Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

What are the Bitcoin projects that suck? In this episode, Super Testnet & Shinobi point out to lots of suboptimal features in CoinJoins, Lightning Network, Nostr, BitVM, and Bitcoin development itself. It's fun, it's educational & it's brutally honest! Time stamps: Introducing Shinobi & Super Testnet (00:00:00) Recording at Paralelni Polis (00:01:06) Why Taproot Sucks (00:01:49) Lightning Network...

F/Dev, also known as 1440000bytes or simply "Floppy", is an open source developer best known for his work on Joinstr: a CoinJoin implementation for Electrum wallet. In this episode, he talks about Bitcoin privacy & his new job at LayerTwo Labs. Time stamps: Mr. Floppy's Work on CoinJoin (00:01:31) Discusses the implementation of CoinJoin feature in Electrum wallet and the challenges faced. Differe...

Rijndael is the CTO of Taproot Wizards – a group of bitcoiners who want to make Bitcoin magical. In this interview, he talks about why OP_CAT matters and what kind of features we should expect to see in Bitcoin once a covenant soft fork gets activated. Taproot Wizards and Bitcoin Magic (00:01:53) Memes as Tools for Bitcoin Advancement (00:03:20) Discussion on Taproot Wizards' Intentions (00:03:47)...

Pete Rizzo is a veteran Bitcoin journalist who still remembers the time when Bitcoin & crypto were the same undivided community. In this episode, he talks about why Bitcoin history matters & how he approaches journalism. Time stamps: Bitcoin's Historical Significance (00:00:48) Bitcoin's Emergence and Pete Rizzo's Journey (00:02:09) Challenges in Understanding Bitcoin's History (00:03:40) Bitcoin'...

Crypsi is the representative of an art collective which expresses its anti-establishment ideas through physical paintings & collages, as well as digitally tokenized ideas. In this episode, he explains why memes are art & why memecoins matter. Time stamps: Bitcoin Art Collective's Origin (00:01:39) Evolution of Crypto Art (00:03:19) Role of Art in Bitcoin Revolution (00:12:21) Intersection of Memes...

Marek Narozniak is a Polish physicist who works on a MimbleWimble implementation that can get added to Bitcoin via extension blocks to become a privacy layer. He also specializes in quantum computing, and busts some FUD about their threat. Time stamps: Introduction to Mimblewimble and Grin (00:00:40) The Privacy Model of Mimblewimble (00:02:07) What is Mimblewimble and Grin? (00:03:47) Scalability...

Back in 2014, Eli Ben-Sasson co-authored the Zerocash paper, which proposed a ZK SNARK system that creates anonymous Bitcoin payments. Around the same time, he also spoke about the compression benefits of zero-knowledge proofs – a full Bitcoin node can be synced within seconds just by verifying against a valid proof. More recently, he became interested in STARKs and built a company around this cry...

OpenDelta is a synthetic dollar (stablecoin) that's built on top of Bitcoin's newly-launched Runes protocol. In this episode, co-founders Nick Schteringart & Konstantin Wünscher discuss about how and why they built this.

MWEB was activated on Litecoin's main net in 2022, providing a useful mix of privacy and scalability. It's a fascinating soft fork that's 100% compatible with Bitcoin. In this episode, Charlie Lee explains how MWEB works & why it matters. Time stamps: Introduction to the Episode (00:00:35)
 Bet with Roger Ver (00:01:19)
 Lightning Network Adoption (00:02:49)
 Expectations for Lightning Network (00...

David Bailey is the owner of Bitcoin Magazine. Ideologically, he is a Bitcoin maximalist who wants everything to happen on Bitcoin and get traded for BTC. During this episode, we also mint a special ordinal... which you can buy for 3.125 BTC! Time stamps: Bitcoin Maximalism (00:04:03) Inscribing Ordinal 70326676 on Bitcoin (00:11:57) Criticism and Autonomy in Transactions (00:22:06) RGB Protocol a...

Aaron Day has been a bitcoiner since 2012 – and in the aftermath of the scaling wars, he decided to support the big block camp due to ideological reasons. Today, Aaron is concerned that adoption might not catch up with the rise of CBDCs. Time stamps: Aaron Day’s Work (00:00:54) Defining Central Bank Digital Currency (00:02:04) Comparison of CBDC with Existing Banking System (00:03:51) Historical a...

