"Individuals can opt-out of their local currency by joining the Bitcoin life raft. Protect purchasing power, rather than go down with the sinking ship that is their state." - Brandon Quittem A fascinating journey through the concept of the Fourth Turning and analysis of the incredible times we live in. More will change in the next decade than in the previous 8 combined. We are entering a time where our old institutions are torn down and built anew. Do we devolve into collectivism and totalitaria...
Oct 30, 2020•1 hr 31 min
"If your local energy cost is effectively zero but you cannot sell your energy anywhere, the existence of a global buyer for energy is a godsend." - Nic Carter What do all the "boiling oceans" alarmist miss about the nature & incentives of Bitcoin's energy consumption? Can we determine anything meaningful about Bitcoin's energy use by looking at the state of mining today, and the trends leading us into the future? Today we read a great piece from CoinDesk by the many times Bitcoin Audible au...
Oct 27, 2020•47 min
"money printing only “works” if the majority of people don’t even realize that it is steadily devaluing their earnings and savings. People must be deceived into believing a false ideology about this practice, but that can only work for so long; as we’ve seen throughout history, bad money doesn’t last forever." - Nik Hoffman What determines a good money and a bad money, and what exactly does it mean for a money to have value? A brief journey through the concepts that define a money, and the histo...
Oct 27, 2020•53 min
"It had a big impact on May, who melded the "Other Plane" with "Galt's Gulch" from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which was a safe haven for rational and productive people protected from government coercion and taxation by an invisible shield. Instead of the Colorado mountains, May's cyberspace Galt's Gulch would exist on the internet, with cryptography providing protective cover." - Jim Epstein The argument between the "blockchain technology" and the "Bitcoin anarchists" happens to be a lot older t...
Oct 23, 2020•1 hr 5 min
Bitcoin and the cryptographic systems that empower it, are not merely another new tech to make use of. They are a fundamental shift in the ability to defend value from organized violence. The impact on the world will be impossible to measure. We go deep down the rabbit hole in this excellent chat with Erik Cason , author of the cryptosovereignty.org blog. Follow Erik on twitter, and check out his amazing pieces we've read on the podcast below: https://twitter.com/Erikcason The Political Theology...
Oct 21, 2020•1 hr 48 min
"When compared to gold, real estate, stocks, bonds or "fine art" that act as stores of value for many individuals, bitcoin that is held in a multisig wallet is an obvious step-function improvement in many regards." - Marty Bent Reading another short Bent from Marty on multisig and how its fundamentally a powerful tool for Bitcoin that isn't shared with any physical store of value. Guy gets into the concept of "deep" vs "shallow" protection in his take following the piece and how Bitcoin represen...
Oct 20, 2020•25 min
Breez wallet makes some major announcements today with their first release candidate of the wallet into the wild. Bringing the dream of a fully non-custodial, user-friendly, super easy to use Lightning wallet for anyone coming into Bitcoin. So many new features to go over in this one and talking about the future of lightning and how we can close the UX hurdle. This is not to be missed. Follow Roy Sheinfeld and Breez on Twitter so you dont miss future announcements! Check out the official announc...
Oct 19, 2020•57 min
A major step toward the next era of Bitcoin was made today. The code is final, and it is now in the Bitcoin codebase as of today. The next steps are an activation method, and a full client release for the network to begin the process of adding it to the global consensus. But before that happens, let's talk about where we are today, what advantages Taproot can give us again, & what the future of Bitcoin, privacy, & Lightning are with this new tool at our disposal. Today's Guy's Take is al...
Oct 15, 2020•38 min
"Value is a strange concept because while it is arguably very real, it is entirely subjective, and because of this there is no yardstick or kilogram to measure it against." - Knut Svanholm Another from the amazing collection over at Citadel21.com , we dive even deeper down the rabbit hole with Knut's piece. What does it even mean to measure value with Bitcoin as our totem? What happens to prices in a perfectly finite monetary good? What would a future where the growth and productivity of the eco...
Oct 14, 2020•51 min
As the dominoes continue to fall, we chat with the owner of the amazing Tahini's restaurant on their journey to a Bitcoin Standard. Why Bitcoin? What led them to such a decision? How do they see the future risks and rewards going forward? What events of the past allowed them to see the true potential of this revolutionary new monetary system? All this and more in today's phenomenal chat with the man behind @TheRealTahinis Follow them on twitter at the link below and if you are in the area, what ...
