Tonight I’ve started the process of remastering my entire podcast catalogue When I first started in 2019, I didn’t know too much about sound engineering (I was using too much reverb & mastering in headphones) and I also had entry level equipment 7 years later, I have much better technology and I can make every interview shine. I will also take advantage of this opportunity to fill my backlog: write a blog post about each and every interview, add individual Spotify graphics for every episode, upload YouTube videos of all the interviews that never made it there. If I do 1 episode/day (very unlikely due to traveling to conferences), I should complete the work in 1 year. But maybe in 18 months I will have everything ready and up to the standard that I’ve come to expect these days. Sometime next year, I want to also release the podcast in physical format for the big fans who also want to collect the content. Kind of like a DVD release with bonuses, except that it will probably be a 2 TB hard drive 😅 Anyway, it feels exciting to rediscover my older work. I cringe myself a little bit when I hear myself speak… but this only means that I improved over the years. Will post more updates as I continue the process. Today I did S1 E1 with the late Donald McIntyre, God bless his soul.

Vlad, how can you be so right about so many Bitcoin topics? Well, I’m glad you asked. I have 3 simple principles: 1. I look up to the builders, the visionaries & the guys I consider smarter than me. Not those who have been historically right, not the narrative gatekeepers. The guys who want Bitcoin to do everything and have a plan to make it happen. 2. I don’t care about what the others think. The high priests of the church of maximalism, the plebs, the pseudo celebrities like Max Keiser and the consensus craftsmen like Greg Maxwell or Mr. Hodl. I do my own thing without caring about public perception or whatever. 3. I always assume that I might be wrong and prepare accordingly. You can call me out for not having enough conviction, I don’t care. I’m here to breathe fresh air, not smell brainfarts in the same room philosophizing about their purity. This means sometimes I have to leave the room and take a look (and a sniff) from outside.

Man, I was so right It feels good to he vindicated

One important lesson that everyone has to learn eventually is that free markets are more efficient than human politics You can spend years trying to convince others that an idea is great They won’t change their mind until the market validates your thesis So you’re better off trying something new than waiting for everyone else to agree with you If you fail, you can apologize later But if you succeed, you can change the world around you regardless of what your critics think

I couldn’t sleep last night Been talking to my new friend Kimi K3 Together we built this amazing stats page For Bitcoin Takeover Podcast Check it out, maybe help me reach 1 million downloads this year! Check it out:

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A BIP110 altcoin is worthless What does it bring to the market that Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash & Zcash don’t already have? Well, virtue signaling. What is the value of virtue signaling? As some guys are about to find out, zero. The free market doesn’t care about feelings, concerns & broken solutions for made up problems You either provide something useful or else you enter the crypto graveyard

BIP110 was just thw recruitment ritual for an altcoin Everyone who engaged with Knots fans in good faith misunderstood the purpose of the movement The goal was never to have efficient filters or follow the BIP process They searched for the most radicalized plebs, boosted their platform, made them part of the fork Now the sunk cost fallacy is kicking in and some folks have their reputations tied to the performance of the new fork At least Paul is honest about his intentions to create a Bitcoin competitor Luke is a snake 🐍

Luke-jr’s strategy for luring maxis towards an altcoin should be studied He most likely knew where this is heading all along, but wanted to look like a pure hearted warrior in the eyes of his followers > I am here to save Bitcoin, mine with my pool > do you hate spam too? Run my Core fork > everyone who doesn’t run Knots is a pedophile > I came up with the solution to stop ordinals, it’s a soft fork > activate this soft fork at this date, we cannot lose. The miners don’t have a choice but to join us > those who didn’t join us are attacking bitcoin > we are the true bitcoin, everyone else is promoting a spam chain > on no, we are in a minority and the fork is getting crushed. But we cannot lose because we are the real bitcoin and everyone else is an attacker > we were not ready to become an altcoin, bear with me for another month as we change the mining algorithm > what do you mean we failed? Just wait, you will see how we defeat the forces of evil probably this time next month: > this is the real bitcoin that you can mine with your start9 node. What do you mean you’re not happy with $1 per coin on the only one exchange where we’re supported? This is what bitcoin was like back in the day too > hey look, now we have our own wallets, github repo, ticker & logo. What do you mean this is an altcoin? It’s the real bitcoin, don’t let the Epstein island visitors & pedo spammers lie to you!

