In a beat-up Silverado, through southern Colorado
She'll be on the interstate, till sometime late tomorrow
And all she's left behind
Is their life there in the pines
And took the pieces of a broken heart
To try and build a better life
And all the words are left unsaved
And all the many miles ahead
On to my way far away
She'll find a place to pray
And ask the Lord for strength from up on high
He's headed for tomorrow
In that beat up Colorado
She'll find her way to finally say goodbye
Standing there at night
Lost in the marfa lights
Tequila in the evening
Alone in Valentine
A movie at the starlight
A drive down River Road
The Eagle's Desperado
Is playing on the radio
And all the words left unsaid
And all the many miles ahead
While on some highway far away
She'll find a place to pray
And ask the Lord for strength from up on high
He's heading for tomorrow
In that beat-up Silverado
She'll find her way
To finally say goodbye
Those ashes in her hand
On the banks of the Rio Grande
A warm Texas wind
To take him home again
Across that great divide
She says her last goodbyes
Her hands on the wheel
With tears in her eyes
In his beat-up Silverado
Through Southern Colorado
I got a scoop now baby, I'm down honey
I thought we agreed to just be friends
Your eyes tell me to undress
I got a scoop now, baby, a hoot now, honey
I thought we needed to tie loose ends
But for the right time rest
Let me get this right
You're on to me
You've made up a page
So casually
If we wanted this
To be a scene
Baby, you would like me
I got a school now, baby
I'm home now, honey
I thought we agreed to
Just be friends, yeah
I sell me two undress
I gotta scoot now, baby, out now, honey
I thought we needed two tall loose ends
But further I'll tell our grand
If we've watched the fire so casually
Will the flames be less damaging?
Logic seems to be a remedy
It's good crafting, so
I got a school now, baby
I'm home now, honey
I thought we agreed to just be friends.
Yeah, I sell me two undress.
I got a school now, baby.
I thought we needed to tie loose ends.
But for the right diagram.
Radio Detox back with another amazing guest.
This guy, you probably know him and we all love him.
It's Trey Musgrave, president of the Bitcoin District Initiative.
Welcome to Radio Detox.
Thank you, Heather, for having me.
We have a lot to talk about today, but I want to start with kind of who you are
and what's your Bitcoin story and your detox off of fiat story.
Uh, so, well, my name is Trey. I live here in DC. Um, I grew up in Alabama, uh, went to the
University of Alabama and then, um, uh, you know, I got a job, um, got a job with the federal
government. Um, and that took me, you know, to a lot of, a lot of cool places. I, I spent some,
uh, spent some time, spent some time overseas, uh, lived in Germany for a few years. And, uh,
That's where my sort of Bitcoin journey started.
I had a friend out there who was like more on the like day trader, like a day trader type.
And he's a good friend of mine.
And he really wanted me to buy some, I think it was Ripple or XRP or something at the time.
Like he was badgering me about it.
So I said, fine, how do I do it?
And then he sent me this long list of instructions on how to buy it.
But it wasn't, you know, super easy.
And this was 2018.
It wasn't super easy.
So I had to like sign up for Coinbase.
He wanted me to buy Ethereum and then I had to withdraw it and then swap it for something.
And it was just, it was just a lot.
Super complicated.
It was super complicated.
So, but I started, I signed up for Coinbase and bought Ethereum.
Just a couple hundred bucks.
It wasn't much.
And then I just forgot about it, right?
I'm living in Germany.
I'm traveling all over the place, having a good time.
And then, yeah, and then just forgot about it.
And then 2020 came around and moved back to the States.
Moving to a new apartment here near DC.
And then I hear something on the news.
There was a big run up in 2020, 2021.
And then I started, I remembered I had bought some Ethereum.
I logged back to my Coinbase and saw that like two or $300 turn into three grand.
So that kind of got me thinking about, you know, what is this thing?
And then, of course, lockdown during COVID.
I eventually, after a lot of shit-coining later, I ended up on the What Is Money podcast by Breedlove.
And that just kind of changed the game.
And then it just clarified everything for me.
I had started to get super exhausted at that point.
Yeah, it was great.
It just, things started to click then.
And ever since then, I've been kind of Bitcoin only.
I think the pandemic got a lot of us into Bitcoin.
Like for me, it was looking for the escape hatch.
And I think the lockdown of being stuck at home, whether you're, you know, you're just
in your house and maybe you're alone or maybe you're not, you're just looking for ways to
time, a lot of us went, I can look deeper into this Bitcoin thing. So you and you like so bravely
admit to the shit coining past, which is, I think, very good, because I think there are a lot of
people in this space that don't want to admit to that. And I think that I personally think we're at
a point in time where it's, it's, it's okay to admit it. And probably a lot of people are out
there looking for that information and wondering, you know, do I get into XRP or, you know, whatever
the hell else is out there right now. I have a friend just told me, she goes, I just, I'm all in
on XRP. And I'm like, hey, this isn't financial advice, but you gotta, you gotta look into Bitcoin,
you know, especially, you know, woman to woman. I'm just like, hey, you know, I don't, I don't
want to like, I don't want to scare people off. Right. I don't want to come on too strong and be
too hard of a Bitcoin maxi and turn her off. And, but, but I wanted to open the door because, you
know, if the XRP thing goes south for her and she at least knows that like, oh, Heather's a nice
Bitcoiner I can talk to her and ask her questions yeah I think it's important for more Bitcoiners
to share their like shitcoining stories because you know what when we put out there that like hey
we went through the same narratives and the same things that like that like we listen to all the
the the influencers and we you know a lot of us watch the same YouTube channels and stuff that
were like pumping this information out and then like I think I think putting that out there is
helpful because it's sort of like it solidifies that message that there's Bitcoin and there's
everything else. And if we know we've gone through everything else, we have that experience to say
like, hey, we were there. We know how you feel. Yeah, it was like I think I remember just wanting
to understand it. And I think I started with trading books. Like I think I bought a stack
of books that were like Rich Dad, Poor Dad, trading books and, you know, just different like finance
books. And I was like, well, do I look into, you know, crypto or Bitcoin? And what is money had
come out at some, I can't remember what year that was that 2021, maybe, or maybe it was before that.
And there was, I actually got into like Max and Stacey back when they were on RT. And so I would,
I would watch Max and Stacey in the morning. I would watch like the PBD podcast because I was,
I was doing TV news, right? So I didn't have to be at work until the afternoon. So I would get up
every morning and I would watch all these Bitcoin podcasts. I was starting, you know, found Robert
Breedlove, found all of these different, you know, podcasts and kind of found Bitcoin Twitter and
just started looking at places where people were talking about crypto and kind of the Bitcoin thing
resonated with me for whatever reason. And I just I wish I could go back and look at how my train of
thought worked. But I was following some crypto people who were talking about trading. And yeah,
It was stuff like Polkadot and Ripple.
It sounded kind of weird to me.
But then when I started listening to the Bitcoiners, I was like, I think these are my people and not these other Polkadot people.
To me, I never really got into the crypto stuff to make a quick buck.
Yeah, sure.
I got excited about price run ups of some of these tokens.
