Bitcoin Magazine Podcast

Bitcoin Magazine's very own Joe Rodgers interview Tyler Winklevoss of Gemini and Winklevoss Capital. We discussed how crazy 2020 has been, as well as his passion for Bitcoin, personal life and outlook for 2021.  We started our conversation by digging into an article that he and his brother, Cameron, published in August titled “The Case For $500K Bitcoin.” In this piece, they lay out a bullish case for Bitcoin and how they arrived at that number for its future price. I asked Winklevoss about this article’s target audience and he told me that “We wanted this to be for everyone… we wanted it to be technical but approachable.”  This is an article you can print out and leave with your family members over the holidays. If it doesn’t orange-pill them, it will at least get some good conversation out of them. Later, we touch on The Great Reset. It turns out that Winklevoss hasn’t wasted any cycles thinking about it and was quick to point out the lunacy of the state fixing the problem it created with more intervention. As a former Olympian, he is still focused on his health and we spoke about what works for him regarding physical and mental wellbeing. Spoiler alert: sugar bad, exercise good. As we wrapped up the recording, we touched on what’s to come in 2021 and beyond. I’ve watched Winklevoss from the sidelines for years and I respect what he’s built. He’s taken on the difficult challenge of developing Bitcoin-friendly regulations in New York and has ambitious plans to bring Gemini to the rest of the world in 2021. I have no doubt he will succeed — he’s been a competitor his whole life and has a track record of excellence.  Before this podcast, I had only a basic understanding of where Winklevoss’s head is, but now it’s clear to me. He might be a billionaire, but he’s one of us. He’s an ultra bull. He wants the state out of the business of money and he’s a Bitcoin true believer.

In this episode, Christian and Ansel give updates on the Federal Reserve, ECB, and PBOC. Europe is the most exciting because last week they updated their policy, admitting they are fighting deflation, economic contraction, and a strong euro, despite the 1.85 trillion euro stimulus this year alone. It seems the more they do, the worse their situation gets. The Fed meets Wednesday, December 16th, for their final meeting of the year, in which they are expected to keep everything the same. Next, we cover the PBOC’s recent troubles with defaults throughout their economy, and the increasing amount of stimulus they are providing. Lastly, what would a bitcoin podcast be without a discussion about MicroStrategy and MassMutual. Bitcoiners have been expecting this type of adoption for years, so it is exciting but expected. Links Federal Reserve’s final meeting of 2020 : https://www.marketwatch.com/story/4-things-to-watch-when-fed-meets-wednesday-11607979577 ECB expands and extends its bond buying as coronavirus resurgence weighs on the recovery : https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/12/10/ecb-expands-bond-buying-as-coronavirus-resurgence-weighs.html The ECB's Policy Dilemma: More QE Will Strengthen The Euro : https://seekingalpha.com/article/4394050-ecbs-policy-dilemma-qe-will-strengthen-euro China has no plan to replace USD with digital yuan, former PBoC head says : https://cointelegraph.com/news/china-has-no-plan-to-replace-usd-with-digital-yuan-former-pboc-head-says Nov 27 - China’s central bank could intervene after ‘glaring’ state-firm bond defaults, analyst says : https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/27/chinas-central-bank-could-intervene-as-state-firm-bond-defaults-rise-analyst.html Dec 14 - China’s central bank injects 950 billion yuan of medium-term loans, leaves rate unchanged : https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/15/chinas-central-bank-injects-950-billion-yuan-of-medium-term-loans.html

Nik Bhatia, famous Bitcoin thinker and economist join's Bitcoin Magazine podcast to discuss the recent corporate bond MicroStrategy issued to buy more Bitcoin. Nik has a deep history in the bond world, Nik explained that this is just the beginning for Bond issuance for Bitcoin purposes emphasizing that corporations can issue bonds for whatever purpose they can justify to investors. Next, we dive into his new book "Layered Money" which is currently available for preorder. Nik explains how the current monetary system has been built in layers and how Bitcoin is the first new asset that lives completely outside of the current system. Lastly Nik answers some cosmic questions about the future of money and what a Bitcoin based financial system looks like. Topics: Bitcoin is such a unique asset because it is not a liability on someone else's balance sheet. MSTR buying Bitcoin and what that means for the bond market. People call it speculative attack Nik calls it arbitrage. We can see many types of companies issuing bonds to buy Bitcoins and their reasoning will completely very. Atomic swaps that make all crypto assets interoperable. Bitcoin exists outside the system and that is why we can build on it. Find Nik Bhatia: https://twitter.com/timevalueofbtc https://www.layeredmoney.com/

