"only 13% of our planet's population is born into the dollar, euro, Japanese yen, British pound, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar or Swiss Franc. The other 87% are born into autocracy or considerably less trustworthy currencies. 4.3 billion people live under authoritarianism, and 1.2 billion people live under double- or triple-digit inflation." - Alex Gladstein Another brilliant piece from Alex Gladstein and Bitcoin Magazine, this one on the incredible privilege of those inside the dollar bubble, looking out and claiming Bitcoin is useless or is bad for the world. They stand like hypocrites living without any of the problems that Bitcoin is specifically designed to fix, and is fixing. Three stories of those who live and experience the real world, give us a very different view of Bitcoin, & why it is critical for all of our futures that we stand behind it and see it succeed.

Bitcoin Audible - Check Your Financial Privilege [Alex Gladstein]

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Have you heard about what's happening in Panama? Hint: It has nothing to do with canals. A new bill has been presented to legalize cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, and we are joined by two important figures in this developing story to learn everything we need to know. Gabriel Silva, a congressman in Panama standing behind this bill, and Felipe Echandi, entrepreneur, seeking to propel the Panamanian economy forward, join us for this fascinating conversation. Our two guests approach the topic with practical discernment and understanding, discussing the basics of crypto legalization in the country, the developing geopolitical factors, and why Panama is becoming an increasingly attractive place for foreign residents. Sharing unique insider insights, Silva and Echandi provide a comprehensive view on Panama's laws, rules around banks and legal tender, comparisons to Singapore, and more. Why this bill specifically? What reality could it espouse to bring positive change for Panama and its people? Catch it all in this exciting episode!

Bitcoin Magazine Podcast - Making Panama Compatible with Bitcoin with Gabriel Silva & Felipe Echandi

Many crypto industry titans - including Vitalik Buterin - believe ZK Rollups are the key to Ethereum's scalability. With DeFi exchange dYdX generating over $2 BILLION in daily volume on Starkware, a ZK Rollup solution, I'm excited to chat with Starkware founders about: Why ZK-Rollups are the future vs. other Layer 2sStarkware vs. Optimism vs. Arbitrum: who wins?Can Fast Layer 1s like Solana compete with Starkware?Host: Jason Choi @mrjasonchoi . Not financial advice. ------------ Sponsors ------------- PARASWAP is the best place to trade your tokens and get the best price in DeFi today. Get started on paraswap.io/blockcrunch SOLANA: The Solana ecosystem is growing at a rapid pace and it's a great place to build your project or get involved with the community. Go to solana.com/blockcrunch to learn more! ------------ Disclosures ------------- Disclaimer: Jason Choi is a General Partner at Spartan Capital, a subsidiary of The Spartan Group. All opinions expressed by Jason and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Spartan Group and any of its subsidiaries

Block Crunch - "This is the future of Ethereum scaling" - Starkware, Uri Kolodny & Eli Ben-Sasson, Ep 164

