From the Front Page - General
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153 - Alex Wearn: Decentralized Capital And Government Currencies On Ethereum
October 18th, 2016 by
Epicenter A topic which is often discussed is the limited use of Ethereum applications without stable cryptocurrencies. Prediction markets are a prime example of this. When one makes a prediction using Ether, he or she is in fact entering into to speculations: one being the outcome of the actual prediction, the other being the price of Ether when the prediction resolves. Projects like Maker DAO try to solve the problem by developing complex systems to ensure that a blockchain token keeps its value in ...
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152 - Tuur Demeester: Investing In Bitcoin
October 10th, 2016 by Epicenter In 2012, a year after discovering Bitcoin in Argentina, Dutch economist Tuur Demeester became one of the first people to advocate investing in Bitcoin to a mainstream audience. Tuur joined us to discuss his thesis for investing in Bitcoin and how it has evolved over time. We also talked about the road ahead and how other cryptocurrencies and Ethereum compare as investment opportunities.
Topics covered included:
- How Tuur discovered Bitcoin in Argentina in 2011
- The case for investing ...
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151 - Ian Grigg: Ricardian Contracts And Digital Assets Prehistory
October 3rd, 2016 by Epicenter Before 2013 few people paid attention to Bitcoin and blockchain, yet even back in the 1990s a vibrant group of prioneers pursued the vision of financial cryptography and digital cash. One of these was financial cryptographer and software developer Ian Grigg, who today works as an architecture consultant for R3. Grigg joined us for a discussion of the history of the digital cash, Bitcoin and his work on Ricardian Contracts, which foreshadowed today's smart contracts.
Topics covered includ...
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150 - Devcon 2 And The State Of Ethereum
September 27th, 2016 by Epicenter Last week the biggest blockchain-focused developer conference took place in Shanghai, China: Ethereum's DevCon 2. Epicenter show host Meher Roy was at the conference and brought back his impressions and insights for a comprehensive discussion of the current state of Ethereum projects and the Ethereum community.
Topics covered included:
- What Ethereum's developer conference DevCon 2 was like
- The big change in going from concepts to alpha version over the last year
- The continued lac...
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148 - Kyle Torpey: Diving Into Bitcoin - The Debates, The Issues and What's To Come
September 12th, 2016 by Epicenter We're joined by Kyle Torpey, a freelance writer, and journalist who writes for a number of publications in the blockchain space including Bitcoin Magazine, Coin Journal, and others. Know for his well-written articles and in-depth reporting on the important topics affecting Bitcoin today, Kyle provides his point of view on the scalability debate and gives an update on the recent and upcoming changes to the bitcoin protocol.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- An update on the scalability d...
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147 - Sarah Meiklejohn: Anonymity, Central Bank Cryptocurrencies And The Academic View On Bitcoin
September 5th, 2016 by Epicenter With academic research on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies still in its infancy, Sarah Meiklejohn's track record of publications in the area stands out. The UCL computer science professor has explored topics ranging from anonymity in Bitcoin to how a central bank could go about issuing a cryptocurrency.
Topics covered included:
- What techniques can be used to deanonymize Bitcoin users
- How Bitcoin's usage evolved over time
- Whether privacy-enhancing overlays in Bitcoin currently work ...
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EB146 - Ryan X. Charles: Allowing Content Creators to Own and Monetize Content with Yours
August 29th, 2016 by Epicenter In the last 20 years, content publishing platforms have proliferated to an almost insane number. There are countless places where people and companies can post articles, blogs, videos, photos, live content and so on. Despite this diverse offering, little innovation has happened in monetizing content, which still mostly remains ad-based.
We're joined by Ryan X. Charles, Bitcoin Developer and Founder of Yours. Yours would like to address the monetization problem by allowing content produce...
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EB145 - Stephen King & Russell McLernon: Distrupting Real Estate With RexMLS - A Decentralized MLS
August 23rd, 2016 by Epicenter One of the sectors which is ripe for disruption is the real estate industry. In the US for instance, a handful of historic and very powerful players operate what is known as MLS, or Multiple Listing Services, and hold unofficial monopolies on residential and commercial real estate listings. Brokers, who depend on these listing services to sell properties, agree that their incumbent positions have created a situation where fees have continued to rise, while little to no added value has been a...
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EB144 - Charles Hoskinson & Alex Chepurnoy: IOHK, Scorex And The Case For Ethereum Classic
August 16th, 2016 by Epicenter From BitShares to his central role during the inception of Ethereum Charles Hoskinson has continually influenced key projects in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space. After departing the Ethereum project in 2014, he has recently stepped back into the limelight by pledging support and resources to turn the fledgling Ethereum fork ETC into a viable project.
Charles joined us together with Alex Chepurnoy, a developer at his company IOHK. Besides Ethereum Classic, we talked about IOHK and...
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EB143 - Joey Krug: Augur - A Decentralized, Crowdsourced Prediction Market Built On Ethereum
August 9th, 2016 by Epicenter Prediction markets are fascinating financial instruments which have proven to be accurate at making predictions on things like the outcome of elections, geopolitical events and sporting events. But in our heavily regulated financial world, they are the subject of much controversy. In 2013 for instance, a well-known US prediction market, Intrade, was forced to shut down following a civil suit filed by the CFTC. While some people consider prediction markets to be a useful tool for society, oth...