When I started recording Bitcoin Takeover podcast in January 2019, I’ve been told that I’m just not interesting enough as a person to succeed Not funny, weird accent, not backed by a local meetup or company Just a nerd talking with internet strangers from his bedroom. Doomed to fail. After interviewing @BitcoinErrorLog for S1 E2, he revealed to me that he repeated the same talking points & stories from another podcast he did. Not because he intended to, but because I’ve asked him the same questions. This really broke my heart and made me aware that I have to consciously avoid this repetition. In order to cut through and stand out, I started inviting people who had never been on a podcast before. Anyone who had something interesting to say could join Bitcoin Takeover: a phenomenon you can observe in the first 3 seasons. When I’d have big names, I listened to the most recent interviews to avoid asking the same questions. Anyway, 7 years later I can get 90% of the interviews that I want and people really enjoy challenging me to long conversations… perhaps to test my stamina, or else to show off their own. Ultimately, embracing my initial weaknesses and quirkiness worked out a lot better than trying to become more like my American counterparts. This is the best advice I can give to anyone: find out who you are, then get better at expressing your uniqueness. And if you’re not part of the cool kids club, create your own.

nvk: introducing the new coldcard plebs: shut up and take my bitcoins

5 years ago, I thought I was gonna become the Roger Ver of Lightning Relentlessly onboarding people (waiters, shopkeepers, old friends) via Blue Wallet “This transaction is unstoppable. I just sent you $1 without banks, without any registration, with good privacy & instant finality!” The biggest problems: 1. it wasn’t working very reliably (many transactions would fail, which made me feel embarrassed) 2. Blue Wallet shut down their Lightning service a couple of years later, so everyone most likely got rugged 3. The amount was too small to withdraw on chain 4. I’m not as rich as Roger and probably never will be Lessons learned, my initiative turned out to be a failed experiment 🤷🏻‍♂️

I was right about: – Coldcard being a scam (2021) – Zcash becoming the new revenge chain, while the price was still under $50 (2025) – Bitcoin Cash becoming a big source of inspiration for BTC developers (2025) – Privacy becoming the next big narrative (2024, after returning from Nashville and realizing that nobody cares about the imprisoned Samourai devs) – The multi-coin world towards which we’re heading. 500 million coins across multiple chains is still scarce and better than infinite inflation or a captured 21 million with paper inflation. I was wrong about: – the Lightning network being the future of payments and the true altcoin killer – Staying Bitcoin-only during DeFi summer & the NFT mania – Bitcoin’s willingness to absorb Ethereum, Zcash & Namecoin use cases (the builders find amazing workarounds, but then the users don’t care because they’re HODLing) – Drivechains coming to Bitcoin, eventually. Now that a BIP300 hard fork is launching, it seems even less likely that Bitcoin will adopt the tech before the miners start starving – Bitcoin maximalists being the smartest people in the room. They’re not anymore, it’s been a decade since this was the case. What else was I right/wrong about?

I think lots of “bitcoin only” businesses are sighing in relief now that (Coldcard) one of the pillars of the movement turned out to be an elaborate scam Bitcoin is only half of the crypto market, BTC maximalists are cheap and rarely spend their coins on anything, virtue signaling doesn’t pay the bills or expand the business Gotta open up the business for the other half of the market, compete on the larger stage. Now that swapping services are everywhere and every wallet is a non-KYC exchange, might as well start making money.

Maybe that the Coldcard hacker wants to become an eCash ECX whale in 3 weeks Unfortunately, the Coldcard won’t support the airdrop

If you’re a true Bitcoin maximalist, spend $100 of your stash to study Bitcoin’s competition Buy some Zcash, try shielded pools & spend it via NEAR Intents Buy some Monero, mine sone with your CPU, learn how the subaddress system works & buy something on XMR Bazaar Buy some Ethereum, try Uniswap & create your first contract Buy some Litecoin, try MWEB and then spend it at a merchant Buy some Decred, see why their implementation of Lightning is more stable Buy some Bitcoin Cash, play with CashFusion, CashTokens & see what you can do with the covenants If you’re a true maximalist, you must think in terms of maximizing: bringing all the popular use cases to the network in which you are emotionally and financially most invested Learn from other projects, then try to figure out how it can work on Bitcoin You don’t need to buy more than $10 of each coin, consider this your education budget Once you learn more, you will become a more valuable community member in Bitcoin. Not a cheerleader, but someone who can compare and think for himself.

