Vlad
Vlad, Bitcoin Takeover Podcast

Your Bitcoin influencer’s influencer. Now a privacy guy too!

Subscribe to the Bitcoin Takeover podcast on Spotify, Apple & YouTube!

Public Key

npub12qz56plzehejkyp4waaannmnny4y4c30j8q55a3wlk49haslga2snypdx8

NIP-57 Address

aerialbus85@walletofsatoshi.com

Profile Code

nprofile1qqs9qp2dql3vmuetzq6hw77eeaeej2j2ughers22wch0m2jm7c05w4gppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0pjtnjx

Publishing to

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub12qz56plzehejkyp4waaannmnny4y4c30j8q55a3wlk49haslga2snypdx8

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Last Notes

2026-01-17 23:20:43

Can anyone show me where the winning is?
Bitcoin didn’t scale in a non-custodial way.
Didn’t get adopted for payments at a satisfactory rate compared to 10 years ago.
Didn’t become a fungible currency.
Didn’t add smart contracts.
No quantum resistance either.
https://image.nostr.build/bc0f5e0ee2d6e9f8a50f1de255b599cc85a2a1a7b1174637d27faeb3b1d78a56.jpg

2026-01-14 19:42:47

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Bla bla bla mindless slogans that are disconnected from market reality

2026-01-14 19:41:53

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Yup, I use Restream

2026-01-14 17:12:00

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Good morning

2026-01-14 17:07:00

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Heh, you can try. Doesn’t mean it will make me spend the money to use @npub1763…uks2

2026-01-14 17:00:53

Should I also livestream my podcasts to Nostr too?
If this note gets 69 likes, I will do it!
https://image.nostr.build/5e9b0518d6c9e582ec8ab57897d6bf7238689dff0c3c4f50c66e7857b4c4074f.jpg

2026-01-14 16:56:14

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While you’re coming up with 5th grade jokes, you’re underperforming the market.
https://image.nostr.build/7dc412e5f453e7c02352e412008fe972ce7985f9669bade5467e45fc13862637.jpg

2026-01-14 16:54:33

Kind reminder that 2017 was 9 years ago
The altcoins you remember as lazy carbon copies of Bitcoin have gotten much better, survived through 2 bear markets and now have much better adoption/network effects
The new generation of altcoins doesn’t use the Bitcoin codebase at all
And the Bitcoin dominance is no longer 85%, it dropped to 57%
Adjust your worldview to the new data, or the data will bring you down
Embrace post-maximalism today!

2026-01-14 15:37:15

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New year, new state of mind.

2026-01-14 15:36:58

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Shitcoins are more cypherpunk than custodial bitcoin or paper assets.

2026-01-14 12:40:07

Bitcoin post-maximalism acknowledges that the maximalist ideology has failed
Instead of nurturing development on Bitcoin, it was overtaken by dumb conservatism which led to premature ossification
In the name of the number go up religion
Post-maximalism heals the culture and restores the focus on Bitcoin’s original goal to become the main internet currency
Post-maximalism recognizes the innovation that happened in altcoins and the encourages experimentation for the purpose of also improving Bitcoin in the process.
Markets are inseparable from software engineering. So if a certain proposal gets significant support and market demand, it definitely gains more legitimacy and is worth considering to add to Bitcoin.
And if Bitcoin is stagnating, then post-maximalism encourages the free market mechanisms that create healthy competition.
So if Bitcoin loses a significant amount of users and the price plummets, it’s more likely for the development culture to change in order to adapt to the existing demand for features.
Are you a post-maximalist yet? Join the movement, let’s save Bitcoin!

2026-01-13 20:13:18

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You’re probably fine

2026-01-13 19:57:56

How to tell if you’re going to hell:
Listen to the drum intro of the song “Rosanna” by Toto
If it doesn’t make you think of something else, you’re probably fine.

2026-01-13 18:50:37

The Bitcoin Takeover podcast is about to celebrate its 7th anniversary
Man, it’s been a wild ride!
I made this video to give old timers a trip down memory lane. Will also use it as the intro for season 17!
Let’s go, more interviews are coming soon!
https://youtu.be/3qsCPcagPuk?si=WNNekv4W4pE7cqH2

2026-01-13 17:59:39

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Vitalik is a better bitcoin maxi than most people you can think of.

