Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

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

Donald Hugh McIntyre passed in 2025, but is remembered as one of the most insightful polymaths... while his blog Etherplan lives on. The episode came out in the first week of February 2019, ran two hours, and set the genetic code for Bitcoin Takeover podcast.

Time stamps:

00:02:45 – Introduction: who is Donald McIntyre

00:04:49 – Was Bitcoin inevitable?

00:06:29 – 10,000 years of top-down structures vs 3.5 million years of evolution

00:08:27 – Cypherpunks: Chaum, Tim May, Nick Szabo

00:09:43 – The ancient desire for unconfiscatable money

00:11:55 – Bitcoin as a bottom-up system

00:12:39 – Living in a dual world: banks vs private keys

00:15:02 – Trusted third parties are security holes

00:16:40 – Nick Szabo's social scalability explained

00:18:27 – Why banking excludes: the unbanked in the US and Latin America

00:20:14 – Privacy, intelligence agencies & the false sense of security

00:21:13 – Is Bitcoin enough to make people demand decentralization?

00:23:23 – Asia's interest in Ethereum Classic & immutability

00:24:51 – Mt. Gox, breaches & untrustworthy third parties

00:25:57 – Not your keys, not your coins

00:27:28 – JP Morgan's building & the marketing of strength

00:28:45 – The instant gratification bribe

00:29:58 – The tradeoff: security means inefficiency

00:31:27 – The high performance fallacy

00:32:26 – Decentralization theater & scammers

00:33:48 – Hyperbitcoinization: elites first or the people who need it?

00:36:26 – The jet set analogy: how technologies bootstrap

00:40:54 – The Lindy effect

00:41:47 – The geeks got in before the bankers

00:43:25 – The token as intrinsic to the protocol

00:46:27 – Bitcoin as a biological invention

00:47:02 – How Nick Szabo thinks (and why he went to law school)

00:48:38 – Shelling Out: the origins of money

00:51:20 – The 150-person brain & money as a bridge between strangers

00:52:39 – Dawkins & reciprocal altruism

00:53:52 – Stone tools, subjective value & the first trade

00:56:15 – Reading Szabo 30 times: one article = six months of university

01:00:52 – Lomekwi, Oldowan & Acheulean: Donald's stone tool theory

01:03:42 – Stashes of hand axes as prehistoric vaults

01:04:58 – Is money millions of years old?

01:07:51 – Darwin, Dawkins & John Maynard Smith

01:08:31 – The logic of animal conflict

01:10:53 – Territory, asymmetry & conflict minimization

01:12:08 – Money as a conflict minimization device

01:12:36 – Bitcoin's game theory & the Byzantine generals problem

01:15:32 – Chimpanzees, bipedalism & why our brains grew

01:17:19 – Bitcoin carnivores

01:17:40 – Szabo & Satoshi: the Newton-Leibniz parallel

01:19:23 – Satoshi's credits: bit gold, RPOW, Hashcash, b-money

01:19:59 – The mystery of Wei Dai

01:20:54 – Remembering Tim May

01:21:53 – The JW Weatherman interview & the CoinDesk piece

01:23:40 – Tim May as the father figure who was never satisfied

01:24:39 – Why not David Chaum? The Elixxir disappointment

01:26:35 – Never underestimate the elders

01:28:08 – What the cypherpunks built: Tor, WikiLeaks, BitTorrent

01:30:17 – Napster, Megaupload & the raid in New Zealand

01:30:30 – Cryptography as a wall: violence made useless

01:34:10 – The shifting Ethereum narrative

01:35:27 – World computer: a marketing confession

01:38:11 – The spectrum from marketers to scammers

01:39:59 – The DAO fork fight & leaving for Ethereum Classic

01:40:44 – What Ethereum Classic adds to Bitcoin

01:41:17 – Liquid & RSK: glorified trusted third parties

01:41:57 – Turing completeness on the base layer

01:43:48 – The future: four or five networks

01:44:26 – ETC's monetary policy: 210 to 230 million

01:46:19 – The 51% attack that happened that week

01:47:48 – 220,000 ETC, 15 double spends & 5,000 confirmations

01:49:15 – The $5,000 ETC thesis

01:50:37 – What happens when Ethereum moves to proof of stake

01:51:37 – ProgPoW, the issuance cut & doing everything wrong

01:52:16 – The Nick Johnson poll on reversing double spends

01:52:54 – The Parity bailout & the precedent of the DAO

01:54:53 – Bitcoin: soft forks, Schnorr & the SHA-256 exception

01:57:09 – Governments will never voluntarily give up fiat

01:59:14 – Donald's criticisms of Bitcoin

02:00:02 – The 21 million cap as a political decision

02:01:13 – The miner lobby scenario, 40 years from now

02:02:09 – Merge mining, drivechains & the super miners

02:02:14 – Miners as the future Google and Apple

02:04:46 – Paul Sztorc, Truth Coin & the guest suggestion

02:05:40 – "Do you think I have a chance with Nick Szabo?"

02:06:31 – The selfish joy of podcasting

02:09:51 – Enlightening, a Lightning pun & goodbye