The Blockchain Debate Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Motion: POS will overtake POW (Kevin Sekniqi vs. Tarun Chitra) Mar 25, 2020

Show notes

Guests:
Kevin Sekniqi (@kevinsekniqi) - debating FOR the motion
Tarun Chitra (@tarunchitra) - debating AGAINST the motion
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion is “POS will overtake POW.”
This is an important topic for a few reasons. First, from an investor’s perspective, this is another angle of evaluating BTC vs its challengers, which by and large are POS, or moving to POS. Second, this provides guidance to architects of new protocols in making design decisions.
If we were to measure the dominance of POW via market cap, of the top 20 coins on CMC, coins with a POW mechanism (with no serious plans to migrate to something else), take up 74% of the share of market cap.
The two guests we have for this episode are: a builder of a highly anticipated POS-based protocol; and a creator of an extremely interesting business that simulates protocol behavior, to help protocol designers make more sound decisions.
I want to note that, about 70 minutes into the debate, the discussion shifted to a general conversation about money characteristics of bitcoin, and this goes on for about 25 minutes. This was not directly relevant to the motion, but I kept it in nonetheless, for the insights it shed.
Make sure to check out our previous episodes too, on Bitcoin’s store of value status, tokenization and smart contracts, DeFi, bitcoin halvening, and China’s future in blockchain.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate.
Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate:

Paul Sztorc article "Nothing is Cheaper than Proof of Work": http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/
Hash rate derivatives: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-derivatives/with-hashes-and-hedges-power-hungry-crypto-miners-court-investors-idUSKBN1YE0KA
Digital currency as a Veblen good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

Motion: China Will Lead the World in Blockchain Innovation (Matthew Graham vs. Avichal Garg) Mar 09, 2020

Show notes

Guests:
Matthew Graham (@mattysino) - debating FOR the motion
Avichal Garg (@avichal) - debating AGAINST the motion
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion is “China will lead the world in blockchain innovation.”
With a huge market, vast amount of capital, loose regulations (in a de facto sense anyway), deep bench of talent and prowess for imitation, China is a powerful incubator of tech and product, both in blockchain and other tech industries. China is the place for concentration of mining power, top exchanges and now potentially a pioneer for national digital currency. Global crypto investors may be interested in knowing, will true innovation come out of China? And for western entrepreneurs and operators, what can they learn from their Chinese friends? Today’s debate will help address these questions.
The guests we have for this episode are founders of two crypto funds: One is a US transplant into Beijing who now considers it home. While the other has been a Silicon Valley lifer since college.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.
Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate:

Baidu's Xuperchain: https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615022/baidus-xuperchain-launch-is-just-the-beginning-of-chinas-blockchain-rush/
China's 9-9-6 engineer hours: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system
Multicoin's Mable Jiang breaks down President Xi's speech about blockchain development: https://medium.com/@mablejiang/xi-jinpings-speech-at-the-18th-collective-study-of-the-chinese-political-bureau-of-the-central-1219730677b2
China's Belt and Road Initiative: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative
More than 30,000 companies are registered as blockchain businesses in China https://news.bitcoin.com/33000-companies-in-china-claim-to-use-blockchain-technology/

Motion: Bitcoin Halvening is Priced In (Jason Williams vs. Christian Keroles) Feb 24, 2020

Show notes

Guests:
Jason Williams (@JWilliamsFstmed) - debating FOR the motion
Christian Keroles (@ck_SNARKs) - debating AGAINST the motion
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion is “Bitcoin halvening is priced in.” Halvening, or halving, refers to the regularly scheduled reduction in the supply of new bitcoins to reward miners. This happens roughly every four years, and the supply is reduced by 50% each time. Halvening is built into the protocol and not a contentious topic. What is contentious, is whether the market for bitcoin has incorporated the effects of this upcoming activity.
The guests we have for this episode are two bitcoiners. One works in bitcoin investment, and the other in bitcoin education and marketing. Turns out there are more areas where the two debaters agree, than disagree. And our listeners can trace the convergence in their arguments. For better or worse, I get involved in the discussion a bit more than usual in this episode. As a sample of topics, we discussed miner response to the halvening, the stock-to-flow model, institutional interests in BTC, and many more.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM @blockdebate.
Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate:

Continued demand increase due to institutional, price-inelastic allocation to BTC asset class (Kyle Samani from Multicoin Capital): https://twitter.com/KyleSamani/status/1213548776700416000
Pomp (Morgan Creek) citing market run-up as evidence of halvening not priced in: https://twitter.com/APompliano/status/1229250083968946176
Kelvin Koh (Spartan Capital) citing BTC's difficulty to value as evidence against EMH https://twitter.com/SpartanBlack_1/status/1198071110798983169
Charts from Coin Metrics: https://coinmetrics.io/
Nic Carter of Castle Island Capital wrote about EMH: https://medium.com/@nic__carter/an-introduction-to-the-efficient-market-hypothesis-for-bitcoiners-ed7e90be7c0d
BTC Stock-to-flow model by PlanB: https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25
Plan B juxtaposing STF vs EMH: https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/efficient-market-hypothesis-and-bitcoin-stock-to-flow-model-db17f40e6107

