Bitcoin is on a 7 week upward trend. Having already smashed through its $9,000 Vegeta memes, it is now inching closer towards $10k.
On this episode, @nlw is joined by Kraken’s Dan Held to discuss how bitcoin has changed in a number of ways since the last time we were at the $10,000 price level last year. They look at:
Narrative - Speculation around bitcoin as a safe haven and the role of the halvening continue to shape the conversation
Infrastructure - The tools for how people can interact with bitcoin - from lending to derivatives - have never been broader
Audience - Institutions are no longer just around the corner but actively participating in the market
That’s the way Meltem Demirors described Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard’s remarks at Stanford yesterday. For the first time, the Fed has said that it is actively researching and experimenting around digital currencies and distributed ledger technologies. This is a change in tone from a Fed that, when asked previously, has more or less dismissed digital currencies.
On this episode, @nlw looks at Brainard’s speech, along with: the latest from Japanese lawmakers proposing a digital currency to counteract the influence of a forthcoming Chinese digital yuan; a Bank for International Settlements digital currency working group with 6 major central banks; and the potential implications of CBDCs on bitcoin.
We also look at a set of acquisitions, including a ConsenSys acquisition poised to get them in the $3.8T municipal bond space; a Bakkt acquisition poised to get them ready for a consumer app that includes more than just cryptocurrencies; and an attempt by Bakkt-parent ICE to buy eBay for north of $30b.
As claims of election tampering, fraud, and other dubious activities fly around the botched Democratic Caucus in Iowa, trust in our public institutions continues to crater.
The question of trust and censorship are at the heart of our episode today. Handshake is a new protocol for uncensorable web domains. The goal is to create a new blockchain-based Top Level Domain system that governments can’t censor or block.
To explain why Handshake (HNS) matters, @nlw is joined by Tieshun Roquerre, the CEO of Namebase, a next-generation domain registrar for HNS.
In this interview, they discuss:
What Handshake is
How a HNS domain is different from a standard web domain
Why uncensorable web domains are the next great blockchain killer app
Much of the Crypto Twitter conversation this weekend was dominated by talk of Twitter’s suspension of ZeroHedge. @nlw explores why the specifics of the infraction or the quality of the publication aren’t the important part of the conversation, and why he thinks we’ll see arguments for social media platforms to be turned into public utilities in the years ahead.
Also on this episode:
Debates around Ethereum marketing. Does the community need to spend more resources telling the story and recruiting new users or should the tech speak for itself?
What Brexit means for the crypto community - practically and metaphorically.
The last section features comments from Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier.
In “Libre Not Libra: Facebook’s Blockchain Project,” Andreas answers the burning question… Has he tried haggis? Just kidding… He shares his thoughts on the recently released Libra whitepaper, as part of a permissioned blockchain project spearheaded by Facebook.
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com
Years of jokes about “FaceCoin” and “ZuckBucks” have finally come to life – sort of. In a previous episode, he talked about how some venture capitalists are monkeying around by downplaying the killer applications of open blockchains in favor of… bananas. Now he makes us wonder whether Libra will even survive to become a production network. Is Silicon Valley coming for banking? Will Libra’s challenges have any impact on open public blockchains?
This talk took place on June 19th 2019 at the Scottish Blockchain Meetup in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Today’s show featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, with a little narration by Stephanie Murphy and Adam B. Levine, as well as the live crowd and that guy with the great laugh about three quarters through.
This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin! is sponsored by Brave.com and eToro.com
This episode featured music by Jared Rubens, Orfan and general fuzz. Production support was provided by Erica and Jessica, with sound editing by Dimitris of Sampi Media.
Want to hear more of Andreas’s Live talks? Check out new episodes every week on Unscrypted, or just head over to aantonop.com .
The best way to fund open source projects remains a question, and one that - in the context of crypto protocols - has never had higher stakes. Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen live action experiments in a number of different approaches.
Gitcoin grants used a quadratic funding program to match grants to technology builders and media creators in Ethereum
After months and months of concerted community debate and conversation, Zcash will implement a new Dev Fund of 20% of the block rewards after the Founders Reward runs out in November, splitting it between the Electric Coin Co (7%), Zcash Foundation (5%) and 3rd party developers (8%)
A consortium (cartel?) of the 4 largest BCH mining pools tried to insist upon a 12.5% block reward diversion to a new dev fund, with a threat to orphan blocks that didn’t comply. The plan ran into a barrier when Roger Ver’s bitcoin.com backed away.
Also in this episode, @nlw looks at the latest in CBDCs - including Japan’s continued hedging that they’re preparing for the possibility of needing to move quickly and Cambodia’s announcement that they will be implementing a CBDC this quarter.
Finally, Andrew Yang took a few minutes yesterday to talk about cryptocurrencies and why regulation with the intent to stop them would be doomed to fail.
The competition around staking is heating up, and the latest entrant is Binance.US, who will begin to offer staking on two assets with plans to roll out more in the future.
On this episode of The Breakdown, Catherine talks with NLW about:
How the company prioritizes both new features and which audiences to build for
Why staking is important both for allowing people to do more with their crypto assets as well as help build and secure the networks those assets run on
How staking is part of a much larger mission around education, financial literacy and lowering the barriers to entry for participation in crypto.
