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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It is often said that technology is neutral. It’s certainly commonplace for Bitcoin to be thought of as such. In reality, technologies may be characterized as an embodiment of human intention, and therefore, cannot be considered as culturally or politically neutral. At least, this is the opinion of our guest, . A research scientist at MIT Media Lab and CEO of ID3, a nonprofit which aims to deploy a new generation of trusted digital institutions, John has spent the last seven decades researching the interaction between technology and society.
He joins us for a fascinating discussion on the flaws of our institutions in present day society and how we can leverage technology to build a new social ecosystem.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/096
As the debate about forks, the blocksize and decision making in Bitcoin continues, we are joined by Adam Back. Adam is best known for his invention hash-cash which became one of the fundamental building blocks of Bitcoin. He is also the inventor of the sidechains concept and founder and president of Blockstream, the single biggest employer of Bitcoin core developers.
With Adam we talked about the different blocksize proposals and how a decentralized cryptocurrency should be governed in general. He is an influential conservative voice in the current debate and has been warning that a rapid increase of the blocksize could undermine the decentralization of Bitcoin.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/095
As the debate about the blocksize continues to roar through the Bitcoin community, Gavin Andresen joins us to take a step back and ask the big questions: How should these decisions be made in the first place? What does the governance of Bitcoin look like now and what do we want it to look like in the future?
In a challenging time for Bitcoin, it’s a critical discussion to have with the Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation and successor of Satoshi. We cover everything from the current blocksize debate to the nature of forks to how decisions will be made in Bitcoin XT.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/094
Ever since the financial system collapsed in 2007, the call for alternatives has grown louder. Bitcoin itself can be seen as such an alternative. Simon Dixon’s search for a way to put capitalism on a sounder financial footing began before Bitcoin with a focus on equity crowdfunding. Since then he has built Bank to the Future into an innovative crowdfunding business that takes an aggressive contrarian stance. He has also launched an investment fund focused on cryptocurrencies together with Max Keiser called Bitcoin Capital.
He joined us for a fascinating discussion about the flaws of the banking system, Bitcoin and the search for alternatives.
Note:
Our sponsor Vaultoro is raising an equity crowdfunding round on Bank to the Future. Read about the details and invest here:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/093
In a long-overdue episode, we finally had the chance to dive into one of the most known but poorly understood cryptocurrency/blockchain project: Ripple. Reviled by many in the Bitcoin space, we put aside any prejudices and sat down for a fascinating conversation with Ripple Labs CTO Stefan Thomas.
We talked about his early days in the Bitcoin space, how Ripple came about, what the Ripple network looks like today and how its consensus protocol works.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/092
Close to two years after the initial whitepaper, the revolutionary Ethereum network has finally launched. The decentralized smart contract platform is, without a doubt, the most exciting cryptocurrency project since Bitcoin. The versatile platform with its turing-complete scripting language aspires to power the distributed applications of the future.
Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin joined us for the second time to discuss the Frontier Launch, future plans for scalability, governance and the road ahead for the organization and the protocol.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/091
Bitcoin mining and the intricate game theory that surround it is a topic that we’ve visited many times. Difficult to grasp in its complexity, it is these dynamics that determine the security of Bitcoin in the short and in the longer term. This time we were joined by none other than Dave Hudson. He is the author of the leading mining blog hashingit.com, VP of Software at PeerNova and had a long career in chip manufacturing including at Qualcomm.
We talked about dynamics in the mining market, security issues with Bitcoin’s design and his data-informed views on the blocksize debate.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/090
Amidst all the discussion of alternative uses of blockchains, it is often forgotten that the very first fork of Bitcoin, Namecoin, pursued a daring vision for a decentralized, censorship-resistant internet. Greg Slepak, co-founder of the okTurtles Foundation joined us for an interesting discussion of DNS, Namecoin and how blockchains can be used to decentralize the internet.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/089
In this episode, we revisited the perennial topic of digital currency regulation with Siân Jones, our regulatory correspondent and founder of the regulation-focused virtual currency consultancy COINSULT. With the final version of the BitLicense, what may turn out to be the most influential document for digital currency regulation, is now out. Besides diving into many different aspects of the onerous BitLicense, we talked about California’s coming rules, how Bitcoin startups will be affected and the implications of Ripple’s fine.
NOTE: Since the episode was recorded the advocate general at the EU Court of Justice recommended that Bitcoin be exempt from VAT.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/088
Solving the pain points of online payments was the applications that garnered the most attention in Bitcoin’s early days. In recent times, as consumer adoption of Bitcoin payments has been underwhelming much of that attention has shifted elsewhere. Nevertheless, companies keep working hard on making the vision of a universal, global payment system a reality.
Among those companies, one stands out as the top contender to compete with existing payment systems: Bitnet. Funded with a heavy warchest and the company is ran by veterans of Visa and Cybersource, a company started in 1994 to help merchants accept credit cards online that was sold to Visa in 2007 for $2bn. They have been working behind the scenes to get Bitcoin to break through with merchants.
CEO John McDonnell joined us for an important discussion of how online payments work today, why they are broken and how Bitcoin will revolutionize the industry.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/087
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