Rare pepes rejoice, deep dive with Adam Krellenstein on Counterparty lore!
Adam Krellenstein Returns: Counterparty’s Comeback & Bitcoin’s Soul Search [FULL EPISODE]
In this episode of the Hell Money Podcast, we sit down with @agkrellenstein — Counterparty’s co‑founder and longtime lead maintainer — for a tour of Bitcoin’s formative years and the ideas shaping its future. Adam revisits the birth of XCP, explains why he walked away a decade ago, and describes what dragged him back into the codebase. Along the way we tackle the perennial question: What is Bitcoin for? Is embedding data on‑chain an evolutionary feature or a contagion best off‑loaded to sidechains? And if you aren't buying your daily coffee with BTC, has Satoshi’s dream failed, or merely evolved?
We explore:
- Counterparty’s origin story
- Early Bitcoin dev culture
- OP_RETURN drama, Blockstream’s sidechain vision & the data‑bloat dilemma
- Whether Bitcoin is prepared for sophisticated political actors
- Counterparty culture & NFTs
- Adam’s decade‑long hiatus: burnout, philosophy of nature & why he’s back
- What's next for Bitcoin
TIMESTAMPS
0:00 The beginning of @CounterpartyXCP
17:30 Worse is better development
24:15 Early Bitcoin dev culture
32:05 OP_RETURN & Bitcoin core devs
38:05 Blockstream & sidechains, storing data on Bitcoin
45:15 Bitcoin is unprepared for sophisticated political actors
54:55 Counterparty culture & NFTs
1:00:30 Adam's departure from Counterparty
1:08:00 Philosophy of Nature
1:19:00 Returning to open source development
1:36:00 What's next for Bitcoin?
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