Trust Revolution

Self-Custody for You and Your AI | Roland Bewick

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:00:25 GMT

“With 12 words, you can travel the world. Your money arrives in the country before you do. It cannot be taken from you.” Roland Bewick builds the software that makes that sentence true—and just taught an AI agent to do the same thing.

Episode Summary

Most Bitcoin wallets promise self-custody but keep offering the easy custodial shortcut. Alby killed theirs. In January 2025, the team shut down a custodial wallet processing over a million transactions a month and told users, Run your own node or leave. Roland Bewick, the developer who built Alby Hub to make that transition possible, walks through what happened when principle met user expectations—the complaints, the creative excuses, and why the team chose sovereignty over growth. The conversation then moves into new territory: AI agents that hold their own Bitcoin wallets, pay for their own infrastructure, and even spawn child agents without a human touching a credit card. Roland details his autonomous agent onboarding project, where an OpenClaw agent rented a server, funded a child agent, and purchased AI credits using Lightning—all without KYC, all without permission. The result is a blueprint for self-sovereign AI operating on self-sovereign money, and a challenge to anyone still giving their agent their credit card number.

About the Guest

Roland Bewick is a core developer at Alby, where he leads development of Alby Hub—an open-source, self-custodial Lightning node that lets users connect to any application through Nostr Wallet Connect. Originally from New Zealand and currently based in Thailand, Roland started at Alby in early 2023 after winning the Legends of Lightning hackathon with Lightsats, a Bitcoin onboarding tool. He also created Bitcoin Connect and recently built the first documented autonomous agent onboarding system using Bitcoin Lightning for machine-to-machine payments.

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/rolznz
Nostr: npub1zk6u7mxlflguqteghn8q7xtu47hyerruv6379c36l8lxzzr4x90q0gl6ef
GitHub: https://github.com/rolznz
Alby: https://getalby.com

Key Quotes

“We all want to be self-sovereign. We hold our own Bitcoin, right? We hold our own keys. That's what we believe in. We build this software for ourselves.” — Roland Bewick

“If all your activity and your agent's activity is tied to your own name, I think there are going to be really big problems.” — Roland Bewick

“A lot of the other crypto projects are doing it for the marketing, for the big noise, but we are actually trying to solve the problem.” — Roland Bewick

Key Takeaways

Self-custody is a choice companies can make, not just users: Alby deliberately shut down a revenue-generating custodial product rather than pursue KYC licensing. Regulation forced a fork in the road, and the team chose the harder path back to the self-sovereign values they started with.
Nostr Wallet Connect turned a Nostr experiment into payment infrastructure: What began as a way to make zaps easier became an open protocol that abstracts away the differences between Lightning implementations. It lets any app talk to any wallet—the USB-C of Lightning payments.
AI agents need separate economic identities: Giving your agent your credit card ties its activity to your name and your limits. An agent with its own Lightning wallet, Nostr key pair, and AI token account operates independently—with whatever autonomy you grant it.
KYC-free services are the infrastructure layer agents actually need: The difference between Bitcoin-native services like LNVPS and PayPerQ versus traditional providers isn't ideology—it's that agents can't fill out captchas, upload IDs, or wait for email verification. Permissionless access is a practical requirement for autonomous operation.

Timestamps

[00:01] Why Alby killed a custodial wallet processing a million transactions a month

[04:30] How Nostr Wallet Connect emerged from a simple zap experiment

[08:07] NWC as the USB-C of Lightning—one protocol for every wallet and app

[11:03] Why Alby didn't just offer both custodial and self-custodial options

[16:41] What Alby Hub gives users that custodial wallets can't—and what breaks without it

[25:35] The real UX gap between self-custody and Cash App

[32:07] Why AI agents should use Bitcoin instead of giving them your credit card

[36:04] Roland's autonomous agent onboarding project—an AI spawning its own child agent

[46:20] How Bitcoin fits into the AI disruption and why permissionless rails matter

[54:01] First steps: taking Bitcoin off exchanges and becoming an AI builder, not just a consumer

[59:16] Alby's NWC Faucet—play money for agents that lets them test real payment flows

Resources & Links

Mentioned in Episode:

Alby Hub - Open-source self-custodial Lightning node
Alby Go - Mobile app that acts as a remote control for your Lightning node via NWC
Alby AI Tools - Skills and MCP server for giving AI agents Bitcoin payment capability
LNVPS - Bitcoin Lightning-powered VPS hosting, no KYC required
PayPerQ - Pay-per-use AI model access via Bitcoin, no account required
Nostr Wallet Connect - Open protocol connecting Lightning wallets to any application
OpenClaw - Open-source local-first AI agent runtime

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

Your Data's Already Gone. Now What? | James Lee

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 13:00:26 GMT

“You cannot have data compromised that you do not have.” James Lee has spent two decades watching breach transparency collapse—from near-total disclosure in 2020 to just 30 percent today. The president of the nation's leading identity crime nonprofit breaks down why your Social Security number is worthless on the black market. Why your driver's license isn't and what individuals can actually do when the system designed to protect them has already failed.

Episode Summary

James Lee has seen the identity crisis from both sides. He was a senior executive at ChoicePoint when a 2005 data breach triggered the first wave of breach notification laws in the United States. He now leads the Identity Theft Resource Center, the nation's only nonprofit providing free identity crime victim assistance. The ITRC's 20th annual data breach report, released weeks before this conversation, tracked a record 3,322 compromises in 2025—a 79 percent jump over five years—while 70 percent of breach notices failed to disclose how the attack happened.

Lee walks through the real economics of stolen identity: Social Security numbers carry zero resale value because the market is so flooded, while driver's license numbers command $150 to $2,000 depending on the state, a direct consequence of pandemic-era digital verification expanding their use far beyond the DMV. The conversation moves through the limits of KYC, the case for data minimization over data hoarding, and why the ITRC advocates for more friction in financial transactions. What it means is that breached data from years ago is being recycled into new attacks. Lee makes the case that individuals, organizations, and government all need to act—and none can solve identity crime alone.

About the Guest

James E. Lee is president of the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), the nation's leading nonprofit dedicated to supporting victims of identity crime at no cost. Before joining ITRC's staff in 2020 as COO, Lee served over a decade on its board of directors, including three years as chairman. His career spans senior leadership at ChoicePoint (now LexisNexis), where he navigated the landmark 2005 data breach, and Irish cybersecurity firm Waratek. He chaired two ANSI working groups on identity management and privacy and has testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on identity crime trends. Lee holds credentials from the University of Texas Center for Identity, the Wharton School, and the University of Arkansas.

LinkedIn: James E. Lee
ITRC: idtheftcenter.org
ITRC on X: IDTheftCenter

Key Quotes

“You cannot have data compromised that you do not have. So data breaches go down right there. Data breaches go down, victims go down. Data breaches go down, cybersecurity attacks go down.” — James Lee
“That one percent of revenue put a hundred percent of the enterprise at risk.” — James Lee
“Your driver's license has become the de facto social security number because the social security number is so compromised.” — James Lee

Key Takeaways

Breach transparency is collapsing, and it's by design: In 2020, nearly 100 percent of organizations disclosed root cause details in breach notices. By 2025, only 30 percent did—leaving individuals unable to assess their own risk or take informed action.
Your Social Security number is worthless, but your driver's license isn't: SSNs are so widely compromised they're given away free in stolen data bundles. Driver's license numbers, newly valuable because of pandemic-era digital verification, sell for $150 to $2,000 on criminal marketplaces.
Data minimization beats data security: The most effective defense against breaches isn't better encryption—it's collecting less data in the first place. If you don't need it, don't collect it. If the purpose is fulfilled, delete it.
Freeze your credit and adopt passkeys today: Credit freezes are free, take minutes, and are the single most effective step individuals can take. Passkeys eliminate the credential-reuse problem that fuels most account takeovers.

Timestamps

[00:04] The ChoicePoint breach: what a 2005 data disaster taught James Lee about institutional accountability
[09:26] Are data brokers a net positive? The uncomfortable tradeoff between utility and risk
[12:07] Breach notice fatigue: when data breach letters become a humiliation ritual
[15:24] From ChoicePoint to ITRC: how James Lee ended up on the other side of the table
[18:42] Breach transparency on the decline: better legal cover, worse consumer protection
[23:33] The golden age of identity crime: what ITRC advisors hear from victims today
[28:27] Recycled stolen data: old breaches fueling new attacks at scale
[30:21] Why your driver's license is now worth more than your Social Security number
[33:42] KYC under pressure: app-based identity verification getting duped by stolen credentials
[38:13] The case for friction: why instant payments make fraud easier
[44:44] Government data sharing: DOGE, SSA, and the fight over federal databases
[48:18] Data minimization: should anyone be holding this much data in the first place?
[53:19] Credit freezes, passkeys, and individual control over identity
[57:33] Redesigning identity from scratch: ITRC's new vision
[1:01:06] Three things to do today if you've been breached

Mentioned in Episode:

ITRC 2025 Annual Data Breach Report — ITRC's 20th edition tracking record 3,322 compromises in 2025
Identity Theft Resource Center — Free victim assistance via phone, text, or live chat: 888.400.5530

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

Your Money, Your Data, Your Mind | Jesse Posner

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 13:00:26 GMT

“If somebody gets control over your personal AI — all your health data, all your financial data, all your emails, everything you've thought about — they own you.” Jesse Posner built FROST threshold signatures and shipped BitKey at Block. Now he's building Vora because he realized individual self-custody is still a LARP — and the stakes are about to get much higher.

Episode Summary

Most people think a hardware wallet means they've solved self-custody. Jesse Posner spent years at Coinbase and Block learning exactly why that's wrong. Without a full node, your wallet leaks your balance and IP address to third-party servers. Without physical security integration, your keys are one wrench attack away from worthless. Without verifiable hardware, your entire setup might be compromised from the factory floor.

Vora is building the integrated answer: a sovereign device combining a full Bitcoin node, air-gapped hardware wallet, tamper detection, and emergency response — all designed so that attacking a Bitcoiner becomes more expensive than it's worth.

But Posner isn't stopping at money. He argues the next frontier of self-custody is your mind. As personal AI agents accumulate our most intimate data — health records, financial decisions, private thoughts — whoever controls that AI controls the person. Vora's “guardian AI” architecture uses hardware-backed isolation to guarantee that no prompt injection can reach your most trusted model, while still letting you harness frontier cloud models for non-sensitive tasks. The same cypherpunk principles that protect Bitcoin keys now protect the most valuable asset of all: your autonomy.

About the Guest

Jesse Posner is CEO and co-founder of Vora, a startup building Bitcoin-grade self-custody for both digital assets and AI. A trained lawyer turned cryptographic engineer, Posner spent over four years at Coinbase on key management, then helped build BitKey at Block. He created the first BIP-340 compatible implementation of FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold Signatures), supported by a Brink grant. His work sits at the intersection of cryptography, constitutional law, and physical security — bringing an unusually broad lens to the question of individual sovereignty in the digital age.

X/Twitter: jesseposner
Nostr: jesseposner on Primal
LinkedIn: Jesse Posner
GitHub: jesseposner
Company: Vora

Key Quotes

“We wanted to make self-sovereignty real — where you can control your Bitcoin, maintain your privacy, protect yourself from physical attacks, and resist government seizure.” — Jesse Posne
“If somebody gets control over your personal AI, they own you. You could literally lose control of your identity.” — Jesse Posner
“The nation-state system is like a dead man walking — the ground has already shifted and we're just seeing the slow collapse.” — Jesse Posner

Key Takeaways

A hardware wallet without a full node is a privacy leak: Every time your wallet checks your balance through a third-party server, it reveals your UTXOs and IP address — giving attackers a map to your Bitcoin and your front door.
Self-custody must include physical security, not just key management: Vora integrates tamper detection, time-delayed spending, and emergency dispatch into the custody system itself, making the economics of attacking a Bitcoiner unprofitable.
FROST threshold signatures eliminate the privacy and cost penalties of multi-sig: Traditional multi-sig reveals your entire key setup on-chain. FROST produces a single signature indistinguishable from a solo signer, with the ability to refresh, revoke, and add key shares without moving Bitcoin.
Your personal AI is the next self-custody frontier: As AI agents accumulate intimate personal data and gain the ability to act on your behalf, controlling that AI becomes as critical as controlling your keys — and the same cypherpunk architecture applies.

Timestamps

[00:00] Introduction and Jesse's background at Coinbase and Block
[03:16] How institutional vs. individual self-custody differs
[06:30] Executive Order 6102 and constitutional resistance to government seizure
[09:05] Physical security: integrating alarms, tamper detection, and emergency response
[14:31] The $5 wrench attack problem and why it gets worse as Bitcoin appreciates
[17:53] Why a full node matters for privacy — your wallet is leaking data
[22:48] Supply chain attacks and the case for verifiable hardware
[27:23] Trusted execution environments: powerful but not impervious
[32:40] How FROST threshold signatures work and why they matter
[39:29] Proactive security: refreshing key shares without moving Bitcoin
[44:37] Self-custody of AI: why controlling your mind is the next frontier
[48:58] Prompt injection attacks and the “lethal trifecta”
[52:47] Guardian AI architecture: hardware-isolated models that can't be corrupted
[54:57] Fiduciary AI: confidentiality and undivided loyalty in a single concept
[1:06:02] Vora's product roadmap: AI product this year, Vora Vault next year
[1:09:34] Why the modern state has already collapsed — topos and nomos
[1:14:24] Five-year vision: sovereign hardware, personal drones, and a renaissance of human flourishing

Resources & Links

Vora — Bitcoin-grade self-custody for digital assets and AI
FROST Implementation — Jesse's BIP-340 compatible FROST in secp256k1-zkp
Brink — Open-source Bitcoin development funding (supported Jesse's FROST work)
Bunny's hardware verification research — Non-destructive chip imaging for verifiable hardware
Distrust / Enclave OS — Security contractors building the isolation OS for Vora

Podcast

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S03E04 John Robb — Total Surveillance Is One Switch Away

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 13:00:26 GMT

“All it takes is the political will or the political mistake to turn it on. And it's there.” John Robb maps the path from post-national identity collapse to automated totalitarian surveillance—and explains why most of the tools people are counting on won't stop it.

Episode Summary

The systems holding society together are breaking down faster than most people realize. John Robb returns to Trust Revolution to connect two accelerating forces: the collapse of shared national identity that made trust and governance possible and the rise of autonomous AI that makes population-scale surveillance trivially cheap.

