LEIGH: BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen on 'a System That Doesn't Suck'

On today’s episode CoinDesk reporter Leigh Cuen sits down with Bram Cohen, author of the BitTorrent protocol and CEO of Chia. In this wide ranging interview they talk Bram’s early interest in “hard problems”, his unexpected ascent from sketchy to celebrity and much more.
Leigh and Bram discuss:

The real promise and strengths of cryptocurrency

Really interesting problems in cryptocurrency

Getting started in crypto 20 years ago with MojoNation and glorious failure.

The origin of BitTorrent

Speculative investment, the dot com boom and where real wealth comes from

The Bitcoin Wizards IRC channel and Bram’s arrival in crypto

How the Bitcoin Wizards stance on ASIC resistance led to Bram’s creation of ‘Proofs of Time’ and ‘Proofs of Space’

Getting rich as a side effect of making the world a better place

Scaling, sharding and unsophisticated engineering

Why ‘Proof of Stake’ is a step backwards from ‘Proof of Work’

A system that doesn’t suck: how engineers try and fail to improve the finance industry

Unregulated banking crisis, shadow banking and hiring the smartest minds to obfuscate leverage

Why trusted third parties are the problem

Satoshi’s wonderful, horrible idea and the obviousness of proof of work.

What Satoshi did surprisingly well

Why improving proof of work wouldn’t really improve bitcoin.

Coherent goals: more decentralized and less wasteful

Both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake have a scary degree of centralization 

Ethereum’s terrifying improvements to the on-chain programming environment

New functionality within Chia that helps cryptocurrency feel less like “carrying around hundred dollar bills”

Limiting opportunities for theft with user controlled rate and recipient limiting

Thinking about ecosystems and adoption

What is your favorite use case for cars? Is it Tires? 

Open source software, politics and adoption

What is the role of advocacy in making something useful?

Why bitcoin gets a bad reputation for things it doesn’t have strong associations with.

Why “governance” is such a touchy topic

Why Chia is funded by Venture Capital rather than token offerings

How Bitcoin is different from what’s come after it

“Our technological capacity exceeds our political will to negotiate the terms of that capacity”

Why Bram hates the “Fake it til’ you make it” ethos

Engineering sticker shock

The “everyone uses cryptocurrency for everything” narrative vs. the “How do we get anyone using Cryptocurrency for anything good?” reality

Better metrics for success than “Getting rich”

Great leaders and bullshit artists

Bitcoin’s trajectory and the meritocratic history of technology

Colored coins, distributed identity, timestamps and censorship resistant value

Minimal functionality, subtle cleanups and simplified transaction formats in the Chia programming environment

And more...

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