
S16E64 - S16 E64: Alex Chepurnoy on Ergo & Bitcoin Smart Contracts
Published: December 23, 2025
Duration: 3:21:19
Alex Chepurnoy is a cryptographer & researcher who famously wrote a Bitcoin client in Haskell in only 3600 lines of code. He is currently working on Ergo, a proof of work blockchain which improves upon Bitcoin's design in order to achieve smart contracts and DeFi. How does it work? Let's find out!
Time stamps:
00:01:11 Introducing Alex Chepurnoy
00:01:51 Alex’s Bitcoin Discovery & Early Development
00:02:37 Namecoin, SmartContract.com, and Cardano Involvement
00:05:15 Satoshi Theories & Code Analysis
00:07:00 Rewriting Bitcoin & Distributed Systems Perspective
00:08:39 Consensus Protocols & Altcoin Proliferation
00:10:20 Bitcoin’s Early Appeal & Peer-to-Peer Motivation
00:14:08 Bitcoin’s Revolutionary Monetary Model
00:15:45 Staying in Crypto: Problems to Solve
00:17:19 Bitcoin as Digital Gold...