Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

Businesses with the alleged potential to become the next Google are plentiful in Bitcoin-land, but finding actual commercial success is a lot harder. The best example of a commercial success is gift card company Gyft that became known as the first place to give access to a wide range of merchants for bitcoin holders and later achieved the largest exit so far in the crypto space in an acquisition b...

One of the concerns confronting the Bitcoin community is that of scaling the transaction throughput rate: How do we go from the current rate of approx. 5 transactions per second to a thousand times that? In this episode, we talk to Emin Gun Sirer and Ittay Eyal from Cornell University regarding Bitcoin NG; a next generation Bitcoin blockchain design that addresses some protocol based limitations p...

Among the dividing themes in the Bitcoin space is the idea of public versus private blockchains. While some argue that private and permissioned blockchains can offer better scalability and lower latency for enterprises, others insist the Bitcoin blockchain will offer the best level of security and robustness longterm. Recently, projects have emerged that propose the best of both worlds by leveragi...

A brilliant fact about crypto-economic blockchains is that they enable the construction of naming systems that transcend limits imposed by Zooko’s triangle. Traditional naming systems such as human names, Domain Name System (DNS) and Facebook profile names are subject to Zooko’s triangle and cannot be secure, human memorable and decentralised at once. For instance human names such as Meher Roy are...

We’ve made it to episode 100! Our guest for our celebratory episode is Juan Benet, inventor of the Inter-Planetary File System and founder of Protocol Labs. IPFS is a distributed file system that seeks to connect all computing devices with the same system of files. The possibilities for IPFS could range from distributed cloud hosting to websites without central servers to even replacing HTTP. It’s...

One of the key innovations of Bitcoin is the ability to easily implement payment channels. A number of use cases have been discussed or demonstrated, among which is the idea of pay-per-use. This is particularly useful when charging for things like WiFi or streaming video by the second. With this in mind, one could imagine a line of communication between two peers, where data flows in one direction...

When invented the concept of prediction markets almost thirty years ago, he felt he had stumbled on a concept with huge implications. By allowing people to bet on the likelihood of future events, prediction markets promise to allow better forecasts and better decision making. Research into the area has been vibrant, culminating in Hanson’s concept of Futarchy: A prediction-market based governance...

Prediction markets are considered one of the most promising applications of blockchain technology. Although the concept and some early implementations have existed for years, decentralized prediction markets present a number of advantages to their centralized counterparts. joins us to discuss Truthcoin, a “Peer-to-Peer Oracle Protocol which absorbs accurate data into a blockchain so that Bitcoin-u...

It is often said that technology is neutral. It’s certainly commonplace for Bitcoin to be thought of as such. In reality, technologies may be characterized as an embodiment of human intention, and therefore, cannot be considered as culturally or politically neutral. At least, this is the opinion of our guest, . A research scientist at MIT Media Lab and CEO of ID3, a nonprofit which aims to deploy...

As the debate about forks, the blocksize and decision making in Bitcoin continues, we are joined by Adam Back. Adam is best known for his invention hash-cash which became one of the fundamental building blocks of Bitcoin. He is also the inventor of the sidechains concept and founder and president of Blockstream, the single biggest employer of Bitcoin core developers. With Adam we talked about the...

As the debate about the blocksize continues to roar through the Bitcoin community, Gavin Andresen joins us to take a step back and ask the big questions: How should these decisions be made in the first place? What does the governance of Bitcoin look like now and what do we want it to look like in the future? In a challenging time for Bitcoin, it’s a critical discussion to have with the Chief Scien...

Ever since the financial system collapsed in 2007, the call for alternatives has grown louder. Bitcoin itself can be seen as such an alternative. Simon Dixon’s search for a way to put capitalism on a sounder financial footing began before Bitcoin with a focus on equity crowdfunding. Since then he has built Bank to the Future into an innovative crowdfunding business that takes an aggressive contrar...

