The Bitcoin v Crypto War with Udi Wertheimer, Crypto Cobain, Alex Gladstein & Allen Farrington

 
 
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“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 Cobain

SHOW DESCRIPTION

Location: Remotely
Date: Wednesday 29th September
Company/project: Independent, Independent, Human Rights Foundation & Baillie Gifford
Role: N/A, N/A, Chief Strategy Officer & Investment Manager

The 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.

TIMESTAMPS

00:05:54: Introductions
00:07:42: Why toxicity is bad for Bitcoin
00:21:54: The protocol war and regulatory pressure
00:31:07: The spectrum of decentralisation
00:34:37: State capture
00:37:15: How decentralised is Ethereum?
00:41:05: Bitcoin vs the crypto industry
00:46:09: Innovation and scams
00:50:45: The trading community
01:00:43: Behavioural change in buying trends
01:07:39: Dishonesty is hurting the retailers
01:19:11: Requiring transparency from VCs
01:27:23: A parable about ethics
01:30:42: A fair launch can no longer happen
01:36:48: Building on Bitcoin
01:46:38: Securities vs money
01:54:01: The answer is education
02:00:36: Final comments

 

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SHOW NOTES

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