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Stephan Livera

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64
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2022-01-12
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2022-01-12
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  1. “So think of it like this when we spin up a Bitcoin node, we're downloading the entire blockchain of transactions. Now, remember, that's the history of all the transactions. And I think today that's probably 430 gigs around that and rising over time. But that is distinct from the UTXO set. And so think of it like this. The entire blockchain is the history of every transaction. And so your Bitcoin node, it downloads all those transactions. And then some Bitcoin nodes run in what's called pruned mode, which is like a cutdown version of that, maybe five gigs, let's say, just as an example. But that is distinct from the what's called the UTXO set, which is the set of unspent coins. So think of it like this. Now, in a superficial sense, people think, oh, I just send Bitcoin to this address and it lives in this address. But that's not really precise. It's more like UTXOs or Bitcoins live inside a UTXO. You can have multiple UTXO.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “I'm interviewing whether it's Bitcoin mining or it's privacy or it's lightning or it's something else or it's you know the financial aspects of Bitcoin, the regulation, the economics, there's all these different nuances to it. So I just try to do my best to get as knowledgeable as I can to be able to ask skillful or an intelligent question of the guest.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Around Bitcoin full node and then ideally use some kind of privacy preserving wallet. Examples might be Samurai Wallet on Android or Sparrow Wallet on the desktop. And these wallets allow you to connect to your own Bitcoin node, ideally, although they can be used in default setup with somebody else's node. Of course, it's best if it's with your own. And then they can use different techniques like the Whirlpool coin join as an example. And then when they're going to spend, they are using post mix spend techniques like Stonewall. So that's an example where it makes a transaction that even looks like a coin join, even if it's not a coin join. So that's just a few examples. I think there's all these different technical realms within Bitcoin, and it's very difficult for one person to sort of be an expert in all of them. So really, I think it's sort of like, I think of myself as I do as much as possible to try to be able to be a good interviewer on the topic.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “Going to have to figure out ways to help deal with that. And there are various ways obviously, lightning is an important part of that, but it's only one part of the strategy. In the future, we may be operating on things like a channel factory. It's been colloquially called, or more professionally, it might be termed multi-party channels. So that's one example. Or another example might be the usage of federated mints. That's another example. As an example, if you look at what's going on in Bitcoin Beach down in El Salvador, in El Zonte, where Galloy created Galloy Money, the company created the Bitcoin Beach wallet. And it's like this idea of like, okay, it's custodial Lightning Wallet and it is also a multi-sig community held wallet. And so I think we're going to see advanced ideas around that. I think another interesting aspect is just around being private in Bitcoin. I think it is possible to be private with Bitcoin. It just takes additional steps. And so as an example, people need to learn how to, for example, run their”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “And now putting it into a hot wallet setup, which is now a completely less secure method of storing your coins, and find that might be reasonable for, let's say, a smaller amount you keep in your lightning wallet or maybe a privacy coin join wallet or just a day-to-day spending, but it should not be what you're doing for your, if you're holding a significant amount. So these are little things around the security aspects of it. But of course, I think maybe it's to the spirit of your question is also around aspects around where is Bitcoin going in terms of lightning and scalability and other aspects, right? So it might be that as an example, we as a community often say, not your keys, not your coins. However, it's going to get more and more difficult over time because over time, there's only so many people who can actually hold a UTXO. What's a UTXO? Unspent transaction output. And so over time, the network and the community and the movement, the project, whatever you want to call this,”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Up your Bitcoin as an example, right? You know how most people might, if you set up a Bitcoin wallet or a hardware wallet, you might have seen how we write down the 12 or 24 words. What a lot of new people might struggle with is that understanding that that is your backup, not just for the coins that you have received up until now, it's the backup for the coins you'll receive in the future on that wallet. And that's a really kind of crazy idea, right? Because you're coming back from a non-Bitcoin perspective. You might think, oh, I'm writing in my Word document and I hit control S or I hit save and that saves my progress up to now. It doesn't save my future progress, but these 24 words you write down actually is for your future. And then the other aspect I think a lot of people wouldn't understand is just that idea.