Bitcoin Takeover Podcast Season 17

[Vlad BTCTKVR]

During Bitcoin's 17th year of existence, Bitcoin Takeover podcast continues its weekly interview streak with season 17!

The goal of this thread is to document these interviews on this historic platform — as I'm sure that many of the individuals who joined the show will play more significant roles in the future.

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast is a rather nerdy show, which focuses on builders, coders, and cypherpunks who dare to defy the Orwellian status quo and focus on shaping a future that's closer to their dream. I also tend to favor the discovery of OGs in order to compare their expectations from the early days with the status quo.

To me, the podcast host, Bitcoin is more like Linux: open source software that anyone can view, copy, modify, and deploy in different shapes and for different purposes. Satoshi himself was open to Namecoin as a merge mined chain... and speaking of, I will publish an interview with the current Namecoin maintainer pretty soon!

2026 also marks Bitcoin Takeover Podcast's 7th anniversary; so throughout the year, I will try to document everything interesting that is happening in the space.

As a Bitcoin post-maximalist, I believe that experimentation and exploration are very important in order to understand how Bitcoin can be improved and which features have most market demand. Everything that exists outside of BTC provides open source software or precious information. So if Bitcoin decides to add privacy at the base layer, implement various layer two setups, or dive into the intricate world of smart contracts, there are lots of options to choose from and their tradeoffs are much better understood. On the other hand, if Bitcoin ossifies and no significant upgrade gets added, it's still important to know which networks and protocols work best for supplementing some of the missing features.

Unlike many of the podcasts out there, the explicit goal is not to present Bitcoin as the perfect money, the sacred invention that was bestowed upon us by a godly time-traveling AI, or the financial asset that will go up forever against the US dollar. Call it Eastern European pragmatism or whatever, but I like to minimize speculation and deal with the lesser convenient facts. I don't believe Bitcoin will improve if we irrationally worship it. I also don't think it's healthy to promote it as something that it's not, or even to subject it to the fractional reserve schemes that motivated the creation of Bitcoin in the first place!

Without further ado, I will leave a link to the podcast's main page and encourage everyone interested to subscribe on their favorite platform. Thank you for reading my post and I hope you will check out the show too: https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/

Season 17 intro/trailer: https://youtu.be/ESK_zFyYyI8

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[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, S17 E1 with Bruce Fenton — Satoshi's Roundtable Organizer & Former Bitcoin Foundation Volunteer

Some might remember Bruce Fenton from the days of the Bitcoin Foundation. Others will hastily question him about his involvement in the Ravencoin project. Older friends also know him from Wall Street. So given this sum of experiences, Bruce Fenton could have been the perfect advisor or even founder of one of these Bitcoin Treasury Companies. But instead, he Satoshi Roundtable organizer calls them for what they are: paper bitcoin which defeats the purpose of the project.

Paper bitcoin is not scarce. It's not censorship resistant. There is no privacy involved. And if you want to trade it, you have to do it during the office hours and outside of banking holidays. Furthermore, these treasury notes are not directly redeemable for bitcoin — so they're very distant from Hal Finney's vision of Bitcoin-backed banks.

I've decided to invite Bruce Fenton on my podcast again because he is unquestionably based. In a time when he could have capitalized his credentials, he proved to be a much better cypherpunk than many of the guys who were talking about the Cyphernomicon a decade ago but today wear suits to talk to bankers. I love his takes, I appreciate that he is self-aware to the point that he can criticize decisions from his past, and I wish more people listened to him.

Below, you will find links to the podcast. Special thanks to SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Bitcoin.com News, NoOnes.com, and Unstoppable Wallet for sponsoring the show!

Blog post about this interview: https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s17-e1-bruce-fenton-suitconers-cypherpunk-bitcoin-spirit/

Listen to this interview on YouTube (with video): https://youtube.com/live/eVRrIcGQxdg?feature=share

Listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, and many other audio-only platforms (without video, links at the top of the page): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/index.php?name=2026-01-10_s17_e1_bruce_fenton_on_suitcoiners_the_spirit_of_bitcoin.mp3

Episode graphics:

[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, S17 E2 with Tyler Spalding — 2011 Bitcoiner who Co-Founded Flexa

Tyler Spalding is a 2011 bitcoiner who first got involved as a home miner. Though he's been around for 15 years, today he is best known for co-founding and becoming the first CEO of Flexa.

