“I am an enthusiastic fan of Bitcoin and I want to say to everyone here thank you for what you’re doing to drive the Texas economy, to drive the American economy, to modernise energy, to strengthen resiliency of the grid, to enhance economic freedom.”— Ted CruzTed Cruz is a serving US Senator for Texas. In this interview, we discuss the importance of Bitcoin for Texas and the United States, communicating the threat of CBDCs, the political and regulatory challenges, and Bitcoin’s symbiotic relationship with energy.- - - - Ted Cruz i...

“You talk about the CIA and American foreign policy during the Cold War…that’s like level one. We’re on a second level here, the IMF and World Bank are operating on a meta-level, like we’re above Cold War politics, we’re at the level of timeless, strong countries abusing poor countries; this is way beyond the Cold War.”— Alex GladsteinAlex Gladstein is Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. In this interview, we discuss the IMF and World Bank - two powerful multinational institutions that have shaped the post-war world for developed nation...

“This is something that I heard from all the crypto funds back in 2017/2018…you can promise any blockchain crypto magic that you want, it can solve whatever problem you say it’s going to solve; and there’s no truth in advertising, no securities laws, no nothing governing the space, so it’s just literally the best magic scam machine in financial markets’ history.”— Cory KlippstenCory Klippsten is the founder and CEO of Swan Bitcoin. In this interview, we discuss the exploitation of retail markets by crypto VCs. Cory called out many of the crypto ventures that ha...

“This time last year, most profitable time to mine ever in Bitcoin; people shovelling money in as quickly as they can. Less than 12 months later, it’s the least profitable time to mine ever. It’s very difficult to make massive strategic pivots in that amount of time.”— Nick HansenNick Hansen is the CEO of Bitcoin mining software firm Luxor Technologies. In this interview, we discuss the distress within the Bitcoin mining industry caused by a perfect storm of leverage, stagnant value, huge growth in capacity, energy price shocks and wider headwinds affecting investment. This could beco...

“Theft in money will divide us all, and that theft in money will take us likely to war and maybe the end of human species… or it will concentrate all control in very few super overlords. And the rest of us, it’ll look like modern day slavery, it’ll look like China’s social credit system on steroids.”— Jeff BoothJeff Booth is the Author of The Price of Tomorrow and CEO/Chairman of Ego Death Capital. In this interview, we discuss how Bitcoin fundamentals (such as its approach to the blockchain trilemma, centring on truth, and its...

“I think we can’t lose sight of what we’re really fighting for here, which is all of those people to be included in the financial system, financial privacy, the separation of money and state; these things are way bigger than any centralised exchange.”— Jesse PowellJesse Powell is the co-founder and Chairman of Kraken. In this interview, we discuss the rising anger over the FTX collapse, parallels with Mt. Gox, FTX’s exploitation of regulatory arbitrage, odd mainstream media reactions, proof of reserves and the future of custodial services.- - - - FT...

“There are five institutions that control $30 trillion of assets in this world. You’ve got Fidelity Vanguard, BlackRock, State Street, and UBS, that control $30 trillion. So when they get in, and they actually put it in their portfolios, it becomes a no-brainer for other asset managers to do it as well.”— James LavishJames Lavish is a Bitcoin advocate and writer, & Greg Foss is a Bitcoin strategist, and they’re both co-founders of Looking Glass education. In this interview, we discuss FTXs lack of checks and balances, how fiat is struggling to find yield, zombie countries and the th...

“When you look at prices as they’re trying to destroy demand, the thing that people aren’t talking about is are they destroying supply faster; and if they are, prices aren’t coming down, they might actually keep going up.”— Preston PyshPreston Pysh is a co-founder of The Investor Podcast Network. In this interview, we discuss the ongoing trauma following FTX’s unprecedented fall from grace, the implications for Bitcoin, and the ever-worsening macro situation where central banks are losing the battle to protect society from excessive government spending.- - - - The...

