Vinny Lingham is a Bitcoin OG who pioneered gift card payments in 2012 with Gyft, served on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, spearheaded blockchain identity verification with CIvic, and in more recent years moved on to managing risk with Praxos Capital. Thanks to some of his accurate price predictions, Vinny has also received the nickname "The Oracle".

In this episode, we talk about his Bitcoin journey and how his views have evolved over the last 14 years.

Time stamps:

00:01:06 Intro & sponsors: Vinny Lingham, 15 years in Bitcoin

00:02:04 Gyft: a dozen companies and one gift card problem

00:02:26 Chargebacks, stolen cards & getting attacked by scammers

00:04:13 Why Bitcoin looked like the perfect payment rail

00:04:51 Zero-conf payments and the first-seen rule

00:05:48 The Starbucks and McDonald's signature math

00:06:51 100,000 Bitcoin payments, zero double spends

00:07:13 Civic's Bitcoin patents & the 2017 fee explosion

00:07:37 Blockstream, Adam Back, MIT and the Epstein files

00:08:10 Core keeps pruning dissenting voices

00:08:55 Why Bitcoin still can't be the whitepaper's payment system

00:09:08 Counterparty, Mastercoin & the birth of Ethereum

00:09:34 "Nothing has happened in Bitcoin in five years"

00:10:16 Why he went and backed Solana instead

00:10:23 Sympathy for BIP 110 over Core

00:11:08 Inscriptions can be done many ways

00:12:27 "Lightning will be ready in 18 months" forever

00:13:26 Drivechains, BIP 300 & the Ecash fork paying miners

00:14:44 UX, mainstream users and idiot-proof money

00:15:17 People who don't know you can hold BTC outside an ETF

00:15:27 Is the ETF the real scaling layer?

00:15:37 What Vinny signed up for when he read the whitepaper

00:16:30 Wayne Vaughn in the chat

00:16:48 Saylor's Bitcoin Security Consortium and the $15M

00:17:24 Saylor argues against bigger blocks and covenants

00:17:49 How is this different from the Bitcoin Foundation?

00:18:36 Saylor as systemic risk: crashing the minority fork

00:19:43 Losing SPV and the simplicity of early Bitcoin

00:20:48 When did you last actually use Bitcoin?

00:21:22 Six confirmations vs Apple Pay

00:21:41 Gyft's customers who had no credit cards

00:22:07 Not a store of value: a store of liquidity

00:23:24 So what is a store of value, exactly?

00:26:00 The 100 year test: one ounce of gold buys one suit

00:27:09 Does the whitepaper ever say "digital gold"?

00:27:53 Saylor's redefinition: expensive to move, held by institutions

00:28:08 Privacy, tiny payments and why volume creates stability

00:28:42 Exchanges are layer two, Lightning is layer three

00:29:06 Solana at the World Series of Poker

00:30:07 BSV, Teranode, BCH and who actually handles volume

00:30:58 Does everyone really need to run a node?

00:31:30 Luke Dashjr, 16MB blocks and 50 billion Catholics

00:33:34 Arguing with someone who redefines words

00:34:33 How did Blockstream become so politically powerful?

00:35:40 Reid Hoffman's $20 million

00:36:26 Reading the Epstein files with Bitcoin eyes

00:36:45 Tether won the global south instead

00:37:42 "The community is people who never built anything"

00:38:00 Why Elon Musk walked away from Bitcoin

00:39:07 The ESG excuse & the Bitcoin Mining Council

00:40:05 Elon on bandwidth, latency and second layers

00:41:03 Why Civic started on Bitcoin and left

00:42:05 Multicoin, the Solana seed round & founding Praxos

00:42:29 Why "Civic" and not "Supra"

00:42:46 Nobody wants identity: crypto's actual number one use case

00:44:03 Zcash's comeback, Ironwood & the auditable supply

00:45:34 Delistings and the headwinds facing privacy coins

00:46:06 Why Zcash chose DeFi rails over merchant adoption

00:47:07 How to know you're in a bear market

00:47:25 Elgamarov & how small this world really is

00:48:10 What does Vinny actually hold today?

00:49:27 Praxos: delta neutral, funding rates and volatility

00:51:44 Sponsors: Braiins, Cake Wallet, SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Orange Rock

00:54:40 Wayne Vaughn's question: will the CLARITY Act pass?

