Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

Hosted by Vlad Costea

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Aug 2026

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On the Bitcoin Takeover podcast you're going to hear the builders and innovators who make the Bitcoin project valuable. It's thanks to their work that the BTC price goes up, and it's their efforts that convince large investors that Bitcoin is the future of money. Here you will find the projects and ideas that will radically improve Bitcoin in the future, presented by the creators and innovators themselves. Time to learn!

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August 17, 2026Episode 382 hr 40 min

S17 E38: Keagan McClelland (Keags) on Lightning Metrics, Covenants, Consensus Politics & Verifying Bitcoin

Keagan McClellan (Keags) co-founded Start9 Labs, worked on Sapio with Jeremy Rubin at Judica during the CTV saga, spent time at Lightning Labs maintaining LND, and is now building BTC Verified, a formal specification and verification project for Bitcoin's consensus rules written in Lean 4. He is also a self-described member of Bitcoin's "progressive wing" who nonetheless defends the rising bar for consensus changes, a pluralist who spends all his working hours on Bitcoin, and a security thinker who refused to dunk on Coldcard even while sitting across from someone who very much wanted him to. Time stamps: 00:00 – Intro and sound check 00:27 – Introducing Keagan "Keags" McClelland 01:14 – Bitcoin origin story: darknet markets and a CS degree in 2015 03:42 – Procrastinating at Amazon by reading ICO white papers 05:11 – Leaving Amazon for Salt Lending 06:24 – How Start9 Labs was founded 07:52 – Leaving Start9 for Jeremy Rubin's Judica (Sapio) 09:47 – What CTV (formerly OP_SECURE_THE_BAG) enables 12:35 – Mastercoin's original pitch, Rare Pepes, and play before serious use 15:44 – The Lindy effect and institutional inertia 18:20 – Sponsors + giveaway rules 22:24 – The road to Lightning Labs and LND 23:55 – Lightning as a complexity class change 25:28 – Data locality, privacy, and incentives in payment channels 27:33 – The 133 MB block problem 30:20 – Scaling takes decades: internet lessons 31:24 – Centralization, Moore's law, and what scaled the web 34:58 – Zcash's Near Intents as outsourced Bitcoin privacy 37:05 – Pluralism and the freedom to transact 39:05 – The gravitational well of money 41:36 – When does a shitcoin stop being a shitcoin? 45:43 – Every soft fork since Satoshi 47:36 – The consensus wall: CTV and BIP300 51:56 – BIP 110 case study: incoherent goals, broken design 56:05 – Why information theory defeats spam filters 58:56 – Node mythology and economic weight 1:05:17 – Miners can activate invisible soft forks 1:07:18 – Luke's soft fork definition and herd immunity 1:10:45 – Chat drama and "how much Bitcoin do you own?" 1:14:15 – RBF, Bitrefill, and policy vs consensus 1:17:21 – Can fees alone secure Bitcoin? The 50% hash rate threshold 1:24:56 – Giveaway reveal: the number is 37 1:26:55 – The Coldcard exploit 1:34:10 – The AI exploit era: "cannot be affected" vs "have not been" 1:39:13 – Why the conspiracy theories teach the wrong lesson 1:42:51 – Against security through obscurity 1:47:27 – Onboarding friction and the paranoia continuum 1:55:42 – Vaults explained, and building them without CTV 2:00:42 – Pre-signed transactions, toxic waste, and Liana 2:05:45 – Would covenants have saved Coldcard users? (No) 2:16:53 – Magic wand: why Simplicity beats CTV and GSR 2:20:33 – Witness size, block size, and what BCH got right 2:24:50 – Why Bitcoin should copy homework 2:29:49 – The two hard forks: BIP 110 vs Ecash 2:33:16 – BTC Verified: formal verification of Bitcoin consensus 2:37:10 – TABConf plans 2:39:23 – Outro and sponsor thanks

August 13, 2026Episode 3728 min

S17 E37: Paul Sztorc on the eCash Three Stage Launch, Free Coins & 12 Drivechains

