Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

I met Yonatan Sompolinsky in Romania during his summer holiday, so we decided to do a roadtrip interview about covenants, the state of Kaspa development, why intents are more interesting than smart contracts & stag hunts.

00:00:54 – Intro: a road trip with Yonatan Sompolinsky

00:01:50 – Life since S16 E41: Oxford Union & the state of Kaspa

00:02:53 – Kaspa shipped covenants while Bitcoin debates OP_CAT

00:04:24 – Sequencing commitments & based apps explained

00:06:48 – Why OP_CAT alone can't do censorship-resistant based rollups

00:07:21 – BitVM & optimistic vs optimistically verified rollups

00:08:05 – ZK was born for privacy but lives for scaling

00:09:18 – "For the record, I'm very bearish on rollups"

00:12:27 – Ethereum quietly abandons the L2 roadmap

00:13:33 – What ZK is actually for: a thin L1 & separation of layers

00:15:05 – Kaspa follows Bitcoin's UTXO design principles

00:16:04 – Ephemeral logic: generalized atomic swaps

00:17:25 – Camera gymnastics & an Aston Martin

00:19:28 – What covenants won't give you: the DeFi Lego box

00:20:05 – One-time logic vs contract deployment

00:23:18 – The use case question & crypto's crisis of utility

00:26:17 – Bitcoin the turtle & the DAGKnight progress report

00:28:17 – DAGKnight: 49% Byzantine resilience, no latency parameter

00:29:50 – Why 100 BPS on GHOSTDAG would 8x confirmation times

00:30:21 – Sponsors: Cake Wallet, LayerTwo Labs, Braiins, Orange Rock & SideShift

00:34:33 – Zcash made a comeback

00:35:19 – The mental map: where Kaspa is unique

00:38:49 – Real-time decentralization: sampling the honest majority

00:39:47 – Solana & Hyperliquid: fast, but led by one

00:42:46 – Only proof of work bundles proposing & content

00:44:35 – A bear market in usage, not just price

00:45:53 – Old-world use case: bridges & oracles

00:47:22 – Tourism break: Bușteni, mascots & ski resorts

00:49:38 – Hit-and-run agents & the agentic economy

00:51:06 – Having your cake and eating it too

00:54:32 – Vlad on Ecash, miner fees & Satoshi's biggest bet

00:56:37 – Sinaia & the royal train station

00:57:38 – "Bitcoin is dead boring to me at this stage"

00:59:50 – Ironwood, verifiable supply & Tachyon

01:00:39 – Driving like six confirmations

01:01:59 – The tectonic shift nobody noticed: verifying the supply

01:03:43 – The bug & Zcash's unfixable history

01:06:04 – Kaspa's pruning vs historical correctness

01:08:12 – How Zcash's rise paves the way for Kaspa

01:09:17 – The Zooko sleeping-in-the-car story

01:10:32 – "Just launch": Zooko one day before the Sapling bug

01:12:05 – Downplaying the bug & the counterfeit scenario

01:14:34 – Peter Todd's demurrage & the Ironwood migration

01:17:25 – Would any other coin survive this?

01:18:55 – Ethereum's identity crisis

01:21:28 – Back to L1: too little, too late; Solana's cohesion

01:22:46 – Oxford Union & political ambitions

01:24:44 – Hayek: true vs false individualism

01:26:04 – The isolated individual: Lopp, Poelstra & early Bitcoiners

01:32:52 – The enthusiastic individualist

01:34:52 – Coordination markets & Project Stag Hunt

01:35:19 – Prisoner's dilemma vs stag hunt

01:36:24 – Moloch, the demon of defection

01:37:18 – Part 2: stag hunt as the optimistic game

01:42:43 – Intents & NEAR Intents

01:44:03 – Intents vs smart contracts

01:45:21 – Part 3: Rousseau's ape men

01:49:45 – Intendos: "if many sign this, consider mine signed"

01:51:44 – Example: migrating a liquidity pool together

01:53:34 – Pack formation & threshold homomorphic encryption

01:55:42 – Actionable but not committed

01:57:18 – The Netflix example: voice for the scattered majority

02:01:36 – Who are the stags we need to hunt?

02:02:11 – Minarchist, anarchist or libertarian?

02:03:32 – Stag = shared utility; escaping Ethereum's L2 mess

02:06:28 – Composable Intendos

02:07:58 – Exiting network effects

02:09:11 – The Kaspa-Ethereum overlap: GHOST & Casper

02:11:55 – "I don't like DAGs": it's just a data structure

02:12:51 – Why DAGKnight survives a world war

02:15:22 – Michael Sutton & the Argent language

02:16:58 – Bypassing the impossibility theorem

02:18:06 – Ahead of his time or poor communicator?

02:19:31 – BPS vs TPS: the shift already happened

02:21:05 – Falling between the cracks

02:23:17 – The next narrative: coordination markets

02:24:26 – Brașov to Bucharest: documenting the trip

02:25:31 – Roles reversed: Yonatan interviews Vlad

02:27:06 – ACTA protests, internet freedom & political science

02:28:53 – Sztorc's party metaphor

02:29:57 – Zcash at $30 & the Coldcard hack

02:31:40 – What Kaspa actually needs: wallets, not exchanges

02:33:56 – Broadening cypherpunk: from protective to positive

02:37:16 – What have we really accomplished?

02:39:33 – Arriving at the Palace of Parliament

02:43:57 – The secret handshake & farewell

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