From the Front Page - Epicenter Bitcoin
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EB97 – Paul Sztorc: Truthcoin & Prediction Markets, From Information-Overload To Crowd Intelligence
September 21st, 2015 by
epicenterbitcoin Prediction markets are considered one of the most promising applications of blockchain technology. Although the concept and some early implementations have existed for years, decentralized prediction markets present a number of advantages to their centralized counterparts. Paul Sztorc joins us to discuss Truthcoin, a “Peer-to-Peer Oracle Protocol which absorbs accurate data into a blockchain so that Bitcoin-users can speculate in Prediction Markets”. We dive deep to explore the advan... Read More -
EB96 – John Clippinger: Developing A Social Ecosystem Of Trusted, Self-Healing Digital Institutions
September 14th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin It is often said that technology is neutral. It’s certainly commonplace for Bitcoin to be thought of as such. In reality, technologies may be characterized as an embodiment of human intention, and therefore, cannot be considered as culturally or politically neutral. At least, this is the opinion of our guest, John Clippinger. A research scientist at MIT Media Lab and CEO of ID3, a nonprofit which aims to deploy a new generation of trusted digital institutions, John has spent the last seven... Read More -
EB95 – Adam Back: Why Bitcoin Needs A Measured Approach To Scaling
September 7th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin As the debate about forks, the blocksize and decision making in Bitcoin continues, we are joined by Adam Back. Adam is best known for his invention hash-cash which became one of the fundamental building blocks of Bitcoin. He is also the inventor of the sidechains concept and founder and president of Blockstream, the single biggest employer of Bitcoin core developers. With Adam we talked about the different blocksize proposals and how a decentralized cryptocurrency should be governed in ge... Read More -
EB94 – Gavin Andresen: On The Blocksize And Bitcoin's Governance
August 31st, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin As the debate about the blocksize continues to roar through the Bitcoin community, Gavin Andresen joins us to take a step back and ask the big questions: How should these decisions be made in the first place? What does the governance of Bitcoin look like now and what do we want it to look like in the future? In a challenging time for Bitcoin, it's a critical discussion to have with the Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation and successor of Satoshi. We cover everything from the current... Read More -
EB93 – Simon Dixon: How Bank To The Future Is Rethinking Finance
August 24th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Ever since the financial system collapsed in 2007, the call for alternatives has grown louder. Bitcoin itself can be seen as such an alternative. Simon Dixon's search for a way to put capitalism on a sounder financial footing began before Bitcoin with a focus on equity crowdfunding. Since then he has built Bank to the Future into an innovative crowdfunding business that takes an aggressive contrarian stance. He has also launched an investment fund focused on cryptocurrencies together with Max Ke... Read More -
EB92 – Stefan Thomas: Understanding Ripple
August 17th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin In a long-overdue episode, we finally had the chance to dive into one of the most known but poorly understood cryptocurrency/blockchain project: Ripple. Reviled by many in the Bitcoin space, we put aside any prejudices and sat down for a fascinating conversation with Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas. We talked about his early days in the Bitcoin space, how Ripple came about, what the Ripple network looks like today and how its consensus protocol works. Topics covered included: - Stefan T... Read More -
EB91 – Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum Frontier Launch, Scalability And The Road Ahead
August 10th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Close to two years after the initial whitepaper, the revolutionary Ethereum network has finally launched. The decentralized smart contract platform is, without a doubt, the most exciting cryptocurrency project since Bitcoin. The versatile platform with its turing-complete scripting language aspires to power the distributed applications of the future. Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us for the second time to discuss the Frontier Launch, future plans for scalability, governance and ... Read More -
EB90 – Dave Hudson: Insights From The Data Mine And Other Adventures Around The Block
August 3rd, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Bitcoin mining and the intricate game theory that surround it is a topic that we've visited many times. Difficult to grasp in its complexity, it is these dynamics that determine the security of Bitcoin in the short and in the longer term. This time we were joined by none other than Dave Hudson. He is the author of the leading mining blog hashingit.com, VP of Software at PeerNova and had a long career in chip manufacturing including at Qualcomm. We talked about dynamics in the mining marke... Read More -
EB89 – Greg Slepak: The Turtle Crawl Towards Internet Decentralization
July 27th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Amidst all the discussion of alternative uses of blockchains, it is often forgotten that the very first fork of Bitcoin, Namecoin, pursued a daring vision for a decentralized, censorship-resistant internet. Greg Slepak, co-founder of the okTurtles Foundation joined us for an interesting discussion of DNS, Namecoin and how blockchains can be used to decentralize the internet. Topics covered included: - What DNS is and the role it plays in the architecture of the internet - What man-in-th... Read More -
EB88 – Sian Jones: Bitlicense And The Regulatory Straitjacket
July 20th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin In this episode, we revisited the perennial topic of digital currency regulation with Siân Jones, our regulatory correspondent and founder of the regulation-focused virtual currency consultancy COINSULT. With the final version of the BitLicense, what may turn out to be the most influential document for digital currency regulation, is now out. Besides diving into many different aspects of the onerous BitLicense, we talked about California's coming rules, how Bitcoin startups will be affected... Read More -