A couple of weeks ago, he came to visit the bear sanctuary in Zărnești, Romania — the largest reservation of its kind in the entire world, which hosts more than 120 rescued brown bears. So I took advantage of the opportunity and met him in person for an interview. What's truly special about this conversation is that we recorded the first two hours on the road, while driving from Zărnești to the Bucharest airport. Also, there is no script and no prior planning involved: we simply talked about the topics that we both found interesting.

Some of the major subjects include Bitcoin's evolution into a store of value, early BTC purchases, why use cases matter, Legitimate Altcoins that really aren't scams, and the proof of work vs proof of stake debate. Tyler Spalding was warm, candid, and provided in-depth explanations for everything.

Below, you will find links to the podcast. Special thanks to SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Bitcoin.com News, NoOnes.com, and Unstoppable Wallet for sponsoring this episode!

Blog post about this interview (includes complete time stamps): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s17-e2-tyler-spalding-on-bitcoin-payments-altcoins-bears/

Listen to this interview on YouTube (with video): https://youtube.com/live/cMIqNThCR90?feature=share

Listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, and many other audio-only platforms (without video, links at the top of the page): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/index.php?name=2026-01-15_s17_e2_tyler_spalding_on_bitcoin_payments_altcoins_bears.mp3

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[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, S17 E3 with Andrey Sabelnikov and Valeriy Pisarkov — lead developers & researchers for the Zano privacy project

Zano is a privacy network which serves the purpose of tokenizing other assets and transferring them with the same confidentiality as Monero. With a trust minimized bridge, it should also be able to handle private bitcoin transactions — in the same way Ethereum acts like a sidechain today for more than 100k BTC thanks to WBTC.

In order to find out what's new with the project, I've decided to interview Zano core developers Andrey Sabelnikov and Valeriy Pisarkov. The former is a software engineer and developer who actually worked on the original CryptoNote design, while the latter is the researcher who authored the Zarcanum research paper for confidential assets. In a nutshell, the Zano network will undergo 3 major changes in 2026: gateway addresses (transparent by design) to enable exchange listings, transition from PoW/PoS hybrid to full Proof of Stake, and Full Chaim Membership Proof (the same FCMP++ that's currently being built for Monero). All of these mark significant departures from the current design and will require individual hard forks to pull off.

Below, you will find links to the podcast. Special thanks to SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Bitcoin.com News, NoOnes.com, and Braiins Hashpower for sponsoring this episode!

Blog post about this interview (includes complete time stamps): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s17-e3-zano-devs-on-private-tokenization/

Listen to this interview on YouTube (with video): https://youtube.com/live/H0p2qwm_dMw?feature=share

Listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, and many other audio-only platforms (without video, links at the top of the page): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/index.php?name=2026-01-20_s17_e3_zano_devs_andrey_val_on_private_tokenization.mp3

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[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, S17 E4 with the Founding Members of {ideal}: Robin Linus, Liam Eagen & Ying Tong Lai

Recently, 3 of the most talented and prolific developers in Bitcoin launched {ideal}: an initiative which aims to bring scalability and privacy to Bitcoin via math, cryptography and advancements in BitVM.

Naturally, given the magnitude of the claims, I had to bring the three founders on my podcast: so Robin Linus, Liam Eagen, and Ying Tong Lai joined S17 E4 of Bitcoin Takeover in order to discuss their plans. In their vision for the future of Bitcoin, there would be many trust-minimized bridges to networks that expand on the current functionality of BTC. Some of them would provide Zcash-level privacy (see their Shielded Client Side Validation paper: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/068), while others focus on scalability and use case maximization (borrowing, lending, automated market makers, and other applications that are popular today on Ethereum).

The beauty of BitVM is that no further Bitcoin soft fork upgrades are necessary... though covenants and operation OP codes (multiplication, concatenation) would definitely help make everything more efficient and trust minimized. So there's a lot that can be done, but the biggest challenge is to convince bitcoiners to embrace use cases outside of just HODLing.

Below, you will find links to the podcast. Special thanks to SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Bitcoin.com News, NoOnes.com, and Braiins Hashpower for sponsoring this episode!

