Stephan Livera Podcast

The global fertility crisis is on with many western and developed nations below replacement fertility. Joining me to discuss this problem is Daniel Hess (aka @MoreBirths on X). 

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro 

(00:54) - How bad is the global fertility crisis?

(04:50) - Implications of low birth rate for future generations

(09:54) - Causes for declining global rate of fertility

(11:53) - Marriages affecting birth rate

(15:38) - Religio...

Even as bitcoiners, we can’t deny that there is demand for ‘stablecoins’ or some kind of stable value feature. Tony Klausing, bitcoin and lightning developer joins me to talk about Stable Channels. This approach to stable value is self custodial, P2P, and bitcoin-native. We talk about the benefits, trade offs and who this would be suitable for. 

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro 

(00:51) - Tony’s background 

(03:28) - Opportunity of Stab...

Aleksandar Svetski (@SvetskiWrites) rejoins me to talk about his newest book, The Bushido of Bitcoin. We get into a discussion about:

Anti-egalitarianism Virtues Why Bitcoiners should ‘stop being plebs’ The ascend & descend of civilisations Imbibing warrior culture in Bitcoin The masses and the remnant Timestamps: (00:00) - Intro (00:41) - Who is ‘The Bushido of Bitcoin’ for? (11:13) - The role of legitimate hierarchy (18:1...

Jörg Guido Hülsmann is a Senior Fellow of the Mises Institute, and he rejoins me to discuss his latest book on Abundance, Generosity and the State. Bitcoiners like to spell out a lot of the social and cultural problems in the world today, and Dr Hülsmann is one of the leading lights in showing how fiat currency and government intervention have caused negative outcomes. 

We discuss the way gratuitous benefits come to us in a free ma...

Why are some bitcoin blocks empty? Orange Surf from the mempool.space team joins me to explain his recent research report on this topic. We discuss:

• Why do empty blocks happen? 

• Comparing empty block rates across mining pools

• Firmware and config differences

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro

(00:44) - Orange Surf’s research report on empty blocks

(02:02) - Block interval data sets 

(06:25) - What is an empty block?

(08:09...

Art Finch is a South African-American Entrepreneur. Art has experience across South Asia and is interested in setting up Free Private Cities or Charter Cities. In this episode he shares his experiences in Bhutan and shares his theories on how Bitcoin and Free Private Cities can work together. 

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro

(01:28) - Art’s background & his interest in building a Free Private City (FPC)

(10:50) - The need for a Fre...

While many debate the pros and cons of Bitcoin ETFs, joining us for this episode is Jeff Yew, CEO of Monochrome, doing a directly held Bitcoin ETF in Australia. We chat about the fees, the custody, the ethos, being able to contribute bitcoin or redeem bitcoin, institutional adoption and Bitcoin in Australia. 

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro

(00:53) - Monochrome’s role in bringing Bitcoin ETFs to Australia

(02:48) - Timeline of differ...

You might have seen my earlier episode with Erick Brimen, CEO of Prospera, here’s the CFO of Prospera discussing the ability to use Bitcoin as a unit of account. We discuss: 

• Life on Roatan

• Setting up a business

• Choose your own regulatory environment

• ZEDE law situation

• Bitcoin as unit of account

• Leaving Canada

Timestamps:

Links:

• https://prospera.hn/

• https://stephanlivera.com/episode/464/ 

Tiero of Ark Labs joins me on the show to discuss the latest with Ark. We get into: 

• How Ark has changed since initial proposal

• clARK - covenant-less ARK

• Trade offs to make clARK happen

• Which covenants would help vs what is ideal for Ark

• Ark on Liquid 

• Capital requirements and costs

• Fiatcoins

• Nostr

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro

(01:37) - What is Ark? ELI5 version

(05:42) - Tradeoffs of scaling payment...

The bitcoin ‘ossification’ debate continues with a discussion on the key considerations. What makes Bitcoin special? What improvements are necessary to retain sufficient decentralisation, if any? 

Vijay Boyapati and Brandon Black (aka reardencode) rejoin me for a special episode to discuss: 

• What makes Bitcoin special? 

