Today’s episode is all about Factom, an open source project which aims to solve three core problems which apply to all Bitcoin 2.0 applications: Speed, Cost, and Bloat. Rather than writing every transaction to the blockchain, Factom allows decentralized applications to write blocks of transactions to Factom blocks, which themselves get hashed and stored to the bitcoin blockchain. At its core, Factom provides Proof of Existance, which allows for any digital artifact to be reduced to a hash that p...
Nov 10, 2014•1 hr•Ep. 52
David A. Johnston is a very active member of the Bitcoin community. Aside from speaking at about every Bitcoin conference there is, David is the Managing Director of the DApps Fund, a board member MSC Protocol Foundation, as well as Co-founder and Executive Director of the BitAngels Network. On this episode we go deep in to decentralized applications, and who better to talk to about DApps than the creator of “Johnston’s Law” which states “Everything that can be decentralized, will be decentraliz...
Nov 03, 2014•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 51
Nicolas Courtois is a cryptographer and senior lecturer at University College London. He has been studying cryptocurrencies for some time and has written a number of papers on bitcoin. His talk is titled “Cryptographic Security of ECDSA in bitcoin” in which he exposes the security vulnerabilities in the specific variation of the Elliptic Curve digital Signature Algorithm used in bitcoin. Episode links: Slides for this presentation Nicolas Courtois’s Wikipedia Page Personal blog On The Longest Ch...
Oct 30, 2014•46 min•Ep. 50
Meni Rosenfeld is Founder of Bitcoil and Chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association. Having organized several meetups and conferences in Israel, he is a very active member of the Israeli Bitcoin community. Meni has been studying mining pool reward methods for several years and in 2011, wrote a paper titled “Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems”. This research gave him a broad understanding the reward system landscape and the issues with many of the methods used by pools. He later wr...
Oct 27, 2014•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 49
BTC2B Brussels conference on October 16 & 17, 2014 This episode features two parts of a session on Bitcoin marketing. First, Richard Caetano, founder of Handshake and btcReport, talks about the importance of sharing stories to create user engagement. Then, you’ll hear a panel discussion moderated by Richard with Jeremy Garder, Executive Directory of the College Cryptocurrency Network, and Sebastien Couture, as panelists. They talk about how the Bitcoin industry can grow adoption though integ...
Oct 23, 2014•48 min•Ep. 48
The College Cryptocurrency Network is a non-profit organization which aims to provide students, academics, and faculty with the guidance and resources required to start independent Bitcoin clubs on college campuses and in schools. Since being founded in early 2014, the CCN has grown to well over 100 chapters, on every continent, from middle schools to PhD programs. Director of Student Outreach, Jacob Sears, and Creative Director, Dean Masley, join us to talk about the CCN’s work and their person...
Oct 20, 2014•59 min•Ep. 47
Shawn Wilkinson, founder and lead developer of Storj, joins us for our first deep dive into a decentralized application. Storj’s particular domain is the decentralization of cloud storage. Their applications allow users to store their files in a decentralized peer-to-peer network that promises to be more secure and effective. At the same time, it creates a market where people can earn money by renting out spare hard disk space. Topics covered in this episode: Why cloud storage lends itself to de...
Oct 15, 2014•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 46
Every quarter CoinDesk puts out its excellent State of Bitcoin Report providing a snapshot of where the Bitcoin ecosystem is at. We took this opportunity to go back to our original formation and have a discuss of the report and the state of Bitcoin in general. It was lots of fun! Topics covered in this episode: Bitcoin Adoption Metrics Our January Predictions The continually slumping Bitcoin price Merchant adoption Startup activity and VC investments Episode links: CoinDesk State of Bitcoin Q3 2...
Oct 15, 2014•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 45
Mehdi Medjaoui (Co-founder and COO) & Elie Chevignard (CMO) are the two guys behind Oauth.io, a service which aims to provide a simple and standardized way for developers to implement Oath. Working in digital identity management, they have an interesting proposal on how to build personal identity management into the blockchain. This proposition would effectively take the power away from centralized single sign on services like Facebook and Google and make them decentralized. Episode links: O...
Oct 15, 2014•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 44
The Isle of Man has been an area of interest for many Bitcoin companies as of late. The local government of this small British Crown Dependency, located in the middle of the Irish Sea, wants to attract Bitcoin businesses by adopting light regulation as well as providing accessible banking relationships and infrastructure for companies dealing in crypto. This business-friendly approach has made the island an ideal place for tech, aerospace and e-gaming companies to establish, which has been a gre...
