In a heated debate, Eric Wall, crypto blogger and investor, and Justin Bons, founder and chief investment officer of Cyber Capital, discuss Bitcoin’s security model, whether there are fundamental flaws in its design, and which is the best consensus mechanism. 

 

Show highlights:

• why Justin stopped believing in Bitcoin and why he calls it “technically one of the worst cryptocurrencies”
• how Eric’s views on Bitcoin changed over time 
• the problems they see with Bitcoin’s security
• why Eric attacks BTC maximalism, even when he is a Bitcoiner
• how the Bitcoin community will change in the next decades, and why the security problem is a challenge that could be solved
• whether BTC should increase its inflation and whether that would break the store of value proposition
• why Justin thinks that BTC fails as money and won’t play a relevant role in the future
• what happened around the time of the blocksize debate back in 2015-2017
• whether there’s something wrong with Bitcoin’s culture and why Eric compares it to a doomsday cult
• why Ethereum has external dependencies that can impose systemic risks, according to Eric
• whether proof of stake or proof of work is a better consensus mechanism
• whether Ethereum is more censorship resistant than Bitcoin
• why BTC is a speculative asset and what Justin believes is needed for crypto to finally flourish

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Justin:

• Twitter

Eric:

• Twitter
• Medium

 

Episode Links

 

Previous Coverage of Unchained:

• Arthur Hayes, Former Ethereum Skeptic, on Why the Merge Makes Him Bullish on ETH 

• With the Merge, Will Ethereum Take Over Bitcoin’s Title as Digital Gold?

 

Bitcoin’s Security, Blocksize and Culture

Surprisingly, Tail Emission Is Not Inflationary by Peter Todd

Justin’s thread that kicked off the debate

A (brief and incomplete) history of censorship in /r/Bitcoin

Theory On Bitcoin Governance; Three Stage Model by Justin Bons

 

Centralization:

Ethereum Post-Merge Centralization

Lido’s validators

BTC Centralization