The consensus is what matters. The breakthrough of proof-of-work and the difficulty adjustment is far more about harnessing energy and existing communications infrastructure to calibrate incentives than it has to do with computation. Computation is a tool that makes the process more efficient and reliable, but Bitcoin is not itself a 'computer.'" We start our dive into the incredible piece from Allen Farrington & Big Al, on the complete philosophical, technical, & social case for the un...
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 32 min
“Sandwiched 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 p...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 39 min
"Schumpeter would have loved Bitcoin. He would have seen in Bitcoin a living representation of his theory of capitalism, so often quoted but rarely understood. Creative destruction is the process by which capitalism continually rejuvenates itself. It is what drives markets forwards, constantly being refreshed with new ideas that destroy extant structures and erect better ones in their stead.” - Prateek Goorha & Andy Edstrom Today we are digging into the evolution of the economy and the cycle...
Sep 17, 2021•1 hr 6 min
"we often hear the U.S. dollar called an “exorbitant privilege.” Namely, that the U.S. benefits disproportionately from the dollar’s reserve currency status. This article will detail why the current financial system has, in fact, been a burden on the United States, why the fiat dollar system is ending and what that means for the future of Bitcoin." - Ansel Lindner What if the dollar fiat reserve system isn't actually a great privilege, but is actually a burden that wears on the US success and gr...
Sep 15, 2021•1 hr 10 min
"For those with the curiosity to look, Bitcoin has emerged as a vast and mysterious space to explore, with treasures, dangers and untold potential. And similar to the Statue of Liberty’s beautiful but no longer true invitation, bitcoin beckons those who are tired, poor and yearning to breathe free to enter its realm and bask in the light of its gifts." - Tomer Strolight Why choose Bitcoin? Why Bitcoin is the new frontier. Why and how Bitcoin uses energy. Why everything that should hurt Bitcoin, ...
Sep 14, 2021•2 hr 11 min
"the fact that bitcoin is now legal tender in a country is absolutely astonishing. Yesterday, some nerds discovered a system that allows magic internet money to emerge by sending messages back and forth. Today, a country decided to adopt this system as their currency" - DerGigi Today we cover an excellent little piece from DerGigi that takes a step back and puts the news of legal tender in El Salvador into perspective. This isn't just another bullet point, this is a key step in the realization o...
Sep 10, 2021•30 min
"There has never been a more secure, scarce, valuable, transportable, decentralized and networked asset in all of humanity’s history. It’s more mobile than gold. It appreciates faster than property. It’s supply is fixed unlike stocks and bonds. It’s payment network is faster and cheaper than Visa’s" - Akarsh Nalawade With Lightning exploding on the scene and becoming the default means of interaction with the Bitcoin system, legal tender going live in El Salvador, the massive hash rate migration,...
Sep 07, 2021•42 min
Proof of stake, versus proof of work. Isn’t POW super wasteful, while POS is the cost free alternative that obviously is as equally secure? Are we throwing hashes into the wind for no reason, or is there something fundamentally wrong with this comparison? Find out in Episode #6 of Shitcoin Insider. Subscribe to the show, don't forget to check out Bitcoin Audible for tons of other deep dives into the nature of Bitcoin and Proof of work vs Proof of Stake, and check us out on Twitter here . (Link: ...
Sep 06, 2021•1 hr 49 min
"Long before we had the Bitcoin energy debate, we had the gold resource cost debate. The contours were similar: the costs associated with gold refining and extraction were a waste; they were too great relative to a mere fiat standard in which notes could be printed for virtually nothing." - Nic Carter Great piece today from Nic Carter published on Bitcoin Magazine. The energy cost debate of Bitcoin might not be quite what it seems to be. And we can take a lesson from history by understanding the...
Sep 04, 2021•50 min
“Farzan 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 bi...
Sep 02, 2021•59 min
Dave Smith has finally done a Bitcoin episode! For those of you who missed this, I am making it available on my own feed and for those of you who do not know Dave Smith, he has the best podcast on libertarianism out there. It is absolutely one to check out if you haven't yet. Check out the links below to watch this episode on youtube, or explore the other great content on Part of the Problem. Part of the Problem with Dave Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAqs3DOXqCc https://podcasts.apple....
Aug 30, 2021•1 hr 11 min
"Bitcoin fails as a money b/c of its naive monetary policy. Many people think government printing too much is evil, so a fixed money supply must be good. The reality: a money that cannot expand would crush the economy and put us all in poverty. Here’s why and how to fix it." - Natasha Che Today we have a fun one to go through. A twitter thread by Natasha Che who was eager to explain why Bitcoin's monetary policy would ultimately lead to economic destitution and poverty. A prime example of "I've ...
Aug 24, 2021•56 min
“This technology goes around blockades and government restrictions, it allows you to move value without trusting anyone, it connects you to the world, and it allows you to empower yourself and do things that are otherwise impossible,” he said. “It has created hope for those who want change.” Today Alex Gladstein takes us on another Bitcoin journey around the world, this time to Cuba. A communist regime where dissent is illegal, where 70% of the value of the currency is stolen by the government i...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr 28 min
"By all extant metrics in security system review, this system should have failed instantaneously, at every possible layer. And, to be fair, it has failed at other layers – BitCoin thefts have occurred, in the meta-code that surrounds the core technology itself. But the core technology actually works, and has continued to work, to a degree not everyone predicted. Time to enjoy being wrong. What the heck is going on here?" - Dan Kaminsky Today we read an excellent blast from the past by legend Dan...
Aug 17, 2021•34 min
"And it’s easier to sensationalize things for pageviews or political gain. For example, it’s commonly said that the Bitcoin network uses more energy than some countries. That’s true, but then so does Google, Youtube, Netflix, Facebook, Amazon, the cruise industry, Christmas lights, household drying machines, private jets, the zinc industry, and basically any other sizable platform or industry. From that list, Bitcoin’s energy usage is the closest to that of the cruise industry’s energy usag...
Aug 12, 2021•2 hr 7 min
"Bitcoin is a network, a money, a language, a system of rules, & a clock. Bitcoin is backed by Truth" - Guy Swann Links to other works mentioned in the show today for further digging and study of these concepts in detail. Plus a really funny clip on the ridiculousness of the English language: Dergigi's "Bitcoin is Time" https://bitcoinaudible.com/bitcoin-is-time/ Gallagher on the English Language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfz3kFNVopk Shelling Out: The Origins of Money: https://bitcoin...
Aug 06, 2021•1 hr 3 min
The word “fiat” is growing more aggrandized in the modern lexicon, however, despite its increasing popularity it is often ill defined or misused. I regularly observe people falsely call Bitcoin a fiat currency. This is thanks, not least of all, to the layman’s poor grasp of history and money. Fiat is of Latin origin, meaning authoritative sanction; a decree, command or order. Fiat does not mean “backed by nothing” or “redeemable for nothing” or “pegged to nothing.” - HAC A walk through the histo...
Aug 03, 2021•1 hr 7 min
"Here's the deal with the US infrastructure bill: A new provision has been added that expands the Tax Code's definition of "broker" to capture nearly everyone in crypto, including non-custodial actors like miners, forcing them all to KYC users. This is not a drill" - Jake Chervinsky The government is trying to sneak in an incredibly arduous and expansive redefinition of the tax code that could be interpreted as so broad to essentially encompass every computer and piece of software running in the...
Jul 31, 2021•40 min
