
Advertise on podcast: Bitcoin Takeover Podcast
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370 episodes
Language
EnglishPublisher
Vlad CosteaExplicit
No
Date created
2019/02/07
Latest episode
2026/10/17
Average duration
151 min.
Release period
5 days
Description
On the Bitcoin Takeover podcast you're going to hear the builders and innovators who make the Bitcoin project valuable. It's thanks to their work that the BTC price goes up, and it's their efforts that convince large investors that Bitcoin is the future of money. Here you will find the projects and ideas that will radically improve Bitcoin in the future, presented by the creators and innovators themselves. Time to learn!
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S17 E47: Tabconf 8 Livestream with Kevin Loaec, Ekrem Bal, Spaces Protocol & The Bitcoin Pivot (Bonus: Peter Todd)
2026/10/17
The second day of TABConf 8, live from Atlanta. Ekrem Bal talks Citrea privacy, Kevin Loaec explains Liana wallet, Spaces Protocol introduces BTC handles, Bitcoin credit unions enter the scene, Peter Todd unboxes his Zcash ceremony laptop 10 years later.
Time stamps:
0:00 Stream warm-up
2:29 Ekrem Bal: Citrea pivots to privacy with Crest
7:22 Privacy and scalability on Citrea
11:30 Privacy as protection from physical attacks
16:00 Lessons from almost a year on mainnet
19:00 User feedback and the Clementine web app
20:13 Alpen, garbled circuits and Clementine v2
21:33 Next use cases: lending, vaults and agent spending limits
22:51 Making Citrea post-quantum
26:21 Great Script Restoration and trust assumptions
29:29 OP_CAT vs CTV vs template hash
31:26 How Crest differs from Tornado Cash
33:12 Railgun and proof of innocence
33:53 Why build on Bitcoin instead of Ethereum
36:23 Favorite fork: Taproot and Zcash envy
38:19 The eCash replay trick
41:24 Skiing and mountaineering
42:51 110 BTC on Citrea
43:34 Kevin Loaec joins
44:31 First and last TABConf and the unconference format
46:21 A bad year: Coldcard, Liquid and Liana
48:00 Stu joins
48:41 Vaults vs Liana’s timelocks
51:59 Most interesting guest and 10 hour episodes
54:02 Forks magazine
55:32 Script emulation on Bark
56:08 Liana videos and Revault
57:32 Favorite covenant and enforced amounts
59:40 Wrench attacks and Liana’s exposure
1:01:07 Ledger leaks and buying hardware online
1:03:41 Coldcard’s RNG bug, license and bounties
1:06:07 Andrew joins: Spaces Protocol
1:10:30 Buffer joins
1:10:55 3,700 spaces and @bitcoin handles
1:11:18 The TABConf name giveaway and delegation
1:14:39 Nacho and payment handles
1:15:39 Burning @tabconf forever
1:17:45 32 bytes on chain and cert relays
1:19:15 Client-side validation and censorship resistance
1:20:18 One click install on StartOS
1:21:14 How Spaces makes money
1:22:17 What stops an alt Spaces?
1:24:01 Namecoin, squatters and 10 auctions a day
1:27:25 Utility: Nacho and social proofs
1:29:37 Don’t reuse your name address: silent payments
1:32:19 Spaces and Bitcoin’s scalability
1:33:39 Do names expire?
1:35:43 One character names
1:37:10 Insight gateways, Nostr and Blossom
1:40:43 The Fabric resolver
1:41:23 Handle pricing
1:44:02 Where to learn more about Spaces
1:47:00 Spaces and the forks
1:53:44 Last call for @tabconf handles
1:55:42 Goodbye Andrew and Buffer
1:57:34 Hallway break
2:00:00 Kevin Loaec returns: Paris, Sparrow and Miniscript
2:05:26 Funding open source without begging users
2:12:33 A horrible year: hacks and forks
2:13:47 Bitcoin follows the crowd
2:28:55 New guest and matching watches
2:29:57 What makes you bullish about Bitcoin?
2:31:05 Closing hallway chatter
2:43:10 Part 2: Back online: The Bitcoin Pivot and the three C’s
2:47:39 How credit unions will custody bitcoin
2:49:28 An advisory firm with vendor-agnostic partners
2:51:47 Why TABConf is welcoming
2:52:26 Feedback and the wave of credit union mergers
2:56:32 Credit unions vs banks: the not-for-profit mission
2:58:32 Lightning and paying with Bitcoin
2:59:10 Credit unions as Lightning service providers
3:00:22 Rehypothecation risk and Aave
3:01:39 NCUA, not FDIC
3:02:07 Where to learn more about The Bitcoin Pivot
3:02:52 Peter Todd arrives and the stream pauses
S17 E46: Livestream from Tabconf 8, Part 1 (feat. Paul Sztorc, Andre Beganski, Alex Lewin, Janusz, Christopher Allen, Will & Michael Tidwell)
2026/10/15
Live from TABConf 8 in Atlanta: Paul Sztorc demos a quantum-resistant soft fork, Christopher Allen on Blockchain Commons, Michael Tidwell on TABConf, plus Andre Beganski, Alex Lewin, Janusz and Will on their work in the space. Recorded on Wednesday, October 14th 2026.
Time stamps:
0:00 Stream warm-up
1:55 Welcome to Bitcoin Takeover at TABConf 8 with Paul Sztorc
2:30 CUSF 2 demo: quantum-resistant signatures, OP_VAULT, OP_CTV & OP_CAT
4:30 Sweeping coins into a quantum-resistant UTXO with BitWindow
5:05 Why miners will never run it
5:52 Is quantum FUD? Pascal's Wager & Saylor
7:50 Bitcoin's overconfidence & the competition
8:41 How altcoins took Bitcoin's use cases
10:17 Greg Maxwell & the belief in Bitcoin's infallibility
11:39 Camera dies, webcam to the rescue
12:30 eCash hard fork: free coins later this month
13:08 Soft forks are opt-in, ignorable & reversible
14:35 Kafkaesque: will soft forks become mandatory?
16:01 Live questions: claiming eCash & does Saylor self-custody?
16:46 Mike Belshe, BitGo & custodians
17:48 The war on crypto, PGP & Enigma
18:44 How to claim your eCash coins
19:13 Liquidity pools instead of paying for exchange listings
21:37 Shinobi walks by & the Coldcard trophy
21:50 Paul leaves for the Town Hall
22:34 Spotting Christopher Allen & sponsor thanks
24:14 André Beganski joins: from Decrypt to MARA Foundation
25:25 Decrypt, The Block & trade publications
25:57 DL News & DeFi Llama
26:49 Blockworks' offer & Supply Shock
27:43 BTCTKVR: Forks! magazine
28:10 The Ledger magazine & sourdough bakers
29:43 Going independent: Bitcoin Magazine vs Bitcoin Takeover
30:30 Storytellers vs AI
32:13 Original reporting & journalism as a public good
33:54 Sponsors & transparency
34:36 Camera battery woes & how to follow André
35:50 Orange Rock sponsor break
37:55 Alex Lewin joins: Finite & private AI
38:47 Fedi, Blockspaces & NCR
39:28 Atlanta, BitDevs & Capture the Bitcoin
40:14 Janusz joins: Zark = Zcash + Spark
41:38 Private AI meets private money
43:35 Privacy as an ingredient for liberty
44:03 Fungibility & a universal currency
45:21 Why Zcash-style privacy and not Monero?
47:05 Shielded pools vs ring signatures
49:44 Scaling privacy: Tachyon vs FCMP++
51:18 The first inning of privacy research
53:56 A bearish year: what still makes you bullish?
56:23 AI will make Bitcoin better, not worse
57:46 Why aren't you at the TABConf funeral?
