Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

From the mysterious creation story, to the early development among a small group of cypherpunks, to the emergence of the Silk Road, the collapse of MtGox, to the entry of a tidal wave of VC money and the Silicon Valley elite, Bitcoin’s short history has been action-packed. It’s no surprise that this could make for a riveting story and NY Times journalist Nathaniel Popper’s book ‘Digital Gold – Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money’ is precisely that. Popper joined us for a conversation about his must-read book about the remarkable story of Bitcoin. Topics covered in this episode: How Nathaniel Popper ended up writing a book about Bitcoin Why he chose ‘Digital Gold’ as a title and some of its different connotations Why he chose to focus on the people and stories of Bitcoin rather than the technology The story of the Silk Road and how it played such a critical role in the early days of Bitcoin How Xapo CEO Wences Casares came to play a crucial role in evangelizing Bitcoin among Silicon Valley’s power players The rising tension and passing of influence between the old, ideological guard and the newer Silicon Valley crew Episode links: Get 'Digital Gold' on Amazon Nathaniel Popper's website Can Bitcoin Conquer Argentina article Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/081

Since Gavin Andresen’s proposal to increase the Bitcoin block size, how Bitcoin can scale to accommodate higher transaction volumes has been heatedly debated among developers. One of the most promising long-term options to allow near infinite scalability is the Lightning Network. Joseph Poon and , the co-authors of the whitepaper, joined us for a discussion of scalability and how the lightning network could allow massive numbers of off-chain transaction in a trustless way. Topics covered in this episode: Why Bitcoin has a scalability problem How payment channels work and the architecture of the Lightning Network Why the Lightning Network would still require a block size increase How transaction fees would work in the Lightning Network How the Bitcoin blockchain would take on a court-like function to ensure honest off-chain behavior The risks and downsides to the Lightning Network Episode links: Gavin Andresen - Why Increasing the Block Size is Urgent Mike Hearn - The Capacity Cliff Mike Hearn - Crash Landing Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 1 Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 2 Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 3 Rusty Russell - Series on the Lightning Network Part 4 Lightning Network Whitepaper Lightning Network website This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/080

Started in May 2013, Coinkite has by now almost advanced to senior citizen status in the short-lived Bitcoin startup space. CEO Rodolfo Novak joined us for a discussion about what drove their initial interest in Bitcoin, why they initially focused on providing ‘bank-like’ services and how they’ve transitioned to powering the infrastructure of countless Bitcoin startups with their API. We also discussed multi-sig and the business strategy they pursued that allowed them to be profitable and not require venture funding. Topics covered in this episode: How Coinkite started Why they have come away from calling themselves a Bitcoin bank Why they have been putting so much emphasis on multi-sig How they’ve ended up building an insane amount of features The transition of their business model to providing a powerful API for startups What the Bitcoin ecosystem in Toronto is like Episode links: Coinkite Coinkite-Ledger Partnership How to use Ledger Nano with Coinkite p2sh.info This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/079

The idea of using the Bitcoin blockchain to represent and track the ownership of off-chain assets is almost as old as Bitcoin itself. One of the startups that is pursuing this vision is Berlin-based Ascribe, which allows creators to register (‘ascribe’), transfer and archive digital art. Ascribe CTO joined us for a fascinating discussion of their ambitious goals to enable a so-far elusive secondary market for digital art, help creators monetize their work and ultimately retrofit an entire ownership layer to the internet. Topics covered in this episode: Why ownership in the internet is broken How Ascribe wants to realize the vision of Project Xanadu of an internet with bi-directional links and baked-in copyrights How the SPOOL (Secure Public Online Ownership Ledger) protocol works The components of the Ascribe tech stack How Ascribe will crawl and similarity-match the entire internet to retrofit an internet of ownership Why Ascribe focuses first on the digital art market Episode links: Ascribe SPOOL Protocol Cointemporary Project Xanadu Wikipedia Rewiring the Internet for Ownership with Big Data and Blockchains Slides This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/078

Few question that educating people about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is one of the most important and challenging tasks to achieve mass adoption. And perhaps even fewer disagree that there is no one more gifted at communicating the revolutionary potential of Bitcoin than Andreas M. Antonopoulos. A technologist, entrepreneur, LTB host and author, he has been speaking, writing and educating about Bitcoin for years and become one of the most popular people in the Bitcoin space. He joined us to talk about his new book, his journey in the Bitcoin space, educating lawmakers about Bitcoin and the exciting future awaiting us. Topics covered in this episode: Why he wrote ‘Mastering Bitcoin’ and how the reception has been so far What he currently spends him time on How he introduces new people to Bitcoin What NOT to do when telling someone new about Bitcoin His experiences speaking in front of the Canadian and Australian Senate Why he believes in the community’s ability to keep evolving Bitcoin Episode links: University of Nicosia Digital Currency MOOC Canada Senate Hearing Disrupt Athens Talk Personal Website Mastering Bitcoin on github Mastering Bitcoin on Amazon This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/077