2026-01-13 17:59:03

I hate apps
Why does everything need to have an app these days when you can just open a webpage?
Every time somebody tells me I need to install a new app, I lose interest. Also because devs forgot how to write elegant code and you end up downloading 200 MB for a supermarket discount code app.
What the actual fuck, do I get to play Starcraft in that supermarket app?
It’s fucked up, man.

2026-01-13 14:46:05

These are the most popular Bitcoin Takeover podcast episodes of 2025
504710 downloads in total
Thank you all for listening! Let’s get to 1 million downloads in 2026!
https://image.nostr.build/aa15e6209b1007a048ed30c6c9243bc274792322b729adf59d3e83942b83c432.jpg

2026-01-13 12:36:57

the worst part about my job is that I sit through these wonderful long-form interviews
and in only a few hours I learn what took others many years to realize
but then I have to deal with people who haven’t learned anything new in a decade and think they’re smart if they use dogma to approach new information
it’s depressing, really!

2026-01-13 12:09:01

I’ve never touched Microstrategy because it always seemed anti-bitcoin to me
But if I was an investor and watched that Saylor interview on WBD
I wouldn’t just dumb my MSTR bags
I’d short the shit out of that stonk

2026-01-13 07:36:42

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🫡

2026-01-12 21:48:11

Bitcoin Takeover podcast downloads in 2025: 504710
Half a million downloads! 😍
(across YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts + Twitter/X)
Top 16 most popular episodes:
1. S16 E24 with Vitalik Buterin: 72539
2. S16 E41 with Yonatan Sompolinsky: 64008
3. S16 E51 with Sean Bowe: 21977
4. S16 E29 with Zooko: 17107
5. S16 E45 with Shai Wyborski: 16999
6. S16 E55 with Mert Mumtaz: 14097
7. S16 E34 with Prof. Richard Werner: 12489
8. S16 E40 with Cory Klippsten: 11634
9. S16 E32 with Diego Salazar & Luke of Cypher Stack: 10319
10. S16 E10 with Eric Voskuil & @npub13nd…0svh: 9980
11. S16 E53 with Xenu: 9218
12. S16 E13 with Corbin Fraser: 9072
13. S16 E30 with Peter Rizun: 8620
14. S16 E19 with Daniel Krawisz: 7031
15: S16 E2 with Liam Eagen: 6419
16. S16 E6 with @npub1yxp…399s: 6304
Thank you all for listening!
https://image.nostr.build/c808bf78a2b868a8698e87985135594bb11e213be7ff32e02bbe92c942a9b6f2.jpg

2026-01-12 21:41:46

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Outperforming both BTC and XMR over the last year

2026-01-12 16:45:35

if you swapped 1 bitcoin for zcash a year ago
today you would have 8 bitcoins worth of zcash
you could have octupled your bitcoin, but you believed in saylor’s strategy
bitcoin maxis are underperforming by fading privacy

2026-01-12 16:14:23

if you swapped 1 bitcoin for monero a year ago
today you would have 3 bitcoin worth of monero
3x more btc if you’re that kind of maxi
how does the church of maximalism, which claims that it’s impossible to outperform bitcoin, explain this market reality?

2026-01-12 08:43:34

Okay so if bitcoin maxis are right and there is hidden inflation
Much higher than the reported numbers
Then nobody investing in indexes such as S&P500 or buying government bonds is making any money
Let this sink in: nobody is making any money unless they earn 20%+ every year

2026-01-12 07:08:00

17 years ago, at block height 170, Satoshi Nakamoto sent 10 bitcoins to Hal Finney
This marked the first Bitcoin transaction in history
https://image.nostr.build/38000f789c593cf37535f68096259a69bceaddf7260e776bfff3d3e10d754e3f.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/5cfed4c9ece1421217b70ccd83ff0dbf77abe41848b752d170b8024c4769c792.jpg

2026-01-12 07:07:34

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Pau 😂

2026-01-11 20:12:03

Post-maximalism learns from the failures of Bitcoin maximalism
But also takes a more optimistic approach towards improving the money technology
The goal is to avoid the mistakes of the past, then return to the roots of the movement in order to build a better future!

2026-01-11 19:27:00

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BitVM is super limited in the absence of something like CTV or OP_CAT. Just a hacky way of doing stuff in a very inefficient way.