58:50 The hallway track & why showing up matters
1:00:48 AI psychosis & conferences
1:01:36 Coffee, tobacco & AI as a productivity drug
1:03:08 Forks magazine handout
1:03:46 Atlanta's BeltLine
1:04:52 Favorite conferences: Bitcoin++ & Nashville
1:06:12 The Town Hall & the Tabbies
1:06:47 Paul has spoken at all eight TABConfs
1:07:43 Favorite fork? Bitcoin vs Zcash
1:09:22 The Orchard bug & a coordinated soft fork
1:11:29 Only Bitcoin is stubborn enough to invent witness encryption
1:11:59 Two hard forks this year: Luke's coin & eCash
1:12:40 Fork strategy: don't touch cold storage
1:13:43 Zcash as a BIP 300 drivechain
1:14:52 If Bitcoin goes to zero
1:16:13 Christopher Allen joins
1:17:40 Randomness warnings & VeriSign security reviews
1:19:32 LetheKit & dice entropy
1:20:00 Don't rely on any single key: multisig, MuSig & FROST
1:21:00 Wallet companies & the Coldcard victims
1:22:34 Coinkite, open source & closing the code
1:24:15 No single points of failure, compromise or denial
1:25:08 How Coldcard treated security researchers
1:26:36 Bug bounties in the age of LLMs
1:27:51 Cypherpunks who embraced Bitcoin
1:28:45 Netscape, SSL 2 & the RSAREF license
1:30:18 Writing the SSL 3 reference implementation & TLS 1.0
1:30:47 DigiCash & David Chaum
1:31:29 Certicom, micro-currencies & the Merkle patent
1:32:03 Schnorr patents & ECDSA
1:33:10 secp256r1 suspicions vs secp256k1
1:35:44 Discovering Bitcoin in 2013
1:36:08 UTXOs to revoke X.509 certificates
1:37:08 Decentralized identifiers & DPKI
1:37:37 Paul Sztorc returns: Rebooting the Web of Trust
1:38:32 Namecoin
1:38:59 Christopher's beef: key reuse in Ethereum & Nostr
1:40:30 BIP 32 & one key pair per identity
1:41:19 Christopher promises a part two
1:42:46 Paul introduces Will: 21 days before the midterms
1:43:35 Will on six privacy prisoners
1:43:59 Larry Harmon & Ian Freeman
1:44:45 Roman Sterlingov & Bitcoin Fog
1:47:32 Roman Storm & Tornado Cash
1:48:19 Samourai: Keonne Rodriguez & William Hill
1:50:59 The judge switch & the plea deals
1:54:25 The pardon campaign
1:55:42 Aaron Day's StarkFreedom PAC
1:58:52 Michael Tidwell joins
1:59:42 The Tabbies
2:01:29 Why TABConf 8 is the last one
2:02:01 Death by a thousand cuts
2:03:51 My first TABConf & thanking the sponsors
2:05:27 eCash: the calmest hard fork in memory
2:07:16 Will miners steal from drivechains?
2:08:15 TABConf debates: BTC vs BCH vs BSV
2:09:06 Monero, Dash & bringing people into the fold
2:09:51 Amanda B. Johnson & DarkCoin at the monthly meetup
2:11:55 No-shill policy during the ICO craze
2:12:50 Paul Sztorc's TABConf debates & Peter Todd
2:14:08 How TABConf got scammed in 2019
2:17:58 Greg Maxwell, Nick Szabo & who never came
2:19:45 Why the obituary happened a day early
2:20:31 Forks magazine
2:21:20 Top highlights: hardcore trivia & the standing ovation
2:23:40 What will Michael do with his eCash?
2:24:00 Kill Tidwell: Bitcoin comedy
2:25:12 Matt Odell never came
2:26:13 The first Bitcoin car & Rassah's plane
2:27:36 Atlanta lore: Jeff Garzik, Stephen Pair & BitPay
2:29:42 Bitcoin is not my religion
2:31:01 Favorite fork: Taproot
2:32:45 I like all the hard forks
2:35:24 Diversifying into airdrops: the most irrational VC
2:38:47 Goodbye Michael & wrap-up
S17 E45: Talking Tari with Naveen Jain, Fox & Marguerite de Courcelle
2026/09/30
After seven years of being in development, Tari finally launched in 2025. Why did it take so long and how many of the initial promises were delivered? Naveen Jain, Mr. Fox & Marguerite de Courcelle join the show to offer their best answers.
0:00 - Intro
0:47 - Welcome to S17 E45: Naveen, Mr. Fox & Marguerite
3:02 - What Is Tari? Mimblewimble, Four Mining Lanes & the Oodle
5:21 - Can Tari Compete With Solana?
6:32 - Meme Coins vs. Real Businesses
8:22 - The Ticketmaster Killer That Wasn't
9:18 - Big Neon, the Pandemic & the Spotify Exit
11:20 - How Dependent Is Tari on Monero's Hashrate?
12:26 - Why Four Mining Lanes and Two Tokens?
14:48 - The One-Way Peg: Burning XTM for the L2
15:43 - Tari Script on L1, Full Programmability on L2
16:13 - Sponsors: Layer 2 Labs & Braiins Hashpower
19:24 - The C29 Consensus Bug & How the Lanes Held Up
23:02 - The Beam Question: Great Tech Is Not Enough
26:18 - What Is Tari's Killer Use Case?
29:21 - Programmable Confidentiality: Securities, Escrow & Stigma Markets
30:15 - Fox's Cat Shirt & the $100 Monero Giveaway
31:36 - Sharing Security With Monero: The Underappreciated Part
34:09 - Did the Monero Community Stick Around?
36:52 - From White Papers to Tickers: The Decline of Ideas
39:14 - Naveen's Linkin Park Lesson: The Lowest Common Denominator
43:11 - Build Contests, Encrypted Messengers & Private Voting
44:48 - Learning English From Linkin Park
47:31 - The Meteora Bank Vault Listening Party
49:27 - Mining Q&A: Pool Censorship & RandomX Changes
53:19 - The Pool That Kept the XTM
53:38 - Will Other Privacy Chains Copy the Model?
54:52 - Sponsors: SideShift & Orange Rock
56:31 - Marguerite (Coin Artist) Joins
57:45 - From the Ethereum ICO to MaidSafe to Decred
1:00:45 - The First Crypto Puzzle Ever: Dark Wallet, Amir Taaki & Cody Wilson
1:02:12 - There Is Treasure Hidden in Tari's Blockspace
1:02:55 - What Marguerite Does on the Tari Council
1:05:52 - Building for Humans or for AI Agents?
1:09:09 - Giveaway Mechanics: Three Numbers, One Winner
1:10:00 - Attracting Normies: Blink, Browser Agents & Small Beginnings
1:13:00 - Tari Universe: Mining Without the UX Nightmare
1:14:28 - Where to Buy XTM (Or Just Mine It)
1:16:15 - Mining Monero and Tari at the Same Time
1:17:41 - Satoshi's Email to Laszlo
1:18:11 - Naveen's Number Is 43 & He Has to Go
1:18:31 - Does Gaming Belong on a Blockchain?
1:19:29 - Neon District, Axie & the PFP Ceiling
1:21:40 - Vibe Coding Three Games in One Weekend
1:25:01 - Online Poker, Frozen Accounts & the First Bitcoin Gamblers
1:27:42 - The Winning Number: 40
1:30:00 - If Monero and Tari Were Roommates
1:31:31 - Privacy-First Games: Fog of War & Front-Running
1:39:21 - Skybox, Modding Communities & Creator Royalties
1:43:39 - Mr. Fox Is a Furry (the Third One on This Podcast)
1:45:46 - The Real Use Case: Commissioning Art Without Bank Permission
1:47:46 - The Manicure Question
1:48:37 - Lessons From Neon District & Loot Boxes
1:50:56 - Vlad's Brother, the CS:GO Knife & the Rome Vacation
1:53:40 - Top Three Games of All Time
2:01:45 - John Carmack & the Open Source Doom Engine
2:03:11 - Tim Sweeney: The Cypherpunk Behind Unreal
2:06:59 - Amir Taaki's Lara Croft Origin Story
2:08:01 - Vitalik Rage-Quitting WoW & Colored Coins
2:11:06 - Bringing the Soul Back to Open Source
2:12:55 - What Fox Wants Built First: Payments Without Permission
2:14:55 - The Community Takeover & the Core Contributor Program
2:18:09 - Councils, Leaders & the Decentralization Paradox
2:22:16 - Andreas Antonopoulos, Vitalik & the Need for Faces
2:25:42 - The NATO Problem: Organizations Without a Purpose
2:28:49 - Steemit, Twitter Tip Bots & Make It Rain Doge
2:31:22 - Counterparty, Rare Pepes & NFT Archaeology
2:34:41 - When VCs Discovered OpenSea
2:36:30 - Infinite Fleet & the Game That Never Shipped
2:39:37 - John Romero: Why Play-for-Money Kills Fun
2:43:05 - Cats: Hunter & Salieri
2:46:43 - A Mini-Game for Vlad's Website
2:47:24 - The Trojan Horse Thesis Revisited
2:48:24 - The Builders Never Left
2:49:02 - Different Leaders for Different Eras
2:52:08 - Why Seven Years? And How Long Until the L2 Matters?
