LTB!: BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen on Coronavirus Second Order Effects and Improving on Bitcoin

BitTorrent creator and Chia CEO Bram Cohen joins the hosts of Let's Talk Bitcoin! To discuss the limitations of Satoshi's approach to Nakamoto consensus, how he believes it can be improved and the lasting impacts of coronavirus lockdowns.

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In Today's discussion we'll briefly talk about some of the knock-on, or second order affects which the coronavirus disruption is having on our world today, and which may continue into the future. Then for the meat of the show we'll dig into specific areas where bitcoin could, or perhaps is being improved with the creator of one of the most impactful peer to peer technologies live in the world today.

Shownotes for LTB! #433

Topic 1 - Second Order Impacts of Coronavirus Lockdowns
Social distancing and the revenge of the Hikikomori
Coronavirus second order effects
It’s an extroverts world but we’re all introverts this month
The AOL moment for Zoom meetings and arguing the potato
Interpersonal compression, zoomers and enforced quality time
Will overall deaths go down because of pandemic lockdowns?
The end of “Bus Mode” for Lyft and Uber
Autonomous vehicles, grocery deliveries and the last mile problem
Tampons, cocktail sausages and a very weird month
This episode is sponsored by eToro
A friendly government delivery service?
Opportunities in sterilization and social changes that’ll last
Automated cleansing cycles and Far-UVC
Internet infrastructure, Netflix social signaling and the recycling dilemma
Masks, headphones and the changing standard of social isolation

TOPIC 2 - How the creator of BitTorrent thinks he’s created a less wasteful, more distributed, more secure approach to Nakamoto Consensus
Decentralized systems and the critical success of BitTorrent
Naming projects, vegetables and a list of grains
Proof of Space and Time
Warehouses of computers, competitive money burning and Keynesian stimulus
Proof of Work works and that’s a huge accomplishment, but could be better
Centralization, Nakamoto consensus and Proof of Stake
Moats and losing the battle with ASIC-hard consensus algorithms
“Grinding attacks” as the competitive strategy
Fundamental economics, storage capacity and the loophole
Airdrops for something over-resourced and under-provisioned
Losing money on buying “farming” hardware
The early days of bitcoin mining with CPUs
Power and CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs
Hard Drives ,hard drives, hard drives and hard drives
Storing data as proof, but not peoples data is like Proof of Work; the work isn’t useful, it’s just a measuring stick that doesn’t need your name or a long term commitment
Printing lottery tickets with ASICs vs. a hard drive full of bingo cards
Proofs of Space need Proofs of Time
Less wasteful by using an underutilized resource
More distributed because excess hard drive capacity is already distributed and there is no “ASIC” equivalent possible for hard drives. Just better or faster hard drives
More secure because less wasteful and more distributed equal better security in distributed consensus
Breaking, tweaking and proving proofs of time and space
Miners don’t run data centers
UTXOs, message passing on-chain programming environments and walking a fine line between Bitcoin and Ethereum
Rate limiting wallets and reversible paper wallets
Improving colored coins
Decentralized exchange doesn’t need decentralized exchanges
Farming, pre-farming, farming rewards and trailing emissions
Why pre-farm?
Is it viable to farm with AWS?
Carrying hundred dollar bills and Chia’s business model involves loaning Tokens To Large International Companies
Covenants replicate many banking system benefits without requiring banks or centralization
Complexity, Bitcoin Script and Protocol Level Improvements

This episode was sponsored by eToro.com, with music by Jared Rubens, Gurty Beats and Adam B. Levine. Today's show featured Bram Cohen, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine with editing by Jonas.