Trust Revolution copertina

Trust Revolution

Trust Revolution

Di: Shawn Yeager
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Unfiltered conversations with builders, thinkers, and operators in Bitcoin and beyond. Exploring the systems we trust, why they work (or don't), and what comes next.

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  • S03E03 Aaron van Wirdum – Bitcoin's Origin Story and the Unfinished Fight

    S03E03 Aaron van Wirdum – Bitcoin's Origin Story and the Unfinished Fight
    Feb 6 2026
    “The cypherpunks who tried to build digital cash before Bitcoin might one day be remembered like America's founding fathers.” Aaron van Wirdum spent five years writing The Genesis Book—and warns the fight for money outside of government control isn't over. EPISODE SUMMARY Bitcoin didn't appear from nowhere. For decades before Satoshi, a scrappy band of cryptographers, privacy activists, and heterodox economists tried to build digital cash that could operate outside government control. They all failed—until one anonymous inventor synthesized their ideas into a system that actually worked. Aaron van Wirdum, author of The Genesis Book and former editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine, traces this lineage from David Chaum's DigiCash in the early 90s through Nick Szabo's Bit Gold to Satoshi's breakthrough: using proof of work for consensus rather than as currency itself. But the origin story doesn't end with invention. Van Wirdum covered the 2015-2017 block size wars in real time—when miners, exchanges, and venture-backed startups controlling 80% of economic activity tried to change Bitcoin's rules and lost to anonymous node runners in basements. Today, the threat has shifted. Mining is concentrated, privacy developers face prison, and incremental regulation slowly suffocates self-custody. The question isn't whether Bitcoin can survive a 51% attack. It's whether it can survive becoming as monitored and controlled as email. ABOUT THE GUEST Aaron van Wirdum is the author of The Genesis Book: The Story of the People and Projects That Inspired Bitcoin and former editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine's print edition. He discovered Bitcoin in 2013 and spent over a decade documenting its technical evolution and governance battles, including real-time coverage of the block size wars. Based in the Netherlands, van Wirdum studied journalism and the historical influence of technology on social structures at Utrecht University. He left X/Twitter and is now active on Nostr. Nostr: https://primal.net/AaronvanWBook: https://thegenesisbook.com KEY QUOTES “The market decides what is Bitcoin. That is ultimately what it comes down to.” — Aaron van Wirdum “The big concern is sort of the emailification of Bitcoin—where the protocol is still out there, but no one's actually interacting with it directly because everything is happening through [custodial solutions and regulated entities.]” — Aaron van Wirdum “Bitcoin is the best form of money ever invented, if it all keeps working as intended.” — Aaron van Wirdum KEY TAKEAWAYS Bitcoin is an evolutionary step, not a lucky accident: Satoshi synthesized decades of failed attempts—Hashcash's proof of work, DigiCash's privacy, Bit Gold's decentralized registry—into a system where the pieces finally fit together. The difficulty adjustment algorithm and using proof of work for consensus (rather than as currency) were the crucial breakthroughs.The block size wars proved Bitcoin's immune system works: When 50 companies representing 80% of economic activity tried to change the rules in 2017, fork futures markets revealed the market valued the conservative version. The users—not the miners or corporations—ultimately decide what Bitcoin is.Individual miners refusing transactions is annoying, not existential: F2Pool censoring OFAC-sanctioned transactions means slightly longer confirmation times. The real threat is miners refusing to build on blocks that include those transactions—that's when censorship becomes enforced.Regulatory suffocation is the most plausible failure mode: Not a protocol attack, but incremental KYC/AML rules that make self-custody harder, privacy tools illegal, and Bitcoin's actual use as digital cash impossible while ETFs and “institutional allocators” hold a version that's no different from any other financial asset. TIMESTAMPS [00:01] Introduction and the cypherpunk vision of building money outside government control[03:44] Tim May's radical vision: the internet as a new frontier for institutions[11:26] David Chaum and DigiCash: how the first working digital cash almost became a banking standard[17:15] Nick Szabo's Bit Gold: inching toward Bitcoin and why it couldn't quite work[21:07] Bitcoin's known weakness: the 51% attack and mining centralization today[25:27] The block size wars: how close Bitcoin came to capture or destruction in 2017[33:58] Transaction censorship: when it matters and when it doesn't[38:25] The OP_RETURN debate: harm reduction versus fighting spam[47:54] Why Aaron's still here after 13 years: “What is more important than money?”[54:46] The dimming torch: privacy as Bitcoin's underemphasized origin story[56:15] The most plausible failure mode: incremental regulation and the emailification of Bitcoin[60:54] Practical advice: get a wallet, get some Bitcoin, just try it RESOURCES & LINKS Mentioned in Episode: Bitcoin Magazine - Aaron van Wirdum's articles - His coverage of Bitcoin over the past decadeNew York ...
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    1 ora e 5 min
  • S03E02 Jason Hughey – Companies Don't Keep Promises. People Do.