2:54:41 - How to Start Mining Tari Today
2:55:41 - Outro
S17 E44: Marc De Mesel on Early Bitcoin Investing & Polygamy
2026/09/25
Marc De Mesel talks about on selling BTC for Bitcoin Cash in 2017, funding BCH devs for years, why BCH failed despite being the best big block version of Bitcoin, what's in his privacy coin basket, his Tesla investment & having multiple girlfriends.
0:00 - Intro
0:47 - Welcome: Marc De Mesel, the Guardian Angel of Bitcoin Cash
2:01 - The Trade: Selling BTC for BCH in August 2017
5:00 - $300 Then vs. $300 Now: The Inflation Math
7:39 - From Investor to Benefactor: Funding BCH Development
8:49 - Amaury's IFP: Treasury Model or Dev Tax?
11:54 - Mike Hearn's Prophecy & the Flipstarter Model
14:21 - Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic & the Article That Scared Vlad
16:00 - Sponsors: SideShift & Layer 2 Labs
18:36 - Why Bitcoin Cash Failed: Death by a Thousand Splits
23:03 - Miner Voting vs. Forking Off
25:54 - The Merchant Adoption Mistake
27:39 - Vlad's SegWit Argument: BCH Launched as Only 2x
31:58 - The Spam Attack Theories
34:25 - "Hijacking Bitcoin": The Store of Value Narrative Shift
36:37 - Never Sell, Borrow Against It: The Saylor Doctrine
40:08 - Stablecoins as the Free Market CBDC
41:59 - Saylor's Leverage & the Dot-Com Track Record
45:12 - Weak Hands and Strong Hands
47:30 - Marc's Altcoin Origin: Litecoin, Peercoin & 2012
50:34 - Network Effects: From 90% to 50% Dominance
55:09 - The Bear Market Liquidation Scenario
56:31 - Sponsors: Braiins Hash Power, Orange Rock & Cake Wallet
59:23 - Q&A: If Satoshi Returned and Disowned BCH
1:01:23 - Q&A: A Contrarian Opinion Too Far
1:05:24 - Q&A: Why Hold Tesla Through Five Flat Years
1:09:35 - Giveaway Reveal: The Number Is 69
1:10:55 - CME Bitcoin Cash Futures & the Thesis Update
1:12:22 - Privacy as Crypto's Last USP
1:13:52 - Vlad's Pushback: Transparent Ledgers vs. Bank Privacy
1:20:18 - What BTC Maximalists Missed in 2017
1:25:13 - Marc's First Bitcoin at $13 on Bitcoin-24
1:29:88 - Selling Too Early & Roger's Slower Hand
1:34:21 - Privacy Coins as Today's Bitcoin-at-$1
1:40:06 - The Zcash 40x
1:45:00 - The Privacy Basket: XMR, ZEC, Zano, Firo, ARRR, Dash
1:46:57 - Visiting Roger Ver Under House Arrest in Mayotte
1:51:46 - Zcoin, Firo & the Week Before Zcash
1:54:56 - Cryptonote, Bytecoin & the Monero Lineage
2:03:31 - The Biggest Wrong Assumption: Adoption Speed
2:06:21 - USDT in the Global South
2:10:17 - Conviction vs. Stubbornness
2:16:00 - NFTs on Zcash
2:20:52 - Shielded Zcash Adoption: Vlad Corrects the Record
2:27:03 - Selling Strength: Marc's Zcash Dilemma
2:33:56 - Rebuilding the Portfolio From Zero
2:39:16 - The Holy Grail Portfolio & the 2022 Wipeout
2:44:52 - Bitcoin, Tesla or BCH: Which Taught the Most?
2:47:36 - The Guardian Angel Costume Question
2:50:10 - The Dating Profile Question
2:58:18 - From Dating Sites to Cold Approach
3:07:58 - From Monogamy to Polygamy
3:16:45 - Does Polygamy Go Both Ways?
3:19:00 - Seven Children and Counting
3:20:27 - The Kenya Years & the Court Cases
3:25:42 - What It Costs
3:29:14 - Living Arrangements & Family Structure
3:37:00 - Old-School Fatherhood
3:51:28 - Trust Across Cultures
3:56:02 - The Tesla Model X in Amsterdam
3:58:00 - Buying Tesla in 2019: Sentiment at Rock Bottom
4:02:50 - Robotaxis, Humanoids & Chinese EVs
4:04:30 - Vlad's Toyota Supra Dream
4:08:07 - Eastern European Honesty
4:20:14 - Plan B If Alt Season Never Comes
4:19:37 - The 20% Target & Where to Follow Marc
4:20:00 - Closing Advice: HODL & Spotting the Top
4:24:42 - The Flip Scenario: What If BCH Wins?
4:26:01 - "I Was a Real Whale Once"
4:26:45 - Outro
S1 E4 Remastered: Omar Faridi on Bitcoin in Pakistan, Brain Drain & the Case for Moderate Thinking
2026/09/24
The 2019 conversation with fellow crypto journalist colleague Omar Faridi is now remastered: featuring Bitcoin in Pakistan, the Petro scam, brain drain economics, and why nothing is absolutely good or bad.
Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:46 - Remaster Notes: The Crypto Insider Colleague
2:29 - Somewhat Jealous of the Five-Article Days
4:01 - Sponsor Shoutout: Helen's Pizza in Jersey City
5:25 - The Original Recording: January 2019
6:12 - Omar Faridi: Crypto Journalist in Pakistan
7:47 - The State of Bitcoin in Pakistan
9:02 - Misinformation, Education & the $400 Salary
10:05 - The Exchange the State Bank Shut Down
11:08 - Potcoin: Pakistan's Own Cryptocurrency ($34,000 Market Cap)
11:53 - The School Owner Who Had Never Heard of Crypto
13:17 - How Free Is Pakistan? A Parliamentary Republic
15:33 - Voting for Parties, Not Presidents
18:06 - Freedom vs. Quality of Life
19:09 - LocalBitcoins & the Day Trader Who Bought From Omar
21:29 - How Free Are You on a Scale of 1 to 10?
23:32 - Freedom House Says "Not Free." Omar Disagrees
25:11 - Telegram Is Blocked, VPNs Work Fine
26:39 - Would They Block Bitcoin Mining?
28:42 - The Enforcement Problem: Corruption as a Feature
30:05 - People Are Stealing Electricity
31:32 - Could Bitcoin Give Pakistan a Kickstart in World Capitalism?
33:20 - The Stability Argument: Why Volatility Kills Merchant Adoption
35:40 - Alena Vranova's Embargo Bypass Thesis
38:04 - The Petro: Venezuela's Dishonest Cryptocurrency
41:30 - The Reuters Investigation: No Evidence of Use
43:14 - Sanctions, Desperation & Who Really Suffers
45:05 - Why Venezuelans Prefer Bitcoin to Bolivars and Dollars
46:50 - ICOs, Central Points of Failure & the Network Effect
48:29 - Putin's Cryptocurrency Speech & Digital Resources
50:02 - McDonald's as Political Ambassador: The Big Mac Theory
52:04 - Is the Big Mac Actually Better?
