Maxime Desalle

Maxime Desalle

Conversations about technology, investing, science, and ambitious ideas.

Episodes

  1. Oct 20

    Zcash Is Encrypted Bitcoin — The Winklevoss Twins

    My first interview with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Guests: Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss Watch on YouTube · Transcript · Follow Maxime on X Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:47 — The 2012 thesis: digital gold 01:46 — Bitcoin’s missing feature: privacy 02:28 — The first internet-native money 03:15 — Why they seeded Zcash in 2016 04:47 — Money has always been private 05:31 — The true separation of money and state 06:20 — Privacy: where the state ends and you begin 07:59 — AI and quantum as accelerants 09:11 — Bullish AI means bullish Zcash 09:27 — Bitcoin’s place in a Zcash world 10:53 — Zcash in 5–10 years 11:47 — AI cycles, not halving cycles 13:37 — The biggest infrastructure build-out ever 14:08 — Valuing Zcash as a percentage of Bitcoin 14:54 — Zcash is encrypted Bitcoin 16:04 — Gold is abundant in space 17:27 — Why start Cypherpunk 19:05 — The coming war on privacy 19:55 — Flock cameras and mass surveillance 22:18 — The encryption wars: Zcash is HTTPS 23:47 — Wrench attacks and public blockchains 25:10 — “I have nothing to hide” 27:11 — Einstein at the patent office 29:14 — Self-censorship in academia 29:48 — Privacy forces you to engage with ideas 30:41 — Outro

  2. Sep 15

    Bitcoin Has Been Captured — Josh Swihart

    My first interview with Josh Swihart, founder and CEO of Zcash Open Development Lab (ZODL), the team behind the Zodl wallet. Guest: Josh Swihart Watch on YouTube · Transcript · Follow Maxime on X Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:45 — Zcash was objectively dying 03:36 — What revived Zcash 07:11 — Swaps: the killer feature 08:41 — What was broken at ECC 10:54 — A dev fund that looks like a government 11:30 — The fork excuse 12:20 — Why ECC went for-profit 13:34 — Balaji: too big to kill 16:05 — Zodl’s roadmap 16:44 — The parallel polis 18:25 — Building a parallel financial system 19:10 — Seed phrases are antiquated 21:57 — Desktop wallet, multisig & time locks 24:50 — Bitcoin has been captured 26:21 — Bitcoiners hedging into Zcash 27:00 — How Zcash avoids capture 29:25 — Do ETFs matter? 30:25 — The biggest Bitcoin maximalist lie 31:58 — Bitcoin’s quantum problem 34:35 — Peter Todd and the soundness bug 36:35 — Will Zcash overtake Bitcoin? 37:23 — Zcash in the hands of billions 37:39 — Store of value vs. currency 38:43 — Should the transparent pool die? 41:19 — Exchanges have no excuse (Gemini vs. Coinbase) 44:00 — Quantum recoverability & the post-quantum roadmap 45:58 — The most secure place to store funds 46:19 — Tap-to-pay, Flexa & CrossPay 49:08 — Stablecoins as the Trojan horse 49:52 — Outro

  3. Aug 11

    Why Billionaires Are Betting on Zcash — Will McEvoy

    My first interview with Will McEvoy, CIO at Cypherpunk and Principal at Winklevoss Capital. Guest: Will McEvoy Watch on YouTube · Transcript · Follow Maxime on X Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:37 — Investing in a chaotic macro regime 02:42 — What entropy actually means 04:08 — Does AI create order or amplify chaos? 04:35 — AI centralizes, crypto decentralizes 06:25 — Zcash as private, unstoppable money 07:25 — What Cypherpunk is building 08:41 — Is Cypherpunk just a DAT? 10:21 — The Berkshire Hathaway of privacy 12:56 — What makes an asset pro-entropic 14:44 — Why attacking Zcash makes it stronger 16:34 — Where Bitcoin fits in 18:51 — Why not gold? 20:29 — AI as the forcing function for privacy 23:03 — ZK proofs and information leakage 25:16 — Will Zcash flip Bitcoin? 26:42 — The Bitcoin maximalist cope 28:41 — Toward a digital Bill of Rights 30:34 — Cryptography vs. pinky-promise privacy (VPNs) 33:22 — Why Zcash over other privacy coins 34:22 — Complexity as attack surface 35:20 — The spectrum of crypto privacy 36:18 — Can Zcash avoid institutional capture? 38:22 — Outro

  4. Jul 2

    This Physicist Says There Are Millions of You — Sam Kuypers

    A conversation with Sam Kuypers, quantum physicist and fellow at the Conjecture Institute. Guest: Sam Kuypers Watch on YouTube · Transcript · Follow Maxime on X Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:33 — Working with David Deutsch 01:11 — Taking quantum theory seriously 03:19 — Locality & local realism 04:19 — Entanglement explained 06:28 — Spooky action at a distance 08:42 — The Conjecture Institute 09:58 — What is Many Worlds? 11:01 — The measurement problem 16:28 — Collapse vs. Many Worlds 19:00 — Branching & decoherence 22:23 — The double-slit experiment 25:20 — Where are the worlds? (Bekenstein bound) 27:18 — What is Hilbert space? 31:08 — Does Many Worlds violate energy conservation? 33:57 — Is time real? 34:20 — Newtonian time vs. internal time 37:07 — Julian Barbour & timeless physics 41:00 — The Page–Wootters clock model 45:02 — Explaining time to a non-physicist 47:19 — Free will in a deterministic universe

  5. Jun 3

    This Cryptographer Has a 10-Year Plan for Zcash — Zooko Wilcox

    My first interview with Zooko Wilcox, co-founder of Zcash. Guest: Zooko Wilcox Watch on YouTube · Transcript · Follow Maxime on X Chapters 00:00 — Intro 00:40 — Why Zooko joined Cypherpunk as advisor 01:42 — Quantum computing & Zcash’s position 05:09 — Bitcoin vs Zcash culture 07:18 — What is Crosslink? 09:35 — Crosslink benefits: irreversible finality & security budget 14:24 — Bitcoin’s security budget problem & NSM 18:20 — The complexity critique of Crosslink 21:23 — NSM, dynamic fees & voting confusion 25:14 — Coin-weighted voting 27:55 — Tachyon: scalability and post-quantum 32:35 — Shielded Labs’ enterprise support services 33:38 — The T-addresses debate 38:30 — The political path forward for Crosslink 43:25 — Turnstiles & canary networks 45:28 — Zooko’s 10-year vision for Zcash

  • 5 Episodes

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Conversations about technology, investing, science, and ambitious ideas.

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