The Bitcoin Matrix Podcast

Aaron Siri: The 1986 Law That Made Vaccines Un-Sueable

939 views · 2mo ago · 1:12:51

Guest: Aaron Siri

"People say 'I believe in vaccines.' Nobody says that about seatbelts." Aaron Siri is the managing partner of Siri & Glimstad and, by most measures, the most consequential vaccine litigator in America — the attorney behind the famous nine-hour deposition of Dr. Stanley Plotkin, lead counsel for the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN), and author of the new book Vaccines, Amen: The Religion of Vaccines.

Topics: Welcome + cold open: "What is real?" · How the Stanley Plotkin deposition happened · From Goldman Sachs to the largest non-pharma vaccine practice · Prep: treat a vaccine like any other product · Plotkin's conflicts of interest (Merck, Pfizer, Sanofi, GSK) · The Hep B trial: 147 kids, 5 days, no control group

Hodlonaut: The Fight for Bitcoin — Bitcoin Core, the Capture Series & BIP-110

4.2K views · 2mo ago · 2:02:26

"We need Bitcoiners to fight for Bitcoin. If no one fights for Bitcoin, Bitcoin will very soon be dead." Hodlonaut is a Bitcoin citizen journalist, the founder of the Citadel21 zine, the mind behind the 2019 Lightning Torch, and the man who told the simple truth about Craig Wright and then stood in the fire for five years over it. He is the author of the Capture series, an investigation into how informal power over Bitcoin Core was assembled, exercised, and defended.

Topics: A message on ColdCard · Welcome the Space Cat, on a brutal day · The Capture series: a Bitcoin citizen journalist · A year away, and the shock of coming back · The node runner's stake: the canary in the mine · Citadel21, Surfer Jim & the culture

The Bitcoin Bug Core Refuses to Fix | Luke de Wolf

1.6K views · 3mo ago · 2:39:19

Guest: Luke de Wolf

Bitcoin secures over a trillion dollars in value, and it has no security team. Luke de Wolf is a critical-infrastructure cybersecurity pro, co-founder of the BTC Helsinki conference, and author of Defending Bitcoin. He spent his career protecting the systems that run power grids and pipelines. Now he applies the same frameworks to Bitcoin, the world's first decentralized critical infrastructure. His argument: security isn't something you buy, it's something you do.

Topics: Calgary, oil & gas & control systems (OT vs IT) · The engineering mindset & the plane that ran out of fuel · "There's always something you can do" · No juniors in security & defense in depth · How is Bitcoin critical infrastructure? · Mining, the grid & Finland's city heated by Bitcoin

Before BIP-110: Bitcoin Mechanic on OCEAN, Mining Centralization & the Spam War (2024)

2.4K views · 3mo ago · 1:50:42

Before BIP-110: Bitcoin Mechanic on OCEAN, Mining & the Spam War | 2024 Two years before BIP-110, Bitcoin Mechanic was already fighting the fight the whole network is in now — over who Bitcoin actually belongs to. A node runner's node runner, pseudonymous and relentless, working with the OCEAN pool, Mechanic has spent years making one argument louder than anyone: Bitcoin's rules belong to its users, not its industry.

Topics: Meet Bitcoin Mechanic — the bio & the punk that passed · Before Bitcoin: music & the death of the spark · Touring, Occupy, WikiLeaks & the pillars of digital freedom · The rabbit hole — Silk Road, Max Kaiser, Andreas · Self-custody from day one & the Mt. Gox warning signs · OCEAN & mining: hasher vs miner

Bitcoin Isn't Just Fixing the Money — It's a New Clock | Scott Dedels

487 views · 3mo ago · 2:17:47

Guest: Scott Dedels

Everyone's trying to fix the money. Scott Dedels says the money was never the root problem. Founder of Block Rewards and author of The Age of Time, Scott makes an argument you won't find in other Bitcoin books: the clock is a technology. It was invented roughly 600 years ago — and somewhere along the way we forgot it was ever invented at all.