54:39 - Ethereum Classic's 51% Attack & Network Security
56:00 - Constantinople: The Hard Fork That Almost Happened
59:01 - Why Omar Trusts Ethereum Developers
1:00:36 - Vlad's Critique: Premine, DAO Fork & Arbitrary Changes
1:03:46 - Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: Different Use Cases
1:06:24 - The Austrian Economics Friend & the Broken System
1:08:46 - Rubini, Stiglitz & the Ponzi Narrative
1:10:03 - SegWit, Schnorr, Lightning & Blockstream Satellites
1:12:20 - Time Magazine: "Bitcoin Is a Guarantee of Liberty"
1:13:36 - Omar's Rebuttal: Nobody Cares About Schnorr Signatures
1:15:15 - Roger Ver, Bitcoin Cash & the Simplicity Argument
1:17:21 - DigiByte, Dogecoin & the Gateway Drug Theory
1:19:18 - The 50% Supply Problem: Worse Than a Central Bank
1:21:20 - The Gym Analogy: Altcoins as Training Wheels
1:22:46 - Omar's Moderate Manifesto: Nothing Is Absolutely Good or Bad
1:25:02 - Rubini Is Not Always Right: Use Your Own Brain
1:26:31 - Brain Drain Omar: The Name Explained
1:28:56 - Romania's Brain Drain: Second Only to Syria
1:31:35 - The Chinese Neighborhood Outside Bucharest
1:34:28 - The Internet Changed Everything
1:37:25 - Jobs That Didn't Exist: The New Economy
1:39:19 - Why Vlad Recommended Omar for Crypto Insider
1:42:54 - The First Email: Bulky Equipment & "It's So Easy"
1:44:56 - Stuart Haber Invented Blockchain Before Satoshi
1:46:41 - Coming Full Circle: From Local to Global
1:49:10 - The Orwellian Alternative
1:51:42 - Privacy Coins Will Have a Market
1:54:06 - Decentralized Exchanges & IP Tracking
1:55:04 - Where to Find Omar Faridi
1:56:44 - Closing: The Bitcoin Takeover Continues
S17 E43: Mike Belshe on BitGo, Quantum & Clarity
2026/09/16
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe returns after 20 months to discuss the Clarity Act, BitGo's IPO and retail launch, quantum-resistant wallets, AI code auditing, and what changed since we last spoke in S16 E1.
Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:54 - Welcome to S17 E43: Mike Belshe Returns
1:26 - The White House Visit & the Clarity Act Vote
2:35 - Why Wall Street Needs the Clarity Act
4:43 - Martin Gruenberg, Operation Chokepoint & the Vulnerability Window
7:00 - Does Clarity Affect Bitcoin Payments?
7:18 - The Three Camps Inside Every Bank
09:12 - Will the Next Administration Rug Pull Crypto?
10:15 - Executive Orders vs. Legislation
11:08 - Larry Fink: "Everything Is Going to Be Tokenized"
13:30 - Market Structure as Infrastructure Robustness
15:42 - MiCA, the War on Cash & the Bitcoin ATM Ban
18:48 - The Cake Wallet Contest
20:17 - BitGo Today: Custody AND Self-Custody
22:00 - The Marble Pillars Lesson: How Banks Earned Trust
23:58 - Why BitGo Is Free for Individuals
25:13 - Coldcard & the Single Point of Failure Problem
26:19 - Two-of-Three Multi-Sig vs. Single-Key Cold Storage
27:38 - Bybit's Blind Signing Hack
29:47 - Random Number Generators & Why Every AI Says 17
32:42 - AI Code Auditing at BitGo
34:11 - The Frontier Model Business Model Is Broken
36:16 - AI Vlad & Seasons 18-21 in Parallel
39:18 - Regulators vs. Borderless Money
42:38 - The $3 Random Number Experiment
47:21 - Sponsors: Layer 2 Labs & Braiins Hash Power
54:27 - BitGo's Fork Policy: Replay Protection & the Three Criteria
58:41 - Why Two Bitcoin Forks in 2025?
1:00:53 - Belshe on Forks: Technical Merit vs. Politics
1:04:47 - Satoshi's Blueprint or Final Solution?
1:08:00 - Forks as Scaling the Idea of Bitcoin
1:10:03 - Satoshi's Unanticipated Centralization Vectors
1:13:16 - Clearing the Record: BitGo & the New York Agreement
1:17:46 - The Block Size Counterfactual
1:19:34 - Tether on Omni: A Technical Correction
1:23:56 - Liquid's Hack as Sidechain Vindication
1:27:11 - The Fee Subsidy Problem & Tail Emission
1:32:01 - Fixed Supply as Bitcoin's Fundamental Promise
1:37:03 - Miner Subscriptions & Marathon's Slipstream
1:38:48 - Fungibility, Privacy & the Regulatory Threat
1:41:34 - Zcash Shielded Adoption: 4.5 Million ZEC
1:43:12 - BitGo's Shielded Zcash Implementation
1:45:00 - Executive Order 6102 & California's Wealth Tax
1:48:16 - The K-Shaped Economy & Borrowing Against Assets
1:53:41 - Do Forks Inflate the Coin Supply?
1:58:28 - The Payments Expectation vs. Protocol Reality
2:04:24 - Stablecoins, Iran & Tether's Freeze Function
2:08:00 - Jameson Lopp, Casa & the New York Agreement Myth
2:12:15 - Ethereum, Solana & the Trade-off Landscape
2:14:30 - The BIP 39 Seed Phrase Experiment: Quen's Answer
2:15:19 - The Winning Number: 91
2:15:31 - The Religion Question
2:17:13 - SideShift Ad Read
2:18:10 - Quantum: The Perception Threat
2:21:38 - BitGo's Quantum-Resistant Wallet Architecture
2:24:07 - The Unspent Selection Mechanism Explained
2:27:03 - Satoshi's Coins & the Freeze Debate
2:28:11 - WBTC as Bitcoin's Largest Scaling Layer
2:28:25 - The Anthropic 100 BTC Bounty
2:32:06 - Open Source AI & the Arms Race
2:34:05 - Will Clarity Pass Today?
2:36:51 - BitGo Wants Competition
2:37:18 - Satoshi vs. Hamilton & Goodbye
S17 E42: Bob Summerwill on Ethereum Classic & Bitcoin's Fork Season
2026/09/12
Ethereum Classic veteran Bob Summerwill retells the DAO hack from inside the Foundation, explains why forks are features, and shares advice for Paul Sztorc's ecash launch, plus FIFA stories and lost ETH.
Time stamps:
00:47 - Welcome to S17 E42: Fork Season Begins
01:26 - Bob Summerwill & the DAO Hack Origin Story
03:11 - Slock.it, Smart Locks & the First DAO
07:03 - Child DAOs and the "Risk-Free" Pitch
10:04 - Bob's Reservations: Legal Liability & Randos Voting With Money
13:27 - The Reentrancy Bug: 14% of the Supply Drained
16:14 - Code Is Law vs. Bailout: The Great Schism
19:42 - Hoskinson's "Two Ethereums From the Start"
26:25 - "Can You Guys Please Stop Trading?"
26:44 - The Irregular State Transition (It Was Not a Rollback)
30:10 - The Hacker Threatens Legal Action
34:08 - The Vote & Activation Day
37:22 - Ethereum Classic: The First Minority Chain to Survive
41:34 - Forking Is Part of Nakamoto Consensus
42:19 - Sal, Donald McIntyre & the Cypherpunks of ETC
43:22 - Barry Silbert, Grayscale & the ETC Cooperative
46:26 - The Weird Roommate Theory of Forks
50:00 - Why Ethereum Classic Didn't Win
56:17 - Bitcoin Cash, Dormant Coins & Grassroots Adoption
57:35 - Vlad's "Many Bitcoins" Theory & the Accidental 21 Million
01:00:13 - Voluntary Consensus & the Little Dictators
01:04:37 - The Blake Fork (BIP 110) & the Node Democracy LARP
01:07:01 - Paul Sztorc's Ecash: The Maximalist Hard Fork
01:09:47 - BitVM, Rollups & Bitcoin's Missing Layer Twos
01:13:17 - Connection Trouble & the Speed of Light
01:14:03 - Sponsors: SideShift, Ecash, Orange Rock, Braiins, Cake Wallet
01:18:18 - Giveaway Reveal: The Number Is 96
01:19:28 - Why the Best Technology Doesn't Win
01:22:50 - Tether on Tron: The Joke That Worked
01:26:07 - Tron's Plagiarized Whitepaper & the Web 4 Roadmap
01:29:04 - NEO, EOS, NEM & the $4 Billion ICO
01:33:41 - Ultrasound Money & the EIP-1559 Burn
01:37:18 - The Prague Photographer's Lament
01:40:08 - Bob's Origin Story: Gold Bugs & the Alex Jones Phase
01:44:53 - El Salvador's Quiet Bitcoin Regression
01:48:07 - Meeting Bitcoin in a Pub (February 2014)
01:54:44 - Bitcoin 2.0: BitShares, Counterparty, Mastercoin, NXT
01:57:48 - Toronto, TD Securities & Joining the Ethereum Foundation
02:02:06 - Michael Ruppert's Collapse & Choosing to Build
02:06:24 - Self-Driving Cars & Assassination Markets
02:10:02 - Does Ecash Feel Like Early Ethereum?
