Crypto Voices

Crypto Voices: Episode 35

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Matthew interviews Henry Brade, co-founder and CEO of Prasos.

Matthew and Henry discuss a good variety of current Bitcoin topics, from adoption to regulation. Henry details the Prasos model and a few of their key services, including Coinmotion and Denarium. Henry overviews how he got into Bitcoin, including his pre-Bitcoin days as a poker player, and how some of his political and economic views have changed since getting into Bitcoin. He provides some hindsight on the Bitcoin scaling debate. We spend a lot of time discussing the business and political environment in Northern Europe surrounding Bitcoin, and how companies do face headwinds from regulators, in spite of the clear benefits of Bitcoin and blockchain. He speculates on a "regulated versus cash" economy emerging in the future digital world, much as it has been in the past analog world. Henry concludes by detailing all their new and improving services, including a crypto investment fund. Finally, Prasos is hiring! They are looking for great developers for their Lightning integration. Contact Henry and the team for details.

Links for more info:

https://twitter.com/Technom4ge

https://prasos.fi/

https://coinmotion.com/

https://denarium.com/

FI: https://bittiraha.fi/

FI: https://bittimaatti.fi/

Show sponsor: https://hodlhodl.com/

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

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Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 34

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Matthew & Fernando interview Žilvinas Šilėnas, President of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute.

Good discussion getting back to basics on the state of classical liberal thought and economics in Eastern Europe, particularly in Lithuania. Žilvinas and his team at LFMI are doing amazing work advocating for classical liberal economic policies in their country, and their influence goes beyond their borders. He shares some insights on how and why they have been so successful in Lithuania. As far as Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies go, Žilvinas shares many good points on currency competition and why this asset class should be treated like any other good, as far as regulations go... don't mess with it!

Links for more info:

https://twitter.com/zsilenas

https://www.facebook.com/zilvinas.silenas

https://en.llri.lt/

https://freema.org/

https://www.atlasnetwork.org/about/people/zilvinas-silenas

Great festival if you are traveling to Lithuania! http://www.vilnius-events.lt/en/event/kaziukas-fair-2/

Show sponsor: https://hodlhodl.com/

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 33

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Matthew & Fernando interview Patrick Byrne, founder & CEO of Overstock.

Fascinating discussion with a busy executive, we are grateful for the time Patrick spent with us covering everything they are doing at Overstock with blockchain technology. We begin with Patrick's background, moving from philosophy to Wall Street. We discuss the complexities of running a publicly traded company, and the many dealings (and battles) Patrick has had with the SEC. He overviews their TZero platform, how they plan to disintermediate the broker-dealer business, and in general cut the inefficiencies and lack of transparency plaguing modern finance. We move on to his work with Hernando de Soto, an important Peruvian economist who has done monumental work on the history of property rights. He, Patrick, and the team at Medici Ventures are (among others) investing in the lofty goal of bringing a true property rights system to the developing (and developed!) world through the blockchain. This could offer those in desparate environments a fighting economic chance at establishing their title and property, potentially opening up access to credit and other entrepreneurial tools. We conclude with another great free-market economist last-named de Soto, Spanish economist Jesús Huerta de Soto, who Fernando studied Austrian Economics under, and whom Patrick would like to meet!

Links for more info:

https://twitter.com/OverstockCEO

https://www.overstock.com/

http://www.mediciventures.com/

https://www.tzero.com/

https://youtu.be/JlnbDdPsY58

Hernando de Soto: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/desoto-capital.html

Jesús Huerta de Soto: https://www.mises.org/library/money-bank-credit-and-economic-cycles

Show sponsor: https://hodlhodl.com/

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 32

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Matthew & Fernando interview RSK Labs CEO Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar.

We discuss many of the technicalities of RSK, which is the first general purpose smart contract platform secured by the Bitcoin network. We discuss RSK Labs' vision for scaling programmable contracts on Bitcoin, how their system relates and works with Ethereum, security and consensus issues, and how they are progressing from being a more centralized system, to becoming a truly decentralized one. We look at some of RSK's use cases. There are many reasons why Diego describes RSK as a "base layer," or even "on-chain" layer, as Bitcoin miners secure the network via merged mining, and full nodes will be incentivized with a new validation system called PUBS (Proof of Unique Blockchain Storage). From there we discuss how their payment layer or off-chain solution called Lumino fits in, and how it can possibly integrate with the Lightning network. We conclude with their roadmap for 2018.

Links for more info:

https://twitter.com/dieguito

https://www.rsk.co/

https://faq.rsk.co/en/main/

Show sponsor: https://hodlhodl.com/

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 31

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Matthew & Fernando interview RegTech Executive Juan Llanos.

