What Bitcoin Did

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Who Needs Bitcoin? With Junseth

Peter McCormack

Interview | Description | Timestamps | Show Notes

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Who Needs Bitcoin? With Junseth - WBD541 Peter McCormack

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Junseth 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.

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The contagion in the DeFi market over the past few months has seemed unprecedented. Major companies wiped out. Investors rekt. Confidence turned to panic. Commentators have been declaring that the recent events are an existential crisis: this time Bitcoin is really dead.

As one of the OG Bitcoiners, Junseth was part of the initial wave who eulogized and expanded on what the innovation could possibly mean for the world before the world had heard of Bitcoin. Then, between 2015-2017, he hosted the uncompromising podcast Bitcoin Uncensored, with Chris DeRose. They exposed false promises and scams prevalent in the space.

Past is, as they say, prologue. And the past events that triggered the development of Bitcoin, and its early days, rhyme with the present.

Junseth connects the over-leverage within traditional finance, which was the predicate for Satoshi’s message in the genesis block, with the excessive confidence and greed that has been the root of the cascading collapse of DeFi companies. In turn, the untenable yields prevalent within the altcoin markets were a practice employed by scammers working with Bitcoin nearly a decade ago.

What are the important lessons to learn? Humans are creatures of habit: scams and greed will always follow the money. But, is the more important lesson that the unnecessary complexity of the grift that develops diverts from the principle simplicity of Bitcoin? Is the innovation of digital value the singular utility? Will those motivated by greed, therefore, miss the real purpose of Bitcoin? Should we instead follow the actions of those motivated by need?

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00:05:17: Introductions
00:05:33: Another Bitcoin winter
00:10:10: Ponzi schemes, and Bernie Madoff
00:16:56: The problem with leverage, and the story of LTCM
00:28:22: The 2008 Financial Crisis
00:34:05: Financial risks and bank failures
00:38:42: Corruption, centralisation, and not all decentralisation is good
00:47:22: Understanding the markets
00:50:27: The Pirateat40 story
00:57:17: Bitcoin's early days
01:02:06: Who needs Bitcoin?
01:11:21: There's nothing interesting about Bitcoin
01:15:37: Guarding against resentment and prioritising time over wealth
01:29:13: DeFi contagion
01:32:03: BlockFi and other WBD sponsorship
01:44:00: Getting rekt
01:50:07: Dogecoin, and selling Bitcoin
01:53:47: Bitcoin integrating into traditional markets, and the metaverse
01:59:00: NFTs and other collectibles
02:14:23: Final comments

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