On The Brink with Castle Island

Nick Hansen is the cofounder and CEO of Luxor, a Bitcoin mining pool. He joins to talk to us about his excitement around ordinals and inscriptions, and how Luxor is thinking about the opportunity. The history of ordinals and how Luxor got started in the space How Luxor mined the first 4MB block in Bitcoin Luxor’s decision to acquire Ordinalhub and their intentions with the project Risks Luxor incurred by mining the first 4MB block Transaction standardness versus validity How ordinals increase the overall quantity of Bitcoin blockspace The risks of out of band fees to Bitcoin Does Bitcoin already have MEV? How does the block reward decay make reorgs more likely? Where Luxor sees opportunity in ordinals Have inscriptions had a material impact on miner rewards? The effect of inscriptions on fees Transacting with PSBTs versus standard NFT marketplaces Nick’s confidence in the long-term persistence of Bitcoin state Why it’s virtually impossible to purge state in Bitcoin Are ordinals and inscriptions a violation of the implied Bitcoin social contract? Have inscriptions inadvertently ossified Bitcoin at the protocol level?

Matt and Nic are back to cover a dramatic week in crypto. Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn also joins to provide market color. In this episode:  Bitcoin’s price action in response to the bank runs USDC recovers its peg FTX crime family news Signature bank is shut down somewhat arbitrarily What happened with Silvergate? Is Operation Choke Point 2.0 real? Blockchain Association FOIA’s federal banking regulators Are macro funds dipping their toes back into Bitcoin? Crypto Banks are gutted Was Signature solvent when it was shut down? Will Signet be sold off in the Signature auction? What was the importance of SEN and Signet? First Republic secures $30b in deposits What happened with Silvergate and the FHLB? Galaxy Digital’s head of research Alex Thorn joins the show Arbitrum announces their airdrop

Matt and Nic are back for another tumultuous week of news and deals. In this episode:  Nic’s Vespa crisis FTX crime family update Grayscale’s oral arguments go well against the SEC in the GBTC case Binance.US wins the right to buy the Voyager assets in court NYAG sues Kucoin and alleges that ETH is a security Silvergate is undergoing an orderly wind-down of the bank Why did Silvergate really collapse? Why are regulators trying to precipitate bank runs? Structural issues explaining why Silvergate’s deposits were so correlated SVB experiences a bank run Are the Silvergate and SVB difficulties warning sights that the Fed’s rate regime can’t last? Content mentioned:  How Banks Fail, by Austin Campbell

Matt and Nic are back for another tumultuous week of news and deals. In this episode:  Nic’s Vespa crisis FTX crime family update Grayscale’s oral arguments go well against the SEC in the GBTC case Binance.US wins the right to buy the Voyager assets in court NYAG sues Kucoin and alleges that ETH is a security Silvergate is undergoing an orderly wind-down of the bank Why did Silvergate really collapse? Why are regulators trying to precipitate bank runs? Structural issues explaining why Silvergate’s deposits were so correlated SVB experiences a bank run Are the Silvergate and SVB difficulties warning sights that the Fed’s rate regime can’t last? Content mentioned:  How Banks Fail, by Austin Campbell

Rob Hamilton, Founder and CEO of AnchorWatch, discusses his journey into Bitcoin, the origins and applicability of Miniscript in custody markets, the state of Bitcoin core development, and his involvement in the Ordinals project. The podcast explores the potential future applications of ordinals and inscriptions in the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Chainalysis CEO and co-founder Michael Gronager joins us for an episode chronicling the rise of the blockchain analytics firm. In this episode:  Michael’s origin story and how he went from helping build Kraken to founding Chainalysis Responding to early market pull from the public sector when building products Responding to criticism around privacy vs. anonymity  Building the Crypto Adoption Index for content marketing around what is actually happening on the blockchain Perspective on how long it can take to change an industry online Content mentioned: Public Key (Podcast) Global Crypto Adoption Index Chainalysis Content / Blog  

Matt and Nic are back for news and deals of the week. In this episode:  Is Yuga Labs’ NFT collection on Bitcoin genuine? Will the environmentalist attacks on PoW move to other industries? FTX’ Nishad Singh pleads guilty Ramnik Aurora maxed out donations to George Santos Silvergate is in trouble Why concentration risk makes it difficult for smaller banks to bank crypto firms UK banks are curtailing their crypto exposures Oasis returns $140m stolen from Wormhole to Jump NY Mag’s piece on Arthur Hayes Gensler continues to make vague threats against the crypto space Gensler’s regulation by blog post Greyscale’s case against the SEC is moving to oral arguments Can Bitcoin just change the code and move to PoS?

We host Matt Cutler, CEO and co-founder of Blocknative, in this episode to discuss the intricacies of block building and his thoughts on the future of MEV. We cover: The phenomenon of certain block builders subsidizing transactions The requirements for operating a competitive block builder Margins required for sustainable block building MEV redistribution and balancing interests of users vs. validators.  You can follow Matt @mcutler on Twitter and learn more about Blocknative here.

Matt and Nic are back for the 400th episode of OTB! In this roundup:  Nic’s Vespa story More on Ordinals Is embedding non-economic data in Bitcoin Satoshi’s vision? How Ordinals accelerates efficiency improvements in Bitcoin More FTX crime family news SBF is hit with four new criminal charges Augustin Cartens claims that crypto has lost the battle against fiat NYAG vs Coinex The SEC alleges that UST is a security - does this implicate other stables? What can Congress do about Choke Point 2.0 or SEC overreach Rep. Emmer introduces an anti-CBDC bill Matt’s baseball card collection Silvergate is the most shorted stock right now The SEC blocks Binance.US’ purchase of Voyager assets

Bitcoin developer Casey Rodarmor joins us to talk ordinals, inscriptions, and digital collectibles on Bitcoin. In this episode: What is an ordinal? Why the name? The history of ordinals and inscriptions How does ordinal theory work exactly? How to participate in ordinals and do you need Ord The interaction between inscriptions and Bitcoin fees Should inscriptions be compressed? How should this happen? Why did Casey not use Counterparty? How Bitcoin is the most premium blockspace for NFTs Inscribed content property rights on Bitcoin versus Ethereum Will Bitcoin state just be pruned? Who will store inscription data? How bitcoin data availability might be improving over time How ordinals affect Bitcoin’s security budget Why NFT traders are looking at Bitcoin for the first time Where the inscription 400kb limit comes from ‘Ripping a 4 megger’ Is Casey concerned about out of band transactions Do ordinals actually increase the possible efficiency of operating a full node? The primary bottlenecks in running Bitcoin Core and how inscriptions affect that Will ordinals catalyze more pruning in Bitcoin Core? Might ordinals make rollups more likely on Bitcoin? Do inscriptions dilute Bitcoin’s primary purpose as a monetary system? Transporting other NFTs to Bitcoin with teleburns What Casey is most excited about with ordinals Further reading:  Ordinals.com Rodarmor.com Casey's twitter