What Bitcoin Did

Jonathan Pollock is Product Lead for Bitkey.

In this episode, we get into wrench attacks, why physical coercion is a structural weakness of private key ownership, why seed phrases may be creating more risk than they solve, and why most self custody setups rely too heavily on users never making a mistake.

We talk about the trade offs between security, privacy, recovery, inheritance, and ease of use, alongside BitKey’s new hardware update and the company’s plans to build time delayed vaults designed to protect users during violent attacks. We also get into collaborative custody, covenants, insurance, ETFs versus self custody and why permissionless money still matters.

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“Bitcoin can change the world because the world can’t change Bitcoin.”

Jack Mallers is back on the show to break down his vision for 21, Strike, and the next phase of Bitcoin’s monetisation.

Jack explains why he doesn’t want to build another pure Bitcoin treasury company or another crypto casino, but a full-stack Bitcoin business: financial services, lending, custody, infrastructure, mining, capital markets, and a balance sheet built around Bitcoin. We get into the proposed acquisition of Strike, Bitcoin-backed lending, proof of reserves, why profitability matters, and why he thinks the best Bitcoin company won’t simply be the one that owns the most Bitcoin.

We also discuss where Bitcoin fits in a world moving towards war, inflation, energy shocks, multipolarity, and whether fiat can survive another crisis.

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“If your system can’t survive without inflation, the problem isn’t deflation.”

Allen Farrington and Sacha Meyers return to the show to break down one of the most misunderstood ideas in economics: deflation.

Allen & Sacha are the authors of Bitcoin is Venice, in this episode they get into their latest essay, Number Go Down, where they challenge the core assumptions behind modern macroeconomics. They argue that the idea inflation is necessary for a healthy economy is not grounded in reality, but in flawed models, bad incentives, and a fundamental misunderstanding of how growth actually happens.

We get into why the 2% inflation target is arbitrary, how Keynesian economics confuses credit collapse with true deflation, and why falling prices driven by innovation might actually be the most important signal of a functioning economy. We also explore the paradox of thrift, malinvestment, and why distorted price signals lead to systemic fragility.

Allen and Sacha explain why saving is the foundation of real growth, how deflation can drive investment rather than kill it, and why trying to “manage” the economy through measurement and intervention is fundamentally misguided. We also get into debt, why inflation acts as a hidden bailout mechanism, and what a world built on sound money might actually look like.

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Allen Farrington: https://x.com/allenf32

Sacha Meyers: https://x.com/sacha_meyers

“Money on the internet is still broken.”

David Marcus returns to the show to break down why moving money globally is still slow, fragmented, and expensive and how Bitcoin could fix it.

David explains how the current system is built on disconnected networks that extract fees, delay payments, and capture data. His solution is a new kind of global account built on Bitcoin infrastructure that unifies dollars, Bitcoin, and stablecoins into a single system that works instantly across borders.

We get into why platforms like Uber and YouTube could become financial hubs, how stablecoins might accelerate Bitcoin adoption, and why open networks tend to beat closed systems.

Finally, we discuss the future of AI agents that can hold and move money on your behalf, and what that means for privacy, control, and Bitcoin as the underlying monetary layer.

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“There’s a reality here that you guys are all asleep to… we are the only alternative path.”

American HODL & Peter McCormack join the show to break down the growing divide across the West, the collapse of trust in institutions, and whether the current political system is already failing.

We’re moving from a high trust to a low trust society, where incentives are broken, democracy is increasingly unstable, and the middle ground between left and right is disappearing. As countries like the UK decline economically and culturally, the risk isn’t just stagnation, it’s escalation.

We get into whether this leads to conflict or some form of authoritarianism, why freedom is so difficult to sell politically, and whether Bitcoin can realistically act as an alternative system. We also discuss the collapse of the middle class, AI-driven disruption, the role of media in accelerating division, and whether Bitcoin arrives in time or simply becomes a hedge against what comes next.

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Peter McCormack: https://x.com/PeterMcCormack