But the thing that really appealed to me was all these different use cases that they were trying to solve.
The idea that you could like decentralize music and decentralize this and that.
And like, I don't know, like that all kind of sounded cool.
And if that could catch on, it was like a like that was the thing that drew me to these tokens.
So like I would I would just study the tokenomics and what developers are involved in this thing.
And, you know, it's it just it just got so exhausting after a while.
And then once I don't know.
And then once I once I land on all like what is money, it just it just brought so much peace.
That was it. You bring up a good point. And that I think you're unique here because I think most people kind of find what we're doing with music by accident. You know, they maybe find Fountain because, you know, Fountain's a great platform. I'm on Fountain. They're my host.
you know if you're into bitcoin you know you're probably going to be drawn to fountain you're
probably in a space that's going to lead you to fountain whether it's nostre bitcoin twitter
your social network your local bitcoin meetup you're probably going to get to fountain and
you're going to find some good bitcoin obviously content on fountain and then maybe you discover
the music too and that you can send a boost or zap in the value verse to music that's you know
kind of, I don't know if open music is the right way to say it, but, you know, we've been calling
it everything from V4V to value-verse music, you know, the point being that this is the alternative
to the Spotify, to the Apple Music, to radio and record labels. You can get completely out of that
system and get into a place where you're getting peer-to-peer payments in Bitcoin, right? And so,
like, what I just said, that was a lot, right? That's a lot to explain to, you know, somebody
happens upon Radio Detox and is like, what is this about?
She plays music.
She talks about Bitcoin.
She talks with Bitcoiners.
You know, we're highlighting community and culture here.
And you actually went from decentralization to looking at what it could do for music because there are alternatives out there I mean over the years we seen things come and go and there different apps
or there's NFTs, or there's Web3, or there's tokens, and there's all these things that,
you know, that's not what we're doing here with Radio Detox or Fountain or Nostra. We're kind of
the antithesis of that. But I've never heard somebody say before that they were specifically
looking for decentralization and kind of found that and went to look for it in music. So I think
you're kind of like the flip side of what most people do where they just kind of happen upon us
and they go, oh, that's cool. And then they go, well, how can I get involved? And it's either a
musician going, hey, I can get on the Fountain app. I can put my music out on RSS or I can put it out
on Wave Lake and Noster and I can join Noster and I can post my videos. And then they start to go down
the rabbit hole, but you didn't find this rabbit hole first. You were looking for the solution
first because you understood the problem first. Right. Yeah, exactly. The altcoin run-up summer
at the time, it led me to the idea that we could decentralize things. But then I think instead of
decentralize things, not all the things need their own token because the token is the thing that
matters, right? How you exchange value is the thing that matters. But ultimately, these tokens
are highly centralized.
They're pre, you know, they had the pre-ICO.
It's just, it just didn't really,
like the idea was cool,
but the implementation wasn't great.
And then, and then you come up with on Bitcoin
and then it's like, wow, like this is real value.
What if we just, like,
what if we just incorporated real value
that you can zap anyone anywhere in the world
in a split second into our music?
Yeah, that's ultimately what made the most sense.
What drew you in?
And so let's talk about Bitcoin.
District because, you know, you were the president of Bitcoin District. And did you Bitcoin District
Initiative? Yeah, I think it mentally is as a Bitcoin. So Bitcoin District Initiative is the
nonprofit, correct? Yeah, that's the formal nonprofit entity here. That's very new. Bitcoin
District is the community of Bitcoiners, the meetup here in D.C. So that's been around
way before I kind of jumped onto the scene here in D.C. So there's a lot of a lot of really good
Bitcoiners here sort of pioneered that the creation of that meetup. Shout out to shout out to all those folks that might be listening.
So very cool. So this is obviously later. Yeah, this is. Oh, we're going to talk to everybody on Radio Detox this year.
We're just getting started. It's only February. So, OK, so Bitcoin District is the meetup.
Bitcoin District Initiative is the nonprofit. I kind of want to talk about both.
You know, meetups being extremely vital. That's how I've met people here in Phoenix.
I really got into the Noster meetup, which was very small and doesn't even happen anymore because everybody's lives kind of scattered.
But I came from I moved back here a couple of years ago from Wichita, Kansas, and there was no meetup in Wichita at the time.
And I thought, I know I'm going to leave Wichita, so I don't want to be the one to start one and then bounce.
But we really needed one. And now I hear there is one there now, which is great, because I think we really need to meet other people in real life.
And it's so cool to finally meet other people in real life after you go down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.
And it's also to like to have a meetup and then to have people come into it who have not met other Bitcoiners before.
That's a cool feeling as well.
So how did you get from, I guess, two separate things here.
How did you get from doing Bitcoin meetups as an attendee to going, OK, we need this Bitcoin district initiative.
Like we need to do this nonprofit where we help on board people.
Yeah. Yeah. So the my first, I guess, entry point into the local meetup scene, I think it was I think I went to a pizza day party.
That was like my very first my very first event, I think.
So at that point, I had listened to so much of like the What Is Money podcast.
I started listening to things like TFTC.
And then, you know, eventually I just said, there's got to be more people here that I can go and hang out with.
and talked to.
So did a quick search and found a local event.
And I think my first Bitcoin meetup event
with the people that I consider some of my best friends
here in DC today,
had Tally Lindbergh had came to DC with her free market kids.
The game that her and her husband made
was called the Hoddle Up.
So they came and did a meetup here
where we all got together and played that game.
And that was cool.
So I got to meet people like Mauricio and Jesse
and others here.
And then, you know,
and then from then on,
I just kept showing up.
And then, you know,
a couple of years later,
you know, I'm wanting to do more,
wanting to do more stuff.
I want to see more people
come into the fold.
I think Bitcoin meetups are amazing
because you get to build
those relationships
with other people that,
you know, like,
we're also very different thinkers.
And I think to be able
to show up to a meetup
and just connect with people
on like,
on some level that you can't really,
it's really hard to explain when you come to a meetup and,
and you know that like,
you know that,
you know that this group of people is like,
there's,
there's some like baseline sort of,
I don't know how you would explain it,
but there's some sort of like baseline thing.
Like we get each other to some extent.
There's a mindset.
There's a value share.
Like we're kind of like,
we're going in the same direction.
We,
we have,
you know,
gone down the rabbit hole of study,
whether it's podcast books,
both,
whatever.
Or we want to find other people who think like us.
And maybe it's a confirmation bias, but I think it's also it's community building.
And we're going, OK, once you get the bigger picture of this and realize, OK, we're kind of building a new world.
We're kind of building an alternate lane to the world that we grew up in.
And how am I going to do that?
I'm not going to do that alone.
You know, I've got to find other people to do that with me.
And then you find people who aren't consumed by the current thing, as we say, or aren't consumed by reality TV and worried about Ks and all the trappings of normie life, like fiat life, where you work for this big corporation and you're going to work till you retire in your 60s.
It's a very conventional life.
And you start to meet, I guess we're kind of radical, right?
Everybody sold everything.
I did that once, right, and moved across the country with nine bags and my two cats and, you know, didn't I still don't have that many chairs, Trey.