In a long-overdue episode, we finally had the chance to dive into one of the most known but poorly understood cryptocurrency/blockchain project: Ripple. Reviled by many in the Bitcoin space, we put aside any prejudices and sat down for a fascinating conversation with Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas. We talked about his early days in the Bitcoin space, how Ripple came about, what the Ripple network l...

Close to two years after the initial whitepaper, the revolutionary Ethereum network has finally launched. The decentralized smart contract platform is, without a doubt, the most exciting cryptocurrency project since Bitcoin. The versatile platform with its turing-complete scripting language aspires to power the distributed applications of the future. Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us for...

Bitcoin mining and the intricate game theory that surround it is a topic that we’ve visited many times. Difficult to grasp in its complexity, it is these dynamics that determine the security of Bitcoin in the short and in the longer term. This time we were joined by none other than Dave Hudson. He is the author of the leading mining blog hashingit.com, VP of Software at PeerNova and had a long car...

Amidst all the discussion of alternative uses of blockchains, it is often forgotten that the very first fork of Bitcoin, Namecoin, pursued a daring vision for a decentralized, censorship-resistant internet. Greg Slepak, co-founder of the okTurtles Foundation joined us for an interesting discussion of DNS, Namecoin and how blockchains can be used to decentralize the internet. Topics covered in this...

In this episode, we revisited the perennial topic of digital currency regulation with Siân Jones, our regulatory correspondent and founder of the regulation-focused virtual currency consultancy COINSULT. With the final version of the BitLicense, what may turn out to be the most influential document for digital currency regulation, is now out. Besides diving into many different aspects of the onero...

Solving the pain points of online payments was the applications that garnered the most attention in Bitcoin’s early days. In recent times, as consumer adoption of Bitcoin payments has been underwhelming much of that attention has shifted elsewhere. Nevertheless, companies keep working hard on making the vision of a universal, global payment system a reality. Among those companies, one stands out a...

Peter Thiel argued in his book ‘Zero to One’ that the way to build a great and highly profitable company is to build a monopoly. But with decentralized technologies, there is a real question whether these monopolies can be built or whether the monopolies will end up being publicly owned goods (like Bitcoin) that can’t be monetized directly. William Mougayar, who is an experienced tech executive an...

Revolutionary progress doesn’t happen without lots of work and in the case of Bitcoin that requires many different startups building technology. Few have contributed to this as much as Silicon Valley based startup accelerator Boost VC, which has been focusing on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency startups since 2013. Focusing exclusively on Bitcoin for an extended time, they’ve invested in companies such...

One topic that is guaranteed to cause heated discussion among cryptocurrency enthusiasts is the idea that blockchains can be controlled by known validators and function without an underlying cryptocurrency. Some think this is a non-sensical idea fabricated by those spineless enough to want to appease regulators and but clueless enough to miss the whole point of cryptocurrencies. But others believe...

Many people think of Bitcoin as the ultimate contender against the power of central banks, most importantly the Federal Reserve System. But that is certainly not the only way that cryptocurrencies and the blockchain can be used and one particularly interesting idea is that central banks could issue their own cryptocurrencies. To discuss how this could be done and what the consequences could be we...

Whether the block size should be increased to 20MB has created more controversy than any other question in Bitcoin’s recent history. For some, it is an urgent and necessary step in Bitcoin’s evolution. Their view is that leaving the block size at 1MB would be irresponsible inaction with potentially catastrophic consequences. Others see increasing the block size as unnecessary and a dangerous first...

From the mysterious creation story, to the early development among a small group of cypherpunks, to the emergence of the Silk Road, the collapse of MtGox, to the entry of a tidal wave of VC money and the Silicon Valley elite, Bitcoin’s short history has been action-packed. It’s no surprise that this could make for a riveting story and NY Times journalist Nathaniel Popper’s book ‘Digital Gold – Bit...

Since Gavin Andresen’s proposal to increase the Bitcoin block size, how Bitcoin can scale to accommodate higher transaction volumes has been heatedly debated among developers. One of the most promising long-term options to allow near infinite scalability is the Lightning Network. Joseph Poon and , the co-authors of the whitepaper, joined us for a discussion of scalability and how the lightning net...