Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

The 2019 conversation with fellow crypto journalist colleague Omar Faridi is now remastered: featuring Bitcoin in Pakistan, the Petro scam, brain drain economics, and why nothing is absolutely good or bad.

Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:46 - Remaster Notes: The Crypto Insider Colleague
2:29 - Somewhat Jealous of the Five-Article Days
4:01 - Sponsor Shoutout: Helen's Pizza in Jersey City
5:25 - The Original Recording: January 2019
6:12 - Omar Faridi: Crypto Journalist in Pakistan
7:47 - The State of Bitcoin in Pakistan
9:02 - Misinformation, Education & the $400 Salary
10:05 - The Exchange the State Bank Shut Down
11:08 - Potcoin: Pakistan's Own Cryptocurrency ($34,000 Market Cap)
11:53 - The School Owner Who Had Never Heard of Crypto
13:17 - How Free Is Pakistan? A Parliamentary Republic
15:33 - Voting for Parties, Not Presidents
18:06 - Freedom vs. Quality of Life
19:09 - LocalBitcoins & the Day Trader Who Bought From Omar
21:29 - How Free Are You on a Scale of 1 to 10?
23:32 - Freedom House Says "Not Free." Omar Disagrees
25:11 - Telegram Is Blocked, VPNs Work Fine
26:39 - Would They Block Bitcoin Mining?
28:42 - The Enforcement Problem: Corruption as a Feature
30:05 - People Are Stealing Electricity
31:32 - Could Bitcoin Give Pakistan a Kickstart in World Capitalism?
33:20 - The Stability Argument: Why Volatility Kills Merchant Adoption
35:40 - Alena Vranova's Embargo Bypass Thesis
38:04 - The Petro: Venezuela's Dishonest Cryptocurrency
41:30 - The Reuters Investigation: No Evidence of Use
43:14 - Sanctions, Desperation & Who Really Suffers
45:05 - Why Venezuelans Prefer Bitcoin to Bolivars and Dollars
46:50 - ICOs, Central Points of Failure & the Network Effect
48:29 - Putin's Cryptocurrency Speech & Digital Resources
50:02 - McDonald's as Political Ambassador: The Big Mac Theory
52:04 - Is the Big Mac Actually Better?
54:39 - Ethereum Classic's 51% Attack & Network Security
56:00 - Constantinople: The Hard Fork That Almost Happened
59:01 - Why Omar Trusts Ethereum Developers
1:00:36 - Vlad's Critique: Premine, DAO Fork & Arbitrary Changes
1:03:46 - Bitcoin vs. Ethereum: Different Use Cases
1:06:24 - The Austrian Economics Friend & the Broken System
1:08:46 - Rubini, Stiglitz & the Ponzi Narrative
1:10:03 - SegWit, Schnorr, Lightning & Blockstream Satellites
1:12:20 - Time Magazine: "Bitcoin Is a Guarantee of Liberty"
1:13:36 - Omar's Rebuttal: Nobody Cares About Schnorr Signatures
1:15:15 - Roger Ver, Bitcoin Cash & the Simplicity Argument
1:17:21 - DigiByte, Dogecoin & the Gateway Drug Theory
1:19:18 - The 50% Supply Problem: Worse Than a Central Bank
1:21:20 - The Gym Analogy: Altcoins as Training Wheels
1:22:46 - Omar's Moderate Manifesto: Nothing Is Absolutely Good or Bad
1:25:02 - Rubini Is Not Always Right: Use Your Own Brain
1:26:31 - Brain Drain Omar: The Name Explained
1:28:56 - Romania's Brain Drain: Second Only to Syria
1:31:35 - The Chinese Neighborhood Outside Bucharest
1:34:28 - The Internet Changed Everything
1:37:25 - Jobs That Didn't Exist: The New Economy
1:39:19 - Why Vlad Recommended Omar for Crypto Insider
1:42:54 - The First Email: Bulky Equipment & "It's So Easy"
1:44:56 - Stuart Haber Invented Blockchain Before Satoshi
1:46:41 - Coming Full Circle: From Local to Global
1:49:10 - The Orwellian Alternative
1:51:42 - Privacy Coins Will Have a Market
1:54:06 - Decentralized Exchanges & IP Tracking
1:55:04 - Where to Find Omar Faridi
1:56:44 - Closing: The Bitcoin Takeover Continues

BitGo CEO Mike Belshe returns after 20 months to discuss the Clarity Act, BitGo's IPO and retail launch, quantum-resistant wallets, AI code auditing, and what changed since we last spoke in S16 E1.

Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro
0:54 - Welcome to S17 E43: Mike Belshe Returns
1:26 - The White House Visit & the Clarity Act Vote
2:35 - Why Wall Street Needs the Clarity Act
4:43 - Martin Gruenberg, Operation Chokepoint & the Vulnerability Window
7:00 - Does Clarity Affect Bitcoin Payments?
7:18 - The Three Camps Inside Every Bank
09:12 - Will the Next Administration Rug Pull Crypto?
10:15 - Executive Orders vs. Legislation
11:08 - Larry Fink: "Everything Is Going to Be Tokenized"
13:30 - Market Structure as Infrastructure Robustness
15:42 - MiCA, the War on Cash & the Bitcoin ATM Ban
18:48 - The Cake Wallet Contest
20:17 - BitGo Today: Custody AND Self-Custody
22:00 - The Marble Pillars Lesson: How Banks Earned Trust
23:58 - Why BitGo Is Free for Individuals
25:13 - Coldcard & the Single Point of Failure Problem
26:19 - Two-of-Three Multi-Sig vs. Single-Key Cold Storage
27:38 - Bybit's Blind Signing Hack
29:47 - Random Number Generators & Why Every AI Says 17
32:42 - AI Code Auditing at BitGo
34:11 - The Frontier Model Business Model Is Broken
36:16 - AI Vlad & Seasons 18-21 in Parallel
39:18 - Regulators vs. Borderless Money
42:38 - The $3 Random Number Experiment
47:21 - Sponsors: Layer 2 Labs & Braiins Hash Power
54:27 - BitGo's Fork Policy: Replay Protection & the Three Criteria
58:41 - Why Two Bitcoin Forks in 2025?
1:00:53 - Belshe on Forks: Technical Merit vs. Politics
1:04:47 - Satoshi's Blueprint or Final Solution?
1:08:00 - Forks as Scaling the Idea of Bitcoin
1:10:03 - Satoshi's Unanticipated Centralization Vectors
1:13:16 - Clearing the Record: BitGo & the New York Agreement
1:17:46 - The Block Size Counterfactual
1:19:34 - Tether on Omni: A Technical Correction
1:23:56 - Liquid's Hack as Sidechain Vindication
1:27:11 - The Fee Subsidy Problem & Tail Emission
1:32:01 - Fixed Supply as Bitcoin's Fundamental Promise
1:37:03 - Miner Subscriptions & Marathon's Slipstream
1:38:48 - Fungibility, Privacy & the Regulatory Threat
1:41:34 - Zcash Shielded Adoption: 4.5 Million ZEC
1:43:12 - BitGo's Shielded Zcash Implementation
1:45:00 - Executive Order 6102 & California's Wealth Tax
1:48:16 - The K-Shaped Economy & Borrowing Against Assets
1:53:41 - Do Forks Inflate the Coin Supply?
1:58:28 - The Payments Expectation vs. Protocol Reality
2:04:24 - Stablecoins, Iran & Tether's Freeze Function
2:08:00 - Jameson Lopp, Casa & the New York Agreement Myth
2:12:15 - Ethereum, Solana & the Trade-off Landscape
2:14:30 - The BIP 39 Seed Phrase Experiment: Quen's Answer
2:15:19 - The Winning Number: 91
2:15:31 - The Religion Question
2:17:13 - SideShift Ad Read
2:18:10 - Quantum: The Perception Threat
2:21:38 - BitGo's Quantum-Resistant Wallet Architecture
2:24:07 - The Unspent Selection Mechanism Explained
2:27:03 - Satoshi's Coins & the Freeze Debate
2:28:11 - WBTC as Bitcoin's Largest Scaling Layer
2:28:25 - The Anthropic 100 BTC Bounty
2:32:06 - Open Source AI & the Arms Race
2:34:05 - Will Clarity Pass Today?
2:36:51 - BitGo Wants Competition
2:37:18 - Satoshi vs. Hamilton & Goodbye

Ethereum Classic veteran Bob Summerwill retells the DAO hack from inside the Foundation, explains why forks are features, and shares advice for Paul Sztorc's ecash launch, plus FIFA stories and lost ETH.

Time stamps:

