#173 – Nic Carter: Bitcoin Core Values, Layered Scaling, and Blocksize Debates
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13.6K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2021
⏱️ 153 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Nic Carter is a financial researcher, investor, writer, and podcaster on topics of decentralized finance. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Nic’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/nic__carter
Nic’s Website: https://niccarter.info/
Nic’s Blog: https://medium.com/@nic__carter
Nic’s Podcast: https://onthebrink-podcast.com/
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(13:05) – Can humans fully understand reality?
(15:34) – The dollar system
(21:44) – Bitcoin
(23:19) – Opendime
(27:22) – Core values of Bitcoin
(35:51) – Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
(41:39) – How Bitcoin works
(50:02) – Bitcoin blocksize wars
(1:02:27) – Layered scaling of Bitcoin
(1:07:25) – Lightning network
(1:10:25) – Schnorr/Taproot update to Bitcoin
(1:15:17) – Criticisms of Bitcoin
(1:25:04) – Bitcoin failure modes
(1:33:07) – Bitcoin vs Ethereum
(1:37:03) – Vitalik Buterin
(1:39:56) – Creative destruction
(1:44:51) – Future of Bitcoin
(1:48:38) – Tesla, Elon Musk, and Dogecoin
(1:56:44) – NFTs
(2:04:00) – Bitcoin maximalism
(2:10:37) – On writing
(2:16:37) – Writing a book on Bitcoin
(2:21:07) – Bitcoin resources
(2:23:57) – Book recommendations
(2:25:56) – Advice for young people
(2:29:13) – Meaning of life
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with Nick Carter, who is a partner at Castle Island Ventures, |
| 0:05.8 | co-founder of CoinMetrics.io and previously a crypto asset research analyst at Fidelity |
| 0:12.0 | Investments. |
| 0:13.4 | He's a prominent writer, speaker, and podcaster on topics around decentralized finance and |
| 0:19.7 | especially Bitcoin. |
| 0:22.3 | Quick mention of our sponsors, the Information, Athletic Greens, Forcigmatic, and Blinkist. |
| 0:29.2 | Check them out in the description to support this podcast. |
| 0:32.9 | This conversation with Nick Carter is part of a series of episodes on cryptocurrency that |
| 0:37.4 | is a small journey of exploration I'm on because I find decentralized finance and especially |
| 0:42.6 | Bitcoin fascinating, technically and philosophically, especially because it may be the very mechanism |
| 0:49.3 | that achieves a global decentralization of power, giving more sovereignty to the individual |
| 0:55.4 | and making our systems more resilient to corruption, manipulation, and in general to the darker |
| 1:01.6 | size of human nature. |
| 1:03.5 | Please let me also address something for a few minutes that happened recently that's |
| 1:08.5 | been weighing heavy on me. |
| 1:10.5 | If you find me annoying to listen to, please skip to the actual conversation with Nick. |
| 1:15.1 | I had a recent podcast episode with Anthony Pompliano, where we spoke about Bitcoin and life |
| 1:22.1 | in general for three hours. |
| 1:23.9 | I was curious, inspired, positive, or at least I tried to be as I usually do. |
| 1:30.4 | Someone clipped out out of context, a short segment of me mumbling something about having |
| 1:35.6 | a PhD, and I started getting mocked online because that made it convenient for people to |
| 1:41.8 | mock me for being yet another quote unquote expert who learns about Bitcoin and thinks |
... |
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