Bitcoin Takeover Podcast
by Vlad Costea
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 guest did something notable, and the host did the reading. Time to learn!
Episodes
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S17 E48: Robin Linus in the 1000 BTC Car, Driving to BitDevs Atlanta
This episode was recorded while driving to BitDevs in Atlanta. The car belongs to Art (at least 1/3 of it) and is the first vehicle ever bought for bitcoin in 2013: a 2011 Toyota Prius, for which the Mycelium wallet founder paid 1000 BTC. We talk about cars, Bitcoin development, why the medium of...
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S17 E47: Tabconf 8 Livestream with Kevin Loaec, Ekrem Bal, Spaces Protocol & The Bitcoin Pivot (Bonus: Peter Todd)
The second day of TABConf 8, live from Atlanta. Ekrem Bal talks Citrea privacy, Kevin Loaec explains Liana wallet, Spaces Protocol introduces BTC handles, Bitcoin credit unions enter the scene, Peter Todd unboxes his Zcash ceremony laptop 10 years later. Time stamps: 0:00 Stream warm-up 2:29…
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S17 E46: Livestream from Tabconf 8, Part 1 (feat. Paul Sztorc, Andre Beganski, Alex Lewin, Janusz, Christopher Allen, Will & Michael Tidwell)
Live from TABConf 8 in Atlanta: Paul Sztorc demos a quantum-resistant soft fork, Christopher Allen on Blockchain Commons, Michael Tidwell on TABConf, plus Andre Beganski, Alex Lewin, Janusz and Will on their work in the space. Recorded on Wednesday, October 14th 2026. Time stamps: 0:00 Stream...
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S17 E45: Talking Tari with Naveen Jain, Fox & Marguerite de Courcelle
After seven years of being in development, Tari finally launched in 2025. Why did it take so long and how many of the initial promises were delivered? Naveen Jain, Mr. Fox & Marguerite de Courcelle join the show to offer their best answers. 0:00 - Intro 0:47 - Welcome to S17 E45: Naveen, Mr. Fox…
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S17 E44: Marc De Mesel on Early Bitcoin Investing & Polygamy
Marc De Mesel talks about on selling BTC for Bitcoin Cash in 2017, funding BCH devs for years, why BCH failed despite being the best big block version of Bitcoin, what's in his privacy coin basket, his Tesla investment & having multiple girlfriends. 0:00 - Intro 0:47 - Welcome: Marc De Mesel, the...
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S1 E4 Remastered: Omar Faridi on Bitcoin in Pakistan, Brain Drain & the Case for Moderate Thinking
The 2019 conversation with fellow crypto journalist colleague Omar Faridi is now remastered: featuring Bitcoin in Pakistan, the Petro scam, brain drain economics, and why nothing is absolutely good or bad. Time stamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:46 - Remaster Notes: The Crypto Insider Colleague 2:29…
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S17 E43: Mike Belshe on BitGo, Quantum & Clarity
BitGo CEO Mike Belshe returns after 20 months to discuss the Clarity Act, BitGo's IPO and retail launch, quantum-resistant wallets, AI code auditing, and what changed since we last spoke in S16 E1. Time stamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:54 - Welcome to S17 E43: Mike Belshe Returns 1:26 - The White House…
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S17 E42: Bob Summerwill on Ethereum Classic & Bitcoin's Fork Season
Ethereum Classic veteran Bob Summerwill retells the DAO hack from inside the Foundation, explains why forks are features, and shares advice for Paul Sztorc's ecash launch, plus FIFA stories and lost ETH. Time stamps: 00:47 - Welcome to S17 E42: Fork Season Begins 01:26 - Bob Summerwill & the DAO...