Blog post about this interview (includes complete time stamps): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s17-e4-ideal-on-bitvm-optimizations-robin-linus-liam-eagen-ying-tong-lai/

Listen to this interview on YouTube (with video): https://youtube.com/live/HlQJtCdkj4I

Listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, and many other audio-only platforms (without video, links at the top of the page): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/index.php?name=2026-01-24_s17_e4_ideal_bitvm_optimizations_robin_linus_liam_eagen_ying_tong_.mp3

Check out {ideal} group: https://ideal.group

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[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, S17 E5 with Paul Sztorc — CEO of LayerTwo Labs & Creator of BIP 300, Hivemind & Truthcoin (first Bitcoin prediction market)

Paul Sztorc is quite a visionary in the world of Bitcoin, with ideas that are usually way ahead of their time. He created the first prediction market (Truthcoin) back in 2013, envisioned a better way to do two way pegged Bitcoin sidechains in the summer of 2017, and also started criticizing the Bitcoin maximalist ideology as early as 2018.

But in a recent blog post, Paul decided to criticize the many derangements of bitcoiners. Ranging from misconceptions concerning technical upgrades (SegWit discount, Taproot's completeness) and all the way to social observation (why do so many thought leaders believe in bad price prediction models such as Stock to Flow?), Mr. Sztorc was able to capture the status quo of Bitcoin culture in a way that very few thinkers could.

Given his ”truth over loyalty to any group” nature and willingness to speak about his convictions, I had to once again invite Paul on my show. The result is a 4-hour interview which explores most of the elements described in his article. I hope that you will find it useful!

Below, you will find links to the podcast. Special thanks to SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Bitcoin.com News, NoOnes.com, and Braiins Hashpower for sponsoring this episode!



Blog post about this interview (includes complete time stamps): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s17-e5-paul-sztorc-bitcoin-derangements/

Listen to this interview on YouTube (with video): https://youtube.com/live/GMX_Agbe-9w

Listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, and many other audio-only platforms (without video, links at the top of the page): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/index.php?name=2026-01-29_s17_e5_paul_sztorc_on_bitcoin_derangements.mp3

Check out LayerTwo Labs on their website and on Telegram: https://layertwolabs.com/download https://t.me/DcInsiders

Graphics:

[Wind_FURY]

So there's a lot that can be done, but the biggest challenge is to convince bitcoiners to embrace use cases outside of just HODLing.

Although true, we can't actually blame people if they merely HODL, which includes me. Haha. The main reason why is because of the Federal Reserve/Central Banks themselves. They're addicted to printing money, inflating the money supply, WHICH also inflates some percentage of our fiat savings.

I watched some of your videos, and I believe that Paul Sztorc's ideas are good in theory, but I have asked other developers what they think of those ideas and I have come to the conclusion that those ideas might be dangerous for the Bitcoin network in practice because they could open some attack vectors.

My take on building services/networks/DeFi on top of Bitcoin is, it's OK to have some centralization with them as long as Bitcoin remains as basic and plain and as trustless as possible.

[Vlad BTCTKVR]

I partially agree with you, but some upgrade proposals are much older and much better tested than SegWit was in 2016-2017. Also, the emergency bug fixing fork concerns are proven to be less harmful for the market price (see what is happening with Ethereum and Solana, they hard fork frequently in order to improve their design and the investors don't lose faith in the project).

At this point, given the geopolitical context and Bitcoin's competition, I'd be happier if we moved faster to onboard new users in a way that they can't have their coins confiscated — custodial services are just a cope. At the same time, Bitcoin needs a new killer app like Silk Road. Something to prove the efficiency of the tech and bring more users who otherwise don't care about investing. There's way too much emphasis on getting rich, but this is freedom tech. And no, freedom doesn't only mean making more US dollars. It's about sending money to anyone you want, from any part of the world, without having your transaction deanonymized or confiscated. Being able to use money without banking institutions. Circumventing government authoritarianism.

I don't see much of this spirit in Bitcoin anymore. And I tend to think that this complacency is worse than hard forking to fix a bug in the event that something goes wrong.

