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PODCAST

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke

Isabel Foxen Duke

Deep dives into the new world of Bitcoin-native assets, Layer 2s, and other progressive technologies on Bitcoin.

technology

All Episodes

79:24

The Cultural Fork of Bitcoin | with TJ Miller

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2026/01/28

I was introduced to Silicon Valley's TJ Miller little over a year ago while he was brainstorming how we could potentially inscribe a 4-megger comedy video through MARA Slipstream.A Bitcoiner since 2018, TJ saw the potential of Ordinals to orange-pill a whole new kind of Bitcoiner — the kind that may realistically be intimidated by (or straight up uninterested in) ivory-tower technical or economic topics. "I talk about cultural adoption and how do we bring Bitcoin into the cultural

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75:38

The History of Bitcoin Sidechains | with Rootstock...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2026/01/21

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01:08:45

Open Source Mining Revolution | with Bitaxe creator Skot

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2026/01/14

“The current mining landscape is dominated by proprietary, closed-source players who aren’t really serving the needs of the market. That creates an opportunity for open source mining to matter again.”Bitaxe creator Skot dives into the state of modern Bitcoin mining, where a small handful of industry players control nearly every facet of mining hardware and ASIC production—in a tightly sealed, closed-source environment. While Bitcoin software developers often champion a rigorously open-source ethos

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01:18:39

Bitcoin Mining in the Age of AI | with MARA CEO Fred...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2026/01/08

In response to the AI-driven shock in global demand for computing power, large players in the Bitcoin mining industry have been forced to make significant strategic shifts to remain competitive.MARA — the largest Bitcoin miner in the world by hashrate — is emerging as one of the more well-positioned beneficiaries of these changing tides, having transitioned from an “asset-light” strategy (via hosted mining at third-party facilities) to an “asset-heavy” approach (owning its own land, power, and

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01:24:06

Ark Beyond Payments | ALEX BERGERON

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/12/16

If you’ve been following the “Bitcoin Season II” meta for some time, you’re likely already following Bitcoin tech critic Alex Bergeron—formerly comms at Blockstream and Layer-2 reporter for Bitcoin Magazine.A notorious contrarian, he’s known for being difficult to impress—and for having a soft spot for the Ark Protocol, which he sees as uniquely suited for trustless Bitcoin scaling and DeFi usecases (e.g. lending) more broadly.Alex made his relationship with the Ark protocol official earlier this

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01:04:16

Optimizing Bitcoin for Medium of Exchange

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/12/09

“Payments are the north star. Bitcoin is money, so payments need to work.”The Ark protocol is widely considered one of the most promising Layer-2 architectures in Bitcoin today—one of maybe two or three that are 'Maxi-approved' due to its unique (and rare) permissionless exit feature.Former Blockchain engineer Steven Roose (& CEO of Ark implementation 2ndbtc has been working on Ark since nearly day one, after connecting with Ark's somewhat infamous creator, Burak, while working on Blockstream’s

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01:13:14

Why You Can’t Stop SPAM on Bitcoin | with Peter Todd

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/12/02

"You cannot prevent arbitrary data from being published in Bitcoin transactions. Even at the consensus level… It’s mathematically impossible.”Legendary Bitcoin contributor since 2009 and self-described "weirdo with a fine arts degree," Peter Todd joins me to unpack the endless wars over Bitcoin's "true purpose," his pioneering work putting "spam" on the blockchain, and why he believes attempts to filter transactions are just “silly.”In this episode, we get deep

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01:22:54

Bitcoin's Cypherpunk Roots: Getting Security Through...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/11/20

“You can get security in two ways in this world: through power or through privacy.”Obi Nwosu, co-founder of Fedi - the largest application layer built on top of e-cash protocol Fedimint - joins me on the show to discuss its role in protecting what he argues is the single most important feature of digital money: Privacy.Self-custody alone, he argues, “is not enough” for protection against attacks by those with resources and physical power — e.g. governments or anyone able to execute force against

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00:49:39

How to Stake Bitcoin Natively | with David Tse

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/11/13

“99% of Bitcoin is held idle, not because of lack of interest, but because of lack of trust.”Not long after Ordinals (and BRC20) revitalized the “Bitcoin DeFi” narrative, Babylon Labs seemingly leapt onto the scene with what felt like overnight success – locking several billion dollars of TVL in its “trustless Bitcoin staking” protocol.With some of the most interesting advisors and contributors in the space (...seriously, what other projects can claim both Domo and Robin Linus as collaborators?),

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01:38:58

Arbitrary Data Wars: The Rise of Node Power in...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/11/06

Matt Hill, CEO of Start9 — which is, as of this recording, the largest distributor of retail Bitcoin nodes (aka “pleb nodes”) — joins me to unpack the biggest underlying question of 2025: Who really holds power in enforcing (or disincentivizing) storage of arbitrary data on Bitcoin? Unsurprisingly, Start9 has seen an epic leap in sales with the popularization of Knots as more and more “plebs” are choosing to run nodes for the first time — not only for the purpose of running Bitcoin in a sovereign

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01:00:45

The Bull Case for Statechains & Why Big Tech Wants...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/10/28

