Obi Nwosu, co-founder and CEO of Fedi, joins us today to talk about the new innovations and challenges in decentralising the web and how both Bitcoin and Ai are at the core of making it possible. This conversation was recorded for the AI Unchained podcast, but I decided to cross post it here since a lot of the conversation is themed around Bitcoin. Guest Links: Follow Obi on X: https://x.com/obi Follow Fedi on X: https://twitter.com/fedimint A huge thanks to our sponsors, and don't forget t...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr 20 min
"With Bitcoin, lives and money are at stake. Interruption of its service can cause a cascade of losses and unintended consequences for potentially millions of people and billions of fiat dollars. If it is possible to build a Bitcoin that cannot fail, that should be the goal, and no compromise should be acceptable." — Beautyon Before we get into a Guy'a Take to continue our FUD Relief series - addressing the failures to understand the value and purpose of Bitcoin - it's time to bring a brilliant ...
Oct 05, 2023•40 min
"Our existing financial system is a mirage of wealth and liquidity, sustained by an ever-expanding money supply. Bitcoin emerges as the ultimate shield against the inevitable reckoning that will shatter this illusion." — Theo Mogenet Today, we dive into another great piece from Axiom BTC on the mission to reprice the world in sats. We all understand the incredible benefit of Bitcoin as a long term store of value, and that's its monetary properties give it unique capacity for long term savings. H...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 11 min
What if we could mitigate the enormous centralizing effects of the massive server farms and huge corporate entities, by pooling the GPU power of the millions of users and tinkerers who have unused or regularly idle computational power, into a decentralized marketplace for buying and selling Ai execution, and we could power it all with instantly settled sats over lightning? It just so happens that we can, and this ambitious project is being brought to life with GPUtopia. Chris David from the proj...
Sep 30, 2023•1 hr 9 min
In this episode, I talked with Zack ₿omsta, the visionary leader behind Pivotal Pleb . Pivotal Pleb is on a mission to level the playing field for decentralized miners. Zack shares insights into how their technology is driving decentralisation and empowering individual miners, allowing them to play a vital role in the Bitcoin network. Join us as we unravel the importance of accessible mining solutions and their impact on the future of Bitcoin. A huge thanks to our sponsors, and don't forget to c...
Sep 29, 2023•1 hr 54 min
"Today historians focus on the symptoms of Rome’s fall, the consequences: The moral decay, the economic decline, the fall in public safety, the multiplying plagues from dysfunctional public services, the hollowed-out military that ultimately invited barbarian invasions. But we know these well - in fact we're living through many of them. What's a lot more interesting is the why. Because that's how you stop it." — Peter St. Onge Are we living through the Fall of Rome? There are so many parallels w...
Sep 28, 2023•36 min
"If the merchant wants the bitcoin and you pay in fiat_, that is you shifting the burden of fiat friction on to them. And paying your valued vendors in bitcoin is the opposite of mutually assured destruction–it's mutually assured survival." — Parker Lewis Ultimately, the decision to accept Bitcoin as payment will be driven by the fact that those merchants understand the value of Bitcoin and why it is expected to store value into the future. What does that mean for how we think about finding our ...
Sep 25, 2023•58 min
"Take the idea of proof-of-stake as a base layer consensus mechanism, and throw the idea away for right now. That's not what this is, and the problems that need to be solved to enable proof-of-stake as a second layer system instead of a stand alone base layer are not the same. #Proof-of-stake is essentially a #federation, but where anyone can join and can't be stopped from doing so, and with a mechanism to punish members for acting malicious. As a base layer that creates all kinds of existential...
Sep 20, 2023•1 hr 9 min
"This has been one of the most effective psychological operations that has ever been conducted on the public in human history. The high priests of central banking started running with this narrative and people have come to believe that it is a law of physics. Economies cannot operate efficiently unless there is a steady flow of new monetary units being created and introduced to the economy. If new monetary units aren't being created people will hoard their money and grind the economy to a halt."...
Sep 15, 2023•33 min
Today we sit down with Utxo, founder of Nodeless, on understanding the design space for Bitcoin services, the challenges of making Bitcoin accessible and streamlined for everyone, and a vision of how the future may unfold. Don't forget to check out Nodeless.io/guy and if you setup your donation page, post it on social, and tag me, I'll be your first 10,000 sat donation! And don't forget to check out our incredible sponsors and their offers for the audience! • The easy, KYC free integration for B...
