On June 5, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele declared that bitcoin would become legal tender in El Salvador. On September 7th of this year, that law came into effect. But the government of El Salvador (and the self-described "Emperor", Nayib Bukele) went further than just permitting the use of Bitcoin for payments- they had a wallet built for the people and offered a $30 signing bonus for citizens who would onboard with their government identification number. Although many in the Bitcoin...

On June 5, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele declared that bitcoin would become legal tender in El Salvador. On September 7th of this year, that law came into effect. Fans of Bitcoin are split between those who see this as a huge win for a decentralized payment system and those who point to the tyrannical character that is Bukele and worry that this will do more harm than good. From my 6th floor podcast studio in Miami at the Oslo Freedom Forum I had the opportunity to speak to a...

What if Bitcoin wasn't the future? What if one Florida man was sent here to save us all from our hard earned money and to free of us of our earthly desires to be wealthy through the graces of pumpamentals? Well we have another Florida man (Bitcoin Uncensored dumbest host and male counterpart, Chris DeRose) to tell us about this. We talk about many things, including Richard Heart's incredibly brilliant scam "Hex" as well as Cardano, ZCash, Ripple and even Ethereum. Are they scams? We will...

It's time to lawyer up because this one might get me sued, but honestly I wouldn't have it any other way! Dr. Carol Alexander is a Professor of Finance at Sussex, a visiting Professor at Peking University HSBC Business School, and Co-Editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance.  She holds a BSc in Maths with Experimental Psychology and a PhD in Algebraic Number Theory. She took a post-doc in Amsterdam, worked as a bond analyst for Phillips and Drew, and attended the London School of...

What is up party people? Yes! I can't believe it either! The greatest Bitcoin podcast has come back to life and is here on our show! What is Bitcoin Uncensored? Well Chris DeRose and Junseth are probably the only two that could do it justice, but this tribute will have to do for now. It ran from 2015-17 and then (due to their falling out) it died off. I still consider it the best place to learn everything blockchain. Follow me on twitter! (@milner_aviv) Do you want to hear some of the 100+...

You can't handle the truth! Have you heard this before - "I'm not very excited about Bitcoin, Ethereum or any of these cryptocurrencies but I am optimistic about the technology behind it, the Blockchain!" Well I have heard that quite a bit as well, and if you are a regular listener you probably know that I am a bit skeptical of the claims.   Tim Swanson (@ofnumbers) is on to discuss this very thing and help us distinguish the real and the fake. He has been an active part of the space for...

Have you heard this before - "I'm not very excited about Bitcoin, Ethereum or any of these cryptocurrencies but I am optimistic about the technology behind it, the Blockchain!" Well I have heard that quite a bit as well, and if you are a regular listener you probably know that I am a bit skeptical of the claims. Tim Swanson (@ofnumbers) is on to discuss this very thing and help us distinguish the real and the fake. He has been an active part of the space for roughly ten years and has even...

My good friend and professionally trained Russian artist Anton Lukashov is back for a second episode to discuss his experience trying to make a bit of money on the side selling his excellent digital artwork. Full disclosure, I hold no NFTs, and do not plan to buy any of them at any point in the future, but I do hold many off Anton's physical paintings and prints (digital art printed on fine paper). In this episode we discuss what exactly is going on with the NFT space and try to make sense...

Dr. Nicholas Weaver is a senior staff researcher focusing on computer security at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, and a lecturer in the Computer Science department at the University of California at Berkeley. In this second of two parts, Dr. Weaver goes deep into his expertise as a network security and computer vulnerabilities expert to describe the reality of much of the hype around "blockchains". He pulls no punches and describes the actual utility in...

Dr. Nicholas Weaver is a senior staff researcher focusing on computer security at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, California, and a lecturer in the Computer Science department at the University of California at Berkeley. In this first of two parts, Dr. Weaver goes beyond his work of network security and computer vulnerabilities to describe a more pernicious and detrimental aspect of finance: gambling, parimutuel betting and the broad category of zero sum games. But...

It all started on May 19th of 2021 when Francis Kim made the perfect call to short Bitcoin on the Binance exchange. While the markets tanked, he saw over a 100 thousand USD of profits, but he would soon realize that Binance was not like the exchanges he was familiar with in legacy finance. A power outage, an exchange that banned the closing of orders... and POOF, all of his 171 thousand dollars vanished. What started as a simple quest to get what he deserves turned into a rabbit hole of...

sMichael (a synthetic podcasting asset created from the depths of Defi) has joined us to talk about the broader impact of crypto on society. In this short excerpt from our conversation that was nearly twice as long. we discuss the role of government in maintaining fair markets while still giving room for free innovation. Who do we blame for frauds and scams? Find out in this episode with Keyword: Michael of the Keyword: Crypto Podcast. Find...