EB87 – John McDonnell: How Bitcoin Will Win Online Payments
July 13th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Solving the pain points of online payments was the applications that garnered the most attention in Bitcoin's early days. In recent times, as consumer adoption of Bitcoin payments has been underwhelming much of that attention has shifted elsewhere. Nevertheless, companies keep working hard on making the vision of a universal, global payment system a reality. Among those companies, one stands out as the top contender to compete with existing payment systems: Bitnet. Funded with a heavy wa... Read More -
EB86 – William Mougayar: The Business Of Decentralization
July 6th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Peter Thiel argued in his book 'Zero to One' that the way to build a great and highly profitable company is to build a monopoly. But with decentralized technologies, there is a real question whether these monopolies can be built or whether the monopolies will end up being publicly owned goods (like Bitcoin) that can't be monetized directly. William Mougayar, who is an experienced tech executive and angel investor, has been writing extensively about these issues and was one of the investo... Read More -
EB85 – Adam Draper: Accelerating 100 Bitcoin Startups With Boost VC
June 29th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Revolutionary progress doesn't happen without lots of work and in the case of Bitcoin that requires many different startups building technology. Few have contributed to this as much as Silicon Valley based startup accelerator Boost VC, which has been focusing on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency startups since 2013. Focusing exclusively on Bitcoin for an extended time, they've invested in companies such as Blockcypher, Coinprism, Coinjar, Mirror, Snapcard, Zapchain and many others. Boost VC Foun... Read More -
EB84 – Tim Swanson: Permissioned Ledgers And The Case For Blockchains Without Bitcoin
June 22nd, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin One topic that is guaranteed to cause heated discussion among cryptocurrency enthusiasts is the idea that blockchains can be controlled by known validators and function without an underlying cryptocurrency. Some think this is a non-sensical idea fabricated by those spineless enough to want to appease regulators and but clueless enough to miss the whole point of cryptocurrencies. But others believe that Bitcoin is unsuited for a lof of 'Bitcoin 2.0' applications and that permissioned ledgers ... Read More -
EB83 – David Andolfatto: Fedcoin And The Implications Of Cryptocurrencies Issued By Central Banks
June 15th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Many people think of Bitcoin as the ultimate contender against the power of central banks, most importantly the Federal Reserve System. But that is certainly not the only way that cryptocurrencies and the blockchain can be used and one particularly interesting idea is that central banks could issue their own cryptocurrencies. To discuss how this could be done and what the consequences could be we were joined by David Andolfatto, a Vice President of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of ... Read More -
EB82 – Mike Hearn - Blocksize Debate at the Breaking Point
June 8th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Whether the block size should be increased to 20MB has created more controversy than any other question in Bitcoin's recent history. For some, it is an urgent and necessary step in Bitcoin's evolution. Their view is that leaving the block size at 1MB would be irresponsible inaction with potentially catastrophic consequences. Others see increasing the block size as unnecessary and a dangerous first step down a slippery slope towards a more centralized Bitcoin. We were joined by Mike Hearn,... Read More -
EB81 – Nathaniel Popper: Digital Gold - The Inside Story Of Bitcoin
June 1st, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin From the mysterious creation story, to the early development among a small group of cypherpunks, to the emergence of the Silk Road, the collapse of MtGox, to the entry of a tidal wave of VC money and the Silicon Valley elite, Bitcoin's short history has been action-packed. It's no surprise that this could make for a riveting story and NY Times journalist Nathaniel Popper's book 'Digital Gold - Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money' is precisely... Read More -
EB80 – Joseph Poon & Tadge Dryja: Scalability And The Lightning Network
May 25th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Since Gavin Andresen's proposal to increase the Bitcoin block size, how Bitcoin can scale to accommodate higher transaction volumes has been heatedly debated among developers. One of the most promising long-term options to allow near infinite scalability is the Lightning Network. Joseph Poon and Tadge Dryja, the co-authors of the whitepaper, joined us for a discussion of scalability and how the lightning network could allow massive numbers of off-chain transaction in a trustless way. Topi... Read More -
EB79 – Rodolfo Novak: Coinkite And The Feature Factory
May 18th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin Started in May 2013, Coinkite has by now almost advanced to senior citizen status in the short-lived Bitcoin startup space. CEO Rodolfo Novak joined us for a discussion about what drove their initial interest in Bitcoin, why they initially focused on providing 'bank-like' services and how they've transitioned to powering the infrastructure of countless Bitcoin startups with their API. We also discussed multi-sig and the business strategy they pursued that allowed them to be profitable and no... Read More -
EB78 – Trent McConaghy: Ascribe And The Internet Of Ownership
May 11th, 2015 by epicenterbitcoin The idea of using the Bitcoin blockchain to represent and track the ownership of off-chain assets is almost as old as Bitcoin itself. One of the startups that is pursuing this vision is Berlin-based Ascribe, which allows creators to register ('ascribe'), transfer and archive digital art. Ascribe CTO Trent McConaghy joined us for a fascinating discussion of their ambitious goals to enable a so-far elusive secondary market for digital art, help creators monetize their work and ultimately r... Read More
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