2017 marked a generational change in BTC The older devs left Bitcoin (Gavin Andresen, Jeff Garzik, Mike Hearn) A bunch of younger guys stepped up (Luke-jr, Greg Maxwell, Wladimir van der Laan, Matt Corallo) An entirely new culture was formed, featuring optimism about layer 2 scaling, a rejection of bigger blocks, and a general philosophy that Bitcoin is savings tech that is primarily used for storing value Unfortunately, too many sociopaths tagged along in order to take advantage of the Lord of the Flies scenario. Professional influencers, government agents, midlife crisis challengers, nutrition experts, outcast artists, they all appropriated the language and culture in order to become part of the movement. Of course, there are only so many slots on conference stages and only so many podcasts can succeed. So what followed was a ritual of purging anyone they didn’t like or simply didn’t want to succeed in this community It wasn’t about purity tests per se: people from the inner circles always had a free pass to use “shitcoins” (non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies) without any accountability. This is why Giacomo Zucco could do consultancy for Ethereum token projects without ever getting called out. This is why Idi Wertheimer could shill Tron while everyone else giggled. This is why nobody ever called out Rodolfo Novak for supporting Litecoin with his first version of the Coldcard. This is why Jameson Lopp could tweet “running Grin” without getting cancelled. The purging wasn’t for them. It was for me, because I interviewed Roger Ver. It was for Andreas Antonopoulos, because he never studied the new maximalist jargon and he wrote “Mastering Ethereum”. It was for Zooko, because in his quest to improve Bitcoin’s privacy he created a compatible altcoin. Just like accusations of sexual harassment were used during the metoo era to destroy the careers of businesses men and politicians, being a “shitcoiner” carried almost the same stigma and effect Bitcoin maximalists are the first class citizens. The chosen people. The pure ones who are destined to become super rich by doing nothing. Everyone else who tries to do something else, has the curiosity to explore beyond the limits of the dogma, or simply talks with certain people must be excommunicated. Of course, this morality works only as long as the claims are backed by technical merits. In 2017, Bitcoin still retained a technical edge and most altcoins were basically lazy clones with some modifications. But obviously, the free market was able to come up with innovations that weren’t cooked in the Bitcoin Core ivory tower. New use cases emerged. New users came with the expectation to access certain features. Instead of adapting to consolidate its network effect, Bitcoin chose to stagnate… and became increasingly proud about it! If proposals aren’t cooked in the ivory tower laboratory, they are either shitcoiny (because they were tried on other networks) or else they’re “not ready” until the ivory tower people agree that they’re good. Otherwise, the cheerleaders LARP that Bitcoin Core is a decentralized meritocracy where the best ideas always win. This is how Bitcoin lost its market dominance and network effect. Because the price went up irrespective of technological progress, the Core dev team became scared of improving anything because the project is too valuable, the conferences became brainwashing distractions that propagate memes instead of trying to create consensus, and in the meantime the smart people left the room to build elsewhere. Now we’re stuck with the bottom of the barrel in terms of community member IQ because only these guys can ignore all the signs and pretend with a straight face that Bitcoin is winning. The biggest irony is that many new devs today will admit that conservatively increasing the block size is a good approach, without unknown tradeoffs. 10 years too late…