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S1 E3 Remastered: Zack Voell on Bitcoin & Politics
The January 2019 Zack Voell crossover (he was hosting The Coin Pod) is now remastered: featuring opt-in money, gridlock as a feature, FDR's gold grab, Russia rumors & dating as a Bitcoiner in NYC. The audio has been enhanced too! Time stamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:46 - Remaster Notes: This Show Was…
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S17 E41: Vik Sharma on Radar, Arbiter & Vibe Coding the Future of Cake Wallet
Vik Sharma is best known as the CEO of Cake Wallet. But lately, he's built two new projects: a Signal fork with BTC tipping called Radar, and a perpetual trading app named Arbiter. In this episode, he explains how the AI revolution speeds up development. Time stamps: 0:00 - Intro 1:18 - Vik…
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S17 E40: Richard Werner & Amir Taaki on Economics, CBDCs & Cypherpunk Tech
Prof. Richard Werner is one of the best known economists in the world. Amir Taaki is one of the most famous cryptographers and cypherpunks of his generation. Together, they join forces to defeat centra planning & stop the rise of CBDCs. Time stamps: 0:00 - Intro: A Crossover Panel at Mallorca...
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S1 E2 Remastered: John Carvalho on Bitcoin Politics
Recorded in January 2019 and published alongside the rest of the Bitcoin Takeover Podcast Season 1 episodes in February 2019, this interview with John Carvalho is one of the show's early hits and a statement that this initiative is able to feature unique insights from popular bitcoiners. The...
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S1 E1 Remastered: Donald McIntyre on Bitcoin, The Teachings of Tim May & Nick Szabo, and the History of Money
Donald Hugh McIntyre passed in 2025, but is remembered as one of the most insightful polymaths... while his blog Etherplan lives on. The episode came out in the first week of February 2019, ran two hours, and set the genetic code for Bitcoin Takeover podcast. Time stamps: 00:02:45 – Introduction:...
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S17 E39: Kurt Wuckert Jr. on BSV & Big Block Bitcoin
Kurt Wuckert Jr. is best known for his work at Gorilla Pool and CoinGeek. In this interview, he explains why BSV formed from BCH, what are the biggest differences between the two versions of big block Bitcoin, and why he believes he found Satoshi Nakamoto. 00:49 – The Cake Wallet contest…
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S17 E38: Keagan McClelland (Keags) on Lightning Metrics, Covenants, Consensus Politics & Verifying Bitcoin
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...
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S17 E37: Paul Sztorc on the eCash Three Stage Launch, Free Coins & 12 Drivechains
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...
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S17 E36: Yonatan Sompolinsky on Kaspa Covenants, DAGKnight & Coordination Markets
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…
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S17 E35: Vinny Lingham on Bitcoin Post-Maximalism, Scaling Regrets & Saylor's Endgame
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...
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S17 E34: Cory Klippsten on Bitcoin Cafe, Swan & Big Bitcoin
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...
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S17 E33: Joël Valenzuela on Being Unbanked with Private Digital Cash
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...
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S17 E32: Perry E. Metzger on Bitcoin in 2008, Cypherpunk Culture & AI Optimism
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 -...
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S17 E31: Alex Waltz Reveals Bitcoin's First Miner
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…
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S17 E30: Martin Matejka on Firefish, BTC-backed Loans & Bitcoin's Purpose
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...
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S17 E29: Grafton Clark on Vibe Coding, Privacy & Bitcoin Culture
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...
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S17 E28: Josh Swihart on Zcash & ZODL
Josh Swihart is the founder of ZODL: the Zcash Open Development Lab. Basically a for profit reincarnation of the old Electric Coin Company, which inherited the dev teams and projects. During his previous Bitcoin Takeover podcast appearance in November 2024 (S15 E62), Zcash was a struggling…
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S17 E27: Kieran Mesquka on Railgun & Building Privacy
Kieran Mesquka is a contributor to privacy projects, best known for his work on Railgun for Ethereum. He is also an advocate for freedom-maximizing technologies and a connoisseur of Zero Knowledge privacy. In this episode, we talk about what it's like to build shielded pools and anonymization…
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S17 E26: Steve Thurmond, Calin Culianu & The Phenomenal Big Blockers
Almost 9 years since the big split of the Bitcoin community, it's time to learn more about how the Bitcoin Cash chain developed. Calin Culianu is the creator of Fulcrum, an efficient privacy-preserving SPV client. Steve Thurmond is the most ardent advocate for Cash Stamps: a convenient paper…
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S17 E25: Milan De Reede on Nano GPT, AI & Vibe Coding
Milan De Reede is the co-founder of Nano GPT: a service that allows you to access all the premium (as well as free) AI models from the same interface, as you pay with bitcoin (and a bunch of other supported coins) for every query and prompt. It successfully allows users to experiment, save money…
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S17 E24: Zach Herbert on AI & Hardware Wallets
Zach Herbert is the CEO of Foundation, a company which specializes in building hardware wallets that offer extra security features. The latest model, the Passport Prime, aims to also replace YubiKey for Two Factor Authentication and other more expensive encrypted storage devices. But now thanks…
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S17 E23: Hunter Beast & Mark Karpelès on Bitcoin's Quantum Upgrade
Hunter Beast is the author of BIP360, the most popular proposal to add quantum resistant signatures to Bitcoin. Mark Karpelès is the former CEO of Mt. Gox and the creator of Tiban wallet. In this episode, they talk about the looming quantum threat. Time stamps: 00:00:56 Introducing Hunter Beast...
