LEIGH: BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen on 'a System That Doesn't Suck'

On today’s episode CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen sits down with Bram Cohen, author of the BitTorrent protocol and CEO of Chia. In this wide ranging interview they talk Bram’s early interest in “hard problems”, his unexpected ascent from sketchy to celebrity and much more.

Leigh and Bram discuss:

The real promise and strengths of cryptocurrencyReally interesting problems in cryptocurrencyGetting started in crypto 20 years ago with MojoNation and glorious failure.The origin of BitTorrentSpeculative investment, the dot com boom and where real wealth comes fromThe Bitcoin Wizards IRC channel and Bram’s arrival in cryptoHow the Bitcoin Wizards stance on ASIC resistance led to Bram’s creation of ‘Proofs of Time’ and ‘Proofs of Space’Getting rich as a side effect of making the world a better placeScaling, sharding and unsophisticated engineeringWhy ‘Proof of Stake’ is a step backwards from ‘Proof of Work’A system that doesn’t suck: how engineers try and fail to improve the finance industryUnregulated banking crisis, shadow banking and hiring the smartest minds to obfuscate leverageWhy trusted third parties are the problemSatoshi’s wonderful, horrible idea and the obviousness of proof of work.What Satoshi did surprisingly wellWhy improving proof of work wouldn’t really improve bitcoin.Coherent goals: more decentralized and less wastefulBoth Proof of Work and Proof of Stake have a scary degree of centralization Ethereum’s terrifying improvements to the on-chain programming environmentNew functionality within Chia that helps cryptocurrency feel less like “carrying around hundred dollar bills”Limiting opportunities for theft with user controlled rate and recipient limitingThinking about ecosystems and adoptionWhat is your favorite use case for cars? Is it Tires? Open source software, politics and adoptionWhat is the role of advocacy in making something useful?Why bitcoin gets a bad reputation for things it doesn’t have strong associations with.Why “governance” is such a touchy topicWhy Chia is funded by Venture Capital rather than token offeringsHow Bitcoin is different from what’s come after it“Our technological capacity exceeds our political will to negotiate the terms of that capacity”Why Bram hates the “Fake it til’ you make it” ethosEngineering sticker shockThe “everyone uses cryptocurrency for everything” narrative vs. the “How do we get anyone using Cryptocurrency for anything good?” realityBetter metrics for success than “Getting rich”Great leaders and bullshit artistsBitcoin’s trajectory and the meritocratic history of technologyColored coins, distributed identity, timestamps and censorship resistant valueMinimal functionality, subtle cleanups and simplified transaction formats in the Chia programming environmentAnd more...

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