2026-01-11 18:46:59

If you’ve spent the last 9 years studying Bitcoin and becoming a maximalist
Now is the best time to learn about post-maximalism
Because we’ve always been told that Bitcoin would add all the interesting features from altcoins
Then all the builders got demoralized and pushed away by a culture that values price action much more than strengthening the fundamentals.
Bitcoin didn’t get CTV or OP_CAT.
Bitcoin didn’t become more fungible via Zerocash or MWEB.
Bitcoin didn’t get smart contracts.
Bitcoin didn’t even add a couple of OP codes to support the work of layer 2 builders.
The technology is out there. It’s been tested for many years on testnets and signets. It’s been tested on altcoins that never broke. It’s been tested on Liquid and Bitcoin Cash.
But somewhere along the way we became so complacent about Bitcoin that we forgot what it’s supposed to do!
In the meantime, Bitcoin has become less useful and more technologically stagnant…
while the altcoins became more useful and technologically divergent from the lazy forks of 2013.
Altcoins are no longer Bitcoin with a few changes. They are complete rewrites of the Bitcoin design. They pursue use cases instead of trying to build market narratives.
Some altcoins have the best privacy for financial transactions. Other altcoins have figured out scaling without bloating. There are altcoins that work as bona fide Bitcoin sidechains, processing more BTC than Lightning, Liquid, Rootstock & every other Bitcoin layer combined.
Post-maximalism is about finding these gems, using their tech and advocating for it to come to Bitcoin. Because Bitcoin doesn’t have a technological or talent problem: it has a cultural problem, in which users mindlessly dismiss everything else as a shitcoin while the project’s dominance on the market has lowered to 57%.
If the tech that can improve Bitcoin is in high demand, then Bitcoin devs are much more likely to try to bring it to the mother of all blockchains.
But if the tech is disrespected and doomed to get used by fragmented communities, it will never reach its full potential.
Bitcoin needs privacy to become a fungible currency.
Bitcoin needs to scale to onboard anyone who needs to use it.
Bitcoin needs to incorporate features from our broken financial system, in order to become able to replace banks entirely.
These goals will not get accomplished if the prevailing ideology doesn’t get replaced.
Bitcoin needs a new philosophy to meet the needs of the protocol and also enable exploration of new ideas without fear of excommunication and stigma.
Post-maximalism is it. We either build a robust Bitcoin that can do anything and challenge the status quo. Or else we accept that multiple networks can accomplish different goals that serve the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Regardless of the outcome, we aim to create a better financial system which is able to support parallel economies and offer an alternative to the CBDC world.
Post-maximalism is optimistic.
Post-maximalism is productive.
Post-maximalism is the answer to a culture that nurtures complacency and punishes experimentation.
Post-maximalism is what Bitcoin maximalism should have been all along, if the community members were honest and never became greedy.
But Bitcoin needs a new dominant ideology. And I hope post-maximalism is gonna be it!

2026-01-11 17:18:52

We could be building great businesses, creating jobs, and adding a lot of value to civilization
But it’s much more profitable to buy magic internet money and sell it for the kind of profits that a company could never bring.
Even Donald Trump would have been much wealthier if he invested everything in S&P500 instead of building any of his real estate projects.
The incentives are fucked. But one must choose to build something meaningful and create value. I guess it’s always been this way.

2026-01-11 15:16:16

I’ve just listened to an AI-generated podcast about The Beatles
Very informative, I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt like I’ve learned something new
Bitcoin maximalist podcasts don’t stand a chance, they’re so predictable you can have them replaced with AI super easily.

2026-01-11 09:35:38

https://youtube.com/shorts/t10-Aw2B0sk?si=-cPRvzP120aRMaz0

2026-01-10 20:43:09

2018: I lost my coins in a boating accident
2026: I lost my coins after Bitcoin Core v30 deleted my wallet file

2026-01-10 20:42:50

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I follow Bitcoin’s birthdays.

