From the Front Page - What Bitcoin Did
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What Bitcoin Did #75 Jed McCaleb on the Creation of Mt. Gox
February 18th, 2019 by
DSholla **“A big part of the reason I handed it off to Mark is that the amount of effort that you need to put into security is something I didn’t want to do.” — Jed McCaleb** **Interview location:** San Francisco **Interview date:** Wednesday 30th Jan, 2019 **Company:** Stellar **Role:** Cofounder In February 2014 Mt. Gox suspended trading and filed for bankruptcy after approximately 850,000 Bitcoins were stolen, at the time, valued at more than $450m. At the time of its demis... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #74 How Bitcoin Works With Matt Corallo
February 15th, 2019 by DSholla **“Bitcoin is the culmination of 30 years of attempts at building digital money for the internet.” — Matt Corallo** **Interview location:** London **Interview date:** Thursday 7th Feb, 2019 **Company:** Chaincode Labs **Role:** CEO What is Bitcoin? Is it digital gold? Is it money? Whoever I put this question to, the answer always changes but one thing that is consistent is that it always retains to technology and value. Perhaps Bitcoin is therefore many things which... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #73 How ABRA Is Building a Global Bank with Bill Barhydt
February 12th, 2019 by DSholla **“Abra uses Bitcoin tech to basically build the foundations for what really will be a global bank.” — Bill Barhydt** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Friday 8th Feb, 2019 **Company:** ABRA **Role:** CEO The dot-com bubble burst when companies were unable to deliver on the expected promise of a boom in e-commerce. Companies raised too much money and were unable to drive the sales volume which supported their ambitious infrastructure and share price. ... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #72 Truth, Lies and Blockchains with JW Weatherman
February 8th, 2019 by DSholla **“I think we underestimate how many people are getting paid to be scammers in this space.” — JW Weatherman** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Sunday 3rd Feb, 2019 What is a scam in crypto? Is it the explicit decision to defraud investors by raising funds for a project you have no intention to build? Does it include projects where the founders make claims to be developing technology which they are not sure they can create? Should it include altcoins which are ... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #71 - Update on the Political Crisis in Venezuela
February 6th, 2019 by DSholla **“Just the idea of getting paid in something you need to immediately need to get rid off is a huge problem.” — Mauricio Bartolomeo** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Wednesday 6th Feb, 2019 Following the January 3rd protests in Venezuela and Juan Guaido declaring himself as the interim president, I invited three Venezuelan nationals to discuss the current political crisis: Alejandro Machado - [Caracas Chronicles](https://www.caracaschronicles.com/author/alejandro-... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #70 Privacy and Zcash with Zooko Wilcox
February 5th, 2019 by DSholla **“If you have sufficiently weak privacy, then that causes centralisation.” — Zooko Wilcox** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Tuesday 22nd Jan, 2019 **Company:** Zcash **Role:** Founder and CEO One of the significant failings of Digicash, the David Chaum pre-Bitcoin digital currency was centralisation. Decentralisation has become one of the core components of what has made Bitcoin work and a success; shutting it down is only possible under extreme circu... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #69 The History of Cryptography With Whitfield Diffie
February 1st, 2019 by DSholla **“It is rare for first implementations of such broad concepts to do as well as that did, Bitcoin is still here 10 years after it started out.”** **— Whitfield Diffie** Interview location: Palo Alto Interview date: Thursday 31st Jan, 2018 Company: Cryptomathic Role: Cryptographer and Security Expert A number of pioneers developed the cryptographic and technical foundations for which Bitcoin is built upon. Nick Szabo highlighted a number of these people in his [Tweet](... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #68 The Essence of Bitcoin With Peter Todd
January 29th, 2019 by DSholla **“Anyone who understands economics and finance and how markets work will be a maximalist because it is more efficient to have one currency than a bunch of ones.”** **— Peter Todd** **Interview location:** Las Vegas **Interview date:** Saturday 26th Jan, 2018 **Company:** Freelance **Role:** Applied Cryptography Consultant There were many attempts at creating a digital currency before Bitcoin, all failing for different reasons. Bitcoin brought together a number of ide... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #67 Bitcoin Is Free Speech Money With Gab's Andrew Torba
January 25th, 2019 by DSholla **“The first amendment is not there to protect popular speech, it is there to protect unpopular speech.”** **— Andrew Torba** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Thursday 17th Jan, 2018 Company: Gab.com Role: CEO The Silk Road remains one of the most important Bitcoin projects. The website provided a clear use case for Bitcoin, allowing for the buying and selling of goods outside of government regulations. Outside of price speculation and trading, there are c... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #66 The Builders Case for Ethereum with Scott Lewis and Bryant Eisenbach
January 22nd, 2019 by DSholla **“Ethereum is 10 - 100 times more complicated than what Bitcoin is. There are certain situations where more complexity is justified.”** **— Bryant Eisenbach** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Wednesday 15th Jan, 2018 Company: Scott - Settle, Bryant - GunClear When Tuur Demeester released his Tweetstorm breaking down the issues he has with Ethereum; the community was quick to respond. While many appreciated the effort Tuur had made to raise critical issues, some... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #65 Why Altcoins Are a Bad Investment With Tone Vays