When common identity dissolves, everyone treats the state as a system to loot—and those benefiting from the looting need tools to maintain control. That tool is what Robb calls “the long night”: AI assigned to every individual, building profiles, manipulating behavior, punishing dissent, all automated by a small group with network access. Musk buying Twitter delayed but didn't prevent it. Asked whether Bitcoin, encryption, or decentralized networks can counter state-level AI surveillance, Robb is blunt: probably not.

What individuals can do is leverage AI aggressively for personal economic advantage, build persistent AI agents they actually control, and resist the emotional manipulation that makes authoritarian lockdown feel necessary. Robb gives the window at roughly ten years before the economic singularity separates those who paired with AI from those who didn't.

About the Guest

John Robb is the editor of the Global Guerrillas Report on Substack and Patreon, where he publishes predictive frameworks at the intersection of war, technology, and politics. A former USAF special operations pilot who flew Tier 1 missions with Delta and SEAL Team 6, Robb later earned his MPPM from Yale, became Forrester Research's first internet analyst, and co-founded Gomez Advisors (sold to Compuware for $295 million). He is the author of Brave New War, a military strategy classic on open-source warfare. His work focuses on how networked systems create both unprecedented fragility and opportunity for individuals navigating institutional collapse.

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/johnrobb
Substack: https://johnrobb.substack.com
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnrobb
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-robb-97518/

Key Quotes

“We don't trust each other anymore. Everything anyone else says, you treat it like an attack.” — John Robb
“If you find yourself being enraged—absolutely anything, even if you think it's justified—walk away. You are being played.” — John Robb
“Every investment [of data] you make is going to be siphoned off to the cloud and used by them to compete against you.” — John Robb

Key Takeaways

The surveillance state doesn't require a conspiracy — just a switch: Corporations already built every component of totalitarian AI surveillance through normal product development. Automated, individualized manipulation at population scale is now a matter of political will, not technical capability.
Bitcoin and encryption probably won't stop the long night: Robb is direct — decentralized tools can't match the degree of control a fully deployed AI surveillance system would exert. The political and social dynamics driving demand for that control are stronger than the technical countermeasures available.
AI leverage is the individual's economic lifeline: The gap between those who pair with persistent AI agents and those who don't will widen into an unbridgeable economic divide within a decade. The priority is building AI tools you control locally — centralized services siphon your intelligence and use it to compete against you.
Empathy triggers are weaponized at network speed: Viral content manufactures tribal identity in days — what took nation-states years of propaganda. Recognizing when you're being conscripted into an emotional swarm is a core survival skill for anyone navigating algorithmic media.

Timestamps

[00:28] Why post-nationalism and AI autonomy are the two forces reshaping everything
[03:19] What autonomous AI actually means — and why current systems fall apart after eight hours
[07:58] The long night: what a modern totalitarian surveillance state looks like
[14:58] Why Musk buying Twitter only delayed the surveillance threat
[17:08] How the end of the Cold War began the structural replacement of the middle class
[20:44] Surveillance as a service — what job it does for the cosmopolitan elite
[28:31] Why Bitcoin and encryption probably can't counter state-level AI surveillance
[29:17] Data ownership as the missed opportunity — sharecroppers on your own land
[38:25] Building persistent AI agents as personal economic leverage
[45:21] Top 10% now drive half of consumer spending — what that means for technology development
[54:13] Empathy swarms: how viral content manufactures tribal identity in days
[1:01:10] Staying connected, staying skeptical, and screening your family's AI exposure
[1:07:14] Expanding the Dunbar number through AI trust proxies

Resources & Links

Mentioned in Episode:

Global Guerrillas Report — Robb's Substack with frameworks on war, technology, and politics
Brave New War — Robb's book on open-source warfare and decentralized conflict
Maneki Neko by Bruce Sterling — Short story about an AI-mediated gifting economy that displaces traditional markets
Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells — Science fiction series exploring autonomous AI and corporate security

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S03E03 Aaron van Wirdum – Bitcoin's Origin Story and the Unfinished Fight

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 13:00:26 GMT

“The cypherpunks who tried to build digital cash before Bitcoin might one day be remembered like America's founding fathers.” Aaron van Wirdum spent five years writing The Genesis Book—and warns the fight for money outside of government control isn't over.

EPISODE SUMMARY

Bitcoin didn't appear from nowhere. For decades before Satoshi, a scrappy band of cryptographers, privacy activists, and heterodox economists tried to build digital cash that could operate outside government control. They all failed—until one anonymous inventor synthesized their ideas into a system that actually worked. Aaron van Wirdum, author of The Genesis Book and former editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine, traces this lineage from David Chaum's DigiCash in the early 90s through Nick Szabo's Bit Gold to Satoshi's breakthrough: using proof of work for consensus rather than as currency itself.

But the origin story doesn't end with invention. Van Wirdum covered the 2015-2017 block size wars in real time—when miners, exchanges, and venture-backed startups controlling 80% of economic activity tried to change Bitcoin's rules and lost to anonymous node runners in basements. Today, the threat has shifted. Mining is concentrated, privacy developers face prison, and incremental regulation slowly suffocates self-custody. The question isn't whether Bitcoin can survive a 51% attack. It's whether it can survive becoming as monitored and controlled as email.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Aaron van Wirdum is the author of The Genesis Book: The Story of the People and Projects That Inspired Bitcoin and former editor-in-chief of Bitcoin Magazine's print edition. He discovered Bitcoin in 2013 and spent over a decade documenting its technical evolution and governance battles, including real-time coverage of the block size wars. Based in the Netherlands, van Wirdum studied journalism and the historical influence of technology on social structures at Utrecht University. He left X/Twitter and is now active on Nostr.

Nostr: https://primal.net/AaronvanW
Book: https://thegenesisbook.com

KEY QUOTES

“The market decides what is Bitcoin. That is ultimately what it comes down to.” — Aaron van Wirdum

“The big concern is sort of the emailification of Bitcoin—where the protocol is still out there, but no one's actually interacting with it directly because everything is happening through [custodial solutions and regulated entities.]” — Aaron van Wirdum

“Bitcoin is the best form of money ever invented, if it all keeps working as intended.” — Aaron van Wirdum

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Bitcoin is an evolutionary step, not a lucky accident: Satoshi synthesized decades of failed attempts—Hashcash's proof of work, DigiCash's privacy, Bit Gold's decentralized registry—into a system where the pieces finally fit together. The difficulty adjustment algorithm and using proof of work for consensus (rather than as currency) were the crucial breakthroughs.
The block size wars proved Bitcoin's immune system works: When 50 companies representing 80% of economic activity tried to change the rules in 2017, fork futures markets revealed the market valued the conservative version. The users—not the miners or corporations—ultimately decide what Bitcoin is.
Individual miners refusing transactions is annoying, not existential: F2Pool censoring OFAC-sanctioned transactions means slightly longer confirmation times. The real threat is miners refusing to build on blocks that include those transactions—that's when censorship becomes enforced.
Regulatory suffocation is the most plausible failure mode: Not a protocol attack, but incremental KYC/AML rules that make self-custody harder, privacy tools illegal, and Bitcoin's actual use as digital cash impossible while ETFs and “institutional allocators” hold a version that's no different from any other financial asset.

TIMESTAMPS

[00:01] Introduction and the cypherpunk vision of building money outside government control
[03:44] Tim May's radical vision: the internet as a new frontier for institutions
[11:26] David Chaum and DigiCash: how the first working digital cash almost became a banking standard
[17:15] Nick Szabo's Bit Gold: inching toward Bitcoin and why it couldn't quite work
[21:07] Bitcoin's known weakness: the 51% attack and mining centralization today
[25:27] The block size wars: how close Bitcoin came to capture or destruction in 2017
[33:58] Transaction censorship: when it matters and when it doesn't
[38:25] The OP_RETURN debate: harm reduction versus fighting spam
[47:54] Why Aaron's still here after 13 years: “What is more important than money?”
[54:46] The dimming torch: privacy as Bitcoin's underemphasized origin story
[56:15] The most plausible failure mode: incremental regulation and the emailification of Bitcoin
[60:54] Practical advice: get a wallet, get some Bitcoin, just try it

RESOURCES & LINKS

Mentioned in Episode:

Bitcoin Magazine - Aaron van Wirdum's articles - His coverage of Bitcoin over the past decade
New York Agreement (Bitcoin Wiki) - The 2017 scaling proposal that 50+ companies tried to force through
How David Chaum's eCash Spawned a Cypherpunk Dream - Van Wirdum's deep dive on DigiCash history
DigiCash (Wikipedia) - Background on the first digital cash system

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S03E02 Jason Hughey – Companies Don't Keep Promises. People Do.

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:01:52 GMT

Enron had “integrity” as a core value. FTX had none at all. Both collapsed. Jason Hughey argues the problem isn't whether companies state their values—it's whether those values function as actual decision-making frameworks or just motivational posters on the wall.

Episode Summary

Most organizations betray trust not through malice but through design. Jason Hughey breaks down the two paradigms shaping every workplace: top-down control systems that optimize for short-term extraction, and emergent systems that treat employees as contributors rather than resources. The dysfunction you've felt—being punished for good ideas, watching customer service decline to hit quarterly targets, seeing values that exist only on walls—isn't random. It's built in. Hughey works with a framework called Principle Based Management, developed by Charles Koch at Koch Industries and first codified in 1990. The core distinction: rules tell people what to do, principles empower them to decide. When you suppress the signals coming from people closest to the work, you get the same coordination failures that collapsed the Soviet economy—just at company scale. The alternative requires hiring for virtue over talent, building genuine challenge cultures, and committing to low time preference even when it's not exciting. If better money requires better principles, better organizations might too.

About the Guest

Jason Hughey leads business development at Satoshi Pacioli, a Bitcoin-focused accounting firm founded in 2022, where he's also driving the firm's adoption of Principle Based Management—a framework rooted in Austrian economics that treats organizations like markets rather than command structures. With over ten years in customer experience and team building, including time in the fitness industry, Hughey brings a practitioner's lens to management theory. He co-authored Called to Freedom (2016), exploring the intersection of Christianity and libertarianism.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhughey/
Satoshi Pacioli: https://satoshipacioli.com
Substack: https://satoshipacioliaccounting.substack.com

Key Quotes

"Values or a company's culture becomes the motivational poster on the wall that you walk by and acknowledge and see the word integrity there, and then you forget about it." — Jason Hughey
"When you are consistently using your power to shut down those signals that are emerging from people who are on the front lines doing the work, you're going to run into the problem of now we're not getting the knowledge to where it needs to go." — Jason Hughey
“The value is the ideal that you live by. The virtue is the day-to-day commitment to doing it.” — Jason Hughey

Key Takeaways

Stated values mean nothing without lived virtue: Enron had “integrity” on the wall. The distinction between values (ideals you claim) and virtue (daily commitment to act on them) separates companies that build trust from those that betray it.
Suppressing internal signals creates Soviet-style coordination failures: When employees are punished for bringing ideas or challenges forward, knowledge stops flowing to where it's needed—the same problem that collapsed centrally planned economies, just at organizational scale.
Hire for virtue first, talent second: Talent can be coached; character rarely changes. If you have to choose between someone highly skilled who plays politics and someone less skilled with integrity, take the latter.
Principles empower, rules constrain: Rules-based management treats employees as resources to accomplish tasks. Principle-based management gives people a framework and lets them decide—unlocking creativity, ownership, and better customer outcomes.

Timestamps

[00:48] Why most organizations betray trust—two competing management paradigms
[04:41] FTX, Enron, Theranos: the pattern behind corporate values failures
[09:16] The fifth dimension of PBM: self-actualization and meaning at work
[11:34] Design choices that guarantee dysfunction—challenge culture and cult of personality
[16:18] How high time preference management destroys customer service and employee trust
[20:35] Information flow in broken organizations—when signals get siloed or shut down
[23:49] The socialist calculation problem applied to business management
[26:01] Principles vs. rules: empowering employees to decide
[29:08] What local knowledge actually requires—integrity, challenge culture, knowledge systems
[30:49] Virtue vs. values: the ideal you claim vs. the commitment to live it
[36:06] Building scaffolding so you don't fall when times get tough
[39:08] Where to start when your team shows cracks—two diagnostic questions
[43:24] Hiring for virtue when everyone can perform values in an interview
[49:41] What's been harder than expected implementing PBM at Satoshi Pacioli
[52:21] What changes if more organizations operated this way—restoring trust
[55:41] The infinite game: low time preference as competitive advantage
[59:13] Legitimate organizational authority and equal application of rules

Mentioned in Episode:

TFTC #699: Jason Hughey on Principle Based Management (Jan 17, 2026) — Jason's conversation with Marty Bent
Principle Based Management — The framework developed by Charles Koch at Koch Industries, first codified in 1990

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S03E01 Oscar Merry — What Joe Rogan Lost for $100M

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 13:00:26 GMT

“If you choose to go exclusive on Spotify, you're essentially saying to 70% of your existing and potential audience, ‘Sorry, you can't listen anymore.’” Oscar Merry watched Joe Rogan lose influence despite a $100 million payday—and built Fountain to prove there's a better way.

Episode Summary

Oscar Merry's Alexa skills hit #1 in productivity and earned $30,000 in six months. He moved on when the technology couldn't match the vision—and the gatekeepers made clear it wasn't going to. Now as CEO of Fountain, he's building infrastructure for creators who want to own their audience rather than rent access to them. The conversation maps the entire value chain—from how legacy media takes up to 90% of creator revenue with quarterly payouts to how open protocols enable instant payments with single-digit fees. Merry unpacks the Joe Rogan case study as proof that even $100 million can't compensate for lost reach and explains why Nostr's cross-app comments represent the most significant shift in content discovery since RSS. For creators sensing that platform dependence is a liability, this episode lays out what's actually working in open podcasting today—and what's still hard.

About the Guest

Oscar Merry is CEO and co-founder of Fountain, a podcast app built on open protocols including Bitcoin Lightning and Nostr. Before podcasting, he was an Amazon Alexa Champion who built skills used by millions, ran the London Alexa Meetup, and taught voice technology courses. He pivoted to audio after recognizing that voice assistants couldn't escape Big Tech gatekeeping. Based in the UK, he leads a small team building what he calls “a different way of doing content discovery on the internet."

