Epicenter - Learn About Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin And Distributed Technologies

Bitcoin mining and the intricate game theory that surround it is a topic that we’ve visited many times. Difficult to grasp in its complexity, it is these dynamics that determine the security of Bitcoin in the short and in the longer term. This time we were joined by none other than Dave Hudson. He is the author of the leading mining blog hashingit.com, VP of Software at PeerNova and had a long career in chip manufacturing including at Qualcomm. We talked about dynamics in the mining market, security issues with Bitcoin’s design and his data-informed views on the blocksize debate. Topics covered in this episode: How he became interested in mining and what metrics he finds most interesting How miners would be affected by a blocksize increase The flaws in Satoshi’s design of the reward scheme Why transaction fees will not make up for the block reward decrease in 2016 and why that will lessen the security of Bitcoin The long-term role of Bitcoin as a settlement network The problem with accepting 0-conf transacti

Amidst all the discussion of alternative uses of blockchains, it is often forgotten that the very first fork of Bitcoin, Namecoin, pursued a daring vision for a decentralized, censorship-resistant internet. Greg Slepak, co-founder of the okTurtles Foundation joined us for an interesting discussion of DNS, Namecoin and how blockchains can be used to decentralize the internet. Topics covered in this episode: What DNS is and the role it plays in the architecture of the internet What man-in-the-middle attacks are and why certificate authorities offer poor protection How certificate authorities, SSL, IP routing and VPNs work Why the current model is broken from a privacy and security perspective How Namecoin and the blockchain could enable a decentralized and more secure internet The security risks when online identity is tied to a private key and how they could be mitigated What DNSChain is and what projects okTurtles is working on Episode links: okTurtles Foundation Namecoin Primer Namecoin Website Airplane W

In this episode, we revisited the perennial topic of digital currency regulation with Siân Jones, our regulatory correspondent and founder of the regulation-focused virtual currency consultancy COINSULT. With the final version of the BitLicense, what may turn out to be the most influential document for digital currency regulation, is now out. Besides diving into many different aspects of the onerous BitLicense, we talked about California’s coming rules, how Bitcoin startups will be affected and the implications of Ripple’s fine. NOTE: Since the episode was recorded the advocate general at the EU Court of Justice recommended that Bitcoin be exempt from VAT. Topics covered in this episode: A brief primer on BitLicense and the process by which it emerged What the key aspects of BitLicense are and how they changed through the revisions Why BitLicense will stifle innovation by dramatically increasing the cost and bureaucratic burden of running a digital currency startups How different companies are responding to

Solving the pain points of online payments was the applications that garnered the most attention in Bitcoin’s early days. In recent times, as consumer adoption of Bitcoin payments has been underwhelming much of that attention has shifted elsewhere. Nevertheless, companies keep working hard on making the vision of a universal, global payment system a reality. Among those companies, one stands out as the top contender to compete with existing payment systems: Bitnet. Funded with a heavy warchest and the company is ran by veterans of Visa and Cybersource, a company started in 1994 to help merchants accept credit cards online that was sold to Visa in 2007 for $2bn. They have been working behind the scenes to get Bitcoin to break through with merchants. CEO John McDonnell joined us for an important discussion of how online payments work today, why they are broken and how Bitcoin will revolutionize the industry. Topics covered in this episode: The story of Cybersource and payments in the early day of the internet

Peter Thiel argued in his book ‘Zero to One’ that the way to build a great and highly profitable company is to build a monopoly. But with decentralized technologies, there is a real question whether these monopolies can be built or whether the monopolies will end up being publicly owned goods (like Bitcoin) that can’t be monetized directly. William Mougayar, who is an experienced tech executive and angel investor, has been writing extensively about these issues and was one of the investors in OB1, the venture-backed company launched by the founders of the decentralized market place Open Bazaar. He joined us for a discussion of the cryptocurrency space, Ethereum, Open Bazaar and monetizing decentralized technologies. Topics covered in this episode: Bitcoin as the new, thin cloud His long-term predictions about where the space is going What kind of business models are the most promising Why he chose to invest in OB1, the company behind Open Bazaar What the state of Venture Capital in the cryptocurrency space i