“We appear to have actual fraud, various types of fraud, essentially a Ponzi scheme, and that’s different from even just a normal casino… you can have a crypto casino, and it just makes money from fees, and most traders get rekt; but this is like a casino built on top of a Ponzi.”— Lyn AldenLyn Alden is a macroeconomist and investment strategist. In this interview we discuss rampant fraud that led to the FTX bankruptcy, the implications for other businesses and legal precedent, and Lyn’s current outlook on markets.- - - - ...

“Imagine the Lightning Network being very similar to the energy system itself and how it moves money, where every physical node now has its own node in the Lightning Network. And when energy moves in one direction, money moves in the other, basically what we’re creating is a system where money can move as fast as energy.”— Austin MitchellAustin Mitchell is the Co-Founder and CEO of Synota. In this interview, we discuss his plan to use the Lightning Network to settle transactions in the energy industry, and how this should bring greater equality to the ener...

“I think these policy fights for Bitcoin, this is the fight of my generation; and I think it’s absolutely important that we as Bitcoiners, and people who care about this technology, understand these political fights, these legal fights because if we get the policy wrong, it can totally skew our future.”— Perianne BoringPerianne Boring is the Founder and CEO of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. In this interview, we discuss the history of Bitcoin spot ETF proposals, the numerous rejections and changing conditions for approval, and why the SEC won’t approve a Bitcoin spot ETF...

“Society is formed through humans cooperating and… the whole is greater than the sum of the parts; when people get together and collaborate and cooperate, we produce something that is way more impressive and better than any single individual can produce.”— Phil GeigerPhil Geiger is the Managing Director of Concierge Services at Unchained Capital. In this interview, we discuss how a robust protocol and monetary policy, a vital utility for energy producers and a committed community of hodlers, makes Bitcoin an extremely low-risk investment.- - - - No other scalable commodit...

“The only way for that system to subsist into the future is for them to print more and more money, and in either scenario, whether they print money or they don’t, the economic engine collapses.”— Parker LewisParker Lewis is Head of Business Development at Unchained Capital. In this interview, we discuss the failure of currencies, the collapse of the economic engine and Bitcoin being the largest tidal wave that's ever existed. - - - - In the nearly 14 years since Bitcoin was launched the global order has continued to shudder in the w...

“You could describe Proof of Stake in two words: shareholders vote. And guess what, that is how the world works already… I want to build a system that at least has the potential to be democratising, and move towards decentralisation, censorship resistance, these properties that we care so much about; and I think Proof of Stake is a huge step in the wrong direction.”— Lane RettigNic Carter is a Partner at Castle Island Ventures & Lane Rettig is a core developer for Spacemesh. In this interview, we discuss the Ethereum merge specifically addressing the issue around increasi...

“If everyone uses a 12-inch ruler to build a house, and then one day, the government wakes up, and they change out all the rulers for an 11-inch ruler, but they don’t tell anybody…that distorts everything in the system because you’re using that as a measure, and the same thing happens with money.”— Steven LubkaSteven Lubka is Managing Director of Private Client Services at Swan Bitcoin. In this interview, we discuss how the misallocation of money by central banks distorts money, destroys capital, and creates zombie companies. Steven calls for money to be left to f...

“Bitcoin isn’t like a new theory about what kinds of money are possible, it’s more like a bulldozer that says: you’re all wrong, you need more tools to think properly about money; here’s a totally new kind of money that is kind of like fiat, kind of like gold and kind of like neither.”— Andrew BaileyAndrew Bailey is a philosopher, professor, fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, and co-founder of Resistance Money. In this interview, we discuss the philosophy of money in respect of what it is, what makes good money, the traps we c...

“The rates have been locked at 1, 2, or 3%...that’s completely distorted the way that people allocate capital; whether it’s human capital or it’s physical capital, they’ve gone ahead and done things specifically because the money is essentially free, rather than pursuing them because they’ll provide a real economic value.”— Joe ConsortiJoe Consorti is a Market Analyst at The Bitcoin Layer. In this interview, we discuss Austrian economics, Credit Suisse & the risk of large scale defaults, price distortions and how Bitcoin fixes this.- - - - When faced with econo...

