cryptography

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas spends months in the virtual world Decentraland and delivers a long critique of the metaverse, NFTs and DAOs, and why virtual worlds fail as places.

Coffeezilla gives a comprehensive history of Tether, the stablecoin issued by a company controlled by the owners of Bitfinex. He lays out accusations that it is not fully backed.

A Reason TV segment, drawing on Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation, argues that Bitcoin works as an escape hatch for people living under authoritarian governments and inflating currencies.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on encryption and the Apple versus FBI dispute after San Bernardino. It explains the stakes of weakening encryption and ends with a fake Apple ad about iPhone vulnerabilities.

Coffeezilla reacts to Sam Bankman-Fried's explanation of yield farming on the Odd Lots podcast, arguing he effectively described a Ponzi scheme. The video was made well before FTX collapsed.

Rick Falkvinge responds to viewer feedback on his earlier Lightning Network video and raises a flaw he says was not previously discussed. The main thread is the network's unsolved routing problem.

A short 2013 video in which Roger Ver says Mt. Gox's withdrawal delays are not caused by a lack of liquidity. Mt. Gox collapsed months later, and the description carries a later update and apology.

A 2017 video arguing that banks and Blockstream steered Bitcoin toward the Lightning Network. It is partisan commentary from the Bitcoin Cash side of the scaling dispute.

A 13-minute video in which Ted Nelson lays out his theory about who created Bitcoin, proposing that Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym for mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki.