Jameson Lopp, Cypherpunk, Infrastructure Engineer and Bitcoin Philosopher

Published: 2018-07-26 09:00:01

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.