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/MerryOscar
Nostr: primal.net/merryoscar
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/oscarmerry
Fountain: https://fountain.fm

Key Quotes

“If you choose to go exclusive on Spotify, you're essentially saying to 70% of your existing and potential audience, sorry, you can't listen anymore.” — Oscar Merry

“In the current system, as an artist, as a content creator, you are losing out massively on both time and money.” — Oscar Merry

“Imagine if that YouTube comment could go into the Twitter feed or the Instagram feed or the LinkedIn feed. That conceptual difference that Nostr can deliver is the thing that lights up the eyes of podcasters.” — Oscar Merry

Key Takeaways

Open podcasting is a check against centralization: Even Spotify's $100 million couldn't prevent Joe Rogan from losing influence during his exclusive period. The fragmented nature of podcasting—where Apple and Spotify together hold only ~30% market share—means exclusivity costs more than it pays.
Legacy media takes up to 90% with quarterly delays: Between platforms, payment processors, labels, and collection agencies, creators can end up with 10 cents on the dollar months after the value was created. Open micropayments reverse this with instant settlement and single-digit fees.
Value-based discovery beats attention algorithms: When a casual like and a life-changing experience are weighted equally, algorithms optimize for slop. Attaching payments to discovery signals lets quality surface over engagement bait.
Nostr inverts the flow for creators: Instead of audiences traveling to walled-off comment sections, engagement and money flow toward the creator across any app that speaks the protocol.

Timestamps

[01:08] Oscar's origin story: #1 Alexa skill to questioning Big Tech control
[09:56] Why podcasting's fragmented ecosystem resists centralization
[11:32] The Joe Rogan case study: $200M couldn't buy back lost influence
[17:14] Why value for value can work when only 1-5% participate
[26:10] What Fountain learned from listen-to-earn rewards
[31:14] Money flow comparison: legacy media vs open payments
[38:44] Attention algorithms vs value-based content discovery
[47:43] Nostr's magic: comments that appear across every app
[51:22] What censorship resistance actually means in practice
[53:33] Building a business on unproven protocols
[1:00:25] First moves for creators exploring open podcasting
[1:03:18] The Fountain pitch: why switch from Spotify or Apple

Resources & Links

Mentioned in Episode:

Primal - Nostr client with built-in Lightning wallet
Podcast Index - Open index for podcast RSS feeds
Alby Hub - Self-hosted Lightning wallet for value-for-value payments

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E16 Pippellia – Reputation Without a Kill Switch

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 13:00:26 GMT

“Web of Trust is any network of relationship where trust is distributed and emergent—it's not imposed by someone else.” Pip builds the infrastructure that makes decentralized reputation actually work. While platforms like Twitter sell verification for $8, he's applying Google's PageRank algorithm to Nostr—and giving it away for free.

EPISODE SUMMARY

Right now, if you want to know whether an account is real or a bot, you're trusting Twitter or Meta to tell you. That model is failing—platforms can't stop spam, won't stop scams that pay for ads, and increasingly demand full KYC just to participate. Pip is building the alternative: Vertex, a Web of Trust service that computes reputation scores across Nostr's social graph. Instead of a company database deciding who you are, your reputation emerges from the people who actually know you. The technology uses PageRank-style algorithms to surface trustworthy accounts and filter out impersonators—without any central authority making those calls. For builders, this means spam protection and personalized recommendations without reinventing the wheel. For individuals, it means your identity and audience become portable—no platform can erase you because no platform owns you. Pip made Vertex free because Nostr needs adoption more than he needs revenue, a bet that infrastructure must reach critical mass before it can sustain itself.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Pip (Pippellia) is the co-founder of Vertex, a Web of Trust service for Nostr developers. He builds the infrastructure layer that helps decentralized apps solve their hardest problem: figuring out who to trust when there's no central authority. Vertex uses PageRank-style algorithms to compute reputation scores, enabling spam filtering, personalized recommendations, and impersonation protection. He received an OpenSats grant in 2025 and made Vertex free to drive adoption, prioritizing network growth over immediate revenue.

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/pippellia
Nostr: https://primal.net/p/nprofile1qqs0dqlgwq6l0t20gnstnr8mm9fhu9j9t2fv6wxwl3xtx8dh24l4auswr6u0j
GitHub: https://github.com/pippellia-btc

KEY QUOTES

“Web of Trust is any network of relationship where trust is distributed and emergent. It emerges organically from interaction and connections—it's not imposed by someone else.” — Pip

“Reputation is not a value, but it depends on the point of view. For me, your reputation is quite high because I follow you directly.” — Pip

“Whatever you build, even if it's small, your audience on Nostr is gonna be yours forever—unless obviously you screw it up and people decide to leave you.” — Pip

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Centralized verification is broken by design: Platforms profit from bots inflating user counts and scammers paying for ads. Meta reportedly requires special permission to remove spammers whose ad budgets exceed certain thresholds—spam prevention conflicts with revenue.
Your reputation should travel with you: On Nostr, if one app bans you, your identity and followers remain intact across every other client. Getting banned everywhere would require the entire network to decide you're toxic—a far higher bar than one company's content team.
Web of Trust solves the cold start problem for builders: Instead of building authentication systems, spam filters, and recommendation engines from scratch, developers can plug into existing reputation infrastructure and inherit the social graph's accumulated trust signals.
Personalized trust beats global authority: Different people can have different views on who's trustworthy. Vertex lets you borrow someone else's perspective—your technically-savvy friend's judgment on which app developers to trust, for example—without surrendering control to a platform.

TIMESTAMPS

[00:44] What Vertex is and the problem it solves

[03:23] Why centralized trust verification is failing—the Twitter/X model

[05:11] Pip's definition of Web of Trust: distributed and emergent trust

[06:49] Why PGP's web of trust failed after 30 years

[10:32] How Twitter's paid verification made identity meaningless

[14:19] Meta's perverse incentives—when scammers pay more than spam costs

[18:42] The primitives needed for healthy online discourse

[21:26] Why reputation depends on point of view, not absolute values

[27:13] How Nostr makes your audience portable and permanent

[29:36] Can Web of Trust be weaponized? The exclusion question

[34:52] Vertex's business model: freemium credits based on reputation

[39:49] Why app store review models are going obsolete

[41:57] Zapstore: using Web of Trust to verify app developers

[49:00] What traditional developers get wrong about decentralized identity

[55:21] What's next: explicit content detection and filtering

[1:00:46] Personalized recommendations and onboarding without surveillance

RESOURCES & LINKS

Mentioned in Episode:

Vertex - Web of Trust as a Service for Nostr
npub.world - Nostr profile search engine powered by Vertex for accurate discovery and verification
Zapstore - Permissionless app store using Web of Trust for developer verification
Citadel Dispatch Episode 167 - Pip's previous interview with Matt Odell

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E15 Christian Keroles – What Dissidents Know About Bitcoin

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 13:00:26 GMT

“It's not enough for me to be taken care of if everyone else on the planet is living in a digital gulag.” CK explains why HRF treats Bitcoin as essential infrastructure for human rights—and why dictators keep failing to build alternatives that work.

Episode Summary

One billion people live in democracies with stable currency and property rights. Seven billion don't. Christian Keroles, Director of Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation, argues that Bitcoin flips this equation—giving everyone access to the best property rights and most stable money regardless of where they're born. In this conversation, CK breaks down why authoritarian regimes are the most enthusiastic about CBDCs yet consistently fail to achieve adoption. Why activists from Russia to Myanmar to Venezuela are choosing Bitcoin as their financial infrastructure, and what HRF has learned funding nearly 300 open-source Bitcoin projects. The pattern is clear: governments build intranets while Bitcoin builds the internet of money. And just like email in the 90s, the protocol works—we're just waiting for everyone to get an address.

About the Guest

Christian Keroles (CK) is Director of Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation, where he leads the CBDC Tracker, Bitcoin Development Fund, and activist education programs. Before HRF, he spent years as Managing Director and COO at Bitcoin Magazine and the Bitcoin Conference, building the infrastructure that shaped Bitcoin's public narrative. His team has distributed millions in grants to open-source developers and trained over 300 activists from 50+ countries on Bitcoin self-custody. CK discovered Bitcoin in 2017 through Laura Shin's Unchained podcast and hasn't stopped building since.

Social Links:

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/ck_SNARKs
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ckeroles
Nostr: https://primal.net/ck

Key Quotes

“If you are opposing the guys in charge, you're not going to have access for very long.” — Christian Keroles
“Bitcoin is freedom enabling technology. Bitcoin is bad for dictators, and Bitcoin aligns with Western liberal values.” — Christian Keroles
“Rather than exporting troops, rather than exporting inflation, the way that we do that is we export freedom technology.” — Christian Keroles

Key Takeaways

CBDCs are the intranet of money: Dictatorships are most excited about CBDCs because they enable capital controls, population surveillance, and data collection on unbanked citizens—but they consistently fail at consumer adoption because governments are terrible at shipping tech products.
Debanked means playing whack-a-mole: Activists under authoritarian regimes describe constant account closures, using aliases, and moving between platforms. Bitcoin gives them permissionless access to digital payments for the first time—reconnecting them to the global economy.
Bitcoin adoption follows the email playbook: The protocol works perfectly for sending value anywhere. The bottleneck is that nobody has a Bitcoin address yet. As more people come online, network effects compound—and HRF is funding the tools to accelerate that adoption.
eCash, Nostr, and open-source AI are the frontier: HRF sees these technologies as complementary layers that make Bitcoin more adoptable. eCash enables jurisdictional arbitrage for product builders; Nostr creates censorship-resistant social infrastructure; open-source AI focuses on practical threats from surveillance systems rather than theoretical superintelligence.

Mentioned in Episode:

HRF CBDC Tracker - Monitoring government digital currency programs worldwide
Zeus Wallet - Lightning and eCash wallet CK uses personally
Bitcoin Design Foundation - User research for Bitcoin builders
Check Your Financial Privilege - Alex Gladstein's book on Bitcoin and human rights

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E14 Why Ads Keep Winning

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 13:00:26 GMT

Big Tech captures $670 a year from the average American through attention and data. Voluntary payment has never broken past 5% adoption in 50 years of trying. So why does it still matter? Because it's not about replacing ads. It's about having somewhere to go when the platforms decide you shouldn't exist.

Episode Summary

Voluntary payment sounds like the answer to surveillance capitalism. Pay creators directly, cut out the middlemen, become the customer instead of the product. The philosophy is compelling. The data is brutal. NPR, Wikipedia, Patreon, Nostr — participation rates cluster between 1-5% and haven't budged in decades. Technology isn't the problem. Human behavior is. When given a choice, most people choose free with ads over paying directly. But this episode reframes the entire question. Voluntary payment doesn't need to replace extraction economics. It needs to exist as an exit. When Patreon banned Sargon of Akkad in 2018, thousands of creators watched their income evaporate. When they fled to SubscribeStar, Stripe and PayPal cut that platform off too. OnlyFans nearly killed its own business model because banks demanded it. Operation Choke Point proved the government can strangle legal businesses through financial pressure alone. The 5% who voluntarily pay aren't your main revenue stream. They're your lifeboat — an uncancellable base that doesn't depend on any platform's good graces.

Key Quotes

"Your ad revenue pays the bills. Your voluntary supporters are your insurance policy."

"Stop thinking about voluntary payment as charity. Think about it as investing in creators you can't afford to lose."

"Voluntary payment can't dominate. Defaults always beat choice. Human nature doesn't really change. But it can exist at a scale that makes it viable."

Key Takeaways

The 1-5% ceiling is structural, not technological: Patreon's conversion rate hasn't grown in a decade despite easier payments and lower friction. Better UX won't solve a values gap between early adopters and typical users.
Defaults beat decisions: Apple's tracking transparency saw a 55-point swing from a single design change. People don't choose surveillance — they just don't reject it. Same with payment. The path forward may be changing defaults, not convincing more people to pay.
Voluntary payment is deplatforming insurance: When Patreon, PayPal, or your bank decides you're too risky, most creators have no backup. Those who built direct relationships with even 5% of their audience have an escape route.
The hybrid model works: Chapo Trap House ($140K/month Patreon plus sponsors), Tim Dillon ($200K/month Patreon plus ads) — successful creators aren't choosing between models, they're using both.

Timestamps

[00:43] The promise of value for value — paying creators instead of being monetized
[02:15] The $670 Big Tech extracts annually from the average American
[04:30] Evidence voluntary payment can work: Patreon success stories and Apple's tracking data
[07:45] The counterevidence: YouTube Premium at 9%, Netflix ads at 55% of signups
[10:20] Nostr's payment participation — 0.5% despite frictionless Bitcoin integration
[14:30] Historical data: NPR, Wikipedia, pay-what-you-want restaurants all hit the same ceiling
[17:00] Why defaults determine behavior more than decisions
[18:45] The exit option reframe — why voluntary payment still matters
[20:30] The Patreon/Sargon cascade and SubscribeStar deplatforming
[23:00] Operation Choke Point and financial censorship
[25:30] How successful creators actually operate: the hybrid model
[28:00] What this means for creators, listeners, and builders

Mentioned in Episode

Fountain - Podcasting 2.0 app with Bitcoin Lightning payments
Nostr - Censorship-resistant social protocol with built-in payments
Patreon - Creator subscription platform
OpenSats - Open source Bitcoin and freedom tech funding

Podcast

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E13 Cory Doctorow – Why Every Platform Betrays You

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 13:00:25 GMT

“The smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to tolerate.” Cory Doctorow didn't just coin “enshittification”—he mapped the precise mechanics of how every platform you depend on will eventually turn against you, and why voting with your wallet won't save you.

Episode Summary

Cory Doctorow breaks down the three-stage process by which platforms lure users in, lock them down, and extract maximum value until the whole thing collapses. Using Facebook as the prototype, he traces how lock-in happens automatically through what economists call the collective action problem—your friends hold you hostage, you hold them hostage, and no one can agree when to leave. The solution isn't to shatter these platforms but to evacuate them through interoperability mandates and adversarial jailbreaking that lets users maintain connections while migrating to alternatives. Doctorow argues that the coming “post-American internet” will emerge as other nations realize they no longer need to tolerate US tech dominance now that tariff threats have materialized anyway—creating an unlikely coalition of digital rights advocates, profit-seeking entrepreneurs, and national security hawks who all want the right to modify and replace American firmware. For individuals, he's blunt: join the EFF or a similar collective and stop agonizing over consumption choices. Boycotts only work when they're organized, and the energy you spend debating whether to stay on X is energy you should spend building systemic change.

