Epicenter – Podcast on Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies

Keeping Bitcoins safe from theft is probably one of the things Bitcoin holders worry the most about. Historically, there have been a number of recommended best practices like paper wallets, BIP 38 wallet cards and cold storage. Although these remain relatively safe ways to store Bitcoins, implementing these solutions can be complicated and difficult to … Continued

Support the show, consider donating: 3ESkdAFgxLez6VEo6AfxJVNPi475mdk5WS (http://bit.ly/1AH9WR1) Keeping Bitcoins safe from theft is probably one of the things Bitcoin holders worry the most about. Historically, there have been a number of recommended best practices like paper wallets, BIP 38 wallet cards and cold storage. Although these remain relatively safe ways to store Bitcoins, implementing these solutions can be complicated and difficult to manage for day-to-day transactions. Recently, some companies have begun introducing multi-signature HD wallet services, where 2-out-of-3 signatures are required to sign transactions. These solutions offer security and usability, with the assurance that Bitcoins will remain safe, and the ability to transact with ease. In fact, the website P2SH.info tracks the adoption of multi-sig, and it has been growing exponentially in recent months. Which brings us to our guest: Arianna Simpson, an Account Specialist at BitGo, a company that provides a simple multi-signature HD wallet solution for individuals and businesses. We talked to Arianna about BitGo and the services they offer, discuss different use cases for multi-sig HD wallets and make projections about the evolution of the wallet space from different angles. Links mentioned in this episode: - BitGo: http://bitgo.com - Arianna's blog: http://www.ariannasimpson.com/blog/ - Amount of Bitcoins held in multi-sig addresses: http://p2sh.info/p2sh-held Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/053 YouTube: http://youtu.be/NRnwPzff52M Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

Support the show, consider donating: 33Xypu9aTiHKbJqqsYZxjxQZ62vAS6ke1T (http://bit.ly/1wl2We3) Today's episode is all about Factom, an open source project which aims to solve three core problems which apply to all Bitcoin 2.0 applications: Speed, Cost, and Bloat. Rather than writing every transaction to the blockchain, Factom allows decentralized applications to write blocks of transactions to Factom blocks, which themselves get hashed and stored to the bitcoin blockchain. At its core, Factom provides Proof of Existence, which allows for any digital artifact to be reduced to a hash that proves that artifact's existence at a specific point in time. We are joined by Factom CEO, Paul Snow, and President, Peter Kirby, to explore the different applications of Factom as well as the technical workings of this very interesting and promissing project. Links mentioned in this episode: - Factom: http://www.factom.org/ - Factom White Paper: https://github.com/FactomProject/FactomDocs Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/052 YouTube: http://youtu.be/ev2mJnX5xqQ Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

Today’s episode is all about Factom, an open source project which aims to solve three core problems which apply to all Bitcoin 2.0 applications: Speed, Cost, and Bloat. Rather than writing every transaction to the blockchain, Factom allows decentralized applications to write blocks of transactions to Factom blocks, which themselves get hashed and stored to … Continued

David A. Johnston is a very active member of the Bitcoin community. Aside from speaking at about every Bitcoin conference there is, David is the Managing Director of the DApps Fund, a board member MSC Protocol Foundation, as well as Co-founder and Executive Director of the BitAngels Network. On this episode we go deep in … Continued