I still, you know, like, but we kind of think different where we go, OK, we're willing to kind of disentangle from systems that we're familiar with.
And it's a willing to like open your mind to a new way of thinking where, you know, we've might have been in like before Bitcoin, we might have, you know, had this very specific worldview or, you know, I know a lot of people who get into Bitcoin and they start to question, you know, the narratives that they sort of have been fed or, you know, whatever propaganda that, you know, was, you know, the algos are kind of thrown at you.
But then once you find Bitcoin and you question what money is, like the foundation of like the way that every human transacts with each other.
And that really starts like that's the thing that I needed to talk to other people about.
And the people who come to meetups aren't all they don't all think the same way.
I think they have this desire to learn more.
And that's the kind of commonality.
But but the people that that I meet often here, like we think very differently.
but we're also willing to challenge each other
and call each other out
when maybe we're leaning into a certain narrative
because I still feel like we're all very vulnerable
to all these narratives that get pushed.
Oh yeah, we're getting bombarded every day.
Yeah, we're being bombarded all the time.
So having a good solid group of people
that get each other on that sort of Bitcoin willingness
to learn more,
we can kind of sharpen each other too.
Yeah, we hold each other accountable.
You know, it's back to like what I said about the escape hatch is I was I was kind of I was at a point where I was questioning things because it was the pandemic for me.
Like I'd become interested in Bitcoin in about 2018.
Didn't understand it.
Found one coworker who was like, yeah, you know, I bought like a thousand or I made a thousand dollars or whatever.
And it was like and then I sold it.
And I was like, OK, so I bought some and I went down 40 percent.
And then I was bummed and I didn't get it.
And I didn't know where to turn for info.
So and then like a couple years later, fast forward to the pandemic, and I'm thinking there's got to be more to life than this.
I've said that so many times over the course of my life and then, you know, moved on to something better, whether it was leaving a corporate world and becoming an entrepreneur or, you know, in this case, Bitcoin.
And it was I think there's a fundamental undercurrent that even if we think differently, we all know something's wrong.
We all know something needs to change and something doesn't feel like it doesn't feel right.
And it's kind of insulting to our intellect to think, you know, in terms of, oh, the Federal Reserve is going to control everything and save everybody.
You know, and like that's a whole rabbit hole, right?
But it's just kind of I think we all kind of started questioning things.
And that was where 2020 took me.
It was like I'm going to I'm going to start questioning everything down to why do I live where I live?
Why do I live in this country?
You looked into my genealogy and went because I don't think I'm happy here.
And then like I went down the rabbit hole of like Nomad Capitalist videos.
Like I would watch that guy every day and go, OK, like where is the escape hatch?
And, you know, I don't watch Nomad Capitalist anymore, but he's great.
Don't get me wrong.
But the escape hatch became OK.
Bitcoin kind of solves everything no matter where I live, no matter what I do for a living,
no matter how old I get.
This this is a sound money.
And to explain to people that there is a sound money, they're like, what do you mean?
You know, like normie people.
So then we that's kind of why we naturally seek out the people who are like, OK, I get it.
Sound money. And then we have sound music.
And, you know, that's kind of what we do here at Radio Detox.
We put it all together where it's it's implementing it into your life.
And I think meetups are a way to implement Bitcoin into your life.
And this is also something that you do very well, Trey.
So we're going to get into this now, what Bitcoin District Initiative does.
I'm using the word implement.
You can use your own language, obviously.
I think that you're going to put this better than me anyway.
You're working on onboarding merchants.
Like you're just doing this like volunteer work.
Yeah, I mean, that's like one of our big objectives this year.
You know, sort of the timing of launching the initiative, it lined up really well with the Square rollout.
I think that energized a lot of Bitcoiners to get out and, you know, hit the streets, find their favorite coffee shop.
And that did the same thing for me, for sure.
But the initiative isn't just about onboarding merchants.
It's about creating a circular economy here in D.C.
I think that's very important.
But it's, you know, it's one thing to onboard a bunch of merchants.
But, you know, that doesn't really matter a whole lot if there's not a lot of people willing to pay with Bitcoin.
So I think building community is extremely important because that creates like the other half of that circular economy.
And, you know, and it's, you know, it's not just convincing people to pay with Bitcoin. It's about teaching people why it matters and why they should value transacting peer to peer with a business that also values Bitcoin for the reasons that we all know where you could save in fees, instant, instant settlement, no chargebacks, like all those things matter to a business.
And, you know, ultimately, like people who people who start meetups, start community Bitcoin communities in their areas, like I think they ultimately care.
Like they want to they want that value to stay local because it just it provides it makes your community better and make sure your business is better.
Your people are happier. So it creates this like it's like this prosperity engine.
So that's where the initiative is. But I guess I'll back up, you know, prior to the merchant onboarding.
Like, I absolutely love Bitcoin meetups.
I think they're great.
But I also think that a lot of times Bitcoiners meet up with other Bitcoiners and there's not a whole lot of outreach in the community to bring in like normie people to like.
Yeah, I think you're right.
Yeah.
Like, how do we that's what we start to question is like, how do we get out into our community?
What what what's our message?
How do we represent ourselves?
Do I show up to, you know, a small business administration meeting or a local small business meetup and say, hey, I'm a random dude who loves Bitcoin.
You guys should come to a meetup or, you know, or does having some sort of entity and more of a public presence have a more official capacity?
I think it I think it just opens up a lot more doors.
So that's so there's the two pronged approach for the initiative.
It's educating merchants. Accepting Bitcoin is great. Ultimately, we want to bring them into the fold and continue that, continue their Bitcoin journey, help them on their Bitcoin journey.
But it's also building the community and getting out in, out hitting the streets and finding new people to bring into our bubble.
Bring them into the cause.
Yeah, that's the goal.
Yeah, I mean, we're really just like kind of low key activists in a way that, you know, we are working on just kind of creating this better world in this circular economy.
I like your approach of like, you're not just walking into a business and saying, hey, adopt Square, you know, become a Square merchant, accept Bitcoin.
You're actually you're providing more of a holistic approach.
Is that correct?
Yeah well the thing that I say when I when I talk to a merchant that says hey I you know my name is Trey and I am part of the Bitcoin community here in D You know it a growing meetup There are people here who are willing to pay with Bitcoin and who will go out of their way to find your business and support you
I don't oversell it either.
I don't say, hey, you should turn on Bitcoin payments and save all this money and fees because that's just not reality.
That only works if people are willing to transact in Bitcoin.
Right. You need Bitcoin payments.
You need people spending their Bitcoin, I think, is the hardest part.
There's such a HODL culture. Like, how do we get more people to kind of adopt this and spend their Bitcoin and seek out these merchants, too?
Yeah, it's tough. And like right now, there's there's such a small group of people like, you know, Bitcoiners are already a small group of people.
But the ones who are willing to spend their Bitcoin is even smaller.
Yeah.
So that's why I'm like really, really excited about, you know, things like like Cash App and Square, because, you know, they they they understood that.
And with Cash App, you can go to a merchant and spend Bitcoin without even having Bitcoin in your Cash App.
So that's so that's great.