• Defining ‘ossification’

• How many users is ‘enough’? 

• Unknown unknowns

• Addressing centralising ME...

NVK of Coinkite rejoins me to talk about attitudes on Bitcoin development and consensus changes. We discuss how “ossification” is commonly thrown around as a term, but maybe there is a better term. “Extreme conservatism”? We talk:

• What is ossification? 

• What about bug fixes? 

• What changes would NVK be interested in? 

• How many people will use Bitcoin? 

• What the market is focused on

• It’s not your chain

Links:

I recently spoke at Bitcoin Seoul 2024 and here are some interviews with some of the speakers:

• Calvin Kim on utreexo

• Gloria Zhao on Bitcoin Core and mempool

• Laolu on Taproot Assets and covenants

• Saifedean on Central Banking and tax cattle

• Obi Nwosu on Fedi

• Jimmy Song on Bitcoin in Korea

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Calvin Kim on importance of Bitcoin conferences

(01:51) - Simplifying Utreexo

(03:31) - What is Utre...

Walt Smith of cyber.fund joins me to discuss thoughts on MEV and where it may be going on Bitcoin. 

We discuss:

• Defining MEV

• 10 minute block time?

• Does it centralise Bitcoin?

• Suffering from success

• The approach on shitcoins and spam

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro 

(02:02) - Defining MEV

(06:02) - Replace-by-fee (RBF)

(11:01) - Concern regarding miner centralisation 

(18:56) - Growth of private mempool flow &...

Silent Payments is a new approach to improving privacy and useability of Bitcoin. Imagine not needing to manually create new addresses? Josibake and Ruben Somsen join me to discuss some of the ins and outs of Silent Payments. We discuss:

• Silent Payments overview

• Contrast with other techniques such as BIP47 

• Light client support

• Stopping address re use

• Base layer privacy discussion

Links:

• X: @josibake

...

Skot joins me to talk about his project to bring affordable, energy efficient, open source mining to home miners. We discuss:

• The current state of open source in bitcoin mining

• Bitaxe overview

• Why do people do this?

• Price and how to set one up

• Mining pools

• Decentralisation

Links:

• X: @skot9000

• Site: Bitaxe.org

Sponsors:

• Swan.com (code LIVERA)

• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)

• Mempool.s...

Rusty Russell rejoins me on the show to talk about a new idea for a bitcoin soft fork that hopefully avoids some of the ‘horse trading’ dynamic that existed amongst other proposals. Listen in to learn more about the different paradigm that Rusty introduces here, so that developers can build more functionality and efficiency in, hopefully so that more people can use Bitcoin in self-custody. 

• Bitcoin Script background

• GSR ove...

Dan Gould of the PayJoin Dev Kit (sponsored by Spiral and Opensats) joins me to discuss how Bitcoin privacy could be improved with more PayJoin adoption. What’s more, it might also benefit users in consolidating their wallets or potentially even fee savings. We discuss how this could be integrated into more bitcoin wallets. 

• What is a PayJoin?
• How it helps privacy
• Other benefits in efficiency
• Downsides and trade offs
• ...

Adam Sullivan, CEO of Core Scientific joins me today as we chat about:

• Going through bankruptcy as a Bitcoin miner
• Debt financing
• Role of capital structure in mining
• What makes Core Scientific different?
• Centralisation of mining pools
• Fee dynamics going forward
• 2025 outlook on Mining

Links:

• X: @_Adam_Sullivan1
• Core Scientific: Corescientific.com

Sponsors:

• Swan.com (code LIVERA)
• CoinKit...

Rapha Zagury, CIO of Swan and Head of Swan Mining rejoins me on the show to talk about a range of topics, from Brazil’s flooding, Bitcoin Mining, Capital Structure, as well as share some insights on speaking to TradFi professionals about Bitcoin. 

Links:

• X: @alphaazeta 
• Site: Swan.com
• Site: Nakamotoportfolio.com
• Nakamoto Gauntlet: The Nakamoto Portfolio Gauntlet 

Sponsors:

• Swan.com (code LIVERA)
• Coin...