Popular Episodes

I talk with Christian Lewe from Blockstream Research. Christian is working on Simplicity, a more robust programming language designed as an alternative to Bitcoin Script. The project that has been in the works for over ten years and has been described by Adam Back as “the last soft fork”, and as Christian shares, enabling simplicity could bypass a lot of the contentious soft fork discussions about things like covenants as this functionality is possible with Simplicity.

I talk with Kieran Nolan and Chris Pollard, two Bitcoiners based in Melbourne, Australia. Kieran Nolan is a Bitcoin educator. He is the technology specialist at a primary school in Australia, teaching Bitcoin and STEM topics, including getting Andreas Antonopoulos to do a video lesson with his students Kieran is also part of the theschoolofbitcoin.com, blockchain academy international, and other projects. Chris Pollard join us a little bit later on the episode and is active in helping organise the Bitcoin meetups in Melbourne, running bitcoinonly.store, as well leading a new project to create a permanent bitcoin space: unspent.space. With both my guests I was blown away by the range of impactful projects they are working on.

Prince Filip of Serbia is a prominent Bitcoiner, and Chief Strategy Officer at Jan3. We talk about Prince Filip's work at Jan3 engaging in high-level conversations about Bitcoin with nation-state leaders as well as his thoughts on monarchy, democracy, and culture. We discuss the role of Bitcoin and sound money and the chance presented for smaller countries such as Serbia and New Zealand to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. I also extend an invitation to Prince Filip and the Jan3 team to come visit and help spread awareness about what Bitcoin could mean for New Zealand, in particular its connection to energy and infrastructure.

Blair Walter is the Renewable Energy Leader at Aurecon, a global design, engineering, and advisory firm. He is also the Chair of the New Zealand Wind Energy Association. Blair shares his experience developing and financing renewable energy projects globally, and the opportunities that he sees for Bitcoin mining to accompany the build-out of new energy assets and infrastructure.

I talk with Brett Scott, author of The Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance and Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto and the War for our Wallets. Brett does a lot of work supporting the protection of physical cash, and I reached out to him about an article he wrote “The War On Informality” which explores the implication of financial surveillance by credit cards and private banks.This is a thought-provoking episode. We explore the Commodity Theory of Money vs Credit Theory of Money, power dynamics, the importance of cash, and more. Brett offers some interesting critiques of certain Bitcoin narratives and provides some alternative frameworks for looking at how money works.