So we need more tools like that.
That's been an interesting thing.
Like because I've been I've been spending my Bitcoin.
Right.
I I spend fiat.
Obviously, I try to live on a Bitcoin standard as much as possible, as much as serves me.
Right.
because, you know, we know that the price goes up and down.
So sometimes if you're converting to fiat, you're losing a little bit.
So you kind of, when Bitcoin goes down, it's kind of like,
well, I'm not going to spend money until we go back up.
You know, I kind of look at it like that.
And so today, as we're recording this, it's Thursday, February 12th.
So I work for Wrigley and we're bringing back the block party tonight.
And so usually I just, I'll use Cash App or whatever wallet tops my mind
and I'll open it up and I'll buy Hashrate real quick.
And this was the first time I opened up Cash App today to buy some hash rate, just like I normally would.
I'm like, OK, I'm going to make a lightning payment and just get some hash rate, you know, like four bucks.
Right. Seven thousand sats worth of hash rate.
You know, and if we hit a block, it's a good return. Right.
I might make hundreds or a couple thousand dollars. Right.
So I'm in. It's like it's like I'm getting my lottery ticket and I go to pay like I've always have for more than a year.
And then Cash App was like, hey, do you want to do you want to really pay in your Bitcoin or do you want to pay in your dollars?
And I was like, OK, Bitcoin's up today.
Like, like the numbers are looking.
I'm like, you know what?
And I've never actually bought Hashrate with dollars before.
I was like, what the hell?
We'll use some cash today instead of the Bitcoin.
You're still using Bitcoin, which is the cool part.
Even though you're not spending your Bitcoin, you're using Bitcoin.
So then I'm like, OK, this is a different, refreshing use case for me today that I'm buying into a Bitcoin mining party.
I'm buying into our block party, making a Bitcoin lightning payment, but I'm technically using my shitty fiat to do it.
So if we hit a block today and I get, you know, my share of the block rewarded, I did it with like $4.87 of shitty fiat.
You know, I'm going to talk about that forever.
So thank you, Cash App.
that's the beautiful part about like bitcoin like bitcoin is the asset and the asset bitcoin is the
asset and the asset is the network so like like you can you can use and spend it in ways that
you know it's it's not it's not so black and white all the time so that's what yeah it's amazing about
building tools on top of bitcoin is you give people that option and like to me that option
is really just like a tax accounting yes you're still paying with bitcoin yeah you're you're
Paying with Bitcoin, you know, because we obviously regularly don't accept fiat.
We do everything in Bitcoin.
There's no reason.
We're selling hash rate.
Why are we going to sell, you know, that we're not going to take your dollars.
You know, that's a Bitcoin thing.
People who understand Bitcoin are going to pay in Bitcoin.
And if you don't understand this, you're not going to be interested in Bitcoin mining anyway.
So it's good to have the choice.
It's, you know, I've paid bills with Bitcoin.
You know, there was a time when I used to say, we'll have made it when I can pay for my auto insurance with Bitcoin.
OK, well, I don't know that we've made it yet, but I did pay for auto insurance with Bitcoin.
Right. So there are different ways to, I guess, use your Bitcoin, spend your Bitcoin, save your Bitcoin.
We have plenty of tools now, plenty of different wallets and different financial products.
But what kind of, I guess, would entice normal people to say, let me, you know, transact, I guess is the right word.
Why should I transact?
That is very challenging.
That's a great question.
Very challenging thing.
I think there's a couple of very real things that a business can do.
So once a business sort of understands the value of accepting Bitcoin, no or low fees, instant settlement, no chargebacks.
Once they get that and they sort of we start them on that journey, they're willing to put up a Bitcoin accepted here sign, which is which is more normies see it.
And then it kind of makes them think, oh, this this business likes Bitcoin.
Maybe maybe the next time I hear about it on the news, I'll take it a little more seriously.
Yeah. So outside of that part, I think if once a once a business gets so far in their journey that they're willing to create an incentive for the customer to pay with Bitcoin, that is a that will be a big step.
That doesn't happen on day one, but that'll be a big step.
I'm sure you've heard of PubKey.
You'll be here soon, I think, in March, right?
We love PubKey.
Yes.
We love PubKey.
Yeah, still looking forward to PubKey.
March 15th, a little after party after the Runster District K.
We're going to head on over to PubKey and have some live music with Ainsley Costello, have some smash burgers, some drink specials.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
And this is actually what PubKey, since you bring them up, this is what they're famous for in New York and now D.C. as PubKey is expanding, which we love to see, actually, because, you know, it's not just a New York Bitcoin bar anymore.
Now it's like a chain.
It's no, it's it's amazing.
And they they're accepting Bitcoin, but they offer a 21 percent discount on there on everything, food, drinks, like everything, 21 percent off if you pay with Bitcoin.
That's a huge incentive.
That is a huge.
It's not 10 percent.
It's not five.
It's 21 percent.
You know, when I go and I order a smash burger and I want extra fries and, you know, I have two or three beers and then I get my check and I'm like, wait, that that should be a lot more.
It's like that discount matters.
So I never pay with a credit card at PubKey nowadays.
You know, they value Bitcoin.
They want to stack Bitcoin.
Obviously, it's PubKey.
They're well along their journey, you know, with Bitcoin.
They started out as like, you know, Bitcoin and sort of in their DNA for a normie sort of business to get to that point, you know, it'll take some time.
Yeah.
The more that we support the business, I think that's a really good thing about having a local community and network of Bitcoiners is that when you find like that really good local business, you can you can tap into that community and say, hey, guys, I onboarded this honeybee stand at a farmer's market.
Would you all go out of your way maybe next time you're there and pay with Bitcoin, go say hi?
It's kind of built for that, that small business.
I've been a Square customer since we're going to say more than a decade.
I had my own business in Wichita, Kansas.
I was at a yoga studio providing Reiki sessions, coaching yoga, you name it.
And I have said for the entire time I've been a Bitcoiner, you can pay me in Bitcoin.
And this is well before I only had Square, right?
Yeah.
This is well before Square added the Bitcoin payments in November.
And so I've said that for years.
Not a single person has paid me for anything I've provided over the years, even when I had a brick and mortar space.
Nobody has yet paid me in Bitcoin.
I've always offered it.
Even here in Phoenix, I had a space downtown where I had a great healing center.
We did a kind of like a spring fling outdoor market event.
and I had like two signs with two QR codes.
Like I'm doing Reiki sessions today.
You can pay me in dollars or you can pay me in Bitcoin.
So there's like two different QR codes.
And so like the dollars one was green.
The Bitcoin one was orange.
And it was like your choice.
And, you know, no one really asked and nobody wanted to.
Everybody, you know, here it's Zelle, it's Venmo.
It's all of these different products that are very, you know, big company, big name.
Not that Square isn't a big company and a big name,
But it's these are the things that are popular. And so where I actually got the conversation going was I was playing music on a Bluetooth speaker through Wavelake.
And people, you know, we're hearing the music because, you know, I'm in a public space.
I've got, you know, we're outdoors. It's gorgeous here. It was like spring and and people just walking around.
