S5 E9: Matthew Haywood on the Liquid Sidechain & His Work at Blockstream

As the product manager of Liquid securities, Matthew Haywood is one of the people who possess the best understanding of Blockstream’s sidechain. And as one of the nicest people you’ll ever find in the Bitcoin space and the the first developer Nopara73 has hired to work on Wasabi Wallet, Haywood is a really interesting guy who has a lot of fun and insightful stories to tell.

Throughout 94 minutes of discussion, which mark Matthew’s first podcast appearance since his 2015 involvement in Bitcoin, the Welsh sound money enthusiast candidly talks about the various projects on which he has worked in the space and goes on to explain how Liquid functions and why it’s different from the Lightning Network.

In between Bitcoin conversations, Haywood also expresses his concerns for the fiat economic system, the nature of politics, and the custodian onboarding of BTC newbies.

By the end of the conversation, he answers the inevitable question: is Blockstream evil and ruled by reptilian shapeshifters?

Listen to the episode on iTunes and Spotify!

1:00 – Introduction

2:20 – How we met in person for the first time

3:10 – Product manager of securities on Liquid?

5:00 – Working with Nopara73 on an early version of Wasabi Wallet

6:30 – Matthew Haywood’s experience as a software developer and involvement in Bitcoin as a writer for Brave New Coin

12:05 – What is the Liquid Network and what does it do?

16:30 – The use cases of Liquid and Lightning

18:30 – What should get stored on the blockchain and what should be moved to a second layer or sidechain?

28:50 – Bitcoin as free speech money with privacy features 

33:20 – Is there a scaling war going on?

37:55 – Liquid on the Lightning Network

47:40 – Atomic swaps between BTC and L-BTC

50:30 – Welsh people are nice

51:30 – Everyone is mean on Twitter, but nicer in person

56:20 – Automagically as a word

58:20 – Bitcoin Takeover was initially meant to be called Bitcoin in Politics (BIP)

59:00 – Zack Voell and Francis Pouliot have also graduated in political science

1:00:00 – Bitcoin and politics

1:06:00 – The fact that we’re divided perpetuates the fiat system

1:10:00 – Career politicians wouldn’t survive in the private sector

1:15:10 – Hyperbitcoinization and the importance on sovereignty 

1:18:40 – Why bother with sovereignty when you can use Coinbase?

1:25:00 – The security of early Bitcoin adopters

1:27:30 – Is Blockstream evil?

1:33:00 – How to follow Matthew Haywood on Twitter

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