Max Hillebrand is more than a freedom-loving student of Austrian economics. If you ever used open-source software in the Bitcoin space, you have likely benefitted in some degree from his work. Max and I go way back- In 2018 we both saw privacy in Bitcoin as a fundamental problem and a concern that is worth addressing. By no coincidence, he and I crossed paths at an open-source project that claimed to offer an unfair amount of user privacy in Bitcoin transactions (Wasabi Wallet). From there,...

The Nano community has challenged skeptics in a recent twitter exchange (see backstory). The result? A passionate exchange between two minds and a deep dive into $Nano and what it takes to become the ultimate digital cash. Patrick Luberus is an IT professional by day and holds a masters degree in informational security. Since 2013, he has been thinking deeply about the search for an ideal digital money for the modern world. Although his initial fascination was mostly around Bitcoin, he would...

What exactly happened on Monday morning with #Tether? You know her from her independent journalistic work on financial fraud in cryptocurrencies that has been published nearly everywhere- Artnet News, Business Insider, The Block, Bitcoin Magazine, Coindesk, Forbes, Modern Consensus, Decrypt and elsewhere!  You know him from his hilarious best-selling book- Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain and his poorly timed dissection of Facebook's attempt to takeover money- Libra Shrugged. Amy Castor...

Did you ever wish you had a computer science professor would could ironically and hilariously explain the deceptive trickery of cryptocurrencies? Well, so do we, and if you are a student at the University of Campinas in Brazil, you know what that's like! Professor Jorge Stolfi is a well cited computer scientist specializing in graph theory, image processing and computational geometry, which gives him the power to shoot lasers out of his nose and take down the masses of rambunctious children...

Our favorite journalist and Crypto Critic discusses a healthy approach to skepticism and journalism in a space that very much requires it. Although published one month after the conversation took place (I was moving! Sorry!), the discussion around managing personal bias and responsible means to convey and challenge fraud remain equally valuable today as they did then. Tether is the largest stable coin in the cryptocurrency space, with more than 60 billion USD equivalent in circulation. It...

Follow Matt on twitter: https://twitter.com/vhranger   Check out Matt's work on his blog: https://www.singlelunch.com/ Subreddit's mentioned: https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/when-the-music-stops/message

Follow Matt on twitter:  https://twitter.com/vhranger Check out Matt's work on his blog:  https://www.singlelunch.com/ Subreddit's mentioned: https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/when-the-music-stops/message

Bestselling author, David Gerard, goes in-depth into a seemingly harmless idea that has wreaked havoc on the hard drive market. The creator of the highly successful file-sharing software, Bram Cohen, gains new notoriety with his latest invention in the blockchain space. Chia is a mining-based distributed system, much like Bitcoin, but with a seemingly positive new contribution. Rather than wasting the electric capacity of Iceland, Chia purports to be the eco-friendly solution. With a reward...

Continuing on the discussion of systemic risks associated with Tether, Bennett describes additional risks in the broader cryptocurrency space. He talks Binance as well as MakerDao & Dai. For those who don't know, Dai is a crypto-collateral stable coin which allows users to interact with smart-contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and take out loans (denominated in Dai) against their cryptocurrency. Bennett describes the contraversial and potentially dangerous move by the decentralized band...

In part one of a two part episode, Bennett Tomlin discusses the legal issues, liquidity problems and spotty history surrounding Tether. Tether is the largest stable coin in the cryptocurrency space, with more than 60 billion USD equivalent in circulation. It acts as the the shadow bank for a majority of exchanges worldwide, exchanges like Binance and Bitfinex. In 2014 Tether made a promise that each unit of Tether would be 1-to-1 backed by a real dollar. Since then, a lot has changed. Check...

A critical discussion on the utility of NFTs with my good friend, Anton Lukashov, an architectural professional and an artist who outlines the challenges of making it as an artist (first 50 minutes). Anton describes how the hype around NFTs compelled him to join a new unregulated industry in the past few months and sell a few pieces online. Although his expectations of NFTs are high, most of the episode confronts many of the claims and leaves us asking if anything was solved at all. Check...

A lot of you have probably heard about the excitement around blockchain, tokens and ICOs, and if you have been paying attention to the space in the last year, you probably heard about Binance (the exchange), the Binance Smart Chain (the blockchain) and BNB (the Binance token). It seems like any twenty year old with a laptop and $500 can make a million, and in this episode we interview a Canadian kid with exactly that story. Although his profits are through the roof, his story says something...