Hell Money

Bitcoin Core Dev Walks Away... to Battle The Great Firewall of China (with Carl Dong)

We sat down with Carl Dong — former Bitcoin Core contributor, now founder of Obscura VPN focused on real-world censorship resistance.In this episode, we dive into:- Why Carl walked away from Bitcoin Core development to t...

2025-06-26

Episode notes

We sat down with Carl Dong — former Bitcoin Core contributor, now founder of Obscura VPN focused on real-world censorship resistance.


In this episode, we dive into:

- Why Carl walked away from Bitcoin Core development to tackle privacy head-on

- What sets Obscura apart from other VPNs

- Lessons from the Great Firewall and routing traffic through hostile networks

- Chinese numerology

- Carl & Casey's long and storied shared history


FOLLOW CARL: https://x.com/carl_dong


Get bonus content by subscribing to @hellmoneypod on X: https://x.com/hellmoneypod/creator-subscriptions/subscribe


Or support the podcast by sending a BTC donation: bc1qztncp7lmcxdgude4px2vzh72p2yu2aud0eyzys


ORDINALS PROTOCOL SHIRT: https://shop.inscribing.com/products/ordinals-protocol-shirt


TIMESTAMPS

:0:00 Intro & Carl's journey to Bitcoin development

11:59 Hard problems in Bitcoin

16:00 Binaries, compliers, and reproducible builds

37:30 Transitioning from Bitcoin core to working on Obscura VPN

1:05:00 Advice for current Bitcoin core contributors

1:10:00 Ordinals numerology

1:39:00 Outro