Stephan Livera Podcast

Setzeus argues that 90% of people will never properly use seed phrases and hardware wallets, and that services like Privy and Turnkey, which split a key behind an email or phone login, are a good-enough floor for self-custody. Stephan pushes back on what that gives up: verifiability, portability across devices, and a degree of vendor lock-in. Setzeus (Jesus Najera) runs SetDev, a Bitcoin L2 and me...

Andrew Webley walks through Smarter Web's capital structure—ordinary shares as growth equity, a repaid short convert, Coinbase credit, and MORE as the income preferred. Webley is CEO of The Smarter Web Company (LSE: SWC), the UK's largest publicly traded Bitcoin treasury. He traces the path from Hargreaves Lansdown to listing on Aquis, then the LSE Main Market, while building toward roughl...

Bitcoiners built L402 for a Lightning-native web. Crypto built x402 for agents — and early volume is mostly stables. Ben Carman helped get Lightning into the x402 standard, and argues the pragmatic move is to meet that stack in the middle rather than wait for L402 alone. Ben Carman of Spiral rejoin me to unpack HTTP 402 Payment Required, facilitators versus Coinbase Commerce, why agentic payments...

Bitkey ditched seed phrases for a recovery-focused 2-of-3 design: an app key, hardware key, and Block server key that use phones, hardware, and cloud access to help people retain control of their funds. Clay Garrett, Bitkey lead at Block, joins Stephan Livera to explain the design trade-offs: safety as security plus recoverability, cloud backup that needs your hardware to decrypt, and why Bitkey d...

Most crypto exchanges are built like casinos: they chase the next hot token, prediction market, or trading product. Relai is building a different category—a savings brand for people who want to accumulate Bitcoin, hold it in self-custody, and build wealth over the long run. Julian Liniger explains why serving patient savers requires a different product, message, and business model. The conversatio...

Bitcoin soft-fork debates around CTV, CSFS, OP_CAT, and OP_VAULT keep stalling — and Misha Komarov of Allocinit argues you can emulate much of that covenant behavior with cryptography instead of changing consensus. Misha joins Stephan to unpack Bitcoin PIPEs v2: a Witness Encryption design that locks a signing key under an NP statement so a valid zero-knowledge proof decrypts the key and produces...

Almost every public Bitcoin node still runs Bitcoin Core. Brandon Black argues that client monoculture is a systemic risk — and that automation plus AI now make independent consensus implementations more realistic than skeptics assume. Brandon (aka reardencode) returns to Stephan Livera Podcast for the first episode in a mini-series on non-Core Bitcoin implementations. He is shipping rbitcoin, a R...

Most Asian markets still make buying and saving Bitcoin painfully hard. James of Ârc argues the fix is not another protocol breakthrough — it is local founders shipping simple DCA and savings products market by market. James joins me from Mirissa Beach, Sri Lanka, where Arc is partnering with Fulgur Ventures on a continuous Bitcoin accelerator. He is a former EY advisor and Playfair Capital invest...

Mike Belshe, co-founder and CEO of BitGo, walks through how institutional Bitcoin custody actually works in 2026: qualified custody, self-custody co-signing, and why BitGo still centers a 2-of-3 model after pioneering P2SH multisig in 2013. BitGo now operates as a US-regulated qualified custodian and public company, while still offering the same wallet stack individuals can run in self-custody mod...

Walter Maffione, CEO and co-founder of KaleidoSwap, join me to explain how the project grew from an RGB Lightning DEX into a broader swap engine and LSP stack — Lightning as rails between Liquid, Arkade, Taproot Assets, Spark, and RGB — plus KaleidoSDK, desktop app, and browser Extension. We dig into web app and SDK integrations for merchants and unified-balance wallets, how HTLC atomicity works a...

Recent attacks exposed how even large, educated Bitcoin holders remained exposed through single-vendor setups. The core lesson is that self-custody alone does not remove single points of failure; deliberate design is required. Dhruv Bansal, co-founder and CISO of Unchained, joins to examine these incidents and the practical barriers that keep most hardware wallet users on single sig despite years...

00:00 - Interview with Gabriele Vernetti of Stratum V2 @gitgab19 15:38 - Interview with Jimmy Kostro @jimmykostro 29:30 - Interview with James Check of checkonchain Links: https://x.com/gitgab19 https://x.com/jimmykostro https://x.com/_checkonchain https://x.com/_checkmatey_ https://x.com/stratumv2 Bitcoinchiangmai.org

Interviews at Bitcoin Asia 2026 Day 2 00:00 - Piriya Sambandaraksa 05:14 - Alexander Mann 11:04 - Shone Anstey of LQWD 17:03 -Liam Eagen from Ideal Group Links:  https://x.com/piriya https://x.com/idealgroup https://x.com/liameagen https://x.com/LQWDTech https://x.com/shoneanstey https://x.com/alex_singh_mann Stephan Livera links: Follow me on X: @stephanlivera Subscribe to the podcast Subscribe t...