[DeeppRockk]

I partially agree with you, but some upgrade proposals are much older and much better tested than SegWit was in 2016-2017. Also, the emergency bug fixing fork concerns are proven to be less harmful for the market price (see what is happening with Ethereum and Solana, they hard fork frequently in order to improve their design and the investors don't lose faith in the project). At this point, given the geopolitical context and Bitcoin's competition, I'd be happier if we moved faster to onboard new users in a way that they can't have their coins confiscated - custodial services are just a cope. At the same time, Bitcoin needs a new killer app like Silk Road. Something to prove the efficiency of the tech and bring more users who otherwise don't care about investing. There's way too much emphasis on getting rich, but this is freedom tech. And no, freedom doesn't only mean making more US dollars. It's about sending money to anyone you want, from any part of the world, without having your transaction deanonymized or confiscated. Being able to use money without banking institutions. Circumventing government authoritarianism. I don't see much of this spirit in Bitcoin anymore. And I tend to think that this complacency is worse than hard forking to fix a bug in the event that something goes wrong.

The system is working precisely as intended. You're describing features of other networks and presenting them as if they are universally desirable, but they come with trade-offs that Bitcoin's design explicitly rejects. The reason Ethereum can 'hard fork frequently' is because the social contract of that network allows for it.

Its investors accept that a core group of developers and the Ethereum Foundation are the ultimate arbiters of the protocol. This is a feature of their system..

Bitcoin's social contract is entirely different. Its core premise is that the rules are fixed and incredibly difficult to change.

This is the entire value proposition of the asset. The system is designed to be resistant to the whims of developers, corporations, and even its own users. When you say you'd be 'happier if we moved faster,' what you're really asking is for Bitcoin to break its own terms of service, basically..

The geopolitical context you cite actually strengthens the case for this rigidity. You cannot have a neutral, seizure-resistant asset if its fundamental properties can be altered by a committee every few years based on 'competition.'

I agree that custodial services are a cope.

But the solution isn't to make the base layer more complex and fast-moving...

The solution is for users to accept the personal responsibility that comes with self-sovereignty. The system provides the tools; it is not the system's fault if people choose not to use them correctly.

[nemesis_incarnate]

So there's a lot that can be done, but the biggest challenge is to convince bitcoiners to embrace use cases outside of just HODLing.

Although true, we can't actually blame people if they merely HODL, which includes me. Haha. The main reason why is because of the Federal Reserve/Central Banks themselves. They're addicted to printing money, inflating the money supply, WHICH also inflates some percentage of our fiat savings.

I watched some of your videos, and I believe that Paul Sztorc's ideas are good in theory, but I have asked other developers what they think of those ideas and I have come to the conclusion that those ideas might be dangerous for the Bitcoin network in practice because they could open some attack vectors.

My take on building services/networks/DeFi on top of Bitcoin is, it's OK to have some centralization with them as long as Bitcoin remains as basic and plain and as trustless as possible.

the printer doing brr is the fuel on which the value of fiat crumbles, and BTCs - rises with every cycle.

as long as the core principles of btc are intact.. we are good.

[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin's social contract is entirely different. Its core premise is that the rules are fixed and incredibly difficult to change.

This is the entire value proposition of the asset. The system is designed to be resistant to the whims of developers, corporations, and even its own users. When you say you'd be 'happier if we moved faster,' what you're really asking is for Bitcoin to break its own terms of service, basically..

The geopolitical context you cite actually strengthens the case for this rigidity. You cannot have a neutral, seizure-resistant asset if its fundamental properties can be altered by a committee every few years based on 'competition.'

I agree that custodial services are a cope.

But the solution isn't to make the base layer more complex and fast-moving...

The solution is for users to accept the personal responsibility that comes with self-sovereignty. The system provides the tools; it is not the system's fault if people choose not to use them correctly.

The fixed ”rules” you are describing as part of the social contract are about monetary policy (21 million, inflation schedule), PoW mining, and the unconfiscatable nature of UTXOs.

Everything else can change. I wouldn't be surprised if this stagnation in which even soft forks (optional upgrades) get treated as hard forks (mandatory upgrades) leads to users moving their BTC to other networks... to the point that the base layer becomes useless and can safely get shut down. I think Gavin Andresen wrote a blog post about it, but you can find other interpretations to it: https://riski.wiki/wiki/User:Gavinandresen/Blog/2021-09-21_A_Possible_BTC_Future

Something as basic as the OP_CTV, OP_CAT, or BIP300 soft forks can brings lots of new users to Bitcoin. They enable better scaling without changing any of the rules that are part of the social contract. But somehow it became preferable to use altcoins than enable Bitcoin to have more efficient L2s.

