Welcome to Blockstream Talk Number Eight. Our conversation today is with Jonas Nick, a core tech engineer on Blockstream's research team. Jonas is one of the authors of the recent Taproot protocol upgrade, so there's really nobody better to talk to about the benefits of Taproot and other innovations coming to Bitcoin in the future. Jonas is also very recently in El Salvador and has some interesting boots on the ground observations on how El Salvador's Lightning Network rollout is going and what some challenges are that average users are bumping into. If you find this episode useful don't forget to like and subscribe. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Follow Blockstream on Nostr:
npub1jg552aulj07skd6e7y2hu0vl5g8nl5jvfw8jhn6jpjk0vjd0waksvl6n8n
1:35 - Biggest innovations happening in Bitcoin right now
4:11 - How long does a BIP take to get implemented into the Bitcoin protocol?
5:54 - What are Bitcoin's core principles?
8:32 - What off chain capabilities need to be deployed for Taproot to be considered successful?
13:43 - Thoughts on the 2017 fork wars and why small blocks won out
17:37 - Threats to Bitcoin that were bigger than the fork wars
19:09 - Impressions of El Salvador after visiting
21:49 - Do El Salvador citizens use Bitcoin for savings or for payment processing?
22:22 - Sentiment of Bitcoin amongst El Salvador citizens
24:20 - Surprising learnings after visiting El Salvador
26:19 - PTLC's in Lightning and the significance of having it on a day to day basis
29:54 - MuSig
31:45 - Predictions for Bitcoin in 2022