Gloria Zhao: A College Student’s Journey to Bitcoin Core Development

Todays guest is Gloria Zhao, she is a Bitcoin Core developer, former president of “Blockchain at Berkeley” and will finish her Computer Science studies at the end of 2020. We discuss how Bitcoin and blockchain technologies are seen by her fellow college students, why she chose to work on Bitcoin only instead of all the other Silicon Valley stuff and blockchain projects that are around.

Nic Carter: Bitcoin Disrupts Our Politicized Financial Infrastructure

Nic Carter is a Bitcoiner with a financial and philosophical background. I wanted to have him on the show for a long time. He is thoughtful and interesting to talk to as you will hear. We touch on some of his favourite topics like Bitcoin metaphysics, crypto-dollarization, historical references to free banking and the future of privacy and surveillance in the digital era.

Is Bitcoin a Ponzi Scheme? The Story of Charles Ponzi

Wondering what a Ponzi scheme is? Somebody told you Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme? Listen to this episode of “The Context” where I tell the story of Italian born confidence trickster Carlo Ponzi. In 1920 it took him only nine months to defraud thirty thousand investors, who believed in getting rich quick, collecting 20 million USD in total. Ponzi promised 50% return on their investment in three months. His arrest in August 1920 brought down six banks and Ponzi’s investors were practically wiped out. In 1957, the Encyclopedia Britannica – the Wikipedia of it’s time – formally acknowledged that Ponzi’s name had become synonymous with swindle. The “Ponzi scheme” officially had a name. In this podcast episode you will also learn, why Bitcoin is not a Ponzi scheme.

Lyn Alden: Bullish on Bitcoin – a Strategic Value Investors View

Lyn Alden is bullish on Bitcoin, because: "The first reason is, that, Bitcoin has demonstrated that it has a pretty strong network effect over time. The second reason is the halving, most of the bullish price action of Bitcoin tends to happen in the first year or two after a halving. And then the final reason was the macro backdrop, it pretty much, couldn't be better for Bitcoin and also for things like silver and that's because with so much money printing with so much bailouts happening, if you look at it historically, just whenever debt levels reach this high, there's usually some sort of a macro economic event like a currency devaluation that happens over the subsequent decade."

Bitcoin in Africa: The Ubuntu Way - A six-part series

In February 2020 I travelled to Zimbabwe and Botswana to see if and how Bitcoin is used in these two Southern African countries. In the first two episodes you learn about the general living situation in Zimbabwe which leads to interviews with bitcoin early adopters, digital entrepreneurs and human rights acitvists.

“Bitcoin is for everyone, Bitcoin is the currency of love.” – Alakanani Itireleng

Andreas M. Antonopoulos: Bitcoin Removes Power From the Few and Gives It to the Many

Today’s guest is one of my favourite people in the space Andreas M. Antonopoulos. We are going to talk about the adoption of Bitcoin, censorship and fake news, the use of Bitcoin in Zimbabwe, corporate and nation state digital currencies, why he does not believe in Austrian economics, why the so-called “left” does not embrace Bitcoin and more.

Tuur Demeester: The Bitcoin Reformation in Times of COVID-19

Today I am talking with Tuur Demeester, who recommended Bitcoin as an investment to his readers at $5 back in 2012. I would say Tuur is a philosopher with a greater perspective and an historical approach to today’s developments. We discuss his findings in his paper “The Bitcoin Reformation”. Published that at the end of 2019 he is drawing comparisons between the Dutch reformation in the 16th century and the emergence of Bitcoin in this century. This bring us to discuss COVID-19 and Tuur’s thoughts on the impact of this crisis on the Bitcoin reformation and he tells us which assets will stay liquid and accessible.

Lisa Neigut: Bitcoin Is Mind-Boggling Cool and How She Became a C-Lightning Developer

Lisa Neigut is an engineer and developer at Blockstream working on c-lightning. We met at the Lightning Conference in Berlin in October 2019 and talked about a variety of topics ranging from quantum experiments, Bitcoin in general, stocks as currency, to the future of the Lightning Network. Before that she was working at Squarecash and at Etsy as an Android developer. People who want to start a career in programming and technology should listen to her story of how she got hired as a lightning developer without fitting the profile.

Jameson Lopp: Bitcoin Will Never Die, It’s a Pure Form of Economic Interaction

Jameson Lopp is very well known in the Bitcoin space for his wide expertise on security, technology and privacy. He is maintaining and curating a Bitcoin resources page with links to valuable information on Bitcoin and since his house was swatted by police in 2017 after an unknown attacker reported a false hostage situation, he is a cypherpunk at heart. Jameson is the CTO at Casa, a company devoted to providing products for personal sovereignty.

Dan Held: Silicon Valley Fundamentally Doesn’t Understand Bitcoin

Dan Held is the Director of Business Development for all products of Kraken. Kraken is one of the worlds biggest and well known cryptocurrency exchanges. Before that he co-founded and developed products like ZeroBlock and Interchange, that were aquired later on. In between he served in the rider growth team at Uber. He lives and works in Silicon Valley. We met at the Baltic Honeybadger Conference in Riga and discussed topics like the bitcoin distribution, what he finds surprising about Satoshi Nakamotos ideas, a possible bitcoin supercycle that’s in the making and much more.

Pamela Morgan on Inheritance Planning for Crypto-Assets

In this episode I am talking with Pamela Morgan. She is the author of “Crypto-Asset Inheritance Planning: A Simple Guide for Owners” a book about strategies to store your private keys for bitcoin and other digital assets safely for your heirs. Pamela is an educator, attorney and entrepreneur. She has studied Business and Computer Programming before pursuing a Juris Doctors degree. In early 2015 Pamela has founded Thirdkey solutions (with Andreas M. Antonopoulos as CTO), a key consulting firm that works with individuals and organizations to improve the security of their crypto-holdings and ensure these assets are accessible in the event of crisis, death, or disaster.