00:56:47 Michael Saylor and the Strategy problem

00:57:14 The GBTC discount scenario

00:58:16 Why August could be a bloodbath

01:01:56 Node counts, sybil attacks and hash rate

01:03:16 The rewritten history of SegWit and SegWit2x

01:04:19 How Bitcoin Cash became the fallback plan

01:04:59 Gavin Andresen and the word "bamboozled"

01:06:00 Was Craig Wright involved at all?

01:08:04 Hal Finney's logs and the Van Nuy, California IP address

01:08:55 GMX, German privacy law and the missing paper trail

01:11:17 Roger Ver, the checksum test and Craig

01:13:00 Asking Claude who Satoshi is

01:14:17 The case for Nick Szabo and the trusted third parties

01:15:31 The counterfactual: what if Bitcoin had scaled?

01:19:35 Tron, USDT and five years of outperforming BTC

01:20:09 Bitcoiners understand supply, not demand

01:20:36 What happens when the block rewards run out

01:21:15 Rentable SHA256 and the state actor attack scenario

01:22:54 Will Vinny claim the August fork airdrops?

Cory Klippsten is the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, the promoter and former adviser of the Sequans BTC treasury, and also a big advocate for bitcoin-only maximalism. In this episode, we catch up on what's been going on over the last year in Bitcoin.

Time stamps:

00:01:59 – The challenges and failures of leveraged Bitcoin equity strategies in the U.S., referencing companies like Sequans, Strike, and Strategy.

00:04:48 – Swan and the relaunch of "Bitcoin Cafe," a daily show that started on Clubhouse and later moved to Twitter.

00:05:48 – Cory introduces his new framework for understanding Bitcoin adoption, inspired by recent government actions, and frames it as a generational fight for monetary independence and freedom.

00:10:41 – Cory outlines Swan’s mission to promote Bitcoin adoption and self-custody, highlighting their "50 Days for Freedom" campaign with reduced fees to encourage participation.

00:14:39 – Cory shares stories from his grandfather’s WWII journal, drawing parallels between maintaining calm and responsibility during wartime and navigating challenging times in Bitcoin.

00:18:56 – Cory responds to a viewer’s question about his compensation for advising Sequans, disclosing that he received stock options and a small cash retainer.

00:22:09 – August 2026 Bitcoin hard forks & their economic impact.

00:29:25 – Cory explains his perspective on Bitcoin’s adoption, describing it as progressing through three sequential S-curves: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account.

00:30:33 – Cory voices skepticism about the new Bitcoin Development Consortium, particularly regarding the proposal to freeze Satoshi’s coins as part of their funding approach.

00:35:51 – The conversation addresses the increasing corporate and crypto-focused sponsorship of Bitcoin conferences, using the Las Vegas event as an example of this shift.

00:43:21 – Cory reflects on the evolution of Bitcoin content creation, contrasting the high-signal era of 2018 with today’s prevalence of AI-generated, lower-quality material.

01:02:51 – Cory explains Swan’s business model, emphasizing the separation of brokerage and custody to promote self-custody and ensure alignment with user interests.

01:09:26 – Cory discusses Swan’s ongoing educational initiatives, including the Swan Canon learning modules and the release of the "Bitcoin Season" documentary.

Ever since he first received his first bitcoin in 2013, Joël Valenzuela has been on a quest to use free market electronic cash to pay for everything. Today, he is still unbanked and looking for ways to make instant payments without a bank account. He is best known for working for the DASH cryptocurrency project. But over the years, he's collaborated with plenty of other projects (mostly those related with private payments) and he possesses a wealth of knowledge in terms of adoption, everyday use as money, and user experience.

Since Joël practices what he preaches and lives without fiat or banks, he is a bona fide advocate of inconvenience: using ATMs, purchasing gift cards, and trying every workaround that helps him accomplish the mission of never using fiat currencies.

