Bitcoin Tech Update with Andrew Poelstra - WBD215
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2020
⏱️ 90 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Location: Zoom Date: Friday, 10th April Project: Blockstream Role: Director of Research
Bitcoin is very conservative. Unlike the typical tech industry ethos of move fast and break things, it is paramount that Bitcoin upgrades and changes to the protocol are absolutely necessary, slow, well planned and well tested.
Two protocol changes that have been discussed for a while now are Schnorr signatures and Taproot. These proposals have lots of positive implications, including an improvement to privacy and scalability, but what will it mean for an average Bitcoin user? What is next on the roadmap?
In this interview, I talk to Andrew Poelstra, the Director of Research at Blockstream. We discuss the upcoming upgrades to the Bitcoin protocol, including Schnorr signatures, Taproot and Miniscript and what that means to Bitcoin users.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It feels in some way like tapir is a bigger deal, but it's because we're taking it a lot more seriously, like even more seriously than we were taking things in the Segwood era. |
| 0:11.0 | The stakes are higher. |
| 0:12.0 | Hello there, how are you all? |
| 0:14.0 | Welcome to the What Bitcoin did podcast, the number one Bitcoin podcast in Bedford, |
| 0:19.0 | which is brought to you by Krakhan, |
| 0:20.0 | the best place to buy, sell and trade Bitcoin. |
| 0:23.0 | I'm your host Pete McCormack and today I've got Andrew Polstra back on the show. |
| 0:27.0 | He's going to give us an update on all the cool tech upgrades coming to Bitcoin, |
| 0:31.0 | but before that I have a message from my show sponsors. |
| 0:34.6 | So first up, let's talk about the amazing block fight. |
| 0:37.2 | They were just on the show. |
| 0:38.6 | A few days ago, I caught up with the team. |
| 0:40.8 | I caught up with Zach and Flory to find out how they handled all the |
| 0:44.3 | volatility during the recent crisis and you know a lot of people have questioned |
| 0:49.2 | their risk management wondered how they would cope with it well they put it all out in the podcast and |
| 0:53.8 | answered all the questions so you should check that out. Anyway they have |
| 0:57.3 | crushed it this last couple of years. They have absolutely killed it and |
| 1:01.8 | raised another 30 million to keep growing the company. |
| 1:05.0 | Now right now they have their interest accounts which lets you put your |
| 1:08.3 | crypto to work and earn monthly interest of payments with your Bitcoin and they also have their crypto back loans |
| 1:14.2 | which allow you to access liquidity without selling by using your crypto as |
| 1:18.4 | collateral. You can unlock up to 50% of the value of your assets in USDA. |
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