About the Guest

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist who works as a special advisor for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and edits the daily blog Pluralistic. He coined “enshittification,” named the American Dialect Society's 2023 Word of the Year, and has authored over 30 books, including the recent Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. A former European Affairs Coordinator for EFF who helped establish the UK Open Rights Group, he holds honorary doctorates from York University and the Open University and serves as a Cornell AD White Professor-at-Large and MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate. He lives in Burbank, uses Linux on a Framework laptop, and remains doggedly enthusiastic about RSS.

Key Quotes

“The smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to tolerate. And if you want a smaller government, have that government first and foremost enforce antitrust law.” — Cory Doctorow

“People who tell you to vote with your wallet typically have thicker wallets than you and anticipate winning that vote.” — Cory Doctorow

“We don't want to shatter the platforms. We want to evacuate them.” — Cory Doctorow

Key Takeaways

Lock-in happens through your relationships, not technology: The collective action problem means your friends hold you hostage on platforms—you can't leave until they do, and they won't until you do. This automatic lock-in is why platforms can degrade service without losing users.
Interoperability is the escape hatch: The same tactics Facebook used to poach MySpace users (bots that scraped your feed and pushed replies back) could evacuate today's platforms. Mandating protocols like ActivityPub, combined with legal protection for adversarial jailbreaking, creates “supple but strong” pressure that companies can't easily evade.
The post-American internet is coming: Other nations accepted US tech dominance to avoid tariffs. Now that tariffs exist anyway, a coalition of entrepreneurs (who want to cream off monopoly profits), digital rights advocates, and national security hawks (who fear Trump bricking their tractors) are converging on the same solution: jailbreak American technology.
Individual action matters less than collective organizing: Stop agonizing over whether to stay on Twitter. If the platform still serves you, use it—then spend that freed-up energy joining EFF, organizing a union, or supporting mutual aid. Boycotts work only when they're coordinated; consumption choices are not politics.

Timestamps

[00:00] Cold open: Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse pivot as peak enshittification
[03:53] The three stages of enshittification using Facebook as case study
[09:48] Why this isn't collusion—it's unshackled business seeking its ideal form
[14:16] How tech consolidation enables regulatory capture
[26:12] Protocols vs platforms: Why Bitcoin isn't the answer
[33:06] Interoperability: How Facebook killed MySpace with the same tactics we need now
[37:05] AT&T's 69-year breakup and why anti-monopoly law matters
[44:53] The post-American internet: Why other nations will jailbreak US tech
[52:37] Technology as alchemy vs science—why secrecy makes everything worse
[58:42] Hollowing out platforms vs shattering them
[1:02:01] Bright spots: Digital Markets Act and bipartisan interoperability momentum
[1:05:09] Good regulation vs induced mistakes—the UK water system catastrophe
[1:10:30] Practical advice: Join EFF, stop agonizing, organize

Resources & Links

Electronic Frontier Foundation — Digital rights nonprofit Doctorow recommends joining
Break Them Up by Zephyr Teachout — Referenced book on monopolies
The Underground Empire by Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman — Book on weaponized American infrastructure

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E12 Average Gary – From classified ops to open source

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 13:00:25 GMT

Operating under a pseudonym fits the ethos—sovereignty starts with controlling your identity. Average Gary brought the “thinking shooter” principle from Naval Special Warfare into Bitcoin: you don't need to know every answer, but you need to know where to find it. His path from military intelligence through Microsoft to large-scale Bitcoin mining reveals how decentralized systems reward proof of work over credentials and why open source tears down the walls between citizens and the institutions meant to serve them.

Episode Summary

Average Gary spent 11 years in Navy intelligence as a Chinese linguist and Naval Special Warfare tech operator, learning discipline, cross-functional thinking, and how to act decisively in dynamic environments. He transitioned to Microsoft as a software engineer, where mentors guided him into Rust programming, then moved into FinTech before landing at a large-scale Bitcoin miner. His journey reveals how military training in networked analysis and independent action translates directly to decentralized technology work—where reputation systems replace bureaucratic credentials and proof of work matters more than permission.

The conversation explores how open source development creates pathways from government service into sovereignty-focused tech, why Bitcoin aligns with veteran values of independence and service, and how showing up consistently in local communities builds resilience against centralized system failures. Average Gary's work with Bitcoin Veterans and the Shenandoah Bitcoin Club demonstrates that the transition from centralized institutions to freedom tech isn't about abandoning service—it's about finding better tools to serve with.

About the Guest

Average Gary is a software engineer at a large-scale Bitcoin miner and founder of the Shenandoah Bitcoin Club in Northern Virginia. He served 11 years in Navy intelligence, including roles as a Chinese linguist at the Defense Language Institute and tactical intelligence specialist with Naval Special Warfare. After his military service, he worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and in FinTech before moving into Bitcoin. He's active in Bitcoin Veterans, an organization helping military veterans understand and adopt Bitcoin, and regularly contributes to open source projects focused on sovereignty and decentralization.

Connect with Average Gary:

Nostr: https://primal.net/gary
GitHub: https://github.com/average-gary

Key Quotes

“You can just do things, but when you do it, you better have an answer as to why you did it.” – Average Gary
“If you show up and you're a good human being, if you put this excess time and energy that you've unlocked by saving in Bitcoin to good use in your direct immediate area, I think you're going to be rewarded.” – Average Gary
“The best centralized system is when you control it, and I think anybody has the opportunity to do that in their local area.” – Average Gary

Key Takeaways

Open source creates sovereign career paths: Contributing to open source projects builds a public proof of work resume that matters more in Bitcoin than corporate credentials—Average Gary emphasizes finding projects that improve government transparency or serve your community, then building your reputation through visible contributions.
Military discipline translates to decentralized work: The Navy's “thinking shooter” concept—knowing enough to act independently while understanding where to find answers—applies directly to Bitcoin development, where you need cross-functional awareness but don't need permission to contribute if you can justify your work.
Reputation systems replace bureaucracy: In Bitcoin's reputation-based industry, your GitHub contributions and project work speak louder than degrees or corporate experience—this levels the playing field for anyone willing to put in visible, verifiable work regardless of their background.
Local action builds systemic resilience: As centralized systems fail and Bitcoin creates new wealth, showing up consistently in local communities—coaching teams, joining churches, attending council meetings, or running ham radio clubs—creates the social capital and infrastructure needed when grid-dependent systems break down.

Timestamps

[00:00] Career arc from Naval intelligence to Bitcoin mining

[05:30] Transitioning from military to Microsoft, learning Rust

[09:45] Why family and bureaucracy drove the shift from Navy to tech

[15:20] FinTech experience and recognizing surveillance in financial systems

[22:10] How Naval Special Warfare training shapes decentralized thinking

[28:35] Defense Language Institute, Chinese linguistics, and data analysis

[33:50] The “thinking shooter” concept and cross-functional awareness

[38:15] Moving to a large-scale Bitcoin miner as a software engineer

[42:40] Bitcoin Veterans: helping military community understand Bitcoin

[47:25] Why open source matters for government transparency

[52:30] Building proof of work resumes through GitHub contributions

[56:07] Local community action as centralized systems fail

[59:10] Closing thoughts on consistency and showing up

Resources & Links

Mentioned in Episode:

Defense Language Institute (Chinese linguist training)
Naval Special Warfare (tactical intelligence operations)
Rust programming language
Kali Linux (penetration testing distribution)
Bitcoin Veterans: https://bitcoinveterans.org
Shenandoah Bitcoin Club: https://shenandoahbitcoin.club

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E11 Stephen DeLorme – Bitcoin and Freedom by Design

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 13:00:25 GMT

“It's really difficult to engineer freedom tech—solutions that require you to kind of take ownership of your money, take ownership of your data. These things typically have engineering solutions that are harder to build; they might take a longer time to build, or it might actually require the user to kind of learn something new.”

Two days after Square unleashed Bitcoin payments on four million merchants, we're asking the uncomfortable question: what if buttery-smooth UX beats self-custody every time?

Episode Summary

Stephen DeLorme designs Bitcoin products at Voltage and helps run Atlanta's ATL BitLab. He's spent years working on the UX problems that make freedom tech hard to use. This conversation explores the tension between purity and adoption, recorded just 48 hours after Square's custodial Bitcoin launch reached millions of merchants. DeLorme argues that freedom tech's disadvantage isn't just technical—it's that most people in stable democracies don't feel the urgency to own their data or money until it's too late. He breaks down why good UX isn't just a design problem but an engineering challenge, how privacy tools gain users when partisan panic swings every four years, and whether beautiful surveillance will always beat ugly freedom. The stakes: if self-custody tools remain hard to use, centralized alternatives win by default. But DeLorme sees a path forward—freedom tech that works its way into daily life without users even knowing it's there, turning ideology into infrastructure one better product at a time.

About the Guest

Stephen DeLorme is UX/UI Leader at Voltage, where he works on Bitcoin infrastructure and Lightning Network products. He co-founded ATL BitLab, Atlanta's Bitcoin hackerspace that hosts weekly meetups and developer events. Previously, he received a Spiral grant to contribute Lightning Network UX best practices to the Bitcoin Design Guide. He's also working on the Bitcoin Builder Kit, an open-source component library at Voltage designed to make Bitcoin UX easier for developers and consumable by AI systems. Before focusing on Bitcoin, DeLorme worked as a graphic designer and web developer, bringing a rare combination of design thinking and technical implementation to freedom tech products.

Key Quotes

“I don't think it has to involve friction. There's this kind of idea that as something becomes more accessible, when you find something early on, you like it more because you had to work hard to find it. I don't like that kind of hipster mentality of just because something is more accessible it's no longer good.” — Stephen DeLorme

“Good user experience is not just a design problem. Some UX problems have design solutions and some have engineering solutions. Sometimes it's just about working until we have the optimal engineering solution to make this stuff easier to use.” — Stephen DeLorme

“Privacy doesn't need to be a partisan idea. You're always at risk of having your privacy breached. But every four years as the pendulum swings, we get a new crop of people interested in privacy tech.” — Stephen DeLorme

Key Takeaways

UX is both a design and engineering problem: Most Bitcoin products fail not because the interface is ugly but because the underlying engineering makes simple tasks complicated. Better UX often requires better protocols, not just prettier buttons.
Freedom tech carries structural disadvantages: Self-custody solutions are harder to build, take longer to develop, and require users to learn new mental models. This creates a persistent advantage for centralized alternatives that abstract away complexity at the cost of control.
Privacy adoption follows partisan cycles: Privacy tools see adoption spikes every four years when political power shifts and each side fears surveillance by the other. This creates opportunities to onboard users who stay for the technology even when their partisan panic subsides.
Beautiful surveillance may win by default: If freedom tech remains clunky while centralized alternatives stay frictionless, most users will choose convenience over sovereignty—not because they don't value freedom, but because the cost of claiming it feels too high.

Timestamps

[00:31] Square's Bitcoin launch and the custody versus UX tradeoff

[02:40] Stephen's background: from graphic design to Bitcoin product design

[05:36] Does self-sovereignty require friction, or is that hipster gatekeeping?

[08:03] Learning software deeply versus making everything easy to use

[11:47] Why most people don't need freedom tech until it's too late

[16:22] Freedom tech's inherent engineering disadvantages

[21:15] The manual problem: when learning curves actually helped users

[27:08] Merchant adoption versus user sovereignty in Bitcoin payments

[35:42] Why governments resisted Bitcoin but not the Lightning Network

[41:28] Intention theft: when free products extract value you don't see

[48:19] Privacy as a cyclical adoption driver tied to partisan politics

[54:37] Building Trojan horses: freedom tech that wins by being useful first

[1:00:10] What if most people prefer beautiful surveillance over ugly freedom?

Resources & Links

Guest

X: https://twitter.com/StephenDeLorme
Nostr: npub1nxy56ame2gfnfj6fjylzxwq7r94phvgwt037mmvwr60qsqlaseksswlnxl
Personal Site: https://d.elor.me
Voltage: https://www.voltage.cloud
ATL BitLab: https://atlbitlab.com
Bitcoin Design Community: https://bitcoin.design

Mentioned in Episode

Square Bitcoin Payments Launch: Jack Dorsey announcement
Bitcoin Builder Kit: Open source component library at Voltage (in development)
Twelve Cash: Simple username for Bitcoin payment info at twelve.cash

Podcast

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E10 Dan Gould – Turning privacy into Bitcoin's economic edge

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 13:00:25 GMT

“Bitcoin exists to remove intermediaries from the movement of money online. Without privacy, if someone can see how money is moving, they don't like someone you paid, they can discriminate based on that.” — Dan Gould

Dan Gould builds PayJoin, the privacy protocol that breaks Bitcoin surveillance while cutting transaction fees up to 25%. Satoshi flagged Bitcoin's privacy problem in the white paper—PayJoin solves it without mixing, turning surveillance assumptions into dead ends. When privacy becomes an economic benefit rather than a cost, adoption follows.

Episode Summary

Dan Gould reveals how PayJoin breaks the core assumption that chain surveillance companies use to track Bitcoin users across the network. By allowing both sender and receiver to contribute inputs to a transaction, PayJoin shatters the multi-input heuristic—the dragnet surveillance tool that assumes all inputs come from the same person. This isn't just privacy theater: PayJoin delivers up to 25% fee savings while protecting financial activity from arbitrary discrimination. Gould explains why Bitcoin's Fourth Amendment moment hasn't arrived yet, how interactive batching supercharges both privacy and efficiency, and why merchant adoption creates network-wide privacy improvements even for users who aren't running PayJoin. The protocol requires no trust in third parties, no heavy dependencies like Tor, and works asynchronously so participants don't need to be online simultaneously. With integrations rolling out across wallets and exchanges, PayJoin shifts privacy from an expensive add-on to a default cost reduction. Privacy, cost savings, censorship resistance—or you can keep broadcasting your transaction history to chain surveillance firms.

About the Guest

Dan Gould is maintainer of PayJoin Dev Kit, a privacy-focused Bitcoin development toolkit supported by OpenSats and Spiral. He launched PayJoin Foundation with eight independent contributors and a volunteer board to eliminate the server requirement that blocked widespread adoption of privacy-preserving Bitcoin transactions. Gould's work on serverless PayJoin (BIP 77) enables asynchronous transaction coordination through encrypted messages, removing the barrier that prevented mobile wallets and merchants from implementing the protocol. His approach treats privacy as infrastructure rather than luxury—breaking surveillance heuristics while reducing fees makes adoption inevitable rather than aspirational.

