Popular Episodes

I talk with G Sovereignty, a Bitcoiner based in Hong Kong and developing applications on Nostr as well as host of the Nostrovia Podcast. We talk about a presentation that G gave titled Bitcoin vs. The State: Four Phases of War, exploring the power dynamics of Bitcoin, its security model, and the steps that the state may enact as it begins to comprehend the true implications of Bitcoin upon its exorbitant privileges. We also discuss the future of Bitcoin-powered economies and what these might look like.

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.

Nicolas Dorier is founder and maintainer of BTCPay Server as well as NBitcoin Library. We talk about the BTCPay Server roadmap for the coming year, including Bitcoin Service Provider functions, and the bigger vision for the platform. We also discuss Nicolas experience going through the Blocksize War and how it prompted the development of BTCPay Server, his approach to assessing proposed changes to Bitcoin, and how he gets his technical information. We also talk about the impact of transaction fees and Layer 2 solutions.

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.

James Scaur has a great story, first discovering Bitcoin in high school, teaching himself programming and starting a business, before going on to work at Cryptopia and Easy Crypto while travelling through Europe and Brazil. He is now launching some exciting projects including bringing ⁠Azte.co⁠ Bitcoin vouchers to New Zealand, and making Bitcoin more accessible in Te reo Māori.