Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

Aljaz Ceru is the CEO and co-founder of Bolt.Observer: a service which helps Lightning network node runners with management and monitoring tools. In this episode, he offers some advice on what mistakes you should avoid when managing your home node.

Opening Lightning Network channels with WBTC and DeFi money from Ethereum? Creating a DAO to pay participants who make the Lightning Network more reliable? This sounds blasphemous, but it's what the Stroom Network aims to do. Slava & Nick explain it all.

Ever heard of the Polish-made BiFury USB ASIC miners? That's only one of Filip Pawczyński's OG contributions to Bitcoin mining. In this episode, Filip reminisces about the early days of Bitcoin mining and comments on the industrialization of mining.

During Bitcoin FilmFest in Warsaw, I had the pleasure to interview three members of LOLA (Ladies of Liberty Alliance) Poland. In this episode, you can hear Justyna Piątek-Pawłowska, Agnieszka Plonka & Tania Rak talk about freedom, Ayn Rand & Bitcoin.

Matyáš Kuchař is the co-founder and main organizer of BTC Prague: Europe's largest Bitcoin conference, which promises to bring together more than 10.000 attendees and some of the finest speakers in the space. Here's why you should buy a ticket to Prague.

Hampus Sjöberg is the creator and lead developer of Blixt – a versatile & feature-packed Lightning Network wallet which he builds according to his own perfectionist expectations. In this interview, we talk about Blixt & unpopular opinions about Bitcoin.

Martijn Wismeijer became an international media sensation in 2014 when he implanted an NFC chip in his hand to access his Bitcoin wallet with greater ease. Today, he is in charge of GeneralBytes' marketing department, pushing for wider Bitcoin adoption.

Emzy is a long-time bitcoiner who contributes to the space by running independent nodes and servers. He is also one of the first people to run their own mempool.space client. In this episode, he shares some of his experiences with working in Bitcoin.

Nick Hansen is the CEO of Luxor Mining – a pool which, at the time of this recording, was the 6th biggest in the world. In this interview, we talk about Bitcoin mining, Luxor's business model & Nick's strange fascination with ordinal inscriptions.

Tomek Kolodziejczuk and Pierre Corbin are the masterminds behind Bitcoin FilmFest – an artistic event which celebrates Bitcoin's cinematic culture in the heart of Europe (Warsaw, Poland, March 24-26 2023). In this episode, they explain why you should join

MercuryWallet is one of the most remarkable achievements in Bitcoin privacy. By virtue of Statechains, users can swap UTXOs without leaving any traces. More recently, CommerceBlock wants to bring Mercury to mobile devices with some cool Lightning features

ShopInBit is the online store that lets you use your bitcoin to buy laptops, phones, watches & thousands of other items. In this episode, Lando Rothbardian & Travin Keith explain how they made it all happen & why you should use your BTC for shopping.

Casey Rodarmor took the Bitcoin world by storm when he launched Ordinals: a modern and simplified approach to Colored Coins which lets anyone upload files to the Bitcoin blockchain to create digital artifacts (inscriptions). But what are the pros & cons?

Since launching in October 2018, Wasabi wallet positioned itself at the avant-garde of Bitcoin privacy. Almost 5 years later, Nopara73 reflects on the ideas and research that led to the creation of Wasabi, and also makes some predictions for the future.

Fedimint provides an easy way for people to create Chaumian mints using bitcoin – basically community banks which offer speed, scalability & privacy at the expense of trusting the bankers. In this episode, Eric Sirion and Obi Nwosu explain how it works.

After Wasabi 2.0 launched, what's next for Bitcoin privacy? Max Hillebrand, CEO of ZK Snacks (the company which develops Wasabi) tells us why the Wabisabi protocol is such a big deal, what kind of challenges lie ahead & what is on the development roadmap.

Mike Jarmuz is a Bitcoin VC, best known as a co-founder of Lightning Ventures. However, in this interview we don't talk about any of that. Instead, we express our mutual love for Bob Dylan's music and share experiences from various concerts we attended.

Bumbee is the Bitcoin version of content monetization platforms such as Patreon & OnlyFans. It offers lower fees, a better form of money that can't be censored & the promise of fairness. In this episode, Chris (OB_HODL) explains how Bumbee helps creators.

Viktor Vecsei is the COO of IVPN – a VPN service which takes privacy very seriously and also accepts payments via on-chain bitcoin and Lightning. In this episode, Viktor talks about what VPN services do, explains their limitations & compares their offers

Max Keidun is best known as a contributor to HodlHodl and co-organizer of the Baltic Honeybadger conference. But this year in Riga, he announced a new project: DebiFi, a bitcoin lending aggregator which helps take loans & borrow money without custodians.

