In the latest episode of Magical Crypto Friends, Monero’s Riccardo Spagni, Litecoin’s Charlie Lee and Blockstream’s Samson Mow sat down together with Whale Panda to discuss recent developments in the crypto-ecosystem.

The episode started with the guests talking about altcoins using the satellite service for “shit posts” against Bitcoin. Blockstream’s Samson Mow went on to say that that Blockstream is currently operating on satellite kits and expanding the coverage of the satellite.

0x, a decentralized exchange on the Ethereum blockchain, shut down its trading services to upgrade the system. This raised a lot of questions about DEX, as instances like this remind people in the cryptoverse that there are not a lot of decentralized apps. Someone will always have access, Whale Panda added.

Samson Mow also spoke about Ethereum’s smart contracts having a “backdoor,” just in case of difficulties. He said,

“I think the more something tries to market itself as decentralized, either DEX or DeFI. The probably more centralized it actually is in reality.”

Riccardo Spagni expressed his concerns over why these exchanges do not accept the fact that they are centralized and are aspiring to become decentralized. Mow seconded that and went on to say that he takes Facebook’s controversial coin, Libra, more seriously than “DEXs pretending to be decent.”

The focus then shifted to the Litecoin halving that took place on August 5. Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin, suggested that it was no big deal and that there was no reason to make it an “event”. He added that halving is not a newly introduced phenomenon and that there is no reason for people to think that it might affect the price of a coin. It must be noted however, that the episode was shot a few days before the halving in question.

Additionally, Lee expanded upon the real reason behind the surge in the coin’s price, before the halving. He said,

“People will think that having is going to cause the price to go up. So they buy, which actually does cause the price to go up. And then they also follow like four years ago the price went down before halving, so people think the price might go down so they might sell before the halving and the price really will go down. So it’s kind of silly.”



