Stephan Livera Podcast

In this episode, Stephan Livera is joined by economist and author Gene Epstein to discuss the flawed chart that shows a divergence in labor compensation and productivity since 1971. They explore the issues with price indexes, whether inflation is over or undercounted, the cost of living crisis, and the challenges of making it on a single income. The episode concludes with a discussion on the real problems we are facing.

Bitcoin security expert NVK joins Stephan Livera to discuss preventing coin loss, securing cryptocurrency keys, transitioning to hardware wallets, upgrading to multi-signature technology, self-custody tools like the cold card, QR codes in the bitcoin ecosystem, the use of mini-script in Bitcoin security, limitations of multi-sig, transaction fees, the future of Bitcoin and its potential impact on fiat currency and gold.

Bob Burnett, CEO of Barefoot Mining, and Stephan Livera discuss bitcoin's blockspace scarcity, UTXO management, different types of miners, the miner's trilemma, arguments against public company mining, and the decentralization of mining. They also touch on topics such as mining profitability, lightning wallets, and challenges faced by public mining companies.

Malcolm Collins, co-founder of The Pronatalist Foundation, joins the podcast to discuss declining fertility rates and the potential consequences. They explore the relationship between population growth and economics, challenges discouraging people from having children, solutions for declining fertility rates, and the importance of cultural transfer in promoting high fertility.

Are we entering a new Bitcoin bull cycle? Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, rejoins me on the show to talk about a variety of things:  SBF found guilty Bitcoin bull cycle Block size wars Blockstream Greenlight Blockstream BASIC note Blockstream Green Links: Site: Blockstream.com Blockstream BASIC Note X: @adam3us  Sponsors: Swan.com (code LIVERA) CoinKite.com (code LIVERA) Mempool.space Stephan Livera links: Follow me on X @stephanlivera Subscribe to the podcast Relevant Episodes: SLP521 Support Bitcoin Lightning with Greenlight with Christian Decker  SLP484 Robin Linus ZeroSync: Speeding up Bitcoin IBD

Jason Les, CEO of Riot Platforms, shares his journey from poker to Bitcoin mining and discusses challenges faced by a publicly listed mining company, advantages over competitors, financing options, HODLing strategies, impact of Bitcoin ETF, outperforming Bitcoin, educating government, curtailing services, and halving predictions.

Christian Decker, Blockstream's representative for Greenlight and expert in Bitcoin's Lightning Network, discusses the improvements in lightning experience, Greenlight experiences, mobile nodes, comparison with other providers, shared infrastructure, and core Lightning features. They also explore the potential of lightning as a force multiplier for the Bitcoin ecosystem and discuss the features of Greenlight, including bolt wealth, splicing, liquidity ads, and PSWOP. The goal is to make Greenlight on par with core lightning, opening up various use cases and enhancing the user experience.

Robin Linus and Super Testnet discuss BitVM, a new paradigm for Turing-complete bitcoin contracts. They explore the trade-offs, potential uses, set up time, interactivity, and the possibility of enabling side chains or covenants. They also discuss off-chain state, taproot circuits, advantages and concerns of side chains, theoretical concerns and value of side chain coins, and the goal of scaling Bitcoin to a million transactions per second.

Matthew Black, co-founder and CTO of Atomic Finance, talks about self custodial Bitcoin finance with DLCs. They discuss how it works without being custodial, where the yield comes from, HODL-only strategy, DLC security over time, and the future of Bitcoin Finance.

Lyn Alden, macro analyst and author of Broken Money, joins Stephan to discuss ledger money, different theories of money, warfare funding under fiat, the GFC and its response, base money and broad money, the incentives of the fiat standard, and the type of debt that makes sense under a Bitcoin standard.