00:00:00 Intro & sponsors: living without banks with Joël Valenzuela

00:02:18 The Vlad Costea handle saga & paying X to keep your name

00:04:20 Where the "Desert Lynx" name actually comes from

00:09:04 Joël's origin story: how Peter Schiff led him to Bitcoin

00:10:16 Growing up on the border & the Mexican peso crisis

00:12:16 First Bitcoin: the Chicago pizza payback of 2013

00:14:27 Silk Road's shutdown & the chaos of the Mt. Gox era

00:18:11 Digital cash vs. hoarding: the sound money mindset

00:20:54 Earning only Bitcoin: barn work, airport rides & Porkfest

00:22:47 Declining a dream political job to go all-in on crypto

00:24:39 The bank drain that made him unbanked for good

00:26:45 Centralization risk & the tyranny of the algorithm

00:31:38 TikTok's eerily accurate (and creepy) surveillance

00:33:32 Sponsor reads & the Cake Wallet Zcash giveaway

00:37:10 Bitcoin to Dash: exploring the whole crypto space

00:41:12 Mike Hearn's "Bitcoin is a failed project" rage quit

00:42:19 Bitcoin's usability failures: the pants & coffee stories

00:46:48 Picking Dash off CoinMarketCap as usable money

00:50:44 Dash founders: Evan Duffield & Amanda B. Johnson

00:55:20 Fluffy Pony, "Dash is trash" & the Miami strip-club drama

00:59:54 Reading the hate comments: the "premine cabal"

01:01:11 Litecoin's alleged inflation bug & Charlie Lee

01:04:07 Did Dash have a premine? The actual definition

01:13:09 Xcoin to Darkcoin to Dash: the name evolution

01:15:32 Master nodes, InstantSend & deterministic finality

01:18:18 The self-funding DAO treasury explained

01:22:01 Max Kaiser, John McAfee & the paid-shill era

01:29:43 What made Satoshi different & the genesis block message

01:33:57 Roger Ver, linear thinking & money as a tool

01:37:39 The 6.15 BTC "generational wealth" meme

01:41:47 BCH Bliss & why small conferences beat the corporate ones

01:46:00 Bitcoin forks: are all these coins really "bitcoins"?

01:50:54 Dash tech history: proof of service & chain locks

01:53:22 Evolution: the enshrined sidechain & DAPI

02:00:24 Adding Zcash-level privacy: the Orchard shielded pool

02:05:17 Orchard vs. Ironwood & the inflation-bug question

02:09:50 Turnstiles: why an inflation bug can't kill Dash

02:11:50 Monero's FCMP++ & why its privacy is "perishable"

02:16:56 Privacy UX, MiCA rules & unshielding to exchanges

02:23:22 Which wallets will support shielded Dash

02:27:34 Umbrel, Lightning & the pain of self-hosting

02:28:44 The for-profit ecosystem & the $15M dev "consortium"

02:34:53 Zcash's comeback: from industry joke to spotlight

02:37:23 Routing around fiat: Thorchain, Maya & DEXes

02:46:59 The number reveal & socializing the giveaway

02:50:02 Privacy as consent, not secrecy

02:51:49 The real challenges of living unbanked

02:58:35 Local AI models & maxing out privacy you don't need

03:04:31 Getting cancelled & how Zooko unblocked Vlad

03:13:03 Demaximizing & the toxic privacy-coin wars

03:21:35 When Zcash nearly built on Monero

03:25:45 Quai Network & transparent "cash-like" privacy

03:32:38 Why Dash focused on payments, not smart contracts

03:36:31 Crypto's consolidation: projects quietly going to zero

03:42:12 XEC, Amaury & bootstrapping off a fork

03:57:47 Monero vs. Zcash: marketing, memes & narratives

04:02:46 Why Joel really lives on crypto: getting real data

04:04:58 "Use it or die": the end of the narrative cycle

04:06:41 The private-equity playbook for buying dying coins

04:11:27 Why Dash is too decentralized to acquire

04:15:49 Which chains get acquired and shut down next

04:24:01 Neptune Cash, Neptune Dash & the first-ever DAT

04:36:57 The Charlie Shrem Dash debit card saga

04:38:46 Tone Vays & other Bitcoiners who dabbled in Dash

04:43:15 Cypherpunk Week Amsterdam & DashCon

04:50:56 Secret Word

S17 E32: Perry E. Metzger on Bitcoin in 2008, Cypherpunk Culture & AI Optimism

Time stamps:

00:00:50 - Introducing Perry E. Metzger

00:03:06 - Perry Metzger's Background

00:06:04 - The Cryptography Mailing List's Origins

00:07:36 - "The Code Breakers" & Early Influences in Cryptography

00:11:19 - The Cypherpunks Era and PGP

00:22:08 - The State of Cryptography in 2008

00:24:20 - Satoshi's Bitcoin Announcement on Metzdowd

00:28:52 - Bitcoin's Key Innovations

00:32:39 - Critique of Proof of Work

00:36:21 - Sponsors

00:40:10 - Scalability and Future Challenges

00:48:41 - Initial Reactions to Bitcoin

00:51:21 - Early Criticisms of Bitcoin from James A. Donald & Ray Dillinger

01:05:16 - Perry's Moderation of the Bitcoin Discussion

01:08:16 - Satoshi's Anonymity and Mailing List Logs

01:11:19 - Perry's Comic Book on Computer Science

01:16:13 - The Metzger Dowdeswell Mailing List Today

01:23:04 - Perry's Interest in AI

01:47:03 - AI Advocacy and Combating "Doomers"