And I ended up telling a guy about Wavelake. And it's like you got like seconds to tell people about this stuff before you lose them because there's there's jargon.
there's tech you know there's you know big words big ideas and so i'm just showing this guy i'm
like hey i'm playing this song off of wave lake and look i can zap the song i can zap the artist
and they're going to get some bitcoin from me and it doesn't go through a bank and it doesn't go
through an intermediary i'm just paying for this song right now because i like it like here's it's
like i'm giving this person a quarter right and this this guy was like that is really cool you
You know, and so I'm like, OK, at this whole event, I put out my Bitcoin sign and my dollar sign and you can pay me however you want.
And there's choices here. And I've got Wavelake music playing.
And like, I think I reached one person.
So it's just so one to one still right now.
Do you have this same kind of experience as you're talking to merchants and also people who are willing to pay in Bitcoin?
Yeah, definitely. I follow up with every merchant that I help onboard because I want to know.
I come back and ask him, I said, you know, hey, since since I was here last month, like how many people offered to pay with Bitcoin?
Many times it's none. Sometimes it was like sometimes I'll I'll I'll get someone to go and support.
That's kind of a known thing. But on occasion, they do say that, like, yeah, some random person showed up, saw the sign and like, I don't know,
looked out their Coinbase app or some other some other app and like pay with Bitcoin.
And they were like so stoked. That's the key, too.
is like when people see the sign
and they already kind of know about Bitcoin
and they don't really consider it.
And maybe they're not like hardcore Bitcoiners
or Bitcoin maxis,
but maybe they have Coinbase
and they have these other things.
And when they see that Bitcoin sign,
it's like an instant, like, oh crap,
like this is something that isn't just,
you know, sitting in my Coinbase
that I can trade or whatever.
Like it's something that this business,
like it's a real world interaction with Bitcoin.
Yeah, makes it come to life.
And that's really kind of the key with this merchant onboarding is if, even if the merchant doesn't really care about Bitcoin, but they, you know, they're okay to go out of their way and cater to these other customers.
Most businesses, you know, want more ways to pay.
If a customer wants to pay a certain way, you know, they'll add the payment method, especially if it's as easy as with Square.
So I think, you know, what's even more powerful in this moment, and this is a low time preference effort here, right?
We're not trying to create a circular economy overnight.
Like that is not how this works.
So very low time preference.
But if we can start getting Bitcoin to be seen in D.C., whether or not it's being used all the time, that is still progress.
If we can get those Bitcoin accepted here signs in more places, that makes it real.
Like Bitcoin is in the real world.
It's tangible.
So it has a use case.
Right now, I think it's just, you know, a lot of people, especially here in D.C., they think Bitcoin is just for rich people.
You know, they lump it in with crypto.
They think it's a scam.
But like, hey, this merchant, this local farmer's market that you go to every single week cares about Bitcoin.
You already want to support that farmer.
You want to you're bringing your physical cash to support that farmer because they prefer cash.
It is that local angle, kind of like small business, local business kind of gets us away from that big centralization.
And I've seen it in my own life where I become conscious of the centralization of how I spend my money more over time.
Like I've finally stopped going to gyms because it's almost impossible to find.
And I'm in Phoenix, Arizona.
OK, I'm in a city of five million people, you know, market number five.
Right. We're still growing.
because of TSMC and all of them, it's like a billion dollars that TSMC is bringing in over
time, right? So we're not going to stop at 5 million people, you know, projecting that we
reach up to 10 million people in this market over time, right? So this is not a small market by any
means. And so we have a lot of businesses around here, but it is a lot of the coffee shops like
Beale Beans, which actually started accepting Bitcoin at a farmer's market, right? So it is,
And, you know, when I did have a brick and mortar business, I was able to accept Bitcoin.
I think we are kind of the ground floor.
If you are selling honey at a farmer's market or you're selling coffee at a farmer's market or you're like me, provide a service where, you know, you're renting a space or whatever and you're able to interface directly with the public.
That brings it to life.
But it's also gets me out of always having to buy things at Target or Walmart or Aldi.
I could buy, you know, coffee from Bill Beans. I could buy coffee from another Bitcoin or I could buy honey from another Bitcoin or I could find a roadside stand.
I know where there is one around here where somebody sells honey or sells oranges or sell sunglasses.
And you see those guys on the corner with like the sunglasses and the blankets and the oranges or they're selling flowers for Valentine's Day.
Like you see those guys and you're like, they could accept Bitcoin.
And because you have a little more freedom as a small business, too.
And it's kind of just easier, I think, to adopt it as an idea because you're an entrepreneur already.
So you already doing things different And then you see the use case for it I think it just kind of clicks in that space a lot better Yeah no you absolutely right It does click And I think these are really small
small businesses, the owner-operated businesses, these hole-in-the-wall spots, you know,
there's so many of those here in D.C. And what's really sad is, like, I feel like for the past few
years, each year, it's projected that, like, 30-plus percent of small businesses here will
will close down because you know of a variety of variety of course things like government shutdowns
are like devastating for a business work from home stuff you know that that's not a dc specific thing
but that affects a lot of the you know sort of government workers here for sure and then uh
things like this snowstorm that came through like dc is still thawing so we're still frozen foot
traffic dropped drastically so like when their margins are already so so slim and then you throw
in these these these external sort of shocks that are very unpredictable yeah that that's that that
that that's uh that's very that's very hard for these businesses so if you know if we can sort of
help them understand bitcoin and and you know it could be an option to help them weather those
downturns in the future then uh then that's that's kind of the goal is that kind of what you do it's
it's kind of like not just accepting bitcoin payments like you're obviously like when you're
onboarding a merchant, that's kind of the key thing. But are you also encouraging them to
hold back their Bitcoin and make sort of a strategic Bitcoin reserve for their small business?
Yeah, I don't encourage them really one way or the other because I don't want them to,
I don't want to like oversell something because Bitcoin is very volatile, right? So,
but the one thing I do say is I say that, hey, look, you're not going to get a lot of
transactions in Bitcoin. If you get one or two a month, like you could just stack that Bitcoin
and keep it and not really have to worry about it.
Like, it's not going to, it's not going to be.
Yeah.
It's not going to hurt your business.
You know, if Bitcoin were to fall 50% tomorrow,
like, oh, okay, those two burgers that you sold,
you know, you're going to be fine.
Yeah, it's not going to break it.
Yeah.
And then I say, like, look, over time,
if more people are willing to transact
and you want to keep,
you want to keep less of it in Bitcoin
and convert some to dollars,
Like you have that flexibility, especially if they're a Square Merchant.
It made it so easy to just move that slider and you can do it that way.
But we do provide some language.
I've got some trifold pamphlets that do lay out the case for why a business would want to hold and store Bitcoin for the long term.
But each business is very unique, very different.
You know, I don't try to push them to stack all your sales in Bitcoin because I think that would be irresponsible.
So it's really being sort of real and upfront and say, hey, look, I think proving the use case that there are Bitcoiners here willing to transact with you in Bitcoin is like a good way to prove the use case of Bitcoin.
And then the more that they learn and go down the rabbit hole, maybe they see those few transactions in their Square wallet, you know, a year from now, maybe they'll see that there was a double, tripled in value.
