Blockstream Talk #2 - Mining, STOs on Liquid & El Salvador´s Bitcoin Opportunity

Welcome to Blockstream Talk #2.

Our conversation today is with Blockstream’s Chief Strategy Officer, Samson Mow.

Samson is Blockstream’s gas pedal, he pushes the company to be at the tip of Bitcoin product development.

He’s also extremely well connected with people and companies across the ecosystem. Given his time managing BTC China - formerly one of the largest exchanges and mining pools on the planet - he also has a good idea of what’s going on in China.

So I was quite keen to get his view on a number of subjects from China, to STOs, NFTs and the state of the Liquid Network.

The Bitcoin market moves fast. As you can probably tell, this conversation was recorded a few weeks ago. Since this conversation, Blockstream has launched its own Asic arm and released our latest Lightning Network service, Greenlight. You can hear Samson hint at these developments in this conversation.

If you have any topics you want us to cover in future episodes, please let us know in the comments section below.

Time Stamps

0:00 Intro
2:17 What is going on in China? Is mining done for good?
3:10 Can Chinese investors still buy and sell Bitcoin?
4:46 How important is Chinese retail to Bitcoin price appreciation?
5:26 What was the motivation behind China’s latest crackdown?
7:06 Is the mining hardware supply chain at risk?
9:06 Where has Chinese hashrate migrated to? How long will it take to recover?
10:58 Security Tokens will drive the reformation of traditional capital markets
13:02 Trading venues, technology, and regulations are coming together for STOs
15:42 There seems to be a groundswell of interest in NFTs, how is Liquid being applied to NFTs?
18:50 Is El Salvador the first domino for dollarized economies?
20:58 Bitcoin is turning out to be a global growth driver
20:25 What is the state of the Lightning Network at the moment and what does it need to grow?
24:06 Within all the things that you’re involved in, what excites you the most?