Sep 14, 2023•1 hr 31 min
"It means that, given an open-source model, this could help bring about the ability to: Independently calculate the price of bitcoin using only your full node at any block height Develop genuine DeFi applications without the need for (or without sole reliance upon) trusted third-party price oracles" — Daniel Hinton & Steve Jeffress What if we could know, within a 1% precision, what the price of Bitcoin is, by only using your full node, and no other source of data? How useful could that be in...
Sep 11, 2023•58 min
A deflationary money is going to destroy the economy! If the value of money keeps going up, then no one will ever spend it! If no one spends it, then the economy will fall into a depression and it will never escape... at least, this is what we are told. How is it that a sound money system with no special privilege and with no printing machine has been equated with the collapse of the economy? How is it that stuff getting more affordable, has been equated with nobody ever buying anything? How hav...
Sep 07, 2023•1 hr 8 min
"Everything about the concept of a social network and the incredible potential and beauty of #nostr as a protocol is in controlling your experience, what content you see, and how you see it. This is literally the entire point of having follows, followers, and reposts in the first place. It's at the core of the very notion of what social media is." — Guy Swann Should we be running from the dreaded "algorithms" of social media giants, or should we be thinking about them differently? A short articl...
Sep 06, 2023•25 min
"When discussing consensus mechanisms for different cryptocurrencies, one issue that often causes arguments is a lack of understanding (and definition) of the security model that they provide for the historical data in the ledger." — Jameson Lopp Today we have another blast from the past with a deep dive into Bitcoin's security model from Jameson Lopp. The most fascinating thing about this piece is that if understood properly, it gives understanding into why many of the following years in Bitcoi...
Sep 01, 2023•51 min
"I believe it’s important to go back to what this sovereignty is made of. Bitcoin works because an economic majority is aligning incentives for every constituent of the network. The longer tail of the economic distribution may choose to run a node and validate consensus but ultimately consensus follows the money." — Alex B. Today we close out the lengthy back and forth over the evolutionary path of Bitcoin to a billion + users. Alex B brings us a great followup with a less technical and more a...
Aug 29, 2023•43 min
"To not die, Bitcoin must become more used. The current thesis accepted by most “maximalists” is that Bitcoin will continue to be thought of as an investment and its price will keep increasing, the price movements will bring more attention to it in a virtuous cycle. Eventually enough people will want to hold it so they will start accepting it as a payment for goods and services and then it can start to be used as money." Today we dive into Fiatjaf's contribution to the sidechains, drivechains an...
Aug 25, 2023•52 min
"Often overlooked is the importance of interoperability between not only the second-layer protocol and Bitcoin but the layer-2 protocols themselves. A second layer, where end-users can leverage several protocols together and move seamlessly between them, creates a healthier, more resilient financial system and an overall better user experience—both essential for mass adoption."— Chase Smith Today we shift back to the current layer 2 protocols to take note of the tools and ideas around making t...
Aug 24, 2023•37 min
"When reading a draft of this post, my wife got kind of depressed right around here. Her macabre question, basically, is: “if everyone just winds up interacting with sidechains, and not Real Bitcoin, hasn’t the whole thing failed? At every point you’re dealing with some token that isn’t really bitcoin." — James O'Beirne Continuing the thread of discussions in a series of articles on sidechains and trying to frame our thinking for a Bitcoin future where billions can take advantage of its soverei...
Aug 21, 2023•1 hr 14 min
"The headroom there isn’t unlimited — expect it to show up as fee pressure and backlogs and less ability to quickly resolve transaction storms. And that will in turn make it hard and expensive for people with small stacks to continue to do self-custody on the main chain. At that point, acquiring new high value users means pricing out existing low value users." — Anthony Towns It's officially Sidechain Week! Because today Anthony Towns takes us through an thought experiment that sets our current ...
Aug 18, 2023•1 hr 15 min
"While bitcoin is still mainly seen as digital currency, it’s essentially a timestamped log with special properties. As such, it can be utilised for far more things than payments and store of value. I presented some of the alternative uses several years ago and the list continues to grow. Brian Deery, chief scientist at Factom, wrote an excellent history of time-stamping, in which he argues that a secure timestamped record wasn’t feasible before the existence of secure digital value." — Jameson ...