Show Notes: On this episode of the Unhashed Podcast, we talk Solana node troubles, Evergrande instability, Robinhood crypto withdrawals, how to pronounce Erdogan's first name, and how Ryan Selkis hates when you don't buy tickets to his events. BREAKING NEWS  Friend of the show Riccardo 'œFluffy Pony' Spagni is out of Jail!  Congrats Fuffy.  In a tweet, Fuffy says 'œI am very pleased that the U.S. court has released me. I am actively working with my attorneys on a way to return to South Africa as soon as possible so I can address this matter and get it behind me once and for all. That's what I've always wanted to do.'On September 14, Solana node operators are coordinating a 'œrestart' of the high-speed blockchain Tuesday in an attempt to bring the stuttering network back online. 'œThe validator community elected to coordinate a restart of the network' and is preparing a 'œnew release' that will right the frozen blockchain, according to an afternoon tweet from the Solana Foundation. In Solana's Discord server, developers distributed restart instructions at 3:21 p.m. Eastern time. The outage began early Tuesday after 'œresource exhaustion' on the network brought blockchain validation to an hours-long halt. On-chain activity froze across Solana's multibillion-dollar ecosystem of trading, staking and lending projects.A source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk that the outage 'œimpacts everything built on Solana, but the issue is the underlying [layer 1].'Tuesday's outage came amid booming interest in Solana, a network seeking to attract Wall Street usage whose token has been on fire since late August. Investors have flocked to Solana as a low-fee platform for decentralized finance (DeFi). The disruption was caused by bot trading of Grape Protocol's Tuesday token offering, founder Anatoly Yakovenko said on Twitter. It is the second time in two weeks that Solana's mainnet cluster experienced 'œinstability,' according to a Messari research note reviewed by CoinDesk. A flood of transactions pushed the network past its limits early Tuesday, Solana's status account tweeted shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern time. The activity triggered a forking that knocked multiple nodes offline. Engineers tried and failed to triage the problem, according to Solana. It's not unheard of for blockchain networks to experience service disruptions. Solana's mainnet is still in beta mode; it last experienced an outage in December, another source said. Last week's hiccup was also related to a resource exhaustion event. 'œIt's good for people to understand that Solana mainnet is still clearly in beta,' said a source building one of Solana's popular DeFi protocols interrupted by the outage. 'œI have faith in the Solana core contributors and validators to resolve this issue promptly.' Engineers were rushing to push a patch to Solana node runners, multiple sources told CoinDesk. Once it's ready and running across 66% of validators (a supermajority on the network) Solana is expected to come back online. Until then, the ecosystem with over $11 billion in total value locked (TVL) is in wait-and-see mode. Activity remains frozen at block #96538485. It is unclear what implications the Tuesday outage may have for Solana. One source in the developer community pointed out that some projects have time-sensitive operations, like liquidations and IDO launches. Those could become thorny the longer the network remains down. Colin put together a price quote sheet if you wanted to run a Solana node here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rc43ZdM7ocsGmxf7VgLlXubUyVlxyrj_vZpKNiHbuZU/edit?usp=sharingEvergrande is China's largest property developer and was up until recently one of the most valuable companies in the world. However, most analysts now believe Evergrande is on the verge of insolvency and won't be able to meet its mountainous debt obligations without direct government interventions within the next few weeks as it struggles to pay its 4 million subcontractors and is unable to finish properties it is holding deposits on from 1.5 million properties. The crunch occurred because of changes made by the CCP in August of 2020 to the amount of debt Chinese developers could take on. Evergrande was accepting deposits from buyers and was then leveraging that money to borrow more money to expand ops and grow. But with the new rule change, they lost access to the spigot of money. In China, real estate is almost the only asset people invest in, and sometimes it takes generations to save up enough money to make a down payment. Many Chinese people may not get their money back if they invested and put down payments on properties under development by Evergrande. What does this have to do with Bitcoin? Well, the fallout of that collapse is so large that it is affecting large swathes of investors the world over. As Evergrande's fallout affects debt markets, all other markets are affected, especially risky, speculative markets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. At least, that's the theory.Robinhood is finally testing Bitcoin and crypto withdrawals, as well as a new digital hot wallet, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The update comes after the past year of broad criticism of Robinhood for, among other things, not allowing users to control their own Bitcoin private keys. The firm repeatedly hinted at enabling such features without delivering any evidence that such products were being developed. Robinhood's new hot wallet and Bitcoin and crypto transfer feature announcement also comes after a mounting demand by customers. Bloomberg reported that evidence of such features has appeared in a beta version of the trading platform's iPhone app. Rather than providing photos or other evidence of such features, Bloomberg stated that 'œThe software includes a hidden image portraying a waitlist page' for users to sign up, and attributed the discovery of said features to software developer Steve Moser.Recep Erdogan '" the firebrand Turkish president '" has declared war on Bitcoin. In the aftermath of a sweeping ban on the use of cryptocurrencies back in April, the leader is aiming to assert financial control ahead of launching the digital Lira. While the central bank was not opposed to the utilisation of digital currency, Erdogan believes it faces conflict with cryptocurrencies. 'œWe are in a war against Bitcoin,' he said. 'œBecause we will continue on the road with our money, which is our fundamental identity in this matter.' The president commented during a national youth meeting with representatives from 81 Turkish provinces, following questions about the central bank's perceptions of cryptocurrencies. Many Turks have turned to cryptocurrency as a hedge on the volatility of the Lira in forex markets, and crypto has become a hot topic in Istanbul ahead of the proposal of new legislation aiming to regulate cryptocurrencies. Regulations will pave the way for the full implementation of the digital Lira, which Erdogan's government is aiming to launch by 2023.From ZeroHedge, 'œChina's War Against Crypto Is Officially Ramping Up (Again).  In several Chinese provinces, inspections of companies have "intensified", with an eye toward targeting illegal mining at places like colleges, research institutions and data centers, according to the report. One miner in China told Bloomberg that his operations "remain intact" because he "regularly switches to new facilities to house his equipment" which is made up of "no more than 100 machines at one location". Hebei province has asked companies for a self-compliance check to ensure they are not mining by September 30. China has said that crypto mining would 'œseriously affect economic and social development and directly threaten national security." The statement says it would "disrupt" financial order. This news follows tighter restrictions in China across the board, from ending most visa's of foreign english teachers, limiting time on tiktok to 40 minutes per day and video game playing to three hours a week among teenagers.Self proclaimed 'œTwoBit Idiot' Ryan Selkis is running for Senate. In a tweet he stated,  'œIf you're wondering when I actually decided to run for Senate, it was when these fuckers came to my event, didn't buy a ticket, and served one of the speakers a subpoena.  Enough talk. More war on our out of control regulatory state.