Social Links:

Key Quotes

“Bitcoin exists to remove intermediaries from the movement of money online. Without privacy, if someone can see how money is moving, they don't like someone you paid, they can discriminate based on that.” — Dan Gould
“Satoshi said all the inputs necessarily come from the same person. That assumption—the multi-input heuristic—is used to dragnet surveil everyone on Bitcoin. PayJoin is the simplest way to break that privacy problem.” — Dan Gould
“Where else do you get to increase or improve privacy and pay less for it? Anytime you're using a custodian, assuming you trust that custodian completely with your privacy, you are getting fee scaling benefits. But the problem is you have to trust that custodian.” — Dan Gould

Key Takeaways

Surveillance companies exploit the multi-input heuristic: Chain analysis firms assume all inputs in a Bitcoin transaction come from the same person—PayJoin breaks this assumption by letting sender and receiver both contribute inputs, rendering surveillance attempts unreliable across the entire network.
Privacy delivers economic benefit, not cost: PayJoin reduces transaction fees up to 25% through interactive batching and cross-input signature aggregation while simultaneously protecting financial activity—making privacy adoption a cost-saving measure rather than an expensive trade-off.
Asynchronous coordination eliminates server requirements: Serverless PayJoin uses encrypted mailbox messages allowing participants to transact without being online simultaneously, removing the infrastructure barrier that prevented merchant and mobile wallet adoption.
Network-wide privacy improves even for non-users: When PayJoin transactions look identical to standard transactions, surveillance firms can't safely apply their heuristics—meaning increased adoption creates privacy improvements for all Bitcoin users regardless of individual PayJoin use.

Timestamps

[00:00] Why PayJoin works like HTTPS—making surveillance unreliable across the network

[02:11] PayJoin Foundation launch: Eight contributors building privacy infrastructure

[04:30] How exchanges batch withdrawals to reduce fees without sacrificing privacy

[08:32] Bitcoin's Fourth Amendment gap—why digital cash has less protection than physical

[14:42] Breaking the multi-input heuristic that enables dragnet Bitcoin surveillance

[20:15] Interactive batching supercharges Bitcoin transactions with privacy and cost savings

[27:45] Why merchants get fee benefits while improving customer privacy

[35:20] Cross-input signature aggregation delivers 25% fee reduction with privacy

[42:18] Serverless PayJoin removes infrastructure barriers through encrypted mailboxes

[48:30] Lightning integration: PayJoin for channel opening and splicing

[52:26] Essential privacy hygiene for self-custody Bitcoin users

[54:27] How developers integrate PayJoin into wallets and e-commerce platforms

[56:17] Six-month roadmap: Production integrations and multi-party PayJoin advances

Resources & Links

Projects & Organizations:

PayJoin.org - Protocol documentation and education
PayJoin Dev Kit - Developer toolkit with Rust, Python, Kotlin, Swift, and WebAssembly bindings
PayJoin Foundation - Nonprofit coordinating development and adoption
OpenSats - Funding source for PayJoin development
Spiral - Additional development funding

Referenced Technologies:

BIP 77 (Async PayJoin) - Serverless payjoin specification
BIP 78 - Original payjoin protocol
HPKE (Hybrid Public Key Encryption) - Encryption without Tor dependencies
Cross-Input Signature Aggregation - Fee reduction through signature compression

Mentioned Organizations & Projects:

BTCPay Server - Early PayJoin implementation
Bull Bitcoin - First mobile wallet with integrated PayJoin send/receive
Cake Wallet - Recent PayJoin V2 integration
Liana - Wallet with time-locked recovery exploring PayJoin integration
Bolts Exchange - Integration proof of concept from MIT Bitcoin Expo

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E09 Tim Bouma — Digital ID architect builds the escape route

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:00:25 GMT

“You cannot have trust without some form of governance. And governance is basically rules.” Tim Bouma has spent two decades inside government building Canada's digital identity framework. He's also building on Bitcoin. This is the conversation about what he's learned straddling both worlds, why centralized architecture creates problems that better policy can't fix, and why the future isn't about choosing between government systems and freedom tech—it's about understanding what each reveals about trust itself.

Episode Summary

Tim Bouma dissects the architecture of institutional trust from a unique vantage point: architecting Canada's Pan-Canadian Trust Framework while building Safebox, a Nostr-based wallet designed so no single entity can shut it down. Currently on interchange assignment from Treasury Board Secretariat to Canada's Digital Governance Council, Bouma inhabits both worlds simultaneously—developing government standards for digital identity while experimenting with permissionless protocols. The conversation reveals why this isn't contradiction but synthesis: every trust framework embeds assumptions about who verifies, who controls rules, and who bears costs. Traditional frameworks optimize for institutional coordination across jurisdictions; Bitcoin optimizes for permissionless participation. Bouma argues the choice isn't technical but political, and that understanding centralized systems deeply is prerequisite to building alternatives that actually work. His work demonstrates that simplicity isn't rejection of complexity—it's what emerges after you've wrestled with every edge case bureaucracy creates.

About the Guest

Tim Bouma is Special Advisor to Canada's Digital Governance Council, currently on interchange assignment from his role at Treasury Board Secretariat where he spent over a decade developing federal identity management policy. He was a key architect of the Pan-Canadian Trust Framework, working across federal, provincial, and territorial governments to create interoperable digital identity standards. For years, Bouma has maintained parallel work in both realms: developing government trust frameworks while simultaneously building on Bitcoin, Nostr, and peer-to-peer protocols. He's currently building Safebox, a wallet architecture designed so no single entity can shut it down, applying first-principles engineering to explore how cryptographic systems can provide trust without institutional intermediaries.

Key Quotes

“You cannot have trust without some form of governance. And governance is basically rules. And if you look at the etymology of the word governance, it means to steer.” — Tim Bouma

“Bitcoin is the simplest trust framework. It's just proof of work, signatures, and clear incentives. Everything else is somebody's opinion about how trust should work.” — Tim Bouma

“When you build identity systems for governments, you're building surveillance infrastructure whether you intend to or not. The question is who controls it and what constraints exist on its use.” — Tim Bouma

Key Takeaways

Trust frameworks are governance mechanisms: Every trust system embeds rules about who can participate, who verifies claims, and who resolves disputes. The Pan-Canadian Trust Framework demonstrates how collaborative governance across jurisdictions creates complexity that ultimately serves institutional coordination needs over individual sovereignty—the more parties involved in framework design, the more compromise and overhead required to maintain consensus.
Complexity preserves power: Legacy identity systems remain complex because simplification would expose how much control intermediaries extract. Government digital identity programs optimize for institutional efficiency (reducing fraud, streamlining service delivery) rather than individual autonomy—the business case always prioritizes the institution's needs, not the citizen's sovereignty.
Bitcoin replaces trust frameworks with proof systems: Rather than building elaborate governance to determine trustworthiness, Bitcoin uses cryptographic proof and economic incentives. This reduces the need for human judgment and institutional oversight, but doesn't eliminate governance—it shifts it to protocol rules and miner incentives that are transparent and auditable by anyone.
Self-sovereign identity still requires trust registries: Decentralized identity solutions promise individual control but require someone to maintain lists of valid issuers, establish credential schemas, and resolve disputes. Moving from centralized databases to distributed ledgers doesn't solve the fundamental question: who decides what's true?

Timestamps

[02:15] Why Tim spent a decade building government identity frameworks and what he learned about institutional trust

[08:42] The Pan-Canadian Trust Framework: collaborative governance as trust infrastructure across federal, provincial, and territorial jurisdictions

[14:20] How digital identity programs become surveillance systems regardless of privacy-preserving design principles

[19:55] Self-sovereign identity versus state-issued identity: moving governance rather than eliminating it

[26:33] Why complexity in trust frameworks serves institutional coordination needs over individual sovereignty

[32:10] Trust registries as the unavoidable bottleneck in decentralized identity systems—someone must maintain valid issuer lists

[38:45] Bitcoin as the simplest trust framework: proof of work, signatures, and economic incentives replace governance committees

[44:18] The business case for digital identity always optimizes for institutions, not individuals—examining who benefits from efficiency gains

[49:50] Why Bouma left framework architecture for Bitcoin: recognizing that the best framework has the fewest assumptions

[54:25] Nostr and peer-to-peer protocols as alternatives to identity systems—reputation without registration

[58:30] The future of trust isn't better frameworks, it's simpler protocols with clearer incentives

Resources & Links

Tim Bouma:

X: @trbouma
LinkedIn: Tim Bouma
Medium: Tim Bouma
Nostr: primal.net/trbouma

Mentioned in Episode:

Pan-Canadian Trust Framework Overview - Tim's foundational article
Digital Governance Council - Canada's digital governance standards body
Canada: Enabling Self-Sovereign Identity - Tim's article on SSI
Trust over IP Foundation - Architecture for Internet-scale digital trust
Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat - Federal management agency

Podcast:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

S02E08 Trey Sellers – Power Without Permission

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 11:58:28 GMT

"If you go into a local community bank and ask for $50,000 in cash, you're going to get a lot of questions—and very likely they're going to say, 'Come back in a week, we need to order that.' The cash doesn't exist." Former Goldman Sachs risk manager Trey Sellers spent 15 years inside the machine before realizing the wealth you think you control is just a ledger entry someone else manages.

Episode Summary

Trust is breaking where it matters most: at your bank. Trey Sellers ran risk models at Truist and Goldman Sachs, managing billions in a system built on permission structures most people never question. Then Bitcoin showed him the alternative—wealth you actually own, not just exposure to. This conversation cuts through the why: institutions hold leverage through licensure and ledger control, creating money when they issue loans while your "savings" evaporates at 7% annually through inflation. Bitcoin inverts this—cryptographic ownership that requires no permission, no institution, no government blessing. Sellers walks through the Silicon Valley Bank collapse as a case study in why sovereignty matters, explaining how business owners couldn't make payroll because their cash was trapped in an insolvent bank. The path forward isn't abandoning the system overnight—it's understanding the power shift when money becomes a bearer asset you control. For executives and founders, this is strategic: Bitcoin on your balance sheet isn't speculation, it's a hedge against the trust failures already playing out in traditional finance.

About the Guest

Trey Sellers is Vice President of Sales at Unchained and author of FireBTC, a newsletter on financial independence through Bitcoin. He spent 15 years in traditional finance at Goldman Sachs and Truist (formerly BB&T), running risk models and managing institutional portfolios. After achieving financial independence in five years, he left Wall Street to focus exclusively on Bitcoin. Sellers writes weekly on how Bitcoin enables true financial sovereignty beyond traditional FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) frameworks. He lives with his wife and two daughters, applying low time preference principles to family wealth building.

Key Quotes

"When you take out a mortgage, there is new money that is created. It will be extinguished over time, but for a 30-year mortgage, that's 30 years of new money in the economy. You can't do that as an individual—but as a bank, you have special licensure from the state that allows you to just conjure up new money." — Trey Sellers

"What does it mean to achieve financial independence if you don't have sovereignty over the money you've saved going forward into retirement? The political environment is really weird right now, and it would make a lot of sense to at least have a little bit of a hedge there." — Trey Sellers

"Bitcoin is so much more real than the dollars you see in your bank account. Sure, you can pull out a $20 bill, but it actually just represents a spot on some amorphous ledger. When you're holding Bitcoin with private keys, it's digital but physical in the way you actually interact with it." — Trey Sellers

"If you are holding your own keys and using a financial advisor, they've got to actively ask you for their fee. It's a push, not a pull—and that keeps them in check because they have to be very nice to you and treat you well." — Trey Sellers

"Number go up technology is the number one recruiter for Bitcoin. That has always been the case. And I think that's perfectly fine—people are focused on Bitcoin for the narrow purpose of making more money. But when you take control of your personal finances and adopt Bitcoin, you take that power back." — Trey Sellers

Key Takeaways

Fractional reserve is a myth in modern banking: With unlimited Fed backstops, banks operate with infinite reserves created through printing. Bitcoin can't be conjured—scarcity creates real accountability and forces institutions to prove solvency, not promise it.
Your "cash balance" is trapped during crises: Silicon Valley Bank proved business owners couldn't access deposits to make payroll when regulators shut down the bank over a weekend. Holding Bitcoin with private keys means treasury you control 24/7, eliminating single-point-of-failure risk in banking relationships.
Information asymmetry disappears with self-custody: Traditional finance obscures fees through expense ratios and advisor arrangements that pull from your accounts. Bitcoin forces push transactions—you must actively send fees, making costs explicit and shifting negotiating leverage back to you.
Corporate treasuries are melting ice cubes: A $500 million cash balance loses 7% purchasing power annually through M2 expansion—meaning it halves in value over 10 years. Allocating even a portion to Bitcoin offsets erosion while maintaining liquidity, turning retained earnings into competitive advantage rather than shareholder value destruction.

Timestamps

[04:38] Why traditional banking is a permission structure—and what happens when you can't access your own money [07:37] The ledger illusion: How fiat currency is less real than Bitcoin despite being "tangible" [11:13] Fractional reserve banking is dead—banks now operate with infinite reserves through Fed intervention [14:28] How banks create new money through loans: The special licensure that gives institutions monetary superpowers [18:37] Why holding a Bitcoin ETF isn't sovereignty—and what financial independence actually requires [22:16] Information asymmetry and fee extraction: How custody models hide what you're really paying [28:11] Mathematical certainty vs. institutional reputation—when cryptography beats brand credibility [35:05] Silicon Valley Bank collapse decoded: Interest rate risk, balance sheet mismanagement, and payroll crises [38:46] Bitcoin treasury strategies demystified—why buying corporate shares to own Bitcoin usually underperforms [44:00] The $500 million melting ice cube: How S&P 500 companies destroy shareholder value by holding cash [47:38] From Wall Street to sovereignty: Trey's five-year path to financial independence through Bitcoin [56:14] Raising kids in a Bitcoin world—teaching autonomy when institutions demand compliance

Resources & Links

Guest Links:

Newsletter: FireBTC
X: @TreyBSellers
Company: Unchained

Episode Links:

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co
Show website: trustrevolution.co
Music: More Ghost Than Man

Subscribe to Trust Revolution at podcast.trustrevolution.co for weekly conversations on what's breaking trust, what's replacing it, and how to win through the transition.

