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Lightning Network Messaging, Political Expediency and What Crisis Has Revealed

In a time of increasing censorship aimed towards protecting us, is truly private messaging possible? Why are we using "data driven" approaches when we know the data is wrong? Juggernaut's John Cantrell and HRF's Alex Gladstein help us see what the crisis has revealed.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 8:33 a.m. Published Apr 26, 2020, 2:15 p.m.

In a time of increasing censorship aimed towards protecting us, is truly private messaging possible? Why are we using "data-driven" approaches when we know the data is wrong? Lightning Network messaging protocol Juggernaut's John Cantrell and HRF's Alex Gladstein help us see what the crisis has revealed.

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On today's show, we've got a pair of interviews for you. First, we speak with John Cantrell, the author of Juggernaut, a new Layer 3 messaging application being built on top of the Layer 2 Lightning Network, which is itself built on top of Layer 1 Bitcoin. It's a lot of layers, but as a technological concept currently in beta Juggernaut could be a fascinating project, and we talk about it. (Juggernaut on GitHub.)

After the break, we're joined again by Alex Gladstein of HRF.org for a discussion on political expediency in the age of pandemic and what crisis has revealed about various governments, and different types of governments around the world. Alex is one of my favorite returning guests, with his global human rights-focused work taking him to some of the most interesting and most oppressed places around the world.

"What's interesting is that citizen journalists I know in Taiwan have pressed the government on this and they've gone to parliament and it's all on record, and they've said, 'Have these ... digital contact tracing or cell phone surveillance things been useful?' And the governments said, 'Only in one case. ... Only in one case was this sort of mass surveillance approach been useful.' So they've actually been honest with the people. ... But at the end of the day, it does teach us that even the most progressive governments are going to be lured by the sirens' call of using surveillance to tackle problems." – Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer, HRF.org

This episode of Let's Talk Bitcoin is sponsored by eToro.com and features content from John Cantrell, Alex Gladstein and Adam B. Levine. Today's show features music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats with editing by Jonas. Album Art original photo by Goh Rhy Yan on Unsplash.

Lightning Network Podcasts Let’s Talk Bitcoin!COVID-19 John Cantrell Alex Gladstein

Adam B. Levine

Adam B. Levine joined CoinDesk in 2019 as the editor of its new audio and podcasts division. Previously, Adam founded the long-running Let's Talk Bitcoin! talk show with co-hosts Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos.

Finding early success with the show, Adam transformed the podcast's homepage into a full newsdesk and publishing platform, founding the LTB Network in January of 2014 to help broaden the conversation with new and different perspectives. In the Spring of that year, he would go on to launch the first and largest tokenized rewards program for creators and their audience. In what many have called an early influential version of "Steemit"; LTBCOIN, which was awarded to both content creators and members of the audience for participation was distributed until the LTBN was acquired by BTC, Inc. in January of 2017.

With the network launched and growing, in late 2014 Adam turned his attention to the practical challenges of administering the tokenized program and founded Tokenly, Inc. There, he led the development of early tokenized vending machines with Swapbot, tokenized identity solution Tokenpass, e-commerce with TokenMarkets.com and media with Token.fm. Adam owns some BTC, ETH and small positions in a number of other tokens.