Unhashed Podcast - Boxer Boners and Ayahuasca

'œSandwiched between Guatemala and Honduras, El Salvador '" the smallest and most densely populated country in Central America, with an average GDP per capita of around $3,500 '" is a most unlikely ground zero for a financial revolution.' - Alex Gladstein Gladstein is back with the full story of Bitcoin and El Salvador. What it's like on the ground, the people it all started with, the responsibility we have as a community, & the history that gives much needed perspective to the actions of the political regime. You don't want to miss this one. Check out the original article and tons of other incredible work by Gladstein & others at Bitcoin Magazine: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/culture/the-polarity-of-bitcoin-in-el-salvador Endless thanks to Bitcoin Magazine and the LTB Network for the incredible content they bring to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Check out our amazing sponsors below that keep this show alive, and all the things made audible for your listening pleasure! ' Get sats back on everything with the Fold Card! Check them out at guyswann.com/fold for 20% off the Spin+ Card! ' And keep those sats SAFE with the BitBox02 hardware wallet. 5% off with discount code "GUY" at guyswann.com/bitbox

Bitcoin Audible - Read_561 - The Village and the Strongman [Alex Gladstein]

My guests are Jeff Gallas and Rootz of Fulmo, an open source company dedicated to the research and development of the Lightning Network. They are the organizers of the Lightning Hackdays and the first Lightning Conference that took place in Berlin in 2019 and are supporters of the RaspiBlitz project, a Lightning and Bitcoin full node. "If you run a Lightning node you're a part of replacing the VISA and Mastercard networks." - Rootz Topics:Development of the Lightning Network and the RaspiBlitzAdoption rate of the Lightning NetworkAccessibility improvementsHow many payments will be possible on the Lightning NetworkMost exciting Lightning projectsWhy it's important to run your own nodeRaspiBlitz integrations, LND and c-lightningResources and RaspiBlitz communitiesShownotes on the episode page

Bitcoin Audible - Check Your Financial Privilege [Alex Gladstein]

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