From the Front Page - Epicenter Bitcoin
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149 - Lukas Abegg: Smart Contracts And The Law
September 20th, 2016 by
epicenterbitcoin Support the show, consider donating: 1P2CDWoYMhro1zowF1Wh2pyprexaZ1bgFH (http://bit.ly/2cS8d42) That blockchains represents a fundamental technological revolution has become widely accepted. What is still more nebulous, but could turn out just as disruptive is how smart contracts while transform the legal system and our understanding of what contracts are and how they work. Legal researcher Lukas Abegg who is currently finishing his PhD on copyright issues around 3d printing and has been researc... Read More -
148 - Kyle Torpey: Diving Into Bitcoin - The Debates, The Issues and What's To Come
September 12th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin We're joined by Kyle Torpey, a freelance writer, and journalist who writes for a number of publications in the blockchain space including Bitcoin Magazine, Coin Journal, and others. Know for his well-written articles and in-depth reporting on the important topics affecting Bitcoin today, Kyle provides his point of view on the scalability debate and gives an update on the recent and upcoming changes to the bitcoin protocol. Topics discussed in this episode: - An update on the scalability d... Read More -
147 - Sarah Meiklejohn: Anonymity, Central Bank Cryptocurrencies And The Academic View On Bitcoin
September 5th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin With academic research on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies still in its infancy, Sarah Meiklejohn's track record of publications in the area stands out. The UCL computer science professor has explored topics ranging from anonymity in Bitcoin to how a central bank could go about issuing a cryptocurrency. Topics covered included: - What techniques can be used to deanonymize Bitcoin users - How Bitcoin's usage evolved over time - Whether privacy-enhancing overlays in Bitcoin currently work ... Read More -
EB146 - Ryan X. Charles: Allowing Content Creators to Own and Monetize Content with Yours
August 29th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin In the last 20 years, content publishing platforms have proliferated to an almost insane number. There are countless places where people and companies can post articles, blogs, videos, photos, live content and so on. Despite this diverse offering, little innovation has happened in monetizing content, which still mostly remains ad-based. We're joined by Ryan X. Charles, Bitcoin Developer and Founder of Yours. Yours would like to address the monetization problem by allowing content produce... Read More -
EB144 - Charles Hoskinson & Alex Chepurnoy: IOHK, Scorex And The Case For Ethereum Classic
August 16th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin From BitShares to his central role during the inception of Ethereum Charles Hoskinson has continually influenced key projects in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. After departing the Ethereum project in 2014, he has recently stepped back into the limelight by pledging support and resources to turn the fledgling Ethereum fork ETC into a viable project. Charles joined us together with Alex Chepurnoy, a developer at his company IOHK. Besides Ethereum Classic, we talked about IOHK and... Read More -
EB143 - Joey Krug: Augur - A Decentralized, Crowdsourced Prediction Market Built On Ethereum
August 9th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Prediction markets are fascinating financial instruments which have proven to be accurate at making predictions on things like the outcome of elections, geopolitical events and sporting events. But in our heavily regulated financial world, they are the subject of much controversy. In 2013 for instance, a well-known US prediction market, Intrade, was forced to shut down following a civil suit filed by the CFTC. While some people consider prediction markets to be a useful tool for society, oth... Read More -
EB142 - Claire Warren & Scott Farrell: DnA Contracts - Bringing Human Discretion To Smart Contracts
August 1st, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Blockchain smart contracts are self-executing contracts composed of computer code. These programs, which are executed by the entirety of the network, enforce the rules described within the code. Effectively, in this realm, code is law. And as we've seen recently, altering the outcome of that code after it has been deloyed, should we later realize that it was flawed or did not produce an intended result, can be messy. In addition, there are instances where human intervention can be necessary ... Read More -
EB141 - Ralph Merkle: Revolutionizing Democracy Using DAOs
July 25th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Legendary scientist and cryptography pioneer Ralph Merkle joined us to discuss his recent paper on DAOs. Merkle examined how the voting mechanisms in today's democracies are flawed and how a decentralized, transparent DAO making decisions using prediction markets could create more efficient democratic systems. Topics covered included: - Merkle proofs, Merkle Roots and his early forays into cryptography - Blockchains as living organisms - Why DAOs will be subject to a Darwinian evolutio... Read More -
EB140 – Manfred Kareer: Bitsquare - The Decentralized Open-Soure Cryptocurrency-Fiat Exchange
July 18th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Exchanges are often criticized as a central point of failure of the cryptocurrency space. This isn't without justification as, in recent years, we have seen a number of exchanges get hacked, robbed, or embezzled by their founders, which is far from insignificant. One proposed alternative are decentralized exchanges that would allow people make peer-to-peer trades using sophisticated smart contracts. However, there remains the fundamental challenge of interfacing with the legacy banking syst... Read More -
EB139 – Martin Köppelmann: Gnosis - The Ethereum Prediction Market
July 11th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Few things arouse excitment among free market believers and enthusiasts of decentralization as prediction markets do. By allowing people to bet on any range of outcomes they promise more efficient markets and better information. Few people have worked with as much dedication on making the promise of prediction markets a reality as Martin Köppelmann. After founding the Bitcoin prediction market Fairlay, he turned to Ethereum and started the Ethereum-based prediction market Gnosis. We dis... Read More -