Revolutionary progress doesn’t happen without lots of work and in the case of Bitcoin that requires many different startups building technology. Few have contributed to this as much as Silicon Valley based startup accelerator Boost VC, which has been focusing on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency startups since 2013. Focusing exclusively on Bitcoin for an extended time, they’ve invested in companies such as Blockcypher, Coinprism, Coinjar, Mirror, Snapcard, Zapchain and many others. Boost VC Founder Adam Draper joined us to discuss running an accelerator, their investment thesis and why they’ve chosen to add Virtual / Augmented Reality startups to the program. NOTE: Applications to join the next tribe of Boost startups can be submitted until Wednesday July 1. If you’re interested in applying go here: Topics covered in this episode: The qualities they look for in companies (8:50) What the overarching Boost VC investement thesis is (14:40) His view on the BitLicense rules and how they affect cryptocurrency startups (3

One topic that is guaranteed to cause heated discussion among cryptocurrency enthusiasts is the idea that blockchains can be controlled by known validators and function without an underlying cryptocurrency. Some think this is a non-sensical idea fabricated by those spineless enough to want to appease regulators and but clueless enough to miss the whole point of cryptocurrencies. But others believe that Bitcoin is unsuited for a lof of ‘Bitcoin 2.0’ applications and that permissioned ledgers have wide-reaching potential to increase efficiency and transparency. Tim Swanson joined us for an important discussion of permissioned ledgers. He’s among their best-known proponents and has recently published a whitepaper discussing how they work and looking at different startups in the space. Topics covered in this episode: Why the ‘blockchains without bitcoin’ idea is so controversial Why it is strange that KYC is done widely on Bitcoin users but not on the validators Why even semi-decentralized blockchains can provid

Many people think of Bitcoin as the ultimate contender against the power of central banks, most importantly the Federal Reserve System. But that is certainly not the only way that cryptocurrencies and the blockchain can be used and one particularly interesting idea is that central banks could issue their own cryptocurrencies. To discuss how this could be done and what the consequences could be we were joined by David Andolfatto, a Vice President of Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and a professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University. The views and opinions expressed by ou guest are his own and should in no way be attributed to his employer. Topics covered in this episode: What makes good money? How does Bitcoin fare in comparison? What is Fedcoin and how could it work? Why the tension between a governments desire for control and the desires for ‘permissionless innovation’ could make this difficult to implement Whether Fedcoin would threaten fractional reserve banking Why competition betwe

Whether the block size should be increased to 20MB has created more controversy than any other question in Bitcoin’s recent history. For some, it is an urgent and necessary step in Bitcoin’s evolution. Their view is that leaving the block size at 1MB would be irresponsible inaction with potentially catastrophic consequences. Others see increasing the block size as unnecessary and a dangerous first step down a slippery slope towards a more centralized Bitcoin. We were joined by Mike Hearn, along with Gavin Andresen the most outspoken supporter of a block size increase. He is also the creator of Bitcoin XT, a modified fork of Bitcoin Core, that may become the vehicle for the push for bigger blocks if no agreement is reached regarding Bitcoin Core. Don’t miss this crucial conversation! Topics covered in this episode: What would happen if blocks started being consistently full Whether bigger blocks create a centralization risk Why Bitcoin core development has become pervaded with toxic division What Bitcoin XT i

From the mysterious creation story, to the early development among a small group of cypherpunks, to the emergence of the Silk Road, the collapse of MtGox, to the entry of a tidal wave of VC money and the Silicon Valley elite, Bitcoin’s short history has been action-packed. It’s no surprise that this could make for a riveting story and NY Times journalist Nathaniel Popper’s book ‘Digital Gold – Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money’ is precisely that. Popper joined us for a conversation about his must-read book about the remarkable story of Bitcoin. Topics covered in this episode: How Nathaniel Popper ended up writing a book about Bitcoin Why he chose ‘Digital Gold’ as a title and some of its different connotations Why he chose to focus on the people and stories of Bitcoin rather than the technology The story of the Silk Road and how it played such a critical role in the early days of Bitcoin How Xapo CEO Wences Casares came to play a crucial role in evangelizin

