TO THE MOON - [Ep01] - Bitcoin: The Genesis

The first of a ten part series on the first ten years of bitcoin originally aired on international television in late 2019, this is the first time it has been released as a podcast.

In the genesis episode of TO THE MOON, Max and Stacy ask: “What is bitcoin? What was the actual beginning? Was it the genesis block on January 3, 2009? Or the Bitcoin White Paper published on October 31, 2008? Or were the seeds first planted in the early digital currencies created by the cypherpunks a decade earlier?”TO THE MOON also asks: “What did Satoshi want?” Early bitcoin contributor, Amir Taaki, believes Satoshi’s genesis block message was very political, that the decision to publish the Times front page headline, “Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks” was not random but rather signals intent. Jimmy Song says Satoshi wanted money that wasn’t controlled by a centralized authority and the best store of value ever created. Giacomo Zucco believes he wanted a monetary policy revolution. TO THE MOON then talks to Bill Barhydt of Abra about cypherpunks, what they wanted and how that influenced the revolution that is bitcoin. Nozomi Hayase says ‘cypherpunks write code’ and the bitcoin code embodies the ideals of natural law. Also in this episode, prominent bitcoiners like investor Trace Mayer, security engineer Jameson Lopp, entrepreneur and coder Rodolfo Novak, and Marshall Long, who was an early miner, provide insight into the ideology and ideas unleashed by bitcoin. The journey then takes them to the radical monetary experiment of QE which began only weeks after the Bitcoin White Paper was first published.