John Newbery, Bitcoin Core developer and founder of Bitcoin Optech, announces an independent nonprofit organization to support Bitcoin development, Brink. Donate here.

In this episode, we discuss the formation and mandate of Brink, as well as the developer funding context that we find ourselves in. Covered in the episode: 

• John Newbery’s core developer story and how he came to found Brink
• Why John left Chaincode and struck out on his own
• Brink’s mandate and foundational purpose
• Lessons learned from the Bitcoin Foundation
• The future of Bitcoin Optech
• The state of funding for Bitcoin development
• The accessibility of Bitcoin protocol development today
• Does the existence of financial incentives cannibalize the intrinsic motivation to work on open source?
• Why John works on Bitcoin
• Why ossification might be more remote than we expect
• Whether Bitcoin’s developer funding model exposes it to corporate capture
• The political implications of Bitcoin having a sole reference implementation
• The importance of distinguishing the validation element of Bitcoin Core from the other components
• Is Bitcoin protocol dev meritocratic or technocratic?
• Why the structurelessness of Bitcoin core dev raises the barriers to entry
• Is Bitcoin protocol development adequately funded right now?
• Does developer funding equate to influence in the Bitcoin protocol development
• The dispersion of Bitcoin protocol development influence

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Joseph Jacks on On The Brink
• Bitmex Research, Who Funds Bitcoin Development?
• Nic Carter in Coindesk, Bitcoin’s Patronage System is an Unheralded Strength

Check out this episode!

Nic and Matt return for deals and news of the week. In this episode:

• Nic’s appearance on Bloomberg TV
• Is Jay Clayton’s departure good for the SEC?
• Our dark horse pick for SEC Chair
• Scaramucci’s fund considers a Bitcoin position
• Is Binance decentralized?
• How are enterprise blockchains still going?
• How Bitcoin is akin to gold in the 1970s
• Bitcoin’s changing narratives as a strength
• How our quiet rally isn’t quiet
• How to interpret the BTC inflow into GBTC
• Why digital asset interest rates are structurally high

Sponsor notes:

Withum is a forward-thinking, technology-driven advisory and accounting firm committed to helping our clients be more profitable, efficient and productive in today’s complex business environment. Our Digital Currency group is proud to partner with members of the cryptocurrency community. Get to know us at withum.com/crypto.

Sponsor notes:

Withum is a forward-thinking, technology-driven advisory and accounting firm committed to helping our clients be more profitable, efficient and productive in today’s complex business environment. Our Digital Currency group is proud to partner with members of the cryptocurrency community. Get to know us at withum.com/crypto.

Check out this episode!

Parker Lewis, head of Business Development at Unchained Capital, and author of the Gradually then Suddenly series, joins the show. In this episode: 

• Parker’s progress in our Bitcoin fantasy league
• Our views on how Bitcoin gives purpose
• Bitcoin’s relationship to the prospects for fiscal spending
• How the virus may have been an excuse to extend the fragile credit system
• Why Covid-related spending is often framed in moral, rather than economic terms
• How Bitcoin eschews academic debates
• Unchained’s mission and current product focus
• Why on-chain multisig is such a good blend of resilience and convenience
• What multisig enables in terms of bitcoin applications
• What credit in a Bitcoin economy looks like
• Bitcoin as a corporate treasury asset and how Unchained is building for that future
• Why Bitcoin custody is fundamentally hard
• Parker’s feelings on avowed Bitcoiner Cynthia Lummis being elected to the Senate
• How Bitcoin aligns with American values
• Parker’s favorite piece in his Gradually then Suddenly series

Check out this episode!

Nic and Matt return for news and deals of the week. In this episode: 

• Cred files for bankruptcy
• Why Bitcoin banking is uniquely robust
• Why we should not be discouraged by the occasional failure of Bitcoin banks
• The ECB looks to create a CBDC within 2-4 years
• Gary Gensler’s influence on the Biden administration
• XRP’s fate hangs in the balance
• Stephen Lynch’s letter to Brian Brooks criticizing his stance on crypto
• Zelle’s influence in Venezuela and the reality of crypto-dollarization
• Why crypto-dollarization is more sustainable than physical dollarization
• Our response to Ray Dalio’s critiques of Bitcoin
• Why Bitcoin can’t be ‘Order 6102’ed’ today
• Valid and less valid critiques of Bitcoin

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Nic Carter in Coindesk, The Case for Bitcoin Banking (Despite Cred’s Bankruptcy)
• Coindesk, US Representatives Rip OCC, Brooks for ‘Excessive Focus’ on Crypto
• Coindesk, Canada Tax Collector Seeks to Force Crypto Exchange Coinsquare to Fork Over Client Records
• Bloomberg, Zelle Has Turned Dollar-Starved Venezuela Into a Cashless Test Lab

Check out this episode!

Alan Lane, the CEO of Silvergate Financial joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• How Silvergate came to bank blockchain companies.
• The challenges and opportunities in providing services in this fast growing market.
• Silvergate Exchange Network – how this product is driving growth and solving customer pain points.
• Alan’s perspectives on stablecoins and how Silvergate plans to play in this area.
• Views on the long-term opportunities for digital asset custody and lending.