02:13:53 - Will Bitcoin Ever Fork Again?
02:19:24 - WBTC: Ethereum Is Bitcoin's Biggest Sidechain
02:21:48 - The Self-Custody Industrial Complex
02:23:52 - Zcash, Monero & Tachyon
02:27:38 - "Everything Is an Experiment"
02:30:46 - The Block Size Wars Counterfactual
02:35:52 - Ethereum PoW: Anatomy of a Cash Grab
02:41:26 - ETC Labs, DFG & the Sabotage of ETC Dev
02:45:27 - Could ETC Have Flipped ETH?
02:49:07 - Bob's Advice for Paul Sztorc
02:55:50 - The EA Years: Psygnosis, Wipeout & Harry Potter
03:01:56 - "None of Us Play FIFA": Confronting the Chairman
03:12:22 - Fixing FIFA: The Seven-Year Turnaround
03:21:02 - FIFA Nostalgia & Vlad's Prodigy Brother
03:24:12 - The Notorious Wii U Tweet
03:26:37 - Professional Chaos Agent? Proof of Work Summit Stories
03:32:24 - Charlie Shrem's Time Zone & Nick Spanos Ghosting
03:35:51 - Advice to 2015 Bob: The Lost ETH Fortune
03:38:00 - Remembering Donald McIntyre
03:41:06 - The Nick Szabo Interview That Almost Happened
03:43:38 - Vitalik, Autism & Genius
03:47:08 - Early Days of Ethereum & the Ethereum Time Machine
03:58:36 - "You Got to Try" & Where to Follow Bob
03:59:22 - Outro & Sponsors
S1 E3 Remastered: Zack Voell on Bitcoin & Politics
2026/09/07
The January 2019 Zack Voell crossover (he was hosting The Coin Pod) is now remastered: featuring opt-in money, gridlock as a feature, FDR's gold grab, Russia rumors & dating as a Bitcoiner in NYC. The audio has been enhanced too!
Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:46 - Remaster Notes: This Show Was Almost Called "Bitcoin & Politics"
2:12 - Sponsor Shoutout: Helen's Pizza in Jersey City
3:30 - The Crossover Episode Zack Never Published
4:41 - The Original Recording: January 2019
5:42 - Bitcoin as a Tool of International Affairs
7:49 - Bitcoin Obituaries, Silk Road Curiosity & Getting Rekt
11:39 - The Opt-In Economy: Voting With Your Money
13:26 - "You Only Ever Experience One Bear Market: Your First"
16:54 - The US Dollar's Outlaw Origins
17:55 - Colonial Currency Disasters & Tobacco Money
20:27 - Thirty Years of Failed Internet Money
21:51 - Gridlock Is a Feature: Congress & Nakamoto Consensus
22:37 - Bitcoin: A Very American Invention
24:47 - Why Americans Seem to Own the Narrative
27:18 - The White Paper's American Pedigree
30:44 - Could Bitcoin Have Come Out of China or Russia?
31:35 - Liberty Arbitrage & the Two Foundational Freedoms
35:15 - FDR's Gold Confiscation
37:43 - Jefferson, Madison & the Hard Money Founders
39:10 - Voltaire's Zero & the Fiat Inertia
43:08 - Rousseau, Property & Money as a Token of Trust
48:02 - Rational Ignorance: The Questions We Never Ask
50:55 - The Bitcoin Crash Course & Why Money Creates Community
55:36 - The Bitcoin Noob Moniker
58:52 - Dating as a Bitcoiner in New York City
1:02:58 - "But That's Not Real Money"
1:04:15 - Paying Your Half of the Date in Bitcoin (2017 Edition)
1:09:48 - The Russia Bitcoin Reserve Rumor
1:13:48 - Bernie Madoff Is Not Satoshi Nakamoto
1:17:19 - Who Adopts First: The Unbanked or the Privileged?
1:20:18 - Deplatforming, Gab, Patreon & Money as Speech
1:23:07 - The Four Freedoms of Money
1:26:05 - The Inconvenience of Freedom
1:29:20 - Your Own Single Point of Failure
1:31:09 - If You're Glad, Then I'm Vlad
S17 E41: Vik Sharma on Radar, Arbiter & Vibe Coding the Future of Cake Wallet
2026/09/01
Vik Sharma is best known as the CEO of Cake Wallet. But lately, he's built two new projects: a Signal fork with BTC tipping called Radar, and a perpetual trading app named Arbiter. In this episode, he explains how the AI revolution speeds up development.
Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:18 - Vik Sharma Returns: Two New Products in Seven Months
1:41 - Radar: A Signal Fork with Bitcoin Lightning Built In
3:18 - How Radar Works: Signal Servers, Monthly Donations & Linked Devices
5:21 - Why Signal Over Telegram
6:36 - Why Lightning Over Monero
8:19 - Stablecoins for Normies: The Venmo-ification of Bitcoin
10:33 - Spark, Breez SDK & the Stablecoin Question
11:55 - The Nvidia Spark Cluster: Going All In on Local AI
15:25 - Why Local Models Beat Cloud Subscriptions for Security Work
17:03 - Guardrails: When Claude Refuses to Audit Your Own App
18:33 - Dinner with the Trump Administration: America's AI Regulation Mistake
20:45 - Italy's ChatGPT Ban & the Fear of Falling Behind
22:44 - The $100 Cake Wallet Contest
23:15 - Does Cake Wallet Use AI for Coding?
25:16 - Arbiter: A Vibe-Coded Hyperliquid Trading App
27:44 - $5 Million Traded, TestFlight & the Mac Desktop Build
30:13 - Linux Requests & the Orange Rock Comparison
31:17 - Gasless USDC: Circle CCTP & Frictionless Onboarding
35:10 - Can This UX Work on Private Chains? Zano, Aztec, Tari & Beam
37:44 - The $10,000 Red Team Donation & Cake's Audit Results
39:34 - The Coldcard RNG Flaw & the "Someone Is Looking at the Code" Fallacy
43:14 - Passphrases: The Simplest Security Upgrade
43:58 - The Bitcoin Forks: Luke Dash Jr's Blake2 & the Ecash Hard Fork
44:51 - Open-Mindedness: The Original Bitcoiner Virtue
46:44 - Wownero, MoneroV & Why Cake Dropped It
49:22 - The Winning Number Is 27 (and Nobody Picked It)
51:04 - The Privacy Narrative: Why Monero & Zcash Are Pumping
55:07 - "Bitcoin Maximalism Is Almost Anti-Bitcoin"
57:52 - NEAR Intents, Maya & Spending Shielded Zcash
59:53 - How to Try Arbiter Today
1:01:45 - What's Next: Desktop Apps, Multisig & Back to Self-Custody Basics
1:04:26 - Still Bullish on Lightning
1:04:39 - The Gatekeeper Question: How Cake Decides Which Coins to List
1:09:07 - Dash Adopting Orchard While Zcash Moves to Ironwood
1:10:56 - The Maintenance Burden: Why Exodus Dropped Monero
1:12:25 - Zcash Voting, Sapling Addresses & Passphrase Support
1:16:03 - Seth's Role & the Foundation Devices Connection
1:17:01 - Two Million Downloads & the Privacy Tipping Point
1:19:08 - Bitcoin Amsterdam & Conference Plans
1:21:14 - Sponsors & Goodbye
S17 E40: Richard Werner & Amir Taaki on Economics, CBDCs & Cypherpunk Tech
2026/08/29
Prof. Richard Werner is one of the best known economists in the world. Amir Taaki is one of the most famous cryptographers and cypherpunks of his generation. Together, they join forces to defeat centra planning & stop the rise of CBDCs.
Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro: A Crossover Panel at Mallorca Blockchain Days
2:02 - Werner's Paradigm: Why Mainstream Economics Is Charlatanism
5:52 - David Ricardo, Karl Marx & the Single Central Bank Dream
7:02 - Scientific Economics: The German Historical School & East Asia
9:25 - The Subsidiarity Principle: Lessons from the Prussian Army
12:46 - Decentralization in Money: 25,000 Local Banks
15:10 - Europe in Decline: Germany's Negative Growth & Rising Controls
17:20 - Germany Is Not Sovereign: The Occupation Statutes Theory
20:45 - The Undemocratic EU: A Soviet-Style Rubber Stamp Parliament
21:58 - Article 146: Germany's Path to a Real Constitution
24:39 - Direct Democracy via Technology: Why Do We Need Representatives?
26:00 - Amir Asks: What Does the Ideal Society Look Like?
27:13 - Switzerland's Referendum Culture as the Model
29:30 - The Scarcity Lie: Every Country Can Have 15% Growth
32:15 - Disaggregated Credit: Productive vs. Non-Productive
33:24 - Why One Currency? Medieval Bonds & Local Money
35:36 - The Wörgl Experiment: Full Employment in the Great Depression
38:04 - Tally Sticks: The Original Public/Private Key Money
40:10 - Local Credit as a Social Force Under Community Control
43:09 - Sea Power vs Land Power: The Bank of England's Origins
47:07 - 1688: The Foreign Invasion Nobody Talks About
49:49 - Belt & Road, Iran, and the Real Target: China
51:47 - Sponsors: Cake Wallet, LayerTwo Labs, Orange Rock, Braiins, SideShift
54:22 - The Year in Privacy: FHE, Obfuscation & the Zcash Hack
56:35 - The Year in Economics: Chat Control & the Digital Prison
57:46 - CBDC Explained: The Umpire Who Wants to Play
59:04 - How a Banking Crisis Ushers in the Soviet System
1:01:07 - Q&A: How Can Politicians Create Growth?
1:06:31 - Q&A: Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse So Suddenly?
1:12:05 - The $100 Cake Wallet Prize Vote
1:13:07 - Closing Question: What Do You Think of Bitcoin Today?
1:14:07 - Amir on Bitcoin: No Leadership, Proletariat Vibes & Trump Dependency
1:17:05 - Werner: Bitcoin Works as an Asset, Fails as Money
1:18:18 - Bitcoin, Geopolitics & Iran Charging Shipping Fees in BTC
1:20:32 - Gold, Cash & the War on Alternatives
1:22:51 - Closing
S1 E2 Remastered: John Carvalho on Bitcoin Politics
2026/08/26
Recorded in January 2019 and published alongside the rest of the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast Season 1 episodes in February 2019, this interview with John Carvalho is one of the show's early hits and a statement that this initiative is able to feature unique insights from popular bitcoiners.
The remastered version features enhanced audio, with some extra EQ and compression. Special thanks to Helen's Pizza for sponsoring this initiative!
Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro: Why This Episode Matters
4:16 - Welcome: John Carvalho, the Bitcoin Error Log
5:17 - Bitcoin Politics and the Early Days
6:39 - The Bitcoin Foundation: Ego Platform or Useful Body?
8:53 - First Contact: Silk Road, Forums and IRC
11:40 - Buying Bitcoin in 2012: Mt. Gox, Dwolla and BitInstant
13:20 - The Foundation's Founders and Its Failures
15:45 - The Rebranding Effort and Why It Failed Again
17:04 - The Impossibility of Organizing Benevolent Bitcoin
20:04 - Bitcoin Core, Communication and the Leaderless Project
23:50 - No Official Narrative: Bitcoin's Many Stories
25:49 - Consensus as the Lowest Common Denominator
28:01 - Should Everything Be on a Blockchain?
28:58 - Surviving Market Cycles: Everyone Who Sold Was Wrong
32:46 - Bitcoins Want to Be Free: The Lord of the Rings Theory
34:05 - Roger Ver Attacks Andreas Antonopoulos
37:08 - How Big Is Bitcoin Really? The Coinbase Illusion
40:52 - Media Conglomerates and Hidden Concentration
42:13 - Decentralization Theater and arewedecentralizedyet.com
42:47 - Refusing BitPay and Political Spending
44:46 - Censorship Resistance as Bitcoin's Core Purpose
46:46 - Debunking "Swiss Bank Account in Your Pocket"
48:26 - What Caused the 2017 Bull Run?
51:31 - Stocks as Stores of Value and What Bitcoin Will Cure
53:44 - No College Degree: Comic Books, Punk Rock and Design
56:19 - Massachusetts [Redacted]: Growing Up Arguing
57:21 - Preparing for the Roger Ver Interview
58:32 - The Bcash Moment: Triggered, Not Scripted
1:00:46 - Roger's Debate Tactics: Zoom In, Zoom Out
1:04:36 - Skepticism as a Survival Skill
1:05:32 - Blockstream: Great Developers, Unclear Business Model
1:09:28 - r/btc Conspiracies and the AXA Myth
1:13:48 - Roger's War Chest and the Cost of Fighting Markets
1:18:17 - Will Roger Ever Come Back to Bitcoin?
1:20:40 - Pepe Politics and the Attention Economy
1:22:11 - The Evolution of Bitcoin and the Lightning Generation
1:23:06 - Bitrefill, Gift Cards and the Circular Economy
1:26:09 - Steemit Critique: Gamify, Don't Scam
1:27:16 - Brave, BAT and the Nonsense of Paid Attention
1:30:52 - Hitchcock's Bladder Rule and Final Questions
1:31:55 - Hyperbitcoinization: Hype, Greed and Small Wins
1:35:17 - Nation States Secretly Accumulating Bitcoin?
1:36:29 - Bitcoin and the Shift in Global Power
1:39:32 - Merchant Adoption and the Tax Man Problem
1:42:06 - Bitcoin in 10 Years: Disruption Incoming
1:43:43 - Bitcoin Is a Consensus Ponzi (and So Is All Money)
1:44:26 - The Cantillon Effect and Inflationary Money
1:47:59 - Closing: A Bitcoin Every Thousand Years
S1 E1 Remastered: Donald McIntyre on Bitcoin, The Teachings of Tim May & Nick Szabo, and the History of Money
2026/08/25
Donald Hugh McIntyre passed in 2025, but is remembered as one of the most insightful polymaths... while his blog Etherplan lives on. The episode came out in the first week of February 2019, ran two hours, and set the genetic code for Bitcoin Takeover podcast.
Time stamps:
00:02:45 – Introduction: who is Donald McIntyre
00:04:49 – Was Bitcoin inevitable?
00:06:29 – 10,000 years of top-down structures vs 3.5 million years of evolution
00:08:27 – Cypherpunks: Chaum, Tim May, Nick Szabo
00:09:43 – The ancient desire for unconfiscatable money
00:11:55 – Bitcoin as a bottom-up system
00:12:39 – Living in a dual world: banks vs private keys
00:15:02 – Trusted third parties are security holes
00:16:40 – Nick Szabo's social scalability explained
00:18:27 – Why banking excludes: the unbanked in the US and Latin America
00:20:14 – Privacy, intelligence agencies & the false sense of security
00:21:13 – Is Bitcoin enough to make people demand decentralization?
00:23:23 – Asia's interest in Ethereum Classic & immutability
00:24:51 – Mt. Gox, breaches & untrustworthy third parties
00:25:57 – Not your keys, not your coins
00:27:28 – JP Morgan's building & the marketing of strength
00:28:45 – The instant gratification bribe
00:29:58 – The tradeoff: security means inefficiency
00:31:27 – The high performance fallacy
00:32:26 – Decentralization theater & scammers
00:33:48 – Hyperbitcoinization: elites first or the people who need it?
