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Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a best-selling author, speaker, educator, and one of the world’s foremost bitcoin and open blockchain experts. He is known for delivering electric talks that combine economics, psychology, technology, and game theory with current events, personal anecdote, and historical precedent effortlessly transliterating the complex issues of blockchain technology out of the abstract and into the real world.

Bitcoin Q&A: Facebook's Libra Blockchain Why is Facebook's Libra Blockchain neither a true cryptocurrency nor a threat to Bitcoin? What requirements and restrictions will GlobalCoin users have? Who will they compete against?

While the Lightning Network runs as a second layer to Bitcoin, it's development is different and allows for much more experimentation. Lightning can be built without the strict adherence to and concern with consensus rules required for Bitcoin development. Lightning developers instead work with a set of standards called B.O.L.T. In this video Andreas explains a bit about Lightning development and walks through some current challenges.

What are the odds of "rogue developers" who introduce vulnerabilities? What happens if the digital signature algorithm is compromised? Is trust in hardware wallet developers and the firmware update process a problem?

Is it be possible to implement features such as ring signatures on the Bitcoin protocol? With controversy around privacy features, what are we likely to see implemented on the Bitcoin network?

Keywords/phrases: The Lightning Network is an overlay layer-two network which uses actual bitcoin transactions to create promises that can be redeemed/ settled on the Bitcoin network in the future, or extended forward in time across multiple participants. This allows you to encompass a much larger volume of transactions, much more fine-grained in time and amount. You can do millions of participants, millions of transactions, milliseconds apart, for a few satoshis and still make it work by only settling the final reconciliation. It is Bitcoin - Layer 2, or the second layer of any other blockchain that supports the basic multi-signature, timelock transactions, and some basic scripting capabilities. It adds a dimension of processing that will blow away everything we've seen before. Imagine streaming your salary not every two weeks but every minute, because why not get paid incrementally every minute? Streaming money is the new concept.

Reading and writing the word of the law, but judging according to the spirit of the law - how does this apply to code for legal frameworks? We already have plenty of institutions that allow you flexibility to have your problem adjudicated in front of an impartial judge or a jury of your peers. Law students will leave believing in the spirit of the law and be gradually ground down in the system of prosecution and courts until eventually they don't believe in anything other than winning the case. We are now looking at building systems where the outcome is known based on the formula of a neutral contract. It will not always work, sometimes it will backfire badly and we will have another DAO-saster. How can law create a safety net? The worst case is that a smart contract fails and then parties in the contract geo-locate each other to sue them in whatever court they choose at the time. New York Convention on Arbitration, an international treaty that allows you to claim independent legal arbitration within a private system of law in 156 countries. Distinguishing between use and abuse of the system with normative judgement. In a system that has no spirit of law, only rule, there is no distinction between use and abuse; if the consensus algorithm allowed it, it is not abuse. The lesson of TheDAO wasn't "do we fork or not fork?", it was that you don't put $150 million in an untested contract, you idiots! That is a lesson that is self-correcting because people got hurt. The caveat of these new systems is that they are free-market, collaborative, voluntary participation: caveat emptor - "buyer beware."

Is a second layer necessary for Bitcoin? What are the fundamental design tradeoffs when building a scalable blockchain?

What is the difference between public keys and addresses? How are new addresses generated? How are change addresses generated? Why have two outputs? Do you still pay fees if you are sending bitcoin to new addresses in your own wallet? What is the VanityGen command? What does the SIG_HASH flag do?

Are hardware wallets really secure enough? Is the complexity of the setup and execution part of the risk model? What are the most likely ways that you will lose your bitcoin? What is the best way to store your mnemonic seed and passphrase?

What do you think about Ethereum 2.0 and a sharded architecture? What will happen to projects developed on the first chain? Is Ethereum the next Bitcoin? First-mover advantage.

Binance considered rolling back the Bitcoin chain in order to recover stolen funds. How would that have happened? How likely is it that such a recovery method would be executed in the future?

