Bitcoin.com Podcast: New Host, New Episodes

In the latest Bitcoin.com Podcast, new hosts Gavin Knight and Stephen Polsky chat with Monero project leader Riccardo Spagni (a.k.a. “Fluffypony”) about block sizes, the future of cryptocurrency privacy and why he doesn’t care about markets.

Also read: Purse and Unocoin Partner to ‘Drive Indian Bitcoin Adoption’

Gavin and Fluffypony talk Monero

Spagni said he became interested in Monero a few days after it launched, eventually forking the project away from its original founder who seemed “not able to play well with others.”

He and his co-workers previously held a dim view of altcoins, but changed their minds with Monero, after becoming interested in Monero’s purpose and basis in Cryptonote technology.

Coins based on Cryptonote close the performance gaps between different kinds of mining — CPU, GPU and ASIC. Also, the algorithm allows miners to alter block sizes to suit demand while reducing their block reward if they increase it too much.

Differences over how to best implement dynamic block sizes were one of the main reasons he forked the project in the first place, Spagni said.

Internet speeds and latency would put more limits on block sizes for Monero as well as Bitcoin, he added. This is more important than issues like storage space. Monero may one day be as popular as Bitcoin, he said, but hopefully internet technology will improve before that happens.

Security, Technology More Important Than Markets

Spagni educated listeners on how Monero’s “stealth addresses” work, adding that Monero’s compulsory hard forks every six months (soon to be 1-2 years) added security by forcing everyone to upgrade the software regularly.

He also addressed comparisons between Monero and Zcash, since both offer a higher degree of anonymity and privacy as their main selling points.

“I’m purely a software creator,” he said, adding that markets and user numbers have less importance to him than the technology itself.

And the name Fluffypony? “That came out of a team-building exercise,” Spagni laughed.

You can check out the full episode here.

Images via Shutterstock,