2026-01-10 20:42:09

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Sorry, got sick and couldn’t do it. Will try again in a week or two

2026-01-09 09:38:31

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I tweeted about it
https://x.com/vladcostea/status/2009549654900281407?s=46&t=gsfNwtDtLBe-E5UXg0sh5A

2026-01-09 09:37:15

Season 16 was a blast!
65 episodes featuring some of the smartest people in Bitcoin.
Here’s a short recap featuring 7 of the guests: Mike Belshe, Vitalik Buterin, Zooko, Paul Sztorc, Sean Bowe, Mert Mumtaz & Yonatan Sompolinsky!
Season 17 is gonna be even better! Subscribe to Bitcoin Takeover!
https://youtube.com/shorts/t10-Aw2B0sk?si=tNcD0MVQOkQJCm75

2026-01-07 18:24:26

About 6 months ago I met a fellow Bitcoin podcaster who told me he’s really sorry that I stopped doing my show after the Roger Ver interview
I replied “are you kidding? I’m doing better than ever!”
He looked perplexed. But #SpotifyWrapped agrees, I had an amazing year!
https://image.nostr.build/c42c5326d809d13386fff84046e42da541c2ad61deceab2dab3e39d322a594d8.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/e222e7733494a417f4dc70c3e255c52e2df2517604a64475720e664f76b970bd.jpg
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https://image.nostr.build/1932c72cec1ed979149740ee35350a0b7b27d41846032f1f61911e459f1dddb3.jpg

2026-01-07 16:36:16

Running a full node used to be considered the safest and most conservative way to hold and manage your coins.
But thanks to the recent Bitcoin Core fuckup, even Ledger looks super safe in comparison 🥲
If only they adopted BIP39, this file deletion wouldn’t be a big deal.

2026-01-05 01:06:01

Not your keys, not your coins.
Not your node, not your rules.
Not your hashrate, not your network.

2026-01-05 01:05:43

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That’s easy to do. What’s your story in a nutshell?

2026-01-01 19:35:09

Would genuinely be interested to interview the triple maxis who mortgaged their house and got into more debt to buy bitcoin because Saylor told them to do so
If you did that anytime in 2025 because you expected $200k+
How are you managing it? Are you happy about your investment?
Because I am part of the generation that only used dispensable income to buy Bitcoin. Only money we could afford to lose. Could have been much richer in hindsight, but being able to sleep well and stay productive is valuable too.

2025-12-28 19:59:04

Been thinking about this all day
Paper Bitcoin Summer worked beautifully until Zcash started pumping
Bitcoin was at $125k, everyone was expecting $150k and beyond this year
And then Zcash flipped the narrative to privacy. The Winklevii even started paper Zcash winter to obliterate paper Bitcoin summer.
It’s tragic, really. So stop blaming the paper Bitcoin companies, the Coretards, or the Knotzis. It was the Zcashers everyone should blame.
Even the Monero bros lost the spotlight and have to cope with the idea that their narratives were useless and now they ride on the coattails of the Zcash pump!
Trying to hang on to the digital gold narrative while gold is pumping is useless. Just accept that Zcash is leading the market trends now. Talk about Bitcoin privacy, shill every half baked solution that vaguely resembles the privacy of Zcash. Talk about the Zside drivechain and the Shielded CSV paper, maybe more people will buy bitcoin.
But most importantly, never stop blaming Zcash. Paper Bitcoin Summer was perfectly executed and the influencers who orchestrated it are saints! Did you thank David Bailey, Cory Klippsten & Jack Mallers today? Did you post about the virtues of buying the top when your favorite toxic maxi podcaster told you so?
DID YOU BLAME ZCASH TODAY? You are not mentally deranged enough about Zcash!

2025-12-27 21:51:02

Paper Bitcoin Summer was a free pass to shitcoin for the people who spent a decade LARPing about the immoral nature of shitcoins
Suddenly, it became socially safe to shill your paper asset while using shitcoin promises of 100x
At least it’s bitcoin… sort of
Then everyone got rightfully rekt and would’ve been better off buying ethereum, which they spent a decade calling a shitcoin that’s doomed to fail 🤷🏻‍♂️

2025-12-25 10:28:59

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https://video.nostr.build/7edfbfb73c8d4e34fa59e4e4f22036eaff9f7b293cb93f52052ca8386b1e538b.mp4

2025-12-24 22:46:11

Merry Christmas, y’all!
Keep dreaming at them Lambos and Supras and Skyline GTRs
Maybe next year we’ll get them 😆
https://image.nostr.build/1672152637d783eb7d876aaa8765687cb01c855a729c3588b86240fec2f94986.jpg

