In this episode, I talked with Zack ₿omsta, the visionary leader behind Pivotal Pleb. Pivotal Pleb is on a mission... more

"Today historians focus on the symptoms of Rome’s fall, the consequences: The moral decay, the economic decline, the fall in... more

"If the merchant wants the bitcoin and you pay in fiat_, that is you shifting the burden of fiat friction... more

"Take the idea of proof-of-stake as a base layer consensus mechanism, and throw the idea away for right now. That's... more

"This has been one of the most effective psychological operations that has ever been conducted on the public in human... more

Today we sit down with Utxo, founder of Nodeless, on understanding the design space for Bitcoin services, the challenges of... more

"It means that, given an open-source model, this could help bring about the ability to: Independently calculate the price... more

A deflationary money is going to destroy the economy! If the value of money keeps going up, then no one... more

"Everything about the concept of a social network and the incredible potential and beauty of #nostr as a protocol is... more

"When discussing consensus mechanisms for different cryptocurrencies, one issue that often causes arguments is a lack of understanding (and definition) of... more

"I believe it’s important to go back to what this sovereignty is made of. Bitcoin works because an economic majority... more

"To not die, Bitcoin must become more used. The current thesis accepted by most “maximalists” is that Bitcoin will continue... more

"Often overlooked is the importance of interoperability between not only the second-layer protocol and Bitcoin but the layer-2 protocols themselves.... more

"When reading a draft of this post, my wife got kind of depressed right around here. Her macabre question, basically,... more

"The headroom there isn’t unlimited — expect it to show up as fee pressure and backlogs and less ability to... more

"While bitcoin is still mainly seen as digital currency, it’s essentially a timestamped log with special properties. As such, it... more

With so many common misconceptions about money, how can we possibly make sense of Bitcoin for customers who have spent... more

"A successful blind merge mined sidechain with significant MEV opportunities could offer Bitcoin significant benefits, which could more than offset... more

We have an incredible chat today with Pablof7z who is on a mission to make Nostr the global, decentralized marketplace.... more

"Talk to a bitcoin maximalist – someone who believes that bitcoin is the only digital asset with innate value – and, more... more

"Bitcoin is often referred to as a secure timestamping service. We never had a global record of truth with trustworthy... more

"Bitcoin represents the explicit encoding of previously implicit values of the tech community. It's not just software — it is... more

"Some networks are “smart.” They offer sophisticated services that can be delivered to very simple end-user devices on the “edge”... more

"The obsession with consumer payments in the Bitcoin community is an unfortunate relic of the fiat money era. Generations that... more

"To do our best to minimize the economics jargon once again, we might simply ask: what are you going to... more

"While many of the innovations in the space are new, they’re built on decades of work that led to this... more

"Since 1800, in 51 out of 52 cases where a country’s debt-to-GDP ratio reached 130%, the country eventually defaulted. The... more

Ai agents are going to be able to seek out, delegate, and pay for micro services from an ecosystem of... more

"Today Americans celebrate 246 years of independence from the British Empire. On this day in 1776 the Founding Fathers made... more

"Your barber or stylist likely has the broadest network of anyone you know. People from every walk of life, including... more

We recently had Aleks Svetski back on at Ai Unchained to discuss the project we hinted at in episode 2... more

"Neither a startup nor a bank will ever be able to cost-effectively compete on a global scale with the Lightning... more

"Investing in bitcoin, we believe, is like having the ability to buy shares of a general “Internet ETF” back in... more

"bitcoin is a protocol stack which we can expect to be expanding for many decades, and its foundation is that... more

"...At some point the entire financial system becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the Federal Reserve" — Peter St. Onge Today... more

"Expect BlackRock to turn around and shill this to banks, and in particular big banks, such that JPMorgan, for example, can itself... more

"The more wonderful something is, the more passion it will arouse. Bitcoin is among the greatest wonders of the late-modern... more

"What is Bitcoin? Many have attempted to answer this question, but I believe that our quest to do so is doomed... more

"Zapvertising has two forms, and I believe there is a crucial difference between the two. In one version, a company... more

With the banking crisis just getting started, with the SEC going after Binance and Coinbase, with rumors of Prime Trust... more

"Nostr isn't just a social network, in a similar way that Bitcoin isn't just a transaction network. Both of these... more

"Much like how two nuclear bombs ended World War II, capital-crushing central bank policy rate hikes and Russian sanctions were... more

"Price inflation is the highest it’s been in decades. Labor participation is the lowest it’s been in decades. Wealth inequality... more

"The idea of a language user interface as the next step from the thumb tapping we’ve become used to over... more

With the Introduction of Ark, the new 2nd layer payments and privacy protocol introduced with Read_734. I left with a... more

This episode will be part review, and part just going over some very practical, step by step ways to think... more

"Ark is a trustless, distinct layer two protocol with unilateral exit. ASPs cannot steal users’ funds or link senders &... more

"an unbounded number of assets can be minted and/or moved in a single on-chain transaction. This off-chain first design enables... more

Welcome to the first episode of AI Unchained, a new show exploring how AI technology can be a means of... more

"Permission can only be denied if it is requested. Direct, peer-to-peer interaction obviates permission and equalizes market power. Don’t request... more

"The biggest complaint members of my audience make about Nostr is the sheer dominance of Bitcoin content. This is understandable. Nostr uses... more

"Bitcoin transaction fees limit network abuse by making usage expensive. There is a cost to every transaction, set by a... more

"This very dominance is causing certain countries to seek a way to be less dependent on the USD and the... more

"The question of who controls the ability to merge code changes into Bitcoin Core’s GitHub repository tends to come up on a recurring... more

Bitcoin is a public good. The maintenance and stewardship of the network rests on the conviction and work of 10s... more

"The fall of First Republic Bank was the second-largest bank failure by assets in US history, putting us in the... more

"If Tor is an anonymous remailer, meaning a protocol facilitating the anonymous forwarding and receiving of messages between peers, Nostr... more

"Banks are highly regulated public-private partnerships in an environment where new charters are excruciatingly hard to obtain, and as such... more

"The title of this book may evoke the kind of question that i hear once in a while: "Why do... more

"Central Banking is successful alchemy in this sense. The money- issuing institutions of the world have found a way to... more

"I believe that in the open /attention/ information economy we find ourselves in, value will mostly derive from effective curation,... more

"Can you imagine a world in which you are restricted from buying meat for a while because you have already... more

The Lightning Network finally strikes in this Bitcoin Basics episode! Now that we understand the fundamentals of keys, wallets, transactions,... more

"This was how more mainstream Bitcoin culture degraded from intellectual expressions of ideas (2017-era debates) to tribal recreations of the... more

"“In the old days they didn’t even use tables and chairs. They sat on beer crates and ate off the... more

"Of all the objections to Bitcoin, the objection that it “wastes” electricity is the most absurd. This thinking betrays a... more

"Generally, what we’re talking about here is unregulated (or lightly regulated), uninsured investors, LLCs, Funds and privately controlled “Shadow Banking”... more

Prices are relative, Bitcoin is infinitely scalable, stability for the sake of stability is undesirable, maximal instability in prices maximizes... more

"and the uniparty is in strong agreement here. both know that losing control of the money and the banks is... more

"Thus was the dubious “clear and present danger” standard born. Holmes himself sought to redefine the standard later that same... more

Bitcoin is ultimately just a piece of software, the network – the global, censorship resistant, immutable system – is ultimately... more

"The question that the fiat system answers is the following: who is allowed to counterfeit currency, and how much? Further,... more

"The financial system in the United States, and for most of the rest of the world for that matter, can... more

I joined John today for an over 2 hour rip on the nature of Bitcoin, numerous technical developments, the trade... more

There is no magic wand. There is no such thing as a free lunch. When we bail out an institution,... more

"One aspect that is still massively under-utilized is the programmability of Bitcoin. While simple things like scheduled payments and automated... more

"One immediate lesson many drew from this event was a reconsideration of the risk of fiat liabilities in an environment... more

"The 20th century was the first where technology enabled forms of violent state competition, as well as peaceful globalization, across... more

"Lightning is the way to make bitcoin the universal mainstream currency it was designed to be. This is how we’re... more

"Over the long run, I view the outcome, one way or the other, more as a matter of technology than politics. From the top-down side, there... more