Oct 02, 2014•52 min•Ep. 43
Tom Ding is the CEO and Founder of Koinify, a platform for funding decentralized applications. Think of Koinify as a sort of Angel List to bootstrap and fund a new decentralized economy, specifically decentralized applications. With his company, Tom hopes to help build the decentralized app which help push this technology to the mainstream. With his extensive knowledge of this space, we talked about the future of DACs and DAPPs and discussed some of the challenges these new models are facing, fr...
Sep 29, 2014•56 min•Ep. 42
Siân Jones was recently in London for the Inside Bitcoins conference . She interviewed two people with extensive knowledge of regulation and how it should apply to Bitcoin. Marco Santori is Chairman of the regulatory affairs committee of the Bitcoin Foundation and recently appointed Global policy council of for Blockchain. As the New York Department of Financial Services BitLicense proposal nears the end of it’s second 45-day challenge period, Mr. Santori gives his predictions on what the legisl...
Sep 25, 2014•36 min•Ep. 41
La maison du Bitcoin is a dedicated Bitcoin center located in the heart of ”Silicon Sentier”, which is situated in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. Founded by entrepreneurs Eric Larchevêque and Thomas France, La maison du Bitcoin is an open space where people are encouraged to walk in and get information about Bitcoin. It also offers a variety of services such as a co-working space for bitcoiners and the ability to purchase Bitcoin over the counter. It’s also the home to meetups, conferences and...
Sep 22, 2014•48 min•Ep. 40
Dr. Bastian Brand is an investment manager at Pathfinder Capital. Pathfinder Capital is a London-based Venture Capital firm that focuses on frontier markets and cryptocurrencies. He is also the founder of the Bitcoin Startups Munich group and was previously a consultant at McKinsey. The episode focused on his comprehensive paper surveying the investment landscape in the cryptocurrency space. We discussed the advantages of buying bitcoins versus investing in cryptocurrency startups, the prospect ...
Sep 15, 2014•1 hr•Ep. 39
Flavien Charlon is the founder of coloured coin wallet Coinprism. Colored coins allow people and organizations to securely issue and trade real-world assets like commodities, stocks and bonds on the bitcoin network. Coinprism recently won the global Startup Challenge hosted by the Bitcoin Foundation in May 2014. Other notable projects include Predictious, a Bitcoin-based prediction market. He has 8 years of experience in software engineering at Microsoft, building large scale distributed systems...
Sep 08, 2014•57 min•Ep. 38
Thomas Spaas, director of the Belgian Bitcoin Association and an international tax lawyer in Antwerp, and our regulatory affairs correspondent Siân Jones, join us to discuss a Swedish court case on VAT, the European Value Added Tax. The case has made it all the way to the Court of Justice of the European Union and may set the precedent for how the sale of Bitcoin will be taxed. For 10% off Inside Bitcoins London on September 15 and 16, use the discount code EPICIBC14 Register for Inside Bitcoins...
Sep 01, 2014•1 hr•Ep. 37
Today’s panel discussion is called “The ever changing landscape of Bitcoin mining” where moderator Jez San is joined by some of the most prominent figures in the mining industry, Marc Aafjes of Bitfury, Dave Carlson of Megabigpower, Timo Hanke of Cointerra and Naveed Sherwani of Peernova. The discussion revolves around several key topics, notably, everyone seems to agree the industry should move away from the term mining and start calling it transaction processing. They also discuss the rapid ev...
Aug 28, 2014•38 min•Ep. 36
George Samman is co-founder and COO of the Bitcoin derivatives exchange, BTC.sx. George helps us get a broad understanding of derivatives as a financial product, and we explore their uses in the context of Bitcoin. He also brings his perspective with regards to bridging the gap between Wall Street and the Bitcoin ecosystem. As a Chartered Market Technician, he has a very technical view on market movements and gives us his thoughts on the recent BTC price fluctuations. Episode links: BTC.sx SeedC...
Aug 25, 2014•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 35
This episode features a panel discussion called “Decentralized Applications and Appcoins.” Flavien Charlon, founder of Coinprism, Ron Gross of the Mastercoin Foundation and Gavin Wood of Ethereum discuss the fascinating things which are happening in the so-called Bitcoin 2.0 space. The panel starts with a short status update on each of the panellist’s respective projects. They also dig into some of the legal implications, lay out the security challenges and give their thoughts on how they feel t...
Aug 21, 2014•44 min•Ep. 34
Edmund Edgar is the founder of Reality Keys. His startup won the Startup Challenge award at the Bitcoin 2014 Conference in Amsterdam. They are providing cryptographic data feeds on real-life events. This can then be used to base derivatives, contracts or insurances on. There is no question that services like Reality Keys will play a key role in crypto currency’s future. Previously he was Director of Information Technology at Princeton Review Japan and he is also a graduate of Oxford University. ...
