SLP66 James O’Beirne - The truth about ‘power’ in Bitcoin

James O’Beirne, Bitcoin Core Engineer at Chaincode Labs joins me in this episode to talk about the real nature of ‘power’ and control within Bitcoin. It’s not as simple as it might first seem! We talk about: 

• Differing conceptions of ‘power’ in Bitcoin
• Peer to peer network governance
• Bitcoin Core development
• Assume utxo

James O’Beirne links:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamesob 
• Github: https://github.com/jamesob 
• Chaincode labs: https://chaincode.com/ 

Discussed in episode: 

• 2019 Draft Paper by Angela Walch: Deconstructing 'Decentralization': Exploring the Core Claim of Crypto Systems - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3326244 
• WBD089 - Angela Walch appearance on What Bitcoin Did podcast - https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/critiquing-bitcoin-with-angela-walch 
• Assumeutxo: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2019-April/016825.html 

Stephan Livera links:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/@stephanlivera 
• Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/stephan-livera-podcast/id1415720320?mt=2 
• Subscribe on Android: https://subscribeonandroid.com/anchor.fm/s/7d083a4/podcast/rss
• Website: https://stephanlivera.com/ 
• Patreon: http://patreon.com/stephanlivera