Our guest this week is Niall Ferguson. Niall is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of 15 books, including The Ascent of Money and has at least two in the works in the upcoming Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe as well as part two of his excellent Henry Kissinger biography.  Niall also writes a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion. In this episode we dig into Niall’s recent Bloomberg piece “Bitcoin Is Winning the Covid-19 Monetary Revolution” and discuss the history of financial evolution, including how the current iteration of that evolution is playing out between China and the US and how he views Bitcoin in that context. We also discuss the qualities that make Bitcoin a significant advance and the broader importance of decentralization and sovereignty. Find Niall online at niallferguson.com and on Twitter @nfergus

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discuss RSK’s shift from a federated sidechain model to the project’s new Powpeg solution. RSK is a merge mined Ethereum-like Bitcoin sidechain developed by IOVlabs. Bitcoin users can effectively move their coins to this blockchain that operates more like Ethereum, and move the coins back to the Bitcoin blockchain when they so choose. Some Bitcoin miners utilize their hashpower to mine bocks on the sidechain, and earn some extra transaction fees by doing so.The tricky part of any sidechain is allowing users to securely move their coins between blockchains. This is technically done by locking coins on the Bitcoin blockchain and issuing corresponding coins on the sidechain, and vice versa: locking coins on the sidechain to unlock the coins on the Bitcoin blockchain.So far, RSK did this by locking the coins into a multi-signature address, for which the private keys were controlled by a group of well-known companies. A majority of them was needed to unlock the coins, which they were to only do if and when the corresponding sidechain coins were locked.RSK is now switching to a Powpeg model where the keys to the multi-signature address are controlled by special tamper-proof hardware modules that are in turn programmed to only unlock coins on the Bitcoin blockchain if and when the corresponding coins on the sidechain are locked, and the transactions to lock these coins up have a significant number of confirmations.Aaron and Sjors explain how this works exactly, and discuss some of Powpeg’s security tradeoffs.

On this episode of the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast, host BranBTC sat down with Kraken’s Bitcoin specialist (and everyone’s favorite Bitcoin maximalist) Pierre Rochard to discuss the STABLE Act that was recently introduced to the public by members of the U.S. Congress. Rochard initially took a broad view on the topic, insisting that looking too closely at the language and intent of the STABLE Act would miss the bigger picture. Instead, he wanted to focus on the conditions of our society that have allowed preconceived notions of money to grant an elite class unfathomable power over the lives of everyday Americans.For more information on the STABLE bill itself, as well as its vast implications and potentially unintended consequences, read through CoinCenter’s article, which breaks down the bill.

Fed vs ECB - FED 33 In this episode of Fed Watch, Christian and Ansel get into specifics on the plans of the ECB in regard to their digital euro. We are told in the media that central banks are very much going to be releasing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and it will have damaging effects. However, on this podcast we get our information directly from the source. First, we must answer is a digital euro likely and why, which is what we do in this episode. In later episodes we will cover the side-effects of CBDCs if there are any. On November 30, 2020, the President of the ECB, Christine Lagarde released a blog post detailing the ECB’s current thoughts on money and how a digital euro, or CBDC, fits into their plans. I talked about this on my recent episode of Bitcoin & Markets, and Christian wanted to explore the idea of the worries of the ECB specifically, because their thinking seems to be heavily worried about monetary sovereignty. That term, “monetary sovereignty” came up several times is Lagarde’s blog post in context to why they feel pursuing a CBDC is necessary. This contrasts Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments which focus on patience and conservatism instead of worries about monetary sovereignty. Why is this? Most likely this is because their already are digital stablecoins, similar to how a digital euro would function, in the market. There is a big problem in the free market offerings of these stablecoins, from the ECB vantage point; they are 99% US dollar based. If the ECB were not to act, the market might completely bypass use of the euro in favor of a digital dollar. That is a scary possibility for the ECB, so they must provide that option for the market, and maybe even require its use in some cases to maintain the euro’s global position. This episode also discusses the recent MicroStrategy “bonds for bitcoin” proposal. Listen to find out if this is the first signs of the long awaited “speculative attack” on fiat by bitcoin, and what to watch out for as this move receives the keen attention of regulators. We also discuss jurisdictional arbitrage at length. How does bitcoin enable jurisdictional arbitrage even within the regions, like between US States or European countries? Of course, as good bitcoiners, this leads us to a cosmic back and forth about citadel locations, and the best place to live in the future from a freedom and economic standpoint.  Fantastic episode, heavy on central bank commentary. Do not forget to subscribe to Fed Watch’s new RSS feed, so you don’t miss any of our great guest insights in the future. Ansel Lindner Economist, author, investor, and bitcoin specialist. Find more from Ansel at BitcoinDictionary.cc, BitcoinAndMarkets.com, and BTCM.co.