Topics: Meet Scott Dedels — The Age of Time · Why Write a Book That Isn't About Hard Money · Li Jiang: The Lantern as the First Link in the Chain · Prague, the Orloj & the Birth of Mechanical Time · "Minutes, Seconds, Hours — Entirely Made-Up Concepts" · What Life Was Like Before Coordinated Time

If This Fails, It's the End' — Bitcoin Mechanic on the Fight for BIP-110

5.1K views · 3mo ago · 1:38:07

The Soul of Bitcoin Is on the Line: Inside the Fight Over BIP-110 | Bitcoin Mechanic Everyone's watching the Bitcoin price. Bitcoin Mechanic is fighting over something bigger — who Bitcoin actually belongs to. A node runner's node runner, pseudonymous and relentless, working with the OCEAN pool, Mechanic has spent years making one argument louder than anyone: Bitcoin's rules belong to its users, not its industry. Right now that argument has a name — BIP-110.

Topics: Why He Likes BIP-110 — "Basic Maintenance" · What Winning Looks Like: Adoption & Activation · What Losing Looks Like: The Industry Ignores It · Where BIP-110 Gets Censored: Reddit, GitHub, the Mailing List · The Numbers: 14,300 Nodes, 15% of the Network · Coercibility & Capture: Are the Plebs Corruptible?

Why You Get Better Bitcoin When You Mine It | Kent Halliburton, Sazmining

482 views · 4mo ago · 1:41:38

The Decentralized Money Printer: Why You Get Better Bitcoin When You Mine It | Kent Halliburton, Sazmining Everyone tells you to buy Bitcoin. Kent Halliburton — CEO and co-founder of Sazmining — thinks that's the weaker path. From 2009 to 2013, Bitcoin was acquired by mining: you ran a node, flipped a toggle, minted your own coins.

Topics: "You Get Better Bitcoin When You Mine It" (Cold Open) · Meet Kent Halliburton & Sazmining · Cranberry Farms & a Low-Time-Preference Childhood · Solar, Peak Oil & His First Taste of Sovereignty · Why Rooftop Solar Is Secretly Bitcoin Mining · The Brutal Logistics of Going Solar

You Can Kill Bitcoin | Matt Kratter on BIP-110, Bitcoin's Last Stand [CLIP]

3.4K views · 4mo ago · 3:27

CLIP from Episode #279 of The Bitcoin Matrix with Matt Kratter, founder of Bitcoin University. Matt makes the case that BIP-110 is Bitcoin's last stand, why the spam fight matters, and why Bitcoin is not guaranteed to survive by math alone. He is putting his own Bitcoin on the line, renting hashrate from cold storage to signal for the soft fork.

Paper Is Where Bitcoin Goes to Die | James Caruso, Stamp Seed

140 views · 4mo ago · 54:22

Buy a hardware wallet and it ships with a slip of paper to write your seed words on. Gel ink, coated paper, fading over time, fire, water — paper is the weakest link in your entire Bitcoin stack. James Caruso, co-founder and VP of Stamp Seed, hammers those words into solid titanium instead.

Topics: "Paper Is Where Bitcoin Dies" (cold open) · Meet James Caruso & Stamp Seed · How a Metal-Stamping Company Found Bitcoin · Combing the Search Terms — Bitcoin Starts Showing Up · Convincing the Bosses & the First Listing · Orange-Pilling Himself + the First Sale

Tomer Strolight: Bitcoin Is a Superstate No Government Can Stop

699 views · 4mo ago · 1:42:50

Guest: Tomer Strolight

"Bitcoin is a rights-protection entity." Tomer Strolight returns for his ninth visit — and reads four of his own essays start to finish, with conversation in between: Bitcoin Is More, Living With AI, AI Built to Survive, and This Is Not the End.