To learn more about Silvergate visit their website.

Sponsor notes:

Withum is a forward-thinking, technology-driven advisory and accounting firm committed to helping our clients be more profitable, efficient and productive in today’s complex business environment. Our Digital Currency group is proud to partner with members of the cryptocurrency community. Get to know us at withum.com/crypto.

Check out this episode!

Matt and Nic cover deals and the news of the week. In this episode:

• The latest on Matt’s bike saga
• Possible election outcomes and the prospect for inflation
• How Kelly Loeffer’s runoff election might affect Bitcoin
• Were prediction markets vindicated by the election?
• The government seizes $1b worth of Bitcoin
• Why the seized bitcoin is good news
• Our take on the big Blockchain Voting Debate
• Our explanation for why people are curious about blockchains for voting
• Longtime Bitcoin holder Cynthia Lummis joins the Senate
• Decentralized storage tech is reaching geopolitical levels of importance
• Why Bitcoin’s demand in 2020 might be more enduring than the demand in 2017

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Matthew Green on blockchain voting
• Benlog, Blockchain and Voting
• The USA v 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbh

Sponsor notes:

Withum is a forward-thinking, technology-driven advisory and accounting firm committed to helping our clients be more profitable, efficient and productive in today’s complex business environment. Our Digital Currency group is proud to partner with members of the cryptocurrency community. Get to know us at withum.com/crypto.

Check out this episode!

Bruce Fenton, founder of the Satoshi Roundtable and Chainstone Labs, joins the show to talk security tokens and tokens-which-are-securities. In this episode:

• About Bruce’s company Chainstone labs
• How the Bitcoin Roundtable is intertwined with Bitcoin history and the blocksize debate
• Coinbase’s ongoing rapprochement with Bitcoiners
• Why longevity is so difficult in the crypto industry
• Are we living in the most historically aggressive period in terms of regulatory oversight into the industry?
• What Bruce makes of Heath Tarbert’s comments on Ethereum
• Continuing uncertainty about the status of Ripple’s XRP – and what possible outcomes look like
• The prospects for token S1s and a genuine standard of disclosure for new issuances
• Why trying to avoid securities laws causes token issuers to create subpar instruments
• How much control do governance tokens really give tokenholders?
• Why Bitcoin isn’t sufficient to resist the state alone – and what tools are part of that toolkit
• Why the US should consider disrupting itself with regards to managing the world’s financial system
• Why some people like security tokens for the wrong reasons
• The logistical advantages of tokenizing a security
• How security tokens could open up mid-size businesses which don’t have access to capital markets

Check out this episode!

Josh Cincinnati, former Executive Director of the Zcash Foundation, joins the show to talk about his tenure at that organization, and lessons he’s taken from the experience. In this episode: 

• The genesis of the Zcash Foundation
• Prior foundation mistakes that Josh sought to avoid
• The difference between governing a non-cryptocurrency FOSS project and an open source protocol with an explicit monetary element
• Why Josh chose to step down from the Zcash Foundation
• How the monetary distribution of Zcash was initially devised and how the founder’s reward became a developer fund
• The dynamics around the trademark sharing in Zcash
• Trademarks as a last resort tool of power in blockchain governance
• How public blockchains are ‘Marxist in their goals, Leninist in their implementations’
• How the mandate of the Zcash Foundation was broader than simply the Zcash ecosystem
• The current outlook for funding Zcash development
• The subtle change in the social contract underlying development funding
• Why poorly formalized social contracts risk opening up projects to capture
• How ‘aid dependency’ is relevant to blockchain governance
• Why blockchain insiders hide the true mechanisms of power
• Why coin votes might be more of the output of power rather than the input
• Josh’s advice to a founder trying to devise funding for a novel cryptocurrency
• Why Rawls’ Veil of Ignorance is so important in determining initial conditions for a monetary protocol
• What Josh is working on now
• The story behind PonzICO.win
• Why there is no good satire in the crypto industry

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Angela Walch, Deconstructing ‘Decentralization’: Exploring the Core Claim of Crypto Systems
• James Prestwich, Zcash Dev Fund Opinions

Check out this episode!

Boaz Sobrado, data analyst and the founder of whynotcuba.com  joins the show to talk about trends in Cuban Bitcoin adoption. In this episode: 

• How Boaz came to start an ecommerce company in Cuba and how Bitcoin became relevant to him
• The structure of Bitcoin trading markets in Cuba
• How Bitcoin currently trades in Cuba
• Drivers of Bitcoin adoption in Cuba
• Why Cuba until recently hasn’t been known as an important jurisdiction for Bitcoin
• Why Cuba doesn’t show up in the typical proxies for bitcoin usage
• Why internet penetration in Cuba is accelerating Bitcoin adoption
• How Bitcoin is incorporated into the remittance flow in Cuba
• How the Cuban regime thinks about and talks about Bitcoin
• The history of Cuba’s three simultaneous sovereign currencies
• How the sovereign currency transitions are a means for the government to acquire hard currency at the expense of savers
• The key factors supporting a wave of Bitcoin adoption in Cuba today
• How Bitcoin markets permit the pricing of the black market peso rate

Content mentioned in this episode: 

• Boaz Sobrado, A Day Using Money in Cuba
• Boaz Sobrado in Decrypt, Why Cuba is Primed for Bitcoin Adoption

Check out this episode!

