Stephan Livera Podcast

In this episode, we talk through emerging market currency crises, and his new 5 part article series on Bitcoin as Ultimate Asset. We contrast differing monetary views, why it doesn't make sense to spend bitcoin right now, Medium of Exchange vs Method of Payment, and fallacies of 'Medium of Exchange only' cryptocurrencies.

Hass McCook and I discuss the Bitcoin mining market and his recent research, "The Cost and Sustainability of Bitcoin". We cover key bitcoin mining metrics, bitcoin mining cost price ranges, the Bitcoin Price - Mining Hash Rate relationship, the evolution of bitcoin mining over the past 3 years, and compare Bitcoin mining costs vs Gold mining.

Pierre Rochard (co-founder Nakamoto Institute, co-host Noded podcast) and I talk through Bitcoin's Decentralised Governance. This is the process by which Bitcoin's rules are decided, implemented, and enforced without having a central authority.

Some topics covered:

The different parties involved

Network Governance

Bitcoin has no central authority

Process of Research, Proposal, Implementation, Deployment, Enforcement

Schelling Points

Nic Carter and Hasu join me to discuss the multitude of changing visions of Bitcoin, and also a Transaction Batching analysis they performed. We discuss how the narratives and attitudes in Bitcoin have changed over time as different constraints surfaced. In the second half, we discuss bitcoin transaction batching, and more appropriate ways to think about the number of bitcoin transactions.

Bryan Vu, VP of Product at Lightning Labs joins me in this episode to sketch out a vision of what Lightning Network may evolve into. We discuss Lightning User Experience and Routing, and the benefits to users, merchants and exchanges.

Murad and I explore a range of economic thought about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in a fascinating interview discussing the path to Bitcoin as 'monetary winner'. As a prolific writer and analyst in Bitcoin, Murad is very well read and articulate. We discuss: His articles, how Bitcoin is ushering in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity, a framework for monetary Store of Value criteria, and more.

In this episode with Nik Bhatia, we talk about the potential for forming capital markets on top of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, by calculating an interest rate (LNRR - Lightning Network Reference Rate) based on the routing fees earned in staking BTC to Lightning Network payment channels.

In this episode with Bitstein, we break down Paul Krugman's errors in his NYT "Transaction Costs and Tethers: Why I’m a Crypto Skeptic" column, as well as other topics:

Mischaracterisation of what money's purpose is

Krugman's 'nirvana fallacies' in money

Why fiat money is an aberration and more akin to a 'fad diet' than bitcoin or gold are

Why Everyone Is a Scammer and the Scammer heuristic

Bitcoin Maximalism - is it descriptive or prescriptive?

UNIX philosophy

In this episode with Neil Woodfine, we talk about the changing face of Bitcoin education and common errors in reasoning about Bitcoin and 'token economics'. Some topics we touch on:

Bitcoin in Beijing

Bitcoin education in the early days vs Bitcoin/Crypto education now

Incentives of unnecessary tokens

Bitcoin is not 'backed by' stored energy

Intolerance of bitcoin versus it merely being a superior money

Skin in the game of Bitcoiners versus other projects such as Ethereum

In this collaboration episode with JW Weatherman, we talk about some of the reasons why Bitcoin is best, versus the altcoins. We also discuss some of the security flaws and problems with the design and execution of altcoins such as: Bcash, EOS, Ethereum, Ripple, Monero, Zcash