From the Front Page - What Bitcoin Did
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What Bitcoin Did #99 Why HTLCs are Harmful with Dan Robinson
April 23rd, 2019 by
DSholla **“There are much better ways to do atomic exchanges across payment channels than having these ledger enforced HTLCs” — Dan Robinson** **Interview location:** New York **Interview date:** Tuesday 26th March, 2019 **Company:** Paradigm **Role:** Research Partner The Lightning Network continues to grow at an impressive pace, both in terms of network capacity and development. As the network grows, more people are using and testing it, leading to open debate of its design. ... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #98 Lightning Critique: FUD or Fair? with Peter Rizun
April 19th, 2019 by DSholla **“Bitcoin is a peer to peer electronic cash system, and the main design goal is to allow me to send money to you without going through any intermediaries. ” — Peter Rizun** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Wednesday 18th April, 2019 **Company:** Bitcoin Unlimited **Role:** Chief Scientist The scaling war pitched two ideologies for the future of Bitcoin against each other. One side believes that Bitcoin can scale on-chain with larger block sizes while t... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #97 Lightning & The Law with Peter Van Valkenburg
April 16th, 2019 by DSholla **“There are a lot of people on Twitter who might be partisans of scaling on chain versus the lightning network, who think it is not complicated and that the government are just going to come after Lightning nodes.” — Peter Van Valkenburgh** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Thursday 11th April, 2019 **Company:** Coin Center **Role:** Research Director The regulatory lens of Bitcoin is also now on the Lightning Network, and there are questions around how... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #96 Why I Have Given Up On Mt. Gox With Andy Pag
April 15th, 2019 by DSholla **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Friday 12th April, 2019 **Company:** Mt. Gox Legal **Role:** Creator and Elected Administrator In this bonus interview, I follow up with Andy Pag, who was part of my Mt. Gox series, following the news that he has stepped down as a coordinator for the creditors and sold his claim. Andy updates me on everything which has happened since we last spoke. This episode is also on: * [iTunes](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/what-... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #95 Using Lightning in Retail with Sergej Kotliar From Bitrefill
April 12th, 2019 by DSholla **“You can’t moralise for people who want to take short cuts when that means you can get something in their hands today.” — Sergej Kotliar** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Wednesday 10th April, 2019 **Company:** Bitrefill **Role:** Founder & CEO The Lightning Network offers to solve a problem for Bitcoin with retailers. While Bitcoin was originally seen as online money, a way of improving digital commerce, the slow confirmation times and high fees ... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #94 The Economics of Lightning with Nic Carter & Pierre Rochard
April 9th, 2019 by DSholla **“To me, it is pretty staggering actually that Bitcoin has never had a real confirmed double spend.” — Nic Carter** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Tuesday 9th April, 2019 **Company:** Nic - Castle Island Ventures | Pierre - Independent Bitcoin Advisor **Role:** Nic - Partner | Pierre - Founder The Lightning Network is a second layer scaling solution for Bitcoin, designed to maintain the security of the protocol while offering a new way for users to s... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #93 Lightning Design and UX with Jack Mallers
April 5th, 2019 by DSholla **“I spend 100% of my time thinking about Bitcoin. Maybe I am being dramatic by about 5%, so maybe 95%.” — Jack Mallers** **Interview location:** Boston **Interview date:** Saturday 9th March, 2019 **Company:** Zap **Role:** Founder Bitcoin is hard for new people. There are so many things to learn; how to use Bitcoin, personal security, trading, economics and so on. The rabbit hole is deep, and not always welcoming. Now The Lightning Network is out in the wild, a whole ... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #92 An Introduction to the Lightning Network with Christian Decker
April 2nd, 2019 by DSholla **“Lightning is a mechanism for us to make Bitcoin more useful, make it available to more people and extend Bitcoin’s reach into more use cases.” — Christian Decker** **Interview location:** Boston **Interview date:** Sunday 2nd April, 2019 **Company:** Blockstream **Role:** Core Tech Engineer The Lightning Network is designed to solve the scaling issues with Bitcoin. As a second layer technology, it enables fast and near instant payments using payment channels, something w... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #91 How Crypto Protects Sex Workers with Ameen Soleimani & Allie Eve Knox from Spankchain
April 1st, 2019 by DSholla **“Porn is the gateway for the governments of the world to stamp out your freedom on the Internet because nobody will come and defend their right to watch porn because of the social stigma attached to it.” — Ameen Soleimani** **Interview location:** Ameen - Venice, Los Angeles | Allie - Austin **Interview date:** Ameen- Sunday 17th March, 2019 | Allie - Friday 22nd March, 2019 **Company:** Spankchain **Role:** Ameen - Co-founder & CEO | Allie - Head of Outreach Porn. An... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #90 The Ethics of Investing in Tokens with Chris Burniske
March 29th, 2019 by DSholla **“If we are trying to take Bitcoin mainstream, that means the vast majority of users will not be educated about the merits of Bitcoin, they just won’t care, they will actually be turned away if they feel like they have this screaming mob asking why the hell they are using this other asset.” — Chris Burniske** **Interview location:** New York **Interview date:** Monday 25th March, 2019 **Company:** Placeholder **Role:** Partner One of the most interesting debates in t... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #89 Critiquing Bitcoin with Angela Walch