    S03E02 Jason Hughey – Companies Don't Keep Promises. People Do.
    Jan 30 2026
    Enron had “integrity” as a core value. FTX had none at all. Both collapsed. Jason Hughey argues the problem isn't whether companies state their values—it's whether those values function as actual decision-making frameworks or just motivational posters on the wall. Episode Summary Most organizations betray trust not through malice but through design. Jason Hughey breaks down the two paradigms shaping every workplace: top-down control systems that optimize for short-term extraction, and emergent systems that treat employees as contributors rather than resources. The dysfunction you've felt—being punished for good ideas, watching customer service decline to hit quarterly targets, seeing values that exist only on walls—isn't random. It's built in. Hughey works with a framework called Principle Based Management, developed by Charles Koch at Koch Industries and first codified in 1990. The core distinction: rules tell people what to do, principles empower them to decide. When you suppress the signals coming from people closest to the work, you get the same coordination failures that collapsed the Soviet economy—just at company scale. The alternative requires hiring for virtue over talent, building genuine challenge cultures, and committing to low time preference even when it's not exciting. If better money requires better principles, better organizations might too. About the Guest Jason Hughey leads business development at Satoshi Pacioli, a Bitcoin-focused accounting firm founded in 2022, where he's also driving the firm's adoption of Principle Based Management—a framework rooted in Austrian economics that treats organizations like markets rather than command structures. With over ten years in customer experience and team building, including time in the fitness industry, Hughey brings a practitioner's lens to management theory. He co-authored Called to Freedom (2016), exploring the intersection of Christianity and libertarianism. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhughey/Satoshi Pacioli: https://satoshipacioli.comSubstack: https://satoshipacioliaccounting.substack.com Key Quotes "Values or a company's culture becomes the motivational poster on the wall that you walk by and acknowledge and see the word integrity there, and then you forget about it." — Jason Hughey"When you are consistently using your power to shut down those signals that are emerging from people who are on the front lines doing the work, you're going to run into the problem of now we're not getting the knowledge to where it needs to go." — Jason Hughey“The value is the ideal that you live by. The virtue is the day-to-day commitment to doing it.” — Jason Hughey Key Takeaways Stated values mean nothing without lived virtue: Enron had “integrity” on the wall. The distinction between values (ideals you claim) and virtue (daily commitment to act on them) separates companies that build trust from those that betray it.Suppressing internal signals creates Soviet-style coordination failures: When employees are punished for bringing ideas or challenges forward, knowledge stops flowing to where it's needed—the same problem that collapsed centrally planned economies, just at organizational scale.Hire for virtue first, talent second: Talent can be coached; character rarely changes. If you have to choose between someone highly skilled who plays politics and someone less skilled with integrity, take the latter.Principles empower, rules constrain: Rules-based management treats employees as resources to accomplish tasks. Principle-based management gives people a framework and lets them decide—unlocking creativity, ownership, and better customer outcomes. Timestamps [00:48] Why most organizations betray trust—two competing management paradigms[04:41] FTX, Enron, Theranos: the pattern behind corporate values failures[09:16] The fifth dimension of PBM: self-actualization and meaning at work[11:34] Design choices that guarantee dysfunction—challenge culture and cult of personality[16:18] How high time preference management destroys customer service and employee trust[20:35] Information flow in broken organizations—when signals get siloed or shut down[23:49] The socialist calculation problem applied to business management[26:01] Principles vs. rules: empowering employees to decide[29:08] What local knowledge actually requires—integrity, challenge culture, knowledge systems[30:49] Virtue vs. values: the ideal you claim vs. the commitment to live it[36:06] Building scaffolding so you don't fall when times get tough[39:08] Where to start when your team shows cracks—two diagnostic questions[43:24] Hiring for virtue when everyone can perform values in an interview[49:41] What's been harder than expected implementing PBM at Satoshi Pacioli[52:21] What changes if more organizations operated this way—restoring trust[55:41] The infinite game: low time preference as competitive advantage[59:13] Legitimate organizational ...
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    1 ora e 4 min
  • S03E01 Oscar Merry — What Joe Rogan Lost for $100M

