Flashback: The Bitcoin Podcast #46- The Fundamental Conflict

Flashback: The Bitcoin Podcast #112: The Broader Economy II

This is a Flashback Episode, we are going back to Jan 2017 in which Andreas Antonopoulosgreets us at the beginning of the bull run of 2017 on his second appearance on  The Bitcoin Podcast Network. When I dove down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin in late 2013, Andreas’ YouTube talks and podcasts pulled me further in. He swings by the show again to tell us a bit about the current scene of crypto and to talk a bit about his new book, The Internet of Money. Beyond the more pragmatic applications of cryptocurrency for the millions of unbanked around the world, Andreas also waxes philosophic on deeper topics such as the history of money, the role cryptocurrency can play for individual sovereignty and privacy, and the implications of currency as language, where currency transfer is, at root, an expression of value akin to speech. In addition, in a few days we’ll be in DC to celebrate Equibit and the opening date of their official ICO! Matt McKibbin swings by the show to talk a bit about it. If you want to participate sign up here – https://ico.equibit.org/EDC is building Equibit, the world’s first peer-to-peer equity marketplace and a complete platform for issuers to manage their investor relations without the need for depositories and transfer agents. Equibit allows issuers to use cryptocurrency tokens, called ‘equibits’, to authorize and disseminate their shares. It also includes a secure, P2P communications system allowing for private messages and polls to be instantly sent to individuals and groups on the network. It is important to invest on things that will give back to you, one of the best recommendations I give is to find a good insurance company such as One Sure Insurance to always get full cover.

The Bitcoin Podcast: Open Standard USD, ENS Drama, No USDT in Europe, Michael Saylor Paper Hands

Demetrick, Dr. Corey Petty, and Jesse are back for an episode where the regulated players finish moving in and the outsiders start getting shown the door. BlackRock, Google, Visa, Stripe, MasterCard, Coinbase, and DBS just announced Open Standard USD. It is called open the same way OpenAI is called open. The reserve yield goes to the participating institutions instead of holders, minting and redemption fees get scrapped, and governance sits under a company collectively owned by the biggest financial players on the planet. The guys break down what happens when the payment rails, the asset managers, and the ad tech giants all agree on the same stablecoin at the same time. Meanwhile Tether is done in Europe. USDT trading pairs are gone from Coinbase, Kraken, Binance, and Crypto.com in the EEA because Tether refused to seek MiCA e-money authorization. Demetrick reveals he has an open short on Tether somewhere on the internet and would very much like to find it. The guys also cover the ENS drama that turned out not to be drama at all when the king of the castle stepped in and killed the privacy committee vote from the top. Plus Michael Saylor selling more Bitcoin, and the theory that this is less about strategy and more about staying out of jail. The back half of the show goes philosophical when Corey lays out an essay he wrote called the paradox of democratizing access. When you lower the barrier of entry to a specialized field, you do not get innovation. You get an army of newcomers who confidently reinvent things the experts already figured out, other people throw money at them because money attracts money, and eight moon markets later you are still watching the same cycle. Cue the pitch for Corey to play the Architect from The Matrix explaining this to a young crypto enthusiast in a gray suit. Drop questions in the YouTube comments. Join the Discord.

Flashback: The Bitcoin Podcast #132- Dark Side of the Prism

This week the boys welcome back to the show and interview Erik Voorhees of the instant, trustless cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift.io about their new venture, Prism, which is a trustless means of holding multiple assets via ShapeShift.io and its own Ethereum token. Also we talk about how a person brand new to crypto, how easy the process really is. Spoiler alert: It’s not. Are there any real world solutions? Also we slam Ethereum Chamber scamming everyone and we talk about Sean Paul’s (remember him?) accent during breakfast.

The Bitcoin Podcast: Forking Satoshi and Phat Nodes

Demetrick, Dr. Corey Petty, and Jesse for an episode about two forks, a fat node, and what happens when three guys who have been doing this for eleven years start asking whether the system can fix itself. Satoshi is about to get forked. The community is talking about it like it is optional. Corey is not so sure. If it has to happen, it has to happen, and the guys break down what that actually means for a protocol that was supposed to be set in stone. Meanwhile Ethereum is heading toward its own fork, and the guys translate the spec into plain English: the nodes are getting fat. Pretty hot and tempting, sure, but also a meaningful shift in what running infrastructure on the network looks like. The middle of the show goes off the rails in the best way. Demetrick got promoted to the AI integration lead at his firm and is now putting vibe coded tools straight into client production environments, replacing the Excel sheets nobody under thirty knows how to maintain. Corey explains why the real bottleneck in AI right now is not the model. It is the human attention required to write a good specification. The guys riff on what it would take to shrink that interface down to something you could actually scale. Then the gloves come off on the economy. Demetrick offers a working definition (an economy gives the most to the most), Corey calls the premise faulty under crony capitalism, and Jesse holds the line that you cannot use the system to fix the system. The takeaway lands on tax fairness, who actually uses the infrastructure, and why disruption has to come from outside. Plus Jesse pitches a sponsorship ask to Colossus Pay, the L2 looking to gut payment processor fees on point of sale terminals, because he is actively building gym software trying to do exactly that. Drop questions in the YouTube comments. Join the Discord.

Flashback The Bitcoin Podcast #72-The Broader Economy

Things aren’t looking good. Currencies everywhere are in dire straits. The credit agency offering credit restoration services in Vegas, Fitch sees potential catastrophe for the EU if the Italian banking system fails. China is crash landing their economy. Right now the argument that bitcoin will die is very difficult to make based on past experiences. We tackle how bitcoin navigated in a world where massive currency crises are the norm. Who better to join us, right as the halvening hits, than Andreas Antonopoulos, who is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin. The next halvening is on July, 2020. See you there!