n August 2026, eCash (ECX) comes out in its alpha phase: leading up to a final complete rollout on October 31st 2026, Bitcoin's 18th birthday. To better explain how this process will take place and why every bitcoiner should try BIP300 this Halloween, Paul Sztorc joins the show for a record-breaking 11th time! Time stamps: 00:01:17 – Welcome: Paul Sztorc for the 11th time, a new record 00:01:42 – Four months since the hard fork announcement 00:02:00 – The three phase rollout: alpha, beta, October 31st mainnet 00:02:25 – Why the launch was delayed: summer, Coldcard hack, BIP 110 00:03:04 – Practice runs: 1,000 test coins convert to 10 real eCash 00:03:55 – Alpha & beta as successors to the drivechain testnet 00:04:25 – How to claim: your Bitcoin private key & splitting transactions 00:04:42 – The fast facts GitHub repo & replay protection 00:05:07 – Why most people should not type in their main keys 00:05:27 – Mining or buying: the other ways to get eCash 00:06:04 – Mining the alpha with SHA-256D hardware 00:06:35 – The 1000:10 conversion threshold explained 00:06:51 – Why old hardware (S9s, Bitaxes) can be profitable again 00:07:17 – The launch difficulty debate: from "difficulty 1" to real data 00:08:14 – Alpha & beta as a glimpse of future price and hash rate 00:09:34 – The other fork's struggles vs planning ahead 00:10:03 – Call to action: withdraw from exchanges, accumulate BTC 00:10:24 – The network only recognizes one owner of the coin 00:10:46 – Self custody advice in a tough summer 00:11:24 – eCash vs BIP 110: honest hard fork vs 100% hash rate claims 00:12:13 – Name picking, PoW changes & the train wreck 00:13:00 – From 5 to 7 to 12 drivechains 00:13:30 – The giveaway announcement & the sponsors 00:16:07 – Thunder: scaling to 8 billion people 00:16:32 – zSide: Zcash Orchard privacy on a drivechain 00:16:48 – BitNames, BitAssets, prediction markets, CoinShift 00:17:17 – Two EVM flavors, an OP_CAT chain & a post-EVM science project 00:18:12 – Elements Plus: Blockstream's own tech, completed by the community 00:19:26 – "How many Lightning implementations at launch?" "Hopefully zero" 00:20:11 – Lightning is a dead project, the evidence is overwhelming 00:20:45 – The giveaway: Paul picks 10, the chat said 77 00:21:17 – Recap: three stages, more drivechains, October 31st 00:22:03 – Try the tech: maximizing what Bitcoin can do 00:22:53 – Rohit wins the prize & the shortest Sztorc interview ever 00:23:59 – The autumn of forks: BIP 110 delays, eCash extends to Halloween 00:24:23 – Bitcoin's 18th birthday on the metzdowd mailing list 00:24:49 – Why drivechains: all fees go to proof of work miners 00:25:38 – Hoping a Bitcoin competitor pushes Bitcoin forward 00:28:02 – Twelve drivechains you can test today

August 10, 2026Episode 362 hr 44 min

S17 E36: Yonatan Sompolinsky on Kaspa Covenants, DAGKnight & Coordination Markets