2025-12-24 22:45:28

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That’s gonna be the Christmas gift 🎁

2025-12-24 02:04:43

Lonely this Christmas Eve?
Listen to this interview with @npub1dge…mccn and you will feel smarter… but not necessarily better 😅
https://www.youtube.com/live/C1Il2Tvte5U?si=8EhIizUW3UcT_p66

2025-12-24 02:03:33

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https://www.youtube.com/live/C1Il2Tvte5U?si=8EhIizUW3UcT_p66

2025-12-22 11:46:23

Will interview @npub1dge…mccn in about 5 hours
We’ll talk about BIP119 (OP_CTV) and how we failed to improve Bitcoin
Got any comments or questions? Join the livestream!
https://video.nostr.build/7918cc529306fd1d92209f303650944e2de26e39dc1f8c8cc7d2a54caf94a0ed.mp4

2025-12-21 23:55:12

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Feels even better!

2025-12-21 23:54:46

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On Reddit, mostly. Talking Miami real estate & studying Hebrew

2025-12-21 23:53:48

Upcoming Bitcoin Takeover podcast episodes:
S16 E65 with @npub1dge…mccn – tomorrow afternoon CET
S16 E66 with Bruce Fenton – after Christmas
S16 E67 with Amir Taaki – new year marathon livestream
Are you ready?
https://video.nostr.build/2448d83100a1dd276d4e99f458467926cbd2fb15fc21a9181c411088baae3523.mp4

2025-12-21 15:48:02

Listening to Bitcoin Uncensored episodes from 2016
Chris & Junseth argue that if these blockchain devs were any good, they would be working for Bitcoin Core
10 years later, some of the best devs from “blockchain” want to bring their work to Bitcoin. But Core won’t activate any OP codes to let them bring their users to the mother ship.

2025-12-21 00:22:05

New profile picture
https://image.nostr.build/7b91f986939636e4a8bbbd91a1c65dd6551555183c96d6bb16b8ddbc98ce391f.jpg

2025-12-20 23:45:49

Where can I find Billy the male prostitute?
You know, the gay escort featured on Bitcoin Uncensored in 2016, who was using bitcoin for everything.
Would be interesting to interview him 10 years later, see how he’s doing.
Maybe Borack the escort Uber driver too, he was fun.

2025-12-20 22:24:43

All I want for Christmas is 1 million podcast downloads
I’m already half way there, but I still need your help
Over the last 12 months, I’ve recorded interviews with some of the most prominent people in Bitcoin
Help me by listening to 1 episode of the Bitcoin Takeover podcast & sharing it with your friends
With a little luck, we’ll get there 😇
https://image.nostr.build/2d3dd72503c71df9d329565b5c09b57059b0188216ecd4a8e61f59c2bb7712a0.jpg

2025-12-19 21:22:41

My interview with David Bailey is now available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts & more
Check it out if you want to understand what’s up with NAKA, how Bitcoin Magazine is doing & what he thinks about the 4 year market cycle.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-takeover-podcast/id1451766883
https://image.nostr.build/12e49d32af660aa5c6a30fef66907edfd0991b4888d0f540addfa46f4a1e9139.jpg

2025-12-19 21:20:41

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Dude you don’t understand how any of this works.

2025-12-19 15:20:17

right now, the bitcoin market seems to be immune to good news but very reactive to bad news
two years ago, we would say that etfs will take us to a million dollars
that never happened and is even less likely to happen now
bitcoin needs a narrative change and some upgrades

2025-12-18 17:21:36

What kind of news would immediately take bitcoin to $150k?

2025-12-16 01:44:04

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Of course not, I need you to educate me.

2025-12-16 01:43:45

I keep thinking about the Bob Dylan lyric “but to live outside the law, you must be honest”
Does it imply that the intervention of the law makes people dishonest, as everyone is trying to lie and cheat for their own gain?
Or is it about honesty in a state of nature, where the absence of any central authority makes everyone more vulnerable and willing to collaborate to survive?
This is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night 😅

2025-12-15 12:39:20

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No, I sound like Satoshi in 2009.