Support the show, consider donating: 38AAWYPwzjmphPp8LwTT6k8yp9HTfB7Z4n (http://bit.ly/1AH8Ch3) David A. Johnston is a very active member of the Bitcoin community. Aside from speaking at about every Bitcoin conference there is, David is the Managing Director of the DApps Fund, a board member MSC Protocol Foundation, as well as Co-founder and Executive Director of the BitAngels Network. On this episode we go deep in to decentralized applications, and who better to talk to about DApps than the creator of ""Johnston's Law"" which states "Everything that can be decentralized, will be decentralized". We talked to David about the recent whitepaper he co-wrote titled "The General Theory of Decentralized Applications, DApps" which defines the different types of DApps and a number of best practices with regards to funding, token distribution, business models etc. We also discussed the DApps Fund, BitAngels Network and the Master Protocol, and his involvement with those projects. Links mentioned in this episode: - DApps Whitepaper: http://bit.ly/1uhF7BL - "Decentralized Applications - the future of Bitcoin and virtual currencies?" - CoinSummit San Francisco 2014: http://bit.ly/13yPFBk - Crowdsale Best Practices Paper: http://bit.ly/1xRV3s7 - DApps Fund: http://dappsfund.com - BitAngels Network: http://www.bitangels.co - Mastercoin Foundation: http://mastercoinfoundation.org Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/051 YouTube: http://youtu.be/GKSx1mNQZXg Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

Nicolas Courtois is a cryptographer and senior lecturer at University College London. He has been studying cryptocurrencies for some time and has written a number of papers on bitcoin. His talk is titled “Cryptographic Security of ECDSA in bitcoin” in which he exposes the security vulnerabilities in the specific variation of the Elliptic Curve digital … Continued

Support the show, consider donating: 39rFJA7bHRREpgghnZKzKbYrQEPVX9P3Fj (http://bit.ly/1wl0Ivn) Nicolas Courtois is a cryptographer and senior lecturer at University College London. He has been studying cryptocurrencies for some time and has written a number of papers on bitcoin. His talk is titled "Cryptographic Security of ECDSA in bitcoin" in which he exposes the security vulnerabilities in the specific variation of the Elliptic Curve digital Signature Algorithm used in bitcoin. Links mentioned in this episode: - Slides for this presentation: http://www.nicolascourtois.com/bitcoin/paycoin_ECDSA_survey_Brussels_2014_3abcd.pdf - Nicolas Courtois’s Wikipedia Page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Courtois - Personal blog: http://blog.bettercrypto.com/ - On The Longest Chain Rule and Programmed Self-Destruction of Crypto Currencies paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1405.0534 - Nicolas’s Bitcoin Publications: http://blog.bettercrypto.com/?page_id=63 Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/050 YouTube: http://youtu.be/-nHKhN4XpMw Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

Meni Rosenfeld is Founder of Bitcoil and Chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association. Having organized several meetups and conferences in Israel, he is a very active member of the Israeli Bitcoin community. Meni has been studying mining pool reward methods for several years and in 2011, wrote a paper titled “Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining … Continued

Support the show, consider donating: 3CaVLqGd8DE6ztuVuhLpf1bUxyTakopMbJ (http://bit.ly/1FUeNmg) Meni Rosenfeld is Founder of Bitcoil and Chairman of the Israeli Bitcoin Association. Having organized several meetups and conferences in Israel, he is a very active member of the Israeli Bitcoin community. Meni has been studying mining pool reward methods for several years and in 2011, wrote a paper titled “Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems”. This research gave him a broad understanding the reward system landscape and the issues with many of the methods used by pools. He later wrote proposals for alternative non pay-per-share methods and which would render pool hopping impossible: the geometric method and double geometric method. Links mentioned in this episode: - Mining Pools Reward Methods Talk - Bitcoin 2013 Conference [YouTube]: http://bit.ly/1whIxT2 - Analysis of Bitcoin Pooled Mining Reward Systems [paper]: http://bit.ly/1zyyQ7v - Summary of mining pool reward systems [paper]: http://bit.ly/1xutjto - Analysis of hashrate-based double-spending [paper]: http://bit.ly/1wAry12 - Meni Rosenfeld's vanity thread [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: http://bit.ly/1v2QzMC - Geometric method [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: New cheat-proof mining pool scoring method: http://bit.ly/1zdoNnv - Double geometric method [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: Hopping-proof, low-variance reward system: http://bit.ly/1DS4knV - Mine in multiple pools to reduce variance [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: http://bit.ly/1wBAv6R - Multi-PPS [Bitcoin Talk Forum]: http://bit.ly/12OytYe - ASIC will not centralize Bitcoin mining [Meni’s blog]: http://bit.ly/1tYfial - Blocksize Economics by Gavin Andresen [Bitcoin Foundation]: http://bit.ly/10uKcdq - Proof of Activity: Extending Bitcoin’s Proof of Work via Proof of Stake [paper]: http://bit.ly/1v2QN6t - Israel Bitcoin Meetup Group: http://bit.ly/10uKaCz - Israeli Bitcoin Community Facebook Page: http://on.fb.me/1wuunyb Sponsors: - Fairlay: http://fairlay.com/epicenter Bitcoin difficulty > 75B by the end of the year: http://bit.ly/1w85tW3 Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/049 YouTube: http://youtu.be/lCxfEk-MrGw Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

