Popular Episodes

Sam Kivi is the CTO and Director at Grid Share, a New Zealand company building flexible load infrastructure centred around renewable energy and Bitcoin mining. We talk about how flexible load works, and the benefits that it provides to the power grid, how it interacts with renewable power generation, and what the opportunities and challenges are, given New Zealand’s unique energy mix. We also discuss the emerging opportunities for landfill methane capture, and what it actually takes to put in the proof of work to stand up a mining operation as Grid Share have done. Sam also shares a new initiative from the company, offering hosting services for Bitcoin miners in New Zealand.

Win Ko Ko Aung is a refugee from Myanmar formerly known as Burma, Human Rights fellow at the Bitcoin policy institute, as well as associate at the Human Rights Foundation. Win shares the story of the ongoing civil war in Myanmar under the control of the military junta and the crackdowns and human rights abuses that are taking place. Win also talks about how Bitcoin helped him escape Myanmar, what it can mean for the people, as well as some of the real infrastructure and tech challenges people face trying to get their money out of the country.

I talk with Rob Clarkson about scaling Bitcoin’s Layer 2 Lightning protocol, and how changes happen to Bitcoin more generally. Rob provides a technical introduction to some of the proposals such as ELTOO, APO, CTV, and we talk a bit about what covenants and vaults mean in Bitcoin.

I talk with Kieran Nolan about his work combining Bitcoin, teaching, and open-source technology. Kieran’s official role is STEM Wizard, teaching at a primary school in Melbourne, Australia. He has been able to bring tech and learning together into the classroom, including helping kids to run Bitcoin nodes, building projects on Nostr, setting up Minecraft servers with other schools, and more. We discuss teaching and learning, and how kids can be better equiped for our rapidly changing world as well as the challenges with bureaucracy and standards-based education in government schools. Kieran is involved in a huge range of other Bitcoin and education projects including the Mornington Peninsula Bitcoin Group, The School of Bitcoin, the Digital Playhouse Foundation, and more.

In this episode I talk with Faris Mali about his journey growing up in the Middle East and North Africa, working in the academic world in Australia, and his upcoming book ‘Bitcoin Begins, beginner's guide to money, currency and Bitcoin’. Faris is the co-host of ⁠The Bitcoin Basics Podcast⁠, based out of Nelson, New Zealand and he also runs a company providing info about Bitcoin risk mitigation.