Location: Skype Date: Sunday, 21st July Project: General Bytes Role: Owner Since the first Bitcoin ATMs started appearing in 2013, the market has grown at a significant rate, seemingly unaffected by Bitcoin’s volatility. With a fast-paced market and strong competition, manufacturers have to keep up with a growing demand for machines and new feature requests. General Bytes has become the largest manufacturer of Bitcoin ATMs with over 1,700 machines in over 40 different countries (according to Coin ATM Radar). They are now faced with navigating the regulatory landscape and finding a business model that is sustainable in this new and emerging market. In this episode, I speak to Karel Kyovsky the owner of General Bytes. We discuss how they stay ahead of their competition,  the challenges of implementing The Lightning Network, security and regulations.

Location: Chicago Date: Tuesday, 2nd July Project: Athena Bitcoin Role: Compliance Officer, CEO and Co-Founders The Bitcoin ATM market continues to grow, and according to a recent report by Coin ATM Radar there are now over 5,000 Bitcoin ATMs worldwide.  While the vast majority are located in the United States, a growing number are appearing in countries where the general population may have less access to proper banking infrastructure and greater economic uncertainty. In these countries, Bitcoin ATMs offer an easy to use FIAT onramp which allows people to hedge against fragile economies and extreme inflation using Bitcoin. In this interview, I speak with Gil Valentine and Eric Gravengaard co-founders of Athena Bitcoin. Athena Bitcoin started out in Chicago but now operate across 8 US states as well as in Mexico, Columbia and Argentina. We discuss the challenges of growing a Bitcoin ATM business, operator fees and opening up to the South American market.

Location: New York Date: Friday, 26th July Project: Chaincode Labs Role: Bitcoin Engineer As an open source initiative, Bitcoin does not have a central fund to pay developers. Instead, it relies on a community of committed devs and a core group of companies and Bitcoin philanthropists to fund them. One of the companies leading the way in providing a platform for these developers is Chaincode Labs.  Every year, Chaincode Labs runs a Hackers Residency which allows people from all around the world to come to New York, connect with developers and work on Bitcoin. In 2016, John Newbery quit his job in telecoms and took a spot on Chaincode Labs first residency. Following a successful four weeks, he was hired to work full time as a Bitcoin Developer at Chaincode. Since then John has dedicated his time to working on the Bitcoin Protocol, Lightning and building a community for Bitcoin developers by running the residency program for Chaincode. In this interview, John explains what it is like working on the Bitcoin protocol and with other core devs, the risks of a reducing block subsidy for miners, privacy and development on the Lightning network. Bonus: I also hear from 3 of the current residents on the Chaincode program. They tell me about their diverse backgrounds, how they ended up in New York, and what they will be working on once the residency is over.

Location: New York Date: Friday, 26th July Project: Tales from the Crypt & Rabbit Hole Recap Role: Founders/Presenters There are a handful of Bitcoiners who bleed orange, those with so much conviction it is hard to listen to them talk about Bitcoin and dismiss its importance. Matt Odell is one of those, and I have a little secret for you, Matt was the trigger for taking What Bitcoin Did full Bitcoin. Having wrestled with this for a while, I heard Matt on Stephan Livera’s show discussing podcasts where he said he liked some of what I was doing. “Some”. So Matt and I had a long chat about this, and it was a trigger for me to realise there is enough with Bitcoin to focus on. Matt previously came on the show with Neil Woodfine to discuss what we would like to see for Bitcoin in 2019. I have though been keen to have him back on for a while, so when I was in NY recently I hit him up, and he agreed to come on. Bonus: Matt’s co-host and the founder of Tales from the Crypt, Marty Bent joined us for the first half of the show. Since starting in October 2017, Marty has interviewed some of the most exciting people in the space, including Matt Corallo, Caitlin Long, Dan Held and even Jack Dorsey and have built their reputation as one of the premier Bitcoin podcasts. It is also my go-to podcast on a long drive. We sat down over a glass or two of whiskey to discuss the podcasting industry and our favourite guests. We also look back at the community split during S2X and consider whether issuance and inflation could be the catalyst for a future contentious hard fork.

Location: San Fransisco Date: Monday 22nd July Company: Blockstream Role: Co-founder Pieter Wuille is one of the most influential, respected and prolific Bitcoin developers. While his career began at Google, the appeal of working on  Bitcoin's open-source protocol was too tempting and led him to co-found Blockstream.  Pieter has had a significant influence on the Bitcoin project and has the third most commits on the codebase. He has helped to implement some of the most significant changes to the protocol, including Segregated Witness, one of the most contentious hard forks in Bitcoin's history.  As others debate the Bitcoin roadmap, Pieter has managed to remove himself from the infighting; instead, focusing his time on improving Bitcoin.  As such, he's now working on implementing Taproot, Schnorr Signatures and MAST. In this interview, we hear how Pieter first heard about Bitcoin in 2010, entering the world of mining and selling thousands of Bitcoin for $0.20. I also find out what he thinks of Bitcoin in 2019 and what he argues is the threat to its future. Bonus: we also hear from a Blockstream intern at the end about his experience working at Blockstream and supporting Pieter in developing Bitcoin.

