
Stephan Livera Podcast
Join Stephan as he interviews the sharpest economic and technical minds in Bitcoin & Austrian Economics to help you understand how money is changing and evolving. Leading names in the world of Bitcoin join the show to share their insights, whether they are developers, CEOs, economists, authors, analysts and more.
Latest episodes

Jul 10, 2023 • 57min
SLP490 Dusty - What is Splicing and why will it improve LN?
Dusty Daemon joins me to talk about splicing on Bitcoin’s lightning network. We talk about:
What is splicing?
Splicing’s potential privacy benefits
Potential to undermine surveillance heuristics
Splicing’s efficiency gains
Splicing as one tool in the toolkit
Walkthrough of how it works
Site:
Site: Lightning Splicing
Twitter: @dusty_daemon
Sponsors:
Pacific Bitcoin Festival (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Lugano PlanB Forum
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast

Jul 6, 2023 • 54min
SLP489 Graham Krizek - Will every company be a lightning company?
Will every company be a lightning company? Graham Krizek CEO of Voltage rejoins me on the show to talk about this idea as well as what’s happening in bitcoin and lightning:
Being near the printer
Why big companies do financial services
What lightning does differently
What use cases are there and who’s looking at them?
Products at Voltage
Thoughts on LDK by Spiral
Links:
Article: Every Company Will Be A Lightning Company
Article: SURGE NOW AVAILABLE FOR VOLTAGE USERS
Twitter: @gkrizek
Twitter: @voltage_cloud
Sponsors:
Pacific Bitcoin Festival (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Lugano PlanB Forum
Mempool.space

7 snips
Jun 21, 2023 • 1h 42min
SLP488 Future Visions of Lightning, Greenlight & Breez SDK with Christian Decker and Roy Sheinfeld
Christian Decker (Blockstream) and Roy Sheinfeld (Breez) rejoin me on the show to talk about:
What has improved about Lightning over time
Lightning in a high fee environment
What Greenlight is
What Breez SDK is
Is anything changing on the existing Breez app?
Core-lightning contrasted with other implementations
Lightning protocol improvements
Links:
Twitter: @Snyke
Twitter: @therealkingonly
Site: Your personal Core Lightning node, without the technical fuss.
Site: Breez SDK
Sponsors:
Swan Bitcoin
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Lugano PlanB Forum
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Patreon @stephanlivera

Jun 15, 2023 • 1h 16min
SLP487 Bitcoin Mining Energy Debate - Digiconomist and Ben Gagnon
Digiconomist (Alex de Vries) and Ben Gagnon (Chief Mining Officer, Bitfarms) join me on the show to debate Bitcoin Mining energy. We talk through:
Bitcoin Mining machine efficiency assumptions
Where do the models break down?
Media referring to scary numbers in the bull cycle
Transactions per second metrics
Links:
Twitter: @DigiEconomist
Twitter: @hashoveride
Digiconomist energy consumption index: Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index
CBECI (Cambridge) referred to: Bitcoin network power demand
Prior episode: SLP478 Ben Gagnon
Sponsors:
Swan Bitcoin
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Lugano PlanB Forum
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Patreon @stephanlivera

Jun 14, 2023 • 1h
SLP486 Bitcoin Estate Planning with Peter Dunworth
Peter Dunworth is a financial adviser for high net worth individuals and families. He joins me to talk about what most people are getting wrong on bitcoin estate planning and inheritance. We discuss:
Why bother with all this?
Legal, asset protection and tax benefits
Possession vs Title of coins
Collaborative custody
Practical components
Miniscript and technical advances
Valuation framework for Bitcoin and why inheritance matters
Links:
Site: https://www.thebitcoinadviser.com/comparison
Peter’s Twitter: @PeterBTCAdviser
TheBTCAdviser’s Twitter: @TheBTCAdviser
Sponsors:
Swan Bitcoin
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Lugano PlanB Forum
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Patreon @stephanlivera

Jun 13, 2023 • 54min
SLP485 What is Inflation? with Jonathan Newman
Jonathan Newman, Associate Professor of Economics and Mises Fellow joins me to chat:
Contrasting definitions of inflation
How did Mises define inflation?
How did Rothbard define inflation?
Where and how does fractional reserve come into it?
Cantillon effect and the Mises effect
Costless production of money
Links:
Paper: What Is Inflation? Clarifying and Justifying Rothbard’s Definition
Twitter: @NewmanJ_R
Twitter: @KrisMoustHansen
Sponsors:
Swan Bitcoin
CoinKite.com(code LIVERA)
Mempool.space

Jun 5, 2023 • 45min
SLP484 Robin Linus ZeroSync: Speeding up Bitcoin Initial Block Download (IBD)
Robin Linus from the ZeroSync project joins me to talk about how ZKPs can be used to help people quickly get started using Bitcoin. We discuss:
What ZKPs are and what they can be used for
Speeding up IBD
Contrasting ZeroSync with utreexo and assumeutxo
UTXO set commitment
Blockstream satellite
What’s being verified?
Different types of nodes
Links:
Site: zerosync.org
Twitter: @ZeroSync_
Twitter: @robin_linus
Sponsors
Swan Bitcoin
CoinKite.com(code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast

Jun 2, 2023 • 1h 20min
SLP483 Lightning in a High Fee Environment with Niftynei, D++ & Nate
What happens under a high fee environment on the lightning network? We had one recently and so I asked Niftynei (Lisa of Base58), D++, and Nate (Voltage Head of Support & Education) to join me to talk about it:
Lightning implementations handling the fee spike
Force closes in lightning
Bitcoin performed just fine
Anchor outputs
Mitigation techniques
Setting fee rates
Links:
plebnet telegram: https://t.me/plebnet
Plebnet wiki: https://plebnet.wiki/wiki/Main_Page
base58: https://www.base58.info/
Voltage blog post: https://voltage.cloud/blog/lightning-network-faq/lightning-node-management-handling-high-on-chain-fees/
Twitter: @beeforbacon1
Twitter: @niftynei
Twitter: @D_plus__plus

May 29, 2023 • 1h 21min
SLP482 Burak - Ark: A new L2 protocol for Bitcoin
Burak (Bitcoin researcher/developer) joins me to talk about Ark, a new protocol for Bitcoin scaling and privacy. We chat about:
Downsides of LN
High level overview
ASPs, vTXOs
Vapourware?
Other criticisms
Interactive vs non-interactive versions
Covenants and what they’d mean for Bitcoin
Links:
Site: arkpill.me
Twitter: @brqgoo
Telegram: https://t.me/ark_network_community
Relevant prior episode:
SLP339 Jeremy Rubin – What is Check Template Verify?
Sponsors
Swan Bitcoin
CoinKite.com(code LIVERA)
Mempool.space

May 25, 2023 • 1h
SLP481 Can There Be a Bullish Case for Bitcoin Custodians? with Kemal (pretyflaco)
Kemal of Galoy Money joins me to chat about his Bullish Case for Bitcoin Custodians. We debate the trade offs and points such as:
Remnant vs ‘Big Tent’
Why not write down 12 words?
“Mis-selling” Bitcoin
Shotgun KYC, and FRB ‘paper bitcoin' risk
Jurisdictions and regulation
Financial hierarchy of needs
Links:
Twitter: @_pretyflaco
Blog: https://www.swanbitcoin.com/the-bullish-case-for-bitcoin-custodians/
Sponsors:
Swan Bitcoin
CoinKite.com(code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on Twitter @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Patreon @stephanlivera