We discuss Juan's history in regulatory and legal frameworks, and how he eventually found the crypto world. Juan overviews his outlook on crypto regulation and compliance in the next few years, including an interesting take that many politicians "on the inside" already own cryptoassets, so regulatory interpretations could be drawn from that conclusion. He defines three kinds of regulation: stimulative, prudential (consumer protection), and law enforcement. We explore these topics, and go further on his experience in dealing with different governments and crypto projects and their views, including best practices, jurisdictions, token categorization, and ICOs. We also explore Milton Friedman's speculations in 1999 on e-cash and taxes.

Links for more info:

https://twitter.com/JuanLlanos

https://contrariancompliance.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juanllanos

Show sponsor: https://hodlhodl.com/

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 30

Show support appreciated: 35iDYDYqRdN2x6KGcpdV2W1Hy3AjGje9oL

Matthew & Fernando interview Jonathan Mohan. This is the final interview we did on location in New York in October 2017!

We discuss Jonathan's thoughts regarding hodling Bitcoin and its forks from a composite perspective, and then spend the majority of time covering his ideas and consulting work on smart contract and counterparty risk. The crux of the issue has to do with effectively arbitrating disputes when something goes wrong, namely through insurance or insurance-based surety bonds. There are technical and practical challenges to any smart contract or oracle usage, and Jonathan discusses the important role that insurance can play, perhaps more than any collateral-based system or staking can.

Links for more info:

https://twitter.com/JonathanMohan

https://www.meetup.com/bitcoinnyc/

https://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/category/episodes

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 29

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Matthew & Fernando interview Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song.

We discuss Jimmy's thoughts on 2017 in crypto (what he's learned and what he's written about), the risk of hard forks, what will scare you to sell(?), his post on Crypto Keynesians vs. Crypto Austrians, Bitcoin's role as a medium of exchange vs. store of value, Bitcoin's position as a base-level protocol, the value overflow incident of 2010, effects of altcoins, and the difficulty of predictions.

Links for more info:

https://medium.com/@jimmysong

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEFJVYNiPp8xeIUyfaPCPQw

https://twitter.com/jimmysong

https://github.com/jimmysong

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 28 (Part II)

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Matthew & Fernando interview Eric Voskuil from Libbitcoin. This is part two in a two-part episode!

We discuss Eric's background, the Libbitcoin protocol implementation, and then focus the remaining 1.5 hours covering a variety of interesting cryptoeconomic topics that Eric has written in the Libbitcoin wiki, including threat level paradox, axiom of resistance, government fiat, reserves versus savings, fees in Bitcoin, the role of inflation in the network, altcoins, and more.

Links for more info:

https://libbitcoin.org/

https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin

https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/wiki/Understanding-Bitcoin

https://twitter.com/evoskuil

https://www.linkedin.com/in/evoskuil

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 28 (Part I)

Show support appreciated: 35iDYDYqRdN2x6KGcpdV2W1Hy3AjGje9oL

Matthew & Fernando interview Eric Voskuil from Libbitcoin. This is part one in a two-part episode!

We discuss Eric's background, the Libbitcoin protocol implementation, and then focus the remaining 1.5 hours covering a variety of interesting cryptoeconomic topics that Eric has written in the Libbitcoin wiki, including threat level paradox, axiom of resistance, government fiat, reserves versus savings, fees in Bitcoin, the role of inflation in the network, altcoins, and more.

Links for more info:

https://libbitcoin.org/

https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin

https://github.com/libbitcoin/libbitcoin/wiki/Understanding-Bitcoin

https://twitter.com/evoskuil

https://www.linkedin.com/in/evoskuil

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.

Crypto Voices: Episode 27

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Matthew gives a (not brief) Happy New Year intro to a recording of the Cryptoeconomics panel at the Baltic Honeybadger Bitcoin Conference in Riga, Latvia, which occurred on 26 November, 2017. The intro (on Jan 2018 valuations, cryptocurrencies vs. ICOs) was recorded on 5 January 2018.

The panelists were Andreas Antonopoulos (@aantonop), Adam Back (@adam3us), Henry Brade (@Technom4ge), Tuur Demeester (@TuurDemeester), Eric Voskuil (@evoskuil), and Giacomo Zucco (@giacomozucco).

Links for more info:

https://bh2017.hodlhodl.com/

https://hodlhodl.com/

Hosts: Matthew Mežinskis, Fernando Ulrich

Music: New Friend Music newfriendmusic.com/

Site: cryptovoices.com/

Podcast & Information

Cryptoeconomics & Liberty

Thanks for listening!

Show content is not investment advice in any way.