Stephan Livera Podcast

Have you wondered what it takes to be a long-term HODLer? American HODL rejoins me on the show to talk about HODLer psychology, bitcoin culture, and what to expect going forward:

• Adoption waves
• Living on Bitcoin
• Overconfidence
• Mainstream culture
• Bitcoin Fixes This
• Jurisdictions
• Thoughts on next cycle

Links:

• X: americanhodl8

Sponsors:

• Pacific Bitcoin Festival (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (c...

Are you interested in spending 16,000 more hours with your children? Consider homeschooling! We discuss this and many other insights in this chat about homeschooling:

• Their own journey of homeschooling
• Escaping hivemind thinking
• Criticism of ‘school vouchers’
• Building up your child’s agency
• Do you need curricula?  
• Modelling behaviour
• “Socialisation”
• The culture war

Links:

• X: https://twitter.com/Home...

The next generation of Bitcoin Lightning wallets is here with Phoenix from ACINQ. Rejoining me is CTO of ACINQ, Bastien Teinturier to talk about how the team is innovating a great self custodial experience for bitcoin and lightning users:

• High Fee environment
• New Phoenix fee structure
• Splicing and what it enables
• Dual Funding
• Liquidity Ads
• Building on a smartphone app
• Can ACINQ steal from users? 
• APO
• Biggest ch...

Drivechain is a proposed soft fork that has faced a lot of criticism in the community, and Shinobi (Technical Editor of Bitcoin Magazine) joins me to discuss his critiques of the idea. We discuss:

• What is Drivechain
• How it works
• Miner centralisation
• Re orgs on sidechains
• T-shirt sales argument
• Stratum v2
• “Miners can steal”
• Other soft fork ideas (e.g. APO, CTV)
• Multi Party Channels
• “First Develop with what we’...

Glozow rejoins me to talk about updates coming to Bitcoin’s transactions and mempool policy. We talk about how these will be essential to keep bitcoin use efficient and safe, especially for layer 2 protocols such as Lightning. We chat:

• Current state with transacting
• RBF and CPFP
• Problems right now
• L2 security
• Pinning vectors
• What is package relay? 
• What is v3 transactions? 
• What are ephemeral anchors? 
• Policy v...

A common question amongst bitcoin investors is whether bitcoin on-chain analytics is legitimate or whether it is snake oil. Joining me to explore this as well as talk about some new research, is James Check, Lead Analyst of Glassnode. We talk about how the field progressed, and some insights to share on analyzing the bitcoin market:

• History of on-chain analytics
• Is it snake oil? 
• Liveliness
• Impact of the ‘DCA Army’
• Los...

Lisa Neigut of base58 and btcplusplus rejoins me on the show to talk about Bitcoin layer 2’s, where bitcoin’s lightning network is going, BTC++ and teaching Bitcoin developers at base58.We talk:

• Views on other L2 protocols
• LN technology
• How important is APO for LN? 
• BTC++
• nix and reproducibility
• Base58

Links:

• niftynei
• base58.school
• https://btcplusplus.dev/ 

Prior and relevant episodes:

• S...

Are Bitcoin’s 4 year cycles over? Vijay Boyapati rejoins me on the show to talk about his view of where things are in the economy. We chat:

• Recession?
• 18 month lag
• Risk on or risk off? 
• Bitcoin as a macro asset
• 4 year cycles
• Is an ETF good for Bitcoin?
• Pacific Bitcoin  

Links

• X: @real_vijay 

Prior episodes:

• SLP332 Vijay Boyapati – The Bearish Case for Bitcoin
• SLP233 Vijay Boyapati – Bitc...

Andrew Poelstra (Director of Research, Blockstream) has been around Bitcoin research and development for a long time, and has a lot of insight to share on Bitcoin research in this episode. For part 2 of my discussion with Andrew we focus more on bitcoin and cryptography research that the team are working on, and what it means for the future of Bitcoin:

• Cryptography
• Bulletproofs++ 
• MuSig2
• FROST
• Bitcoin Scripting
• Minis...

