From the Front Page - Epicenter Bitcoin
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EB80 – Joseph Poon & Tadge Dryja: Scalability And The Lightning Network
May 25th, 2015 by
Epicenter 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...
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EB79 – Rodolfo Novak: Coinkite And The Feature Factory
May 18th, 2015 by Epicenter 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...
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EB78 – Trent McConaghy: Ascribe And The Internet Of Ownership
May 11th, 2015 by Epicenter 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...
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EB77 – Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Mastering Bitcoin
May 4th, 2015 by Epicenter Few question that educating people about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is one of the most important and challenging tasks to achieve mass adoption. And perhaps even fewer disagree that there is no one more gifted at communicating the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin than Andreas M. Antonopoulos. A technologist, entrepreneur, LTB host and author, he has been speaking, writing and educating about Bitcoin for years and become one of the most popular people in the Bitcoin space.
He joined u...
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EB76 – Emin Gün Sirer & Ittay Eyal: From Selfish Miners To The Miner's Dilemma
April 27th, 2015 by Epicenter Bitcoin's approach to solving the double spending problem is to make a collusion and attack on the network prohibitively expensive. One of the main factors that will determine Bitcoin's chance of survival in the long-term is whether the behavior that maximizes the profits of miners contributes to or sabotages the health of the network.
The game theory that determines this is complex and our understanding of it still incomplete. But research is increasing and two people who have been at the fo...
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EB75 – Paul Brody: Internet Of Things And The Democracy Of Devices
April 20th, 2015 by Epicenter As the cost of computing continues to plummet, the number of connected devices is increasing dramatically. In the future powerful computing capacity will be in billions of devices ranging from the lightbulb to the car door to new wearables. This new internet of things (IoT) will dramatically change our lives.
Paul Brody, a Technology Strategist and the former VP of Mobile and IoT at IBM, joined us for a discussion of where the IoT is going. We discussed their white paper on why a decentr...
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EB74 – Robby Dermody: Counterparty - Assets, Dividends And Decentralized Exchange
April 13th, 2015 by Epicenter In the crowded race to become the leading ‘Bitcoin 2.0’ platform, Counterparty has stood out by avoiding fancy crowdsales and instead building a platform that works. The protocol, which sits on top of Bitcoin and thus benefits from the security of its mining power, allows issuing assets, paying dividends or trading in a decentralized way. Over the past year, it has been the platform of choice for many crowdsales and is also what powers LTBCoin.
Co-Founder Robby Dermody joined us for a...
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EB73 – Dan O’Prey & Daniel Feichtinger: Hyperledger Decentralised Ledger Platform
April 6th, 2015 by Epicenter The cryptocurrency ecosystem is increasingly divided into different camps. There are those betting and working on the eventual mainstream success of Bitcoin. And there are those who take elements of Bitcoin’s technology and repurpose them to improve existing systems.
Hyperledger is one of the projects firmly in the latter camp. They are envisioning a world where innumerable interoperable ledgers are operated by different parties. Hyperledger is their tool for the creation and managemen...
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EB72 – Siân Jones - Cryptocurrency Regulation Update: Uk, Isle Of Man, California, Bitlicense
March 30th, 2015 by Epicenter When one is busy driving a technological and societal revolution forward, complying with complicated regulatory requirements is rarely a top priority. Yet, the reality is that at this stage the often ambigious and rapidly evolving regulatory landscape can have an outsized impact on the fate of cryptocurrency startups and on the adoption/integration into existing systems.
Epicenter Bitcoin Regulatory Correspondent and founder of COINsult Siân Jones joined us for an update on the state of ...
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EB71 – Lisa Cheng - Token Sales And Crowdfunding In The Cryptocurrency Space
March 23rd, 2015 by Epicenter Creating a new token and selling it to fund the development of software has become a preferred way of fundraising for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. It’s a tempting tool, allowing startups to avoid traditional investors, build a community and allow anyone anywhere to own a stake in the project. For participants, there is the promise of big financial upside and being part of novel undertakings.
Lisa Cheng, whose consulting firm Vanbex has accompanied many crowdsales, joined us for a discu...
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EB70 – Chainalysis, Surveillance And The Path To Mass Panic
March 16th, 2015 by Epicenter When spinning up a few hundred data-gathering Bitcoin nodes prevented some breadwallet users from transmitting bitcoin transaction, a minor panic quickly erupted about the Bitcoin compliance startup Chainalysis and their supposed sybil attack on the Bitcoin network.
Chainalysis CEO Michael Gronager joined us for a discussion of what happened and what role transaction monitoring will play in the future. We dove deep into the tension between the desires for user privacy and the requirements...
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EB69 – Thomas Voegtlin - Electrum, Spv Wallets And Bitcoin Aliases
March 9th, 2015 by Epicenter Powering an estimated 5-10% of all Bitcoin transactions, Electrum is one of the leaders of the Bitcoin wallet space. The open-source walled was started in 2011 and played a key role in the development of the light-weight SPV wallets. Developer Thomas Voegtlin joined us for a discussion of Electrum, their recent 2.0 release and the rapidly evolving Bitcoin wallet space in general.
Topics covered included:
- The evolution of Bitcoin wallets and what motivated him to start Electrum
- Electr...
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Epicenter Bitcoin #68 – Kamikaze Attack, Block Halving And The Perils Of Proof-Of-Work
March 2nd, 2015 by Epicenter Is Bitcoin secure from attacks that could destroy the currency? To a large part, this is determined by how expensive it is to carry out an attack and by the potential profits the attacker could generate. Ideally, an attack is so expensive to carry out that no profit-driven attacker would engage in it.
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