Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

Vinny Lingham is a Bitcoin OG who pioneered gift card payments in 2012 with Gyft, served on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, spearheaded blockchain identity verification with CIvic, and in more recent years moved on to managing risk with Praxos Capital. Thanks to some of his accurate price predictions, Vinny has also received the nickname "The Oracle".

In this episode, we talk about his Bitcoin journey and how his views have evolved over the last 14 years.

Time stamps:

00:01:06 Intro & sponsors: Vinny Lingham, 15 years in Bitcoin
00:02:04 Gyft: a dozen companies and one gift card problem
00:02:26 Chargebacks, stolen cards & getting attacked by scammers
00:04:13 Why Bitcoin looked like the perfect payment rail
00:04:51 Zero-conf payments and the first-seen rule
00:05:48 The Starbucks and McDonald's signature math
00:06:51 100,000 Bitcoin payments, zero double spends
00:07:13 Civic's Bitcoin patents & the 2017 fee explosion
00:07:37 Blockstream, Adam Back, MIT and the Epstein files
00:08:10 Core keeps pruning dissenting voices
00:08:55 Why Bitcoin still can't be the whitepaper's payment system
00:09:08 Counterparty, Mastercoin & the birth of Ethereum
00:09:34 "Nothing has happened in Bitcoin in five years"
00:10:16 Why he went and backed Solana instead
00:10:23 Sympathy for BIP 110 over Core
00:11:08 Inscriptions can be done many ways
00:12:27 "Lightning will be ready in 18 months" forever
00:13:26 Drivechains, BIP 300 & the Ecash fork paying miners
00:14:44 UX, mainstream users and idiot-proof money
00:15:17 People who don't know you can hold BTC outside an ETF
00:15:27 Is the ETF the real scaling layer?
00:15:37 What Vinny signed up for when he read the whitepaper
00:16:30 Wayne Vaughn in the chat
00:16:48 Saylor's Bitcoin Security Consortium and the $15M
00:17:24 Saylor argues against bigger blocks and covenants
00:17:49 How is this different from the Bitcoin Foundation?
00:18:36 Saylor as systemic risk: crashing the minority fork
00:19:43 Losing SPV and the simplicity of early Bitcoin
00:20:48 When did you last actually use Bitcoin?
00:21:22 Six confirmations vs Apple Pay
00:21:41 Gyft's customers who had no credit cards
00:22:07 Not a store of value: a store of liquidity
00:23:24 So what is a store of value, exactly?
00:26:00 The 100 year test: one ounce of gold buys one suit
00:27:09 Does the whitepaper ever say "digital gold"?
00:27:53 Saylor's redefinition: expensive to move, held by institutions
00:28:08 Privacy, tiny payments and why volume creates stability
00:28:42 Exchanges are layer two, Lightning is layer three
00:29:06 Solana at the World Series of Poker
00:30:07 BSV, Teranode, BCH and who actually handles volume
00:30:58 Does everyone really need to run a node?
00:31:30 Luke Dashjr, 16MB blocks and 50 billion Catholics
00:33:34 Arguing with someone who redefines words
00:34:33 How did Blockstream become so politically powerful?
00:35:40 Reid Hoffman's $20 million
00:36:26 Reading the Epstein files with Bitcoin eyes
00:36:45 Tether won the global south instead
00:37:42 "The community is people who never built anything"
00:38:00 Why Elon Musk walked away from Bitcoin
00:39:07 The ESG excuse & the Bitcoin Mining Council
00:40:05 Elon on bandwidth, latency and second layers
00:41:03 Why Civic started on Bitcoin and left
00:42:05 Multicoin, the Solana seed round & founding Praxos
00:42:29 Why "Civic" and not "Supra"
00:42:46 Nobody wants identity: crypto's actual number one use case
00:44:03 Zcash's comeback, Ironwood & the auditable supply
00:45:34 Delistings and the headwinds facing privacy coins
00:46:06 Why Zcash chose DeFi rails over merchant adoption
00:47:07 How to know you're in a bear market
00:47:25 Elgamarov & how small this world really is
00:48:10 What does Vinny actually hold today?
00:49:27 Praxos: delta neutral, funding rates and volatility
00:51:44 Sponsors: Braiins, Cake Wallet, SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Orange Rock
00:54:40 Wayne Vaughn's question: will the CLARITY Act pass?
00:56:47 Michael Saylor and the Strategy problem
00:57:14 The GBTC discount scenario
00:58:16 Why August could be a bloodbath
01:01:56 Node counts, sybil attacks and hash rate
01:03:16 The rewritten history of SegWit and SegWit2x
01:04:19 How Bitcoin Cash became the fallback plan
01:04:59 Gavin Andresen and the word "bamboozled"
01:06:00 Was Craig Wright involved at all?
01:08:04 Hal Finney's logs and the Van Nuy, California IP address
01:08:55 GMX, German privacy law and the missing paper trail
01:11:17 Roger Ver, the checksum test and Craig
01:13:00 Asking Claude who Satoshi is
01:14:17 The case for Nick Szabo and the trusted third parties
01:15:31 The counterfactual: what if Bitcoin had scaled?
01:19:35 Tron, USDT and five years of outperforming BTC
01:20:09 Bitcoiners understand supply, not demand
01:20:36 What happens when the block rewards run out
01:21:15 Rentable SHA256 and the state actor attack scenario
01:22:54 Will Vinny claim the August fork airdrops?

