Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

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

Prof. Richard Werner is one of the best known economists in the world. Amir Taaki is one of the most famous cryptographers and cypherpunks of his generation. Together, they join forces to defeat centra planning & stop the rise of CBDCs.

Time stamps:

0:00 - Intro: A Crossover Panel at Mallorca Blockchain Days
2:02 - Werner's Paradigm: Why Mainstream Economics Is Charlatanism
5:52 - David Ricardo, Karl Marx & the Single Central Bank Dream
7:02 - Scientific Economics: The German Historical School & East Asia
9:25 - The Subsidiarity Principle: Lessons from the Prussian Army
12:46 - Decentralization in Money: 25,000 Local Banks
15:10 - Europe in Decline: Germany's Negative Growth & Rising Controls
17:20 - Germany Is Not Sovereign: The Occupation Statutes Theory
20:45 - The Undemocratic EU: A Soviet-Style Rubber Stamp Parliament
21:58 - Article 146: Germany's Path to a Real Constitution
24:39 - Direct Democracy via Technology: Why Do We Need Representatives?
26:00 - Amir Asks: What Does the Ideal Society Look Like?
27:13 - Switzerland's Referendum Culture as the Model
29:30 - The Scarcity Lie: Every Country Can Have 15% Growth
32:15 - Disaggregated Credit: Productive vs. Non-Productive
33:24 - Why One Currency? Medieval Bonds & Local Money
35:36 - The Wörgl Experiment: Full Employment in the Great Depression
38:04 - Tally Sticks: The Original Public/Private Key Money
40:10 - Local Credit as a Social Force Under Community Control
43:09 - Sea Power vs Land Power: The Bank of England's Origins
47:07 - 1688: The Foreign Invasion Nobody Talks About
49:49 - Belt & Road, Iran, and the Real Target: China
51:47 - Sponsors: Cake Wallet, LayerTwo Labs, Orange Rock, Braiins, SideShift
54:22 - The Year in Privacy: FHE, Obfuscation & the Zcash Hack
56:35 - The Year in Economics: Chat Control & the Digital Prison
57:46 - CBDC Explained: The Umpire Who Wants to Play
59:04 - How a Banking Crisis Ushers in the Soviet System
1:01:07 - Q&A: How Can Politicians Create Growth?
1:06:31 - Q&A: Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse So Suddenly?
1:12:05 - The $100 Cake Wallet Prize Vote
1:13:07 - Closing Question: What Do You Think of Bitcoin Today?
1:14:07 - Amir on Bitcoin: No Leadership, Proletariat Vibes & Trump Dependency
1:17:05 - Werner: Bitcoin Works as an Asset, Fails as Money
1:18:18 - Bitcoin, Geopolitics & Iran Charging Shipping Fees in BTC
1:20:32 - Gold, Cash & the War on Alternatives
1:22:51 - Closing

Recorded in January 2019 and published alongside the rest of the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast Season 1 episodes in February 2019, this interview with John Carvalho is one of the show's early hits and a statement that this initiative is able to feature unique insights from popular bitcoiners.

The remastered version features enhanced audio, with some extra EQ and compression. Special thanks to Helen's Pizza for sponsoring this initiative!

Time stamps:

0:00 - Intro: Why This Episode Matters
4:16 - Welcome: John Carvalho, the Bitcoin Error Log
5:17 - Bitcoin Politics and the Early Days
6:39 - The Bitcoin Foundation: Ego Platform or Useful Body?
8:53 - First Contact: Silk Road, Forums and IRC
11:40 - Buying Bitcoin in 2012: Mt. Gox, Dwolla and BitInstant
13:20 - The Foundation's Founders and Its Failures
15:45 - The Rebranding Effort and Why It Failed Again
17:04 - The Impossibility of Organizing Benevolent Bitcoin
20:04 - Bitcoin Core, Communication and the Leaderless Project
23:50 - No Official Narrative: Bitcoin's Many Stories
25:49 - Consensus as the Lowest Common Denominator
28:01 - Should Everything Be on a Blockchain?
28:58 - Surviving Market Cycles: Everyone Who Sold Was Wrong
32:46 - Bitcoins Want to Be Free: The Lord of the Rings Theory
34:05 - Roger Ver Attacks Andreas Antonopoulos
37:08 - How Big Is Bitcoin Really? The Coinbase Illusion
40:52 - Media Conglomerates and Hidden Concentration
42:13 - Decentralization Theater and arewedecentralizedyet.com
42:47 - Refusing BitPay and Political Spending
44:46 - Censorship Resistance as Bitcoin's Core Purpose
46:46 - Debunking "Swiss Bank Account in Your Pocket"
48:26 - What Caused the 2017 Bull Run?
51:31 - Stocks as Stores of Value and What Bitcoin Will Cure
53:44 - No College Degree: Comic Books, Punk Rock and Design
56:19 - Massachusetts [Redacted]: Growing Up Arguing
57:21 - Preparing for the Roger Ver Interview
58:32 - The Bcash Moment: Triggered, Not Scripted
1:00:46 - Roger's Debate Tactics: Zoom In, Zoom Out
1:04:36 - Skepticism as a Survival Skill
1:05:32 - Blockstream: Great Developers, Unclear Business Model
1:09:28 - r/btc Conspiracies and the AXA Myth
1:13:48 - Roger's War Chest and the Cost of Fighting Markets
1:18:17 - Will Roger Ever Come Back to Bitcoin?
1:20:40 - Pepe Politics and the Attention Economy
1:22:11 - The Evolution of Bitcoin and the Lightning Generation
1:23:06 - Bitrefill, Gift Cards and the Circular Economy
1:26:09 - Steemit Critique: Gamify, Don't Scam
1:27:16 - Brave, BAT and the Nonsense of Paid Attention
1:30:52 - Hitchcock's Bladder Rule and Final Questions
1:31:55 - Hyperbitcoinization: Hype, Greed and Small Wins
1:35:17 - Nation States Secretly Accumulating Bitcoin?
1:36:29 - Bitcoin and the Shift in Global Power
1:39:32 - Merchant Adoption and the Tax Man Problem
1:42:06 - Bitcoin in 10 Years: Disruption Incoming
1:43:43 - Bitcoin Is a Consensus Ponzi (and So Is All Money)
1:44:26 - The Cantillon Effect and Inflationary Money
1:47:59 - Closing: A Bitcoin Every Thousand Years