“My whole objective here was just to really meticulously go through their document and show that they don’t have a better command of the facts then we do, they’re relying on bad data, they’re relying on bad sources and academics, and they should do better.”— Nic CarterNic Carter is a Partner at Castle Island Ventures and co-founder and Chairman of Coin Metrics. In this interview, we discuss the White House bitcoin mining research paper, regulation and the role of renewables in the energy mix.- - - - In September...

“My background is both economics and finance. So I feel very confident in what I’m saying: this is the first global private, meaning no government oversight, digital rules-based monetary system. When I’m explaining it like that I ask everyone to listen to each of those words, each one of them is very important. This is one of the most profound innovations of our time.”— Cathie WoodCathie Wood is the founder, CEO and CIO of Ark Invest. In this interview, we discuss investing in disruptive technologies, the importance of research for investment, deflationary signals, uncertaint...

“That’s the one thing Bitcoin does really well is that it has these property rights that allow you to enforce the fact that you do own Bitcoin. And so that’s what I’m most focused on: building a great wrapper and experience around that.”— Sam AbbassiSam Abbassi is the founder and CEO of Hoseki. In this interview, we discuss the growing demand for proof of reserves. Whilst the use case for businesses is clear, there is also an increasing retail need: it enables individuals to use Bitcoin as collateral, but also validates financial credentials...

“You have to understand what the Fed says in public is not what it says in private. You look at some of the academic studies, the literature, they know they have no idea what they’re doing. But their job requires them to tell the public that they do.”— Jeff SniderJeff Snider is co-host of the Eurodollar University podcast and Head of Global Research at Atlas Financial Advisors. In this interview, we discuss the crazy possibility that nobody knows what money is, and as a result, nobody knows how to run or fix the economy. Central...

“All of that monetary profligacy over the last 10 years put the Fed’s reputation on watch; everybody and their mother knows about the Fed and its willingness to just do QE infinity, and so in a post-pandemic world where they got caught, basically, without a plan, now they have to preserve their reputation.”— Nik BhatiaNik Bhatia is Author of Layered Money and founder of TheBitcoinLayer.com. In this interview, we discuss Jeff Snider’s Eurodollar ideas: how all money is credit money; why Bitcoin will be a check, but will not replace, fractional reserve banking; and how Bi...

“The only way that tyranny is prevented is a strong civil society that the state actually becomes concerned about.”— Natalie SmolenskiNatalie Smolenski is an Executive Director of the Texas Bitcoin Foundation and a Fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute. In this interview, we discuss the elimination of cash, the importance of Bitcoin to a free society, and the clear and present danger posed by CBDCs.- - - - Like the fable of a frog being not perceiving danger when slowly boiled, citizens in mature democracies have been surrendering to the steady...

“This period looks a lot like the 1940s, which is when you have a combination of high debt and high inflation, which is not what you had in the 70s. In the 70s they had low debt and high inflation, which means they had a lot more tools to respond to it…when you have that combination of both…that’s the closest thing that a central bank has to a checkmate scenario, where there’s only bad options.”— Lyn AldenLyn Alden is a macroeconomist and investment strategist. In this interview, we discuss the recent market turmoil...

“Free enterprise and individual liberty and innovation/entrepreneurship do actually increase prosperity for lower and middle-income people, they’ve done that all over the world; we’ve lifted a billion people out of poverty in India and China over the last 20 years...and we can do that again.”— Avik RoyAvik Roy is president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity think tank and a policy Editor at Forbes. In this interview, we discuss how society can improve social mobility through free markets, individual liberty, innovation, social integration, energy freedom, housing growth and harnessing good deflation...