EB138 - Sergio Lerner: How RSK Will Bring Smart Contracts To Bitcoin
July 4th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Security researcher and RSK co-founder Sergio Lerner joined us to discuss RSK (also Rootstock), the project to launch a turing-complete smart contract sidechain to Bitcoin. We talked about how he got into the industry, spending countless days analyzing Bitcoin for vulnerabilities and finding a few along the way. And, of course, RSK, the ambitious project to strenghten the Bitcoin ecosystem through adding smart contract capabilities. Topics covered included: - How Sergio initially got inv... Read More -
EB137 – Siân Jones: Regulatory Update - The Brexit, The EU And The DAO
June 29th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin With recent news surrounding The DOA and the Brexit vote causing a stir in the blockchain world and beyond, it seems like a regulatory update is due. So we called up our favorite regulatory affairs specialist Siân Jones to enlighten us on some of the recent developments in Bitcoin and blockchain regulation. Topics covered in this episode include: - The Brexit and it's potential impacts on the Blockchain and Fintech space in the UK - The Bank of England opening its doors to more t... Read More -
EB136 - Arthur Breitman: Tezos - A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger
June 20th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin The lack of an explicit governance mechanism has created deep problems for Bitcoin. Ethereum, with the DAO-related soft/hard-fork discussions, may face similar challenges ahead. Yet, already in 2014 Arthur Breitman quietly started working on cryptocurrency network Tezos that has an explicit mechanism to let coinholders vote on protocol upgrades. Our discussion with Breitman centered around how explicit governance could lead to a more secure and evolutionary protocol. We also discussed Te... Read More -
EB135 - Stephen Palley: Lawmodynamics And How To Sue A DAO
June 14th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin For many the promise of decentralized applications and DAOs is to be beyond the limitations and rigidity of the existing legal system. There is no question that where DAOs can roam freely, innovation can accelerate. But can the law, courts and regulations be left behind so easily? Lawyer Stephen Palley joined us to discuss what happens when the new and old worlds collide and how courts will look at what goes on in the land of DAOs and DApps. Topics covered included: - Whether trust is... Read More -
EB134 - Emin Gün Sirer And Vlad Zamfir: On A Rocky DAO
June 6th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin Raising $150m+ through its toke sale, 'The DAO' has become the most notable decentralized application to date. The ambitious goal of the project is to form an decentralized organizations that efficiently makes investment decisions and generates a return for the token holders. Computer Science professor Emin Gün Sirer and researcher Vlad Zamfir joined us to discuss the various security issues with the daring project and why they've called for a temporary moratorium on funding proposals. ... Read More -
EB133 - Pascal and Julien Hamonic: Applying the Mechanisms of Thermoregulation to Cryptocurrencies
May 30th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin One of the problems often cited when talking about cryptocurrencies is their level of volatility compared to traditional fiat currencies. This makes most cryptocurrencies a poor instrument for storing value, and introduces complexities when making purchases in fiat amounts. Stable cryptocurrencies include mechanisms which allow them to stay pegged to fiat currencies like the US Dollar or Euro. They present a number of advantages, and, in addition to taking the headache out of making purchase... Read More -
EB132 - Stephan Tual: Building A Universal Sharing Network On Ethereum And A $150M DAO
May 23rd, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin In this episode we welcome back Stephan Tual, the COO of Slock.It, a German startup working at the intersection of the Internet of Things and the Ethereum blockchain. Slock.It’s small team also wrote the smart contracts that power ‘The DAO’, a decentralized capital management entity that recently raised north of $160 million for investing into Ethereum based projects. ‘The DAO’ has been featured in many mainstream news outlets, such as New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the Ec... Read More -
EB131 - Stefan Thomas & Evan Schwartz: Building The Internet Of Payments With Interledger
May 16th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin One of the foundational problems in payment networks is that they are mostly uninteroperable. This problem exists at all levels, from consumer payment solutions like PayPal, to national and multi-national banks. This complexity is brought on by the proprietary nature of payment networks, and moving value from one to another requires a negotiation between parties on which common payment network to use in a transaction. We saw similar problems in the early days of the Internet, assembled aroun... Read More -
EB130 - Erik Voorhees: Fooling The Fox - The Story Of The Shapeshift Hack
May 9th, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin In the short history of the Bitcoin industry, there has been an impressive amount of high profile hacks, ranging from a few hundred thousand to many millions of dollars. In all of these, customers, Bitcoin users, where robbed of their funds because poor security policies, negligence, incompetence, or plain old scamming. Recently, the cryptocurrency conversion service ShapeShift fell victim to a hack in which over $200,000 of company funds were stolen, initially by an employee, and then by a ... Read More -
EB129 - The Far Future In Front Of Us
May 2nd, 2016 by epicenterbitcoin As the blockchain field continues evolving rapidly, Sebastien, Meher and Brian take some time to discuss the current environment and the longer term implications of blockchains. We discussed how smart contracts could affect the pace of innovation and the competitiveness of industries. We also talked about the role DAOs will play and what we can take away from the current DAO crowdsale and its connection with Slock.it. Topics covered included: - How companies running on smart contracts co... Read More
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