The Bitcoin v Crypto War with Udi Wertheimer, Crypto Cobain, Alex Gladstein & Allen Farrington - WBD405

Location: Remotely
Date: Wednesday 29th September
Company/project: Independent, Independent, Human
Rights Foundation & Baillie Gifford
Role: N/A, N/A, Chief Strategy Officer &
Investment Manager


The narrative around altcoins is constantly changing. However,
one thing that remains consistent is that they almost always
promise to 'improve upon Bitcoin' in one way or another. More
often than not, this is improved layer one scalability, lower
transaction costs or enhanced programmability. 


While many of these projects can offer faster and cheaper
throughput and smart contracts, they come at the cost of the most
fundamentally important aspects of Bitcoin; security,
decentralisation and censorship resistance.


Bitcoin maximalists often cite these reasons as to why all
projects outside of Bitcoin are doomed to fail, but the market
seems to think differently. Over short time frames, many of these
altcoins can outperform Bitcoin and the opportunity to make quick
gains draws in large amounts of retail investment regardless of
premines, lack of product-market fit or whether a project is, in
fact, meaningfully decentralised or not.


Bitcoin is designed to be the hardest money the world has ever
known and to demonetise the state. To achieve this, it moves
slowly, protecting its core principles at all costs. In stark
contrast to this, Altcoins operate on a model similar to Silicon
Valley, move fast and break things. 


With growing concerns over a state-level regulatory crackdown on
'crypto', decentralisation is paramount. Bitcoin's
decentralisation means it can survive almost any attack, but
could altcoins survive without being meaningfully decentralised?


In this interview, I talk to Allen Farrington, Crypto Cobain, Udi
Wertheimer, and Alex Gladstein. We discuss tokens and securities,
scalability vs decentralisation, nation-state resistance, and
building on Bitcoin.