“On a long enough timeline every single social, political, etc., pressure is going to be applied to test the strength of these systems and anything that’s not strong enough will be erased.”— Crypto CobainLocation: New YorkDate: Wednesday 29th SeptemberCompany/project: Independent, Independent, Human Rights Foundation & Baillie GiffordRole: N/A, N/A, Chief Strategy Officer & Investment ManagerThe narrative around altcoins is constantly changing. However, one thing that remains consistent is that they almost always promise to 'improve upon Bitcoin' in one way or another. More often than not, this is improved layer one scalability, lower transaction costs or enhanced programmability. While many of these projects can offer faster and cheaper throughput and smart contracts, they come at the cost of the most fundamentally important aspects of Bitcoin; security, decentralisation and censorship resistance.Bitcoin maximalists often cite these reasons as to why all projects outside of Bitcoin are doomed to fail, but the market seems to think differently. Over short time frames, many of these altcoins can outperform Bitcoin and the opportunity to make quick gains draws in large amounts of retail investment regardless of premines, lack of product-market fit or whether a project is, in fact, meaningfully decentralised or not.Bitcoin is designed to be the hardest money the world has ever known and to demonetise the state. To achieve this, it moves slowly, protecting its core principles at all costs. In stark contrast to this, Altcoins operate on a model similar to Silicon Valley, move fast and break things. With growing concerns over a state-level regulatory crackdown on 'crypto', decentralisation is paramount. Bitcoin's decentralisation means it can survive almost any attack, but could altcoins survive without being meaningfully decentralised?In this interview, I talk to Allen Farrington, Crypto Cobain, Udi Wetheimer, and Alex Gladstein. We discuss tokens and securities, scalability vs decentralisation, nation-state resistance, and building on Bitcoin.This episode’s sponsors:Gemini - Buy Bitcoin instantlyBlockFi - The future of Bitcoin financial servicesSportsbet.io - Online sportsbook & casino that accepts BitcoinCasa - The leading provider of Bitcoin multisig key security.Exodus - The world's leading Desktop, Mobile and Hardware crypto wallets.Ledger - State of the art Bitcoin hardware walletCompass Mining - Bitcoin mining & hosting-----WBD405 - Show Notes-----If you enjoy The What Bitcoin Did Podcast you can help support the show by doing the following:Become a Patron and get access to shows early or help contributeMake a tip:Bitcoin: 3FiC6w7eb3dkcaNHMAnj39ANTAkv8Ufi2SQR Codes: BitcoinIf you do send a tip then please email me so that I can say thank youSubscribe on iTunes | Spotify | Stitcher | SoundCloud | YouTube | Deezer | TuneIn | RSS FeedLeave a review on iTunesShare the show and episodes with your friends and familySubscribe to the newsletter on my websiteFollow me on Twitter Personal | Twitter Podcast | Instagram | Medium | YouTubeIf you are interested in sponsoring the show, you can read more about that here or please feel free to drop me an email to discuss options.