Cory Klippsten is the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, the promoter and former adviser of the Sequans BTC treasury, and also a big advocate for bitcoin-only maximalism. In this episode, we catch up on what's been going on over the last year in Bitcoin.

Time stamps:

00:01:59 – The challenges and failures of leveraged Bitcoin equity strategies in the U.S., referencing companies like Sequans, Strike, and Strategy.

00:04:48 – Swan and the relaunch of "Bitcoin Cafe," a daily show that started on Clubhouse and later moved to Twitter.

00:05:48 – Cory introduces his new framework for understanding Bitcoin adoption, inspired by recent government actions, and frames it as a generational fight for monetary independence and freedom.

00:10:41 – Cory outlines Swan’s mission to promote Bitcoin adoption and self-custody, highlighting their "50 Days for Freedom" campaign with reduced fees to encourage participation.

00:14:39 – Cory shares stories from his grandfather’s WWII journal, drawing parallels between maintaining calm and responsibility during wartime and navigating challenging times in Bitcoin.

00:18:56 – Cory responds to a viewer’s question about his compensation for advising Sequans, disclosing that he received stock options and a small cash retainer.

00:22:09 – August 2026 Bitcoin hard forks & their economic impact.

00:29:25 – Cory explains his perspective on Bitcoin’s adoption, describing it as progressing through three sequential S-curves: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account.

00:30:33 – Cory voices skepticism about the new Bitcoin Development Consortium, particularly regarding the proposal to freeze Satoshi’s coins as part of their funding approach.

00:35:51 – The conversation addresses the increasing corporate and crypto-focused sponsorship of Bitcoin conferences, using the Las Vegas event as an example of this shift.

00:43:21 – Cory reflects on the evolution of Bitcoin content creation, contrasting the high-signal era of 2018 with today’s prevalence of AI-generated, lower-quality material.

01:02:51 – Cory explains Swan’s business model, emphasizing the separation of brokerage and custody to promote self-custody and ensure alignment with user interests.

01:09:26 – Cory discusses Swan’s ongoing educational initiatives, including the Swan Canon learning modules and the release of the "Bitcoin Season" documentary.

Ever since he first received his first bitcoin in 2013, Joël Valenzuela has been on a quest to use free market electronic cash to pay for everything. Today, he is still unbanked and looking for ways to make instant payments without a bank account. He is best known for working for the DASH cryptocurrency project. But over the years, he's collaborated with plenty of other projects (mostly those related with private payments) and he possesses a wealth of knowledge in terms of adoption, everyday use as money, and user experience.

Since Joël practices what he preaches and lives without fiat or banks, he is a bona fide advocate of inconvenience: using ATMs, purchasing gift cards, and trying every workaround that helps him accomplish the mission of never using fiat currencies.