"For proponents of privacy and open networks to win becomes a matter of making the technology easy to use, too costly to stamp out, and well-understood... more

"This context highlights the importance of the 1920–1921 depression. Here the government and Fed did the exact opposite of what... more

"But for me, when I think about what Bitcoin’s properties are as a store-of-value asset and then compare those properties... more

"People are very quick to project technology adoption curves onto Bitcoin. But the problem is that Bitcoin is not just a technology.... more

I recently had an awesome two-hour marathon chat about P2P social media with BitKarrot from the Nostrovia podcast. We chatted... more

Hot wallets, cold wallets, hardware wallets, custodial wallets, lightning wallets, holy crap! What does all of this mean and how... more

Nostr, OP_VAULT, decentralized media, privacy, the incredible progress of the past few years, the challenges of making Bitcoin hardware, why... more

"Here is a little story of how I built a #Bitcoin Lightning payments app used by more than 10,000 users... more

Not your keys, not your coins. What does this mean? Your Bitcoin keys are literally the keys to the kingdom. They... more

"If Fedipools prove to be viable we could find ourselves in a world where bitcoin mining pool centralization risk is... more

"This is the end of Lightning as a niche technology and the beginning of Lightning as a (ubiquitous) Service. In a... more

"Furthermore, when Bitcoiners develop privacy and scaling technology for Bitcoin, we make it substantially more challenging for anti-coiners to make... more

One thing to make abundantly clear: Nostr is a protocol. It’s a set of rules that servers and clients use to communicate... more

In order to truly understand why Bitcoin works, we must understand a fundamental tool that operates at basically every level... more

"But, I keep coming to the same conclusion: We are here for this movement. We are here to build a... more

"To wit, we have raised the debt limit 22 times from 1997 to 2022. Yep, we’ve raised the limit 22 times... more

Mathias and Paolo join us for a Twitter Spaces AMA to answer all of your questions about this cutting-edge technology.... more

WEN MOBILE!? No more do we have to ask because Keet mobile has finally arrived! Download from the App Store... more

"Today no money in the world fully performs all three services. National currencies are being used as means-of-payment and standard-of-value... more

Sure, everyone tells me that bitcoin is a new technology. That it's magic money for the internet and tokens you... more

"All of this is important because there has been a resurrection of Burns-type positions in the current debate about the... more

"Last night, lightning struck our house and burned it down. I escaped wearing only my nightclothes. In an instant, everything... more

"But as with all new technology, it can be incredibly hard to explain what’s actually happening, without getting too complex.... more

Today we break into the racket that is the IMF and World Bank monetary imperialism. Piggy backing off Gladstein's remarkable... more

"Bitcoin is paradoxical. It is simple yet complicated, ever-changing yet unchangeable. A novel machine without any novel parts; a technological... more

The problem today is that we have companies who own both the protocol and discovery of content. Which ultimately puts... more

Bringing back one of my favorites today that I mention often but we haven't covered in a very long time.... more

How much economic ignorance can you fit into 1 minute and 54 seconds? Well apparently its quite a lot. Peter... more

"Bitcoin is not a hedge against inflation; it is the permanent solution to inflation, and those are two very different... more

"If your money requires permission to be spent, it is not your money. If your money has counterparty risk, it... more

"So they fire out digital chaff frantically in every direction, they play whack-a-mole with high-engagement nodes that are or could... more

"This is the root of our cultural concern for crypto DeFi. The cultural, and arguably even structural, commitment to financialization... more

This is the full, unabridged reading of Alex Gladstein's work, "STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT: HOW THE IMF AND WORLD BANK REPRESS POOR... more

"Research from Mexico — a typical country in terms of consistent involvement historically from the Bank and Fund — shows... more

"The “generosity” of the West enabled unaccountable leaders to plunge their nations into debt deeper than ever before. The system... more

"Far from playing the role of good samaritan, the Fund does not even follow the timeless human tradition, established more... more

"To give an example of what this might look like in a given year, in 2012 developing countries received $1.3... more

"A 2014 analysis showed that the IMF had attached, on average, 20 conditions to each loan it gave out in... more

There are about a million claims out there as to what blockchains are going to fix, and how NFTs are... more

