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The Fundamental Values of Bitcoin : Interview with John Vallis ②

If we allow those to change, we have to figure out who changes them, who has the power, and what's to stop us from changing it depending on the political or philosophical winds that are blowing at any given time. No, Bitcoin’s fundamental propositions are meant to be an absolute constant which is something we've never had in the field of economics. We've never had an absolute constant for measuring value, but now we have one, and we should not fail to understand or recognize the importance of that.

How does the ECB feel about Bitcoin? : Interview with Marc Friedrich ②

The ECB is scared of Bitcoin because they see how dominant and powerful it has become. As Gandhi once said: “First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” They ignored it in the early days, then they laughed at it, and I believe we are at stage three now where they are fighting us. For me, that's a symbolic sign that we are going to win. It is overwhelming for governments because it is more powerful than people thought, and it cannot be abolished or banned. So, their last measure was to regulate, put it on the black-list and spread propaganda about it so people refrain from dealing with it.

Canada Should Pull Up Their Socks? : Interview with Greg Foss ②

Mathematically, it's going to be very difficult. After years of the same patterns with printing and being backed by the government, we get used to it. Free money is like an addiction. If you tell people that you can have free money, and then you stop giving them free money, it will be very difficult to get off that addiction.You might try to countermeasure through raising taxes, but perhaps we're already at a level of diminishing marginal returns. This means that if we raise taxes, some of the economies will go underground to the black market, and it will be off-record so they’re not taxed.

Daylight Robbery : Interview with Dominic Frisby ②

I called it “Daylight Robbery” because some people think that taxes are the price we pay for having a civilized society, while others think “taxation is theft”. Both these arguments are true, but it all depends on the degree to which you are taxed and how you are taxed. For example, in North Korea, people are taxed 100% and nobody owns their own labor; they work for the nation and don't receive any money for it. In anarchy, you own all of your labor and there's no taxation.

How can the value of money be destroyed? : Interview with Jeff Booth ②

That's why I do these podcasts, interviews and why I wrote the book. It wasn’t to try to make money, fame, or fortune out of it. I have very successful businesses and I love spending time with technology founders in creating special businesses. That's something I love to do, and apart from that, I love spending time with my family and friends. I wrote the book in hope that it would work as a lightning rod to a conversation we need to have. People are having conversations that are too removed from the primary problem.

Can we hide Bitcoin from the government? : Interview with Santiago Velez Block Digital Corporation ②

As US citizens, we have certain rights in our constitution and there are certain rules that the government has to follow before they can seize your assets. Pablo Escobar, who was a big drug dealer from Colombia where I was born, used to say the same thing about the cash he buried in the jungle. If you bury a bunch of cash in the jungle, indeed the government can't confiscate it, but now you can't use it either. It's in a hole somewhere, but there's no way you express value with it in a meaningful way like buying property or buying goods and services. Money only exists in the framework of a system of laws, so hiding your Bitcoin and trying to run around the world to maybe try to find a jurisdiction that will take you in is really the same as being exiled. Moreover, Bitcoin is arguably the most transparent ledger ever to exist, so the idea that you're going to hide is very bad.

Bitcoin time value on the Lightning Network : Interview with Nik Bhatia ②

The Lightning Network changes the time-value aspect of Bitcoin because Lightning Network is a network of Bitcoin peers that agree to financial contracts that allow them to transact Bitcoin instantly with each other. Now if you have your Bitcoin dedicated to this network, you can facilitate payments between people. And, when facilitating the payment, you can earn an income for providing liquidity. So, with Lightning Networks, Bitcoin gains the time value of money in which you can earn income. Now, it's not Bitcoin in cold storage anymore where it's offline in your keys are private, rather it is now in a hot environment where your Bitcoin in an online environment and it's being used. It will be locked up by hash time-locked contracts, HTLC, which are smart contracts the Lightning Network uses to function. In brief, while your Bitcoin is tied up in a smart contract in the Lightning Network, it will gain time value, but if it's not, it won’t have time value.