Oct 13, 2020•1 hr 8 min
“I believe that Satoshi Nakamoto, Whoever he/she/it/them is/was, was first and foremost a strategist of the cypherpunk traditions. This is extremely important because we need to understand the motivational ideology was not one of any sort of state capitalist nature, or idiotic wealth fantasies of lambos and other childish bullshit, but an explicit crypto-anarchist one .” - Erik Cason Cryptography was, before anything else, a weapon of war. How can this perspective inform the type of revolution B...
Oct 12, 2020•56 min
There's been a bit of Bad News. The canary doesn't seem to be moving, and its time that we take our situation seriously. As Bitcoin becomes both more mature and finds its way back into a bull market, we can also expect a sharp increase in regulatory and governmental attention. The powers that be, the surveillance state, and the control that the financial institutions have acquired will not be lost without a fight. Bitcoin is disrupting some of the most influential institutions on the planet. The...
Oct 07, 2020•48 min
"So the next time somebody says that “shitcoin X” is faster than Bitcoin or claims that Bitcoin is slow, show them the criteria that truly count in a decentralized network." - Vlad Costea Did you hear that any 1 of 1000s of altcoins was "way faster" than Bitcoin? Have you ever wondered what that means or what exactly they are faster at? Vlad breaks it all down. How shitcoins aren't fast, even close to as fast actually as Bitcoin. Bitcoin isn't slow, its highly secure! Check out the original post...
Oct 06, 2020•44 min
"Battles in the money market aren’t about incremental technology features, but fundamental monetary properties. Bitcoin is a pragmatic monetary evolution, which contrasts with shitcoin issuers misrepresenting a delusional technology revolution." - Thibaud Marechal Another great piece on the incentives and misunderstanding of the shitcoin mindset. It isn't a technological revolution, it is fundamentally a monetary one! Thibaud breaks it down amazingly in this piece and Guy gets into some history ...
Oct 06, 2020•58 min
What are rights and can Bitcoin enable us to make better sense of them? It is very common to hear that education is a "right," that healthcare, a fair salary, etc are all "rights" that we can demand of others and are entitled to. Can this be the case? How do they conflict with the more basic rights of the control over our own lives, our right to choose, and the rights to our bodies? Can we simply declare that the things we want or need are rights and this means we can have as much of it as we wo...
Oct 02, 2020•51 min
Were you ever just deathly curious about what Defi really is? What is going on behind the scenes of the token wrapped token printing yield machines? Or what the mindset of the shitcoiner really is, and what they think they are building? Don't miss the flagship episode of our new show SHITCOIN INSIDER! Don't forget to subscribe to Shitcoin Insider if you want more and let me know on Twitter is you enjoyed it and want us to dig further. Host Links Guy on Nostr (Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney...
Oct 01, 2020•1 hr 37 min
Are we on the verge of a new revolution in personal computing? Matt Hill and the team at Start9Labs believes we are, and are helping to build our path through it to a brighter future. How do we re-decentralize the internet? By what means can we break the censored, centralized, surveilled "cloud" into a thousand encrypted, distributed, and private pieces? That is the mission at the heart of Start9Labs. Don't miss this awesome discussion to learn more. If you want to explore what Matt and the team...
Sep 29, 2020•1 hr 38 min
"Contrary to what the critics would have you believe with all of their scary language about fraud and risk, when I send an on-chain Bitcoin transaction to you, it will get to you, no matter what. There is no point of censorship, seizure, or control." - Alex Gladstein A great throw back from Alex Gladstein where he makes a response to the old and tired criticisms of Bitcoin. Is it stupid to think we would want to hold our own passwords to our money, or it is a revolutionary new tool in the global...
Sep 29, 2020•49 min
"I am talking about the inability to confront shortcomings with layers of the system. The inability to confront substantial threats or attack surfaces that are not being worked on in terms of creating solutions and defenses." - Shinobi Being bullish is tons of fun, and getting cosmic about the impact & world shattering implications of Bitcoin is even more so... but sometimes we need to take a sober step back, and remember that this is just code at the end of the day. It is a network, with tr...
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 4 min
“Some concepts are essential, removing them because you want a better UX might turn out to be fatal.” - Gigi En excellent piece from SwanBitcoin blog today by the one and only Gigi. Thoughts on the trade-offs, the previous leaps that have been made, and the distance still to go on the problem of Bitcoin’s user experience. Plus, Guy talks about what it was like using Bitcoin in the “good ol’ days” before seed phrases and deterministic wallets. Check out the crazy images of the early internet and...