That gets them to think more about Bitcoin.
More long term, for sure.
Like if I had converted 50 percent of my sales or 10 percent, 5 percent, whatever it is, if I converted a portion of my sales, when this guy came up to me and asked me to pay away with Bitcoin, like here's where I here's where I could be today.
We also make sure that they understand that Bitcoin is pristine collateral.
Like you could get a loan in 10 seconds.
Like with Strike, you can get a loan and you can invest that in your business, grow your business like you have options.
I think given that optionality message is very important.
Like, you know, I'll never give like advice on what they should do, but giving them the optionality and telling them that Bitcoin gives you optionality in the future is kind of the big message.
So Square began rolling out the Bitcoin payments on about November 10th of 2025.
So now as we sit here, it's been a few months, right?
It's Thursday, February 20th, Thursday, February 12th, 2026.
So we've had a couple months now to work on this.
Did you start right away with Bitcoin District Initiative?
Yeah, right away.
Right away.
Okay.
So you've been working at this this whole time.
I hear that you probably hit a few merchants a day.
Not a few a day.
That's a lot.
There were a few days where I hit a few merchants a day.
Okay.
So how many do you hit like a week?
Like what's your average?
Like how many are you hitting?
So it's very like bursty.
So sometimes I will hit a farmer's market and then, you know, it's almost rare that they'll turn it on on the spot.
yeah it's you know i i talk to a lot of people i show up consistently i try not to batter them too
much i don't want them to yeah to get annoyed with me sometimes i can kind of tell if i've
because you're kind of like a sales guy but you you're not really like making money from these
sales so you're kind of like i don't know mercenary i mean like i'm selling an idea but
like that's it i'm not trying to like if anything i'm trying to bring more business to you for like
nothing in return just like put up a bitcoin sign and that's kind of it doing the lord's
there's been weeks especially like before it started getting super cold there were weeks where
i would i would help on board like two or three merchants in a week so that would be like the max
that's pretty good though recently though uh there's a restaurant they started here as a
food truck back in like 2013, 2014, like a long time ago. They had tried Bitcoin payments in their
food truck back then. They're called the Peruvian Brothers. It's a really good restaurant. Since then,
they've opened up four or five different locations here in DC. We knew that they had sort of a
history with Bitcoin. So we ended up following up with them and made sure they knew about the
square rollout of Bitcoin payments. And that was great. So we emailed them and then they said,
yeah, we'll turn it on. And then we show up and we support and we give them all the signage and
everything. And then now they're accepting Bitcoin. So that one was a cool one because
they had five different locations. So now they're all showing up on the Cash App map.
Yeah, I would say like on a good week, like two or three.
Okay. So you hit two or three, but do you manage to onboard two or three?
on a good week i've onboarded like three different merchants okay so that's okay so
dozens yeah talk to anybody who's willing yeah i'll talk to anybody who's willing so
like i'll like two or three days a week i'll hit the ground in dc and i'll just
scour different parts of the city and find find merchants nowadays i like i try to target the
square merchants because the onboarding is just so easy i think if you if you can get more if you
can get like one or two merchants in a specific area to start accepting bitcoin then you can point
like if you can go to another business point to them and say like they're accepting bitcoin
then you become a bitcoin neighborhood where exactly yeah and the case with the peruvian
brothers it's in a like big food court called la cosecha and there's a lot of like latin latin
themed latin restaurants in there so like if i can get one to accept bitcoin put up the sign
And then you can just walk around and like point to them and say, hey, they're accepted Bitcoin.
And then they talk.
That's good.
So that's a good force amplifier.
And then, yeah, so that's kind of the goal.
Farmers markets is another easy way to do that because a lot of the farmers market vendors, they all talk to each other.
They're friends.
So if you can get a couple there to do it, that helps a lot.
So there's a lot of really good strategies for sure.
That is good.
Okay, so your goal, I think, was to onboard 100 merchants.
That's going to take a while.
By the end of the year, we've got about 22-ish, 22 separate businesses.
Almost a quarter of the way there.
Yeah.
You've got a soft approach.
We're well on the way.
Yeah.
Okay.
So like, are you hitting the same ones over and over again?
Like if you get a no, you go back?
Yeah, definitely.
And I won't go back right away.
Give them some time to think.
Because, you know, a lot of these businesses, they're in the customer service industry and they want to treat their customers with respect.
They want to be very pleasant and kind.
So like, even if they, sometimes you can tell,
like even if they really don't want anything to do with Bitcoin,
they'll kind of like, you know, they'll still be nice.
They'll still talk to you.
So I try to, you know, kind of take a hint when I know it's just not going to work.
But for the vast majority of the people I talk to, they're super receptive.
I did a survey, me and my colleagues with the initiative,
we did, we put together a very, very easy survey.
And the first couple of questions were,
what's the biggest challenges that you have running your business?
And of course, the top answer was high fees.
Yeah.
The second question was, are you able to save in your business?
Like, do you invest in any sort of assets that grow over time?
And all of them said no, or they just like reinvest back in their business.
And then the third question we say is, have you ever heard of, or have you ever considered
accepting Bitcoin in your business?
So that was a cool strategy because we asked those like questions that we knew they would
kind of latch on to and really like open up about because they all hate the high feet.
And then we bring in Bitcoin on the third and fourth questions.
And then that kind of that helps really start a good conversation.
So that was very helpful, too.
So I definitely circle back up with all those businesses.
But it's fun.
You get to meet a lot of cool people along the way.
And I very much enjoy it.
Very cool.
So now you're partnering, let's bring it back to PubKey in D.C. to build like a Bitcoin education hub.
So what does that kind of look like in practice?
Like what happens when somebody walks in?
Like walks into PubKey?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess it depends on the day.
Like if someone walks into PubKey just like on a random Tuesday, you know, and they ask the bartender or something about Bitcoin, you know, they'll say as much as they can.
You know, they'll say, hey, you can pay with Bitcoin.
You get 21% off.
You can just do it with Cash App.
Kind of depends on who's at the bar.
And I don't work for Pupke.
I'm just kind of telling you my experience there.
Just a fan.
Yeah, huge fan.
We are partnering with them to do some educational events on Wednesdays.
Not every Wednesdays, but like one or two Wednesdays out of the month.
They'll always have like Bitcoin free,
and open Bitcoin programming on Wednesdays here in D.C.
So that's just getting going.
And they've partnered with us to organize some of those educational events.
So we've done a few already.
We're having one next week.
It's called the Great Mid-Atlantic Bitcoin Meetup, which is a really fun idea one of our guys came up with.
And we're inviting Bitcoiners and specifically Bitcoin organizers from the region.
So New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia.
Someone's like flying in from South Carolina for it.
So it's a good way to like bring everyone together and, you know, network and stuff like that.
But yeah, no, Pupkey is amazing.
And we're just super happy that they showed up and we can do so much cool stuff there.
That's going to be an awesome meetup.
That's on the 18th?
That is on the 18th, yes.
February 18th, 6 p.m.
Okay.
Very cool.
It will be live stream.
