Jameson Lopp, Cypherpunk, Infrastructure Engineer and Bitcoin Philosopher

Jameson Lopp is a Professional Cypherpunk, Infrastructure Engineer at Casa and Bitcoin Philosopher. Jameson enjoys building technology that empowers individuals and is interested in opportunities within the Bitcoin and crypto asset ecosystem. Graduating from the University of North Carolina with a degree in computer science, Jameson is passionate about sharing his expertise and technical knowledge of crypto assets, his philosophical approach to understanding the systems, and his opinion on the consensus of their participants. For comprehensive shownotes, a complete bio and links in the episode take a look below or click the episode title.

Written by Alexandra Moxin

Jameson Lopp is a Professional Cypherpunk, Infrastructure Engineer at Casa and Bitcoin Philosopher. Jameson enjoys building technology that empowers individuals and is interested in opportunities within the Bitcoin and crypto asset ecosystem. Graduating from the University of North Carolina with a degree in computer science, Jameson is passionate about sharing his expertise and technical knowledge of crypto assets, his philosophical approach to understanding the systems, and his opinion on the consensus of their participants.

Jameson is an application infrastructure engineer and early investor in Bitcoin in addition to being founder and creator of Statoshi.info and Bitcoin SIG. Formerly at BitGo, Jameson has been involved in Bitcoin since 2012.

In this episode we cover

Jameson’s background
Cypherpunk beliefs and ethics
The benefits of increasing user privacy and freedom
What motivated Jameson to get into Bitcoin
The benefits of having a robust and long standing network, a strong network effect and having most talented engineering team working on the network
Jameson’s experience with distributed data processing prior to Bitcoin
The origin story of Casa the multi-signature, multi-device, multi-location vault product
Some of the features that will be available on the Casa platform
Why the work in Proof of Work matters and how some of the features in Casa will enable users to be their own secure bank
Why the iTunes solution was developed first
Differences between platforms and why Android presents some initial security challenges but a better overall user experience
Privacy and other benefits of the Purism phone, platform and system
Some of the emerging trends Jameson sees in Bitcoin and what companies or groups are exploring interesting ideas in engineering and security
Mt. Gox and calling out bad security practices
The Lightning Network, Jameson’s thoughts on where it’s going, potential challenges and ways its benefiting Bitcoin
Ways to leverage social media and other sources to improve channel reputation
Ways for users to improve privacy and a shout out to Jameson’s upcoming article on privacy (we’ll post a link once it’s published)
Breaking down Jameson’s Bitcoin Resource List and some of the reasoning behind creating that list
Why it’s important to run a full node
Where you can start and some of the system requirements if you’d like to configure and run a full node
Places you can look to find ways you can help Bitcoin and projects you can contribute to
How to find and join communities interested in maintaining and furthering Bitcoin
Jameson’s world renown pinned tweet on Bitcoin
The strengths and differences of the Bitcoin community and other cryptocurrency communities
Jameson’s thoughts on different Bitcoin hard forks
Breaking down Proof of Work and Proof of Stake concepts
The benefits of Proof of Work and why the energy spend is both market driven and necessary
Jameson’s tweet about why Bitcoin is driven by conservative development principles
The resiliency of the Bitcoin network despite multiple attempts to attack it
The 2013 accidental consensus failure and how it was resolved within a few hours
The 2018 Build Bitcoin Conference in Lisbon, Portugal
Upcoming conferences Jameson is speaking at and where he’s part of the review committee
Jameson’s closing comments to our listeners and how you can reach out to him

You can reach Jameson via his personal website, on twitter and to find out more about what he’s working on at Casa. Find out how you can contribute to the Bitcoin community and Bitcoin development at Bitcoin.org and the Bitcoin Wiki.

Show Links

Jameson Lopp’s Personal Website
Bitcoin.cc
Jameson Lopp’s Bitcoin Resource List
Jameson Lopp on Twitter
Casa
Blockstack Platform
Bitcoin SIG
Article from Jameson on configuring and running a full Bitcoin node
Jameson’s full node resource use via Statoshi.info
Statoshi.info - Realtime Bitcoin Node Stats
Bitcoin Core Config Generator
Bitcoin Physical Attack Log
Bitcoin.org
The Bitcoin Wiki
Jameson’s Triangle Bitcoin Meetup Group
DCTRL
Bitcoin-N-Beers
Jameson’s world renown pinned tweet on Bitcoin
Jameson’s profile on Medium
Jameson’s profile on CoinDesk
Jameson’s profile on Github
Jameson’s profile via OneName
Baltic Honeybadger Conference in Latvia, September 22 - 23
Scaling Bitcoin in Tokyo, October 6 - 7
Purism
Article reviewing features of the Librem5 Purism Phone