Nathaniel Popper on Bitcoin and Digital Gold

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2015

⏱️ 68 minutes

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Summary

Nathaniel Popper of the New York Times and the author of Digital Gold talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Bitcoin. Can Bitcoin make it? What went wrong with Mt. Gox? Why did Ross Ulbricht, the creator of Silk Road, just get sentenced to life in prison? Why are venture capital firms pouring millions of dollars into companies promising easier ways to use Bitcoin? Popper discusses these questions along with the technical side of Bitcoin to help listeners understand why so many investors are excited about the potential of Bitcoin.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:06.4	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:11.0	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:16.0	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:19.0	You'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:23.2	back to 2006.
0:25.4	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:27.4	We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.0	Today is May 28, 2015, and my guest is Nathaniel Popper.
0:37.2	He is a business reporter for The New York Times and the author of Digital Gold, Bitcoin,
0:42.8	and the inside story of the misfits and millionaires trying to reinvent money.
0:48.3	Nathaniel, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:49.9	Thank you for having me.
0:52.3	Your book is a history of Bitcoin, which of course is unfolding in real time right now.
0:57.0	So, we're going to talk about that history, even though it's pretty momentous.
1:01.9	There's a lot that's happened in the short life of Bitcoin.
1:07.4	Early on in the book, you list a five-step process for a Bitcoin transaction.
1:12.6	What are those five steps?
1:15.3	Each Bitcoin transaction begins with a person and their Bitcoin address, which is a string
1:27.4	of letters and numbers, initiating a transaction by signing off with their private key.
1:35.0	So, the base of the whole Bitcoin system is each person having their address and their
1:41.5	private key.
	...

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