Month: August 2021

Ethereum’s London hard fork, also known as EIP 1559, took place on Aug. 5. The backwards-incompatible upgrade reignited community debate over hard forks, soft forks and the best methods – most foolproof, least polarizing – to bring about change to a network.

Join hosts Adam B. Levine, Jonathan Mohan and Andreas M. Antonopoulos as they explore the various ways in which consensus has been reached recently across the two largest protocols. The differences in technology and underlying philosophy means some solutions are more enticing to Ethereum and others to Bitcoin.

Ethereum maintains a so-called “difficulty bomb,” whose fuse is lengthened with every upgrade. If it ever goes off, miners would face exponentially harder work and proportionally diminished rewards, forcing them to switch from the pre-fork chain to the upgraded one. Bitcoin’s equivalent to the difficulty bomb, the User Activated Soft Fork (UASF), accomplishes the same thing by other means. Are these mechanisms the proverbial ‘Chekhov’s Gun,’ inevitably to be used in some later act, or simply empty threats to coerce miners into compliance?

Listen to this episode of “Speaking of Bitcoin” for an in-depth explainer of how wide-spread change occurs across decentralized networks and what changes might be in store for the future.

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This episode featured Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Jonathan Mohan. It was edited by Jonas, our theme song comes courtesy of Jared Rubens and todays music during the break was Sloth Beats by Gurty Beats. Today's album art features a photo by Anita Jankovic/Unsplash, modified by Speaking of Bitcoin.

Have any questions or comments? Send Adam an email at adam@speakingofbitcoin.show

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Last month’s FOMC meeting minutes show crypto and stablecoins came up for the first time ever as an official topic at a key Federal Reserve meeting. 

This episode is sponsored by NYDIG.

On this edition of “The Breakdown’s Weekly Recap,” NLW looks at:

• News that Brian Brooks left Binance.US after a fundraise proved unsuccessful 
• Why Coinbase is investing $500B in crypto 
• The Fed’s discussion of stablecoins at last month’s FOMC meeting 
• Which nations rank atop Chainalysis’ new adoption index 

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NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for Bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW.

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“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Only in Time” by Abloom. Image credit: Al Drago/Bloomberg/Getty Images, modified by CoinDesk.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The chaos and questions in Kabul and around Afghanistan continue since the Taliban took control of the country with surprising speed earlier this week. Thousands of Americans, as well as Afghans who helped the U.S. and its allies, are now scrambling to get out as they fear for their futures under Taliban rule.

Today we’re talking with a retired U.S. Army colonel who has commanded combat troops in Afghanistan and still knows plenty of people on the ground there. Mike Jason spent more than two decades in the U.S. Army before retiring in 2019.

He joins me to share his reaction to the Taliban takeover, how he believes it happened and what he thinks America’s obligation is now.

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp.com/newsworthy and Rothys.com/newsworthy

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