[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, S17 E6 with Vik Sharma — CEO of Cake Wallet

Vik Sharma is the CEO of Cake Wallet and one of the uniting figures in the privacy space. Initially, Cake Wallet launched as a fork of Bread Wallet to support Monero. But in the coming years, the wallet integrated Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin with MWEB, Decred, and a handful of other altcoins. Now Cake decided to focus its attention on the Bitcoin side of privacy. Previously, they added Silent Payments and PayJoin exclusively for Bitcoin. As of January 15th, they also support Zcash (a Bitcoin fork which enabled the Zerocash protocol) with complete shielding features. And in the coming weeks, the Lightning network will be supported too — thus turning Cake into the first multi-coin wallet in existence to support the Lightning network!

Given these achievements, I had to interview Vik Sharma in order to find out how these integrations work, why Cake is advancing so fast compared to other wallets, and what the plans for upcoming upgrades and integrations are (spoiler alert: more focus on desktop wallets!).

Below, you will find links to the podcast. Special thanks to SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Bitcoin.com News, NoOnes.com, and Braiins Hashpower for sponsoring this episode!

Blog post about this interview (includes complete time stamps): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s17-e6-vik-sharma-on-ending-wars-between-privacy-coins/

Listen to this interview on YouTube (with video): https://youtube.com/live/eDYDRD5mFFU

Listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, and many other audio-only platforms (without video, links at the top of the page): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/index.php?name=2026-01-31_s17_e6_vik_sharma_on_ending_war_among_privacy_coins_with_cake_wallet.mp3

Cover art:

[Vlad BTCTKVR]

Bitcoin Takeover Podcast, S17 E6 with Colin Harper — co-host of Blockspace Podcast


Colin Harper is a veteran Bitcoin journalist whose works you might have read on Coin Central, Bitcoin Magazine, and the Luxor Mining blog. More recently, he joined Blockspace Media to co-host the Mining Pod — which now merged into the Blockspace Podcast. His analysis usually covers mining, geopolitics, and the global competition between SHA256 hashers.

I've previously had Colin on my podcast in August 2019. At the time, we were both writing for Bitcoin Magazine. What I recall is that he was advocating for Marxism and the fact that left wingers should also embrace Bitcoin. Almost seven years later, he seems to have repented from his collectivist sins.

After discussing the competition between Bitcoin mining and AI, and in between making fun of the Paper Bitcoin Summer movement of 2025, we also took a few minutes to discuss some of the information that we found out from the Epstein Files. Prominent bitcoiners, such as Adam ”Andy” Back, Gavin Andresen, Amir Taaki, Austin Hill, Corey Fields, Wladimir van der Laan, and Brock Pierce were mentioned in different contexts. So we had to discuss exactly what the e-mails say and what the implications might be. Could it be that Epstein's involvement via MIT Labs has indirectly influenced the 2015-2017 scaling debate? Did Jeffrey Epstein influence regulations which concern Bitcoin? At this point, we can only speculate. But in the near future, maybe that new information will reveal more details.

Below, you will find links to the podcast. Special thanks to SideShift, LayerTwo Labs, Bitcoin.com News, NoOnes.com, and Braiins Hashpower for sponsoring this episode!

Blog post about this interview (includes complete time stamps): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/s17-e7-colin-harper-bitcion-mining-epstein-emails-journalism/

Listen to this interview on YouTube (with video): https://youtube.com/live/9ydMlVzyDYc

Listen to this interview on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Fountain, and many other audio-only platforms (without video, links at the top of the page): https://bitcoin-takeover.com/audio/index.php?name=2026-02-04_s17_e7_colin_harper_on_bitcoin_mining_epstein_journalism.mp3

Cover art:

[john_egbert]

-snip-

Something as basic as the OP_CTV, OP_CAT, or BIP300 soft forks can brings lots of new users to Bitcoin. They enable better scaling without changing any of the rules that are part of the social contract. But somehow it became preferable to use altcoins than enable Bitcoin to have more efficient L2s.

I do think it's due the fact that.. the main chain remains the main one and making L2s for every issue there may be or a need to be solved would just track people back and forth like with ETH.. imo.

But I see where you are going and you are, in a sense - right.