Why are Coinbase Outflows significant? : Interview with Ki Young Ju CryptoQuant CEO ②

Ki Young Ju is the head of CryptoQuant, a blockchain analysis firm that provides premium data for crypto hedge funds and traders. They are building blockchain metrics which this industry has never exp...

What is P2SH about? : Interview with John Riggins Bitcoin Magazine ②

The battle for P2SH is the untold story of the first Bitcoin crisis when it was at risk of collapsing. This incident continued until the end of 2010, and the authors Aaron Van Wirdum and Pete Rizzo explain it in a fluent and artistic manner readable for anyone. This article goes in-depth about how Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin and changed the protocol 8 times until he gradually stepped away from the project. After Satoshi left the Bitcoin project publicly, he gave the role as the main developer to Gavin Andersen. Within the group of Bitcoin core developers, the first upgrade of Bitcoin was revealed by Russell O’Connor.

What do you think about NFTs? : Interview with Charlie Lee ②

Non-Fungible tokens are interesting assets and similar to baseball cards on the blockchain. The idea of having a unique non-fungible and limited asset is intriguing. You cannot duplicate the NFT, and if enough people value it, it becomes valuable. Its theory is similar to Bitcoin only being valuable if people value it. The same applies to NFTs; there is limited supply and if you value it, it becomes valuable. Conversely, there will be no value in an asset if there is unlimited supply regardless of how much you value it. I think the NFT concept is cool but I am not sure if it will work out. I think about who and why there is value in a certain NFT token in the first place, and if the value does come from the asset itself or not. The value of Bitcoin and Litecoin comes from the inside of the coins. It is valuable because the network is secure, and you can easily move value around. Besides, you can send value easily, cheaply, securely, and fast to someone on the side of the world.

2% of all Bitcoin addresses hold 95% of the supply ? : Interview with Rafael Schultze-Kraft CTO of Glassnode ②

I do think Bitcoin and Ethereum are fair coins. If you look at the distribution over time, it has become more decentralized and dispersed across different sections in the network. Besides, we cannot forget that these coins are divisible by a lot. Even if you hold a couple of Satoshi’s, their price has been appreciating. Looking at on-chain data, there is a good argument for this continuous dispersion that shows the adoption of new people coming into space. People often drop claims like “2% of all bitcoin addresses hold 95% of the supply” , but they forget to factor in things like exchanges, that today they have approximately 2.6 million BTC. When an exchange is reduced to “an address with a lot of BTC”, then you certainly will get an extremely narrow view of the whole picture. It is very clear that these 2.6 million do not belong to a dozen entities but it is millions of users that are simply holding their funds on exchanges. So, those arguments are most of the time flawed.

Equal Rights for the LGBTQ Community : Interview with Jason Hsu Crypto Congressman ②

It's been very emotional. When I was a legislator, the priority was giving legal rights to the LGBTQ community, and I probably would list blockchain and cryptocurrency as my second priority. As ordinary people, we rarely do have a chance to make an impact. LGBTQ issues have been around in Taiwan for over 30 years since the first game person came out of the closet. It was a very long march in the dark without seeing the end of the tunnel for many.Growing up I was always surrounded by gay friends. when I started my own business, I employed several gay people and creating a guy-friendly environment. Over time, when I got to know them on a more personal level, I would hear about their stories and their struggles, jobs, friends, their family members, and how oppressed they felt.

What happens when you start to understand Bitcoin’s implications? : Interview with John Vallis ①

This does 2 things. One, when you realize the extent to which the monetary system has become corrupted and how Bitcoin fixes it, you start to distrust a lot of other things. You will look a little bit more critically at all the other things in your life whether it be healthcare, education, government, etc., thinking, “if I misunderstood the truth of the monetary system so much, maybe I should look a little bit more critically at other areas.” So, you become intoxicated on sovereignty and you want to establish it in as many other areas of your life if you can.

