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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

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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01:20:18

Protecting Bitcoin From "MEVIL" | With Matt Corallo

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/07/23

After starting full-time in Bitcoin straight out of college (as a co-founder of Blockstream… NBD) Matt Corallo is one of the most long-standing and prolific Bitcoin contributors in the world, having worked on several of its most influential projects—including Lightning, Stratum V2, the original sidechains paper, and more.That being said, he’s arguably best-known in recent history for sounding the alarms about potential risk vectors for miner centralization—including the risks of “Miner Extractable

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01:07:23

Orange Pilling Crypto With Cats and Wizards | With...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/07/15

One of the most influential voices in “Bitcoin Season II,” Udi Wertheimer is one of the most controversial and, perhaps, most misunderstood figures in the Bitcoin community broadly. A self-identified “survivor” of Bitcoin maximalism, Udi’s critiques of Bitcoin-only tribalism – and the suppression of nuanced discussion that arises as a result – made him the perfect spokesperson for post-Ordinals Bitcoiners looking for someone to represent their “Bitcoin-first” rather than “Bitcoin-only”

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01:13:37

Building Rollups on Bitcoin + the Battle for...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/07/03

BITCOIN RAILS EPISODE #27: Building Rollups on Bitcoin + the Battle for ‘OP_Return’ | with @citrea_xyz founders @0x_orkun and @ekrembal_ The founders of Citrea were unlikely superstars in the Bitcoin ecosystem—a team of 24-year-olds, barely out of school, with most of their prior experience in the Ethereum ecosystem. Yet they have rapidly emerged as one of the leading teams at the forefront of BitVM research, design, and implementation—and are the crowned BitVM play for Founders Fund (@peterthiel +

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01:30:34

The Untold Story of CTV | With Jeremy Rubin

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/06/26

The introduction of covenants to Bitcoin has been a long-standing debate—one recently brought back into consideration with the memetically-driven advocacy of “OP_CAT” by the Taproot Wizards.In previous history, the most likely contender for a covenants-enabling OP code was “CTV” (check template verify)—a simpler and more narrow way to enable covenants—that, while once considered radical, is now seen as the “conservative choice” relative to CAT.Serious discussions about implementing CTV have

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01:10:06

The Birth of BitVM and the Fight for "End Game" Money...

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/06/18

In early 2024, independent developer Robin Linus published a paper outlining how one theoretically could verify zero-knowledge proofs on native Bitcoin for near-trustless scaling. A feat long considered impossible without a soft fork—the paper went viral, amassing over 3 million views and “nerd-sniping” some of the brightest developers and investors in the space.Since then, a flood of builder effort has gone into actuating BitVM bridges—with many of the most highly valued “layer 2s” contributing to

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01:02:08

History of ZKProofs | With Eli Ben Sasson

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/06/10

The History of Zero-Knowledge Proofs | with ZK “Godfather” Eli Ben SassonIn 2013, computer science professor Eli Ben-Sasson presented his research on zero-knowledge proofs at a small Bitcoin conference outside of Standford University. The presentation immediately sparked interest from Bitcoin Core developer Greg Maxwell—leading Eli into over a decade of sustained work advancing ZK-based solutions for blockchain scalability and privacy.Today, zero-knowledge proofs are widely considered some of the

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01:07:15

Digital Property Rights & ZKPs | With Edan Yago

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/05/22

Edan Yago has been in the “Bitcoin DeFi” ecosystem since before that term was a thing. An early adopter of Rootstock, Yago developed the “largest DeFi ecosystem in Bitcoin” through DEX @sovryn before becoming obsessed with Zero Knowledge Proofs and the promise of BitVM for enabling more trustless rails into and out of Bitcoin. While Yago has most recently been working on the modular-style BitVM bridge @bitcoinOS - we got deep in this episode about the early days of Bitcoin DeFi - and Bitcoin in

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00:57:00

The Problem With Bitcoin L2s | With Mike Casey

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/05/15

Michael Casey was brought on by MARA to address an often overlooked problem in the world of Bitcoin Layer 2s… they generally don’t contribute much to the security budget of Layer 1 Bitcoin. We often hear concerns about fees being either too high OR too low depending on how you look at it… too high if you’re optimizing for 8 billion people being able to use the network in a self-custodial way—but too low if your goal is maintaining network security as Bitcoin block rewards continue to halve over

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00:59:30

Fee-Market Maximalism | With Rena Shah

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/05/07

Stacks was one of the first “Bitcoin L2s” (or “Bitcoin scalers” if you’ll call it that) that has stayed incredibly relevant in the Bitcoin Season 2 era. From conducting the first regulated token sale to becoming a face of the Ordinals ecosystem, Trustmachines COO Rena Shah guides us through the network’s history, and why she believes its positioned to keep both Bitcoin’s network and ethos alive. In this episode, we discussed:How Stacks pulled off the first regulated token saleStacks consensus,

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01:23:12

Make Bitcoin Quantum Resistant | With Hunter Beast

Bitcoin Rails | Isabel Foxen Duke ·

2025/04/08

Is Bitcoin going to break? Don’t roll your eyes: quantum computing may be a more realistic threat to Bitcoin than you think, and it may only be a few years away. Thankfully, Bitcoin dev Hunter Beast is preparing us in advance with the thoughtful BIP 360 – an effort to bring post quantum cryptography to Bitcoin.In this episode, we discussed:- How quantum computing threatens your Bitcoin wallet- The vulnerability of Satoshi’s one million BTC- How to stay protected against quantum (for now!)- How banks

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38 results

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