From the Front Page - What Bitcoin Did
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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 -
What Bitcoin Did #79 Reviving Mt. Gox With Brock Pierce
February 22nd, 2019 by DSholla **“If someone came to me today and said should I put my money in this or banks I’d say no, you should keep your money in the bank, banks are better than we are today.” — Brock Pierce** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Wednesday 13th Feb, 2019 Brock Pierce…hmmm… A man with a questionable history in Bitcoin and wrapped up in the Mt. Gox story. With Gox Rising Brock has a plan to help creditors but what are his incentives? The creditors I have spoken to... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #78 Kim Nilsson on His Investigation Into Mt. Gox
February 21st, 2019 by DSholla **“We expect more from this position, that is why we usually put people in these elevated positions, to be able to make the right decisions and Mark kind of ended up there more by accident.” — Kim Nilsson** **Interview Location:** Skype **Interview Date:** Wednesday 20th Feb, 2019 **Company:** WizSec **Role:** Chief Engineer Mark Karpeles has had many accusations thrown at him since the collapse of Mt. Gox, including being the architect of the theft himself. Many people ... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #77 Daniel Kelman on the Creditors of Mt. Gox and Civil Rehabilitation
February 20th, 2019 by DSholla **“When this all happened I hated Mark, but now I don’t because I understand a lot more about what went on.” — Daniel Kelman** **Interview location:** Skype **Interview date:** Tuesday 12th Feb, 2019 **Company:** OceanEx **Role:** Chief Strategy Officer The victims of Mt. Gox are the creditors, those who lost their Bitcoin when the company entered into bankruptcy arrangements. For years they have battled for a fair civil rehabilitation plan and suffered delay after de... Read More -
What Bitcoin Did #76 Mark Karpelès on the Collapse of Mt. Gox
February 19th, 2019 by DSholla **“I am very sorry about the way things went; I wish I could go back and fix things. There is only so much I can do so I just continue helping and making sure people get as much as help as they can.” — Mark Karpelès** **Interview location:** Tokyo **Interview date:** Saturday 16th Feb, 2019 **Company:** Mt. Gox **Role:** CEO The shadow of Mt. Gox still hangs over Bitcoin some five years after it collapsed. At the time it held 7% of all Bitcoin in circulation and was... Read More -
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
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