Stephan Livera Podcast

Steve Barbour (Founder, Upstream Data) joins me to discuss how he is turning stranded natural gas into Bitcoin mining hashes. His HashGen product uses low value natural gas to improve the economics for Canadian Oil and Gas facilities, while powering Bitcoin mining ASICs. In this discussion we also talk about the 'bitcoin energy use is wasted' narrative, and how bitcoin mining was centralised in the past, but is now decentralising.

Jeremy Welch, Founder of Casa, discusses crafting a business around safely storing Bitcoin. Topics include: designing services for a sovereign individual, securing top tier talent, CASA Premium's unique features, Bitcoin insurance, government regulation, supporting Ethereum, and building a business or service to last.

Sergej Kotliar, CEO of Bitrefill joins me to discuss taking bitcoin and lightning payments as an online merchant. We talked about the challenges and benefits of doing this, particularly in how lightning network simplifies the user experience and reduces errors. In the second part of the episode, we talk about 'earner adoption' - the idea that bitcoin's ecosystem can grow from people earning it.

Adam Ficsor (nopara73), a Bitcoin privacy developer and CTO of zkSNACKs joins me to talk about his new wallet, Wasabi Wallet. We talk about: Privacy being for everyone Comparison with other privacy projects, such as Monero, or other Bitcoin mixing services ZeroLink framework How your Bitcoin Privacy can be broken How chain analysis works What Wasabi Wallet does to break chain analysis heuristics Upcoming Wasabi Wallet launch

Rusty Russell, a well known and respected Bitcoin Lightning developer at Blockstream joins me in this episode. We talk about his article, The Three Economic Eras of Bitcoin, and discuss the Lightning Network for Bitcoin. Lastly, Rusty draws from his prior experience as a Linux kernel developer to contrast Linux development with Bitcoin and Lightning development practices and culture.

Udi Wertheimer (Bitcoin software developer) joins me to discuss the use of unnecessary crypto-tokens, why some people do it, the use of non-crypto tokens in gaming, unnecessary blockchains, #reckless lightning development, and what he is looking forward to in Bitcoin and Lightning.

Jimmy Song (Bitcoin Educator, Developer, and Entrepreneur) joins me in this episode to discuss his recent debate with Roger Ver, and in the second half we also discuss Blockchain skepticism. We separate the signal from the noise on 'enterprise blockchain' technology by discussing the true costs and difficulties involved, and then discuss some alternatives to 'enterprise blockchain'.

Samson Mow, CSO of Blockstream (leading provider of blockchain technologies) joins me in this episode to discuss a variety of topics: Bitmain IPO, mining centralisation Errors of cryptocurrency 'diversification' When it makes sense to use a blockchain, when it doesn't Why Blockstream builds mostly on bitcoin Blockstream products Cryptocurrency Data feed, and Liquid network Privacy Bitcoin Fee Market Samson's Hat sales and blog

Vortex (Jeffrey), a software developer and well known bitcoin YouTuber joins me in this episode to talk about the Bitcoin ecosystem. This interview is targeted for newbies to bitcoin, to help them understand the key components of the Bitcoin ecosystem. We also discuss: the Cryptocast network, the role of nodes in Bitcoin, Bitcoin development, his course Programming with Bitcoin, Fintech vs FinUI, and his outlook for the future.

Daniel Alexiuc (CEO of Living Room of Satoshi) joins me in this episode to discuss how he is pioneering Bitcoin and Lightning Network payments in Australia, both on his website LROS, and also as a partner with Travel By Bit. We discuss: his viral video using LN to buy a coffee in Brisbane airport (May 2018), why blockchains aren't a good payment system, use of both C-Lightning by Blockstream and Lnd by Lightning Labs, crypto payment volumes increasing, use of BTCpay, and outlook for the future.