00:47 - Welcome to S17 E42: Fork Season Begins
01:26 - Bob Summerwill & the DAO Hack Origin Story
03:11 - Slock.it, Smart Locks & the First DAO
07:03 - Child DAOs and the "Risk-Free" Pitch
10:04 - Bob's Reservations: Legal Liability & Randos Voting With Money
13:27 - The Reentrancy Bug: 14% of the Supply Drained
16:14 - Code Is Law vs. Bailout: The Great Schism
19:42 - Hoskinson's "Two Ethereums From the Start"
26:25 - "Can You Guys Please Stop Trading?"
26:44 - The Irregular State Transition (It Was Not a Rollback)
30:10 - The Hacker Threatens Legal Action
34:08 - The Vote & Activation Day
37:22 - Ethereum Classic: The First Minority Chain to Survive
41:34 - Forking Is Part of Nakamoto Consensus
42:19 - Sal, Donald McIntyre & the Cypherpunks of ETC
43:22 - Barry Silbert, Grayscale & the ETC Cooperative
46:26 - The Weird Roommate Theory of Forks
50:00 - Why Ethereum Classic Didn't Win
56:17 - Bitcoin Cash, Dormant Coins & Grassroots Adoption
57:35 - Vlad's "Many Bitcoins" Theory & the Accidental 21 Million
01:00:13 - Voluntary Consensus & the Little Dictators
01:04:37 - The Blake Fork (BIP 110) & the Node Democracy LARP
01:07:01 - Paul Sztorc's Ecash: The Maximalist Hard Fork
01:09:47 - BitVM, Rollups & Bitcoin's Missing Layer Twos
01:13:17 - Connection Trouble & the Speed of Light
01:14:03 - Sponsors: SideShift, Ecash, Orange Rock, Braiins, Cake Wallet
01:18:18 - Giveaway Reveal: The Number Is 96
01:19:28 - Why the Best Technology Doesn't Win
01:22:50 - Tether on Tron: The Joke That Worked
01:26:07 - Tron's Plagiarized Whitepaper & the Web 4 Roadmap
01:29:04 - NEO, EOS, NEM & the $4 Billion ICO
01:33:41 - Ultrasound Money & the EIP-1559 Burn
01:37:18 - The Prague Photographer's Lament
01:40:08 - Bob's Origin Story: Gold Bugs & the Alex Jones Phase
01:44:53 - El Salvador's Quiet Bitcoin Regression
01:48:07 - Meeting Bitcoin in a Pub (February 2014)
01:54:44 - Bitcoin 2.0: BitShares, Counterparty, Mastercoin, NXT
01:57:48 - Toronto, TD Securities & Joining the Ethereum Foundation
02:02:06 - Michael Ruppert's Collapse & Choosing to Build
02:06:24 - Self-Driving Cars & Assassination Markets
02:10:02 - Does Ecash Feel Like Early Ethereum?
02:13:53 - Will Bitcoin Ever Fork Again?
02:19:24 - WBTC: Ethereum Is Bitcoin's Biggest Sidechain
02:21:48 - The Self-Custody Industrial Complex
02:23:52 - Zcash, Monero & Tachyon
02:27:38 - "Everything Is an Experiment"
02:30:46 - The Block Size Wars Counterfactual
02:35:52 - Ethereum PoW: Anatomy of a Cash Grab
02:41:26 - ETC Labs, DFG & the Sabotage of ETC Dev
02:45:27 - Could ETC Have Flipped ETH?
02:49:07 - Bob's Advice for Paul Sztorc
02:55:50 - The EA Years: Psygnosis, Wipeout & Harry Potter
03:01:56 - "None of Us Play FIFA": Confronting the Chairman
03:12:22 - Fixing FIFA: The Seven-Year Turnaround
03:21:02 - FIFA Nostalgia & Vlad's Prodigy Brother
03:24:12 - The Notorious Wii U Tweet
03:26:37 - Professional Chaos Agent? Proof of Work Summit Stories
03:32:24 - Charlie Shrem's Time Zone & Nick Spanos Ghosting
03:35:51 - Advice to 2015 Bob: The Lost ETH Fortune
03:38:00 - Remembering Donald McIntyre
03:41:06 - The Nick Szabo Interview That Almost Happened
03:43:38 - Vitalik, Autism & Genius
03:47:08 - Early Days of Ethereum & the Ethereum Time Machine
03:58:36 - "You Got to Try" & Where to Follow Bob
03:59:22 - Outro & Sponsors

The January 2019 Zack Voell crossover (he was hosting The Coin Pod) is now remastered: featuring opt-in money, gridlock as a feature, FDR's gold grab, Russia rumors & dating as a Bitcoiner in NYC. The audio has been enhanced too!