Max Hampshire is responsible for developer relations at Nym – an internet privacy project which makes use of Chaumian mixnets in order to break the link between data packets. It's one of the most promising projects & definitely one worth learning about.

Kristaps Kaupe (Lord Kristaps) is an open source contributor who works on a handful of Bitcoin projects. Most notably, he is a maintainer of JoinMarket & a contributor to Bitcoin Core, RaspiBolt & SatSale. In this episode, he talks about privacy & more.

On the last day of Baltic Honeybadger 2022, BIP 300 creator and advocate Paul Sztorc joins the show to provide a summary of his two panels on Drivechaina and unpopular Bitcoin opinions. When he doesn't explain technical concepts, Paul makes funny jokes.

This interview is the result of 2 separate recordings which took place in August and October 2022: in the first one, Christian Rootzoll talks about what's new with RaspiBlitz. In the second part, Matthew Croughan joins to talk about integrating NixOS.

Lisa Neigut (@niftynei) works on Lightning network projects at Blockstream. In this interview, she provides some practical advice on running your own Core Lightning node on a home device. Also, she explains what happened to LND lately.

Dr. Maxim Orlovsky is the lead developer of RGB: a layer 3 protocol that's built on top of the Lightning Network which aims to make it easy for anyone to issue tokens, stablecoins & NFTs in a scalable client side-validated way.

During Hackers Congress 2022, after longer than a year of exchanging messages and planning, I finally managed to interview Ben de Waal about his left anarchist political views. Spontaneously, Alexandra Moxin & Karo Zagorus also decided to join.

Labitconf is Bitcoin's own Lollapalooza – this is how Rodolfo Andragnes describes the event that he created. In November 2022, Labitconf celebrates its 10th annual anniversary, with a football world cup-themed return to the home country of Argentina.

Rahim Taghizadegan is an actual Austrian economist who teaches economics in Austria and founded his own university to preserve the tradition – Scholarium. In this episode, he explains the nuances of Bitcoin's cult-like culture & how he sees the future.

This year's Adopting Bitcoin conference from El Salvador will happen thanks to the efforts of Kemal and Noor. In this episode, they explain the progress that the country has made in the year that has passed since it adopted Bitcoin as legal tender.

Amir Taaki joined Bitcoin in late 2010, and is responsible for creating the BIP system, the first alternative Bitcoin client (libbitcoin), and the first privacy-focused wallet (DarkWallet). In this interview, he reflects on the early days of Bitcoin.

Electrum is the most feature-rich Bitcoin wallet, and creator Thomas Voegtlin has been adding improvements to it since 2011. Right now, Thomas is making the Lightning Network accessible with Trampoline nodes that don't need to be online 24/7.

After having had enough from the authoritarians, longtime bitcoiner Bruce Fenton has decided to take matters into his own hands and run for the US Senate to represent New Hampshire. In this interview, he explains why & gives us an insight of his platform. Special thanks to Vaultoro and Wasabi wallet for sponsoring the show! Time stamps: 00:46 – Intro 02:04 – Bruce Fenton selling 85 BTC to finance his campaign 03:31 – Why Bruce Fenton is different 05:35 – Is Bruce Fenton a constitutionalist? 07:38 – Freedom is what made America great 10:26 – Did Bruce Fenton get any support from mainstream politicians? 12:56 – Have bitcoiners given up on politics? 16:00 – Divisive issues raise more money, at the expense of nuance 20:00 – A national divorce? 23:30 – “Bowling Alone” by Robert D. Putnam and division 33:00 – Fighting for freedom vs taking freedom for granted 36:26 – The Founding Fathers of the USA were very young 40:00 – Safety vs freedom 41:40 – On China and authoritarianism 46:02 – Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness 48:10 – Is Bitcoin a big part of Bruce Fenton’s campaign? 51:45 – Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin would be bitcoiners if they lived today. Hamilton would have done ICOs and DeFi 55:30 – Carrying a copy of the Constitution during the campaign 56:40 – Both Bitcoin and the US Constitution are hard to change 01:03:30 – How the US Government is attacking Bitcoin 01:08:14 – Should Bitcoin become legal tender in the USA? 01:14:50 – What can Bruce Fenton do for the people of New Hampshire? 01:16:00 – Breaking the record for the longest filibuster 01:18:10 – Bringing people together 01:20:50 – What can a state do to nullify federal overreach? 01:21:55 – How does Bruce Fenton rank in the polls? 01:27:20 – Donating $17.76 01:29:30 – Is everything really good for Bitcoin? 01:33:00 – Freedom is like a muscle, you gotta train it

Recently, Peter Todd published a mathematical paper to explain how tail emission could work om Bitcoin. In this episode, he gets to explain why he thinks inflation is necessary to secure the Bitcoin network as the mining rewards get halved every 4 years.