01:49:19 - The Extropy Mailing List

01:51:01 - Conclusion and How to Follow Perry Metzger

Alex Waltz is a prominent Bitcoin historian and film maker, who specializes in digging up information from the first months of Bitcoin's existence. Recently, he launched the ”First Bitcoin Miner” project in order to question whether or not Hal Finney truly was the second mining node on the Bitcoin network.

In this episode, we talk about his work and some geeky facts about Bitcoin's history.

Read Bitcoin: Year One (free download): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Bitcoin-Year-One-Vlad-Costea-Ani-Comic-Book-Demo.pdf

Read Alex's research: https://1stbitcoinminer.com

Sponsors:

Proudly sponsored by Orangerock.com: Trade Without Limits

Orangerock is the pro trading terminal that fits in your pocket. Perps and spot, instant cross-chain swaps, and a self-custodial wallet. Trade crypto, stocks, and commodities with up to 40x leverage. Your keys, no surveillance.

Get app: https://go.orangerock.com/bitcoin-takeover

Sideshift, the place where you can exchange your stablecoins for unconfiscatable, free market money: https://sideshift.ai

LayerTwo Labs, creators of BIP300 and builders of the Drivechain. Now they're hard forking Bitcoin to create Ecash too: https://ecash.com

Cake Wallet, your privacy-friendly self-custody companion. Enables silent payments, PayJoins & Lightning for Bitcoin. Also supports Monero, Zcash, Zano & more. Available on desktop & mobile: https://cakewallet.com

Time stamps:

00:00:41 Introducing Alex Waltz & His Projects

00:03:34 The Philosophy of Art and Filmmaking

00:05:18 Alex's Research for "First Bitcoin Miner"

00:09:28 The First Bitcoin Miners: Hal Finney vs. Dustin Trammell

00:14:37 Early Bitcoin History and Cypherpunk Involvement

00:21:28 Debating Sergio Lerner's "Patoshi" Research

00:25:39 The Technicals of the Patoshi Pattern

00:37:30 Zcash Giveaway Announcement

00:40:10 The Research Process and Dedication

00:43:11 Analyzing Early Bitcoin Block Times

00:50:35 Explaining the Extra Nonce and Network Halts

01:10:18 Satoshi Was in California?

01:25:49 Why This Research Matters

01:36:18 Feedback and Cinematography

01:49:25 The "Satoshi's Don't Exist" Movie Saga

02:00:41 The Bitcoin Community: Then and Now

02:18:43 The "Knots" Fork Controversy & Moral Panic

02:30:39 The Future of Bitcoin Development

02:34:38 Bitcoin's Use Case: Payments vs. Store of Value

02:46:33 What Is The Point of Bitcoin?

02:56:38 Alex's First Bitcoin Purchase

03:00:38 Early Bitcoin Wallets

03:16:20 Mircea Popescu: A Bitcoin Legend

03:48:07 Growing Up in 90s Romania

04:00:48 Final Message: Take Risks and Build

Martin Matejka is the CEO of Firefish, a company which offers a platform where BTC holders can connect with fiat borrowers in order to achieve the ”never sell your bitcoin” status.

In this episode, we talk about how these BTC-backed loans work, and also pursue a more philosophical conversation about the purpose of Bitcoin and whether or not it's currently achieving it.

Sponsors:

Proudly sponsored by Orangerock.com: Trade Without Limits

Orangerock is the pro trading terminal that fits in your pocket. Perps and spot, instant cross-chain swaps, and a self-custodial wallet. Trade crypto, stocks, and commodities with up to 40x leverage. Your keys, no surveillance.

