March 17 2021
Chia – A New Cryptocurrency Launching Soon, Built by Bram Cohen, Founder of BitTorrent
About the episode
Kevin chats with Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent, about his new cryptocurrency, Chia. Chia is an energy-efficient “green” cryptocurrency that utilizes additional hard drive space on inexpensive computers. Chia is launching in just a few days. Kevin has already begun mining (“farming”) on their testnet.
Bram Cohen
(@bramcohen) is the inventor of the P2P BitTorrent protocol, co-founder of CodeCon, co-author of Codeville, and Big Kahuna of green cryptocurrency platform Chia.net.
Topics covered
Links from the episode
Show notes
Want to help review this show? Here’s how.[01:08]
Bram’s original concept for Chia.[02:56]
Understanding the mechanics of how this works in layman’s terms.[06:10]
Bitcoin mining, ASIC chips, and the cost of electricity.[07:25]
What is the plot file, and what’s in it?[09:57]
Bram explains how “Timelords” operate in Chia farming.[10:30]
Where do the winning “bingo” numbers come from?[12:45]
What’s the smallest amount of hard drive space someone needs to start farming Chia?[13:19]
What is the mechanism behind Chia farming? What happens to the data?[14:21]
How is a farmer rewarded for their contribution?[15:52]
How does the network process and handle transactions?[16:39]
How should people think of this coin? What is it used for?[17:59]
There won’t be any transactions at mainnet launch. Here’s why.[19:22]
How many transactions per second will the Chia network eventually be able to support?[20:48]
What is a colored coin?[23:55]
Using Chia for DeFi, here’s how Uniswap on Chia could be done.[24:55]
How does a rate-limited wallet enhance security?[26:34]
Will there be support for pools in Chia?[28:35]
On supply of coin, halvings to fixed rewards, and inflation.[30:26]
Is there any advantage to farming on SSD vs. standard hard drives?[31:09]
Efforts Bram and the Chia team have made in improving plot speeds.[32:06]
The rude awakening that prompted me to fix my hard drive plotting.[33:25]
What does Bram see Chia looking like three to five years from now?[33:53]
Bram’s thoughts on NFTs, and if Chia will support them.[35:01]
Bram’s thoughts on Filecoin.[39:15]
Does Bram know Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto? Is Bram Satoshi Nakamoto?[40:20]
Is Bram bullish on Bitcoin?[41:53]
Does being green mean a lot to Bram?[42:28]
Why farming Chia makes me feel nostalgic.[42:48]
Parting thoughts about the perils of celebrating on launch day.[46:42]