March 27th, 2019 by DSholla **“I’m worried that policy makers are getting a single perspective on the technology, its capabilities, its risk, I think they need to be getting a more critical perspective as well.” — Angela Walch** **Interview location:** San Antonio **Interview date:** Thursday 21st March, 2019 **University:** St. Mary’s **Role:** Professor of Law Bitcoin is defined as decentralised, a critical feature which stops any individual or group control or destroy it, but a closer look... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #88 Matthew Hougan from Bitwise on Why 95% of Reported Bitcoin Trade Volume is Fake
March 25th, 2019 by DSholla **“The reported spot volume of Bitcoin that is claimed on sites like Coin Market Cap is about $6bn a day, that means all Bitcoin would turn over about every two weeks, for something which is designed primarily as a long-term store of value. That is absurd.” — Matthew Hougan** **Interview Location:** Skype **Interview Date:** Friday 22nd March, 2019 **Company:** Bitwise Asset Management **Role:** Global Head of Research **Bonus show:** following the release of the Bitwi... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #87 Erik Voorhees on Maximalism, KYC & Shoddy Reporting
March 23rd, 2019 by DSholla **“I am always sceptical when people say someone shouldn’t be allowed to talk. Saying someone should never be allowed to talk is a lazy way of trying to close down discourse.” — Erik Voorhees** **Interview location:** Denver **Interview date:** Wednesday 20th March, 2019 **Company:** Shapeshift **Role:** CEO With the growth of cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin, there has been a growing pressure from regulators for exchanges to implement KYC/AML policies. The privacy affor... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #86 The Ashes of the Fyre Festival with Marc Weinstein
March 20th, 2019 by DSholla **“If this is not logistically possible, we need solutions, not problems.” — Marc Weinstein** **Interview location:** Los Angeles **Interview date:** Monday 18th March, 2019 **Company:** Wave Financial **Role:** Principal The two documentaries on Netflix and Hulu about the Fyre Festival highlight what can go disastrously wrong when you pitch a grand vision which can’t be delivered. The Fyre Festival was sold as the ultimate music festival, situated on a beautiful isl... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #85 Bitcoin Math & Research With Andrew Poelstra
March 15th, 2019 by DSholla **“Mathematics is the art of finding patterns in logical structures and finding connections between seemingly apparently different structures.” — Andrew Poelstra** **Interview location:** Boston **Interview date:** Saturday 9th March, 2019 **Company:** Blockstream **Role:** Director of Research I usually write a few paragraphs about each show, but with this interview, I struggled, primarily because Andrew’s work for Blockstream is so technically advanced that I... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #84 Surveillance Capitalism With Amber Baldet
March 12th, 2019 by DSholla **“Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.” — Amber Baldet** **Interview location:** New York **Interview date:** Wednesday 6th March, 2019 **Company:** Clovyr **Role:** Founder The line between data collection for commercial use and surveillance by the state has become blurred. Where the NSA tracks online user activity for crime prevention, Silicon Valley behemoths have become increasingly hungry for user data with the goal of building ever more targeted advertis... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #83 Podcasting Head to Head With Anthony Pompliano
March 9th, 2019 by DSholla “People on Wall Street will spend millions of dollars on things which don’t work. The best way to build an asset management firm today is to build a media company which monetises through asset management.” **— Anthony Pompliano** **Interview location:** New York **Interview date:** Tuesday 5th March, 2019 **Company:** Morgan Creek Capital **Role:** Founder & Partner The Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space is experiencing a golden age of podcasting, but often the work beh... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #82 What Happens When Bitcoin Takes Over With Andreas M. Antonopoulos
March 5th, 2019 by DSholla **“We’re talking about a change in how humanity organizes itself.” — Andreas M. Antonopoulos** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Thursday 28th Feb, 2019 **Company:** Independent **Role:** Bitcoin & Open Blockchain Expert, Speaker, Author Bitcoin, the decentralised, trustless, censorship-resistant money. Bitcoin, digital gold and the hardest form of money the world has. Bitcoin, a financial infrastructure built for the digital age. Whatever Bitcoi... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #81 Bitcoin Rationalism With Lily Liu
March 1st, 2019 by DSholla **“It makes me laugh when Wall Street says ‘blockchain, not Bitcoin’ because Silicon Valley says exactly the same thing in slightly different language.” — Lily Liu** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Thursday 7th Feb, 2019 **Company:** Earn.com **Role:** Founder Protocols, protocols, protocols; so many smart contract protocols, but why? If you look at the history of Ethereum, and the returns generated for investors, you can see why Silicon Valley has... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #80 Reflecting on Mt. Gox with Andy Pag
February 25th, 2019 by DSholla **“It is a lot of money that could have some pretty dramatic effects on a lot of peoples lives. It would be a really lovely story to see that delivered and to see people get these windfalls that they have been waiting for, for a long time.” — Andy Pag** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Friday 22nd Feb, 2019 **Company:** Mt. Gox Legal **Role:** Creator and Elected Administrator The Mt. Gox story is incredibly complicated. The first Bitcoin exchange, crea... Read More
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