579 episodes
Stephan Livera Podcast Stephan Livera
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- Technology
Join Stephan as he interviews the sharpest economic and technical minds in Bitcoin & Austrian Economics to help you understand how money is changing and evolving. Leading names in the world of Bitcoin join the show to share their insights, whether they are developers, CEOs, economists, authors, analysts and more.
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Silent Payments: A Bitcoin username? With Josibake and Ruben Somsen SLP579
Silent Payments is a new approach to improving privacy and useability of Bitcoin. Imagine not needing to manually create new addresses? Josibake and Ruben Somsen join me to discuss some of the ins and outs of Silent Payments. We discuss:
Silent Payments overview
Contrast with other techniques such as BIP47
Light client support
Stopping address re use
Base layer privacy discussion
Links:
X: @josibake
X: @SomsenRuben
BIP: Silent Payments
Tracking progress in Bitcoin Core/libsecp256k1
Informational website from sethforprivacy : Privacy-preserving static addresses for Bitcoin
Sponsors:
Swan.com (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Subscribe to Substack
Timestamps:
(00:00) - Intro
(01:01) - Overview of Silent Payments (SP)
(03:15) - History of the SP idea & contrast with other methods
Add more
(14:36) - Current status of SP development & adoption
(17:49) - Testing light clients for SP
(21:50) - The Silent Payment Experience
(26:31) - Light client support
(31:20) - What is a light client?
(38:05) - Sponsors
(41:16) - Spend Key & Scan Key
(42:37) - XPUB vs. Silent Payments
(44:42) - Reducing address re-use with SP
(49:29) - Labeling with Silent Payments
(53:14) - Ease of use and compatibility with Lightning
(57:03) - Overcoming the ‘silver bullet’ mindset
(01:10:50) - Composability with Silent Payments
(01:12:46) - Silent Payments summary
(01:14:06) - Closing Thoughts -
Bitaxe: The Open Source Bitcoin Miner with Skot - SLP578
Skot joins me to talk about his project to bring affordable, energy efficient, open source mining to home miners. We discuss:
The current state of open source in bitcoin mining
Bitaxe overview
Why do people do this?
Price and how to set one up
Mining pools
Decentralisation
Links:
X: @skot9000
Site: Bitaxe.org
Sponsors:
Swan.com (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Nomadcapitalist.com/apply
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Subscribe to Substack -
Great Script Restoration with Rusty Russell SLP577
Rusty Russell rejoins me on the show to talk about a new idea for a bitcoin soft fork that hopefully avoids some of the ‘horse trading’ dynamic that existed amongst other proposals. Listen in to learn more about the different paradigm that Rusty introduces here, so that developers can build more functionality and efficiency in, hopefully so that more people can use Bitcoin in self-custody.
Bitcoin Script background
GSR overview
GSR benefits
What is varops
Contrast with APO or LNHANCE?
Will it enable shitcoins and spam?
Relevant previous episodes:
SLP565 Great Consensus Clean up, MEVil and LN isn’t dead – Steve Lee and Matt Corallo
SLP573 A Shift in Bitcoin Developer Thought? with Brandon Black (aka reardencode)
Links:
Rusty’s BTC plus plus talk on GSR
https://x.com/rusty_twit
Sponsors:
Swan.com (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Subscribe to Substack -
Payjoin Dev Kit for Bitcoin Privacy - Dan Gould SLP576
Dan Gould of the PayJoin Dev Kit (sponsored by Spiral and Opensats) joins me to discuss how Bitcoin privacy could be improved with more PayJoin adoption. What’s more, it might also benefit users in consolidating their wallets or potentially even fee savings. We discuss how this could be integrated into more bitcoin wallets.
What is a PayJoin?
How it helps privacy
Other benefits in efficiency
Downsides and trade offs
Changes with the v2 PayJoin protocol
PayJoin Directory
Payjoin Dev Kit
Links:
X: @bitgould
X: @payjoindevkit
Site: PayjoinDevKit.org
Site: Payjoin.org
Sponsors:
Swan.com (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Subscribe to Substack -
Core Scientific Exits Bankruptcy with Adam Sullivan SLP575
Adam Sullivan, CEO of Core Scientific joins me today as we chat about:
Going through bankruptcy as a Bitcoin miner
Debt financing
Role of capital structure in mining
What makes Core Scientific different?
Centralisation of mining pools
Fee dynamics going forward
2025 outlook on Mining
Links:
X: @_Adam_Sullivan1
Core Scientific: Corescientific.com
Sponsors:
Swan.com (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Subscribe to Substack -
Bitcoin Mining and Capital Structure with Rapha Zagury SLP574
Rapha Zagury, CIO of Swan and Head of Swan Mining rejoins me on the show to talk about a range of topics, from Brazil’s flooding, Bitcoin Mining, Capital Structure, as well as share some insights on speaking to TradFi professionals about Bitcoin.
Links:
X: @alphaazeta
Site: Swan.com
Site: Nakamotoportfolio.com
Nakamoto Gauntlet: The Nakamoto Portfolio Gauntlet
Sponsors:
Swan.com (code LIVERA)
CoinKite.com (code LIVERA)
Mempool.space
Stephan Livera links:
Follow me on X: @stephanlivera
Subscribe to the podcast
Subscribe to Substack