Stay ConnectedFeaturing analysis and discourse by hosts Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Dr. Stephanie Murphy, Adam B. Levine, and Jonathan Mohan, episodes feature friendly, in-depth discussions and even-handed interviews.
Speaking of Bitcoin (formerly known as Let’s Talk Bitcoin!) is the longest-running English language talk show on the ideas, people and projects surrounding the Bitcoin movement and Cryptocurrency phenomenon.
Copyright: © Adam B. Levine
On today’s episode of Let’s Talk Bitcoin! you’re invited to join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine, Stephanie Murpy and special guest Richard Myers for an in-depth look at the past, present and future of ‘Mobile Mesh Networking’ technology and the open source LOT49 protocol built on top of lightning.
Just as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin don’t rely on static infrastructure and professional providers, mobile mesh networking allows the creation of inexpensive, high range, low bandwidth and power consumption ad-hoc networks that’ll let your phone send text messages or even bitcoin lightning network micro-transactions, even in areas with no coverage.
According to Richard, Bitcoin’s Lightning is a what’s needed to make mobile mesh networks catch on by bootstrapping on top of the payment routing infrastructure.
“…the Lightning network currently sends payments from A to B to C and then all those intermediate nodes can connect a small fee if the payment is delivered at the end. All we’re doing is saying ‘Not only [can you send] a payment, but [you can send] a small message. In our case it’d be a SMS message. So you’re sending an SMS message along with a Lightning payment from A to B to C to D, and when D receives that message they return proof that it was delivered and that’s what flows back through the network. In the Lightning sense, that’s your pre-image. It’s computed from the message, that’s how the nodes are able to collect payment even if they lose touch with the original person who sent it.”
But the way the Lightning network uses data natively isn’t ideal for mobile mesh. The open source Lot49 protocol is another layer on top of lightning that Richard says is necessary to make it work at scale while using mesh devices as an extremely low-bandwidth TOR-like privacy layer.
“In many ways we’re not making a new protocol, we’re literally using lightning. Lot49 is custom communication protocol that’s optimized for mesh. For example, right now there’s a 1300 byte onion that’s used to route messages over the internet and that’s very important because you lose a lot of privacy… you lose all your privacy… if you were to just send messages over the internet without onion routing.
We’re sending over more or less a physical TOR network since it’s going from node to node, not through a central ISP who can associate who you’re trying to pay. We’re also doing it over a low bandwidth network, so if you were sending 1300 bytes it may not sound like much in the age of the internet but we’re talking about devices that [have a maximum data transmission capacity of] about a kilobyte a minute so that’s a significant amount of the bandwidth that you have [tied up just in the web’s onion routing]
So for example with LOT49, we take out the onion and we use the native routing at the mesh device [level] which is optimized for mesh communications. And there’s a few other little changes we make like that in order to reduce the bandwidth by chunking up messages… the ultimate goal is to minimize the lightning protocol overhead so that there is more bandwidth available for data… For things like sending an SMS and as bandwidth increases there may be things like internet protocol…”
Credits
This episode of Let’s Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine and Richard Myers. Music provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Josep Castells on Unsplash
The episode is sponsored by eToro.com and The Internet of Money Vol. 3
On today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! you're invited to join Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Adam B. Levine, Jonathan Mohan and Stephanie Murpy for an in-depth discussion about the ups and downs, the good and the bad about being your own bank in the modern world of Bitcoin.
The powerful idea and meme at the core of Bitcoin self-sovereignty is incredibly empowering but has an unspoken element that requires persistent competence and at least for some makes it more trouble than it's worth.
As the world reels from the response to COVID-19 and disorder seems the trend on the rise, we discuss how although Bitcoin makes it possible for anyone to be their own bank, who actually wants the constant vigilance and anxiety that goes along with it? And what happens when things go wrong and there's no-one to blame but ourselves?
"...There is tremendous luxury in having institutions that at least appear to be stable over some period of time where you don't need to worry about the details of how they work and what happens under failure conditions. That luxury is pretty concentrated in just a few places in the world and at some point you can't afford that luxury of apathy. - Andreas M. Antonopoulos, LTB! #437
Credits
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine. Music provided by Jared Rubens, FromEther and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Pathdoc on Shutterstock
The rallying cry of the totalitarian is "He farted first", but if both systems have produced similar outcomes, is there much of a difference? Inspired by a recent article in the Atlantic, in today's wide-ranging discussion the hosts of Let's Talk Bitcoin! dig deeply into the questions of censorship, propaganda and how things are both better and worse than in years past.