Aug 18, 2014•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 33
CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014 In this episode we talk to Olivier Janssens, a Bitcoin early adopter and investor, and his associate Andrew Turner. We discussed Olivier’s recent $100,000 bounty replace the Bitcoin Foundation. He told us why he chose Mike Hearn’s Lighthouse project as the winner of 40% of that bounty and the effect that Lighthouse could have on Bitcoin core development funding. We also interviewed Michael Jackson. He’s the former COO of Skype and curren...
Aug 14, 2014•38 min
Coinapult’s CEO Ira Miller and marketing specialist Freya Stevens join us for a discussion about their company and plans for the future. We particularly dove into their new Locks feature, which allows people to ‘lock’ the value of their bitcoins to other assets such as US Dollar, Euro or gold from directly within the Coinapult wallet. The goal is to remove one often-named barrier to mainstream adoption: volatility. We also talked about the amazing ‘Let the Bit Drop’ project, which involves sendi...
Aug 11, 2014•59 min•Ep. 32
CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014 This episode features a panel discussion called “The challenges of operating a Bitcoin business in Europe”. Peter Smith, COO of Blockchain.info, Mark Lamb, CEO of Coinfloor and Frank Schuil CEO, of Safello provide their insights on some of the challenges of running a Bitcoin business on the old continent. These challenges include regulatory compliance, establishing banking relationships and establishing trust with consumers. The panel is...
Aug 07, 2014•53 min
Gavin Wood joins us for an episode that is all about Ethereum. The uniquely ambitious Ethereum project with its turing-complete programming language is building a platform on which the next generation of decentralized applications can be run. While the project is still in development, the goal is to provide the infrastructure for the completely decentralized web of the future. The first part of the episode features an interview of Ethereum CTO and lead developer of the C++ client Gavin Wood. In ...
Aug 04, 2014•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 31
CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014 Our second CoinSummit Episode is out! In it we have two fantastic interviews. In the first one we discussed transaction fees, the economics of Bitcoin and the coming relaunch of Coinometrics with Jonathan Levin. Jonathan is a co-founder of Coinometrics and just finished his Master’s thesis on Bitcoin at Oxford University. In the second interview we talked with Peter Todd, one of the thought leaders in the Bitcoin space. We covered the ec...
Aug 01, 2014•48 min
Radko Albrecht joins us to discuss his startup, the Bitcoin-based peer-to-peer lending platform, BitBond . We dove deeply into why Bitcoin-based peer-to-peer lending is such a compelling proposal. We also talked about a lot of the intricacies such as volatility, reputation and loans pegged to fiat currencies. The final part we discussed raising venture capital for European Bitcoin startups and how Bitcoin will change the financial industry. This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain. Show note...
Jul 28, 2014•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 30
CoinSummit London Conference Series – July 10 and 11, 2014 We start our coverage of CoinSummit with Garrick Hileman, CoinDesk contributor & Economic Historian at LSE, who delivers the opening “State of Bitcoin” keynote, a data-driven assessment of how the Bitcoin Ecosystem is developing. The second part of the episode features a panel discussion called Will Bitcoin Last the Distance where Jeff Garzik, Bitcoin core developer, Prof. Emin Gün Sirer, Cornell University, Peter Todd, Bitcoin a cor...
Jul 24, 2014•59 min
Steven Morell and Gabriel Mirón join us to discuss the recent New York Department of Financial Services BitLicense proposal. Our regulatory affairs correspondent Siân Jones also joins us briefly to give a general overview of this proposed legislation. We also take the opportunity to talk about Bitcoin’s development in Latin America, notably as a means to disrupt the remittance market, a multi-billion dollar industry. Our guests also talk about their respective companies. Steven is Chief Product ...
Jul 21, 2014•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 29
This episode is part of our coverage of the Bitcoin 2014 Conference which took place in Amsterdam from May 15 to 17, 2014. These interviews were conducted by Siân Jones and focus on the area of regulation. Topics covered in this episode: Patrick Murck, General council of the Bitcoin Foundation Preston Byrne, Securitisation lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright in London This episode is hosted by Siân Jones. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/bitcoin2014-08...
Jul 17, 2014•50 min
The recent publication of a European Banking Authority opinion on “virtual currencies” has caused great concern among actors of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Siân Jones joins us to dissect this 46-page document and the 70+ risks it identifies. Siân also helps us better understand the EBA, its role and the extent of its influence in the European Union. We also briefly recap the Coinsummit conference which took place in London and which we attended. Episode links: European Banking Authority EBA opinion o...
Jul 14, 2014•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 28