    S03E01 Oscar Merry — What Joe Rogan Lost for $100M
    Jan 22 2026
    “If you choose to go exclusive on Spotify, you're essentially saying to 70% of your existing and potential audience, ‘Sorry, you can't listen anymore.’” Oscar Merry watched Joe Rogan lose influence despite a $100 million payday—and built Fountain to prove there's a better way. Episode Summary Oscar Merry's Alexa skills hit #1 in productivity and earned $30,000 in six months. He moved on when the technology couldn't match the vision—and the gatekeepers made clear it wasn't going to. Now as CEO of Fountain, he's building infrastructure for creators who want to own their audience rather than rent access to them. The conversation maps the entire value chain—from how legacy media takes up to 90% of creator revenue with quarterly payouts to how open protocols enable instant payments with single-digit fees. Merry unpacks the Joe Rogan case study as proof that even $100 million can't compensate for lost reach and explains why Nostr's cross-app comments represent the most significant shift in content discovery since RSS. For creators sensing that platform dependence is a liability, this episode lays out what's actually working in open podcasting today—and what's still hard. About the Guest Oscar Merry is CEO and co-founder of Fountain, a podcast app built on open protocols including Bitcoin Lightning and Nostr. Before podcasting, he was an Amazon Alexa Champion who built skills used by millions, ran the London Alexa Meetup, and taught voice technology courses. He pivoted to audio after recognizing that voice assistants couldn't escape Big Tech gatekeeping. Based in the UK, he leads a small team building what he calls “a different way of doing content discovery on the internet." X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/MerryOscarNostr: primal.net/merryoscarLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/oscarmerryFountain: https://fountain.fm Key Quotes “If you choose to go exclusive on Spotify, you're essentially saying to 70% of your existing and potential audience, sorry, you can't listen anymore.” — Oscar Merry “In the current system, as an artist, as a content creator, you are losing out massively on both time and money.” — Oscar Merry “Imagine if that YouTube comment could go into the Twitter feed or the Instagram feed or the LinkedIn feed. That conceptual difference that Nostr can deliver is the thing that lights up the eyes of podcasters.” — Oscar Merry Key Takeaways Open podcasting is a check against centralization: Even Spotify's $100 million couldn't prevent Joe Rogan from losing influence during his exclusive period. The fragmented nature of podcasting—where Apple and Spotify together hold only ~30% market share—means exclusivity costs more than it pays.Legacy media takes up to 90% with quarterly delays: Between platforms, payment processors, labels, and collection agencies, creators can end up with 10 cents on the dollar months after the value was created. Open micropayments reverse this with instant settlement and single-digit fees.Value-based discovery beats attention algorithms: When a casual like and a life-changing experience are weighted equally, algorithms optimize for slop. Attaching payments to discovery signals lets quality surface over engagement bait.Nostr inverts the flow for creators: Instead of audiences traveling to walled-off comment sections, engagement and money flow toward the creator across any app that speaks the protocol. Timestamps [01:08] Oscar's origin story: #1 Alexa skill to questioning Big Tech control[09:56] Why podcasting's fragmented ecosystem resists centralization[11:32] The Joe Rogan case study: $200M couldn't buy back lost influence[17:14] Why value for value can work when only 1-5% participate[26:10] What Fountain learned from listen-to-earn rewards[31:14] Money flow comparison: legacy media vs open payments[38:44] Attention algorithms vs value-based content discovery[47:43] Nostr's magic: comments that appear across every app[51:22] What censorship resistance actually means in practice[53:33] Building a business on unproven protocols[1:00:25] First moves for creators exploring open podcasting[1:03:18] The Fountain pitch: why switch from Spotify or Apple Resources & Links Mentioned in Episode: Primal - Nostr client with built-in Lightning walletPodcast Index - Open index for podcast RSS feedsAlby Hub - Self-hosted Lightning wallet for value-for-value payments Podcast: Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.coMusic: More Ghost Than Man
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    1 ora e 8 min
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