In this conversation, Xavier Lavayssière, a traditional finance expert, and Clément Berthou, a payments specialist, tackle the life cycle of transactions and the complexities involved in payment systems. They explore trust issues between banks and the impact of liquidity on banking stability, referencing the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. The duo breaks down the role of SWIFT in global finance, its geopolitical implications, and the evolution of CBDCs, highlighting the need for cooperation in modern financial infrastructures.

Mathieu Baudet, an expert in decentralized consensus protocols and blockchain technology, delves into the intricate world of Bitcoin and Byzantine fault-tolerant systems. He explains Bitcoin’s unique approach that prioritizes decentralization over safety, allowing for interesting outcomes like forks. The discussion also highlights the energy costs of Bitcoin mining and compares traditional crash-resistant protocols to more complex BFT models. Lastly, Mathieu examines innovations in payment protocols and practical applications like Fastpay and Linera, addressing scalability challenges in blockchain.

David Wong, an Ethereum expert, discusses the account-based model and smart contracts. He compares Ethereum to Bitcoin, talks about expressive programming, transaction execution, and the role of the Ethereum network in maintaining smart contract state.

In this episode, David Wong interviews Kevin Hurley and Alex Akselrod to discuss layer 2 solutions on Bitcoin. They explain that layer 2 (L2) is a scalability solution that sits on top of the Bitcoin blockchain and adds additional functionality and programmability. They discuss the history of L2s, mentioning Namecoin and colored coins as early examples. They also explore the distinction between L2s and sidechains, with L2s typically allowing for unilateral exits and sidechains relying on federations or merge mining. They mention projects like Blockstream, Stacks, and Rootstock as examples of L2s or sidechains on Bitcoin. The conversation explores the concept of multi-signature (multi-sig) and its role in layer 2 (L2) solutions like Liquid. It also delves into the workings of the Lightning Network, which enables instant and low-cost transactions on Bitcoin. The Lightning Network operates through payment channels, where users can push 'beads' (Satoshi's) back and forth. The conversation also touches on the challenges of centralization in Lightning Network and the role of LightSpark in making Lightning more accessible and user-friendly.

In the 5th episode of this series I interview Arik Sosman (our very first guest!) in order to learn more about Bitcoin transactions. Specifically, how the Bitcoin scripting language works, and what UTXOs are! You can find out more about Arik by following him on twitter: https://twitter.com/arikaleph?lang=en

In this fourth episode I stick with Bitcoin to talk about 51% attacks and double spending in more details. In the second part of the podcast I explain what type of data structure merkle trees are, and why they are used in pretty much all cryptocurrencies.

In this third episode we'll dig more into the tech of Bitcoin. But for that, we'll need to talk briefly about cryptographic hash functions and how they work. Once done, we'll talk about mining, proof of work, chains of blocks, and mining pools!

In the previous episode we briefly talked about what cryptocurrencies fundamentally are, and what problems they attempt to solve. In this episode we'll dig int our very first cryptocurrency: Bitcoin. This will be a high-level overview that will cover what the software looks like, what cryptographic signatures are, and who are these miners who process transactions.

This is the first episode of a series on cryptocurrencies. In this series I will tell you about cryptocurrencies from scratch. This first episode is quite non-technical and should be easy to understand for most folks. I will explain what databases are, how banks around the world move money around, and what cryptocurrencies fundamentally offer. In the next episode I will dig more into the first ever cryptocurrency: Bitcoin.