Sep 23, 2020•41 min
"DLCs are uniquely positioned to bring smart contracting to Bitcoin using oracle contracts that are much more private and scalable than previously thought possible." - Ben Carman Ben Carman, a developer with the awesome team at SuredBits, drops a BitcoinMagazine article today laying out Discreet Log Contracts and how they can be an exciting new addition to the functionality and power of the Bitcoin system. Privacy, cost savings, and non participating oracles to real world events; DLCs bring a ne...
Sep 22, 2020•37 min
Today we bring on Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy after they have announced a $425 million investment into Bitcoin. With a move to making Bitcoin their dominant treasury reserve asset, we talk all about fundamental shifts in technology, the innovation of Bitcoin as a monetary asset, the dematerialization of money, and the impact it will have on the future. Don't forget to follow Michael on social media and check out his excellent book "The Mobile Wave" for some interesting thoughts on past ...
Sep 18, 2020•1 hr 14 min
"Instead of relying on accountants, regulators, and the government, Bitcoin relies on a global network of peers to enforce rules, shifting enforcement from manual, local, and inconsistent to automated, global, and predictable." - Yassine Elmandjra Finishing out the great investment thesis on Bitcoin by Yassine from ARKinvest . Now the we have broken down the 4 critical economic assurances for prosperity and how the trust-based model has failed to deliver them... how does Bitcoin compare as a fin...
Sep 17, 2020•34 min
"If one transaction can be censored and controlled, can’t all transactions be censored and controlled? Can’t the powers-that-be deprive participants of the ability to exchange value globally and freely?" - Yassine Elmandjra Starting into the first half of a great investment thesis on Bitcoin by Yassine from ARKinvest . Digging into the core economic assurances of the financial system and how the legacy, trust based model of financial authority has failed in providing them. Where have they broken...
Sep 16, 2020•55 min
"Most Cypherpunk veterans on the Cryptography mailing list had by then seen one too many electronic cash experiments come and go, without any real successes to account for..." "But Hal Finney, ever the optimist, wasn’t ready to give up." - Aaron Van Wirdum Another in the amazing "Genesis Files" series from Bitcoin Magazine, Aaron walks us through the history and the legacy of Hal Finney. From the introduction to the cypherpunks list, to the implementation of RPOW, all the way to Hal "running Bit...
Sep 15, 2020•41 min
In a world drowning in patent trolls, insane intellectual property restrictions, and a reality where someone who neither can build a product, nor came up with the idea, could make millions by suing those who wish to use it... how can we protect an open source ethos in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space? How do we defend an alternative financial system from the intellectual prisons of the legacy system it is replacing? Another major initiative is bringing us one step closer to that future thank...
Sep 14, 2020•22 min
"This explanation rests on illustrating a few interesting properties of how Proof-of-Work is used in the blockchain that are not immediately obvious and sometimes are rather counter-intuitive, for example how participants collectively solve a problem without ever communicating ." - grisha While we incessantly focus on the side-effects of the proof-of-work system in Bitcoin, the security it attributes to the Bitcoin history, the incentive structure it enables, etc, we can often forget the reason ...
Sep 10, 2020•50 min
"The project was initially understood as yet another doomed attempt to construct a digital currency by the disillusioned cypherpunk community. And without anyone’s permission, Bitcoin slowly emerged and diligently grew to become adopted by a small group of computer researchers, cryptographers and engineers curious to decipher the technology." - Thibaud Marechal Another great article at Bitcoin Magazine on the history of the internet, and how Bitcoin finally fulfills the ultimate vision of a mone...
Sep 09, 2020•1 hr 2 min
Unabridged, Uninterrupted, & unmatched. Parker Lewis's most recent installment of the "Gradually, Then Suddenly" series. Read the original and check out the data accompanying the piece at the Unchained Capital Blog below: https://unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-one-for-all/ Check out the entire Gradually, Then Suddenly playlist on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4NRn7e8FbNtoCLSigf8GV4?si=RnrAdkrSTmmMrh6rECxrbg If you would like to sponsor or support this podcast and the...
Sep 08, 2020•1 hr 9 min
"I was just amazed when Bitcoin emerged, and I'm like 'I think someone finally cracked this and figured it out,' it's ingenious right?" - @NKinsella Stephan Kinsella joins us today for a fascinating discussion on the morality and concept of property in the digital age. Is it possible to own Bitcoin? Do we legally own it, or are we simply the ones in control via the rules of the Bitcoin system? Follow Stephan Kinsella for more excellent Austrian knowledge and brilliant takes on social media by hi...
Sep 07, 2020•1 hr 40 min