The episode is sponsored by eToro.com and The Internet of Money Vol. 3
Shownotes:
Credits
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin features Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Adam B. Levine. Music provided by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Sebastiaan Stam on Unsplash
Although some believe bitcoin mining is a wasteful activity, on today's show we dig into the relative world of constant fuel production, lumpy demand and bitcoin based load balancing.
After years of bitcoin mining domination by china-based miners, some US power producers, both professional and incidental, are beginning to get into the game as a way to be more green. It's a narrative reversal if ever we've seen one and if proven successful by the early players could change the bitcoin mining landscape as we know it.
But even without a "Green Bitcoin" narrative in the US, one of China's two major mining advantages has evaporated as Moores Law stretches out the useful lifespan of modern bitcoin miners hardware.
Correction: Before installing miners, Greenidge Generation previously shut down during off-peak season, during the episode Adam incorrectly stated that it previously shut down during off-peak hours.
Today's episode features Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine
This episode features music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats. Today's show is edited by Jonas, and sponsored by eToro.com
Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash
On today's show we've got a pair of interviews for you. First we speak with John Cantrell, the author of Juggernaut, a new messaging layer 3 application being built on top of layer 2 lightning network, which is itself built on top of layer one bitcoin. It's a lot of layers, but as a technological concept currently in beta it's a fascinating project, and we talk about it. (Juggernaut on Github)
After the break we're joined again by Alex Gladstein of HRF.org for a discussion on political expediency in the age of pandemic and what crisis has revealed about various governments, and different types of governments around the world. Alex is one of my favorite returning guests, with his global human rights focused work taking him to some of the most interesting and most oppressed places around the world
"What's interesting is that citizen journalists I know in Taiwan have pressed the government on this and they've gone to parliament and it's all on record, and they've said 'Have these (...) digital contact tracing or cell phone surveillance things been useful?' And the governments said "Only in one case.... Only in one case was this sort of mass surveillance approach been useful', so they've actually been honest with the people... But at the end of the day it does teach us that even the most progressive governments are going to be lured by the sirens call of using surveillance to tackle problems." - Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer HRF.org
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin is sponsored by eToro.com and features content from John Cantrell, Alex Gladstein and Adam B. Levine. Todays show features music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats with editing by Jonas. Album Art original photo by Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash
In Today's discussion we'll briefly talk about some of the knock-on, or second order affects which the coronavirus disruption is having on our world today, and which may continue into the future. Then for the meat of the show we'll dig into specific areas where bitcoin could, or perhaps is being improved with the creator of one of the most impactful peer to peer technologies in the world today.
This episode was sponsored by eToro.com, with music by Jared Rubens, Gurty Beats and Adam B. Levine. Today's show featured Bram Cohen, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine with editing by Jonas.
In the aftermath of the so-called "Black Thursday" crash from several weeks ago, MakerDAO's "DAI" ethereum backed dollar pegged stablecoin came untethered and was, for a time at least, functionally insolvent. In the aftermath, holders of the MKR token which allows holders to participate in governance decisions opted to do a couple of things, including adding the centralized stablecoin USDC to the list of acceptable collateral, which drew both condemnations mostly around centralized risk being added to the system and praise for making the system more robust against sudden ETH collateral price crashes.
And now most recently, the Maker Foundation which had held some centralized control over the protocol completed their long-planned exit with all authorities now transferred to the holders of MKR tokens, removing both a point of control which had been used as a safety check and a point of risk in that centralized control can be co-opted and used to disrupt a system as we've seen in other examples.
On today's show we're digging into:
What is Decentralized Finance (DeFi)?
How does decentralized finance differ from traditional banking?