In this episode, I interviewed several people at Bitcoin Asia 2026. Timestamps: 00:00 - Interview with Adam Poulton 06:28 Interview with Giovanni Santostasi 15:18 Interview Jeff Walton of Strive 34:11 Interview with Alex B from ArkLabs Links:  http://x.com/Giovann35084111 http://x.com/adampoulton http://x.com/bergealex4 http://x.com/arklabshq http://x.com/punterjeff http://x.com/strive Stephan Liv...

In this episode, Piers Macrae demonstrates Wallet Playground and explains why hardware wallets are signing devices, not wallets. Timestamps: 01:10 — Teach Me vs Do It For Me 03:23 — Test Any Wallet Free in Browser 09:09 — Coldcard Drama Forced Early Release 14:03 — Generate Seeds Using Your Webcam 17:52 — Hardware Wallets Aren't Real Wallets 21:52 — Only 1% Use Multisig for Life Savings 25:33...

In this episode, Keith Mukai of SeedSigner joins to explain why 1.4 percent variance in cheap dice still delivers full 128-bit entropy and how to verify rolls across devices. Timestamps: 03:10 — Cheap Dice Only 1.4% Unfair? 06:29 — Shake Multiple Dice in a Box 08:26 — Verify Dice Rolls Across Devices 11:02 — Verify Dice Seeds With Fake Rolls 13:50 — Multiple Test Rounds Foil Attackers 16:36 — 90%...

In this episode, Rich from the team at Blockstream explains Jade, offline dice entropy, blind oracle protection, multisig descriptor recovery and the new Blockstream Swaps beta. Timestamps: 00:45 — AI Scans & Audits Secure Jade 03:21 — Jade Core $99, Plus Up to $169 05:51 — Roll Dice for Offline Seed Entropy 08:23 — Blind Oracle: Remote Secure Element Explained 11:15 — Seed QR: Hand-Draw Your...

Lightning Labs built Wavelength to deliver self-custodial Lightning payments without forcing users to run nodes, manage channels, or handle liquidity. Olaoluwa Osuntokun, CTO and co-founder of Lightning Labs, and Michael Levin, VP of Product, join me to detail the design choices behind their Ark implementation. They explain why Ark was selected, how hop hints let every payment use ordinary Lightni...

Old self-custody approaches collapse once Bitcoin reaches six figures, physical threats rise, and AI tools proliferate. Single hardware wallets and mattress myths no longer match the scale or risks that large holders now face. Michael Tanguma, CEO and co-founder of Onramp, returns to examine how custody must adapt to family obligations, mortality, and market structure that turns concentrated holdi...

Roy Sheinfeld of Breez returns to walk through Glow, the team's new reference wallet built using Spark. It’s designed so non-custodial Bitcoin feels simple: send, receive, and go. Glow uses passkey onboarding (no seed phrase to write down), automatic backup via the passkey provider, and a single-balance UX so users can pay Lightning, on-chain, and stablecoin destinations without wrestling sett...

In this episode, Nick Neuman of Casa argues that it’s not the end of self-custody. Instead, it highlights why multisig with multiple vendors provides stronger protection without the hidden complexity of passphrases or dice rolling for single sig setups. Timestamps: 03:12 — Not the End of Self-Custody 06:14 — Single Sig Is Actually More Complex 08:45 — Multisig Simpler Than Secure Single Sig 15:37...

Kruw (@kruwed) runs one of the highest-volume WabiSabi coordinators, giving him direct insight into how the protocol handles liquidity, Sybil resistance, and real-world usage. Timestamps: 00:42 — Wasabi 2.8 Privacy Features  02:45 — Taproot As Wasabi's Default Address 07:25 — Pay Inside CoinJoin Saves 40 Minutes 10:26 — Auto CoinJoin  12:21 — WabiSabi Blocks Whale Sybil Attacks 14:31 — Payjoin...

In this episode, Mike Schmidt executive director of Brink, and volunteer coordinator for the consortium, explains how the group formed, autonomy over funding, and how it plans to avoid repeating earlier centralized roadmap fights. Timestamps: 00:55 — Quantum Risk and the Consortium Pledge 03:10 — The Nine Consortium Members 11:40 — Publishing Quantum Research Publicly 13:39 — Brink Role and Fundin...

Buchner, known for his work on decentralized identity at Proof, brings a technical and game-theoretic lens to the debate over Bitcoin's monetary focus versus attempts to restrict arbitrary data. The conversation covers narrative shifts driving spam to Bitcoin, the limits of relay policy versus consensus rules, why the house analogy fails, economic node power over basement operators, and the la...

Lyn Alden warns that BIP 110 is unlikely to curb spam and instead mostly rearranges non-monetary data, raising the risk of a minority fork attempt that could split the Bitcoin chain. Lyn Alden is a leading macro analyst and Bitcoiner who examines how fiscal dominance now overrides traditional monetary policy tools. She breaks down why high debt-to-GDP ratios prevent rate hikes from taming inflatio...