I met Yonatan Sompolinsky in Romania during his summer holiday, so we decided to do a roadtrip interview about covenants, the state of Kaspa development, why intents are more interesting than smart contracts & stag hunts. 00:00:54 – Intro: a road trip with Yonatan Sompolinsky 00:01:50 – Life since S16 E41: Oxford Union & the state of Kaspa 00:02:53 – Kaspa shipped covenants while Bitcoin debates OP_CAT 00:04:24 – Sequencing commitments & based apps explained 00:06:48 – Why OP_CAT alone can't do censorship-resistant based rollups 00:07:21 – BitVM & optimistic vs optimistically verified rollups 00:08:05 – ZK was born for privacy but lives for scaling 00:09:18 – "For the record, I'm very bearish on rollups" 00:12:27 – Ethereum quietly abandons the L2 roadmap 00:13:33 – What ZK is actually for: a thin L1 & separation of layers 00:15:05 – Kaspa follows Bitcoin's UTXO design principles 00:16:04 – Ephemeral logic: generalized atomic swaps 00:17:25 – Camera gymnastics & an Aston Martin 00:19:28 – What covenants won't give you: the DeFi Lego box 00:20:05 – One-time logic vs contract deployment 00:23:18 – The use case question & crypto's crisis of utility 00:26:17 – Bitcoin the turtle & the DAGKnight progress report 00:28:17 – DAGKnight: 49% Byzantine resilience, no latency parameter 00:29:50 – Why 100 BPS on GHOSTDAG would 8x confirmation times 00:30:21 – Sponsors: Cake Wallet, LayerTwo Labs, Braiins, Orange Rock & SideShift 00:34:33 – Zcash made a comeback 00:35:19 – The mental map: where Kaspa is unique 00:38:49 – Real-time decentralization: sampling the honest majority 00:39:47 – Solana & Hyperliquid: fast, but led by one 00:42:46 – Only proof of work bundles proposing & content 00:44:35 – A bear market in usage, not just price 00:45:53 – Old-world use case: bridges & oracles 00:47:22 – Tourism break: Bușteni, mascots & ski resorts 00:49:38 – Hit-and-run agents & the agentic economy 00:51:06 – Having your cake and eating it too 00:54:32 – Vlad on Ecash, miner fees & Satoshi's biggest bet 00:56:37 – Sinaia & the royal train station 00:57:38 – "Bitcoin is dead boring to me at this stage" 00:59:50 – Ironwood, verifiable supply & Tachyon 01:00:39 – Driving like six confirmations 01:01:59 – The tectonic shift nobody noticed: verifying the supply 01:03:43 – The bug & Zcash's unfixable history 01:06:04 – Kaspa's pruning vs historical correctness 01:08:12 – How Zcash's rise paves the way for Kaspa 01:09:17 – The Zooko sleeping-in-the-car story 01:10:32 – "Just launch": Zooko one day before the Sapling bug 01:12:05 – Downplaying the bug & the counterfeit scenario 01:14:34 – Peter Todd's demurrage & the Ironwood migration 01:17:25 – Would any other coin survive this? 01:18:55 – Ethereum's identity crisis 01:21:28 – Back to L1: too little, too late; Solana's cohesion 01:22:46 – Oxford Union & political ambitions 01:24:44 – Hayek: true vs false individualism 01:26:04 – The isolated individual: Lopp, Poelstra & early Bitcoiners 01:32:52 – The enthusiastic individualist 01:34:52 – Coordination markets & Project Stag Hunt 01:35:19 – Prisoner's dilemma vs stag hunt 01:36:24 – Moloch, the demon of defection 01:37:18 – Part 2: stag hunt as the optimistic game 01:42:43 – Intents & NEAR Intents 01:44:03 – Intents vs smart contracts 01:45:21 – Part 3: Rousseau's ape men 01:49:45 – Intendos: "if many sign this, consider mine signed" 01:51:44 – Example: migrating a liquidity pool together 01:53:34 – Pack formation & threshold homomorphic encryption 01:55:42 – Actionable but not committed 01:57:18 – The Netflix example: voice for the scattered majority 02:01:36 – Who are the stags we need to hunt? 02:02:11 – Minarchist, anarchist or libertarian? 02:03:32 – Stag = shared utility; escaping Ethereum's L2 mess 02:06:28 – Composable Intendos 02:07:58 – Exiting network effects 02:09:11 – The Kaspa-Ethereum overlap: GHOST & Casper 02:11:55 – "I don't like DAGs": it's just a data structure 02:12:51 – Why DAGKnight survives a world war 02:15:22 – Michael Sutton & the Argent language 02:16:58 – Bypassing the impossibility theorem 02:18:06 – Ahead of his time or poor communicator? 02:19:31 – BPS vs TPS: the shift already happened 02:21:05 – Falling between the cracks 02:23:17 – The next narrative: coordination markets 02:24:26 – Brașov to Bucharest: documenting the trip 02:25:31 – Roles reversed: Yonatan interviews Vlad 02:27:06 – ACTA protests, internet freedom & political science 02:28:53 – Sztorc's party metaphor 02:29:57 – Zcash at $30 & the Coldcard hack 02:31:40 – What Kaspa actually needs: wallets, not exchanges 02:33:56 – Broadening cypherpunk: from protective to positive 02:37:16 – What have we really accomplished? 02:39:33 – Arriving at the Palace of Parliament 02:43:57 – The secret handshake & farewell

August 1, 2026Episode 351 hr 25 min

S17 E35: Vinny Lingham on Bitcoin Post-Maximalism, Scaling Regrets & Saylor's Endgame