Topics: 📖 Tomer reads "Bitcoin Is More" · Welcome back — Tomer's 9th visit · Iran's Bitcoin toll & the bear-market mood · Freedom isn't free · Bitcoin is a superstate · Not a price — a rights-protection entity

Bitcoin Core Has Gone Rogue | Matthew Kratter, Bitcoin University

12K views · 4mo ago · 3:16:48

Bitcoin is not physical gold. You can kill Bitcoin. Matthew Kratter runs Bitcoin University and has spent the better part of a decade as one of the most-watched voices teaching Bitcoin. Before Bitcoin, he did a PhD in literature under René Girard and ran global macro at Peter Thiel's hedge fund — growing a $50M Roth into $2 billion. Today he holds nearly everything he owns in Bitcoin, and he's one of the loudest voices warning that Bitcoin is under attack from the inside.

Topics: Who is Matthew Kratter · Literature, physics & a PhD under René Girard · Meeting Peter Thiel at the Girard seminar · Thiel Macro → PayPal → Clarium Capital · $50M Roth to $2 billion · The PayPal mafia & Palantir

Rehypothecation Is Cryptographically Impossible — Martin Matejka, Firefish CEO

347 views · 4mo ago · 35:17

"Rehypothecation is cryptographically impossible." Martin Matejka joins the show to break down the rise of Bitcoin-native lending, Firefish's 3-of-3 multisig + DLC architecture, and why the February 6 stress test was the day Bitcoin-backed credit grew up.

Topics: Welcome to The Bitcoin Matrix · The origin — investing without selling Bitcoin · Power trading at ČEZ — what risk taught him · Martin's rabbit hole — Austrian economics meets cryptography · What is a Bitcoin-backed loan · Shorting fiat, going long Bitcoin

He Ran $70 Billion. Now He's Built Something Wall Street's Never Seen | Matt Cole, Strive CEO

773 views · 5mo ago · 1:11:10

Matt Cole spent 15 years at CalPERS — the largest U.S. public pension fund — running $70 billion in global fixed income without underperforming his benchmark in a single year. Today he's Chairman & CEO of Strive (Nasdaq: ASST), the first publicly traded asset-management Bitcoin treasury company — over 16,000 BTC, zero debt — and the man who just made a security pay a dividend every business day for the first time in U.S. market history.

Topics: Welcome to The Bitcoin Matrix · Math nerd to CalPERS — managing $70B · How U.S. Treasuries made him a Bitcoiner · Leaving CalPERS for Strive · Top performer, but the pension stayed underfunded · Boomer outflows & why the 60/40 is dead

Bitcoin's Next Supply Shock — Matt Hougan, Bitwise CIO

2.9K views · 5mo ago · 58:37

Guest: Bitcoin's Next Supply Shock

Matt Hougan is the Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise Asset Management — one of eleven spot Bitcoin ETF issuers, managing over $10 billion. When family offices, RIAs, and pension consultants size their Bitcoin allocation, his is the analysis they read.

Topics: Welcome to The Bitcoin Matrix · The 2026 macro lens — kinetic + monetary chaos · Bitcoin as two investments in one · Why kinetic war boosts Bitcoin's option value · Harvard's 13F — Bitcoin and gold · Lyn Alden joins Bitwise — "nothing stops this train"

Camp Nakamoto — The Bitcoin Anti-Conference on a Private Island

292 views · 5mo ago · 48:50

Guest: Camp Nakamoto

Jeff Casler and Angelo Firenze don't run a Bitcoin conference. They run a Bitcoin camp. Every summer, the Bitcoin world boards another plane to another conference. And every summer, some of us come home wondering if we actually made a single real connection. This is the conversation about what happens when someone looks at that and decides to build the inverse — four days on a 66-acre private island in Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire. Cabins. Campfires.

Topics: Welcome to The Bitcoin Matrix · What's broken about how the Bitcoin world gathers · Profit is not the incentive · Angelo · the "last boat" realization · Sandy Island · 66 acres · the family camp since 1899 · Kids running free · 1950s parenting