S02E07 Rob Brinded – Can you trust your mind?

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 12:00:25 GMT

What if the mind you trust is running a four-year-old's survival code?

Rob Brinded, author of Glitch: The Hidden Code Running Your Life (And How to Debug It), joins Shawn to reveal how childhood programming creates unconscious “hamster wheels” that determine who we trust, why we repeat patterns of betrayal, and how intelligent people make devastating choices. This conversation maps the five binary programs installed in early childhood that run our lives—left-siders seeking value through people-pleasing, right-siders compulsively achieving to avoid disappointment, both trapped in wheels that inevitably flip.

Rob unpacks Bitcoin as collective consciousness technology that exposes our programming, the critical role of mineral restoration in clear judgment, and the path to “admin mode”—observing your patterns without judgment until they dissolve.

Guest Background

Rob Brinded is a mind coach and author of Glitch: The Hidden Code Running Your Life (And How to Debug It). Working with elite athletes, founders, and executives, he helps clients identify and dissolve childhood programming that drives self-sabotage, addiction, and misplaced trust. Rob spent years observing behavioral patterns to map the five “hamster wheels” that create our reality. He combines Eastern philosophy, somatic observation, and Bitcoin-inspired thinking to guide clients into “admin mode”: the ability to watch and reprogram their operating systems.

Highlights

The hamster wheel framework: five binary operating systems from childhood—left-siders people-please for value, right-siders compulsively achieve to avoid disappointment, both inevitably flip
Intelligence doesn't protect you: PhDs at the Fed, David Deutsch blocking critics, Nassim Taleb's fragility—all running four-year-old survival scripts, not strategic thinking
Bitcoin as collective consciousness technology: reveals the fiat hamster wheel, forces you to question your own operating system, price triggers fear as opportunity for observation
Mineral restoration urgency: copper deficiency plus iron overload from fortified foods creating hormonal chaos, magnesium burning through under stress, lowest testosterone levels ever recorded
Admin mode practice: observe your reaction to information—that reaction is a program, not you; “everything you don't want to be like your father is within you"

Quotes to Remember

“If someone keeps getting betrayed, it's because their operating system needs that.” — Rob Brinded
“The only thing I can trust about chemtrails is that it triggers my hamster wheel.” — Rob Brinded
“We have the lowest levels of testosterone ever recorded throughout the world. Look at our system—everyone feels completely unable.” — Rob Brinded
“Know the truth. There's no forgiving.” — Rob Brinded
“You cannot trust your mind. It's not intelligent. It's just scripts.” — Rob Brinded (citing David Bohm)

Resources & Links

Glitch: The Hidden Code Running Your Life by Rob Brinded: https://www.glitchthebook.co/shop/
Rob Brinded on X: https://x.com/RobBrinded
Rob Brinded on Nostr: https://primal.net/RobBrinded
The Place to Be / Citadel Garden: https://citadel.garden/
Rob Brinded website: https://robbrinded.com

Subscribe: https://trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

S02E06 – Privacy's last stand

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:28:55 GMT

September 2025 marked a critical turning point in the surveillance economy. Disney paid $10 million for illegally collecting children's data. Google faced $425.7 million in penalties for nearly a decade of smartphone tracking. Microsoft cut off a military unit for using their tools to surveil civilians. While corporations face mounting fines and compliance nightmares, governments worldwide are accelerating digital ID mandates—offering a false choice between corporate surveillance and state control. From cryptographic proofs to peer-to-peer networks, the alternatives exist right now. The question is whether we'll adopt them before the surveillance trap closes.

Key Highlights

The September 2025 Reckoning: Major enforcement actions against Disney ($10M), Google ($425.7M), and others signal the surveillance economy's breaking point
The Digital ID Trap: How governments worldwide are using corporate surveillance failures to justify centralized identity systems
The False Binary: You're being offered corporate surveillance OR government control—but cryptographic alternatives eliminate both
The Compression Effect: Privacy regulations squeeze corporations while governments offer their surveillance infrastructure as "relief"
19 Episodes of Solutions: How every Trust Revolution guest has been showing us privacy-by-design alternatives that actually work
The Personal Playbook: Five concrete actions you can take this week to reduce surveillance exposure and resist digital ID adoption
The Fork in the Road: Why your individual choices in the next 6-12 months will determine whether surveillance infrastructure succeeds

Resources

Privacy-Preserving Communication Tools

Signal - End-to-end encrypted messaging with no metadata collection
SimpleX Chat - Anonymous messaging with no phone number or identifier required
Nostr - Censorship-resistant communication protocol
Tor Browser - Anonymous web browsing

Privacy-Focused Browsers & Search

Brave Browser - Privacy-first browser with built-in tracker blocking
Firefox - Open-source browser with strong privacy extensions
DuckDuckGo - Search engine with no tracking or profiling
Brave Search - Independent search with no user profiling

Financial Privacy & Sovereignty

Bitcoin - Decentralized, permissionless digital money
Lightning Network - Fast, private Bitcoin transactions

Your Action Items This Week

Delete one surveillance app - Replace it with a privacy-respecting alternative
Learn about one privacy-preserving technology - Zero-knowledge proofs, Bitcoin, Nostr, or secure enclaves
Have one conversation about digital IDs - Make someone aware of what's coming
Resist one unnecessary data request - Don't give information websites don't actually need
Subscribe to Trust Revolution - Stay informed as we continue covering alternatives

S02E05 Live from Imagine IF 2025

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 20:20:55 GMT

This week we feature the “Open Communities in the Age of Control” panel, recorded live on September 20th at the Imagine IF conference in Nashville. The discussion dives into the erosion of trust in a digital age dominated by surveillance, opaque algorithms, and centralized platforms.

Trust Revolution host Shawn Yeager joins Matt Odell and Derek Ross to explore how broken incentives turn users into products, with censorship and deep fakes threatening livelihoods and verifiability. They advocate for open, user-controlled communities via protocols like Nostr, emphasizing personal responsibility, parental tools, and creator-owned ecosystems to reclaim digital sovereignty.

Highlights

Shawn diagnoses broken money as the root of exploitative business models and creeping KYC regulations.
Matt reveals how censorship can erase years of online work, pushing for user-controlled algorithms.
Derek highlights deepfakes and the need for verifiable identity in the AI era.
The panel discusses Nostr’s potential to empower individuals, with Shawn recommending Primal as an entry point.
Parental control and kid-safe Nostr apps are proposed to combat radicalization and unhealthy tech use.

Quotes to Remember

Shawn Yeager: “With broken money come broken incentives, and from that flow business models that turn us into the product.”
Matt Odell: “Years of hard work can be taken away because you built your digital life on somebody else’s foundation.”
Derek Ross: “We need easy tools for parents to choose how their kids are interacting with these things.”

Resources and Links

Primal.net - User-friendly Nostr client recommended by Shawn.
Soapbox Tools - Derek Ross’s platform for creator-owned apps.
Imagine IF - A two-day convergence of dreamers and doers

Subscribe at Trust Revolution.

S02E04 Alex Newman – Trust Crisis: Paths to Renewal

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 12:00:27 GMT

Centralized systems—Big Pharma, globalist agendas, government education—are crumbling under their own weight, leaving trust in tatters. Alex Newman, investigative journalist and CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media, joins Shawn to rip the veil off these failures. With 2025 exposés on digital IDs, vaccine mandates, and institutional overreach, Newman reveals how entities like the WEF and UN erode sovereignty. This Trust Revolution episode delivers a raw dissection of power grabs and practical, decentralized strategies to reclaim control, urging listeners to question narratives and act.

Guest Bio

Alex Newman is an award-winning journalist, author, and CEO of Liberty Sentinel Media. With a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Florida and global experience, he’s written bestsellers like Indoctrinating Our Children to Death and Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes. Newman exposes centralized power undermining sovereignty, advocating self-reliant, privacy-first solutions. His 2025 work, including The Sentinel Report and X posts, tackles digital IDs and Big Pharma corruption.

Highlights

Big Pharma’s Erosion of Confidence: Newman unpacks vaccine mandate fallout, drawing from his 2025 Dr. Robert Malone interview, and suggests decentralized health solutions.
Digital IDs as Control Tools: UK proposals tied to migration expose surveillance risks; Newman offers privacy-first countermeasures (X, Sep 9, 2025).
Education’s Centralized Overreach: Policies tying funding to curricula alienate families; community-driven learning is a path forward.
Whistleblowers Driving Change: Dr. Kirk Moore’s case and Trump’s Warp Speed reflections show how exposure sparks critical thinking (Rumble, Sep 2025).
Individual Empowerment: Newman shares steps to navigate globalist agendas with autonomy and skepticism, avoiding institutional traps.

Actionable Takeaways

Scrutinize Dependencies: Identify reliance on centralized systems (healthcare, education) and explore alternatives.
Prioritize Privacy Tools: Adopt secure platforms to protect data from surveillance, like digital IDs.
Build Local Networks: Create community-based systems for learning and resource sharing to reduce institutional control.
Question Narratives: Use evidence-based skepticism to evaluate institutional claims and maintain autonomy.

Books:

Indoctrinating Our Children to Death (2024).
Deep State: The Invisible Government Behind the Scenes (2018).

Connect

Guest: Liberty Sentinel Media | @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU | The Sentinel Report
Host: shawnyeager.com | @shawn
Subscribe: trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

S02E03 Jeffrey Tucker – Breaking the spell of consensus

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 12:00:27 GMT

Jeffrey Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute and Austrian economics advocate, joins Shawn to dissect the COVID-19 response's devastating impact on institutional trust and explore paths to personal sovereignty. This conversation unveils how the pandemic revealed the “total state” pervading all aspects of society, why libertarian institutions failed during the crisis, and how Austrian economics principles point toward reclaiming individual freedom through timeless values and critical thinking.

Guest Background

Jeffrey Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, established in 2021 as a response to COVID-19 policies. He's authored numerous books, including his latest, Spirits of America: On the Semiquincentennial, inspired by Eric Sloan's The Spirit of '76. A prolific writer with 1,000+ articles, Tucker has been a leading voice against pandemic restrictions and institutional overreach. His work spans economics, technology, and individual liberty, with a focus on practical philosophy for modern life.

Highlights

Tucker's 2005 warnings about pandemic planning and his isolation as a lone voice against lockdowns
How China scripted the global lockdown response and Western institutions' compliance
Austrian economics explains how negative interest rates created the bloated managerial class
The “total state” revelation: regulatory capture extending throughout corporations, media, and academia
Brownstone Institute's mission to “outwit their experts” with intellectual accountability
Personal sovereignty through reclaiming time, finding joy in routine, and mastering your domain

Quotes to Remember

“I was outraged when I saw what was happening. I had been writing about pandemic planning issues since about 2005 because I saw that there was a sector within government that imagined that the way to deal with infectious disease was by nationalizing everything.”
“We experienced negative interest rates for two decades. And you know from Austrian production theory that under those conditions, what you get is a wildly blown up, overblown capital goods sector that's living off leverage.”
“We need to reclaim our freedom by first reclaiming our time and the use of our time, the use of our personal space, and reclaiming our brains from those people who have stolen them from us.”

Resources & Links

Spirits of America by Jeffrey Tucker: https://www.amazon.com/Spirits-America-Semiquincentennial-Jeffrey-Tucker/dp/1630693014/
Brownstone Institute: https://brownstone.org/
The Great Barrington Declaration: https://gbdeclaration.org/
Jeffrey Tucker's articles at Epoch Times: https://www.theepochtimes.com/author-jeffrey-tucker
Austrian Economics Center: https://www.austriancenter.com/
Jeffrey Tucker on Twitter/X: @jeffreyatucker

Subscribe: https://trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

S02E02 Mathias Buus – The future is peer-to-peer

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 12:00:27 GMT

In This Episode

Shawn interviews Mathias Buus, CEO of Holepunch, about revolutionizing the internet with peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies like Pear Runtime, Hypercore, and Keet. Mathias shares his journey from math student to open-source powerhouse with over 1,000 NPM modules, driven by empowering individuals. They discuss centralized platforms’ flaws, Keet’s open-source controversy, and how businesses can adopt P2P for a trustless future.

Guest Bio

Mathias Buus, Holepunch’s CEO, is a Copenhagen-based JavaScript wizard who’s published over 1,000 NPM modules with billions of downloads. Creator of Pear Runtime, Hypercore, and Keet, he organized the 2025 P2P Summit to rally developers against Big Tech’s grip. His mission: empower individuals with trustless, decentralized systems.

Highlights

Mathias’s background: From university math’s humbling lessons to prolific open-source contributions, emphasizing individual empowerment through code.
Origins of Holepunch: Inspired by BitTorrent’s resilience, Mathias generalized P2P for any data, removing infrastructure barriers for app building.
Centralization flaws: P2P targets data control, censorship, and erosion of sovereignty by platforms like Meta, Google, and X.
Keet controversy: Partial open-sourcing raises verifiability concerns; Mathias defends modular approach but acknowledges community demands.
Future vision: A world of borderless, sovereign communication via owned devices; businesses should deprogram centralization and experiment with P2P.
Practical steps: Start with hybrid models, join Keet communities for collaboration, and focus on sustainable decentralized business models.

Quotes to Remember

“I'm very driven by the power of the individual… What can I do as a person myself to make an impact on my surroundings?” – Mathias Buus
“How do you stop a population that has financial and communication independence?” – Mathias Buus on P2P sovereignty
“You need to learn how to deprogram… Start thinking these crazy things like, what if we just didn't have servers?” – Mathias Buus on adopting P2P

Resources & Links

Holepunch Official Website -https://company.holepunch.to - Overview of P2P technologies and company mission.
Keet App Download - https://keet.io - Get the P2P chat app and explore its communities.
P2P Summit 2025 Recap - https://company.holepunch.to/summit-2025 - Insights from Mathias’s developer event.
Mathias Buus’s GitHub Profile - https://github.com/mafintosh - View his extensive open-source contributions.
Mathias Buus’s X Profile - https://x.com/mafintosh - Follow for updates on P2P development.

S02E01 Nicholas Anthony – CBDCs and defying digital control

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 12:00:27 GMT

Shawn Yeager kicks off Season 2 of Trust Revolution with Nick Anthony, policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and fellow at the Human Rights Foundation, leading their CBDC Tracker. They dive into the escalating risks of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which supercharge government surveillance beyond laws like the Bank Secrecy Act. Nick, author of Digital Currency or Digital Control, traces the 2019 CBDC surge to Facebook’s Libra and flags authoritarian regimes as frontrunners. Learn why financial privacy hangs by a thread and how Bitcoin could be the lifeline.