Vinny Lingham is a Bitcoin OG who pioneered gift card payments in 2012 with Gyft, served on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, spearheaded blockchain identity verification with CIvic, and in more recent years moved on to managing risk with Praxos Capital. Thanks to some of his accurate price predictions, Vinny has also received the nickname "The Oracle". In this episode, we talk about his Bitcoin journey and how his views have evolved over the last 14 years. Time stamps: 00:01:06 Intro & sponsors: Vinny Lingham, 15 years in Bitcoin 00:02:04 Gyft: a dozen companies and one gift card problem 00:02:26 Chargebacks, stolen cards & getting attacked by scammers 00:04:13 Why Bitcoin looked like the perfect payment rail 00:04:51 Zero-conf payments and the first-seen rule 00:05:48 The Starbucks and McDonald's signature math 00:06:51 100,000 Bitcoin payments, zero double spends 00:07:13 Civic's Bitcoin patents & the 2017 fee explosion 00:07:37 Blockstream, Adam Back, MIT and the Epstein files 00:08:10 Core keeps pruning dissenting voices 00:08:55 Why Bitcoin still can't be the whitepaper's payment system 00:09:08 Counterparty, Mastercoin & the birth of Ethereum 00:09:34 "Nothing has happened in Bitcoin in five years" 00:10:16 Why he went and backed Solana instead 00:10:23 Sympathy for BIP 110 over Core 00:11:08 Inscriptions can be done many ways 00:12:27 "Lightning will be ready in 18 months" forever 00:13:26 Drivechains, BIP 300 & the Ecash fork paying miners 00:14:44 UX, mainstream users and idiot-proof money 00:15:17 People who don't know you can hold BTC outside an ETF 00:15:27 Is the ETF the real scaling layer? 00:15:37 What Vinny signed up for when he read the whitepaper 00:16:30 Wayne Vaughn in the chat 00:16:48 Saylor's Bitcoin Security Consortium and the $15M 00:17:24 Saylor argues against bigger blocks and covenants 00:17:49 How is this different from the Bitcoin Foundation? 00:18:36 Saylor as systemic risk: crashing the minority fork 00:19:43 Losing SPV and the simplicity of early Bitcoin 00:20:48 When did you last actually use Bitcoin? 00:21:22 Six confirmations vs Apple Pay 00:21:41 Gyft's customers who had no credit cards 00:22:07 Not a store of value: a store of liquidity 00:23:24 So what is a store of value, exactly? 00:26:00 The 100 year test: one ounce of gold buys one suit 00:27:09 Does the whitepaper ever say "digital gold"? 00:27:53 Saylor's redefinition: expensive to move, held by institutions 00:28:08 Privacy, tiny payments and why volume creates stability 00:28:42 Exchanges are layer two, Lightning is layer three 00:29:06 Solana at the World Series of Poker 00:30:07 BSV, Teranode, BCH and who actually handles volume 00:30:58 Does everyone really need to run a node? 00:31:30 Luke Dashjr, 16MB blocks and 50 billion Catholics 00:33:34 Arguing with someone who redefines words 00:34:33 How did Blockstream become so politically powerful? 00:35:40 Reid Hoffman's $20 million 00:36:26 Reading the Epstein files with Bitcoin eyes 00:36:45 Tether won the global south instead 00:37:42 "The community is people who never built anything" 00:38:00 Why Elon Musk walked away from Bitcoin 00:39:07 The ESG excuse & the Bitcoin Mining Council 00:40:05 Elon on bandwidth, latency and second layers 00:41:03 Why Civic started on Bitcoin and left 00:42:05 Multicoin, the Solana seed round & founding Praxos 00:42:29 Why "Civic" and not "Supra" 00:42:46 Nobody wants identity: crypto's actual number one use case 00:44:03 Zcash's comeback, Ironwood & the auditable supply 00:45:34 Delistings and the headwinds facing privacy coins 00:46:06 Why Zcash chose DeFi rails over merchant adoption 00:47:07 How to know you're in a bear market 00:47:25 Elgamarov & how small this world really is 00:48:10 What does Vinny actually hold today? 00:49:27 Praxos: delta neutral, funding rates and volatility 00:51:44 Sponsors: Braiins, Cake Wallet, SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Orange Rock 00:54:40 Wayne Vaughn's question: will the CLARITY Act pass? 00:56:47 Michael Saylor and the Strategy problem 00:57:14 The GBTC discount scenario 00:58:16 Why August could be a bloodbath 01:01:56 Node counts, sybil attacks and hash rate 01:03:16 The rewritten history of SegWit and SegWit2x 01:04:19 How Bitcoin Cash became the fallback plan 01:04:59 Gavin Andresen and the word "bamboozled" 01:06:00 Was Craig Wright involved at all? 01:08:04 Hal Finney's logs and the Van Nuy, California IP address 01:08:55 GMX, German privacy law and the missing paper trail 01:11:17 Roger Ver, the checksum test and Craig 01:13:00 Asking Claude who Satoshi is 01:14:17 The case for Nick Szabo and the trusted third parties 01:15:31 The counterfactual: what if Bitcoin had scaled? 01:19:35 Tron, USDT and five years of outperforming BTC 01:20:09 Bitcoiners understand supply, not demand 01:20:36 What happens when the block rewards run out 01:21:15 Rentable SHA256 and the state actor attack scenario 01:22:54 Will Vinny claim the August fork airdrops?

July 30, 2026Episode 341 hr 15 min

S17 E34: Cory Klippsten on Bitcoin Cafe, Swan & Big Bitcoin

Cory Klippsten is the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, the promoter and former adviser of the Sequans BTC treasury, and also a big advocate for bitcoin-only maximalism. In this episode, we catch up on what's been going on over the last year in Bitcoin. Time stamps: 00:01:59 – The challenges and failures of leveraged Bitcoin equity strategies in the U.S., referencing companies like Sequans, Strike, and Strategy. 00:04:48 – Swan and the relaunch of "Bitcoin Cafe," a daily show that started on Clubhouse and later moved to Twitter. 00:05:48 – Cory introduces his new framework for understanding Bitcoin adoption, inspired by recent government actions, and frames it as a generational fight for monetary independence and freedom. 00:10:41 – Cory outlines Swan’s mission to promote Bitcoin adoption and self-custody, highlighting their "50 Days for Freedom" campaign with reduced fees to encourage participation. 00:14:39 – Cory shares stories from his grandfather’s WWII journal, drawing parallels between maintaining calm and responsibility during wartime and navigating challenging times in Bitcoin. 00:18:56 – Cory responds to a viewer’s question about his compensation for advising Sequans, disclosing that he received stock options and a small cash retainer. 00:22:09 – August 2026 Bitcoin hard forks & their economic impact. 00:29:25 – Cory explains his perspective on Bitcoin’s adoption, describing it as progressing through three sequential S-curves: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account. 00:30:33 – Cory voices skepticism about the new Bitcoin Development Consortium, particularly regarding the proposal to freeze Satoshi’s coins as part of their funding approach. 00:35:51 – The conversation addresses the increasing corporate and crypto-focused sponsorship of Bitcoin conferences, using the Las Vegas event as an example of this shift. 00:43:21 – Cory reflects on the evolution of Bitcoin content creation, contrasting the high-signal era of 2018 with today’s prevalence of AI-generated, lower-quality material. 01:02:51 – Cory explains Swan’s business model, emphasizing the separation of brokerage and custody to promote self-custody and ensure alignment with user interests. 01:09:26 – Cory discusses Swan’s ongoing educational initiatives, including the Swan Canon learning modules and the release of the "Bitcoin Season" documentary.

