Popular Episodes

I speak with Brad Loewen, host of Beyond the Price, exploring Bitcoin adoption in East Asia. Brad and I both attended the Bitcoin Asia conference in Hong Kong recently, organised by BTC Inc, the same company behind Bitcoin Miami, Bitcoin Amsterdam, Bitcoin Magazine, along with their investment arm UTXO Management. Now it was clear that there would be some ordinal-related discussions at the conference which I wanted to verify for myself, however I was not expecting the sheer degree of emphasis on these, as well as the overall VC, compliance & KYC, public mining, and financial services direction of the conference. As we explore, I have come to question BTC Inc's motivations, their choice of sponsors and programming, and their commitment to Bitcoin as freedom and privacy tech.

A down-to-earth and impromptu catchup with HG, a local Bitcoiner from Christchurch who flew up to be at the Bitkiwi meetup in Wellington recently. We discuss Bitcoin in NZ, local initiatives, and who we think is the one kiwi we would like to see get orange pilled!

I talk with Konrad Hurren, a New Zealand Economist. We cover a lot of topics, looking at Austrian economics and how it can be considered in a New Zealand context, the challenges and inherent biases with trying to measure an economy with things like GDP and CPI, and the difference between the science and practice of economics.

Brandon Bucher is a Bitcoiner based in New Zealand working on several Bitcoin-related projects and an important figure in the local Kiwi Bitcoin community. We zoom out to discuss the recent high on-chain transaction fees, and what we can expect from discussions about scaling solutions moving forward. We talk about how rough consensus works for making changes to Bitcoin and what the situation was like during the period of the Blocksize Wars and SegWit activation from 2015 to 2017. Finally we discuss the importance of education and support for self-custody of bitcoin.

I talk with Paul from Bitkiwi, a small dedicated group organising Bitcoin events in New Zealand. Bitkiwi's first two in-person events in Wellington went well, with people coming from across the country to attend. More meetups are scheduled for 2023. Follow Bitkiwi on Twitter at @Bitkiwi1 for the latest.