A review on some "deep history" of Bitcoin... that is, one year ago. What was SegWit2x? Why should block sizes be limited? What is the "real Bitcoin"? What are the interdependent consensus constituents, and how do consensus changes succeed or fail?

Will criminal elements leverage cryptocurrencies? Criminal organizations as early adopters of technology, operating at the nexus of highest risk and highest reward. Money, by definition, is something you can use to buy anything. The more restrictions it comes with, the more it loses the fundamental principle of medium of exchange. I bet it's a lot easier to buy drugs with the New Zealand dollar than it is with bitcoin. Criminals will use money, but what we need to understand is that the tool is not the crime and has never been the crime. 99% of humanity is going to use money and other tools to feed our children, give them healthcare, education, and a better future. I'm not concerned with solving crime through attempting to control money. The organization you give the absolute power over money to, will become the criminal and punish not other criminals but their political opponents. We need to start thinking about separation of money and state, and understand that it just as important as the separation of church and state.

Bitcoin Q&A: From Barter to Abstract Money

How does the Blockstream satellite project work? What do you need in order to participate? What is it useful for? Let me bring your science fiction imagination back down to earth...

Could bitcoin becoming the world's reserve currency? Will it be more than digital gold? Why did gold not work out as a medium of exchange? Should we desire mainstream adoption if bitcoin becomes a mandated currency, or should we strive for currency choice? The only people who can afford to use surveillance currencies are those with a government that is not corrupt enough yet.

This testimony was delivered at the Senate Economics References Committee of the Australian Senate, presenting on Bitcoin and digital currencies, on March 4, 2015.

Can bitcoin be a good store-of-value while still being a risky investment? Why is it a bad idea to over-emphasize the investment aspect while undervaluing education about the technology?

What is Ethereum 2.0? When is it happening? Is it real? And what should you expect? In this edition of Down the Rabbit Hole Andreas asks himself to explain what will happen as Ethereum switches to it's 2.0 version. From Proof-of-Stake, to sharding, the beacon chain, epocs and phases, here is what to expect!

Keywords/phrases: Could state authorities shut down Bitcoin at any time? A state-sponsored 51% attack would be very difficult. Even though a lot of the mining is in China, it's not as concentrated as you think; some of the pools are, but the mining farms themselves are distributed in very remote rural areas. In those areas, the mining farms represent a significant percentage of the local economy. Before a hired gun gets up and tells them to shut down the mine, you first have to pay them a salary, and the Chinese government is a minority bidder because the mining farm operator is paying them much more lavishly. Don't underestimate how much resistance you're going to see in areas where this is having a significant impact on incomes in rural areas that have excess capacity electricity. The biggest threat for the Chinese government isn't Bitcoin or America, it's a billion peasants with pitchforks who have decided they've had enough. They've been trying to forestall that from happening for 25 years. Economic growth in rural areas is the goose that lays golden eggs, which benefits them too. Don't overestimate how effective a 51% attack would be either, or how long it could be sustained, and what kind of countermeasures we could put in place. This is a system that will evolve, not just sit still and take the blows. After 7 years of Bitcoin, it's not because they're not trying or that they don't want to stop it.

Why aren't we using cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, for recurring payments like memberships and subscriptions? Because cryptocurrency payments are push systems, not pull systems. Watch this video to learn the difference between push and pull systems and why cryptocurrency recurring payments are better suited for layer 2 solutions, like the Lightning Network.

What is the story behind MimbleWimble? What is Grin? What is a Dandelion transaction relay, as described in BIP156, and how does it improve the anonymity of the Bitcoin network?

Will Lightning Network and other second layers have interoperability? How will it be designed in terms of protocol standards (BOLT) across different client implementations and APIs? What kinds of Lightning Network apps (LApps) will we see built on top? Which other coins can participate in atomic swaps?

In this talk, Andreas speaks about the ongoing clash between hardware and software development (instead of "East vs. West") within the emerging culture of trustware.