July 26, 2026Episode 334 hr 51 min

S17 E33: Joël Valenzuela on Being Unbanked with Private Digital Cash

Ever since he first received his first bitcoin in 2013, Joël Valenzuela has been on a quest to use free market electronic cash to pay for everything. Today, he is still unbanked and looking for ways to make instant payments without a bank account. He is best known for working for the DASH cryptocurrency project. But over the years, he's collaborated with plenty of other projects (mostly those related with private payments) and he possesses a wealth of knowledge in terms of adoption, everyday use as money, and user experience. Since Joël practices what he preaches and lives without fiat or banks, he is a bona fide advocate of inconvenience: using ATMs, purchasing gift cards, and trying every workaround that helps him accomplish the mission of never using fiat currencies. 00:00:00 Intro & sponsors: living without banks with Joël Valenzuela 00:02:18 The Vlad Costea handle saga & paying X to keep your name 00:04:20 Where the "Desert Lynx" name actually comes from 00:09:04 Joël's origin story: how Peter Schiff led him to Bitcoin 00:10:16 Growing up on the border & the Mexican peso crisis 00:12:16 First Bitcoin: the Chicago pizza payback of 2013 00:14:27 Silk Road's shutdown & the chaos of the Mt. Gox era 00:18:11 Digital cash vs. hoarding: the sound money mindset 00:20:54 Earning only Bitcoin: barn work, airport rides & Porkfest 00:22:47 Declining a dream political job to go all-in on crypto 00:24:39 The bank drain that made him unbanked for good 00:26:45 Centralization risk & the tyranny of the algorithm 00:31:38 TikTok's eerily accurate (and creepy) surveillance 00:33:32 Sponsor reads & the Cake Wallet Zcash giveaway 00:37:10 Bitcoin to Dash: exploring the whole crypto space 00:41:12 Mike Hearn's "Bitcoin is a failed project" rage quit 00:42:19 Bitcoin's usability failures: the pants & coffee stories 00:46:48 Picking Dash off CoinMarketCap as usable money 00:50:44 Dash founders: Evan Duffield & Amanda B. Johnson 00:55:20 Fluffy Pony, "Dash is trash" & the Miami strip-club drama 00:59:54 Reading the hate comments: the "premine cabal" 01:01:11 Litecoin's alleged inflation bug & Charlie Lee 01:04:07 Did Dash have a premine? The actual definition 01:13:09 Xcoin to Darkcoin to Dash: the name evolution 01:15:32 Master nodes, InstantSend & deterministic finality 01:18:18 The self-funding DAO treasury explained 01:22:01 Max Kaiser, John McAfee & the paid-shill era 01:29:43 What made Satoshi different & the genesis block message 01:33:57 Roger Ver, linear thinking & money as a tool 01:37:39 The 6.15 BTC "generational wealth" meme 01:41:47 BCH Bliss & why small conferences beat the corporate ones 01:46:00 Bitcoin forks: are all these coins really "bitcoins"? 01:50:54 Dash tech history: proof of service & chain locks 01:53:22 Evolution: the enshrined sidechain & DAPI 02:00:24 Adding Zcash-level privacy: the Orchard shielded pool 02:05:17 Orchard vs. Ironwood & the inflation-bug question 02:09:50 Turnstiles: why an inflation bug can't kill Dash 02:11:50 Monero's FCMP++ & why its privacy is "perishable" 02:16:56 Privacy UX, MiCA rules & unshielding to exchanges 02:23:22 Which wallets will support shielded Dash 02:27:34 Umbrel, Lightning & the pain of self-hosting 02:28:44 The for-profit ecosystem & the $15M dev "consortium" 02:34:53 Zcash's comeback: from industry joke to spotlight 02:37:23 Routing around fiat: Thorchain, Maya & DEXes 02:46:59 The number reveal & socializing the giveaway 02:50:02 Privacy as consent, not secrecy 02:51:49 The real challenges of living unbanked 02:58:35 Local AI models & maxing out privacy you don't need 03:04:31 Getting cancelled & how Zooko unblocked Vlad 03:13:03 Demaximizing & the toxic privacy-coin wars 03:21:35 When Zcash nearly built on Monero 03:25:45 Quai Network & transparent "cash-like" privacy 03:32:38 Why Dash focused on payments, not smart contracts 03:36:31 Crypto's consolidation: projects quietly going to zero 03:42:12 XEC, Amaury & bootstrapping off a fork 03:57:47 Monero vs. Zcash: marketing, memes & narratives 04:02:46 Why Joel really lives on crypto: getting real data 04:04:58 "Use it or die": the end of the narrative cycle 04:06:41 The private-equity playbook for buying dying coins 04:11:27 Why Dash is too decentralized to acquire 04:15:49 Which chains get acquired and shut down next 04:24:01 Neptune Cash, Neptune Dash & the first-ever DAT 04:36:57 The Charlie Shrem Dash debit card saga 04:38:46 Tone Vays & other Bitcoiners who dabbled in Dash 04:43:15 Cypherpunk Week Amsterdam & DashCon 04:50:56 Secret Word

