We sat down with Carl Dong — former Bitcoin Core contributor, now founder of Obscura VPN focused on real-world censorship resistance.

In this episode, we dive into:

- Why Carl walked away from Bitcoin Core development to tackle privacy head-on

- What sets Obscura apart from other VPNs

- Lessons from the Great Firewall and routing traffic through hostile networks

- Chinese numerology

- Carl & Casey's long and storied shared history

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TIMESTAMPS

:0:00 Intro & Carl's journey to Bitcoin development

11:59 Hard problems in Bitcoin

16:00 Binaries, compliers, and reproducible builds

37:30 Transitioning from Bitcoin core to working on Obscura VPN

1:05:00 Advice for current Bitcoin core contributors

1:10:00 Ordinals numerology

1:39:00 Outro

Bitcoin Core Dev Walks Away… to Battle The Great Firewall of China (with Carl Dong)