“Where I think the real valuable conversation is, is not debating the science because again, I am a scientist, and I can back that shit up with fucking receipts. And that’s not going to be a fun debate for anybody. What’s the fun debate is ‘What do we actually do about it?’”— Nathaniel HarmonNathaniel Harmon is an oceanographer, Bitcoiner and cofounder of OceanBit. In this interview, we discuss how an old technology deriving energy from ocean temperature differences can provide unlimited renewable baseload energy, and Bitcoin’s vital and symbiotic role. - - - - ...

“Can we run the same models, but with better data? Can we get to a 1.5-degree world? And that’s the ultimate nuclear argument for how Bitcoin mining actually makes sense…where does it make sense to engage with policymakers, to actually build on their language, with their models, rerunning it but with Bitcoin mining, and Bitcoin in the various dimensions as the X factor in the equation.”— Herald RauterHarald Rauter is an environmentalist and Bitcoiner. In this interview, we discuss how UN climate change action is predicated on socio-economic scenarios that no longer apply (i.e. a coo...

“The fact that you had the opportunity to even consider becoming an energy generator, that’s purely because solar panels as a technology became so cheap and so accessible…in the hands of every person soon is going to be the ability to participate in the energy system and to be self-sovereign.”— Nima TabatabaiNima Tabatabai is co-founder of Optimize Infrastructure. In this interview, we discuss how battery technology for energy grids, solar’s overwhelming economic case, energy sovereignty, and how combining batteries, Bitcoin and solar results in the most flexible energy assets possible.- - - - ...

“We send around UTXOs, at the moment those UTXOs are Bitcoin, they could be lightning channels. Now, there’s a lot of complexity there, but I think that’s where we’re gonna go where you’d be able to move around lightning channels, and that’s like swapping around your checking account.”— Nicholas GregoryNicholas Gregory is the CEO of Commerce Block, the company behind Mercury Wallet. In this interview, we discuss how they have used statechains to develop a virtual version of Opendime, the balance of trust and privacy on layer 2 protocols, and onboarding Lightning users...

“One interesting thing about Bitcoin is Bitcoin doesn’t care about what the regulators do. If they end up drafting regulation that stifles the adoption it will just flourish in other jurisdictions, and eventually, they realise their mistake.”— Tibor BallaiTibor Ballai is the co-founder and CTO of Fortris. In this interview, we discuss the challenges of running a business on Bitcoin, how Fortis enables businesses to use Bitcoin as an operational currency, and why this will be the next step in the adoption cycle.- - - - It is one thing fo...

“Is the world that we want to live in, one where we need to hyperfinancialize every aspect of an individual’s life because financial conditions on a macro level are such that you have to finacialize your whole being in order to keep up or get ahead? Is that truly a victory for democracy?”— Logan BolingerLogan Bolinger is a lawyer and writer of the Think Bitcoin newsletter. In this interview, we discuss how he became orange pilled after concluding trust in politics is an impossible dream. We talk about how Bitcoin can help fix the broken p...

“Bitcoin mining can be plugged into the existing nuclear fleet as it and shore up the economics right now, because a lot of the reactors that are being shut down are because they’re not economically competitive on a grid that has a large share of wind and solar.”— Ryan MacLeodRyan MacLeod is a Bitcoiner working in the reactor research and safety programs at Canadian Nuclear Labs. In this interview, we discuss the importance and safety of nuclear energy, and how Ryan is trying to orange pill the nuclear industry by showing how Bitcoin aids the econ...

“On the encryption side a lot of people are worried about ‘how long do you want your secrets to remain secret for?’. And if you’re really worried about things staying secret for a long time, there are some things that people won’t want to get out for the next 100 years, then that’s the reason for people moving on to other types of secure platforms today.”— Richard MurrayRichard Murray is the co-founder and CEO of ORCA Computing. In this interview, we discuss the spooky and baffling effects of quantum mechanics, how ORCA is harnessing these...