July 22, 2026Episode 321 hr 53 min

S17 E32: Perry E. Metzger on Bitcoin in 2008, Cypherpunk Culture & AI Optimism

S17 E32: Perry E. Metzger on Bitcoin in 2008, Cypherpunk Culture & AI Optimism Time stamps: 00:00:50 - Introducing Perry E. Metzger 00:03:06 - Perry Metzger's Background 00:06:04 - The Cryptography Mailing List's Origins 00:07:36 - "The Code Breakers" & Early Influences in Cryptography 00:11:19 - The Cypherpunks Era and PGP 00:22:08 - The State of Cryptography in 2008 00:24:20 - Satoshi's Bitcoin Announcement on Metzdowd 00:28:52 - Bitcoin's Key Innovations 00:32:39 - Critique of Proof of Work 00:36:21 - Sponsors 00:40:10 - Scalability and Future Challenges 00:48:41 - Initial Reactions to Bitcoin 00:51:21 - Early Criticisms of Bitcoin from James A. Donald & Ray Dillinger 01:05:16 - Perry's Moderation of the Bitcoin Discussion 01:08:16 - Satoshi's Anonymity and Mailing List Logs 01:11:19 - Perry's Comic Book on Computer Science 01:16:13 - The Metzger Dowdeswell Mailing List Today 01:23:04 - Perry's Interest in AI 01:47:03 - AI Advocacy and Combating "Doomers" 01:49:19 - The Extropy Mailing List 01:51:01 - Conclusion and How to Follow Perry Metzger

July 2, 2026Episode 314 hr 6 min

S17 E31: Alex Waltz Reveals Bitcoin's First Miner

Alex Waltz is a prominent Bitcoin historian and film maker, who specializes in digging up information from the first months of Bitcoin's existence. Recently, he launched the ”First Bitcoin Miner” project in order to question whether or not Hal Finney truly was the second mining node on the Bitcoin network. In this episode, we talk about his work and some geeky facts about Bitcoin's history. Read Bitcoin: Year One (free download): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Bitcoin-Year-One-Vlad-Costea-Ani-Comic-Book-Demo.pdf Read Alex's research: https://1stbitcoinminer.com Sponsors: Proudly sponsored by Orangerock.com: Trade Without Limits Orangerock is the pro trading terminal that fits in your pocket. Perps and spot, instant cross-chain swaps, and a self-custodial wallet. Trade crypto, stocks, and commodities with up to 40x leverage. Your keys, no surveillance. Get app: https://go.orangerock.com/bitcoin-takeover Sideshift, the place where you can exchange your stablecoins for unconfiscatable, free market money: https://sideshift.ai LayerTwo Labs, creators of BIP300 and builders of the Drivechain. Now they're hard forking Bitcoin to create Ecash too: https://ecash.com Cake Wallet, your privacy-friendly self-custody companion. Enables silent payments, PayJoins & Lightning for Bitcoin. Also supports Monero, Zcash, Zano & more. Available on desktop & mobile: https://cakewallet.com Time stamps: 00:00:41 Introducing Alex Waltz & His Projects 00:03:34 The Philosophy of Art and Filmmaking 00:05:18 Alex's Research for "First Bitcoin Miner" 00:09:28 The First Bitcoin Miners: Hal Finney vs. Dustin Trammell 00:14:37 Early Bitcoin History and Cypherpunk Involvement 00:21:28 Debating Sergio Lerner's "Patoshi" Research 00:25:39 The Technicals of the Patoshi Pattern 00:37:30 Zcash Giveaway Announcement 00:40:10 The Research Process and Dedication 00:43:11 Analyzing Early Bitcoin Block Times 00:50:35 Explaining the Extra Nonce and Network Halts 01:10:18 Satoshi Was in California? 01:25:49 Why This Research Matters 01:36:18 Feedback and Cinematography 01:49:25 The "Satoshi's Don't Exist" Movie Saga 02:00:41 The Bitcoin Community: Then and Now 02:18:43 The "Knots" Fork Controversy & Moral Panic 02:30:39 The Future of Bitcoin Development 02:34:38 Bitcoin's Use Case: Payments vs. Store of Value 02:46:33 What Is The Point of Bitcoin? 02:56:38 Alex's First Bitcoin Purchase 03:00:38 Early Bitcoin Wallets 03:16:20 Mircea Popescu: A Bitcoin Legend 03:48:07 Growing Up in 90s Romania 04:00:48 Final Message: Take Risks and Build