It was about four years ago that Facebook’s famous effort at creating its own cryptocurrency and crypto-native payments system (Libra, then Diem) was effectively halted by an unending stream of regulatory scrutiny and compliance blocks.Some leaders of the project went on to create crypto-projects of their own (e.g. SUI and Aptos), however, “Head of Facebook Financial” @davidmarcus, along with Diem wallet technical lead Kevin Hurley made the key bet that Bitcoin’s decentralized rails were the only in

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01:28:17

The Two Forces That Could Break Bitcoin: AI vs...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/10/15

A couple months ago, I co-hosted an X space with Layer Two Labs re: “Should Bitcoiners care about quantum computing?”You can imagine our surprise when (in?)famous tech investor Martin Shkreli arrived to share that he’s been researching this very question for years… and dropped that he’s been personally considering raising funds to hire a team of mathematicians to hack Satoshi’s Coins.In this episode, Martin and I explore the limits of Bitcoin’s security model and the two forces he believes could

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01:04:47

The Birth of BRC2.0: Bitcoin’s Programmable Asset...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/10/07

Programmable BRC20 tokens, dubbed “BRC2.0,” launched a few short weeks ago after more than a year of building and anticipation.This effort was spearheaded by BRC20 lead-maintainer team Best In Slot, who joined the BRC20 core team after their development of open source Ordinals indexer “OPI,” and solidifying their title as a leading Ordinals infrastructure provider.In this episode, I sat down with Best In Slot CEO, Binari, to hear the birth story of “BRC2.0,” and learn how the ground was laid for

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01:08:25

The Developer That Brought Back Bitcoin's Forgotten...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/09/26

As interest in Bitcoin Layer 2s skyrockets, the inclusion of OP_CAT — an opcode enabling concatenation of elements in the Bitcoin stack — has become a key technical upgrade to watch for its potential in the development of trustless bridges.OP_CAT co-author @ethan_Heilman and I sat down to discuss debate around this opcode — including why it’s controversial, the cultural environment shaping its future, and why some worry its broad expressivity could pose “unknown risks” to Bitcoin over time.More

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01:27:31

The Untold Story of the Lightning Network | with...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/09/18

Co-creator of the Lightning Network, inventor of DLCs, and author of Utreexo—Tadge Dryja is easily one of the most influential developers in Bitcoin’s history.After co-authoring the Lightning Network paper in 2015—leading to the development of what is still easily the most well funded and widely adopted Bitcoin L2 in the world—Tadge continued with some of the most influential Bitcoin research in the world, including but not limited to: Discreet Log Contracts or DLCs—the only tech currently usable

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01:27:58

Bitcoin’s Security & Quantum Risks—and the Future of...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/09/11

“Most people don’t think about security until it’s too late,” says the Casa co-founder and CSO.One of the most prolific thought-leaders in Bitcoin security and privacy, there are few people who understand the nuances of Bitcoin security quite as deeply - not to mention the OPSEC practices required to protect against wrench attacks, for instance, which are rising globally as Bitcoin price increases. More recently, Lopp has turned his attention to mitigating Bitcoin’s quantum vulnerabilities,

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02:21:45

History of Drivechains & the Problem with Bitcoin...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/08/27

We love gleefully controversial figures on this show—and Paul Sztorc is no exception.One of the most outspoken and alternative thinkers in Bitcoin, Paul proposed BIP300/301—a softfork mechanizing the creation and removal of trustless Bitcoin sidechains, aka “Drivechains,” in late 2022.While the proposal received diverse reception from prominent Bitcoiners “across the aisle,” it’s clear that activating such a significant change to Bitcoin—when Core itself can barely push through minor relay policy

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01:32:27

How Rare Pepes Took Over Bitcoin’s Meme Culture |...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/08/14

There are few people on the planet more deeply entrenched in ‘Bitcoin Art’ than Rare Scrilla - and few people more influential in its culture and adoption.A key figure in "Rare Pepe" culture, Scrilla pioneered the "Fake Rares" movement, igniting a significant surge in demand for Counterparty assets in late 2021 - nearly eight years after he began recording Bitcoin-inspired hip-hop, influenced by the Silk Road, in 2014.Scrilla has written and recorded multiple Bitcoin-inspired

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01:07:28

Arbitrary Data Wars: The next Block Size Wars? +...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/08/07

The Bitcoin Historian Pete Rizzo has been chronicling Bitcoin longer than almost anyone.Former editor at CoinDesk and Bitcoin Magazine (and more recently the Bitcoin anchor Blockworks), Pete seems to be close to the helm of *the* top crypto media publication at any given time. -------------------------------------------------------------------In this episode of Bitcoin Rails, Pete and I sit down to unpack the cultural rifts surfacing in Bitcoin — primarily around the use of Bitcoin for storing

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01:12:17

Bitcoin Lending | With Fred Krueger and Ben Sigman

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/07/30

Fred Krueger has always “followed the money” from Finance in the 80s, to software in the 90s, to the internet in 00s… and finally, to Bitcoin.A self-described “opportunist,” it was the networks-effects argument that ultimately set Fred on a heavy Bitcoin-focused path—and more recently opened his eyes to the possibility that “fast chains” too will disrupt the fiat system permanently.In this episode of Bitcoin Rails, I sat down with Fred and his Bitcoin experimentation partner Ben Sigman to discuss

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