Get app: https://go.orangerock.com/bitcoin-takeover

Sideshift, the place where you can exchange your stablecoins for unconfiscatable, free market money: https://sideshift.ai

LayerTwo Labs, creators of BIP300 and builders of the Drivechain. Now they're hard forking Bitcoin to create Ecash too: https://ecash.com

Cake Wallet, your privacy-friendly self-custody companion. Enables silent payments, PayJoins & Lightning for Bitcoin. Also supports Monero, Zcash, Zano & more. Available on desktop & mobile: https://cakewallet.com

Time stamps:

00:01:14 Intro & sponsors: meet Martin Matejka of Firefish

00:02:11 "Making Bitcoin lending right this time": BlockFi & Celsius PTSD

00:02:53 How the loan marketplace works in a nutshell

00:03:36 The book: "Bitcoin, the Ultimate Collateral"

00:04:31 Why Bitcoin as collateral vs. digital cash

00:05:17 The Elon Musk playbook: borrow, don't sell

00:06:55 "Once I stopped seeing Bitcoin as an investment, life got better"

00:07:24 Being short fiat: the mortgage mindset

00:08:24 Vlad's pushback: spending fuels the system & miner fees

00:09:35 Liquidation risk & timing loans to the market cycle

00:12:14 Staying safe: 50% LTV and "a machine gun in your hands"

00:13:35 Coming soon: loans with no liquidation mechanism

00:15:17 Why Bitcoin-backed loans are still too expensive

00:16:00 Scaling up: 27,000 users, $160M loans, 4,500 BTC

00:17:05 "Almost as much Bitcoin as the Lightning Network"

00:20:22 Why he founded Firefish: a finance guy's contribution

00:21:38 Firefish explained simply: the marketplace model

00:23:12 The tech: escrow, presigned transactions & DLC-like logic

00:24:41 The "zombie apocalypse" recovery transaction

00:26:06 What's the catch? Avoiding the "trust me bro" mandate

00:28:11 Preventing rehypothecation via Bitcoin itself

00:28:45 How Firefish makes money: the origination fee

00:29:33 Promo code BTCTKVR for 30% lower fees on Firefish

00:30:50 Bitcoin-native DeFi vs. bridging & wrapping

00:32:07 Stablecoins, currencies & US availability

00:34:09 Cypherpunk loan settlement & the dispute mechanism

00:37:37 Why 3-of-3 multisig instead of 2-of-3

00:38:31 Oracles, ephemeral borrower keys & how signing works

00:40:01 Lenders need no keys: "my parents can fund loans"

00:40:32 Beating bonds: outperforming bank deposits & tax-free loans

00:42:37 Zcash giveaway & a seed-phrase security lesson

00:45:30 Sponsors: Bitcoin.com News & Layer 2 Labs drivechains

00:48:01 Debate: is Bitcoin just software that should improve?

00:50:58 Austrian economics & "crashing the central banks"

00:51:32 The paper Bitcoin debate: gold's financialization

00:53:29 Trust minimization, Nick Szabo & God protocols

00:55:10 Covenants & understanding both sides of Bitcoin's civil war

01:00:42 The spam/filtering debate & permissionless transactions

01:02:33 Satoshi's Genesis block message & arbitrary data history

01:06:09 "We're stuck debating spam" — limited supply as core value

01:08:15 The underrated educational value of Bitcoin

01:09:21 Where did the newcomers go? ETFs vs. real adoption

01:10:12 How to make Bitcoin cool again & the FTX taint

01:11:46 Eulogy for Paralelni Polis / Institute of Cryptoanarchy

01:15:44 Grandma's savings destroyed by inflation

01:17:05 The wedding money & the car that never came

01:18:03 Inflation is a much deeper problem than the CPI

01:20:24 The worst thing for Bitcoin: losing its identity

01:21:42 "Do you know what Zcash is?" Privacy vs. fixed supply

01:22:42 Competition & shitcoins: the jealousy analogy

01:23:28 Losing dominance & the Bitcoin Cash profitability metric

01:25:11 Sponsor: SideShift.ai for stablecoin swaps

01:26:11 Why try Firefish today? Rates as low as 5%

01:28:38 Closing thoughts & farewell

Grafton Clark is best known in the Bitcoin space for his work at SatoshiLabs and Vexl. But more recently, he discovered vibe coding and completely fell in love with it. In this episode, we talk about all the cool stuff you can just build with help from AI... and where Bitcoin fits into this equation.

Hopefully, this dialogue will inspire you to create something cool, that reignites your love for computers.

Time stamps:

00:00:36 Intro: Grafton on freedom of transactions & cash

00:01:45 Breaking FUD: onboarding a friend through gaming

00:03:13 Writing for humans or for AI to summarize?

