The Future of Bitcoin Banking with Eric Yakes - WBD625
The Peter McCormack Show
Peter McCormack
4.7 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 1 March 2023
⏱️ 102 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Eric Yakes is the author of 'The 7th Property'. In this interview, we discuss how a Bitcoin native banking system could evolve, predicated on a practical vision where not everyone will be able or willing to self-custody. Eric has theorised how Fedimints may form the basis for a new digital age of free banking, and the risks and opportunities this would present.
- - - -
As Bitcoin is a new form of money, then it stands to reason that it could become the basis for a new global monetary system. Yet, it is not a certainty that this will happen. And how it may manifest is far from settled. Eric Yakes is one of the leading thinkers on this topic. His ideas around how Bitcoin banking may develop are evolving to respect the central tenets of Bitcoin's ideology, whilst making pragmatic allowances for real-world constraints.
The principal issue for Bitcoin banking is the provision of custody. 2022 gave everyone clear grounds to promote cold storage. However, with widescale adoption, there will still be significant demand for third-party custody solutions. Therefore, one must consider which custody solutions maximise trust. Fedimint provides such an alternative where trust is federated, with the intention that this federation is a known community.
Fedimint is not only a custody solution, it is also a means for issuing value. A Fedimint can issue Ecash against the held Bitcoin. This Ecash acts as a bearer instrument that can be stored on mobile phones, with the privacy characteristics of physical cash. Ecash could also be transferred via the Lightning Network. This opens up the possibility of a quantum of decentralized federations developing and operating akin to the free banking era of the 19th century.
There are issues. Third-party custody in any form involves risk. There will be occasions when trust is broken, Bitcoin is lost and innocent people are affected. There are also risks associated with a rise in fractional reserve banking, and questions over the issuance of credit through such systems. However, as Eric Yakes asserts, if Bitcoin is to be more than Gold 2.0 and become the basis for a global monetary system, then these are risks that need to be faced.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The whole point is that we have enough self custody to where the system remains, you know, |
| 0:12.0 | permissionless so that we don't turn into digital gold 2.0. |
| 0:15.2 | Like that's the whole point. |
| 0:16.2 | Maybe that's 20% of all Bitcoin. Maybe that's 30%. I have no idea, but it needs to be as much |
| 0:20.6 | as we could possibly make it based on the consumer utility trade-offs. |
| 0:24.0 | Hello there, how are you all doing? |
| 0:27.0 | And you're having a good week. |
| 0:28.0 | Rail Bedford won again last night a massive result. |
| 0:31.0 | Six-nil win, ten games to go. |
| 0:32.8 | We might win this leak. |
| 0:34.2 | Anyway, welcome to the What Bitcoin did podcast, |
| 0:36.7 | which is brought to you by Gemini, |
| 0:38.1 | the only place I'm using for buying Bitcoin. |
| 0:40.4 | I'm your host Peter McCormack, |
| 0:41.6 | and today I've got my buddy Eric Yakes back on the show. |
| 0:44.4 | Now Eric's been on the show a couple of times and today we're getting into the future of free banking. |
| 0:49.4 | So when we recorded with Eric last time in the UK and August, he flew in to talk to us about this article. |
| 0:55.6 | He'd been working on looking at Bitcoin banking in 2050. |
| 0:59.2 | Me and Danny loved the idea of looking ahead to what a hyper-bit colonized world might look like and how the banking system might change. |
| 1:05.6 | Since then he has been diving a lot deeper into the topic, so we asked him to come to New York and walk us through his |
| 1:11.9 | vision for the future financial system, |
| 1:14.4 | how lightning integrates and the role of federated mints, which by the way is something I'm still struggling |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Peter McCormack, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Peter McCormack and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.