Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

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 project is seriously taking over.

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

Kurt Wuckert Jr. is best known for his work at Gorilla Pool and CoinGeek. In this interview, he explains why BSV formed from BCH, what are the biggest differences between the two versions of big block Bitcoin, and why he believes he found Satoshi Nakamoto.

00:49 – The Cake Wallet contest explained
01:22 – Who is Kurt Wuckert Jr? Print shop, 2012, and the making of a big blocker
02:07 – The OP_RETURN reduction that killed his tokenization project
03:28 – The Hodlonaut photo controversy in Oslo: Kurt's side of the story
07:02 – Vlad on the fallout: friendship, slander, and psychological damage
09:21 – The handshake Hodlonaut refused, and Kurt's public apology
12:03 – The irony: Hodlonaut now sounds like a 2016 big blocker
13:53 – Dan Kaminsky's 2011 gigabyte block slides
15:46 – Andrew DeSantis, world computer ideas before Vitalik
17:13 – Why Mike Hearn was Kurt's first big block influence
19:14 – BIP 101, 102, 103: when block size was not controversial
22:46 – Gavin's 8 GB by 2036 plan and Jeff Garzik's modest 2 MB
25:23 – Lightning, Liquid, and the migration of activity to other chains
29:03 – Vlad's Raspberry Pi Lightning node confession
30:42 – Jack Dorsey and the lightning bank thesis
32:19 – BTC's share of market cap vs its share of transactions
32:42 – Tether on Tron and the Tetheral Reserve
35:39 – IShowSpeed in Nigeria: USDT accepted, Visa declined
37:36 – Chat question: what if Michael Saylor called to pivot to BSV?
40:24 – Saylor's anti-development tweets and the perfectionism trap
41:37 – SPV debates and engineering for perfection
44:24 – Why Bitcoin Core devs do not stack
47:01 – The 2018 inflation bug disclosed by a BCH developer
48:23 – The DDoS attacks on Bitcoin XT nodes
48:58 – The Resolution of the Bitcoin Experiment and the Mike Hearn wish
51:18 – The merchant adoption Bitcoin lost
52:24 – WBTC's 120,000 BTC vs Lightning's 5,000
53:09 – Sponsors: Braiins, Cake Wallet, SideShift, OrangeRock, Ecash
59:38 – Kurt on drivechains and Paul Sztorc
1:03:36 – The BCH/BSV split: what actually happened in November 2018
1:08:08 – Rolling checkpoints and the night of the fork
1:11:46 – Where Kurt was when the chain split
1:16:47 – Kurt's coin strategy: the Satoshi index of unsplit UTXOs
1:21:10 – The Binance delisting wave and Paolo Ardoino's defense
1:24:17 – Who invests and builds in BSV: Calvin Ayre, Tokenovate, Gorilla Pool
1:31:41 – Kurt's presentation to one of the world's biggest banks
1:33:05 – What BSV can do that BCH cannot
1:37:04 – Satoshi's disabled opcodes and the 2010 value overflow bug
1:39:16 – The poker client and marketplace in Bitcoin v0.1
1:41:48 – BCH's ABLA, CashTokens, and the governance difference
1:47:39 – The Monero codebase stored on BSV
1:48:05 – The DAR and Blacklist Manager hard forks
1:51:03 – CZ's aborted Binance rollback
1:55:33 – The white paper's immutability clause vs DAR
2:03:55 – Vlad's dormant-coins nightmare scenario
2:08:33 – The Craig Wright verdict as proof the system works
2:11:56 – Does Kurt still think Craig Wright is Satoshi?
2:15:36 – Dave Kleiman, the Drive Wipe Fallacy, and the Satoshi writing style
2:23:28 – The key slices, Uyen Nguyen, and the missing thumb drives
2:27:50 – Vlad's counter: the California IP address
2:32:00 – Bitcoin as an American project
2:35:32 – Hodlonaut replies mid-show
2:36:29 – If Craig is Satoshi, why sue the developers?
2:44:57 – The Arnhem 2017 speech
2:50:56 – Craig's neurodivergence and the villain arc
2:59:23 – The Gavin Andresen signing ceremony
3:04:58 – The rental Lamborghini and the pattern of bending truth
3:12:31 – Ryan X Charles and the post-COPA denunciations
3:14:04 – Can BSV exist without Craig Wright?
3:19:24 – BitVM: Craig's Turing completeness claim vindicated
3:20:44 – The giveaway reveal: the number is 40
3:22:24 – Would Kurt work on anything else if BSV died?
3:24:46 – Monero, fungibility, and the historian job offer
3:26:43 – OPL.dev, Bitcoin Schema, Sigma Identity
3:29:01 – The Smashing Pumpkins truce
3:32:00 – The Epstein money vindication
3:35:12 – Kurt's plugs: Gorilla Pool, kurtwuckertjr.com, bopen.ai
3:36:12 – Vlad's promise: this episode goes on the BSV blockchain
3:38:00 – The Mike Hearn introduction request
3:38:15 – Outro and sponsor thanks

Keagan McClellan (Keags) co-founded Start9 Labs, worked on Sapio with Jeremy Rubin at Judica during the CTV saga, spent time at Lightning Labs maintaining LND, and is now building BTC Verified, a formal specification and verification project for Bitcoin's consensus rules written in Lean 4. He is also a self-described member of Bitcoin's "progressive wing" who nonetheless defends the rising bar for consensus changes, a pluralist who spends all his working hours on Bitcoin, and a security thinker who refused to dunk on Coldcard even while sitting across from someone who very much wanted him to.