00:36:26 – The jet set analogy: how technologies bootstrap
00:40:54 – The Lindy effect
00:41:47 – The geeks got in before the bankers
00:43:25 – The token as intrinsic to the protocol
00:46:27 – Bitcoin as a biological invention
00:47:02 – How Nick Szabo thinks (and why he went to law school)
00:48:38 – Shelling Out: the origins of money
00:51:20 – The 150-person brain & money as a bridge between strangers
00:52:39 – Dawkins & reciprocal altruism
00:53:52 – Stone tools, subjective value & the first trade
00:56:15 – Reading Szabo 30 times: one article = six months of university
01:00:52 – Lomekwi, Oldowan & Acheulean: Donald's stone tool theory
01:03:42 – Stashes of hand axes as prehistoric vaults
01:04:58 – Is money millions of years old?
01:07:51 – Darwin, Dawkins & John Maynard Smith
01:08:31 – The logic of animal conflict
01:10:53 – Territory, asymmetry & conflict minimization
01:12:08 – Money as a conflict minimization device
01:12:36 – Bitcoin's game theory & the Byzantine generals problem
01:15:32 – Chimpanzees, bipedalism & why our brains grew
01:17:19 – Bitcoin carnivores
01:17:40 – Szabo & Satoshi: the Newton-Leibniz parallel
01:19:23 – Satoshi's credits: bit gold, RPOW, Hashcash, b-money
01:19:59 – The mystery of Wei Dai
01:20:54 – Remembering Tim May
01:21:53 – The JW Weatherman interview & the CoinDesk piece
01:23:40 – Tim May as the father figure who was never satisfied
01:24:39 – Why not David Chaum? The Elixxir disappointment
01:26:35 – Never underestimate the elders
01:28:08 – What the cypherpunks built: Tor, WikiLeaks, BitTorrent
01:30:17 – Napster, Megaupload & the raid in New Zealand
01:30:30 – Cryptography as a wall: violence made useless
01:34:10 – The shifting Ethereum narrative
01:35:27 – World computer: a marketing confession
01:38:11 – The spectrum from marketers to scammers
01:39:59 – The DAO fork fight & leaving for Ethereum Classic
01:40:44 – What Ethereum Classic adds to Bitcoin
01:41:17 – Liquid & RSK: glorified trusted third parties
01:41:57 – Turing completeness on the base layer
01:43:48 – The future: four or five networks
01:44:26 – ETC's monetary policy: 210 to 230 million
01:46:19 – The 51% attack that happened that week
01:47:48 – 220,000 ETC, 15 double spends & 5,000 confirmations
01:49:15 – The $5,000 ETC thesis
01:50:37 – What happens when Ethereum moves to proof of stake
01:51:37 – ProgPoW, the issuance cut & doing everything wrong
01:52:16 – The Nick Johnson poll on reversing double spends
01:52:54 – The Parity bailout & the precedent of the DAO
01:54:53 – Bitcoin: soft forks, Schnorr & the SHA-256 exception
01:57:09 – Governments will never voluntarily give up fiat
01:59:14 – Donald's criticisms of Bitcoin
02:00:02 – The 21 million cap as a political decision
02:01:13 – The miner lobby scenario, 40 years from now
02:02:09 – Merge mining, drivechains & the super miners
02:02:14 – Miners as the future Google and Apple
02:04:46 – Paul Sztorc, Truth Coin & the guest suggestion
02:05:40 – "Do you think I have a chance with Nick Szabo?"
02:06:31 – The selfish joy of podcasting
02:09:51 – Enlightening, a Lightning pun & goodbye
S17 E39: Kurt Wuckert Jr. on BSV & Big Block Bitcoin
2026/08/23
Kurt Wuckert Jr. is best known for his work at Gorilla Pool and CoinGeek. In this interview, he explains why BSV formed from BCH, what are the biggest differences between the two versions of big block Bitcoin, and why he believes he found Satoshi Nakamoto.
00:49 – The Cake Wallet contest explained
01:22 – Who is Kurt Wuckert Jr? Print shop, 2012, and the making of a big blocker
02:07 – The OP_RETURN reduction that killed his tokenization project
03:28 – The Hodlonaut photo controversy in Oslo: Kurt's side of the story
07:02 – Vlad on the fallout: friendship, slander, and psychological damage
09:21 – The handshake Hodlonaut refused, and Kurt's public apology
12:03 – The irony: Hodlonaut now sounds like a 2016 big blocker
13:53 – Dan Kaminsky's 2011 gigabyte block slides
15:46 – Andrew DeSantis, world computer ideas before Vitalik
17:13 – Why Mike Hearn was Kurt's first big block influence
19:14 – BIP 101, 102, 103: when block size was not controversial
22:46 – Gavin's 8 GB by 2036 plan and Jeff Garzik's modest 2 MB
25:23 – Lightning, Liquid, and the migration of activity to other chains
29:03 – Vlad's Raspberry Pi Lightning node confession
30:42 – Jack Dorsey and the lightning bank thesis
32:19 – BTC's share of market cap vs its share of transactions
32:42 – Tether on Tron and the Tetheral Reserve
35:39 – IShowSpeed in Nigeria: USDT accepted, Visa declined
37:36 – Chat question: what if Michael Saylor called to pivot to BSV?
40:24 – Saylor's anti-development tweets and the perfectionism trap
41:37 – SPV debates and engineering for perfection
44:24 – Why Bitcoin Core devs do not stack
47:01 – The 2018 inflation bug disclosed by a BCH developer
48:23 – The DDoS attacks on Bitcoin XT nodes
48:58 – The Resolution of the Bitcoin Experiment and the Mike Hearn wish
51:18 – The merchant adoption Bitcoin lost
52:24 – WBTC's 120,000 BTC vs Lightning's 5,000
53:09 – Sponsors: Braiins, Cake Wallet, SideShift, OrangeRock, Ecash
59:38 – Kurt on drivechains and Paul Sztorc
1:03:36 – The BCH/BSV split: what actually happened in November 2018
1:08:08 – Rolling checkpoints and the night of the fork
1:11:46 – Where Kurt was when the chain split
1:16:47 – Kurt's coin strategy: the Satoshi index of unsplit UTXOs
1:21:10 – The Binance delisting wave and Paolo Ardoino's defense
1:24:17 – Who invests and builds in BSV: Calvin Ayre, Tokenovate, Gorilla Pool
1:31:41 – Kurt's presentation to one of the world's biggest banks
1:33:05 – What BSV can do that BCH cannot
1:37:04 – Satoshi's disabled opcodes and the 2010 value overflow bug
1:39:16 – The poker client and marketplace in Bitcoin v0.1
1:41:48 – BCH's ABLA, CashTokens, and the governance difference
1:47:39 – The Monero codebase stored on BSV
1:48:05 – The DAR and Blacklist Manager hard forks
1:51:03 – CZ's aborted Binance rollback
1:55:33 – The white paper's immutability clause vs DAR
2:03:55 – Vlad's dormant-coins nightmare scenario
2:08:33 – The Craig Wright verdict as proof the system works
2:11:56 – Does Kurt still think Craig Wright is Satoshi?
2:15:36 – Dave Kleiman, the Drive Wipe Fallacy, and the Satoshi writing style
2:23:28 – The key slices, Uyen Nguyen, and the missing thumb drives
2:27:50 – Vlad's counter: the California IP address
2:32:00 – Bitcoin as an American project
2:35:32 – Hodlonaut replies mid-show
2:36:29 – If Craig is Satoshi, why sue the developers?
2:44:57 – The Arnhem 2017 speech
2:50:56 – Craig's neurodivergence and the villain arc
2:59:23 – The Gavin Andresen signing ceremony
3:04:58 – The rental Lamborghini and the pattern of bending truth
3:12:31 – Ryan X Charles and the post-COPA denunciations
3:14:04 – Can BSV exist without Craig Wright?
3:19:24 – BitVM: Craig's Turing completeness claim vindicated
3:20:44 – The giveaway reveal: the number is 40
3:22:24 – Would Kurt work on anything else if BSV died?