2025-12-15 12:38:51

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Yes it is! Let’s go BIP 360!
https://www.youtube.com/live/O6PZ-dquuwE?si=C7zgxwymGbjh_bIM

2025-12-15 12:38:03

A few months ago I was on a flight and I noticed that a teenager was wearing a “Lizzy McAlpine on tour” hoodie
I said to myself “oh, that’s what cool kids are listening to these days” and wrote down the artist’s name on my phone
Forgot about it until last night when I was reading my notes. Then I searched for some songs on YouTube and was blown away!
As it turns out, Lizzy McAlpine is an incredible singer-songwriter who sort of reminds me of Joni Mitchell in the early 1970s (the “Blue” album).
I had no expectations, so I was pleasantly surprised. Would definitely listen to a full album or check out a concert.

2025-12-15 01:24:40

the true bear market is the friends we lost along the way
some of whom became suits
others who lost their mind because of jpegs
but most of them lost focus and forgot why they came here in the first place
the time for healing begins now!

2025-12-15 01:24:18

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Nodes are useless unless you mean run your own miner.

2025-12-14 22:21:43

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How does that make you feel, though?

2025-12-14 22:20:35

I really want to interview more Bitcoin devs working on interesting projects
It’s just that all I see in my feed is Knotzi vs Coretard drama
And I don’t know where I can find new ideas
What’s the most revolutionary proposal you’ve seen lately?

2025-12-14 19:07:52

I was a bitcoiner back in 2004
When I was playing MMORPGs with friends
Buying in-game items from each other with cash
Dealing with scammers who were pretending to help you level up your character if you gave them your password, but would steal your items.
Joining guilds, fighting silly tribal wars knowing anyone could easily be on the other side but we’re here because of some friends.
The only difference is that we never aimed to overthrow banking with in-game gold. And we actually had much more fun, there was a true feeling of brotherhood and friendship.

2025-12-14 15:28:32

So when the EU leaks everyone’s bitcoin holdings next year
Which country is the safest against $5 wrench attacks, SWATing, having your family members kidnapped for ransom, and/or being kidnapped yourself?
It sure isn’t France, the country of the ECB president 🤔

2025-12-13 18:28:47

What is the Bitcoin maximalist reaction
to the fact that the European Union wants all citizens to declare all the coins they hold in self-custody?
The boating accident? A casual HFSP in between the steak lunch and the steak dinner?
How about acknowledging that you were wrong and the purity virtue signaling and the NGU greed kept millions of people away from privacy projects and DeFi
and now every user who humbly stacked sats on the most compliant podcaster-endorsed KYC exchange out there and withdrew to the hardware wallet they bought under their name using their home or office address
is just one bureaucratic LLM query away from becoming a criminal if he doesn’t disclose every little UTXO?
Bitcoin has no untraceable kind of privacy. Your LSP can leak all the data about your activity to the government. Your favorite custodial Lightning wallet can rug you on demand. Running your own Lightning node will most likely make you lose a lot of money and doesn’t scale anyway.
While you were jerking off to price charts, the regulators caught up. Now they want your name and your wallet addresses on a list that will definitely get leaked in the future.
No privacy, no hope for the future, your hard-earned coins will most likely enrich some EU bureaucrat. You got duped, anon. Thank you for playing!

2025-12-11 01:44:13

Total Bitcoin Takeover podcast
Season 16 downloads
(up until December 5th 2025):
471271
Almost half a million!
Thank you all for listening!
https://image.nostr.build/7744d17a78890a22eee4fcc212a5dfa067251470a18dccbc759cb6f7f68fc42c.jpg

2025-12-08 22:58:14

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Shitcoiners aren’t broke. They own more BTC than you and your friends ever will.
100k BTC is locked right now on Ethereum for DeFi.
Lightning only has 4k BTC.

2025-12-08 19:07:30

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Just replace these people’s names with “broke rent seekers who like to virtue signal” and everything they say makes much more sense

2025-12-08 18:30:46

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Same way Tor, Signal, and a lot of open source cryptography libraries (some of which Monero is also using) are working without permission.
They’re useful for everyone involved.

2025-12-08 18:28:54

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Oh so Tron is better than Bitcoin because the price outperformed it over the last 5 years since they added USDT?
Good to know.

2025-12-08 18:27:37

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Guacamole is hallucinating, he was orange pilled by Lawrence Nahum (fellow Italian, CTO of Blockstream). Before he met Lawrence, he was a Ripple shill.