Since Gavin Andresen’s proposal to increase the Bitcoin block size, how Bitcoin can scale to accommodate higher transaction volumes has been heatedly debated among developers. One of the most promising long-term options to allow near infinite scalability is the Lightning Network. Joseph Poon and , the co-authors of the whitepaper, joined us for a discussion of scalability and how the lightning network could allow massive numbers of off-chain transaction in a trustless way. Topics covered in this episode: Why Bitcoin has a scalability problem How payment channels work and the architecture of the Lightning Network Why the Lightning Network would still require a block size increase How transaction fees would work in the Lightning Network How the Bitcoin blockchain would take on a court-like function to ensure honest off-chain behavior The risks and downsides to the Lightning Network Episode links: Gavin Andresen - Why Increasing the Block Size is Urgent Mike Hearn - The Capacity Cliff Mike Hearn - Crash Landi

Started in May 2013, Coinkite has by now almost advanced to senior citizen status in the short-lived Bitcoin startup space. CEO Rodolfo Novak joined us for a discussion about what drove their initial interest in Bitcoin, why they initially focused on providing ‘bank-like’ services and how they’ve transitioned to powering the infrastructure of countless Bitcoin startups with their API. We also discussed multi-sig and the business strategy they pursued that allowed them to be profitable and not require venture funding. Topics covered in this episode: How Coinkite started Why they have come away from calling themselves a Bitcoin bank Why they have been putting so much emphasis on multi-sig How they’ve ended up building an insane amount of features The transition of their business model to providing a powerful API for startups What the Bitcoin ecosystem in Toronto is like Episode links: Coinkite Coinkite-Ledger Partnership How to use Ledger Nano with Coinkite p2sh.info This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian C

The idea of using the Bitcoin blockchain to represent and track the ownership of off-chain assets is almost as old as Bitcoin itself. One of the startups that is pursuing this vision is Berlin-based Ascribe, which allows creators to register (‘ascribe’), transfer and archive digital art. Ascribe CTO joined us for a fascinating discussion of their ambitious goals to enable a so-far elusive secondary market for digital art, help creators monetize their work and ultimately retrofit an entire ownership layer to the internet. Topics covered in this episode: Why ownership in the internet is broken How Ascribe wants to realize the vision of Project Xanadu of an internet with bi-directional links and baked-in copyrights How the SPOOL (Secure Public Online Ownership Ledger) protocol works The components of the Ascribe tech stack How Ascribe will crawl and similarity-match the entire internet to retrofit an internet of ownership Why Ascribe focuses first on the digital art market Episode links: Ascribe SPOOL Protoco

Few question that educating people about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is one of the most important and challenging tasks to achieve mass adoption. And perhaps even fewer disagree that there is no one more gifted at communicating the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin than Andreas M. Antonopoulos. A technologist, entrepreneur, LTB host and author, he has been speaking, writing and educating about Bitcoin for years and become one of the most popular people in the Bitcoin space. He joined us to talk about his new book, his journey in the Bitcoin space, educating lawmakers about Bitcoin and the exciting future awaiting us. Topics covered in this episode: Why he wrote ‘Mastering Bitcoin’ and how the reception has been so far What he currently spends him time on How he introduces new people to Bitcoin What NOT to do when telling someone new about Bitcoin His experiences speaking in front of the Canadian and Australian Senate Why he believes in the community’s ability to keep evolving Bitcoin Episode links: Unive

Bitcoin’s approach to solving the double spending problem is to make a collusion and attack on the network prohibitively expensive. One of the main factors that will determine Bitcoin’s chance of survival in the long-term is whether the behavior that maximizes the profits of miners contributes to or sabotages the health of the network. The game theory that determines this is complex and our understanding of it still incomplete. But research is increasing and two people who have been at the forefront of this work are , a professor in computer science at Cornell University, and Ittay Eyal, a post-doc at the same department. They joined us for a fascinating discussion of their work on ‘selfish mining’, the incetive structure that underlies Bitcoin and their recent positive conclusions from the Miner’s Dilemma. Topics covered in this episode: Emin Gün Sirer’s early interest in cryptocurrencies and work on a cryptocurrency to incentivize bittorrent users in 2004 What selfish mining is and how miners could profit