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Many Blockchains, One Cryptocurrency
July 25th, 2016 by
John Light Since the introduction of Namecoin, the first serious attempt to build a public blockchain network separate from Bitcoin, there has been an explosion of so-called “altcoins” – bitcoin competitors – which have sought to unseat bitcoin from its throne atop the cryptocurrency charts. So far, none have come close to matching the market demand for bitcoin, with bitcoin commanding about 82% of the market share in the $12.9 billion cryptocurrency market at the tim... Read More -
Teaching Bitcoin at the Enchanted Forest Gathering
July 17th, 2016 by John Light On Sunday July 24, from 1:30 – 3:00pm, I will be giving a workshop called “Banking With Bitcoin” at the Enchanted Forest Gathering in Northern California. During this workshop, I will teach attendees about the basics of Bitcoin, then go on to explain the many ways that Bitcoin can be used to do tasks normally associated with banking. This talk is based on the content published in my book “Bitcoin: Be Your Own Bank” and will feature some new content th... Read More -
EB139 – Martin Köppelmann: Gnosis - The Ethereum Prediction Market
July 11th, 2016 by Epicenter Few things arouse excitment among free market believers and enthusiasts of decentralization as prediction markets do. By allowing people to bet on any range of outcomes they promise more efficient markets and better information. Few people have worked with as much dedication on making the promise of prediction markets a reality as Martin Köppelmann.
After founding the Bitcoin prediction market Fairlay, he turned to Ethereum and started the Ethereum-based prediction market Gnosis. We dis...
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EB138 - Sergio Lerner: How RSK Will Bring Smart Contracts To Bitcoin
July 4th, 2016 by Epicenter Security researcher and RSK co-founder Sergio Lerner joined us to discuss RSK (also Rootstock), the project to launch a turing-complete smart contract sidechain to Bitcoin. We talked about how he got into the industry, spending countless days analyzing Bitcoin for vulnerabilities and finding a few along the way. And, of course, RSK, the ambitious project to strenghten the Bitcoin ecosystem through adding smart contract capabilities.
Topics covered included:
- How Sergio initially got inv...
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EB137 – Siân Jones: Regulatory Update - The Brexit, The EU And The DAO
June 29th, 2016 by Epicenter With recent news surrounding The DOA and the Brexit vote causing a stir in the blockchain world and beyond, it seems like a regulatory update is due. So we called up our favorite regulatory affairs specialist Siân Jones to enlighten us on some of the recent developments in Bitcoin and blockchain regulation.
Topics covered in this episode include:
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The Brexit and it's potential impacts on the Blockchain and Fintech space in the UK
- The Bank of England opening its doors to more t...
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EB136 - Arthur Breitman: Tezos - A Self-Amending Crypto-Ledger
June 20th, 2016 by Epicenter The lack of an explicit governance mechanism has created deep problems for Bitcoin. Ethereum, with the DAO-related soft/hard-fork discussions, may face similar challenges ahead. Yet, already in 2014 Arthur Breitman quietly started working on cryptocurrency network Tezos that has an explicit mechanism to let coinholders vote on protocol upgrades.
Our discussion with Breitman centered around how explicit governance could lead to a more secure and evolutionary protocol. We also discussed Te...
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Used Underwear Vendors and Assumptions About Smart Contracts
June 20th, 2016 by
Adam B. Levine When doing new things, it is not uncommon to find completely unanticipated results. The recent events impacting TheDAO have opened my eyes to a reality that is very contrary to the one I thought I knew. Why are we interested in smart contracts and what really is their value?
Peer to Peer Ecommerce - For the People?
Let's talk about OpenBazaar - For anyone who hasn't heard of it, basically it's a protocol to decentralize ecommerce listings. So a merchant, instead of paying shopify $2...
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Andreas Antonopolous Recorded Live, is Uncensored and Uncut with Part 2 of LTB #297 Available Now!
June 18th, 2016 by Adam B. Levine This episode is unedited and contains mature language, a mildly edited version will be available on the podcast feed by Tuesday.
On this episode, Andreas is joined by Attorneys Pamela Morgan and Brian Klein. From the founding Ethereum team, Taylor Gerring joins to provide an insiders perspective on events. This episode is not investment or legal advice, consult your own representative.
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EB134 - Emin Gün Sirer And Vlad Zamfir: On A Rocky DAO
June 6th, 2016 by Epicenter Raising $150m+ through its toke sale, 'The DAO' has become the most notable decentralized application to date. The ambitious goal of the project is to form an decentralized organizations that efficiently makes investment decisions and generates a return for the token holders.
Computer Science professor Emin Gün Sirer and researcher Vlad Zamfir joined us to discuss the various security issues with the daring project and why they've called for a temporary moratorium on funding proposals. ...
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Technology and Choice article (What's in a Name?)
April 18th, 2016 by
John Ferguson [Note: link to author's reading of the article appears at the bottom of the article]
Technology and Choice is a great name for a podcast, don’t you think? A lot of people seem to find the title compelling, all by itself. I know I do. There’s so much implied, yet so formlessly. Even I only have a vague idea of where we’re going with this--just a thread to start pulling, really. So, why is the name so engaging?
Choice
Choice is one of those weird strings the universe leaves han...
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