This week on the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast, Christian sits down with macro analyst and thinker Lyn Alden to discuss her recent piece titled 7 misconceptions about Bitcoin. In the piece Lyn breaks down what she would consider are the most common misunderstandings or objections to Bitcoin and explains why these are in fact misconceptions that will not negatively impact Bitcoin or the investment thesis into Bitcoin.  This is an excellent podcast for Bitcoin enthusiasts looking to sharpen up their arguments as well as new entrants into Bitcoin interested in learning why Bitcoin could make sense as a part of a balanced portfolio. This podcast is full of intelligent and articulate ways to defend and explain how and why Bitcoin will continue to increase in usefulness and value.  Lyn's original article: https://www.lynalden.com/misconceptions-about-bitcoin/ We discuss the following topics:  Motivations behind writing the article.  Lyn address, Bitcoin is a Bubble. Look at it in log and the bubble looks more like a pattern.  Lyns Opinion on the Bitcoin Halving.  Lyn likes to discuss things in terms of probabilities.  Bitcoins intrinsic value is zero  Altcoin/fork issue  Bitcoin is too Volatile  Bitcoin is catching on with Gold investors.  Governments will Ban Bitcoin  Bitcoin isn’t Scalable  Bitcoin wastes Energy  Why DCA instead of Trade? 

In this episode of The Van Wirdum Sjorsnado, hosts Aaron van Wirdum and Sjors Provoost discussed Bitcoin mempools, Child Pays For Parent (CPFP) and package relay. Package relay is the project that Gloria Zhao will work on as part of her Brink fellowship, which was announced earlier this week, and would make the Lightning Network more robust (among other benefits). Mempools are the collections of unconfirmed transactions stored by nodes, from which they forward transactions to peers. Miners usually select the transactions from their mempools that include the highest fees, to include these in the blocks they mine. Mempools can get full, however, at which point transactions that pay the lowest fees are ejected. This is actually a problem in context of CPFP, a trick that lets users speed up low-fee transactions by spending the coins from that transactions in a new transaction with a high fee to compensate. Tricks like these can be particularly important in the context of time-sensitive protocols like the Lightning Network. In this episode, van Wirdum and Provoost explained how package relay could enable CPFP, even in cases where low-fee transactions are dropped from mempools, by bundling transactions into packets. And they explore why this may be easier said than done.

On this episode of the Bitcoin Magazine Podcast, CK sits down with the team behind the MintGox Lightning-enabled gaming initiatives. Desiree Dickerson of Lightning Labs, plus Simon Cowell and Christian Moss of ZebeDee take turns discussing why Bitcoin and Lightning are such game changers for the future of human commerce in general, and gaming specifically.  One of the key points of the conversation revolves around how it is necessary for folks to onboard onto Bitcoin without permission, and to onboard directly onto the Lightning Network where they can transact with small amounts.  As discussed on this episode, the group thinks that micro payments enabled by Lightning opens up a completely new paradigm in the way value and services will be exchanges.  Lastly, the group covered how the most meaningful activities in the world are being uploaded to the web. It discussed how this really favors both Bitcoin and gaming as the world goes digital.  Follow the guests.  MintGox @MintGox Christian Moss @MandelDuck Simon Cowell @SECowell Desiree Dickerson @dickerson_des