Fractional reserve vs over-collateralized loans
Liberty Dollars’s missing collateral and USDC’s risky name
MakerDAO, DAI dollar-pegged stablecoins and how this DeFi stablecoin actually works
SDAI (Single Collateral DAI) vs. DAI (Multi Collateral DAI)
Smart contract ‘vaults’
Lending money to yourself: 150%, 300%, insurance and auctions
What happened on ‘Black Thursday’ as the price of Ether dropped more than 50%
What happened when transaction fees went through the roof
A bug in the collateral auction smart contract
A surprising crash: as the system became functionally insolvent the price of the dollar pegged stablecoin actually went up.
Oasis.app vaults are transparent and pretty interesting, take a look!
Loaning yourself money using your ether (at interest)
How MakerDAO’s approach differs from SALT Lending
The other half of the DAI system: saving vault smart contracts
DAI Saving Rate (DSR) and the new certificate of deposit
The reward for using MKR tokens to administer a good system
Can savings vaults be liquidated?
Smart contract risks, consensus risks, systemic risks and response time risks
Sponsors: eToro.com and Purse.io
What specifically went wrong with the auction smart contracts?
Recapitalizing the system by diluting MKR governance stakeholders
Even with bugs, market mechanisms to fill the solvency hole seemed to work better than government bailout equivalents.
Completing the transition from foundation-overseen to full tokenized governance.
Decentralization transition - A necessary step or a natural one?
Single collateral vs. Multi-collateral stablecoins
Why would a decentralized stablecoin want to allow a centralized stablecoin for collateral?
External political risks vs. internal technological risks
“Life finds a way” and DeFi’s natural circuit breakers (also Mt.GOX)
Whats the point of putting USDC in to get DAI out?
How does DeFi stablecoin insurance work?
A modular ecosystem
How DeFi and traditional finance are similar
DeFi vs. 2nd layer protocols
Credits
Hosts: Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Jonathan Mohan & Stephanie Murphy
Sponsors: eToro.com and Purse.io
Music: Jared Rubens and GurtyBeats
Editing: Jonas
From Boeing to bitcoin in this week's discussion we're talking about our disrupted reality, the politically expedient path forward, why it almost certainly won't work, the alternatives to it, what this means for bitcoin and what you can do to help.
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin is sponsored by eToro.com. If you're a skilled audio editor with deep crypto knowledge consider applying for CoinDesk's Deputy Podcasts Editor role
This week on Let's Talk Bitcoin we're discussing the coming bailout-everything regime in a topic that's both extremely timely but is also what originally forced many long-term bitcoin enthusiasts to learn about money and become interested in cryptocurrency in the first place.
As much of the world on an almost uniform and bipartisan basis shuts down to slow the spread of COVID19 and prepares to bail out first financial markets and now basically everything that can't work on a fully remote basis, we're talking about crisis, bailouts, the limits of monetary policy and the real possibility that it's not a straw that breaks the back of our money but rather the whole world suddenly jumping on.
On today's show we'll discuss:
Today's episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine.
This episode was sponsored by eToro.com and featured music by Jared Rubens and Adam B. Levine, with editing by Jonas.
Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash
On today's podcast we're joined by early investor and entrepreneur David Johnston to discuss:
Further listening: The original panel where Johnston's Law was introduced in 2014
Credits for LTB#430 - Anything that can be decentralized will be decentralized 6 years later
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Purse.io and eToro.com.
This episode featured Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan, David Johnston and Adam B. Levine
Today's episode was produced by Adam B. Levine, edited by Jonas with music provided by Jared Rubens and Adam B. Levine
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
Earlier this week the Let's Talk Bitcoin! Show gathered to discuss Coronavirus and its potential impacts or disruptions to the decentralized world of bitcoin.
On today's podcast we discuss Coronavirus and:
Later, we hear from correspondent George Ettinger about the indications of a "Dumb Currency Singularity" taking place at the IRS right now (also presented in full text below).
Credits for LTB#429 - Coronavirus Impacts on Bitcoin (And the IRS's Dumb Singularity)
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Purse.io and eToro.com.
This episode featured Stephanie Murphy, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, George Ettinger and Adam B. Levine
Today's episode was produced by Adam B. Levine, edited by Adam B. Levine with music provided by Jared Rubens and Adam B. Levine
Would you like to Sponsor a future episode of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show? Do you have any questions or comments? Email adam@ltbshow.com
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