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S17 E22: Jeremy Rubin on CTV, Char & Building on Bitcoin
Jeremy Rubin is the author of BIP 119 (OP_CTV, Check Template Verify) and co-author of BIP 348 (CSFS, Check Sig From Stack). More recently, he started working on Char: a decentralized shared sequencer for Bitcoin layer 2s. In this episode, which we recorded at the LayerTwo Labs booth during the...
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S17 E21: Paul Sztorc Hard Forks Bitcoin to Launch Ecash with Drivechains!
After 15 years of being a Bitcoin-only maximalist and about a decade of promoting BIP300 as a soft fork, LayerTwo Labs CEO Paul Sztorc decided to launch Ecash: a hard fork of Bitcoin in which every BTC holder gets free coins. There's a catch, though: while everyone can claim 1 ecash for every...
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S17 E20: Talking Privacy with Amir Taaki, Harry Halpin & Christopher Cialone
Amir Taaki is one of the first Bitcoin developers to join the project and today he stands out as one of the most prominent cypherpunks and privacy advocates. Currently, he is working towards building DarkFi. Harry Halpin is one of the most prominent privacy advocates in academia, and an...
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S17 E19: Deadalnix (Amaury Séchet) on Forking Bitcoin & Ecash
Amaury Séchet is the developer who forked Bitcoin in August 2017 to create Bitcoin Cash. Three years later, in the aftermath of an internal conflict about developer funding mechanisms, he also forked Bitcoin Cash to create Ecash (XEC): the evolution of the Bitcoin ABC client which adds the...
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S17 E18: Dr. K (Karl Kreder) on Quai & Scaling Proof of Work
Karl Kreder, better known as Dr. K, is the architect of the Quai network: a layered blockchain stack which maximizes the power of proof of work to enable high transaction throughput. Similar in design with Peter Todd's idea of Tree Chains, Quai finds itself at the bleeding edge of cryptocurrency...
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S17 E17: Lukas Hozda on BIP110, Bitcoin & Rust
Lukas Hozda is the incumbent genius at Braiins mining: the Jack of all trades who's been with the company since he finished high school and can get assigned to any project. He wrote "Programming Bitcoin in Rust" and lately he's scrutinized BIP110. Time stamps: 00:00:46 – Introducing Lukas Hosoda,...
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S17 E16: Summer Meng on Bitmars & Selling Bitcoin ASIC Miners
Summer Meng is the CEO of Bitmars: the largest distributor of Bitmain ASIC miners in Europe and North America. Often described as the ”ASIC Queen”, she is the person to contact if you need to supply a mining farm with the latest and best-performing hardware. In this episode, she talks about the...
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S17 E15: OPNET Smart Contracts on Bitcoin L1 with Danny & Chad
Chad Masterson & Charlie Plainview are the co-founders of OPNET: a protocol that brings smart contracts, DeFi & stablecoins to Bitcoin's base layer. No tokens, wrappers, or bridges are required. But how does it really work & how is it different from Omni, Counterparty, and Citrea? Time stamps…
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S17 E14: Kristian Csepcsar on Braiins & The History of Bitcoin Mining
Kristian Csepcsar is the Chief Propaganda Officer at Braiins: the first Bitcoin mining pool and also the oldest Bitcoin company in existence. In this episode, he talks about the role that Braiins plays in the Bitcoin world (inside and outside of mining) and the moments that shaped the Proof of…
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S17 E13: Charlie Spears on Blockspace, Bitcoin Culture & OP_NEXT
Charlie Spears is a co-founder of Blockspace media, an organization which specializes in publishing articles and podcasts about Bitcoin mining and scaling. In this episode, we talk about the rise of AI, Bitcoin culture, and the upcoming OP_NEXT event. Time stamps: 00:01:07 – Introduction & Spook...
