Bitcoin Takeover tells the oral history of many OGs and builders such as Roger Ver, Martti Malmi, Vitalik Buterin, Charlie Shrem, as well as hundreds of developers, entrepreneurs, and troublemakers whose work shaped the world's first decentralized money. This is not a show about price predictions or recycled talking points. It is about the technology, the history, the scandals, and the ideas that will decide Bitcoin's future. Seven years and 350+ episodes, with one rule that never changed: the…
Keagan McClellan (Keags) co-founded Start9 Labs, worked on Sapio with Jeremy Rubin at Judica during the CTV saga, spent time at Lightning Labs maintaining LND, and is now building BTC Verified, a formal specification and verification project for Bitcoin's consensus rules written in Lean 4. He is also a self-described member of Bitcoin's "progressive wing" who nonetheless defends the rising bar for…
n August 2026, eCash (ECX) comes out in its alpha phase: leading up to a final complete rollout on October 31st 2026, Bitcoin's 18th birthday. To better explain how this process will take place and why every bitcoiner should try BIP300 this Halloween, Paul Sztorc joins the show for a record-breaking 11th time! Time stamps: 00:01:17 – Welcome: Paul Sztorc for the 11th time, a new record 00:01:42 –…
I met Yonatan Sompolinsky in Romania during his summer holiday, so we decided to do a roadtrip interview about covenants, the state of Kaspa development, why intents are more interesting than smart contracts & stag hunts. 00:00:54 – Intro: a road trip with Yonatan Sompolinsky 00:01:50 – Life since S16 E41: Oxford Union & the state of Kaspa 00:02:53 – Kaspa shipped covenants while Bitcoin debates…
Vinny Lingham is a Bitcoin OG who pioneered gift card payments in 2012 with Gyft, served on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation, spearheaded blockchain identity verification with CIvic, and in more recent years moved on to managing risk with Praxos Capital. Thanks to some of his accurate price predictions, Vinny has also received the nickname "The Oracle". In this episode, we talk about his…
Cory Klippsten is the CEO of Swan Bitcoin, the promoter and former adviser of the Sequans BTC treasury, and also a big advocate for bitcoin-only maximalism. In this episode, we catch up on what's been going on over the last year in Bitcoin. Time stamps: 00:01:59 – The challenges and failures of leveraged Bitcoin equity strategies in the U.S., referencing companies like Sequans, Strike, and…
Ever since he first received his first bitcoin in 2013, Joël Valenzuela has been on a quest to use free market electronic cash to pay for everything. Today, he is still unbanked and looking for ways to make instant payments without a bank account. He is best known for working for the DASH cryptocurrency project. But over the years, he's collaborated with plenty of other projects (mostly those…
S17 E32: Perry E. Metzger on Bitcoin in 2008, Cypherpunk Culture & AI Optimism Time stamps: 00:00:50 - Introducing Perry E. Metzger 00:03:06 - Perry Metzger's Background 00:06:04 - The Cryptography Mailing List's Origins 00:07:36 - "The Code Breakers" & Early Influences in Cryptography 00:11:19 - The Cypherpunks Era and PGP 00:22:08 - The State of Cryptography in 2008 00:24:20 - Satoshi's Bitcoin…
Alex Waltz is a prominent Bitcoin historian and film maker, who specializes in digging up information from the first months of Bitcoin's existence. Recently, he launched the ”First Bitcoin Miner” project in order to question whether or not Hal Finney truly was the second mining node on the Bitcoin network. In this episode, we talk about his work and some geeky facts about Bitcoin's history. Read…
Martin Matejka is the CEO of Firefish, a company which offers a platform where BTC holders can connect with fiat borrowers in order to achieve the ”never sell your bitcoin” status. In this episode, we talk about how these BTC-backed loans work, and also pursue a more philosophical conversation about the purpose of Bitcoin and whether or not it's currently achieving it. Sponsors: Proudly sponsored…
Grafton Clark is best known in the Bitcoin space for his work at SatoshiLabs and Vexl. But more recently, he discovered vibe coding and completely fell in love with it. In this episode, we talk about all the cool stuff you can just build with help from AI... and where Bitcoin fits into this equation. Hopefully, this dialogue will inspire you to create something cool, that reignites your love for…