Time stamps:

00:00 – Intro and sound check
00:27 – Introducing Keagan "Keags" McClelland
01:14 – Bitcoin origin story: darknet markets and a CS degree in 2015
03:42 – Procrastinating at Amazon by reading ICO white papers
05:11 – Leaving Amazon for Salt Lending
06:24 – How Start9 Labs was founded
07:52 – Leaving Start9 for Jeremy Rubin's Judica (Sapio)
09:47 – What CTV (formerly OP_SECURE_THE_BAG) enables
12:35 – Mastercoin's original pitch, Rare Pepes, and play before serious use
15:44 – The Lindy effect and institutional inertia
18:20 – Sponsors + giveaway rules
22:24 – The road to Lightning Labs and LND
23:55 – Lightning as a complexity class change
25:28 – Data locality, privacy, and incentives in payment channels
27:33 – The 133 MB block problem
30:20 – Scaling takes decades: internet lessons
31:24 – Centralization, Moore's law, and what scaled the web
34:58 – Zcash's Near Intents as outsourced Bitcoin privacy
37:05 – Pluralism and the freedom to transact
39:05 – The gravitational well of money
41:36 – When does a shitcoin stop being a shitcoin?
45:43 – Every soft fork since Satoshi
47:36 – The consensus wall: CTV and BIP300
51:56 – BIP 110 case study: incoherent goals, broken design
56:05 – Why information theory defeats spam filters
58:56 – Node mythology and economic weight
1:05:17 – Miners can activate invisible soft forks
1:07:18 – Luke's soft fork definition and herd immunity
1:10:45 – Chat drama and "how much Bitcoin do you own?"
1:14:15 – RBF, Bitrefill, and policy vs consensus
1:17:21 – Can fees alone secure Bitcoin? The 50% hash rate threshold
1:24:56 – Giveaway reveal: the number is 37
1:26:55 – The Coldcard exploit
1:34:10 – The AI exploit era: "cannot be affected" vs "have not been"
1:39:13 – Why the conspiracy theories teach the wrong lesson
1:42:51 – Against security through obscurity
1:47:27 – Onboarding friction and the paranoia continuum
1:55:42 – Vaults explained, and building them without CTV
2:00:42 – Pre-signed transactions, toxic waste, and Liana
2:05:45 – Would covenants have saved Coldcard users? (No)
2:16:53 – Magic wand: why Simplicity beats CTV and GSR
2:20:33 – Witness size, block size, and what BCH got right
2:24:50 – Why Bitcoin should copy homework
2:29:49 – The two hard forks: BIP 110 vs Ecash
2:33:16 – BTC Verified: formal verification of Bitcoin consensus
2:37:10 – TABConf plans
2:39:23 – Outro and sponsor thanks

n August 2026, eCash (ECX) comes out in its alpha phase: leading up to a final complete rollout on October 31st 2026, Bitcoin's 18th birthday. To better explain how this process will take place and why every bitcoiner should try BIP300 this Halloween, Paul Sztorc joins the show for a record-breaking 11th time!

Time stamps:

00:01:17 – Welcome: Paul Sztorc for the 11th time, a new record

00:01:42 – Four months since the hard fork announcement

00:02:00 – The three phase rollout: alpha, beta, October 31st mainnet

00:02:25 – Why the launch was delayed: summer, Coldcard hack, BIP 110

00:03:04 – Practice runs: 1,000 test coins convert to 10 real eCash

00:03:55 – Alpha & beta as successors to the drivechain testnet

00:04:25 – How to claim: your Bitcoin private key & splitting transactions

00:04:42 – The fast facts GitHub repo & replay protection

00:05:07 – Why most people should not type in their main keys

00:05:27 – Mining or buying: the other ways to get eCash

00:06:04 – Mining the alpha with SHA-256D hardware

00:06:35 – The 1000:10 conversion threshold explained

00:06:51 – Why old hardware (S9s, Bitaxes) can be profitable again

00:07:17 – The launch difficulty debate: from "difficulty 1" to real data

00:08:14 – Alpha & beta as a glimpse of future price and hash rate

00:09:34 – The other fork's struggles vs planning ahead

00:10:03 – Call to action: withdraw from exchanges, accumulate BTC

00:10:24 – The network only recognizes one owner of the coin

00:10:46 – Self custody advice in a tough summer

00:11:24 – eCash vs BIP 110: honest hard fork vs 100% hash rate claims

00:12:13 – Name picking, PoW changes & the train wreck

00:13:00 – From 5 to 7 to 12 drivechains

00:13:30 – The giveaway announcement & the sponsors

00:16:07 – Thunder: scaling to 8 billion people

00:16:32 – zSide: Zcash Orchard privacy on a drivechain

00:16:48 – BitNames, BitAssets, prediction markets, CoinShift

00:17:17 – Two EVM flavors, an OP_CAT chain & a post-EVM science project

00:18:12 – Elements Plus: Blockstream's own tech, completed by the community

00:19:26 – "How many Lightning implementations at launch?" "Hopefully zero"

00:20:11 – Lightning is a dead project, the evidence is overwhelming

00:20:45 – The giveaway: Paul picks 10, the chat said 77

00:21:17 – Recap: three stages, more drivechains, October 31st

00:22:03 – Try the tech: maximizing what Bitcoin can do

00:22:53 – Rohit wins the prize & the shortest Sztorc interview ever

00:23:59 – The autumn of forks: BIP 110 delays, eCash extends to Halloween

00:24:23 – Bitcoin's 18th birthday on the metzdowd mailing list

00:24:49 – Why drivechains: all fees go to proof of work miners

00:25:38 – Hoping a Bitcoin competitor pushes Bitcoin forward

00:28:02 – Twelve drivechains you can test today