BTC2B Brussels conference on October 16 & 17, 2014 This episode features two parts of a session on Bitcoin marketing. First, Richard Caetano, founder of Handshake and btcReport, talks about the importance of sharing stories to create user engagement. Then, you’ll hear a panel discussion moderated by Richard with Jeremy Garder, Executive Directory of the … Continued

Support the show, consider donating: 3HZQ4Ha8zcGNrXsJkwFdLZUD1K48UDv1Mn (http://bit.ly/1JIaoWn) *BTC2B Brussels conference on October 16 & 17, 2014* This episode features two parts of a session on Bitcoin marketing. First, Richard Caetano, founder of Handshake and btcReport, talks about the importance of sharing stories to create user engagement. Then, you'll hear a panel discussion moderated by Richard with Jeremy Garder, Executive Directory of the College Cryptocurrency Network, and Sebastien Couture, as panelists. They talk about how the Bitcoin industry can grow adoption though integrated product & marketing strategies. Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/048 YouTube: http://youtu.be/VGwMpsdOFP8 Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

The College Cryptocurrency Network is a non-profit organization which aims to provide students, academics, and faculty with the guidance and resources required to start independent Bitcoin clubs on college campuses and in schools. Since being founded in early 2014, the CCN has grown to well over 100 chapters, on every continent, from middle schools to … Continued

Support the show, consider donating: 3BbxcotoeWszSV17Fv62mq32fvc3R4MK9C (http://bit.ly/1JIa2Pw) The College Cryptocurrency Network is a non-profit organization which aims to provide students, academics, and faculty with the guidance and resources required to start independent Bitcoin clubs on college campuses and in schools. Since being founded in early 2014, the CCN has grown to well over 100 chapters, on every continent, from middle schools to PhD programs. Director of Student Outreach, Jacob Sears, and Creative Director, Dean Masley, join us to talk about the CCN's work and their personal experiences with starting clubs in their respective universities. We also talked about how the concept of Bitcoin is received by students and the potential for blockchain innovation and adoption on university campuses. Links mentioned in this episode: - College Cryptocurrency Network: http://collegecrypto.org Sponsors: - Fairlay: http://fairlay.com/epicenter Our prediction on Storjcoin X vs MaidSafeCoin market cap: https://www.fairlay.com/predict/registered/new/storejoinx-maidsafecoin-in-market-cap-april-2015/ Show notes: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/podcast/047 YouTube: http://youtu.be/yooWNuEabss Epicenter Bitcoin is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain & Sébastien Couture. - Visit our website: http://epicenterbitcoin.com - Subscribe to our newsletter: http://epicenterbitcoin.com/newsletter - Twitter: http://twitter.com/epicenterbtc

Shawn Wilkinson, founder and lead developer of Storj, joins us for our first deep dive into a decentralized application. Storj’s particular domain is the decentralization of cloud storage. Their applications allow users to store their files in a decentralized peer-to-peer network that promises to be more secure and effective. At the same time, it creates … Continued