2025-12-08 13:15:41

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Different ball games, my friend.
Zcash developers are doxxed and paid by legal entities. They did something smart when they moved part of the operations to Switzerland, though.
This is the price they pay for building the most advanced privacy tech. In comparison, Monero just takes stuff that was already built and merges it into the tech stack.

2025-12-08 13:12:37

Arbitrary data (aka “spam”) is the red herring
The goal of Knots is to create a precedent for transaction censorship & UTXO confiscation
Why? Because institutional investors, some of which back Ocean pool, consider Satoshi’s coins an existential risk and want to freeze his BTC to effectively prevent him from ever selling.
Some of the quantum resistance debates aim for the same goal. But they have lesser credibility due to the unconvincing evidence that quantum computers will be able to crack elliptic curve digital signatures anytime soon.
Follow the money.

2025-12-08 13:12:18

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It was great for GPU miners, while it lasted. But it was a popular fork in 2017 and it experimented with something that some anti-ASIC bitcoiners would have wanted to see.
Is it possible for you to look at a crypto without checking the price chart?

2025-12-06 22:29:09

The block size wars were a mistake
All of this development energy should have taken place on one Bitcoin
https://image.nostr.build/51f5dd36f85c58133482c5c37d43f2683a30b9d81123308114c651d8a28c18d0.jpg

2025-12-06 22:27:00

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I should have someone from Ergo on my show 🤔

2025-12-06 21:36:32

Interesting altcoins that test + refine ideas first proposed for Bitcoin:
Zcash: Zerocash, soft fork proposed for BTC in 2014
Litecoin: MimbleWimble Extension Block, soft fork proposed by Andrew Poelstra for BTC in 2016
Monero: ring signatures, Confidential Transactions, Dandelion++, Bulletproofs, all of which were proposed individually for Bitcoin
Decred: CoinJoin by default, smaller blocks & stable Lightning Network
Bitcoin Cash: dynamic block size, OP_CAT + a bunch of restored OP codes from the Satoshi era (AND, OR, XOR, DIV, MOD, MUL, LSHIFT, RSHIFT)
What else?

2025-12-06 21:35:46

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Yup I interviewed @npub1klk…x3vt
https://www.youtube.com/live/amNaZ35KIo8?si=eBLTydkbU3C3fOAj

2025-12-06 21:34:28

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That’s always nice to see. My country really isn’t a bad place to live.

2025-12-03 05:17:22

Satoshi Nakamoto gave everyone the blueprint to create unstoppable money.
Some say that he created the last form of money we’ll ever need, but he also supported the creation of BitNames (later Namecoin).
The only kind of maximalist Satoshi proved himself to be is Proof of Work and merged mining maxi.
He didn’t care that much about Austrian economics and the “everything divided by 21 million coins” meme. Satoshi was a cypherpunk who gladly supported different use cases for his tech, but wanted a whole galaxy of coins to get secures by the same miners.

2025-11-29 09:17:58

Remember last year’s 7-hour interview with Amir Taaki?
Well, this year he has booked the entire new year’s eve 😂
So we might just break every record!
Got no plans for December 31st 2025? Join our livestream!
https://image.nostr.build/fdd9a206494a1644153b5fed6dc46db2d6f3b5cc1c3b68284489657d1593962a.jpg

2025-11-28 23:23:00

It’s more ethical to support interesting altcoins that may push Bitcoin to improve
than to put on a suit and shake hands with bankers.
One is evolutionary and cypherpunk.
The other is regressive and defeatist.

2025-11-28 17:22:43

Searching for some Black Friday deals to improve your cypherpunk experience?
Use promo code “BTCTKVR” to get special discounts for:
– all metal backups on the Cryptosteel website
– awesome Bitcoin miners for your livingroom from Braiins
– cold storage devices from Satochip
– hardware wallets from @npub1tg7…cxmt
– BitAxe Bitcoin miners from solomining.de
More details:
https://bitcoin-takeover.com/promo-code-btctkvr/

2025-11-28 17:20:01

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Not yet, but I’m applying for a community grant:
https://forum.zcashcommunity.com/t/vlad-costea-for-zcg-zecember-2025/53330/12

2025-11-24 21:40:24

Over the last week I’ve spoken with 3 Bitcoin devs who are migrating part of their work to Zcash
Not because Zcash pays them – they’re frustrated by the shitty dev culture where they must constantly ask for permission to build stuff
One is a Lightning dev, one is a Starkware dev, another one is a Counterparty/Ordinal dev and artist.
Not everyone wants to take part in the “Knotzi vs Coretard” debate. The revenge chain scenario is very real.