Live stream.
Okay.
Where can we watch that?
Follow Pupkey's channel.
So their ex, probably their YouTube.
I think they're streaming on Nostra as well.
That is awesome.
Yeah.
I found that streaming on Nostra can be a little subjective.
Like it may or may not show up in Primal.
It's going to probably show up on Fountain for sure.
I've heard that when you try this, you know, zap.stream, of course, Amethyst should work.
Nostra, N-O-S-T-U-R, that app, you know, probably works.
So if you're expecting to see the stream on Nostra and you're not seeing it in the expected place, you know, try Fountain.
Try Amethyst if you have Android.
I just keep keep bound. It's still an imperfect technology that we have going here.
But yeah, then PubKey YouTube, PubKey Twitter, that's always good.
So people can kind of people can watch what you guys are talking about live.
I think that's that's an important component, too.
Yeah. And the event will be it's from six to ten.
But there's a portion of it that will be live stream.
We'll have speakers to two different panels.
We're going to talk about meetup organizers experiences in there, kind of talk about their meetups.
and then what it's like to the importance of growing a Bitcoin community
and then give like tips and tricks and recommendations
for people who might want to start their own.
So like the goal there is to inspire more Bitcoiners out there to,
you know, if there's not a meetup in your town already, like start one.
And then we'll also talk about the merchant adoption piece.
Very cool.
Meeting, meeting exchange and why it's important
and tips to get out there and talk to merchants.
They're going to learn that. That's good stuff.
But can people kind of like, I guess people outside of D.C. who are interested in what the Bitcoin District Initiative is doing, can they get in touch with you or maybe copy what you're doing or get some pointers?
Because you're a great resource.
For sure.
And I lean on a lot of other great resources.
So, you know, I consume all the, you know, pay attention to all the really cool stuff coming out of other meetups, coming out of other companies.
There's a group.
There's a something called the Bitcoin Merchant Community that Spiral launched that puts out some really good resources that help Bitcoiners talk to merchants and sort of give them tips and stuff and print material.
And they have these little plushies that they give out and to local Bitcoin champions.
So they're really putting out some really good stuff.
I've used that.
I've used, you know, pamphlets that, you know.
Other folks have put out, customized them to sort of to the local Bitcoin or the local DC businesses.
So, you know, it's like it's just I'm putting into practice what like a lot of other people out there have done.
And then we produce some of our own stuff, too.
So it's really cool to be part of a movement where so many people just support each other and put out these free resources.
Yeah.
And encourage everyone to use and modify and stuff.
So it's the whole open source spirit of it all is really cool.
But yeah, feel free to reach out, Trey, at BitcoinDistrictInitiative.org.
You can go to BitcoinDistrictInitiative.org.
It's a very long domain name.
BitcoinDistrictInitiative.org.
You'll see all of our initiatives there, contact info, and happy to meet and chat with others.
If people want to start a local nonprofit in their town to be able to do more things,
like having a formal entity is very helpful in a lot of ways.
Yeah.
You have to pay for the work that you're doing.
That was all very straightforward.
I'm sure you have materials and needing to pay for things.
And therefore, the nonprofit structure.
Yeah.
Having a budget is amazing.
The budget we have is like peanuts.
Having a budget is great.
When you want to print things and maybe book a venue for something,
or sell tickets to something, it helps a lot.
It's a good way.
And lastly, I wanted to ask you what music you're a fan of.
in this quote-unquote value-for-value space or the Bitcoin music space,
since we're still searching for the right name to give it,
because nothing has caught on with mainstream people.
They're not grabbing on to value-for-value or Bitcoin music or open music,
you know, unless they really are.
Like yourself, you were looking specifically for ways to decentralize music,
and you were looking for something around that.
So I know you've got some music you like.
Who are some of your favorite artists or songs or your favorite app to listen?
Yeah. So, I mean, I'm still a huge Spotify person. I love the Spotify experience. But the thing that really drew me to decentralizing music was like, oh, like artists should be paid more for the music that they put out. And so that very much resonates with me. So like I would love to see my favorite artist, you know, kind of slide into the value for value sphere. But I love Ainsley. I love her music.
I first saw her in Nashville.
That was my first Bitcoin conference.
Like leading up to it, I had started to get into Wave Lake and I started listening to her new album.
You know, when she got really big on Wave Lake, her first few songs, that was really cool.
So to like see her live was awesome.
I think I saw her live twice.
I went to the Vinyl Lab and saw her play there.
Were you at the Vinyl Lab?
Wasn't there.
So that was the Bitcoin conference 2024 in Nashville.
That was, yeah, they had the bands at Bitcoin at the Vinyl Lounge and it was just three days straight of just performances just as a side event to the Bitcoin conference.
It was so cool. Yeah, that side event was so cool to see her in person.
And then I saw her, I think there was another like concert there.
Yeah. So like in terms of like the value for value world, Ainsley's great.
And then just personally, like other music I listen to, like my music is my music preferences fluctuates wildly.
But the type of music that's my favorite that I always kind of like go back to often is there's a few bands.
I love Mayday Parade.
I don't know if you've heard them.
It's like a punk pop band.
I love them.
That was like my sort of childhood music growing up.
Yellow Card is great.
They just put out a new album, which is awesome.
Honestly, Eye is a really good song that's like on repeat nowadays.
And then I guess another artist would be Rainbow Kitten Surprise.
I don't know if you've heard of that.
No, I haven't heard of that one at all.
It's always good when we talk about any music around here because, you know, it's impossible to know all of it, whether it's in the value verse or not.
So it's always good to hear what people are into.
Because it's like, you're into this, like Yellow Cardinal, and you're like, but I love Ainsley, and I've seen Ainsley play live in Nashville.
Well, I grew up in Alabama, so my dad was huge in the country, so a big country music fan, at least liked the country music back then.
And I don't listen to a whole lot of the new stuff, but there's Dad.
And I would say like this, like punk pop is good.
I'm not into Screamo.
That's a little too much for my ears.
It's a good point because I think we're still in a world where people are on legacy social media platforms like Twitter and they're also getting into Nostra.
And people are also like, hey, I am listening to Spotify or Apple Music or, you know, the laundry list.
There's like 10 of them, right, that are mainstream and tied into record labels and performance rights organizations.
But then there's also this alternative where you can get on Wavelake and you can get on Fountain and you can hear music where you can, if you love it, you can pay Ainsley Costello in Bitcoin with just a few sats here and there, you know, or you can stream on Fountain.
I love the streaming part. That's really cool, too.
That makes it easy. And I don't have to consciously, like, stop down, grab my phone, do the boost or the zap and think and go through a thought process.
It's like, oh, I'm listening to this song and I really like it.
And the artist is just getting some money just because I'm listening to the song.
I feel like that's the natural way.
Like, that's how it should work.
Like, because I'm listening to your song, you're getting paid for me listening to it.
I feel like that's a more wholesome and proper way to be a music consumer.
But, you know, we do still have, you know, the mainstream.
We're not going to give up our Nirvana or our Fleetwood Mac, right?
We're not going to give up Chapel Rhone and all these big things that we listen to that are mainstream.
