Bitcoin In Asia - Bitcoin Magazine

Our guest this week is Ahyke Otutubuike, a technical writer and Bitcoin user based in Nigeria. Nigeria has been in the news this month as its central bank issued a directive, prohibiting regulated financial institutions from dealing with cryptocurrency exchanges and companies that touch crypto, essentially unbanking them. Ahyke had a piece in Bitcoin Magazine this past week explaining the situation and adding context for the Bitcoin’s place in Nigeria’s economy overall, and we get additional analysis from him here. We discuss the momentum for Bitcoin in Nigeria and its main use cases, national economic factors behind the central bank’s move and what he sees as the main driver of the move, and what comes next.

Ahyke’s Bitcoin Magazine article

Follow Ahyke on Twitter @AhykeCop

Our guest this week is Alejandro De La Torre, Vice President at Poolin. Alejandro and Poolin are managing taprootactivation.com to improve on the communication and transparency of the Taproot activation process specifically. Poolin has also recently launched hashrate backed token, one that represents 1 Th of hashrate in their own mining operation and is already trading.

Alejandro has been in Bitcoin data and mining space since 2014 when he founded SendChat, later acquired by wallet and data service Blocktrail, where Alejandro led BD until it was acquired by Bitmain. Inside of Bitmain, Alejandro cofounded BTC.com, and led their European office during the Segwit upgrade process. Now back with former BTC.com colleagues at Poolin, Alejandro leads their global BD. We discuss Poolin’s hashrate backed token and why it is gaiing traction as a novel market entrant and the progress of taprootaxtivation.com and what comes next in the activation process. Alejandro also shares his thoughts on recent news in North America around DCG’s Foundry and Blockstream as well as Bitmain’s split and how he sees the prospects for each separate entity.

After a little holiday break we are kicking off 2021 with a quick hitting episode. Our guest is Molly, head of marketing at HashKey Hub. Molly was Bitcoin Magazine’s first employee in Asia and combines that early Bitcoin experience with a lot of success rolling out Bitcoin products in Asia with Hashkey. This is more of a rapid fire episode with Molly’s perspective on mainstream media coverage of Bitcoin in China, the growth of Bitcoin interest products, the Asian view of GBTC and more.

Our guest this week is Niall Ferguson. Niall is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, and a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He is the author of 15 books, including The Ascent of Money and has at least two in the works in the upcoming Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe as well as part two of his excellent Henry Kissinger biography. 

Niall also writes a regular column for Bloomberg Opinion. In this episode we dig into Niall’s recent Bloomberg piece “Bitcoin Is Winning the Covid-19 Monetary Revolution” and discuss the history of financial evolution, including how the current iteration of that evolution is playing out between China and the US and how he views Bitcoin in that context. We also discuss the qualities that make Bitcoin a significant advance and the broader importance of decentralization and sovereignty.

Find Niall online at niallferguson.com and on Twitter @nfergus

Our guest this week is Lixin Liu head of hardware at Cobo and creator of Cobo Vault out of Shanghai. Lixin’s background in hardware and international product development made him Discus Fish’s choice when F2 Pool decided to get into the hardware and security game. We talk about building out Bitcoin hardware from the ground up, why it is valuable to the Bitcoin network to have increasing competition in the hardware product space, the difference between what Chinese miners and western retail users want in hardware products, trends he is seeing in institutional custody interest in Asia and more.

Our guest this week is Alejandro De Le Torre, Vice President at Poolin. Alejandro and Poolin have launched taprootactivation.com to improve on the communication and transparency of the Taproot activation process. Alejandro has been in Bitcoin since 2014 when he founded SendChat, later acquired by wallet and data service Blocktrail, where Alejandro led BD until it was acquired by Bitmain. Inside of Bitmain, Alejandro cofounded BTC.com, and led their European office during the Segwit upgrade process. Now back with former BTC.com colleagues at Poolin, Alejandro leads their global Business Development. We talk about lessons learned in the Segwit and blocksize debates, bitcoin upgrade activations and taprootaxtivation.com specifically, operating in the mining pool space and more.

We have very special episode this week featuring some of the godfathers of Bitcoin: Nick Szabo, Adam Back and David Chaum. This was recorded as a live panel from Seoul at Korea Blockchain Week and is laid out as a history of the ideas and events that led to Bitcoin from their first person accounts, plus their current thoughts on the experiment and what excites them about the future. From the cryptography and cypherpunk movements to David’s DigiCash, Adam’s Hashcash proof-of-work, Nick’s Bit Gold, and more. Their own contributions were foundational to the development of Bitcoin, and it was fascinating to have them together and playing off of each other in a discussion of that history. A special thanks for fact block for organizing.

Our guest this week is Sathvik Vishwanath, CEO of India based Bitcoin exchange Unocoin. A tech entrepreneur who got into Bitcoin in 2013, starting a Bitcoin meetup group in Bangalore out of which came the founding team of Unocoin, Sathvik as CEO is now leading the company through a new Series A funding round led by Draper Associates. We discus how Unocoin became the market leader in India initially, what the exchange ecosystem in India looks like now, why it is a market playing catchup, and why he is bullish on what is next. There aren’t many people who have been operating Bitcoin businesses in India since 2013, and I enjoyed Sathvik’s insights.

Our guest this week is Nishant Sharma, a long time bitcoin mining industry insider in China who is now a founder and partner of BlocksBridge Consulting, a communications strategy and advisory firm focused on the Bitcoin mining sector and serving some of its largest companies. Nishant has been in the mining space since 2014, including 4 years at Bitmain in Beijing. We discuss his time at Bitmain, seeing it grow from a two digit employee company to a dominant player in the industry, trends in the mining space outside of China, state of mainstream and industry media coverage and more.

Our guest this week is Ciara Sun, Head of Global Business and Markets at Huobi Group. Ciara joined Huobi in 2019 first focusing on growth of its institutional business and in her role now now overseeing its growth and product strategy around the world, she gives a great look into what goes into running and growing a global bitcoin company with a diverse range of products. And one that is continuously rolling out new products in very cutthroat markets, including rollouts this year in the futures space, mining pool space, and more. It was interesting to get a look under the hood at how huobi operates, how they plan expansion and navigate regulation around the world and how Ciara is thinking about current trends and the future.