Stay ConnectedEpicenter brings you in-depth conversations about the technical, economic and social implications of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies. Every week, we interview business leaders, engineers academics and entrepreneurs, and bring you a diverse spectrum of opinions and points of view.
Epicenter is hosted by Sebastien Couture, Brian Fabian Crain, Friederike Ernst, Meher Roy and Felix Lutsch. Since 2014, our episodes have been downloaded over 8 million times.
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In the world of Bitcoin podcast, there is one show which definitely stands out as the longest running, Let’s Talk Bitcoin! In its 4-year history, the show has produced over 320 episodes and expanded to become a network of podcasts which includes Epicenter and many others.
We’re joined by Adam B. Levine the founder and host of Let’s Talk Bitcoin! It was thanks to Adam that Sébastien and Brian first connected in 2013, so in many ways, we consider him as the “”spiritual grandfather”” of Epicenter. Adam reflects on his signature show and the network he created in 2014. He discusses the future of the network and makes an announcement live on the show, which even takes us by surprise.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/176
For a long time the native asset of the Ripple network XRP was the cryptocurrency with the second biggest market cap. But with much of the supply controlled by Ripple, it remained surrounded by controversy. Still, XRP remains an interesting asset to enable cross-border payments in the future. Miguel Vias recently joined Ripple after a long career on Wall Street to develop XRP as a liquid and widely accepted asset.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/175
In the footsteps of the finance industry, the energy sector has been caught by the blockchain fever. Conceived over a century ago, increased usage and an explosion of devices have made energy grids outdated. Smart grids offer a two-way dialogue where electricity and information are exchanged between utilities and its customers. This new grid takes advantages of connected devices and green energy production to provide more reliability, security and sustainability.
Carsten Stöcker, Senior Manager Machine Economy & Blockchain at Innogy, shares his vision for how blockchains will serve as the transactional fabric for tomorrow’s smart grids. In this new paradigm, energy is locally produced and blockchains provide the rails on which local energy marketplaces can be built. The German utility has been conducting blockchain experiments for several years and is soon releasing the Mobility Transaction Platform moveX. The Ethereum-powered platform will serve an ecosystem of electric vehicles with transaction layer needed for charging, car sharing and mobility as a service.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/174
Writing his college thesis on Bitcoin in 2012 and becoming Coinbase’s first employee in 2013, Olaf Carlson-Wee has been at the forefront of cryptocurrency for many years. Recently, he left Coinbase to start Polychain Capital, a hedge fund focused solely on investing in cryptocurrencies and protocol tokens. Olaf joined us to discuss his journey in the industry and the investment thesis behing Polychain.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/173
With both the Bitcoin Unlimited and Segregated Witness efforts far from reaching majority support and exploding transaction fees, the debate around how to scale Bitcoin continues on. One of the key arguments against bigger blocks and Bitcoin Unlimited is that a blocksize restriction is needed to create a healthy fee market. Dr Peter Rizun has been researching the economics of transaction fees in Bitcoin extensively and joined us to discuss what dynamics affect fees and why he thinks the blocksize limit will eventually fall.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/172
Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us once again to discuss the state of Ethereum and the efforts to innovate the protocol. We covered the takeaways from the DAO fork, switching to the proof-of-stake system Casper and how to think about blockchain interoperability.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/171
One of the key issues with blockchain networks is the lack of interoperability. In the early days of Bitcoin, blockchain interoperability was far from people’s minds. However, as new networks continued to emerge and gain traction, the ability to move assets freely from one blockchain to another has become a critical feature.
We’re joined by Jae Kwon, CEO and Founder of Tendermint, the team which is launching the Cosmos Network. Cosmos aims to build the internet of blockchains: A global network of blockchains, connected through hubs that allow trustless token transfer. Jae joined us to discuss the Cosmos vision, the underlying Tendermint consensus algorithm and upcoming fundraiser.
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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/170
There is no doubt that proof of work, introduced in the Bitcoin white paper, has stood the test of time as a robust and resilient Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism. However, many issues may prevent Nakamoto Consensus from securely scaling over the long term. The risk of validator centralization, network forking, block scarcity and high energy costs required to mine a block have all been extensively debated with no realistic long-term solutions to date. A new paper titled “Algorand” attempts to addresses these problems.
We’re pleased to be joined by Professor Silvio Micali, a computer scientist at MIT, who is known for his work in many of the technologies blockchains rely on today. As one of the co-inventors of zero-knowledge proofs, he has been decorated with a number of prizes and awards, including the Turing Award, which he received in 2012 for his work in cryptography.
Prof. Micali describes the concept of Algorand, an alternative approach to proof of work which offers high security guarantees while allowing the network to scale with demand. Relying only on a trivial amount of computation to validate transactions, Algorand also reduces the probability of network forks to near-zero. It uses novel mechanisms to select validators for blocks and enabling them to come to consensus on them.
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This episode is hosted by Meher Roy and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/169
In the last year, blockchain protocols have matured at an exciting pace. Open source projects like Ethereum, the Eris stack and Tendermint are behind much of the experimentation being conducted at leading companies. These protocols would not be where they are today if it wasn’t for the hard work of dedicated open source developers.
One of those people is Rick Dudley. An opinionated and passionate developer, Rick is involved in multiple projects. He works as a DevOps at Monax, works closely with Vlad Zamfir on implementing Casper in Ethereum, is a leading member of the Coala organization and is Founder and CEO of the startup Vulcanize. Rick gives us insider insights on Ethereum and on how the project may evolve, in particular, once Casper is implemented and when more robust, strongly typed language VMs are made available to the protocol.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/168
After the successful Ethereum crowdfunding campaign, musician and web developer Peter Harris saw a path to creating a fair, decentralized music streaming platform. Out of that Resonate was born. Peter joined us to discuss why the dysfunctional structure of the music industry results in a bad deal for musicians and why a decentralized platform supported by blockchain technology and run as a cooperative represents a better way forward.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/167
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