June 27, 2026Episode 301 hr 28 min

S17 E30: Martin Matejka on Firefish, BTC-backed Loans & Bitcoin's Purpose

Martin Matejka is the CEO of Firefish, a company which offers a platform where BTC holders can connect with fiat borrowers in order to achieve the ”never sell your bitcoin” status. In this episode, we talk about how these BTC-backed loans work, and also pursue a more philosophical conversation about the purpose of Bitcoin and whether or not it's currently achieving it. Sponsors: Proudly sponsored by Orangerock.com: Trade Without Limits Orangerock is the pro trading terminal that fits in your pocket. Perps and spot, instant cross-chain swaps, and a self-custodial wallet. Trade crypto, stocks, and commodities with up to 40x leverage. Your keys, no surveillance. Get app: https://go.orangerock.com/bitcoin-takeover Sideshift, the place where you can exchange your stablecoins for unconfiscatable, free market money: https://sideshift.ai LayerTwo Labs, creators of BIP300 and builders of the Drivechain. Now they're hard forking Bitcoin to create Ecash too: https://ecash.com Cake Wallet, your privacy-friendly self-custody companion. Enables silent payments, PayJoins & Lightning for Bitcoin. Also supports Monero, Zcash, Zano & more. Available on desktop & mobile: https://cakewallet.com Time stamps: 00:01:14 Intro & sponsors: meet Martin Matejka of Firefish 00:02:11 "Making Bitcoin lending right this time": BlockFi & Celsius PTSD 00:02:53 How the loan marketplace works in a nutshell 00:03:36 The book: "Bitcoin, the Ultimate Collateral" 00:04:31 Why Bitcoin as collateral vs. digital cash 00:05:17 The Elon Musk playbook: borrow, don't sell 00:06:55 "Once I stopped seeing Bitcoin as an investment, life got better" 00:07:24 Being short fiat: the mortgage mindset 00:08:24 Vlad's pushback: spending fuels the system & miner fees 00:09:35 Liquidation risk & timing loans to the market cycle 00:12:14 Staying safe: 50% LTV and "a machine gun in your hands" 00:13:35 Coming soon: loans with no liquidation mechanism 00:15:17 Why Bitcoin-backed loans are still too expensive 00:16:00 Scaling up: 27,000 users, $160M loans, 4,500 BTC 00:17:05 "Almost as much Bitcoin as the Lightning Network" 00:20:22 Why he founded Firefish: a finance guy's contribution 00:21:38 Firefish explained simply: the marketplace model 00:23:12 The tech: escrow, presigned transactions & DLC-like logic 00:24:41 The "zombie apocalypse" recovery transaction 00:26:06 What's the catch? Avoiding the "trust me bro" mandate 00:28:11 Preventing rehypothecation via Bitcoin itself 00:28:45 How Firefish makes money: the origination fee 00:29:33 Promo code BTCTKVR for 30% lower fees on Firefish 00:30:50 Bitcoin-native DeFi vs. bridging & wrapping 00:32:07 Stablecoins, currencies & US availability 00:34:09 Cypherpunk loan settlement & the dispute mechanism 00:37:37 Why 3-of-3 multisig instead of 2-of-3 00:38:31 Oracles, ephemeral borrower keys & how signing works 00:40:01 Lenders need no keys: "my parents can fund loans" 00:40:32 Beating bonds: outperforming bank deposits & tax-free loans 00:42:37 Zcash giveaway & a seed-phrase security lesson 00:45:30 Sponsors: Bitcoin.com News & Layer 2 Labs drivechains 00:48:01 Debate: is Bitcoin just software that should improve? 00:50:58 Austrian economics & "crashing the central banks" 00:51:32 The paper Bitcoin debate: gold's financialization 00:53:29 Trust minimization, Nick Szabo & God protocols 00:55:10 Covenants & understanding both sides of Bitcoin's civil war 01:00:42 The spam/filtering debate & permissionless transactions 01:02:33 Satoshi's Genesis block message & arbitrary data history 01:06:09 "We're stuck debating spam" — limited supply as core value 01:08:15 The underrated educational value of Bitcoin 01:09:21 Where did the newcomers go? ETFs vs. real adoption 01:10:12 How to make Bitcoin cool again & the FTX taint 01:11:46 Eulogy for Paralelni Polis / Institute of Cryptoanarchy 01:15:44 Grandma's savings destroyed by inflation 01:17:05 The wedding money & the car that never came 01:18:03 Inflation is a much deeper problem than the CPI 01:20:24 The worst thing for Bitcoin: losing its identity 01:21:42 "Do you know what Zcash is?" Privacy vs. fixed supply 01:22:42 Competition & shitcoins: the jealousy analogy 01:23:28 Losing dominance & the Bitcoin Cash profitability metric 01:25:11 Sponsor: SideShift.ai for stablecoin swaps 01:26:11 Why try Firefish today? Rates as low as 5% 01:28:38 Closing thoughts & farewell