"A data-driven exploration proving that Lightning scales bitcoin payments beyond Visa and that second-layer innovation is the way." - Stanislov... more

“They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few... more

"We believe the core of the cultural fissure between crypto and bitcoin comes down to financialization. While the ethos of... more

"One counterargument might be that the de facto state capture of Ethereum in gradually becoming more and more OFAC compliant... more

"A bitcoin full node is a certainty machine. When a user runs a full node, they are granted a level... more

On the nature of sovereignty, the challenges of the world we live in, the fog of war that has descended... more

"As the Web became much more complex, we now engage with multiple companies for each of those functions. Including all... more

"The primary work undertaken by thieves to maintain their systems of thievery is manipulation. Deceit and lies are the tools... more

"They used to own everything, and in a way they still do; the media, the banks, the NGOs, the international... more

"I will start with the conclusion: my piece failed. Nothing has changed. DeFi-driven blowups have continued. Therefore, in the strongest... more

"My learned opinion is that although your average toxic Bitcoin maximalist might be able to sniff out this bullshit a... more

“It must become embarrassing to admit one ever supported uninformed and nonconsensual participation in a medical experiment or mass house... more

Today we bring John Carvalho back on to talk about Bitkit and the release of Synonym's first major product in... more

"They will come to understand that Bitcoin is hope for non-violent revolutionaries in the environmental movement who seek to end... more

"The creation of new money by insiders debases the savings ability of the existing money. It is critically important for... more

"Money facilities a system — the economy — that is too complex, too unpredictable and too uncertain to be modeled... more

"A universal law can be understood to be an objective, observable, and eternal description of some facet of the universe.... more

"One might ask: if much of the U.K. pension money was about to vanish, where was it going? Partly to... more

"Imagine if all respectable business knowledge had been derived from studying large, established companies because there had never been a... more

"While Bitcoin does not litigate the ethics of hydrocarbon production, it is not controversial to point out that the dollar,... more

"to survive and prosper in this world, man can either make the things he needs and wants, or he can... more

"But if technological civilizations are more common, then we must resolve the Fermi Paradox in a different way. We know that... more

"Astrobiologists increasingly believe that conditions are frequently right for life. Hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and the life-sustaining molecules they form are the... more

Today we explore a highly earned Guy's Take for Dergigi's "Bitcoin is Digital Scarcity" as well as using a core... more

"The power of prices is the process of dynamic discovery that underpins their emergence, not the fleeting consensus of a... more

"Today, it’s a trucker protest. What if it’s a women’s rights protest next? A protest against abuses by a country... more

We dive into the chaotic world of 2022 with the insanity of the financial markets, the bond markets cracking apart,... more

"The difference between the Linden Dollar, World of Warcraft Gold, Fortnite V-Bucks, the Euro, and the U.S. dollar is in... more

"Lighting Network adoption is scaling Bitcoin around the world. And it will be key to protecting our freedoms in the... more

"Bitcoin is ripe for a massive disruption of systems like SWIFT, and at the rate the world is becoming both... more

"Given two competing views of the world, the state will always promote the one that increases its power to extract... more

"The whole tokenize-everything-thing so far is one fast hype train. It is exciting not for the technical efficiencies it may... more

"Everyone loves a good origin story. Some are true, some made-up, and some a mix of the two. The true origin... more

"Bitcoin is not merely a network, it's a foundation for an anti-authoritarian political movement in an increasingly authoritarian world. If... more

"This brings us to our fourth principle behind PoS, which is that **PoS relies on subjective truth**. There is simply... more

"That misinformation in the form of money wouldn’t just create polarization. Because money connects value between people and nations, it... more

"I’m going to clear things up here because most of the people piling on were deeply confused about me, my... more

"I believe Africa represents the most elegant use case for a Bitcoin standard in existence. In the paragraphs that follow... more

"Cryptocurrency market-isms are built on claims about the economic and computer science advances Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have achieved, and thus... more

"Many aspects of the Bitcoin mining industry are poorly understood and often misrepresented. But one practice in this sector stands apart... more

"A study of the hill tribes of Southeast Asia titled “The Art Of Not Being Governed” provided a fresh take.... more