Guest

Nick Anthony serves as a policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and a fellow at the Human Rights Foundation, where he leads the global CBDC Tracker. He monitors the implications of central bank digital currencies across 139 jurisdictions. As the author of Digital Currency or Digital Control: Decoding Central Bank Digital Currency and the Future of Money, he focuses on dissecting the threats posed by centralized financial systems, advocating for decentralized alternatives like Bitcoin to protect individual privacy and freedom.

Highlights

Season 2 & Fountain.fm Launch (00:00): Shawn unveils Season 2, shifting to Fountain.fm for independent, ad-free distribution. Support via Bitcoin or fiat at trustrevolution.co.
Nick’s Intro via Nostr (01:31): Shawn welcomes Nick, connected via Nostr, spotlighting his Cato role, CBDC Tracker, and book Digital Currency or Digital Control.
Cato’s 2014 Mission (03:27): Nick details the Center’s start to challenge central banking post-2008, exploring Bitcoin and fintech alternatives.
Public’s Financial Woes (08:51): Nick highlights confusion over inflation and government chaos, sparking CBDC curiosity.
Authoritarian Edge (14:36): Nick reveals seven of ten CBDC nations are autocracies, using them for control.

Quotes to Remember

“Having conversations about [CBDCs] is so important… if [people] don’t know, then it’s just going to happen without our say.” – Nick Anthony
“I want people to use alternatives because they’re better, because they’re running to them, not because they’re running away from something.” – Nick Anthony
“The state is objecting to this… planting in the ground that the state is protesting.” – Nick Anthony
“Activity is accelerating, but interest is waning… the allure across the world is fading.” – Nick Anthony

Resources & Links

Nick Anthony’s book: Digital Currency or Digital Control
Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives: cato.org/centers/cmfa
Human Rights Foundation CBDC Tracker: hrf.org/cbdc-tracker
Nick Anthony on X: @Nick-C-Anthony
Nick Anthony on Nostr

Subscribe at trustrevolution.co.

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

S01E13 – Reflecting on Trust Revolution: Season 1 recap

Thu, 10 Jul 2025 12:00:00 GMT

In this solo episode, Shawn reflects on the first 12 episodes of Trust Revolution, expressing gratitude to listeners and sharing insights gained from conversations with various builders, thinkers, and leaders. The podcast aims to explore the erosion of trust in traditional institutions and the potential of decentralization and technology, such as Bitcoin, to restore personal sovereignty. Shawn discusses the importance of reaching those curious about alternative systems and highlights key themes like the diminishing trust in centralized entities and the promise of decentralized solutions.

Throughout the season, Shawn engaged with a diverse group of guests, including futurists, technologists, and policy advisors, to discuss topics ranging from private AI and alternative app stores to the implications of AI on society. He emphasizes the need for citizen action and transparency to challenge existing power structures and the role of technology in reshaping business and governance.

As the podcast moves forward, we'll focus on conversations with builders and advocates who are leading the way in creating change and empowering individuals to reclaim control over their trust and privacy.

Subscribe at podcast.trustrevolution.co.

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

S01E12 OpnState ‒ Global financial control: AML’s hidden cost

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 12:00:00 GMT

OpnState, a pseudonymous civil servant and former corporate banker, joins Shawn to expose the hidden mechanisms of global financial standards and their impact on trust and sovereignty. From his role drafting anti-money laundering (AML) legislation, OpnState reveals how the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) enforces KYC and AML rules, centralizing power and eroding individual rights. He discusses the challenges of reforming a surveillance-heavy system, the power of citizen action through Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, and the hope offered by cypherpunk innovations like Bitcoin. Recorded June 16, 2025, amid growing global tensions, this episode examines why transparency matters, what’s at stake in 2025, and how individuals can reclaim agency in a trust-minimized future.

Background

OpnState is a pseudonymous policy and legislation advisor in a jurisdiction with a major financial sector. Formerly a corporate banker managing million-dollar accounts, he grew disillusioned with a financial system rigged to enrich elites. Now, as a civil servant, he’s drafted over a dozen pieces of AML legislation, giving him an insider’s view of the FATF’s global standards. Through podcasts and posts on Nostr, OpnState critiques centralized control while advocating for transparency and decentralized governance. His pseudonym allows him to speak freely about the erosion of sovereignty and the need for citizen engagement.

Highlights

FATF’s Global Control: The Financial Action Task Force sets AML and KYC standards, pressuring countries into compliance through mutual evaluations and gray-listing, undermining national sovereignty.
Erosion of Rights: AML/KYC rules bypass due process, enabling extrajudicial asset freezes and surveillance, a slow erosion of ancestral rights like property and privacy.
Misaligned Incentives: Civil servants prioritize private-sector prospects and perks over public good, necessitating new incentives like GDP-linked bonuses.
Bitcoin’s Disruption: Cypherpunk innovations like Bitcoin challenge centralized finance, though integration into traditional systems risks co-option by FATF’s focus on “unhosted wallets.”
Citizen Power: FOI requests and policy consultation participation can hold governments accountable, with transparency as the key to curbing criminal activity.
Decentralized Governance: OpnState’s paper on decentralized regulatory frameworks, inspired by game theory, and Taiwan’s POLIS platform offer paths to transparent governance.

Quotes to Remember

“The government knows everything about you, and you know so little about them. That’s not democracy—that’s a high probability of tyranny.” — OpnState
“Transparency kills all criminal activity. Cockroaches love to hide from the light.” — OpnState
“Send an FOI request. It’s free, it’s easy, and it scares the bejesus out of civil servants.” — OpnState
“Bitcoin negates the old system by creating something better, not by reforming from within.” — OpnState
“The incentives are all wrong. Civil servants chase private-sector deals, not citizen prosperity.” — OpnState

Resources & Links

OpnState’s on nostr: Follow his insights on global financial standards and sovereignty.
OpnState's "inside the government" thread: chronicling his day-to-day observations as a government regulatory policy analyst.

S01E11 Matt O'Dell ‒ The past, present, and future of freedomtech

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Matt O'dell, Bitcoin OG and freedom tech advocate, joins Shawn to dissect trust in a world of surveillance and centralized control. From Bitcoin’s role as a beacon of financial agency to Signal's strides in secure communication, O'dell unpacks the tools reshaping money, identity, and expression. As co-founder of Bitcoin Park, OpenSats, and Ten31 Ventures, and host of Rabbit Hole Recap and Citadel Dispatch, he shares a decade of insights on building privacy-first businesses and communities. Recorded June 16, 2025, amid global tensions, this episode explores why open protocols matter, what’s thriving in 2025, and how to navigate a trust-minimized future.

Background

Matt O'dell is a veteran Bitcoiner and open-source advocate, driving freedom tech forward. He co-founded Bitcoin Park, OpenSats, a 501c3 funding open-source projects like nostr and Tor, and Ten31, a VC firm backing Bitcoin businesses like Strike and Start9. Hosting Rabbit Hole Recap with Marty Bent and Citadel Dispatch, O'dell educates thousands on Bitcoin and privacy. A former Human Rights Foundation volunteer and Bitcoin Policy Institute board member, he champions self-custody and financial freedom, blending technology, policy, and community to counter surveillance.

Highlights

Bitcoin’s Evolution: From a pre-Mt. Gox Wild West to 2025’s robust self-custody and mobile apps, Bitcoin empowers users, though KYC/AML normalizes surveillance.
Freedom Tech Wins: Signal’s nonprofit model balances privacy and usability, while Tor persists despite vulnerabilities. Both lag Bitcoin’s anti-hegemonic design.
OpenSats Mission: Funds open-source projects transparently, countering corporate capture, with support for Tor and Bitcoin-focused initiatives.
Ten31 Ventures: Backs profitable Bitcoin businesses like Strike (fiat-Bitcoin bridge) and Start9 (self-hosting), balancing short-term gains with long-term freedom.
Nostr’s Promise: Solves identity and social media challenges with permissionless, trust-minimized communication, countering deep fakes and censorship.
Business Models: Buy/sell Bitcoin and collateralized loans dominate, but lean, open-source ventures like Primal and Peach bet on future demand. Tether’s $24B profit underscores fiat arbitrage, yet Bitcoin’s scarcity prevails long-term.

Quotes to Remember

“Bitcoin became this avenue of hope for me. It was a direction that we could actually affect actionable change and have true agency.” – Matt O'dell
“The power of these projects relies on individuals. It’s a movement of people.” – Matt O'dell
“Winning is 5% or higher of the global population using these tools in a freedom-focused way.” – Matt O'dell
“The tools exist for people to take agency. It’s better spent improving the lives of those who seek it than convincing the masses.” – Matt O'dell
“Bitcoin is the opportunity cost. You need to be profitable in Bitcoin terms.” – Matt O'dell

Resources & Links

Human Rights Foundation Financial Freedom Report: hrf.org/financialfreedomreport – Weekly insights on global financial repression and freedom tech’s impact.
Odell’s Resource Page: odell.xyz – Tools, contacts, and guides for Bitcoin and privacy tech.
Rabbit Hole Recap: rhr.tv – Weekly Bitcoin news with Odell and Marty Bent.
Citadel Dispatch: citadeldispatch.com – Ma…

Bitcoin and American statecraft | Stephen Pollock

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Stephen Pollock, SVP of Development at the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), joins Shawn to explore Bitcoin’s growing role in U.S. policy and statecraft. This discussion covers BPI’s mission to educate policymakers, the challenges of Washington’s political landscape, and the push for Bitcoin as a tool for freedom and national interest, including the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Background

Stephen Pollock, Senior Vice President of Development at the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank co-founded by Grant McCarty and David Zell, drives the organization’s operational and advocacy efforts. As BPI’s first hire, he’s been key in building its influence in Washington, DC. With over a decade in political campaigns, public affairs, and FinTech, Pollock has shaped legislation through grassroots strategies and built networks with political and business leaders. A passionate Bitcoiner from Nashville, he bridges Bitcoin’s decentralized ethos with policy, championing self-custody and financial freedom through events like the Bitcoin Policy Summit.

Highlights

BPI’s Mission: Founded to ensure policymakers take Bitcoin seriously, BPI builds credibility through white papers, 30+ expert fellows, and a new DC office, framing Bitcoin as freedom money, not a threat.
Washington Challenges: Bitcoin faces an education gap and political football dynamics in DC. BPI counters with research and hires like Ken Egan (ex-CIA) and Axe Shapiro for advocacy.
Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR): BPI’s advocacy led to an SBR via executive order, needing codification through Senator Lummis’ Bitcoin Act, though stablecoin bills currently compete for attention.
Statecraft Shift: Bitcoin is seen as a statecraft tool, with the CIA’s Deputy Director speaking at BPI’s summit, signaling a subtle shift in perspective.
Bitcoin Conference Milestone: The Vice President’s 2025 speech praised Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and control, with JD Vance as a potential future champion.
Five-Year Vision: BPI seeks to codify self-custody and regulatory clarity via the Bitcoin Act, build bipartisan support, and elevate Bitcoin to a nonpartisan asset like the internet, reducing risks like a 6102-style seizure.

Quotes to Remember

“There's no CEO of Bitcoin… that creates vacuums unless someone steps up.”
“Memorize 12 words, take your life savings anywhere.”
“The worst thing is Bitcoin reaching government with nobody knowing what it is.”
“I don’t need an elected official to be a Bitcoiner, just to take it seriously.”
“Bitcoin is one of the most powerful human rights tools we have.”

Resources & Links

Bitcoin Policy Summit: June 25, 2025, Washington, DC. Features CIA’s Michael Ellis, Hester Pierce, and lawmakers at btcpolicysummit.org.
BPI Website: Explore research and advocacy at btcpolicy.org.

Subscribe at podcast.trustrevolution.co. Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

The Internet’s lost promise and paths to freedom | R.U. Sirius

Wed, 11 Jun 2025 11:39:06 GMT

In this episode, Shawn sits down with a legendary figure from the early days of digital culture, R.U. Sirius, exploring the radical roots and transformative potential of the Internet. Our guest shares insights from his experience with pioneering publications like Mondo 2000, reflecting on the early ideals of user empowerment and decentralization. We delve into the evolution of the Internet from a space of individual freedom to one dominated by corporate interests, discussing the shifts in power dynamics and the impact of commercialization on the digital landscape. With a mix of optimism and caution, this episode offers a thought-provoking look at the past, present, and future of digital culture and individual agency.

About RU Sirius

RU Sirius is a writer, musician, and counterculture pioneer who co-founded Mondo 2000, the 1980s–1990s magazine that shaped cyberpunk and tech optimism. A “left-libertarian” influenced by transhumanists Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson, he’s explored technology’s liberating potential for decades. Based in San Francisco, RU writes for Mindplex.ai on AI and creativity, performs as The Smarter Kings of Delirium, and is co-authoring a Mondo 2000 history with Shira Chess for Strange Attractor Press.

Quotes to Remember

“The original ideal was that everything on the internet can be easily copied and shared… it won’t be controlled and it won’t be monetized.” — RU Sirius
“Competition was going to put more power into the hands of the hosts, the sites, and less into the hands of the participants.” — RU Sirius
“If Mondo 2000 had one message, it was be like Laurie Anderson… use the tools as creatively as is possible.” — RU Sirius
“Leaning into friendship can be a good thing to start doing [in a trolling world].” — RU Sirius

Resources & Links

Mondo 2000 Archives: Explore cyberculture’s roots with digital scans at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/mondo2000magazine
Mindplex.ai Articles: Read RU’s takes on AI and creativity at Mindplex.ai. https://magazine.mindplex.ai/search/R.U. Sirius
Strange Attractor Press: Learn about RU’s forthcoming Mondo 2000 book. https://www.mondo2000.com/freaks-in-the-machine-mondo-2000-in-late-20th-century-tech-culture/
RU Sirius on X: Follow RU for updates on his work and events. https://x.com/2000_mondo

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man: https://moreghostthanman.bandcamp.com/

Trust is the currency of the future | Rishad Tobaccowala

Wed, 04 Jun 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Rishad Tobaccowala, futurist and author of Rethinking Work, joins Shawn to unravel the dynamics of power, talent, and trust in a decentralized, AI-driven future. This conversation exposes the seismic shifts dismantling traditional jobs, the rise of talent over capital, and why trust—rooted in truth and integrity—is the ultimate currency for brands and leaders. From technology’s promise to demographic realities, Rishad delivers a wake-up call for navigating the unbundled world of work.