00:05:40 The internet's resurgence & discovering Nostr

00:07:42 Digital ID & age verification fears

00:08:03 Gem: the "Cool For Free" iPod scheme story

00:09:30 Cake Wallet Zcash giveaway setup

00:10:14 "I don't want hardware anymore" — build your own tools

00:12:04 Building an Apple Watch live-music app in 3 days

00:13:28 Roadstr, mesh networks & freedom tech

00:16:27 The vibe coding debate

00:20:18 Grafton's setup: Mac Mini, OpenClaw & self-hosting

00:23:25 Taming a giant live-music library with AI

00:25:35 Learning vs regurgitating: AI and education

00:26:38 Two sides of everything: Bitcoiners love to argue

00:28:28 Why a Zcash giveaway? Zerocash history explained

00:30:03 "That was the whole idea of maximalism"

00:30:48 The Monero address troll

00:32:20 Sending Zcash via Cake Wallet

00:33:22 No CEO, no HR: why Satoshi disappearing matters

00:35:08 Zcash vs Monero: comparing the privacy tech

00:36:46 The culture problem: HODLing vs spending

00:40:03 Hot take: "If you don't use Bitcoin as money, it's a Ponzi"

00:40:47 Michael Saylor, pizza day & the Manhattan quote

00:41:57 Pokemon cards & what makes a "real" Bitcoiner

00:43:21 Buying a Nintendo Switch with Bitcoin

00:44:35 Find "digital gold" in the white paper

00:46:36 Satoshi never envisioned KYC

00:48:14 Gem: privacy means "dance like no one's watching"

00:51:08 The Hawk Tuah girl & normalizing overexposure

00:54:25 Brands as verbs & Gen Z's "ask chat"

00:57:05 Millennials, analog cravings & LLM imperfections

00:59:01 Futurama, AI dependence & moving to a farm

01:01:09 Impostor syndrome & the meaning of work

01:02:46 UBI, Idiocracy & doomscrolling

01:04:31 Gem: the Super Bowl's most powerful ad

01:06:35 Is today's propaganda any different?

01:07:44 AI voice-cloning scams & protecting your parents

01:10:24 Data leaks, KYC & living life in public

01:12:08 Building forts, kids' dreams & role models today

01:17:26 Building an empire from the bedroom: EA & N64

01:18:47 Grafton's mom, the video game champion

01:21:18 Community, church & Hurricane Katrina

01:24:58 Work from home vs real socialization

01:26:46 "Is this still a Bitcoin podcast?" Does Bitcoin fix it?

01:30:01 Spend it, earn it: value for value & Juraj Bednar

01:33:31 Why onboarding friends so often fails (& Dentacoin)

01:37:08 Bitcoin is the revenge of the nerds

01:39:16 Mississippi roots & cowboy boots in Europe

01:45:04 Bitcoin.com news

01:46:26 Layer Two Labs & drivechains

01:47:17 SideShift.ai for stablecoin payments

01:48:33 Vexl: peer-to-peer, face-to-face Bitcoin trading

01:50:37 KYC kills: kidnappings & "kill your customer"

01:53:35 Coinbase & Binance KYC leaks

01:54:19 Why Saylor doesn't represent every Bitcoiner

01:56:02 Why base-layer privacy ends the Knots debate

01:57:05 AI eating Bitcoin mining & US hash rate

02:01:27 MiCA is killing European Bitcoin adoption

02:05:33 Gem: grandpa's secret $20 & why cash matters

02:07:07 Switzerland, Alexis Roussel & the right to a human

02:10:05 Privacy as the major concern with AI

02:11:18 Where to find Grafton's open source projects

Josh Swihart is the founder of ZODL: the Zcash Open Development Lab. Basically a for profit reincarnation of the old Electric Coin Company, which inherited the dev teams and projects.

During his previous Bitcoin Takeover podcast appearance in November 2024 (S15 E62), Zcash was a struggling privacy project with very little support and a rather disappointing price action. In June 2026, Zcash is the rising star of the cryptocurrency market, with plans to scale to billions of users and ever-improving shielding technology.

In this episode, we talk about the good, the bad, and the controversial moments in the recent history of Zcash... and why Bitcoin didn't activate Zerocash yet.

