Peter Todd, mistakenly identified as Satoshi in an HBO doc, discusses Bitcoin's technical history, mining economics, block withholding attacks, and controversial ideas like demurrage.

You're listening to Bitcoin Season 2. Subscribe to the newsletter, trusted by over 7,000 Bitcoiners: https://newsletter.blockspacemedia.com

Peter Todd joins us to talk about Bitcoin's technical evolution, discussing terminology like "blockchain" vs "timechain," and revealing flaws in Satoshi's original design. Peter dives deep into mining economics, explaining the risks of block withholding attacks, the problems with activation mechanisms for soft forks, and controversial funding models like demurrage. Despite surviving significant challenges, Bitcoin faces ongoing security concerns as block rewards diminish, requiring creative solutions to ensure mining remains economically viable long-term.

Notes:

- Block withholding attacks remain an unsolved risk

- Mining rewards currently ~0.5% tax on Bitcoin savings

- Bitcoin difficulty algorithm relies on halving events

- Miners have ~24-30% hash power can disrupt network

- Transaction fees alone insufficient for mining economics

- Demurrage could stabilize mining revenue long-term

Check out our Bitcoin scaling conference! Visit opnext.dev to learn more.

Timestamps:

00:00 Start

02:03 Timechain not a good word

04:28 White paper terminology

09:17 Difficulty

11:35 Price vs hashrate

12:53 Block withholding attack

21:08 Arch Network

21:40 Risks of a block withholding attack

26:50 Soft forks

31:01 BIP 8 & BIP 9

34:12 Signaling for soft forks

35:51 Nodes vs miners

38:04 Transaction IDs

43:22 OP_NEXT

44:14 Solving soft fork activation

48:50 Are drivechains dumb?

50:44 Miner centralization

56:54 WTF is demurrage?

1:01:18 Tail emission

1:07:04 ETH mansion

1:09:47 Ordinals

-

👉 Brought to you by Arch Network! Arch brings the speed of Solana & the best of crypto UX to Bitcoin. Tap into the rich app ecosystem on Arch & try out the testnet while you’re still early! Visit arch.network to learn more.

-

👋Bitcoin Season 2 is produced Blockspace Media, Bitcoin’s first B2B publication in Bitcoin. Follow us on Twitter and check out our newsletter for the best information in Bitcoin mining, Ordinals and tech!

Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here.

Questions or want to sponsor? [email protected]

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.