“I think freedom is what humanity is striving for; I think we should have freedom in our societies, and freedom is not something that we should bargain for.”— Pascal GauthierPascal Gauthier is the CEO of Ledger. In this interview, we discuss how to build and grow a business in a bear market, making the business part of the mission, how nation-states are trying to steal Bitcoins, the vulnerability of software wallets to hacks at scale, and why freedom is not something that we should bargain for.- - - - Ledger is a F...

“If you decentralise custodianship, if you make being a custodian very, very easy, it makes a mockery of laws restricting people from being custodians; if you’ve just got a few big operators, they’re points of failure which can be attacked by government or whatever. I think you see that with technology if you make things easier to run, more people are going to collectively challenge those regulations and those rules.”— Ben ArcBen Arc is a free open-source software advocate and founder of LNbits. In this interview, we discuss how LNbits helps to decentralize custodians...

“A world where there’s a plethora of different kinds of society where people consent to the rules, and people have the ability to choose what kind of system they live under, is a better society for everyone.”— Peter YoungPeter Young is the managing director of the Free Cities Foundation. In this interview, we discuss the development of autonomous administrative areas around the world called ‘free cities’, where new types of governance can be offered to citizens outside the control of existing states.- - - - Paul Romer, former chief economist at...

“Now that we have this peer-to-peer payment network, where normally that value is being captured by credit card companies and applications and things like that in our current system, now that it’s peer-to-peer, that value can be captured by individuals peer-to-peer…that 5% fee going to your credit card company, that’s going to you baby.”— Eric YakesEric Yakes is the author of ‘The 7th Property’. In this interview, we discuss the possible Bitcoin banking systems that could emerge when Bitcoin reaches maturity. We consider the forms of banking that developed in the past, and the new forms of...

“Most of the solutions that I’ve seen around custody take us from A to B to C, so they’re better custody, they improve upon where we are. But what we did is look at what does the world look like when everybody’s using Bitcoin, when there are billions of people using Bitcoin.”— Obi NwosuObi Nwosu is a co-founder of Fedimint and a board member for Jack Dorsey’s and Jay-Z’s ₿trust. In this interview, we discuss how Fedimint builds upon various innovations to create community Bitcoin banks, with the aim of fully realising Bi...

“A model is just a way to try to predict something, but this got so popular that people just started believing in it completely, and stopped being rational about it. You always have to be a bit sceptical about models that predict the future, they can be wrong.”— Rational RootThe Rational Root is a Bitcoin on-chain & cycle analyst and in this interview, we discuss developing & using Bitcoin price models. We look in detail specifically at his Bitcoin Spiral Models, Bitcoin hodl price models and Bitcoin halving & cycle charts. - - - - Bit...

“Lightning opens up interesting things, if you’re a programmer in a country, you can now get international payments directly from them without going through their country’s banking system. It’s basically peer-to-peer finance. And then they have a unit that is hard, that is harder than their local currency….basically it connects global labour, global work, global productivity in a way that didn’t exist before.”— Lyn AldenLyn Alden is a macroeconomist and investment strategist. In this interview, we discuss her latest paper on the Lightning Network (LN). We focus on the importance of Bitcoin’s bas...

“It’s seriously a matter of life and death. Humanity cannot survive under tyranny, it just dwindles away and dies. It’s a really important fight, if we lose this one, we’re screwed - the future is going to be substantially different, substantially different, and not in a good way at all.”— Max HillebrandMax Hillebrand is an economist and open-source entrepreneur who runs Agora Towards Liberty. In this interview, we discuss the release of Wasabi Wallet 2.0 that he has been contributing to, the importance of CoinJoin, providing easy privacy for everyone, and why the personal ris...

“Left libertarianism, libertarian socialism, is the idea that you want to maximise freedom for people in general so maximising of liberty, that’s the libertarian part of it. And the socialist part of it is explaining that the best way to do that is with traditionally socialist structures, rather than more capitalist structures.”— Ben de WaalBen de Waal is the VP of Engineering for Swan Bitcoin. In this interview, we discuss living on bitcoin, what it means to be a libertarian socialist, the issues with capitalism and why Bitcoin should be a home for those on the l...