Location: San Diego Date: Tuesday, 16th July Company: Silvergate Bank Role: CEO Since Satoshi’s left the message, "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" in the genesis block, Bitcoin has been the antithesis of banks. “Be your own bank”, perhaps an overused phrase from Bitcoin proponents certainly comes under question for companies building Bitcoin-based businesses. Businesses need Fiat for operating costs: rent, wages etc. and for now, at least that is a gap that Bitcoin can't fill.  Most banks have also looked at Bitcoin unfavourably, and crypto companies have struggled to find reliable banking partners. Many companies and exchanges have unexpectedly lost banking services or turned to creative solutions. Silvergate Bank, however, looks at Bitcoin and cryptocurrency differently. Since 2014 they have been building their reputation as the leading bank for cryptocurrency companies and now have over $1 billion in deposits. In this interview, I talk to Alan Lane, Silvergate's Chief Executive Officer and find out how they have been paving the way for cryptocurrency companies and are how they are offering banking services previously unheard of in the traditional industry.

During the previous bull run, the hype led to an influx of companies using Bitcoin or 'blockchain' to inflate value and attract investment. Many of these were questionable projects, and some were outright scams. Even legitimate companies struggled with the difficulty of creating value with Bitcoin, as companies failed two thrived: Casa and BlockFi. BlockFi is building financial products for Bitcoin holders which allow them to use their crypto as collateral for taking out a loan or lend out their Bitcoin to earn interest. Casa is improving security by simplifying multisig.  So why have BlockFi and Casa been able to grow and thrive duing the bear market while so many others have failed? In this interview, I speak with Casa Founder Jeremy Welch and BlockFi Founder Zac Prince, we discuss Bitcoin utility, non-financial and sometimes unexpected applications and why Bitcoin is more than a financial system.

Exchange hacks have been a constant thorn in the side of the industry. Where a physical bank robbery of $millions will make headline news, a +$100m exchange hack will barely break out of the crypto news media. Exchange hacks are now so commonplace that a recent report from Ledger’s CEO Eric Larcheveque found that the equivalent of $2.7 million a day was stolen from exchanges last year. Almost all major exchanges have experienced a hack of some kind, from Mt. Gox which could have destroyed the industry to Poloniex and Bitfinex, and more recently Binance and Cryptopia, the list goes on and on.  As such, security is one of the biggest challenges faced by any exchange and there are very few that haven’t suffered from a breach, one that has managed to remain unscathed is Kraken. With attacks becoming more sophisticated and hackers working 24/7 to find vulnerabilities how is that Kraken has managed to succeed where so many others failed? The man in charge of this roll at Kraken is Nick Percoco, their Chief Security Officer. In this interview we discuss: Ethical hacking Finding critical vulnerabilities in iOS Vulnerability brokers Kraken’s company-wide security culture The difficulties in disclosing vulnerabilities Kraken Security Labs

There are a few places retail investors can currently trade a Bitcoin futures contract, but these tend to clouded in regulatory uncertainty and most are unavailable to US retail traders. That’s about to change though as LedgerX have recently announced both the first regulated physically settled Bitcoin futures contract and the launch of a new trading platform called Omni which, for the first time, will give US retail investors access to regulated derivative markets. The physical settlement in Bitcoin is a big step forward for the ecosystem. It means that when a contract expires, the buyer will now receive Bitcoin as opposed to fiat, meaning businesses and miners can now bypass the fiat system entirely, hedging or betting in Bitcoin and settling in Bitcoin. This is just one of the implications the LedgerX’s new contract.Will this lead to reduced volatility in the Bitcoin price and bring in more institutional investors? I visited LedgerX in New York and spoke with the Co-founder and COO Juthica Chou. We also discussed;  Regulators being open to Bitcoin  The licenses required to run a regulated exchange If the institutions are coming or if they are already here Working at Goldman Sachs during the 2008 financial crisis Betting on the Bitcoin halvening $20k, $25k and $50k contracts Bitcoin being better than gold Wall street's interest in Bitcoin Ledger X’s competition

When landing in the world of Bitcoin there are many concepts down the rabbit hole to get lost in, from technology to economics there is a wealth of information available. Within the world of economics, many will discover the theory of Austrian economics for the first time.  Those who believe in Austrian Economics believe in free markets, the gold standard and minimal government intervention. So where does Bitcoin fit into this? Could it be the perfect tool to facilitate a free market Could it even become an improved and new gold standard?  To find out more, I sat down with Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard and an Associate Professor in Economics at the Lebanese American University. Having recently launched his online academy it was a great time for Saifedean to teach me more about Austrian Economics and catch up on our mutual love for Liverpool FC. We discuss: Is Austrian Economics the only economic model that Bitcoin fits into? Is taxation theft? What makes a market a free market? What is money and is Bitcoin money? Will fractional reserve banking occur with Bitcoin? Will central banks adopt Bitcoin? Will improved monetary policy kill Bitcoin? Will Liverpool win the Premier League in ‘20?

Whenever you hear about Bitcoin in the mainstream media, undoubtedly one of the things that comes up time and time again is the power consumption needed to secure the network and which is the latest country Bitcoin has overtaken on power usage. Is this something Bitcoiners should be worried about and can the criticism be written off  as a way for Bitcoin naysayers to ignore it for a little longer?  Michel Rauchs recently released The Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index to address this issue and try and put Bitcoin’s power consumption into perspective. We discussed: Whether Bitcoin needs to be inefficient to work? If holding Bitcoin is using Bitcoin  What is Bitcoin’s carbon footprint and is it a concern How much of the power used to mine Bitcoin is renewable? If Bitcoin were to reach $1,000,000 would mining use all the available power on earth?