June 19, 2026Episode 292 hr 12 min

S17 E29: Grafton Clark on Vibe Coding, Privacy & Bitcoin Culture

Grafton Clark is best known in the Bitcoin space for his work at SatoshiLabs and Vexl. But more recently, he discovered vibe coding and completely fell in love with it. In this episode, we talk about all the cool stuff you can just build with help from AI... and where Bitcoin fits into this equation. Hopefully, this dialogue will inspire you to create something cool, that reignites your love for computers. Time stamps: 00:00:36 Intro: Grafton on freedom of transactions & cash 00:01:45 Breaking FUD: onboarding a friend through gaming 00:03:13 Writing for humans or for AI to summarize? 00:05:40 The internet's resurgence & discovering Nostr 00:07:42 Digital ID & age verification fears 00:08:03 Gem: the "Cool For Free" iPod scheme story 00:09:30 Cake Wallet Zcash giveaway setup 00:10:14 "I don't want hardware anymore" — build your own tools 00:12:04 Building an Apple Watch live-music app in 3 days 00:13:28 Roadstr, mesh networks & freedom tech 00:16:27 The vibe coding debate 00:20:18 Grafton's setup: Mac Mini, OpenClaw & self-hosting 00:23:25 Taming a giant live-music library with AI 00:25:35 Learning vs regurgitating: AI and education 00:26:38 Two sides of everything: Bitcoiners love to argue 00:28:28 Why a Zcash giveaway? Zerocash history explained 00:30:03 "That was the whole idea of maximalism" 00:30:48 The Monero address troll 00:32:20 Sending Zcash via Cake Wallet 00:33:22 No CEO, no HR: why Satoshi disappearing matters 00:35:08 Zcash vs Monero: comparing the privacy tech 00:36:46 The culture problem: HODLing vs spending 00:40:03 Hot take: "If you don't use Bitcoin as money, it's a Ponzi" 00:40:47 Michael Saylor, pizza day & the Manhattan quote 00:41:57 Pokemon cards & what makes a "real" Bitcoiner 00:43:21 Buying a Nintendo Switch with Bitcoin 00:44:35 Find "digital gold" in the white paper 00:46:36 Satoshi never envisioned KYC 00:48:14 Gem: privacy means "dance like no one's watching" 00:51:08 The Hawk Tuah girl & normalizing overexposure 00:54:25 Brands as verbs & Gen Z's "ask chat" 00:57:05 Millennials, analog cravings & LLM imperfections 00:59:01 Futurama, AI dependence & moving to a farm 01:01:09 Impostor syndrome & the meaning of work 01:02:46 UBI, Idiocracy & doomscrolling 01:04:31 Gem: the Super Bowl's most powerful ad 01:06:35 Is today's propaganda any different? 01:07:44 AI voice-cloning scams & protecting your parents 01:10:24 Data leaks, KYC & living life in public 01:12:08 Building forts, kids' dreams & role models today 01:17:26 Building an empire from the bedroom: EA & N64 01:18:47 Grafton's mom, the video game champion 01:21:18 Community, church & Hurricane Katrina 01:24:58 Work from home vs real socialization 01:26:46 "Is this still a Bitcoin podcast?" Does Bitcoin fix it? 01:30:01 Spend it, earn it: value for value & Juraj Bednar 01:33:31 Why onboarding friends so often fails (& Dentacoin) 01:37:08 Bitcoin is the revenge of the nerds 01:39:16 Mississippi roots & cowboy boots in Europe 01:45:04 Bitcoin.com news 01:46:26 Layer Two Labs & drivechains 01:47:17 SideShift.ai for stablecoin payments 01:48:33 Vexl: peer-to-peer, face-to-face Bitcoin trading 01:50:37 KYC kills: kidnappings & "kill your customer" 01:53:35 Coinbase & Binance KYC leaks 01:54:19 Why Saylor doesn't represent every Bitcoiner 01:56:02 Why base-layer privacy ends the Knots debate 01:57:05 AI eating Bitcoin mining & US hash rate 02:01:27 MiCA is killing European Bitcoin adoption 02:05:33 Gem: grandpa's secret $20 & why cash matters 02:07:07 Switzerland, Alexis Roussel & the right to a human 02:10:05 Privacy as the major concern with AI 02:11:18 Where to find Grafton's open source projects