“This is the US government and the dollar system beating an open-source project and a free speech project… this isn’t like, oh, Bitcoin’s winning because Eth is losing. No, this is a big change that’s happening.”— Mark GoodwinMark Goodwin is the director of print editorial at Bitcoin Magazine. In this interview, we discuss the US government's sanctions on Tornado Cash, the upcoming Ethereum merge, and why this is vitally important for the future of Bitcoin. - - - - On 24th August, the Ethereum Foundation's Protocol Support team announced the...

“In Zimbabwe for instance with that high inflation: if you tell them you can’t inflate that money, you can’t make more out of this Bitcoin, you can’t censor it, your government can’t take it away from you, everybody understands immediately.”— Anita PoschAnita Posch is a fellow Bitcoin podcaster, author, advocate, and educator. In this interview, we discuss her mission to educate Bitcoin educators in emerging countries, the challenges Africans face using Bitcoin, and the numerous innovative Bitcoin initiatives happening in Africa.- - - - Bitcoin has a tremendous c...

“We’ve lived with this, we’re done with this. Look, you are now invading Ukraine, we’re not going to stand for it, and we’re certainly not going to side with people who say that Russia’s security interests are the problem here.”— Matthew MežinskisMatthew Mežinskis is the creator of the Crypto Voices podcast and Porkopolis Economics website. In this interview, we discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the refutation of justifications for the war on the basis of Russia’s security needs and threats from Ukrainian Nazis. - - - - On the...

“The problem is that this idea that what we used to believe were inviolable, sacred rights, can be suspended because of an emergency then they’re not sacred, then they’re not inviolable, then they’re basically temporary and they’re not rights: they’re permissions.”— Maajid NawazMaajid Nawaz is a UK-based counter-extremism activist, author and content producer. In this interview, we discuss his membership of a fundamentalist pan-Islam political group, imprisonment in Egypt, and returning to the UK to work on counter-extremism. We also discuss being forced to leave his position as a presenter on LBC....

“Credit needs no money; it needs no barter, it needs no commodity, it needs no intermediary, credit actually needs nothing and it can work… and that is actually the thing that has allowed civil civilization to grow well in excess of money.”— Matthew MežinskisMatthew Mežinskis is the creator of the Crypto Voices podcast and Porkopolis Economics website. In this interview, we discuss the definition of money, the importance of credit and fractional reserve banking, and how “not your keys, not your coins” equally applies to bank deposits. - - - - WBD528...

“Any of these external effects like the fact that mining is good for attaching to an energy infrastructure, the fact that anything is useful as a result of Bitcoin, comes from the fact that Bitcoin is nothing interesting. It just contained value, that’s it. All things flow from that.”— JunsethJunseth is an OG Bitcoiner and the former co-host of Bitcoin Uncensored. In this interview, we discuss how the early days of Bitcoin mirror the issues we’re seeing in the ecosystem today: over leverage, unsustainable returns, greed and excessive confidence that the party won’t end.

“I don’t think we’ll ever agree on what you might call meta consensus, like what the blockchain should contain. I think people will probably continue to disagree about that, forever. And I think that sidechain is a sort of an escape valve.”— Paul SztorcPaul Sztorc is an independent Bitcoin researcher. In this interview, we discuss drivechains, his 2015 proposal that’s the focus of BiP 300 and 301. Drivechains facilitate sidechains on Bitcoin, providing a bridge to new coins. The aim is to enable developer creativity atop Bitcoin.- - - - In October 2...

“Bitcoin has the potential to help with these progressive ideas; but in order for that to be successful, it doesn’t mean that all of the libertarian or conservative ideas have to be wrong.”— Jason MaierJason Maier is a teacher and progressive Bitcoiner. In this interview, we discuss his inspiration for writing a book setting out his case, as a progressive, for Bitcoin. The public narrative and FUD around Bitcoin are antithetical to progressives, yet, its utility is aligned with progressive ideals. - - - - Bitcoin should be a broad church...