January 18th, 2019 by DSholla **“If you are intending to be around for the next 5 or 10 years, you need to really think about what you are going to say.”** **— Tone Vays** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Friday 11th Jan, 2018 Role: Bitcoin/Blockchain Researcher, Consultant Content Creator & Derivatives Trader Trading is hard, and crypto trading is even harder. There are significant disagreements around the value of all cryptocurrencies, especially altcoins. While maximalists believe that Bi... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #64 Defending Bitcoin With John Carvalho
January 15th, 2019 by DSholla **“Shitcoins are called shitcoins because they are shit compared to Bitcoin.”** **— John Carvalho** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Wednesday 2nd Jan, 2018 Company: Bitrefil The Bitcoin protocol is now over 10 years old and in that time Bitcoin has been attacked on numerous fronts: - Government crackdowns - Mt Gox collapse and breakdown of investor confidence - The closing of the Silk Road - Blockchain, not Bitcoin narrative - S2X attempted ... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #63 Crypto Journalism With The Block's Mike Dudas
January 11th, 2019 by DSholla **“These types of markets attract the worst types of people.”** **— Mike Dudas** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Tuesday 18th Dec, 2018 Company: The Block Role: Founder & CEO Crypto journalism has a questionable past, from mainstream media misreporting on Bitcoin with sensationalist headlines to crypto specific publications exposed as accepting payment for positive stories. With so many people losing money to scams and poor projects, it is often difficult... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #62 2019 Bitcoin Predictions With Matt Odell and Neil Woodfine
January 8th, 2019 by DSholla **“I do not believe altcoins are a threat to Bitcoin, they are a threat to individuals who speculate on them.”** **— Matt Odell** **“It is not a cryptocurrency industry, it is a Bitcoin industry.”** **— Neil Woodfine** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Wednesday 2nd Jan, 2019 Matt Odell: Co-host of Rabbit Hole Recap podcast Neil Woodfine: Marketing Director at Blockstream 2018 was quite the year for the cryptocurrency space, a space which many maxi... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #61 Tuur Demeester's Bearish Case for Ethereum
January 4th, 2019 by DSholla **“With Ethereum there is a culture of recklessness and not keeping to promises.”** **— Tuur Demeester** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Sunday 30th Dec, 2018 Company: Adamant Capital Role: Founder/CEO What is Ethereum? Is it money? Is it a platform for building decentralized applications? Is it a world computer? Is it all of this? The bull run of 2017 was kind to Ethereum, ICO mania led to the issuance of countless tokens, and the price rose from $9 to n... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #60 2019 Crypto Resolutions With Meltem Demirors
January 1st, 2019 by DSholla **“We all got caught up in this hype, we all got caught up in believing things we knew were untrue.”** **— Meltem Demirors** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Sunday 30th Dec, 2018 Company: CoinShares Role: Chief Strategy Officer As we enter a new year and reflect on 2018, it is essential to learn from any mistakes we have made. The 2018 Crypto bear market has hit many hard, from trading losses to layoffs at Bitmain and Consensys to the closing of GigaWatt, th... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #59 What Bitcoin Did in 2018 with Marty Bent
December 28th, 2018 by DSholla **“A world of a thousand tokens is not as strong as a world with one token.”** **— Marty Bent** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Sunday 23rd Dec, 2018 Company: Tales From the Crypt Podcast Role: Host What a year 2018 has been. The bear market has taken its toll on many: traders have lost money, companies such as Bitmain and Consensys are looking at significant layoffs, and the steep decline has provided the mainstream media with ammo to attack crypto. Stil... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #58 Trace Mayer On Why You Must Own Your Bitcoin Private Keys
December 21st, 2018 by DSholla **“Bitcoin is for all of humanity, it is the greatest technical innovation when it comes to sound money.”** **— Trace Mayer** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Monday 17th Dec, 2018 Company: Premier Ark LLC Role: Manager Own your private keys! OWN YOUR PRIVATE KEYS! How many times are people told to make sure they own their private keys and not risk holding their Bitcoin on an exchange but they still do? Bitcoin offers people the chance of financial self-so... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #57 Building Bitcoin With Core Developer Bryan Bishop
December 18th, 2018 by DSholla **“There are bugs in Bitcoin, some that we know about and some that we don’t. Of the ones that we know about, not all of them are public knowledge.”** **— Bryan Bishop** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Friday 14th Dec, 2018 Project: Bitcoin Role: Core Developer Bitcoin may be the most important software project of our lifetime. A decentralized protocol, storing $billions in value, potentially $trillions in the future, yet this software is supported and dev... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #56 Why Bitcoin Matters For Freedom With Alex Gladstein
December 14th, 2018 by DSholla **“A lot of the dismissals, criticisms and attacks on Bitcoin come from people who have the luxury of having a stable financial system.”** **— Alex Gladstein** Interview location: Skype Interview date: Thursday 6th Dec, 2018 Company: Human Rights Foundation Role: Chief Strategy Officer All too often price dominates the discussion with Bitcoin: an ETF approval will be great for the price, we need institutions, when is the next bull run? Also, naysayers criticize Bitcoi... Read More
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