Aug 17, 2023•50 min
With so many common misconceptions about money, how can we possibly make sense of Bitcoin for customers who have spent their entire lives using only a single product, and know almost nothing about it? Without even a means to compare one "product" to another, where do we start? Most only understand money from the context of its network utility - ie. How many places can I spend it at - and have no foundational to make a judgement of its *quality,* which must come before its network adoption. We ha...
Aug 14, 2023•52 min
"A successful blind merge mined sidechain with significant MEV opportunities could offer Bitcoin significant benefits, which could more than offset the disadvantages." - "Blind merge mining works by a third party running the sidechain, building sidechain blocks and receiving the sidechain fees. This entity then creates a Bitcoin transaction, which passes on these fees to the Bitcoin miners in the form of Bitcoin transaction fees." — Bitmex research A trustless, high assurance means of moving B...
Aug 11, 2023•1 hr 18 min
We have an incredible chat today with Pablof7z who is on a mission to make Nostr the global, decentralized marketplace. With highlighter for integrated, universal note taking, data vending machines for micro tasks and shared computing, and using Ai to bring new services and coordination to the ecosystem. Pablof7z dedicates all of his time to building the future. Don't miss our chat in diving down the rabbit hole with him. Links for the many things discussed in the show: • An open system for note...
Aug 08, 2023•2 hr 43 min
Today we delve into a captivating topic, as we explore the potential relationship between AI and evil. My guest Dhruv Bansal brings his profound insights to the forefront as we navigate the depths of this subject. We contemplate the ethical dilemmas that arise when intelligence is harnessed for destructive purposes, and Dhruv expertly unpacks the intricate interplay between AI intelligence, good, and evil, leaving us with a lot to consider about its impact on our lives and the broader world. We ...
Aug 04, 2023•2 hr 38 min
"Talk to a bitcoin maximalist – someone who believes that bitcoin is the only digital asset with innate value – and, more likely than not, they’ll tell you the world’s oldest cryptocurrency is, in fact, ‘not crypto’ at all. The refrain can be confusing: clearly, bitcoin pioneered the use of cryptography – an ultra-secure type of encryption – with the aim of creating a digital currency. Bitcoin is the archetypal crypto. And yet, in the context of how the digital asset marketplace has evolved sinc...
Aug 04, 2023•49 min
"Bitcoin is often referred to as a secure timestamping service. We never had a global record of truth with trustworthy timestamps, so how did this come about? It’s generally due to Proof of Work being combined to a few simple rules by which miners must abide." — Jameson Lopp Can Bitcoin's sense of time be broken? The security and probabilistic assurances of Bitcoin seem simple on their face, but when you dive a little deeper, there is so often tons of nuance and quiet brilliance to unpack around...
Jul 27, 2023•33 min
"Bitcoin represents the explicit encoding of previously implicit values of the tech community. It's not just software — it is a Schelling point and a symbol. As such, it will become widely recognized as the flag of technology over the course of the 2020s." — Balaji S. Srinivasan Today we cover another read from Anil's Bitcoin Essentials list, this time from Balaji Srinivasan. Balaji has a way with words and always brings a unique, high level mental frame to how the world is unfolding. He seems...
Jul 26, 2023•1 hr 18 min
"Some networks are “smart.” They offer sophisticated services that can be delivered to very simple end-user devices on the “edge” of the network. Other networks are “dumb” — they offer only a very basic service and require that the end-user devices are intelligent. What’s smart about dumb networks is that they push innovation to the edge, giving end-users control over the pace and direction of innovation. Simplicity at the center allows for complexity at the edge, which fosters the vast decentra...
Jul 21, 2023•47 min
"The obsession with consumer payments in the Bitcoin community is an unfortunate relic of the fiat money era. Generations that have only known monetary hot potatoes that need to be spent before they devalue have come to view life as a quest of mass consumption." — Saifedean Ammous Today we hit an historical piece from the one and only Saifedean on the economics of Bitcoin for global settlement. While so many fail to recognize the deeper value of money, rather than the shallow service of payments...
Jul 18, 2023•45 min
"To do our best to minimize the economics jargon once again, we might simply ask: what are you going to do with your time? Are you going to create or consume? And how do the characteristics of money, as the salable representation of that time, influence your decision? I sincerely believe that this is the killer app for Bitcoin: pricing capital. If there were ever a time to say that Bitcoin Fixes This, here it is." — Allen Farrington On the announcement of AxiomBTC, Allen Farrington writes an inc...
Jul 16, 2023•1 hr 8 min