Larry White, economics professor at George Mason University and senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives, joins the show to discuss free banking, the history of dollarization, and the prospects for a crypto-native banking system.  

In this episode:

– Why CBDCs might not be a good idea
– The legacy of dollarization in Ecuador
– How the Scottish free banking system worked
– What would have to change for free banking to re-emerge today
– The prospects for Bitcoin banks issuing notes – and one problem with the idea
– The prospects for restoring a cash-like standard of privacy and autonomy in a digital context
– The prospects for crypto-dollarization

Check out this episode!

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week’s topics include: 

– Deals of the Week

– Dislocations in the gold markets

– The effects of the -16% difficulty adjustments in BTC

– Thoughts on the stimulus package

– Quarantine reading suggestions

and much more news of the week

Check out this episode!

Jurrien Timmer, the Director of Global Macro at Fidelity Investments, joins the podcast. In this episode we discuss: 

– Jurrien’s career trajectory and how he became the Director of Global Macro at Fidelity

– His views on the current crisis in the context of other dislocations he has seen in his 25+ year career

– Perspectives on the unprecedented interventions that we are seeing from the Federal government

– The outlook for Gold, Bitcoin and other store of value assets

– A best and worst case scenario for a recovery. 

Follow Jurrien: 

– https://www.linkedin.com/in/jurrien-timmer-fidelity/

– https://twitter.com/TimmerFidelity

Check out this episode!

David Vorick, the founder of Nebulous and the blockchain Sia, joins the show to discuss Sia and its latest layer 2, Skynet. We also cover David’s experience as an ASIC manufacturer, and what he learned about blockchain security models and the merits of ASICs versus GPUs. In this episode:

• How Sia is different from other decentralized storage platforms
• Different models for financing protocol development
• The story behind Nebulous’ settlement with the SEC
• How Skynet represents the completion of the original vision for Sia
• David’s experience manufacturing ASICs for Sia and Decred – and his clash with Bitmain
• David’s proposal to launch new blockchains with ‘protectionist’ mining in place

Check out this episode!

Open Money Initiative founder Alejandro Machado joins the show to explain how Bitcoin is actually used in Venezuela, and how the country is dollarizing in real time.

In this episode:

• How a power cut has been linked to a recent dollarization movement in Venezuela, and how dollar usage became decriminalized
• Whether dollarization has improved the prospects of everyday Venezuelans
• Why Maduro is actually in favor of partial dollarization
• How bitcoin allows you to import a system of credible property rights
• Why bitcoin still has a relatively low level of penetration in Venezuela
• Why stablecoins have not made a dent in Venezuela so far

Check out this episode!

Patrick South, VP of Development at the Chamber of Digital Commerce joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The mission of the Chamber of Digital Commerce and the policy initiatives that the organization is advocating for
• The line of demarcation between security and non-security tokens and a possible path forward for a safe harbor provision
• The potential impact of the travel rule and FATF guidelines
• Patrick’s quarantine book and show recommendations

Check out this episode!

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week’s topics include: 

– Market Commentary

– Deals of the Week

– Attestiv, Coase and other news

– Quarantine Tips

and much more news of the week

Check out this episode!

Nicos Vekiarides, the cofounder and CEO of Attestiv joins the show. Attestiv is a company that builds software to prove the authenticity of photos and videos using public blockchains to timestamp these records. In this podcast we discuss: 

– The benefits of public blockchains as public notary systems

– Use cases for deep fake detection in the insurance industry

– Tooling and user experience building on public blockchains

Learn more about Attestiv at www.attestiv.com

Check out this episode!

Douglas Jackson, the founder of E-gold, arguably the first widely-used electronic medium of exchange, appears on the show. In this episode we discuss: 

– Douglas’ motivations for starting E-gold
– His disagreements with his cypherpunk contemporaries
– Why private monetary issuers might be more responsible than public ones
– The challenge of creating an open payments system which is also compliant
– His critiques of stablecoins and native-unit cryptocurrencies

Check out this episode!

Matt and Nic from Castle Island Ventures review the top stories of the week in the cryptoasset industry. This week’s topics include: 

– Market Turmoil

– Market Infrastructure

– Deals

and much more news of the week

Check out this episode!

Jeremy Allaire, the co-founder and CEO of Circle joins the show. In this episode we discuss: 

– Jeremy’s entrepreneurial journey and the original vision for Circle

– The geopolitical impact of US Dollars on public blockchains

– The goals of USDC

– Circle Platform Services, a new product launching today

– The regulatory environment globally for cryptoassets

and much more

Check out this episode!