00:00:00 Intro & sponsors: living without banks with Joël Valenzuela
00:02:18 The Vlad Costea handle saga & paying X to keep your name
00:04:20 Where the "Desert Lynx" name actually comes from
00:09:04 Joël's origin story: how Peter Schiff led him to Bitcoin
00:10:16 Growing up on the border & the Mexican peso crisis
00:12:16 First Bitcoin: the Chicago pizza payback of 2013
00:14:27 Silk Road's shutdown & the chaos of the Mt. Gox era
00:18:11 Digital cash vs. hoarding: the sound money mindset
00:20:54 Earning only Bitcoin: barn work, airport rides & Porkfest
00:22:47 Declining a dream political job to go all-in on crypto
00:24:39 The bank drain that made him unbanked for good
00:26:45 Centralization risk & the tyranny of the algorithm
00:31:38 TikTok's eerily accurate (and creepy) surveillance
00:33:32 Sponsor reads & the Cake Wallet Zcash giveaway
00:37:10 Bitcoin to Dash: exploring the whole crypto space
00:41:12 Mike Hearn's "Bitcoin is a failed project" rage quit
00:42:19 Bitcoin's usability failures: the pants & coffee stories
00:46:48 Picking Dash off CoinMarketCap as usable money
00:50:44 Dash founders: Evan Duffield & Amanda B. Johnson
00:55:20 Fluffy Pony, "Dash is trash" & the Miami strip-club drama
00:59:54 Reading the hate comments: the "premine cabal"
01:01:11 Litecoin's alleged inflation bug & Charlie Lee
01:04:07 Did Dash have a premine? The actual definition
01:13:09 Xcoin to Darkcoin to Dash: the name evolution
01:15:32 Master nodes, InstantSend & deterministic finality
01:18:18 The self-funding DAO treasury explained
01:22:01 Max Kaiser, John McAfee & the paid-shill era
01:29:43 What made Satoshi different & the genesis block message
01:33:57 Roger Ver, linear thinking & money as a tool
01:37:39 The 6.15 BTC "generational wealth" meme
01:41:47 BCH Bliss & why small conferences beat the corporate ones
01:46:00 Bitcoin forks: are all these coins really "bitcoins"?
01:50:54 Dash tech history: proof of service & chain locks
01:53:22 Evolution: the enshrined sidechain & DAPI
02:00:24 Adding Zcash-level privacy: the Orchard shielded pool
02:05:17 Orchard vs. Ironwood & the inflation-bug question
02:09:50 Turnstiles: why an inflation bug can't kill Dash
02:11:50 Monero's FCMP++ & why its privacy is "perishable"
02:16:56 Privacy UX, MiCA rules & unshielding to exchanges
02:23:22 Which wallets will support shielded Dash
02:27:34 Umbrel, Lightning & the pain of self-hosting
02:28:44 The for-profit ecosystem & the $15M dev "consortium"
02:34:53 Zcash's comeback: from industry joke to spotlight
02:37:23 Routing around fiat: Thorchain, Maya & DEXes
02:46:59 The number reveal & socializing the giveaway
02:50:02 Privacy as consent, not secrecy
02:51:49 The real challenges of living unbanked
02:58:35 Local AI models & maxing out privacy you don't need
03:04:31 Getting cancelled & how Zooko unblocked Vlad
03:13:03 Demaximizing & the toxic privacy-coin wars
03:21:35 When Zcash nearly built on Monero
03:25:45 Quai Network & transparent "cash-like" privacy
03:32:38 Why Dash focused on payments, not smart contracts
03:36:31 Crypto's consolidation: projects quietly going to zero
03:42:12 XEC, Amaury & bootstrapping off a fork
03:57:47 Monero vs. Zcash: marketing, memes & narratives
04:02:46 Why Joel really lives on crypto: getting real data
04:04:58 "Use it or die": the end of the narrative cycle
04:06:41 The private-equity playbook for buying dying coins
04:11:27 Why Dash is too decentralized to acquire
04:15:49 Which chains get acquired and shut down next
04:24:01 Neptune Cash, Neptune Dash & the first-ever DAT
04:36:57 The Charlie Shrem Dash debit card saga
04:38:46 Tone Vays & other Bitcoiners who dabbled in Dash
04:43:15 Cypherpunk Week Amsterdam & DashCon
04:50:56 Secret Word