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S17 E12: Ray Youssef on Fighting for the Global South
Time stamps: 00:00:46 Introducing Ray 00:02:05 Ray Steps Down as CEO of NoOnes & Legal Troubles Begin 00:03:10 The Arrest & Deportation in Mexico 00:06:29 US Charges & Legal Proceedings 00:11:07 Motivations Behind the Prosecution 00:17:08 Conditions of Release & Ankle Bracelet 00:20:57 NoOnes’...
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S17 E11: John Carvalho on Bitcoin Depression, Bitkit & Pubky
John Carvalho is the CEO of Synonym: the company behind the Bitkit wallet and the Pubky social tagging protocol. In this episode, he talks about the progress he's made with his products, the relevance of BIP110, and two concepts which he calls ”Bitcoin depression” and ”Lightning derangement”.…
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S17 E10: Mark Karpelès on Mt. Gox, 79956 Bitcoins & Chief P*ssy
Mark Karpelès is the former CEO of Mt. Gox, the defunct Bitcoin exchange. Recently, he requested the Bitcoin community to hard fork the chain in order to recover 79956 BTC that was stolen from his exchange. In this episode, he explains all about it. Time stamps: 00:01:19 Introducing Mark Karpelès…
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S17 E9: Cameron Robertson on Burner & Bitcoin in 2010
Cameron Robertson first discovered Bitcoin in 2009, after reading a post on hacker website Slashdot. About a year later, he started mining and mingling with other Bitcoin enthusiasts in the Silicon Valley area. More recently, he created a product named the Burner: an affordable, NFC-based card…
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S17 E8: Riccardo Spagni on Bitcoin, Monero & Privacy
Between 2014 and 2019, Riccardo Spagni (aka Fluffy Pony) led the development and engineering efforts of the Monero privacy. But he's also been a prominent bitcoiner since 2011, who did mining and supported e-commerce. He built a solid reputation on the Bitcoin OTC trading platform, created the...
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S17 E7: Colin Harper on Bitcoin Mining, Epstein E-mails & Journalism
Colin Harper is a veteran Bitcoin journalist, who is known for the well-researched articles that he wrote for Coin Central, Bitcoin Magazine, Luxor Mining, and Blockspace Media. More recently, he became the co-host of the Blockspace Podcast. In this episode, we talk about Colin's insights into...
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S17 E6: Vik Sharma on Ending Wars Among Privacy Coins
Lately, Cake Wallet has become the Swiss Army knife for privacy-preserving cryptocurrencies — a description that should be an oxymoron. CEO Vik Sharma joins the show in order to explain how the project went from only supporting Monero to branching out into Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Decred…
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S17 E5: Paul Sztorc on Bitcoin Derangements
Over the last 6 months, Paul Sztorc has compiled an impressive list of inconsistencies and significant losses from the Bitcoin maximalist camp. He referred to them as ”derangements” and we cover most of them in this brutally honest wakeup call. Read Paul's article:...
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S17 E4: {ideal} BitVM Optimizations (Robin Linus, Liam Eagen, Ying Tong)
Robin Linus, Liam Eagen, Ying Tong Lai are the co-founders of {ideal}: an initiative which recently created Argo: a garble circuits scheme which enabled 2000x efficiency gains for BitVM. The group aims to use cryptography in order to advance privacy and scalability in Bitcoin. Time stamps…
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S17 E3: Zano Devs on Private Tokenization
Andrey Sabelnikov and Valeriy Pisarkov are the core devs of Zano: a privacy network which enables users to create tokens with privacy. The project's mix of Cryptonote and Zarcanum protocols can also enable private transfers of bridged BTC. In this episode, we talk about how this system works and…
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About this show
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 guest did something notable, and the host did the reading. Time to learn!
Hosted by
Vlad Costea
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