Background

Rishad Tobaccowala, a global strategist, spearheaded digital transformation at Publicis Groupe for 37 years. Now a speaker, advisor, and author of Rethinking Work and Restoring the Soul of Business, he guides leaders on technology and human values. His Substack, with 30,000+ subscribers including global CxOs, offers sharp insights. Key lessons from his work include decentralizing work, empowering talent over capital, and building trust through integrity in an AI age.

Highlights

Peak Jobs Are Over: By 2030, U.S. jobs could drop by a third due to automation, but work will explode outside traditional roles, driven by a 1.6 fertility rate and technologies like AI and blockchain.
Five Forces Unbundling Work: Societal/demographic shifts, technology (AI, blockchain, XR), marketplaces (Upwork, Etsy), gig work, and COVID’s redefinition of purpose decentralize work.
Trust as Currency: AI becomes table stakes; trust, built on integrity (aligned words, beliefs, actions, and truth), sets brands and leaders apart.
Talent Trumps Capital: Technology empowers individuals to own content and data via platforms like Substack and blockchain, shifting power to “companies of one.”
2027 Ecosystem: A “whales” (e.g., NVIDIA) and “plankton” (small firms) model emerges, with fewer employees and AI-driven strategies.

Quotes to Remember

“We’ve seen peak jobs… by the end of this decade, we will have maybe a third fewer jobs than currently exist.”
“Trust is what somebody earns… integrity is when what you say, what you believe, and what you do are completely aligned. And is it true?”
“Technology is the leverage that allows David to bring down Goliath. Power is moving to talent over capital.”
“The future is already here, but it’s not evenly distributed… Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.” (paraphrasing William Gibson)

Resources & Links

Rethinking Work by Rishad Tobaccowala (HarperCollins): https://www.harpercollins.com/products/rethinking-work-rishad-tobaccowala
Restoring the Soul of Business by Rishad Tobaccowala (HarperCollins): https://www.harpercollins.com/products/restoring-the-soul-of-business-rishad-tobaccowala
Rishad Tobaccowala’s Substack: https://rishad.substack.com
Rishad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishadtobaccowala/
Rishad’s website: https://rishadtobaccowala.com/

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

Revolutionizing the app store | Fran

Wed, 28 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT

In this Trust Revolution episode, Shawn Yeager and Fran, the Buenos Aires-based creator of Zapstore, explore the chokehold of centralized app stores. Fran details how Apple and Google’s control stifles innovation and erodes trust, then unveils Zapstore, a Nostr-powered, decentralized solution with cryptographic security and social trust layers. This 65-minute conversation spans the frustrations of arbitrary curation to the promise of AI-driven “vibe-coded” apps, showing how decentralized systems can reclaim power for users and developers.

About Fran

Fran is a full-stack software engineer with nearly two decades of experience, from Java in the 2000s to modern mobile frameworks. Based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he’s the creator of Zapstore, a decentralized app store launched in May 2024 on the Nostr protocol. Driven by frustration with centralized app stores’ control, Fran’s work empowers users and developers with secure, censorship-resistant software distribution. A participant in the first Sovereign Engineering cohort in Madeira, he’s a vocal advocate for privacy and autonomy, blending technical expertise with a vision for a freer digital ecosystem.

X Profile: @FranOnNostr
Nostr: fran@primal.net
Zapstore: Zapstore

Quotes to Remember

“The biggest problem is we can’t change the curator, and that creates resentment on both sides.” — Fran
“With centralized stores, the filters feel random, like they’re just flexing power.” — Fran
“ZapStore uses Nostr to sign apps, so you know they’re from the developer, not some middleman.” — Fran
“A free market of catalogs means no one can misbehave without losing trust.” — Fran
“In the future, AI will let anyone vibe-code apps, breaking the app store monopoly.” — Fran

Resources & Links

Zapstore Website: Discover Zapstore’s decentralized app store for Android and explore its mission to empower users. Zapstore
Nostr Protocol: Learn about the decentralized protocol behind ZapStore’s censorship-resistant app distribution. nostr.com
Fran’s Blog Post: Read Fran’s detailed analysis of centralized app store flaws and Nostr’s potential to fix app distribution. Zapstore/blog

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

Navigating the unraveling cycle of society | Bronwyn Williams

Wed, 21 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT

In this hard-hitting episode of Trust Revolution, Shawn sits down with Bronwyn Williams, a South African futurist and economist, to dissect the collapse of trust in centralized systems. Bronwyn analyzes how globalization and technology challenge institutional credibility, using South Africa’s governance struggles as a backdrop. She critiques AI’s centralizing risks, questions Bitcoin’s decentralized promise, and discusses ways businesses and individuals can rebuild trust. This conversation unravels the dynamics of power and agency in a low-trust world.

About Bronwyn Williams

Bronwyn Williams is a futurist, economist, and partner at Flux Trends, a leading consultancy focused on strategic foresight and trend analysis. Based in Johannesburg, she brings nearly two decades of experience advising global public and private sector clients on fintech, alternative economic models, and sustainable futures. She is the author of Rescuing Our Republic, a book tackling South Africa’s systemic crises, and co-author of The Future Starts Now (Bloomsbury UK), which explores global trends shaping the future. A sought-after speaker and media commentator on platforms like CNBC Africa and eNCA, she also runs What The Future Now?, unpacking chaos theory and future scenarios.

Quotes to Remember

“Institutions work as long as they give people what they want.” — Bronwyn Williams
“Democracy is governance by the governed, not a menu of services.” — Bronwyn Williams
“Automate away your costs, not your value.” — Bronwyn Williams
“Money is an illusion… Power equals money, not the other way around.” — Bronwyn Williams
“Bitcoin opened Pandora’s box… It accelerated CBDCs.” — Bronwyn Williams

Resources & Links

Book: Rescuing Our Republic by Bronwyn Williams – Analysis of South Africa’s governance challenges.
Book: The Future Starts Now by Bronwyn Williams – Exploring future trends and economic models.
Book: The Human Experience by John Sills – Insights on building trust in business.
Follow Bronwyn on X.
Flux Trends: fluxtrends.com for her trend reports.
Blog: What The Future Now? for chaos theory and future insights.

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

The balance of power is shifting | Yaël Ossowski

Wed, 14 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT

In this episode of Trust Revolution, Shawn welcomes Yaël Ossowski, a consumer advocate and Bitcoin policy expert, for a candid discussion on the shifting balance of power between individuals and institutions.

Yaël shares his global perspective, shaped by living under multiple governments, from Canada to the U.S. to Austria. As Deputy Director of the Consumer Choice Center and a Fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, he unpacks how overreach during the pandemic exposed institutional distrust, why agencies like the CFPB often hinder innovation, and how Bitcoin and decentralized technologies empower individuals to reclaim control. From vaping to stablecoins, they explore how consumer choice and sound money are fueling consumer empowerment.

About Yaël Ossowski

Yaël Ossowski is a consumer advocate, journalist, and Bitcoin policy expert with a unique global lens. Born in Quebec, Canada, raised in the U.S., and now based in Austria, Yaël has experienced firsthand how different governments approach citizen trust. As Deputy Director of the Consumer Choice Center, he champions individual choice in areas like vaping, technology, and finance. A Fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, Yaël advocates for policies that restrain government overreach and enable Bitcoin’s adoption. His work as a journalist and commentator bridges philosophy, policy, and technology to promote freedom and autonomy.

Quotes to Remember

“We’ve seen our institutions much more involved in our lives, much more so than they ever were for our parents or grandparents.” — Yaël Ossowski
“I think we as individuals know exactly what’s best for us, for our families, and for those in our community.” — Yaël Ossowski
“Bitcoin can exist and will be very strong without any government rule. The problem now is not that there are not enough government rules, but that the rules that are on the books are, themselves, restrictive of the technology.” — Yaël Ossowski

Resources & Links

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man

Decoding trust | Dr. David Strayhorn

Wed, 07 May 2025 12:00:00 GMT

In this episode of Trust Revolution, Shawn welcomes Dr. David Strayhorn, a neurologist, electrical engineer, and freedom technologist, for a deep dive into Web of Trust. Recorded at Bitcoin Park in Nashville, David shares his journey from clinical practice to building Brainstorm, a personal Web of Trust relay on Nostr, and GrapeRank, an algorithm reimagining trust curation. Together, they explore how decentralized systems can empower individuals to control their data and trust networks, challenging centralized gatekeepers and reshaping how we find truth in a skeptical world.

Dr. David Strayhorn is a board-certified neurologist specializing in epilepsy, with a background in electrical engineering. A decade-long contributor to freedom technology, he focuses on decentralized systems and Web of Trust protocols. His current project, Brainstorm, is a personal Web of Trust relay on Nostr, while GrapeRank is an extensible algorithm for contextual trust scores. Follow him on Nostr (@wds4@primal.net) or explore his GitHub (github.com/wds4) for insights into Concept Graph and Grapevine.

Quotes to Remember

“Trust doesn’t live in any one place in the brain, just like there’s no single neuron in charge. It’s decentralized, like the systems we’re building.” — Dr. David Strayhorn
“Web of Trust is about letting your community decide what trust means—not developers imposing categories.” — Dr. David Strayhorn
“GrapeRank is PageRank for people: it uses any signal—follows, zaps, mutes—to calculate trust in context, not just importance.” — Dr. David Strayhorn

Resources & Links

David Strayhorn’s GitHub: Dive into Concept Graph and Grapevine (github.com/wds4).
Nostr Protocol: Learn about the platform powering Web of Trust (nostr.com).

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

The rise of peer-to-peer economies | Max Hillebrand

Wed, 30 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT

From working inside the banking system to living fully bankless.

In this episode of Trust Revolution, Shawn welcomes entrepreneur, cypherpunk, and Bitcoin privacy pioneer Max Hillebrand for a powerful conversation about how trust, finance, and community are being rebuilt from the ground up.

Max shares his personal journey from inside the banking system to living fully bankless, his leadership in advancing Bitcoin privacy, and how freedom technologies like Nostr are fueling the rise of decentralized, peer-to-peer economies. Together, they explore the cultural and economic shifts already underway — and what it means for individuals, entrepreneurs, and the future of trust itself.

About Max Hillebrand

Max Hillebrand is an entrepreneur, cypherpunk, and leading advocate for financial privacy and economic freedom. He is a longtime contributor to Wasabi Wallet, where he served as CEO and continues to support the development of Bitcoin privacy technologies. With a background in Austrian economics and a foundation in praxeology, Max’s work bridges philosophy, technology, and entrepreneurship. He is a prominent voice in the Bitcoin community, advising individuals, businesses, and institutions through Sound Money Solutions while helping to build the parallel economies and decentralized networks shaping the future.

Quotes to Remember

"We actually don't need to trust a financial institution like a bank anymore. We can replace that trust with Bitcoin." — Max Hillebrand
"Technology is not everything. Especially when it comes to security technology — it only works if the user resists the attacker." — Max Hillebrand
"The second realm has always existed. It's where people meet and trade without asking permission, simply because they want to help each other." — Max Hillebrand

Resources & Links

Follow Max Hillebrand on Nostr — His main profile and posts.
Sound Money Solutions — Bitcoin and freedom tech consulting by Max.
Wasabi Wallet — Open-source Bitcoin privacy wallet supporting CoinJoin.
The Second Realm: Book on Strategy (PDF Download) — Practical guide to building parallel economies.
Nostr Resources — Learn how Nostr enables decentralized communication.
Human Action by Ludwig von Mises — Foundation for Austrian economics and praxeology.

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

Reshaping privacy with secure enclaves | Marks

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT

Can your private data be as secure as your Bitcoin? In this thought-provoking episode of Trust Revolution, host Shawn Yeager sits down with Marks, co-founder and CEO of OpenSecret and Maple AI, to explore the future of digital trust. Marks unpacks how secure enclaves are reshaping privacy, evolving from the privacy-first Mutiny Wallet to a platform that safeguards user data and shields businesses from costly liabilities. This conversation illuminates a new frontier where AI agents and apps prioritize your security, delivering an encrypted, seamless experience that could redefine how we protect what matters most.

Marks, co-founder and CEO of OpenSecret and Maple AI, is a seasoned mobile app developer and privacy advocate. With a startup background, he’s pioneering secure enclave solutions to safeguard data and rebuild trust in the digital world.

Follow Marks on X or Nostr: Marks@primal.net.
Explore OpenSecret and follow them on X and Nostr: OpenSecret@primal.net.
Try Maple AI and connect on X or Nostr: MapleAI@primal.net.
Learn about secure enclaves at opensecret.cloud.
Check out Mutiny Wallet’s open-source privacy innovations on GitHub.

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

AI, decentralized networks, and political swarms | John Robb

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT

What happens when trust—the glue holding society together—starts to crumble under the weight of AI, decentralized networks, and political swarms? In the premier episode of Trust Revolution, host Shawn Yeager sits down with John Robb, a former Special Ops officer turned tech visionary, to explore this question. With a career spanning the battlefield and Silicon Valley, Robb offers sharp insights into how "red" and "blue" network swarms are reshaping U.S. politics, how AI-driven augmented reality might disconnect us from reality, and how social AIs could spark the next economic revolution. From the fertility crisis to the future of decentralized systems, this conversation unpacks the challenges and opportunities in a world where trust is increasingly fragile.

John Robb is a US Air Force Academy graduate, a former Special Ops officer, and a tech entrepreneur. He founded Gomez and served as CEO of Userland Software, a key player in the development of RSS technology. Robb is also the author of Brave New War and a leading strategist focused on decentralized systems and artificial intelligence.

For more from John Robb, check out these links:

John Robb’s Substack – His current platform for insights on technology, trust, and society.
"Brave New War" on Amazon – Purchase or learn more about his book on modern warfare.
Userland Software and RSS – Background on his role in pioneering RSS.
John Robb’s Wikipedia Page – More details on his career and contributions.

Stay tuned to Trust Revolution for new, weekly episodes diving into trust, technology, and our evolving world.

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https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.

Season 1 Trailer

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 01:00:26 GMT

Trailer for Season 1 of Trust Revolution with Shawn Yeager

Subscribe: https://podcast.trustrevolution.co

Your host: Shawn Yeager

Music in this episode by More Ghost Than Man.