Time stamps:

00:01:14 Intro: Josh Swihart returns after 20 months

00:02:07 Why Zcash is "in a class of its own" (and self-defeating)

00:03:28 Shielded note Q: the run on the Orchard pool before Iron Wood

00:05:22 What are shielded pools? Sprout, Sapling, Orchard explained

00:06:26 The Orchard vulnerability found by Taylor Hornby

00:06:48 Why Zcash matters to Bitcoin: Zerocoin, Zerocash, Halo 2

00:09:06 The secret: from near-delisting at $30 to near top 10

00:11:03 Governance battles, killing the dev fund, refocusing ECC

00:13:03 Peacemonger research and focusing on the first 100 users

00:14:09 Keystone, NEAR intents swaps, and shielded pool growth

00:15:23 Reflexivity and the macro case (Canadian truckers, seizures)

00:16:32 Cake Wallet, Vic Sharma, and the ZEC integration recognition problem

00:17:57 The Monero rivalry and the privacy renaissance

00:19:35 "Cypherpunk does not mean criminal": Samourai vs Wasabi

00:23:04 Railgun comparison and why fungibility matters

00:25:02 Zmap, Flexa, and spending shielded ZEC in stores

00:26:21 Buying lunch at Chipotle and a Ford F150 truck with Zcash

00:27:33 Giveaway setup + sponsors

00:30:32 Why is Zcash "lied about a ton"?

00:34:03 Debunking the low anonymity-set myth and DeFi integrations

00:35:48 "Main character syndrome," paid FUD, and the influencer claim

00:38:50 Uncorrelated price + maximalist FUD around the Orchard bug

00:40:40 The ethics of disclosure and Taylor Hornby's character

00:45:03 The security budget problem and Network Sustainability Module

00:46:56 Scaling Zcash: Tachyon, recursion, and off-chain services

00:49:35 Do shielded memos bloat the chain?

00:51:32 The shielded stablecoins / shielded assets debate

00:58:31 Last giveaway call + ZODL phone overheating

00:59:12 New user Q: where's the privacy when you spend?

01:01:02 Shielded vs transparent transactions explained

01:03:22 Number reveal and winners

01:06:39 Crypto Visa/Mastercard debit cards: winning or losing?

01:09:56 Has Bitcoin been co-opted? Adam Back and incentives

01:15:20 What stops Zcash from being co-opted like Bitcoin?

01:19:52 Decentralization and killing the trademark agreement

01:21:31 Many orgs now: Foundation, Shielded Labs, Tachyon, Valor

01:23:21 No funding from exchanges or mining pools

01:26:04 ZODL origin: Balaji, fundraising, and the ECC split

01:29:17 ZODL's business model: 50 bps on swaps

01:30:01 Hardware wallets: Keystone, Passport, Trezor Safe 7

01:34:07 How Slush discovered Bitcoin through Zooko

01:35:37 Zcash ASIC demand and decentralizing mining

01:38:51 ECC wind-down, the Bootstrap settlement, and dev funds

01:42:38 Thoughts on ZNS (Zcash Naming Service)

01:44:47 Living with the FUD and "Zionist coin" conspiracies

01:46:31 Why disclose the bug publicly? Transparency vs trust

01:48:18 Inside the emergency coordination with pools and exchanges

01:49:52 Echoes of Bitcoin's 2013 hard fork

01:51:49 Iron Wood and Tachyon upgrade timelines

01:53:31 Closing: the Zcash dance and where to follow Josh

Kieran Mesquka is a contributor to privacy projects, best known for his work on Railgun for Ethereum. He is also an advocate for freedom-maximizing technologies and a connoisseur of Zero Knowledge privacy.

In this episode, we talk about what it's like to build shielded pools and anonymization tools in a political landscape that actively fights against it.

Time stamps:

00:01:10 - Introducing Kieran Mesquka

00:02:21 - Kieran's Early Crypto Involvement, GPU Mining

00:03:54 - Discovering Bitcoin

00:06:31 - Transition to Ethereum Smart Contracts

00:10:24 - Motivation for Working on Privacy

00:20:33 - Comparing Tornado Cash and Railgun

00:26:30 - Why Tornado Cash Developers Got in Trouble

00:29:10 - The "Kieran is Satoshi" Joke

00:31:07 - General Online Privacy and Naomi Brockwell

00:33:25 - The Surveillance of Smart Devices

00:43:43 - The Problem with Subscriptions for Hardware

00:46:35 - Building Privacy for Mainstream Adoption

00:51:04 - Podcast Sponsors: Orange Rock, Cake Wallet, SideShift.AI, Layer Two Labs