S17 E32: Perry E. Metzger on Bitcoin in 2008, Cypherpunk Culture & AI Optimism

Time stamps:

00:00:50 - Introducing Perry E. Metzger

00:03:06 - Perry Metzger's Background

00:06:04 - The Cryptography Mailing List's Origins

00:07:36 - "The Code Breakers" & Early Influences in Cryptography

00:11:19 - The Cypherpunks Era and PGP

00:22:08 - The State of Cryptography in 2008

00:24:20 - Satoshi's Bitcoin Announcement on Metzdowd

00:28:52 - Bitcoin's Key Innovations

00:32:39 - Critique of Proof of Work

00:36:21 - Sponsors

00:40:10 - Scalability and Future Challenges

00:48:41 - Initial Reactions to Bitcoin

00:51:21 - Early Criticisms of Bitcoin from James A. Donald & Ray Dillinger

01:05:16 - Perry's Moderation of the Bitcoin Discussion

01:08:16 - Satoshi's Anonymity and Mailing List Logs

01:11:19 - Perry's Comic Book on Computer Science

01:16:13 - The Metzger Dowdeswell Mailing List Today

01:23:04 - Perry's Interest in AI

01:47:03 - AI Advocacy and Combating "Doomers"

01:49:19 - The Extropy Mailing List

01:51:01 - Conclusion and How to Follow Perry Metzger

Alex Waltz is a prominent Bitcoin historian and film maker, who specializes in digging up information from the first months of Bitcoin's existence. Recently, he launched the ”First Bitcoin Miner” project in order to question whether or not Hal Finney truly was the second mining node on the Bitcoin network.

In this episode, we talk about his work and some geeky facts about Bitcoin's history.

Read Bitcoin: Year One (free download): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Bitcoin-Year-One-Vlad-Costea-Ani-Comic-Book-Demo.pdf

Read Alex's research: https://1stbitcoinminer.com

Sponsors:

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Sideshift, the place where you can exchange your stablecoins for unconfiscatable, free market money: https://sideshift.ai

LayerTwo Labs, creators of BIP300 and builders of the Drivechain. Now they're hard forking Bitcoin to create Ecash too: https://ecash.com

Cake Wallet, your privacy-friendly self-custody companion. Enables silent payments, PayJoins & Lightning for Bitcoin. Also supports Monero, Zcash, Zano & more. Available on desktop & mobile: https://cakewallet.com

Time stamps:

00:00:41 Introducing Alex Waltz & His Projects

00:03:34 The Philosophy of Art and Filmmaking

00:05:18 Alex's Research for "First Bitcoin Miner"

00:09:28 The First Bitcoin Miners: Hal Finney vs. Dustin Trammell

00:14:37 Early Bitcoin History and Cypherpunk Involvement

00:21:28 Debating Sergio Lerner's "Patoshi" Research

00:25:39 The Technicals of the Patoshi Pattern

00:37:30 Zcash Giveaway Announcement

00:40:10 The Research Process and Dedication

00:43:11 Analyzing Early Bitcoin Block Times

00:50:35 Explaining the Extra Nonce and Network Halts

01:10:18 Satoshi Was in California?

01:25:49 Why This Research Matters

01:36:18 Feedback and Cinematography

01:49:25 The "Satoshi's Don't Exist" Movie Saga

02:00:41 The Bitcoin Community: Then and Now

02:18:43 The "Knots" Fork Controversy & Moral Panic

02:30:39 The Future of Bitcoin Development

02:34:38 Bitcoin's Use Case: Payments vs. Store of Value

02:46:33 What Is The Point of Bitcoin?

02:56:38 Alex's First Bitcoin Purchase

03:00:38 Early Bitcoin Wallets

03:16:20 Mircea Popescu: A Bitcoin Legend

03:48:07 Growing Up in 90s Romania

04:00:48 Final Message: Take Risks and Build