Bitcoin’s approach to solving the double spending problem is to make a collusion and attack on the network prohibitively expensive. One of the main factors that will determine Bitcoin’s chance of survival in the long-term is whether the behavior that maximizes the profits of miners contributes to or sabotages the health of the network. The game theory that determines this is complex and our understanding of it still incomplete. But research is increasing and two people who have been at the forefront of this work are , a professor in computer science at Cornell University, and Ittay Eyal, a post-doc at the same department. They joined us for a fascinating discussion of their work on ‘selfish mining’, the incetive structure that underlies Bitcoin and their recent positive conclusions from the Miner’s Dilemma. Topics covered in this episode: Emin Gün Sirer’s early interest in cryptocurrencies and work on a cryptocurrency to incentivize bittorrent users in 2004 What selfish mining is and how miners could profit from withholding blocks How an attacker would execute a selfish mining attack Why the miner’s dilemma implies that the equilibrium might be small mining pools Why the lack of security of clients and servers is holding back adoption Episode links: Selfish Mining paper (PDF) Miner's Dilemma blog post Miner's Dilemma paper (PDF) Hacking, Distributed Meni Rosenfeld's paper on mining pool reward systems (PDF) This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/076

As the cost of computing continues to plummet, the number of connected devices is increasing dramatically. In the future powerful computing capacity will be in billions of devices ranging from the lightbulb to the car door to new wearables. This new internet of things (IoT) will dramatically change our lives. Paul Brody, a Technology Strategist and the former VP of Mobile and IoT at IBM, joined us for a discussion of where the IoT is going. We discussed their white paper on why a decentralized, blockchain-based internet of things could solve the problems of the current IoT in terms of privacy, scalability, and business models. Topics covered in this episode: What the Internet of Things and its core value proposition is Why the current IoT business models are broken How a decentralized IoT infrastructure would be more secure, scalable and economically feasible What role the blockchain could play in a decentralized IoT The three components of IBM’s ADEPT proof-of-concept Episode links: IBM Democracy of Devices Whitepaper Paul Brody IFA Talk IBM Empowering the Edge Report IBM Empowering the Edge Use Cases IBM & Samsung ADEPT Demo at CES This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/075

The cryptocurrency ecosystem is increasingly divided into different camps. There are those betting and working on the eventual mainstream success of Bitcoin. And there are those who take elements of Bitcoin’s technology and repurpose them to improve existing systems. Hyperledger is one of the projects firmly in the latter camp. They are envisioning a world where innumerable interoperable ledgers are operated by different parties. Hyperledger is their tool for the creation and management of these ledgers. CEO Dan O’Prey and CTO joined us for a discussion of the project, underlying technology and their view of where the cryptocurrency ecosystem is going. Topics covered in this episode: Why Hyperledger is trying so solve a fundamentally different problem than Bitcoin How networks consisting of known parties can have massive performance and scalability advantages over anonymous networks Why Hyperledger doesn’t have or need its own currency How Hyperledger can vary the degree of decentralization and security depending on use-case Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) Episode links: Hyperledger Meher Roy’s Internet of Money Whitepaper Practical Bynzantine Fault Tolerance This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/073

When one is busy driving a technological and societal revolution forward, complying with complicated regulatory requirements is rarely a top priority. Yet, the reality is that at this stage the often ambigious and rapidly evolving regulatory landscape can have an outsized impact on the fate of cryptocurrency startups and on the adoption/integration into existing systems. Epicenter Bitcoin Regulatory Correspondent and founder of COINsult Siân Jones joined us for an update on the state of Bitcoin regulation in a variety of jurisdiction. Topics covered in this episode: The recent statement by the UK’s treasury on digital currencies How the Isle of Man keeps pioneering a cryptocurrency-friendly environment The stance of the FATF (Financial Action Task Force) towards Bitcoin The insanity of the looming BitLicense rules and difficult-to-predict consequences they may have Episode links: COINsult UK HM Treasury: Digital Currencies - Response to the Call for Information Isle of Man Introduces Regulation for Bitcoin Businesses California Bill Proposes License Requirement for Bitcoin Businesses Bitlicense Comment Period Closes This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/072

Creating a new token and selling it to fund the development of software has become a preferred way of fundraising for cryptocurrency entrepreneurs. It’s a tempting tool, allowing startups to avoid traditional investors, build a community and allow anyone anywhere to own a stake in the project. For participants, there is the promise of big financial upside and being part of novel undertakings. Lisa Cheng, whose consulting firm Vanbex has accompanied many crowdsales, joined us for a discussion of this revolutionary way to fund and monetize open source software. Topics covered in this episode: Why crowdfunding and cryptocurrency are a natural fit A brief history of crowdsales in the cryptocurrency space US securities law and the questionable legality of token sales The value of writing a solid white paper before launching a sale Elements of a successful coin launch The role of companies like Swarm and Koinify in conducting crowdsales Episode links: An Interview with Lisa Cheng Tokenizing the User Experience Token Sales and the US Securities Law David Johnston DApps Whitepaper Vanbex Group This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/071