The block size wars meant that, in 2017 lots of smart devs & business owners left Bitcoin maximalism for BCH, Ethereum & other cryptos Some of the biggest names were gone: Gavin Andresen, Mike Hearn, Roger Ver This power vacuum created an opportunity for some young guys to build a new Bitcoin culture, structure it as a top-down feudal structure (OG-pleb), and profit from it Unfortunately, many of them were not the brightest, most competent, or most successful. But they were sociopathic enough to want to climb their way to the top and keep others down NVK is a prime example: a nerd who wasn’t necessarily the best at anything, whose ideas couldn’t succeed on their own merit without politics and virtue signaling, but whose histrionic behavior was mistaken for confidence and competence Similar examples are Jimmy Song (not a great dev, but somehow on every conference stage), Pierre Rochard (more of a priest than economist), Francis Pouliot (idealistic LARPer who built his business on virtue signaling), Giacomo Zucco (the jester who never practiced what he preached, but always got away with it), Peter McCormack (king of midwits, but with a charming British accent) and I can go on all day The point is that under the previous Bitcoin environment, there was no room for these guys to shine. So in order to build their status and keep themselves at the top of the hierarchy, they created the church of Bitcoin maximalism and appointed themselves as high priests This worked so well that even shameless shitcoiners like Max Keiser (look up Maxcoin, Startcoin & the numerous DASH endorsements) took notice and wanted to join the club But to survive, churches need perpetual miracles and vindication. The biggest miracle is the price that goes up according to a mystical cycle. The vindication came when the lessons about self custody (learned during the Mt. Gox era) were also useful in 2021-2022 (Celsius, FTX, BlockFi) 2022 was the peak, though. Because these guys got greedy and felt jealous that the big blockers are making more money with the multi-coin diversification strategies. They missed out on DeFi summer. They missed out on the NFT mania. Virtue signaling doesn’t pay the bills. So they started shilling the Coldcard more aggressively: because it followed the rules of the church and it made them money. They didn’t allow anyone to criticize it. Instead, they turned the Coldcard into the status symbol: the object that screams “I’m part of the toxic maximalist club. I don’t hold any other coins”. Every church breaks when the miracles are gone, the vindications are hard to find, and the reality contradicts the dogma. That’s when the smart people read the room and start taking action to protect themselves from a disastrous outcome. But the consequence is that only the dumbest people stick around. Because to them, loyalty to the cult is everything and reason must be stopped if it contradicts the teachings. The biggest problem here is that markets are fast to reveal useful information. They aren’t always an oracle of truth: but they bring up patterns, trends, and expose lies. As soon as it became inexpensive to verify security code, the Coldcard went belly up. The cash cow of every hollier than thou influencer ran dry, leaving behind the kind of pain and resentment that hurts much more than exchange rug pulls and bad trades. I think that this incident will wipe out an entire class of influencers and businessmen. But if the church has enough leverage, it will try to save the reputations of the high priests and carry on. The only problem? The average IQ of the toxic maximalist church follower will go even lower. Only the dumbest guys will stick around. Everyone else will figure out ways to move on.

In early 2022 after Coldcard decided to ditch the open sourcd GPL license for Commons Clause, I called out NVK. Francis Pouliot defended came to his friend’s defense by arguing that I’m “gaslighting” with “esoteric nerd talk”. That’s when I lost all respect for Francis and I blocked him. I don’t care what else he does in the space, this man is not intellectually honest and chooses loyalty over truth. The reason I am posting this is simple: if more people called out Rodolfo (NVK) for his reckless decision to change licenses, the Coldcard firmware would have had more scrutiny from white hat hackers. Today’s incident could have been avoided if the people close to NVK had the balls to call him out on his bullshit.

I just want to thank @Peter Todd for opening my eyes about Coldcard in late 2019 with something that he described the “tiger rock”: a solution for a problem that you don’t have, but is marketed to you He also taught me that the best security is in the most tested solution (for hardware wallets, Trezor) and it’s better to use something limited in scope that you understand than something so complex that you won’t be able to replicate the same setup ceremony Peter also told me point blank that Bitcoin Core on a clean Linux computer is more secure than Coldcard or any other hardware wallet So yeah, I owe a lot of my understanding of security and threat models to him and the fact that he took the time to explain to me some basic concepts Once again: Bitcoin Takeover podcast listeners can sleep well these days

Will interview @npub18p63...0k8k in about 10 hours 12:30 PM CET / 6:30 AM EST Join the livestream chat if you have any questions! https://www.youtube.com/live/Y8vFTR1L8Lg?si=kaB86u46ATzQKM0y