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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Every quarter CoinDesk puts out its excellent State of Bitcoin Report providing a snapshot of where the Bitcoin ecosystem is at. We took this opportunity to go back to our original formation and have a discuss of the report and the state of Bitcoin in general. It was lots of fun!
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/045
Mehdi Medjaoui (Co-founder and COO) & Elie Chevignard (CMO) are the two guys behind Oauth.io, a service which aims to provide a simple and standardized way for developers to implement Oath. Working in digital identity management, they have an interesting proposal on how to build personal identity management into the blockchain. This proposition would effectively take the power away from centralized single sign on services like Facebook and Google and make them decentralized.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/044
The Isle of Man has been an area of interest for many Bitcoin companies as of late. The local government of this small British Crown Dependency, located in the middle of the Irish Sea, wants to attract Bitcoin businesses by adopting light regulation as well as providing accessible banking relationships and infrastructure for companies dealing in crypto. This business-friendly approach has made the island an ideal place for tech, aerospace and e-gaming companies to establish, which has been a great benefit for the local economy in the last few decades. As an example, the leading online gaming site Poker Stars now employs some 200 people on the island.
With the support of the Economic Development Department, the Isle of Man recently hosted Crypto Valley Summit to help promote their wiliness to work with Bitcoin companies. Siân Jones was at the event and captures this enthusiasm in three interviews, which we discuss on the show:
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/043
Tom Ding is the CEO and Founder of Koinify, a platform for funding decentralized applications. Think of Koinify as a sort of Angel List to bootstrap and fund a new decentralized economy, specifically decentralized applications. With his company, Tom hopes to help build the decentralized app which help push this technology to the mainstream. With his extensive knowledge of this space, we talked about the future of DACs and DAPPs and discussed some of the challenges these new models are facing, from profitability to the obvious legal aspects.
This episode was recorded over a live Google Hangout. It was our first attempt at doing a live video show and unfortunately we didn’t get the recording right. Our apologies for the bad sound quality, we’ll get the next one right.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/042
Siân Jones was recently in London for the Inside Bitcoins conference. She interviewed two people with extensive knowledge of regulation and how it should apply to Bitcoin.
Marco Santori is Chairman of the regulatory affairs committee of the Bitcoin Foundation and recently appointed Global policy council of for Blockchain. As the New York Department of Financial Services BitLicense proposal nears the end of it’s second 45-day challenge period, Mr. Santori gives his predictions on what the legislation will look like when it is passed, which he expects to happen by the end of this year.
Amor Sexton is a lawyer at Adroit in Sydney Australia, a commercial law firm that specializes in Bitcoin and actively represents the Bitcoin industry when hen liaising with the Australian government. In her talk with Siân, she spoke about the Australian government’s recent guidance and draft ruling on the tax treatment of crypto currencies, with regards to income tax, capital gains tax and GST. They point out how these draft rulings differ from those proposed in other jurisdictions and explore how they will affect merchants and Bitcoin holders in the future.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/041
La maison du Bitcoin is a dedicated Bitcoin center located in the heart of ”Silicon Sentier”, which is situated in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris. Founded by entrepreneurs Eric Larchevêque and Thomas France, La maison du Bitcoin is an open space where people are encouraged to walk in and get information about Bitcoin. It also offers a variety of services such as a co-working space for bitcoiners and the ability to purchase Bitcoin over the counter. It’s also the home to meetups, conferences and training seminars.
For 10% off the upcoming Euro Bitcoin conference happening on October 8 in Paris, go to EuroBitcoin.org and use the code EPICENTER.
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This episode is hosted by Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/040
Dr. Bastian Brand is an investment manager at Pathfinder Capital. Pathfinder Capital is a London-based Venture Capital firm that focuses on frontier markets and cryptocurrencies. He is also the founder of the Bitcoin Startups Munich group and was previously a consultant at McKinsey.
The episode focused on his comprehensive paper surveying the investment landscape in the cryptocurrency space. We discussed the advantages of buying bitcoins versus investing in cryptocurrency startups, the prospect of Bitcoin 2.0 projects, and his views on the different sectors of the Bitcoin industry.
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/039
Flavien Charlon is the founder of coloured coin wallet Coinprism. Colored coins allow people and organizations to securely issue and trade real-world assets like commodities, stocks and bonds on the bitcoin network. Coinprism recently won the global Startup Challenge hosted by the Bitcoin Foundation in May 2014. Other notable projects include Predictious, a Bitcoin-based prediction market. He has 8 years of experience in software engineering at Microsoft, building large scale distributed systems, and is a graduate of Ecole Centrale Lyon, where he received an Msc. in Engineering.
For 10% off Inside Bitcoins London on September 15 and 16, use the discount code EPICIBC14
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/038
Thomas Spaas, director of the Belgian Bitcoin Association and an international tax lawyer in Antwerp, and our regulatory affairs correspondent Siân Jones, join us to discuss a Swedish court case on VAT, the European Value Added Tax. The case has made it all the way to the Court of Justice of the European Union and may set the precedent for how the sale of Bitcoin will be taxed.
For 10% off Inside Bitcoins London on September 15 and 16, use the discount code EPICIBC14
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This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/037
Today’s panel discussion is called “The ever changing landscape of Bitcoin mining” where moderator Jez San is joined by some of the most prominent figures in the mining industry, Marc Aafjes of Bitfury, Dave Carlson of Megabigpower, Timo Hanke of Cointerra and Naveed Sherwani of Peernova. The discussion revolves around several key topics, notably, everyone seems to agree the industry should move away from the term mining and start calling it transaction processing. They also discuss the rapid evolution of ASIC processors in the last year, the importance of improving the overall power efficiency of the network and where ASIC production is heading. They also talk about a highly debated subject which is the shift from home mining to centralised data centers. The panels ends with predictions on the total hashing power of the network at the end of this year.
This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/036
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