Motion: DeFi is DeFicient (Udi Wertheimer vs. Haseeb Qureshi) Feb 05, 2020

Show notes

Guests:
Udi Wertheimer (@UdiWertheimer) - debating FOR the motion
Haseeb Qureshi (@Hosseeb) - debating AGAINST the motion
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion concerns DeFi, or decentralized finance. The vision of decentralized finance is financial markets such as borrowing/lending and trading without intermediaries. The hope is this will improve efficiency, transparency and cost-effectiveness. MakerDAO, Compound, Uniswap are examples of DeFi apps w/ the most traction today.
Our two guests, Udi Wertheimer and Haseeb Qureshi are active members of the crypto community, to say the least. In fact, many consider them to be OG’s in the space.
No summary does justice to the rich exchange of the debate; Nevertheless here is a teaser:
Udi sees DeFi as purporting but failing to provide true self-custody and censorship-resistance. He also sees DeFi's composability as a non-innovative feature already found in non-DeFi products. And regulations will come for DeFi if and when it gets sufficient traction.
Haseeb believes that DeFi provides much stronger form of permissionless-ness than centralized counterparts (e.g., Bitfinex), and DeFi entrepreneurs can build on top of each other's work with tools and freedom unavailable in centralized finance. He also thinks some of the DeFi systems (e.g., MakerDAO) are regulation-robust for reasons like strong team decentralization and core clientele being outside of potentially hostile jurisdictions (e.g., U.S.).
If you are interested in debating or want to nominate someone to debate, DM me at @blockdebate.
Note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate:

Binance Singapore blocking withdrawal to Wasabi wallet: https://www.coindesk.com/binance-blockade-of-wasabi-wallet-could-point-to-a-crypto-crack-up
MakerDAO: https://hackernoon.com/whats-makerdao-and-what-s-going-on-with-it-explained-with-pictures-f7ebf774e9c2
Dragonfly Capital Research: https://medium.com/dragonfly-research
Udi's Pro-Ethereum Alerts Telegram Group: https://t.me/ProEthereumAlerts

Motion: Tokenization and Smart Contracts are Useful Ideas (Emin Gün Sirer vs. Edmund Schuster) Jan 16, 2020

Show notes

Guests:
Emin Gün Sirer (@el33th4xor) - debating FOR the motion
Edmund Schuster (@Edmund_Schuster) - debating AGAINST the motion
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion concerns tokenization and smart contracts. Smart contracts' value proposition is to facilitate programmable transactions of tokens, in a manner that is decentralized, transparent, and cost-effective. A big part of the value, although not all of the value, in tokenization lies in the fact that disintermediated transactions of these tokens can take place via smart contracts.
The only way to experience is the full debate is to listen to the episode in its entirety. Nevertheless for our busy listeners, here is a teaser that reflects part of the content:
Gün argues that tokenization can put constraints on relationships to prevent errors and serve as a check on misbehavior. He cites examples that necessitate blockchain, such as the Dole company fiasco where actual number of shares outstanding exceeded the amount recorded. He agrees that tokenization on first-gen blockchain was flawed in divorcing digital assets from real world jurisdictions, but indicates that next-gen blockchain addresses this flaw by introducing a special set of nodes that hold the ledger, thereby allowing enforcement of jurisdictional legal requirements. Gün also discusses how blockchain combats rent-seeking, fosters automation and creates a trustless system unlike traditional client-server paradigms.
Edmund contends that blockchain tech cannot encapsulate all the intricate details and complexity of real world, thereby necessitating some backdoor to address edge cases. Without it, a synchronization conflict arises between the state acknowledged by law and the state of the blockchain. He also indicate that lawyers can get creative in structuring arrangements to game a smart contract, rendering it useless. He thinks the next-gen blockchain with "privileged parties" that can rectify and reverse transactions looks similar to status quo, which is a trusted party with a database.
Source of select items discussed in the debate:

Dole Foods had 12 million more shares than the company thought existed: https://www.coindesk.com/dole-stock-crisis-reigniting-push-blockchain
Ava Labs: https://www.avalabs.org/
"Cloud Crypto Land" paper by Edmund Schuster: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3476678
Tokenization of NBA player's salary: https://www.coindesk.com/nba-players-contract-tokenization-plan-can-move-forward-reports
Illinois' smart contract bill: http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/BillStatus.asp?DocNum=3575&GAID=15&DocTypeID=HB&LegId=120249&SessionID=108&GA=101
Numerai (crowd-sourced hedge fund): https://numer.ai/

Motion: Bitcoin will Attain Global Store of Value Status in 2040 (Jimmy Song vs. David Gerard) Dec 19, 2019

Show notes

Motion: Bitcoin will Attain Global Store of Value Status in 2040.
Guests:
Jimmy Song (@jimmysong) - debating FOR the motion
David Gerard (@davidgerard) - debating AGAINST the motion
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
This debate touches upon one of the most fundamental value proposition of cryptos. If any crypto can attain the status of digital gold, the coin with the longest history, highest market cap and widest recognition seems to have the best chance. And if there are serious obstacles, it’s probably important for investors, developers and operators of other alternative coins to know why.

Some of the highlights of the debate include real bitcoin usage in oppressive regimes and inflation-heavy countries; myths around mining centralization; nuances in fixing bitcoin code; whether irreversibility is a feature or bug.
Source of select items discussed in the debate:

Bitcoin ownership survey: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/largest-bitcoin-ownership-survey-reveals-6-2-of-americans-own-bitcoin-while-7-3-are-planning-to-buy-some-300928651.html
Bitcoin usage in Venezuela: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/opinion/sunday/venezuela-bitcoin-inflation-cryptocurrencies.html
Bitcoin inflation bug: https://www.coindesk.com/the-latest-bitcoin-bug-was-so-bad-developers-kept-its-full-details-a-secret

Announcing The Blockchain Debate Podcast Dec 16, 2019

Show notes

Each episode invites two industry experts to debate a blockchain related motion.
The debate winner will be determined based on changes in pre-debate and post-debate motion poll results.
For example, if according to Twitter polling, 30% agreed with motion A before the release of the debate, and 35% agree afterwards, then the "for" debater effected a net +5% conversion, and therefore won.
Episode #1 is expected to drop in a week!
Host: Richard Yan (@gentso09)

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