A ‘paper computer’ for Bitcoin checksums and Shamir Secret Sharing may seem absurd, but that’s what we’re talking about in this episode! This project is a scheme to generate, encode, checksum, split and recover Bitcoin secret keys, using pencil, paper and lookup tables (alternately, volvelles). We discuss codex32 and the motivation behind it with Andrew Poelstra (Director of Research, Blockstream). Note this is the first of a two p...

Brandon Black (aka Rearden Code) joins me on the show to talk about his experience implementing MuSig2 at BitGo, and also his thoughts on the future Bitcoin soft fork discussion re: APO (ANYPREVOUT), CTV (Check Template Verify), and his proposal on moving forward:

• MuSig2 benefits
• Implementing MuSig2
• MPC vs Script
• What are APO and CTV? 
• Brandon’s combo proposal
• Upgrade hooks

Links:

• Twitter: @reardencode
...

Have you been wondering about how to design your lifestyle overseas? Rigel (aka coinsurenz) rejoins me on the show to talk about jurisdictional arbitrage in Latin America. We talk about some of his recent moves and his experiences as a bitcoin sovereign individual: 

• Voice vs Exit - what about ‘staying and fighting’? 
• Recent residency acquisition in Paraguay
• How the Latam residency market has shifted
• Common mistakes that ...

Lawrence Lepard of Equity Management Associates rejoins me to talk about all the things that are breaking: 

• Cost of living crisis
• Are we going into recession and what timing? 
• Boomer hate
• US government debt
• Policy responses
• Social responses
• The waiting game

Site:

• Site: Ema2.com  
• Twitter: @LawrenceLepard

Sponsors:

• Pacific Bitcoin Festival (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
• Memp...

How can lightning users secure themselves even further? Just like how hardware wallets and secure elements can help secure your cold storage coins, Validating Lightning Signer (VLS) is a project aiming to help improve the way lightning security works. In this conversation with project co-founder Ken Sedgwick, we chat:

• Why VLS is needed
• How VLS works
• Implementing part of the lightning state machine
• What rules are covered?...

Dr Maxim Orlovsky joins me on the show to walk through RGB, a smart contract layer for Bitcoin. We talk through:

• Some of the history of RGB
• Client side validation as a concept
• RGB ecosystem
• What it can be used for - tokens, bitcoin finance
• MyCitadel wallet
• What’s next for RGB

Links:

• Site: RGB
• Twitter: @dr_orlovsky
• Personal site: Dr. Maxim Orlovsky
• Github: Dr. Maxim Orlovsky

Sponsors:

• P...

Andrew Henderson, Founder of Nomad Capitalist rejoins me on the show to talk:

• Home country bias
• Looking beyond headlines 
• Evolution in citizenship
• Global minimum tax and ‘the international community’
• CBDC
• Nomad Capitalist Live

Links:

• Twitter: @nomadcapitalist 
• Site: Nomadcapitalist.com

Sponsors: 

• Pacific Bitcoin Festival (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
• Mempool.space
• Base58 

...

Jonathan Chester, Founder/CEO of Bitwage joins me to talk about his experience setting up the company and enabling more people to earn Bitcoin:

• The story of growing Bitwage
• The market size for payroll
• Exploring Lightning payouts 
• Remote working as a trend
• HODLing as the use

Links:

• Twitter: @Bitwage
• Site: Bitwage 

Sponsors:

• Pacific Bitcoin Festival (code LIVERA)
• CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
...

Mara joins me to talk about his adventures in Argentina, and his thoughts on:

• Geo arbitrage
• Rules in theory, rules in practice
• FX in Argentina
• Bitcoin use in Argentina
• Argentina’s property market
• Where things are going with CBDCs

Mara links:

• Twitter: @BowTiedMara
• Substack: BowTiedMara - Geoarbitrage & Mobility Assets
• Sovspot: Live & Work from anywhere

Sponsors:

• Pacific Bitcoin Fe...

Author, digital nomad and web entrepreneur Olivier Roland joins me to talk about his issues with AML and his very interesting views on where the world is going in the age of remote working and internet communications.

• The problem with KYC / AML
• FATCA
• Taxes and the Sovereign Individual thesis
• Digital Nomadism disrupting nation states

Links:

• Twitter: @DisruptiveHoriz
• Site: Disruptive Horizons

Relevant ...