As the CEO of Bitrefill, Sergej Kotliar has been offering a steady, predictable, reliable & seemingly-boring service for 7 years. However, Bitrefill is anything but boring: these days, the gift card company is trying to save the bankers & make NBA shoes!

Pavol Rusnak (Stick) is one of the most prolific contributors in the Bitcoin space. Since creating the Trezor hardware wallet with his friend Slush, he worked tirelessly to create open source standards that make using BTC more secure and private.

Joseph Tetek (SatsJoseph) is a well-known Bitcoin educator, author, and content producer from the Czech Republic. In this episode, he talks about his work at Satoshi Labs, some upcoming Trezor projects, and what it's like to promote Bitcoin in Czech.

Sodomak is a cryptoanarchist who formerly worked as the CTO of Paralelni Polis in Prague. In this interview, he talks about the philosophical values of Paralelni Polis, the cafe's origins, and how it provides Bitcoin education to every customer.

CommerceBlock CEO Nicholas Gregory is one of the engineering masterminds behind Mercury Wallet: a Bitcoin wallet which makes use of Statechains and provides privacy via CoinSwaps. In this interview, Nicholas talks about making bitcoin work as money.

Initially, extension blocks & Mimble Wimble were Bitcoin proposals for scalability & privacy. But now that Litecoin married the two with MWEB via soft fork, Charlie Lee explains if & how we can have this solution type of solution added into Bitcoin.

In the heart of Budapest, there is this shrine of Bitcoin culture where you can taste the poison of strong liquors, boost your energy level with a copy, and pay your bill with BTC. In this episode, I interview Bitcoin Bar co-owner Adam.

Lipa is a Swiss-made open source project which aims to provide an easy way for small businesses (restaurants, bars, clubs) to accept bitcoin payments via Lightning network. In this episode, co-founders Adrian, Patrick, and Bastian explain how Lipa works.

Bleskomat is an open source project which aims to create a universally accessible Bitcoin ATM that swaps your dirty fiat currency for BTC via Lightning network. In this episode, co-founders Karliatto and Chill explain how their ATM works.

This season premiere is all about promoting the ethos of free open source software. Pavlenex and Kykks from BTCPay Server, accompanied by Mempool.space mastermind Soft Simon talk about their work and advice newcomers about the challenges of Bitcoin FOSS.

Rare Scrilla (formerly known as JScrilla) is a hip hop artist, music producer, and on of the most celebrated Bitcoin artists around. In this episode, Scrilla expresses his love for frogs, Bitcoin's Counterparty protocol, and the DJPEPE cards.

Joe Looney and Shawn Leary were there when the first Rare Pepe card was created. And as true scientists, they instantly started contributing with both art and infrastructure. In this episode, they talk about frog memes and the history of Counterparty.

Giacomo Zucco did to Bitcoin maximalism what Elvis Presley has done to rock n roll: he didn't invent it, but he popularized it to the masses. And when Counterparty and Omni are making a comeback while Stacks rises, it is his duty to rate their scamminess.

Harry Halpin is a privacy lover and freedom advocate who embarked on an ambitious journey to create a better Tor, which is actually decentralized and provides incentives. The name of his project is Nym & it makes use of mixnets to prevent traffic analysis. In this episode, Harry Halpin talks about the meaning and scope of privacy in the digital age, why the Nym project accepted a financial grant from the European Commission, why Nym provides better data anonymization than Tor, and how several cypherpunk ideas get rediscovered years later in order to fix contemporary problems.

When I first met Yuval in November 2021, he was working to improve the Wabisabi protocol, trying to make Bitcoin transactions truly private. In this episode, we talks about both the innovations and challenges that we must face to attain fungibility.

Nik Oraevskiy is the CEO & co-founder of Bitcoin Reserve – a European non-custodial Bitcoin exchange which looks into adding all sorts of features & integrations (including Lightning, Liquid, and auto DCA). In this episode, we talk about keeping it real.