Time stamps:

0:00 - Intro
0:46 - Remaster Notes: This Show Was Almost Called "Bitcoin & Politics"
2:12 - Sponsor Shoutout: Helen's Pizza in Jersey City
3:30 - The Crossover Episode Zack Never Published
4:41 - The Original Recording: January 2019
5:42 - Bitcoin as a Tool of International Affairs
7:49 - Bitcoin Obituaries, Silk Road Curiosity & Getting Rekt
11:39 - The Opt-In Economy: Voting With Your Money
13:26 - "You Only Ever Experience One Bear Market: Your First"
16:54 - The US Dollar's Outlaw Origins
17:55 - Colonial Currency Disasters & Tobacco Money
20:27 - Thirty Years of Failed Internet Money
21:51 - Gridlock Is a Feature: Congress & Nakamoto Consensus
22:37 - Bitcoin: A Very American Invention
24:47 - Why Americans Seem to Own the Narrative
27:18 - The White Paper's American Pedigree
30:44 - Could Bitcoin Have Come Out of China or Russia?
31:35 - Liberty Arbitrage & the Two Foundational Freedoms
35:15 - FDR's Gold Confiscation
37:43 - Jefferson, Madison & the Hard Money Founders
39:10 - Voltaire's Zero & the Fiat Inertia
43:08 - Rousseau, Property & Money as a Token of Trust
48:02 - Rational Ignorance: The Questions We Never Ask
50:55 - The Bitcoin Crash Course & Why Money Creates Community
55:36 - The Bitcoin Noob Moniker
58:52 - Dating as a Bitcoiner in New York City
1:02:58 - "But That's Not Real Money"
1:04:15 - Paying Your Half of the Date in Bitcoin (2017 Edition)
1:09:48 - The Russia Bitcoin Reserve Rumor
1:13:48 - Bernie Madoff Is Not Satoshi Nakamoto
1:17:19 - Who Adopts First: The Unbanked or the Privileged?
1:20:18 - Deplatforming, Gab, Patreon & Money as Speech
1:23:07 - The Four Freedoms of Money
1:26:05 - The Inconvenience of Freedom
1:29:20 - Your Own Single Point of Failure
1:31:09 - If You're Glad, Then I'm Vlad

Vik Sharma is best known as the CEO of Cake Wallet. But lately, he's built two new projects: a Signal fork with BTC tipping called Radar, and a perpetual trading app named Arbiter. In this episode, he explains how the AI revolution speeds up development.

Time stamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:18 - Vik Sharma Returns: Two New Products in Seven Months
1:41 - Radar: A Signal Fork with Bitcoin Lightning Built In
3:18 - How Radar Works: Signal Servers, Monthly Donations & Linked Devices
5:21 - Why Signal Over Telegram
6:36 - Why Lightning Over Monero
8:19 - Stablecoins for Normies: The Venmo-ification of Bitcoin
10:33 - Spark, Breez SDK & the Stablecoin Question
11:55 - The Nvidia Spark Cluster: Going All In on Local AI
15:25 - Why Local Models Beat Cloud Subscriptions for Security Work
17:03 - Guardrails: When Claude Refuses to Audit Your Own App
18:33 - Dinner with the Trump Administration: America's AI Regulation Mistake
20:45 - Italy's ChatGPT Ban & the Fear of Falling Behind
22:44 - The $100 Cake Wallet Contest
23:15 - Does Cake Wallet Use AI for Coding?
25:16 - Arbiter: A Vibe-Coded Hyperliquid Trading App
27:44 - $5 Million Traded, TestFlight & the Mac Desktop Build
30:13 - Linux Requests & the Orange Rock Comparison
31:17 - Gasless USDC: Circle CCTP & Frictionless Onboarding
35:10 - Can This UX Work on Private Chains? Zano, Aztec, Tari & Beam
37:44 - The $10,000 Red Team Donation & Cake's Audit Results
39:34 - The Coldcard RNG Flaw & the "Someone Is Looking at the Code" Fallacy
43:14 - Passphrases: The Simplest Security Upgrade
43:58 - The Bitcoin Forks: Luke Dash Jr's Blake2 & the Ecash Hard Fork
44:51 - Open-Mindedness: The Original Bitcoiner Virtue
46:44 - Wownero, MoneroV & Why Cake Dropped It
49:22 - The Winning Number Is 27 (and Nobody Picked It)
51:04 - The Privacy Narrative: Why Monero & Zcash Are Pumping
55:07 - "Bitcoin Maximalism Is Almost Anti-Bitcoin"
57:52 - NEAR Intents, Maya & Spending Shielded Zcash
59:53 - How to Try Arbiter Today
1:01:45 - What's Next: Desktop Apps, Multisig & Back to Self-Custody Basics
1:04:26 - Still Bullish on Lightning
1:04:39 - The Gatekeeper Question: How Cake Decides Which Coins to List
1:09:07 - Dash Adopting Orchard While Zcash Moves to Ironwood
1:10:56 - The Maintenance Burden: Why Exodus Dropped Monero
1:12:25 - Zcash Voting, Sapling Addresses & Passphrase Support
1:16:03 - Seth's Role & the Foundation Devices Connection
1:17:01 - Two Million Downloads & the Privacy Tipping Point
1:19:08 - Bitcoin Amsterdam & Conference Plans
1:21:14 - Sponsors & Goodbye