Shit Bitcoiners Say with Rusty Russell
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SHOW DESCRIPTION
Location: Squadcast
Date: Friday 25rd September
Company: Blockstream
Role: Lightning Network Developer
Bitcoiners can be firm in their views and are often called toxic by outsiders; however, this toxicity plays an important role. Bitcoin is a threat to the legacy financial system. It is therefore open to a broad range of attacks from technical to social and Bitcoin's immune system defends against these attacks to protect the protocol.
In previous episodes, I have looked at the pros and cons of toxicity and how it acts as an immune system for Bitcoiner. Does this immune system lead to silly narratives going unchallenged? Can Bitcoin fix everything or are we missing critical nuanced debates regarding its potential?
Rusty Russell is somewhat of a contrarian in the Bitcoin space. He is a lightning network developer for Blockstream but also runs the Shit Bitcoiners Say Twitter account which regularly calls out some of the more overzealous and outlandish claims by Bitcoiners.
In this interview, Rusty and I discuss the lightning network, open-source development, narratives and overzealous Bitcoiners.
TIMESTAMPS
00:05:27: Introductions
00:08:04: Lightning and the search for the killer use case
00:15:55: Porn and drugs…
00:18:37: Jack Mallers and Strike
00:21:55: All about Linux
00:29:11: From Linux to Blockstream - Rusty's journey
00:33:08: Number Go Up
00:38:44: Mt Gox and other scams
00:40:55: When Peter got rekt
00:46:41: Bitcoin Fixes This
00:47:16: The "Bitcoin will stop wars" debate
00:50:13: Libertarianism
01:10:19: Peter and Rusty debate Bitcoin over gold
01:13:52: What is Bitcoin for Rusty?
01:16:22: The three phases of Bitcoin
01:20:48: The three groups of bitcoiners
01:25:49: Forking Bitcoin
01:29:08: Peter's experience of mining
01:29:42: Rusty's view on the future of Bitcoin
01:31:00: The hash rate
01:35:25: Shit Bitcoiners Say
01:43:17: Declaration of interests
01:47:30: Why not to speculate on the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto!
01:52:17: Increasing the block size
02:00:12: Final comments
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SHOW NOTES
Connect with Rusty:
Mentioned in the interview:
Other relevant WBD podcasts:
WBD271: Becoming a Bitcoin Core Developer with Amiti Uttarwar
WBD259: Does Bitcoin Have Gatekeepers? With Andreas M. Antonopoulos
WBD258: BTC vs ETH Technicals with Andrew Poelstra, Tadge Dryja, Vitalik Buterin & Patrick McCorry
WBD134: John Newbery on Building a Bitcoin Developer Community
WBD110: Andrew Poelstra on Schnorr, Taproot & Graft Root Coming to Bitcoin
WBD107: Daniel Buchner on Why Microsoft is Building Decentralised IDs on Bitcoin
WBD106: Bitcoin Block Reorgs Explained with Adam Back and Bryan Bishop
WBD047: Adam Back on a Decade of Bitcoin