2025-11-23 18:49:24

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Yes and in order to solve that problem, they had to create a slippery slope for government-mandated censorship and call everyone who disagrees with them Coretard pedos.
Sorry, they are indefensible.

2025-11-23 18:48:21

On Bitcoin Takeover podcast, I’ve interviewed 3 of the people sitting at this dinner table (Sergio Lerner, Zooko & @npub1ej4…ndrm)
And over the next couple of months I think I will have 3 more
(this is a picture from 2014, taken by Matthew D. Green at Princeton University)
https://image.nostr.build/d00a30ba181e361d9d8704b0b7db32291887c9a5926c08871634eadb22e4237a.jpg

2025-11-23 18:46:53

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I did, you’re just not paying attention.

2025-11-23 10:41:59

I told you Zcash is the revenge chain against the current mental derangement in Bitcoin.
Just like Ethereum was the revenge chain for builders who were fed up with the block size war in 2016-2017.
To many investors, Bitcoin is not sound money digital energy banana. It’s a tech stock which promises to accomplish the goal outlined in the whitepaper: peer to peer electronic cash.
If the goalpost shifts from “let’s make bitcoin the ultimate form of money, with contracts, fungibility & quantum resistance” to “Bitcoin is already perfect, let’s fight about jpeg inscriptions instead”, investors will notice and try to minimize their exposure to risk.
So far, Ocean mining has been the most destructive actor in Bitcoin since Craig Wright. The hatred, infighting & division they caused will take years to heal.
Meanwhile, Zcash is just building stuff. It’s technologically interesting, way ahead of its time, but still familiar thanks to its Bitcoin roots.
Zcash is bringing devs on board to work on privacy that scales to billions of people (Tachyon). Zcash is working on shielded assets (imagine stablecoins that are truly censorship resistant because you cannot know who sent them, to whom, and in which amount). Zcash is the Bitcoin we were promised more than a decade ago, refined and improved over the years.
While Bitcoin is dangerously stagnant, Zcash is evolving. And investors love throwing their money at something that’s vibrant and promising.
Haters will point out that Zcash was dead until a few months ago. Well, that’s also when bitcoiners lost the plot. Think about it.
Also, some of the same things that were being said about Bitcoin in 2013 (that it’s persistent, mathematically sound & usable as both a store of value and a medium of exchange) can be said about Zcash too.
There’s a lot of virtue in not giving up… and this industry provides more incentives for developers to pivot to new VC-funded projects. But the Zcash team has been consistent over the last 9 years and honestly deserves this influx of users & developers.
It’s fine to be in denial when confronted by new information. But don’t let any ideology blind you. In 2017, it was infighting bitcoiners who guaranteed Ethereum’s status as the number 2 coin. Eight years later, some of the same names are causing an exodus to Zcash.
There’s also a narrative shift that’s going on, with privacy (something bitcoiners of today fear) becoming more important in everyday life. A decade ago, financial privacy was for paranoid nerds. Today, it’s what billions of CBDC forced adopters need.
Embrace the change, or else stay zidelined and bitter. Either way, you can’t say nobody tried to explain to you what’s happening.

2025-11-22 02:43:30

> endorse Trump to put an end to Operation Chokepoint 2.0
> Trump gets elected, says he will stop lawfare & let crypto in the USA thrive
> start Bitcoin treasury companies, get rekt by the market
> Blame Chokepoint 3.0

2025-11-21 23:47:33

Up until last year I was really upset that I never get invited to any of the Bitcoin Magazine conferences
Not in Nashville/Vegas, not in Amsterdam, not in Abu Dhabi
I used to write for BM, currently run one of the most popular podcasts & also produced competing magazines
Ironically, now I get invited to Ethereum conferences despite holding no ETH and not doing anything relevant for their community 🤷🏻‍♂️
But now I also understand the value of being counterculture and not selling out to the suits. While brushing shoulders with politicians and corporate CEOs can be educational, I feel more at home among idealistic nerds who want to change the world with their code.
Punk rock is not played in every large expo hall. And I like punk rock quite a lot.