Ray Youssef is the CEO of NoOnes, a P2P marketplace which enables people from the Global South to exchange bitcoin for gift cards or local currencies. As he describes it, NoOnes is the platform where "everyone eats" – meaning that all parties make advantageous trades that help them feed themselves and their families. Consequently, Ray is an advocate of free market money who agrees with Roger Ver o...

Charlie Lee is the creator of Litecoin and the current managing director of the Litecoin Foundation. Some may also remember him as Engineering Director at Coinbase. But very notably, Charlie Lee is one of the earliest believers in the power of the Lightning Network and an investor in Lightning Labs. I've decided to invite Charlie on the Bitcoin Takeover podcast for the third time in order to ask h...

Polish bitcoiner & libertarian Tomek Kolodziejczuk is co-organizing the 2nd annual Bitcoin Film Fest. In 2024, the event happens at the same time as the European Halving Party. In this episode, we talk about Bitcoin-related art, the current state of cinema, and why the halving (or halvening?) is such a major event.

Amaury Séchet is the developer who forked Bitcoin to create Bitcoin Cash in August 2017. A year later, he became one of the first people to find out about the inflation bug in Bitcoin – yet he chose to not exploit it and collaborate with the Bitcoin Core devs instead. Deadalnix was also one of the first large blockers to figure out that Craig Wright is not Satoshi. On the other hand, he appears to...

Adam Soltys is a Canadian bitcoiner, best known for his work on Raretoshi – a marketplace for Liquid network NFTs. Cole is a marketer who likes the Lightning network. Together, they built Coinos: a custodial & newbie-friendly Lightning wallet.

As of 2024, Roger Ver has been in Bitcoin for 7 years and in Bitcoin Cash for 7 years. This episode is a reflection on his journey and an attempt to bring back one of the greatest Bitcoin advocates and entrepreneurs.

Thanks to the efforts of CommerceBlock CEO Nicholas Gregory and CTO Tom Trevethan, Statechains are now a reality on the MercuryLayer. Originally designed by Ruben Somsen, Statechains serve the purpose of transferring ownership of bitcoins in a private, scalable, and affordable environment. However, the original Statechain design requires the ANYPREVOUT soft fork – something Bitcoin didn't get. But...

Bryan Bishop is a computer programmer who currently moderates the Bitcoin-dev mailing list and considers a position as BIP editor. In this episode, he talks about his work in Bitcoin, his Webcash experiment, and why he is an advocate of biokaching.

As the CEO of Synonym, John Carvalho has experimented with many Bitcoin layers & protocols – including OmniBolt, Lightning & sidechains. In this episode, he explains what lessons he's learned and why he believes in more conservative ways to scale Bitcoin.

Eric Voskuil is the maintainer of Libbitcoin & the author of Cryptoeconomics. In this episode, he offers details about the Libbitcoin incident that took place in the summer of 2023 and also criticizes some aspects of the cult of Michael Saylor.

Fiatjaf is the creator of Nostr, a decentralized social media protocol which enables everyone around the world to communicate without censorship. Surprisingly, he doesn't agree with some existing Nostr software, no longer likes Lightning & promotes BIP300. Nostr Bitcoin and Lightning (00:00:47) Fiatjaf's creation Nostr, association with Bitcoin, and differing opinions on its development and us...

Bastien and Baudoin are the creators and main promoters of Satochip: an affordable self-custody solution which makes use of the smart card technology to provide hardware wallet features. In this episode, they explain how Satochip works & why it's unique.

Alexei Zamyatin is an academic cryptographer who works on the Build on Bitcoin projects. His approach to scaling Bitcoin with second layers involves some unconventional methods, which he describes in this interview. Zero Knowledge Proofs and Rollups (00:01:21) Discussion of the development of layer two solutions, including zero knowledge proofs and rollups. Defining BitVM Rollups (00:01:58) Explan...

ZK rollups are certainly promising, as they can bring scalability and privacy to Bitcoin. In this episode, Orkun Kilic talks about Citrea: the first protocol to enable ZK rollups on Bitcoin. He explains the advantages, the tradeoffs & why you should use.