Bitcoin Audible

They call it “financial inclusion,” but it’s anything but. Whether's it's Vietnam’s mass bank-account purge, India’s new censorship engine, or Lagarde's demands to "accelerate" control before democracy gets in her way, governments are racing to move the world into a monetary dystopia. I break down the latest Financial Freedom Report and explain why this rising wave of surveillance could ...

We are back with the roundtable and today we tackle news from the privacy war frontlines, new and old surveillance laws, stablecoins on Bitcoin, a precedent for failed CBDCs, is Luke actually planning a fork, Protonmail's battle with Switzerland, biometric banking lockdowns, and so much more. Plus the incredible feat of the bitcoin network's computing power and why 1 Zetahash marks a sta...

Is layered self-custody really secure in a future of rising Bitcoin fees, or are we all just living in a gray area of trust and compromise? I dive into Shinobi’s article and unravel the hidden mechanics behind what it actually costs to enforce your claim on-chain—and why the line between custodial and non-custodial is blurrier than we want to admit.

Check out the original article The Cos...

"The atomic economy and Synonym's mission is to research, design and ship a working free market society. So not just a free market economy, but a free market society. /CUT/ So it replaces government, it replaces big tech, it replaces big banks, it replaces Visa, MasterCard, you know, everything. Everything you would want to do in a network is represented here as part of the economy."
~ Jo...

Bitcoin mining is both one of the coolest and most unique aspects of the Bitcoin system, and it's also one of the most deeply misunderstood parts of it.

In my effort to make this crazy thing make some amount of sense, I toss my hat into the ring to explaining why mining is actually one of the most profound, and fascinating parts of Bitcoin, that make it a truly revolutionary discovery. S...

"All of the above did have an impact, however their impact is often overstated in our view. The most significant factor is culture. Some Bitcoiners and Bitcoin developers simply did not want this type of activity on the Bitcoin blockchain and they successfully discouraged it."
~ BitMEX Research

Did Bitcoin’s culture - not its code - push DApps to Ethereum? I read the “OP_RETURN wars” histo...

"It's that old saying, right? It's that meme. It's like, however bad you think it is, it's going to get worse, right? But at the same time, it's also going to get better.
So be very bearish on fiat. Be very bullish on Bitcoin. This system, it's going to get worse. The collateral problem and the fail to deliver problem is going to get worse. Your shares that you own in brokerage aren't rea...

"Technology is always and everywhere a tool, not an autonomous agent.
It requires humans to operate, which they will do in order to satisfy human desires."
When we say "technology" saves labor, what we really mean is it leverages labor.
It gives to labor powers that were previously impossible, inconceivable even.
Only in the aftermath of witnessing its novel capabilities do we articulate...

In this episode, I break down the ticking time bomb of global debt and why it’s unsustainable. The exponential growth of debt, fueled by central banks artificially manipulating interest rates, is suffocating economies and eroding living standards. Bitcoin emerges as the only sound solution to this crisis, offering a perfect form of collateral that can’t be manipulated or inflated away. T...

"The whole MNav trade, it has as much implied leverage on the way down as it does on the way up.
I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that actually this is what triggers the next bear market, that there's so much leverage introduced via this mechanism that not only do a lot of the treasury companies themselves get wiped out, but the sell pressure is so severe that it impacts Bitcoin as a...

What happens when our obsession with building the “perfect protocol” blinds us to the real problems users want solved? It's time to slay some sacred cows. In this conversation, we unpack the hype around Nostr, the pitfalls of developer-first thinking, and the lessons Bitcoiners should learn if we want adoption that truly matters.

Check out the original article Nostr Unpopular Opinions by...

"Up until a few months ago, the best developers played the violin. Today, they play the orchestra."
~ Justin Searls

Is AI rewriting what it means to code? In this episode, I dive into “Six Weeks of Claude Code” and reflect on how LLMs are changing the experience of building apps, troubleshooting problems, and exploring ideas. Are these tools just fancy autocomplete, or the start of a “pho...

The boys are back for another Roundtable, and as usual, it’s part tech talk, part therapy session, and a little bit of news thrown in. Steve rants about Lightning, Mechanic goes to war with Core devs, Jeff wrestles with immigration paperwork, and I try to keep the whole circus on the rails.

We cover everything from spam filters and node drama to modular mining rigs that might finally mak...

Around the world, Bitcoin is colliding with power. Russia tracks miners, Pakistan builds a digital rupee, and activists quietly test new tools for freedom. In this episode I unpack the latest Financial Freedom Report, explore breakthroughs like Block’s modular “Proto Rig” and the ARK protocol, and ask: can these innovations keep Bitcoin uncensorable?

Check out the original articles over ...

"There have never been more tools available to the individual than there have been today.
And it's like cryptography is like the thing. If cryptography is like the wheel, like we invented the wheel. Okay, cool. We have a wheelbarrow and we have a cart and stuff like that. Bitcoin is now like this engine that is enabling these wheels to turn at a rate that a lot of people are sleeping on."
...

"Now that USDT and Bitcoin are natively interoperable on lightning, the circle has gained tangents. With USDT on lightning, each party to a payment, the payer and the recipient, can choose whether to use Bitcoin or Tether on their own end, and neither depends on the other's decision. A customer can pay in Bitcoin and the merchant can receive USDT, or the customer can pay in USDT and the ...

The institutional era of Bitcoin has begun, and will make this likely one of the most significant and important bull runs in Bitcoin's history. We are diving into the always excellent report from Adamant Research and Tuur Demeester, on the fundamentals of the bitcoin market, where things are likely to go, what major undercurrents can minimize or reinforce this cycle, and how to practical...

"Obviously we're trying to make fountain the best possible listening experience and the best possible app for discovering great audio content.
But more broadly than that, we don't want to turn into, you know, another version of Spotify where things only work in fountain. We want to, enable discovery and the signal around valuable content to come from anywhere and be consumed anywhere.
That...

"In my eyes, one of the most common playbooks used by the ruling class is to identify a life-essential resource everyone is using, introduce a new and quote, "better version" of it, and widely promote that new option until the old one is completely displaced.
And then once a market monopoly is established, tighten the screws until the replacement is far worse than what preceded it. But th...