And people may still you know a few people probably still watch the Grammys and we go to concerts Like I had Rustin Kelly tickets here in town The show got canceled because it was Super Bowl Sunday But I still going to enjoy some of my record label music shall we say mainstream music And then I yes going to you know take every opportunity to see Ainsley play or see Longhi play or see Joe Martin play and listen to those songs as well
And, you know, that's kind of where we're at right now, where we have the fiat system and people are taking fiat payments with Square and people are also taking Bitcoin payments with Square.
And it's just sort of becoming, I think, slowly but surely, you know, as Parker Lewis says, you know, gradually then suddenly, you know, there's I don't know if things ever emerged.
Like, I don't think we ever get rid of the old way completely.
But like right now, we're starting to kind of kind of mesh and mingle the two together.
You know, we still it's really important to have options.
And I think the more that big corners create really good tools and options when the time comes and people need another option, you know, maybe it's gradually for a long time.
And then, you know, maybe there's some sort of event or maybe like, I don't know, maybe the law is passed.
And now all these companies have to collect all these data on all our transactions.
And like now people really do care about privacy.
Like, I guess what?
There's there's like an option.
Yeah, it's like Discord just said that they're doing age verification.
So everybody's going, oh, gosh, we should have this ready for an Oster so we could have the Discord.
It's not that people haven't tried to build it.
It just isn't ready yet.
And so it's just one of those things where.
Keep building.
Yeah.
Keep at it.
Well, thank you, Trey.
Is there anything else that I asked you or is there anything else I didn't ask you that we didn't cover that I should have asked you?
Did I miss anything?
I don't think so.
If you hear this and you like what we're doing, you can go to givebdi.org.
You can donate some SATs or some dirty fiat.
And if you want to see us do more of that stuff, you know, a little bit goes a long way.
Awesome. Thank you, Trey, for letting me.
This was a lot of fun.
Yeah, letting me pick your brain and sharing some.
You're just full of resources and great ideas.
And you're a good soft sell on this sort of, you know, getting people into the Bitcoin world,
which I think we've all, we were maxi orange pillars back in the day.
I think we've rehabilitated ourselves to be a little easier, softer approach.
As far as getting people interested in this, we don't sound like we're in a crazy cult.
I think that's better.
We're like, we're regular, normal people who just have adopted Bitcoin in our lives.
It's not a cult.
It's not a scheme.
It's just weird.
We did the studying to figure out, okay, we want this better world.
And now, oh gosh, we have to actually go work on it.
And you're one of the people who are you're working on it.
Your proof of work is getting merchants onboarded in Washington, D.C.
And I commend you for that.
That's I think it's important work.
You're you're spending your time well and you're spending your talent well.
And, you know, just appreciate what you're doing, Trey.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Looking forward to the race.
March 15th.
Let's go Haynes Point.
Sign up. Runster.
R-U-N-S-T-R dot club.
That will sign you up for the run.
And you're going to start to see posters all around D.C. soon talking about our after party at Pub Key.
So we'll be opening the doors at 10 in the morning.
Ainsley is going to take the stage at noon for a great performance.
So you've got time to do the run or not do the run.
But, you know, we want you to get the full D.C. Bitcoin experience.
You can also walk the 5K, which I think a lot of people will do.
But do your run after your run is over.
You can hang out with the Bitcoiners at Pub Key.
Get a great show.
Get a great burger.
Drink specials.
And Trey will be there.
And that's a great thing for you to go see Trey, pick his brain like I just did,
and see if he can help you where you live if you're outside of D.C.
Or maybe you want to join Trey and start helping him try to onboard these businesses to Bitcoin.
Let's do it.
We'll see.
But I'm too weak if I ever show the pain
Stone cold if I lock it all away
Damned if I do or don't, but you don't see it
You can't say I'm not trying
You can't say I'm not doing my best
Might not be where I want yet
You can't say I'm not trying
You can't say I'm not doing my best
The process, it might be a mess
But you can't say I'm not trying
Been doing what I'm supposed to do
Go to war and get the scars to prove
Even if I don't win, I'm still fighting
But I still run even though I lose the race
Smacked the tears with a smile on my face
Might hate every song, but I'm still writing
Can't say I'm not tryin'
You can't say I'm not doin' my best
Might not be where it won't yet
Can't say I'm not tryin'
You can't say I'm not tryin'
You can't say I'm not doin' my best
The process, it might be a mess
But you can't say I'm not trying
Just tell me that I doing fine Maybe that I sleep tonight Just tell me that I good enough When I say it I call my own blood Just tell me that I doing fine
Even if it means you lie
Just tell me that I'm good enough
You can't say I'm not trying
You can't say I'm not doing my best
Might not be wearable yet
You can't say I'm not trying
You can't say I'm not doing my best
Might not be wearable yet
You can't say I'm not trying
You can't say I'm not doing my best
The process, it might be a mess
But you can't say I'm not trying
As I become a free man
I hold my thought in my hand
Well, the living don't lead me on
You know that I'm not that strong
Well, if I'm born else I can't smile today
I'm holding everything in the highest way
And without everything I hold so dear
Well, everything seems so much clearer
Well, if I didn't know what else to do
Well, would you still think they're making through you?
And if I didn't know what else to say
Would it truly bring you that much pain?
There was a walkin' through the dark and sand
I dropped that thing that was in my hand
But it doesn't hurt me, so don't worry baby
Cause I've been here before and I still stand
Thank you.
Yeah, I'm good at telling lies
I can see it in your eyes
The way you look through mine
You take hold of my desire
As you occupy my mind
As you watch the world go by, yeah
In this world it gets so complicated Suffocated by the time One map with no direction there always chasing
There's something you can't find, and it's hard to breathe
And the walls are fading in, where it takes two hours to see
That the girl I love was known for good at telling lies
I can see it in your eyes
The way you look through my eyes
You take hold of my desires
You walk you by my mind
As you watch the world go by
No good at telling lies, you call me by surprise
Might take a minute but I think I'm gonna be alright
It's not the word you say that you're delivering
And since the moment that I noticed it was over
For we were to fade, it's all a big illusion
Just a shadow on the cape for the fuel of my confusion
Should've known it's just a game, I guess it's my mistake
At the end of the day, you should've watched the way you're talking to me
Shove
Thank you.
in the street
You're blinded up to say goodbye
So do I
Keep it all deep down inside
So do I
Keep your memories alive
So do I
Feel the pain that will die
So do I
So you're the only one who sees destruction
And you're the only one who tells the truth
You're the only one who smells corruption
You're the only one who's got the juice
Walking in a cloud of egotism
High above the rest of humanism
Swimming in the sea of self-eviction
And you're strong enough to face the truth
Oh, yeah
You find it hard to say goodbye
So do I
Leave it all deep down inside
So do I
Your memory's alive
So do I
You're gonna pray and don't die
So do I
So long do I
So do I, so do I
So do I, so do, so do
I
Once behind your eyes
When you're fighting it
I'm to say goodbye
Burn it out to say goodbye
So do I
Keeping it all deep down inside
So do I
Keeping all your memories and lies
So do I
Can't breathe and die
So do I
i