Crypto Industry in Taiwan : Interview with Jason Hsu Crypto Congressman ①

I think it's important to understand the long-term implications of cryptocurrency, whether it's a way to change or get countries to think about how the central bank has to figure out an alternative way for current monetary systems; a way to develop a less politically affected monetary system. Thus, I think the way that cryptocurrency is being perceived around the world is also a reflection of how societies are being perceived. Meaning, every country has its own narrative, and due to their differences in their narratives, they are treating cryptocurrencies and blockchains differently.

What is the credit swap market? : Interview with Greg Foss ①

The credit default swap market is default insurance on any reference asset. It is like an insurance policy that you purchase to protect yourself if the reference asset defaults. Purchasing the insurance costs you a certain premium each year, much like an insurance premium for house insurance, fire insurance, etc. There's default insurance where you pay a certain premium that is set by the market and by the riskiness of the borrower. For example, Canada is a sovereign borrower and the insurance market for Canada is charging 37 basis points per year over a 5-year term to ensure Canada against default. This means the purchaser has to pay $37000 a year to ensure about $10 million worth of debt. The seller of the insurance collects the premium; however, they are on the hook for any payout in the event of default.

How are our societies and tax systems related? : Interview with Dominic Frisby ①

I have this idea that you design society the way you tax it. You determine the destiny of a society by the way that you tax it; how prosperous or poor the people will be, how free or subordinated people will be, etc. It's not just the amount but also the way that you tax the people. For example, today we rely very heavily on taxing labor even though we didn't always tax labor so much. I think there's a relationship between taxation and freedom. A slave owns none of his own labor like someone in a totalitarian state, but someone in an anarchic state with no government has 100% ownership of his own body and labor. At the moment where 40~50%of our money goes on taxes, so we own about 50~60% of ourselves. This needs to be a lower number.

The Biggest Chance of All Times : Interview with Marc Friedrich ①

The last book was called The Biggest Crash of All Times, but the new book is called The Biggest Chance of All Times because every crisis is also a chance. I wanted to give people some perspective and positive things for the future to look forward to. I started thinking about the positive things in this COVID-19 crisis, like what people can achieve, and where the possibilities and opportunities lie in this crisis. I think it is the biggest chance in our lifetime to invest during this crisis because our current monetary system is wholly disordered, and our political system is completely broken. Politicians don’t seem to have any other decisions than to put people in lockdowns. Everything has become corrupt and our system is not human anymore.

Why is the East vs West indicator important? : Interview with Nicolas Contasti, Francesco Galati ②

Because it can enable our users to mitigate risk if they are located in a geography that is opposite to where their crypto-assets are having the most activity. For example, if someone in Asia is investing in Litecoin, they should be aware that the distribution of activity is usually disproportionately large towards the West side of the world.If I were to be located in Hong Kong and I was trading or investing in, for example, Litecoin, I would never go to bed without setting a stop-loss or a take-profit order, since I would be more exposed to price variation either very late at night or very early in the morning.

Why Deflation is Key to an Abundant Future : Interview with Jeff Booth ①

Well, technology is deflationary. Technology provides so much efficiency that it creates deflation. If you look at your cellphone or just about anything technology-driven that you use, you get more for less on an exponential scale. That technology is moving into every single part of our world. So, you would expect prices to be falling as a natural by-product of that while saving our time. We should be getting more for less and have our time expanding, but it doesn't feel like that's happening.

How did IntoTheBlock start? : Interview with Nicolas Contasti, Francesco Galati ①

IntoTheBlock (ITB) is the result of a macro thesis formulated by our founder and CEO Jesus Rodriguez. Jesus has a long career in technology and finance. Having been a distinguished engineer at Microsoft and later built quant systems for major hedge funds on Wall Street, he has a deep understanding of the intersection of financial markets and tech. His main thesis was (and still is) that crypto products should be intelligent-first products, that is, powered by artificial intelligence. If traditional financial markets are evolving towards AI-first products, why shouldn’t crypto, the first natively digital asset class, do the same?

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