In this interview, I talk to Lightning Network developer and owner of the Shit Bitcoiners Say Twitter account, Rusty Russell. We discuss the lightning network, open-source development, narratives and overzealous Bitcoiners.

00:05:27 Introductions
00:08:04 Lightning and the search for the killer use case
00:15:55 Porn and drugs…
00:18:37 Jack Mallers and Strike
00:21:55 All about Linux
00:29:11 From Linux to Blockstream - Rusty's journey
00:33:08 Number Go Up
00:38:44 Mt Gox and other scams
00:40:55 When Peter got rekt
00:46:41 Bitcoin Fixes This
00:47:16 The "Bitcoin will stop wars" debate
00:50:13 Libertarianism
01:10:19 Peter and Rusty debate Bitcoin over gold
01:13:52 What is Bitcoin for Rusty?
01:16:22 The three phases of Bitcoin
01:20:48 The three groups of bitcoiners
01:25:49 Forking Bitcoin
01:29:08 Peter's experience of mining
01:29:42 Rusty's view on the future of Bitcoin
01:31:00 The hash rate
01:35:25 Shit Bitcoiners Say
01:43:17 Declaration of interests
01:47:30 Why not to speculate on the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto!
01:52:17 Increasing the block size
02:00:12 Final comments

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****

“This irrational exuberance is where I’m like you know what… calm the fuck down, this stuff is not promised to you, number will not always go up, it is not guaranteed to hit $100k, $288k or whatever fucking number you want and even if it does hit $1 million, you wonder what $1million will be worth at the time.”
— Rusty Russell

Location: Squadcast
Date: Friday 25rd September
Company: Blockstream
Role: Lightning Network Developer

Bitcoiners can be firm in their views and are often called toxic by outsiders; however, this toxicity plays an important role. Bitcoin is a threat to the legacy financial system. It is therefore open to a broad range of attacks from technical to social and Bitcoin's immune system defends against these attacks to protect the protocol.

In previous episodes, I have looked at the pros and cons of toxicity and how it acts as an immune system for Bitcoiner. Does this immune system lead to silly narratives going unchallenged? Can Bitcoin fix everything or are we missing critical nuanced debates regarding its potential?

Rusty Russell is somewhat of a contrarian in the Bitcoin space. He is a lightning network developer for Blockstream but also runs the Shit Bitcoiners Say Twitter account which regularly calls out some of the more overzealous and outlandish claims by Bitcoiners.

In this interview, Rusty and I discuss the lightning network, open-source development, narratives and overzealous Bitcoiners.