00:54:49 - Technical Similarities Between Railgun and Zcash

01:00:26 - Opt-in vs. Default Privacy

01:02:37 - Why Bitcoin Lacks Advanced Privacy

01:10:32 - Railgun's Multi-Chain Presence

01:15:05 - The State of Ethereum and Privacy Demand

01:19:13 - Railgun's Elevator Pitch

01:20:47 - Railgun's Transaction Filtering System

01:29:20 - Trusting Zero-Knowledge Proofs

01:36:18 - Future of Privacy Technology

01:40:37 - How to Follow Kieran's Work

Almost 9 years since the big split of the Bitcoin community, it's time to learn more about how the Bitcoin Cash chain developed. Calin Culianu is the creator of Fulcrum, an efficient privacy-preserving SPV client. Steve Thurmond is the most ardent advocate for Cash Stamps: a convenient paper wallet system that's used for gifting.

Throughout the episode, more BCH community members will join to have the conversation that you will never hear on any other Bitcoin podcast.

Time stamps:

00:01:09 Introducing Calin Culianu & Steve Thurmond

00:02:37 The Evolution of Bitcoin Cash

00:03:59 Who is Behind Bitcoin Cash Now?

00:06:34 Narratives and Misconceptions

00:07:53 Vlad's Perspective on the Fork

00:09:44 Bitcoin's Capture and Speculative Nature

00:11:48 Vlad's Journey with Lightning Network

00:16:07 Blockstream and the "Banker" Conspiracy

00:18:33 The Security Budget Debate

00:22:12 The Problem with IOU Systems like Lightning

00:24:02 Vlad's Disappointment with Onboarding

00:24:58 Ethereum's Rise Amidst Bitcoin's Infighting

00:27:52 The Bankers Won, But Crypto Still Exists

00:32:16 The Future of Bitcoin and Firing Core Devs

00:33:08 The Wall of Consensus in BTC

00:39:19 The Multi-Coin Future

00:42:48 Bitcoin Cash's Development Philosophy

00:49:08 Craig Wright's Controversial Involvement

00:55:16 The Impact of Contentious Forks

00:58:55 The Resilience of Bitcoin Cash

01:02:32 The Value of Open Source Competition

01:08:51 Greg Maxwell's Influence

01:12:00 The Ecash fork

01:25:02 Introducing New BCH Community Members

01:26:38 Building Smart Contracts on Bitcoin Cash

01:34:06 Why UTXO is Better than EVM

01:40:07 Can You Run a BCH Node?

01:41:07 The Flawed "Run a Node" Narrative

01:53:27 The Dangers of RBF and the Importance of 0-Conf

02:05:07 One-Minute Blocks Proposal

02:08:02 Finality and User Experience in Wallets

02:12:13 The "It's Just Money, Bro" Philosophy

02:41:39 What Can You Buy with BCH?

02:48:28 The Permissionless Nature of BCH

02:52:12 The Paradox of Layer Twos

02:57:18 The Stigma of Building on BCH

02:58:21 The Changing Culture of Bitcoin Cash

03:11:35 Ordinals and the "Spam" Debate

03:17:07 Would BCH Still Have a Nice Dev Culture If Michael Saylor Started Buying?

03:28:14 Quantum Computing and Satoshi's Coins

03:42:59 The Tail Emission Debate

03:50:11 The Culture is the Ultimate Defense

03:53:16 The Politicization of Bitcoin Development

03:59:26 Privacy and Fungibility

04:02:21 The Future of Privacy on BCH

04:36:12 Fulcrum: An Electrum Server Implementation

04:38:54 The Litecoin Question

04:49:13 The Difficulty of Recreating Bitcoin's Genesis

04:51:38 The Long-Term Bet on SHA-256

04:54:12 A Break and Introduction to Rosco

05:48:33 CashScript and Smart Contracts on BCH

05:55:22 BCH vs. Ethereum Smart Contracts

06:03:05 The UTXO Stack and Abstraction Layers

06:43:30 The Avalanche Pre-Consensus Question

06:45:51 The "Tax" Fork

07:04:06 The Failed Attack on Bitcoin Cash

07:08:58 The 2018 Inflation Bug Disclosure

07:22:46 The Michael Saylor Phenomenon

07:28:41 The Arrest of Roger Ver

07:39:28 Spending Crypto in the Real World

07:44:22 The End of Crypto-Friendly Spaces in Europe

07:52:05 Prediction Markets and Community Sponsorship

08:08:17 Robin Linus is Jealous of BCH Opcodes

08:09:50 Final Thoughts and Conclusion