Erik is joined on this episode by Dan Held (@danheld), co-founder of Interchange. He was an early advocate of Bitcoin in San Francisco and is an influential writer in the space. Dan and Erik cover the history of Bitcoin, discuss some of Dan’s most interesting blog posts, and talk about what the future might hold for crypto.

Dan explains why Satoshi had a brilliant go-to-market strategy with Bitcoin. He talks about the reasons why various aspects of Bitcoin were set up the way they were, including the hard cap on the number of Bitcoin and why there is no set inflation rate.

Dan explains why mining takes so much electricity, and says that the walls around fiat money that would normally take the form of a vault are instead built virtually using that energy. He contrasts proof of work and proof of stake systems and talks about the trends in Silicon Valley’s perception of the space over the last several years.

They also talk about the future, including a discussion the Lightning network, whether micro-payments will take hold, and why there are so many projects with interesting ideas but without many users (and what might change that).

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Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.