3:24:46 – Monero, fungibility, and the historian job offer
3:26:43 – OPL.dev, Bitcoin Schema, Sigma Identity
3:29:01 – The Smashing Pumpkins truce
3:32:00 – The Epstein money vindication
3:35:12 – Kurt's plugs: Gorilla Pool, kurtwuckertjr.com, bopen.ai
3:36:12 – Vlad's promise: this episode goes on the BSV blockchain
3:38:00 – The Mike Hearn introduction request
3:38:15 – Outro and sponsor thanks
S17 E38: Keagan McClelland (Keags) on Lightning Metrics, Covenants, Consensus Politics & Verifying Bitcoin
2026/08/17
Keagan McClellan (Keags) co-founded Start9 Labs, worked on Sapio with Jeremy Rubin at Judica during the CTV saga, spent time at Lightning Labs maintaining LND, and is now building BTC Verified, a formal specification and verification project for Bitcoin's consensus rules written in Lean 4. He is also a self-described member of Bitcoin's "progressive wing" who nonetheless defends the rising bar for consensus changes, a pluralist who spends all his working hours on Bitcoin, and a security thinker who refused to dunk on Coldcard even while sitting across from someone who very much wanted him to.
Time stamps:
00:00 – Intro and sound check
00:27 – Introducing Keagan "Keags" McClelland
01:14 – Bitcoin origin story: darknet markets and a CS degree in 2015
03:42 – Procrastinating at Amazon by reading ICO white papers
05:11 – Leaving Amazon for Salt Lending
06:24 – How Start9 Labs was founded
07:52 – Leaving Start9 for Jeremy Rubin's Judica (Sapio)
09:47 – What CTV (formerly OP_SECURE_THE_BAG) enables
12:35 – Mastercoin's original pitch, Rare Pepes, and play before serious use
15:44 – The Lindy effect and institutional inertia
18:20 – Sponsors + giveaway rules
22:24 – The road to Lightning Labs and LND
23:55 – Lightning as a complexity class change
25:28 – Data locality, privacy, and incentives in payment channels
27:33 – The 133 MB block problem
30:20 – Scaling takes decades: internet lessons
31:24 – Centralization, Moore's law, and what scaled the web
34:58 – Zcash's Near Intents as outsourced Bitcoin privacy
37:05 – Pluralism and the freedom to transact
39:05 – The gravitational well of money
41:36 – When does a shitcoin stop being a shitcoin?
45:43 – Every soft fork since Satoshi
47:36 – The consensus wall: CTV and BIP300
51:56 – BIP 110 case study: incoherent goals, broken design
56:05 – Why information theory defeats spam filters
58:56 – Node mythology and economic weight
1:05:17 – Miners can activate invisible soft forks
1:07:18 – Luke's soft fork definition and herd immunity
1:10:45 – Chat drama and "how much Bitcoin do you own?"
1:14:15 – RBF, Bitrefill, and policy vs consensus
1:17:21 – Can fees alone secure Bitcoin? The 50% hash rate threshold
1:24:56 – Giveaway reveal: the number is 37
1:26:55 – The Coldcard exploit
1:34:10 – The AI exploit era: "cannot be affected" vs "have not been"
1:39:13 – Why the conspiracy theories teach the wrong lesson
1:42:51 – Against security through obscurity
1:47:27 – Onboarding friction and the paranoia continuum
1:55:42 – Vaults explained, and building them without CTV
2:00:42 – Pre-signed transactions, toxic waste, and Liana
2:05:45 – Would covenants have saved Coldcard users? (No)
2:16:53 – Magic wand: why Simplicity beats CTV and GSR
2:20:33 – Witness size, block size, and what BCH got right
2:24:50 – Why Bitcoin should copy homework
2:29:49 – The two hard forks: BIP 110 vs Ecash
2:33:16 – BTC Verified: formal verification of Bitcoin consensus
2:37:10 – TABConf plans
2:39:23 – Outro and sponsor thanks
S17 E37: Paul Sztorc on the eCash Three Stage Launch, Free Coins & 12 Drivechains
2026/08/13
n August 2026, eCash (ECX) comes out in its alpha phase: leading up to a final complete rollout on October 31st 2026, Bitcoin's 18th birthday. To better explain how this process will take place and why every bitcoiner should try BIP300 this Halloween, Paul Sztorc joins the show for a record-breaking 11th time!
Time stamps:
00:01:17 – Welcome: Paul Sztorc for the 11th time, a new record
00:01:42 – Four months since the hard fork announcement
00:02:00 – The three phase rollout: alpha, beta, October 31st mainnet
00:02:25 – Why the launch was delayed: summer, Coldcard hack, BIP 110
00:03:04 – Practice runs: 1,000 test coins convert to 10 real eCash
00:03:55 – Alpha & beta as successors to the drivechain testnet
00:04:25 – How to claim: your Bitcoin private key & splitting transactions
00:04:42 – The fast facts GitHub repo & replay protection
00:05:07 – Why most people should not type in their main keys
00:05:27 – Mining or buying: the other ways to get eCash
00:06:04 – Mining the alpha with SHA-256D hardware
00:06:35 – The 1000:10 conversion threshold explained
00:06:51 – Why old hardware (S9s, Bitaxes) can be profitable again
00:07:17 – The launch difficulty debate: from "difficulty 1" to real data
00:08:14 – Alpha & beta as a glimpse of future price and hash rate
00:09:34 – The other fork's struggles vs planning ahead
00:10:03 – Call to action: withdraw from exchanges, accumulate BTC
00:10:24 – The network only recognizes one owner of the coin
00:10:46 – Self custody advice in a tough summer
00:11:24 – eCash vs BIP 110: honest hard fork vs 100% hash rate claims
00:12:13 – Name picking, PoW changes & the train wreck
00:13:00 – From 5 to 7 to 12 drivechains
00:13:30 – The giveaway announcement & the sponsors
00:16:07 – Thunder: scaling to 8 billion people
00:16:32 – zSide: Zcash Orchard privacy on a drivechain
00:16:48 – BitNames, BitAssets, prediction markets, CoinShift
00:17:17 – Two EVM flavors, an OP_CAT chain & a post-EVM science project
00:18:12 – Elements Plus: Blockstream's own tech, completed by the community
00:19:26 – "How many Lightning implementations at launch?" "Hopefully zero"
00:20:11 – Lightning is a dead project, the evidence is overwhelming
00:20:45 – The giveaway: Paul picks 10, the chat said 77
00:21:17 – Recap: three stages, more drivechains, October 31st
00:22:03 – Try the tech: maximizing what Bitcoin can do
00:22:53 – Rohit wins the prize & the shortest Sztorc interview ever
00:23:59 – The autumn of forks: BIP 110 delays, eCash extends to Halloween
00:24:23 – Bitcoin's 18th birthday on the metzdowd mailing list
00:24:49 – Why drivechains: all fees go to proof of work miners
00:25:38 – Hoping a Bitcoin competitor pushes Bitcoin forward
00:28:02 – Twelve drivechains you can test today
Podcast reviews
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Wonka buds 2024/05/14
Great content!
For those who want in the crypto market, those that flourish in the market and those that are extremely successful……. THIS podcast is the true scale-t...
jackhammer2422 2024/02/04
Very good
Straight into the point and informative
alex hawn 2023/04/19
Not great
Not relevant topics. Wasabi shill
Kahsbnslslajabab 2021/11/11
One of the best bitcoin podcasts!
Love this podcast as I continue on my Bitcoin journey. Lots of relevant updates and details I need to better understand bitcoin.
BRANLEE2030 2021/10/04
Bitcoin Podcast
One of the most informative Bitcoin podcasts on the market right now— deep conversations, great guests, and intellectually stimulating
Few……
Eureka Street 2021/09/17
Wallets and life and such
Vlad is an interesting dude. I randomly found one of his written articles on Bitcoin and talked about it on YouTube. From there, I discovered him on...
SamusRaRa 2021/06/04
Best Podcast on Bitcoin!!!
Vlad is very knowledgeable on Bitcoin and it one of the best Bitcoin journalists in the space. His podcast is always a great listen. Few...
Raginggrandma 2020/03/20
Vlad can translate technical Bitcoin topics better than anyone else.
Love this podcast especially their deep dive into all the best Bitcoin Hardware wallets! Highly recommend.
Donald McIntyre 2019/03/01
Bitcoin enthusiast must
Great guests and great questions.
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