As the cost of computing continues to plummet, the number of connected devices is increasing dramatically. In the future powerful computing capacity will be in billions of devices ranging from the lightbulb to the car door to new wearables. This new internet of things (IoT) will dramatically change our lives. Paul Brody, a Technology Strategist and the former VP of Mobile and IoT at IBM, joined us for a discussion of where the IoT is going. We discussed their white paper on why a decentralized, blockchain-based internet of things could solve the problems of the current IoT in terms of privacy, scalability, and business models. Topics covered in this episode: What the Internet of Things and its core value proposition is Why the current IoT business models are broken How a decentralized IoT infrastructure would be more secure, scalable and economically feasible What role the blockchain could play in a decentralized IoT The three components of IBM’s ADEPT proof-of-concept Episode links: IBM Democracy of Devic

The cryptocurrency ecosystem is increasingly divided into different camps. There are those betting and working on the eventual mainstream success of Bitcoin. And there are those who take elements of Bitcoin’s technology and repurpose them to improve existing systems. Hyperledger is one of the projects firmly in the latter camp. They are envisioning a world where innumerable interoperable ledgers are operated by different parties. Hyperledger is their tool for the creation and management of these ledgers. CEO Dan O’Prey and CTO joined us for a discussion of the project, underlying technology and their view of where the cryptocurrency ecosystem is going. Topics covered in this episode: Why Hyperledger is trying so solve a fundamentally different problem than Bitcoin How networks consisting of known parties can have massive performance and scalability advantages over anonymous networks Why Hyperledger doesn’t have or need its own currency How Hyperledger can vary the degree of decentralization and security depe

When one is busy driving a technological and societal revolution forward, complying with complicated regulatory requirements is rarely a top priority. Yet, the reality is that at this stage the often ambigious and rapidly evolving regulatory landscape can have an outsized impact on the fate of cryptocurrency startups and on the adoption/integration into existing systems. Epicenter Bitcoin Regulatory Correspondent and founder of COINsult Siân Jones joined us for an update on the state of Bitcoin regulation in a variety of jurisdiction. Topics covered in this episode: The recent statement by the UK’s treasury on digital currencies How the Isle of Man keeps pioneering a cryptocurrency-friendly environment The stance of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) towards Bitcoin The insanity of the looming BitLicense rules and difficult-to-predict consequences they may have Episode links: COINsult UK HM Treasury: Digital Currencies - Response to the Call for Information Isle of Man Introduces Regulation for Bitcoin

Creating a new token and selling it to fund the development of software has become a preferred way of fundraising for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. It’s a tempting tool, allowing startups to avoid traditional investors, build a community and allow anyone anywhere to own a stake in the project. For participants, there is the promise of big financial upside and being part of novel undertakings. Lisa Cheng, whose consulting firm Vanbex has accompanied many crowdsales, joined us for a discussion of this revolutionary way to fund and monetize open source software. Topics covered in this episode: Why crowdfunding and cryptocurrency are a natural fit A brief history of crowdsales in the cryptocurrency space US securities law and the questionable legality of token sales The value of writing a solid white paper before launching a sale Elements of a successful coin launch The role of companies like Swarm and Koinify in conducting crowdsales Episode links: An Interview with Lisa Cheng Tokenizing the User Experience T

When spinning up a few hundred data-gathering Bitcoin nodes prevented some breadwallet users from transmitting bitcoin transaction, a minor panic quickly erupted about the Bitcoin compliance startup Chainalysis and their supposed sybil attack on the Bitcoin network. Chainalysis CEO Michael Gronager joined us for a discussion of what happened and what role transaction monitoring will play in the future. We dove deep into the tension between the desires for user privacy and the requirements to achieve integration into existing financial services. Topics covered in this episode: How Chainalysis’ nodes caused problems for breadwallet What damage a large scale sybil attack could really do to Bitcoin The role transaction monitoring will play to achieve Bitcoin integration in existing systems Why transaction-related blockchain analysis does not threaten Bitcoin’s fungibility The best way users can protect their anonymity Episode links: CoinDesk: Chainalysis CEO Denies Launching Sybil Attack Bitcoin Talk Discussio