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “Right, I think part of that is just that awareness that you need to really play around with things to learn. Because I think a lot of people might, they might have heard someone talk about this idea but never have actually used it. And I think that's an important thing. So it's important to try to get as close to bare metal as you can where you can, right? Whether that is learning how to take your coins off the exchange, whether that is learning how to run a Bitcoin node, whether that's learning how to use hardware wallets, whether that's playing around with multi-signature. So these are a few examples. Like I guess the lesson is really actually try to use this stuff. And so that's something even for me. It's not always possible. But when I can, if I'm interviewing someone, I try to actually use their product or their software or their hardware if possible. It's not always feasible, but the better you can, then you're giving more of a real informed perspective on that. Other concepts that I think a lot of people struggle with, just like when you're backing.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “So for me, I think it's a few things, but I loved that idea of when you're young, you think of this idea of, I guess it's kind of like passive income, although that can be overplayed nowadays. But I mean, this idea that, hey, if I save this money and I earn, you know, back in those days, you could actually earn interest in the bank, right? Because you would actually earn interest. And so it was like this idea, this fascination of, oh, hey, what if I save and then I can actually earn money off of the interest or earn money out of the income? And so that was a very appealing idea to me. And I would say from a young age, I was more of a saver. Like I was already a kind of a saving kind of person. And so even from my first job, I was relatively good about saving and I enjoyed reading about personal finance and accounting and some of these different ideas. So I think all of those things sort of contributed to the, I guess, the personality and the person I am now.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “I was about 14 or 15 when I started learning a little bit about Austrian economics and I would say it took some while for it to take right maybe a couple years later I would have said yeah I'm a libertarian I'm interested in Austrian economics but it sort of took time and obviously when you're younger your patience for reading these long books is not as much I started out reading articles and shorter books and then by the time I got to about university age then I was reading more of the longer Austrian books and considering myself at least a student of Austrian economics.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Or podcasts, and that was what gave me that awareness and understanding from an Austro-libertarian perspective. And that's, I think, also what helped what you might say primed me for being open to the idea of Bitcoin, this anti-state money, anti-fiat money.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “Right, so that's another whole rabbit hole. So that for me was actually even earlier. I was probably about 14 or 15 years old around there. And I was on IRC. So for the young ones, that's internet relay chat. That's like an old school chat system. And so I would hang out on IRC channels and I found this Australian politics channel. And this guy kept linking to Mises Daily articles. At the time, I just thought, what the hell, this is all crazy stuff. That's not going to work. But then it's sort of the logic of it started to dawn on me as I read those articles and then it just made so much more sense to me than what I was being taught in terms of the Keynesian and monetarist ideas I was being fed at school and at university and so for me I went down that Austrian rabbit hole in terms of reading Mises and Rothbard and Hanshem and Hopper Guido Hallsman Joseph Salerno and modern day well-known practitioners people like Tom Woods and Bob Murphy I was reading a lot of their work listening to their”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Yes, that's right. I was working as an internal auditor and chartered accountant back in Australia. So I used to work at Deloitte and then later I was working at some of the big banks”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Of it, the technology of it, as you mentioned. And so for me, it was the economics of it that really got me interested. It's just that I'm not a developer, but I'm just like a relatively tech savvy person. And so that's what sort of enabled me to, I think, get a reasonable understanding of it relative to the average person on the street.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Like most people, the first time I heard about Bitcoin, I thought of it like some foolish thing or it was just like some game currency, whatever, you know, like Fortnite V-Bucks or World of Warcraft gold or whatever, right? What did it for me was actually an Eric Voorhees article and I was reading it in December 2012. So that's when I came across it. And so I, being a libertarian and into Austrian economics, anti-central banking, anti-fiat money, this was the article for me that just made it click. From then on, I just couldn't stop thinking about Bitcoin and talking about Bitcoin. And nowadays I eat, live, and breathe Bitcoin. And so that was my moment. And so what I would say in terms of that article, I think it was that up until then, no one had explained it to me in a way that made sense that, oh, wow, this is actually a challenger to central banking. And of course, I love all different aspects of Bitcoin. I like talking about the economics.”

    2022-01-12 · We Study Billionaires · BTC060: Bitcoin Tech w/ Stephan Livera (Bitcoin Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT