Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell slop
Content farm Christmas that just won't stop
Scrolling through cheer like a dopamine drop
Yeah, Santa's optimized for clicks on top
Snowflakes fall like algorithm tricks
Influencer elves doing brand new kicks
Buy more joy is the corporate fix
A mistletoe kiss with a paywall twist
Oh, what fun it is to see
The plebs lops surf so merrily
Wrapped in bows of irony
A hallmark heart with no battery
Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell slop
Bubbles of nonsense you can't unstop
We deck these halls till we all just drop
A Christmas made from recycled pop
Jingle bells flop in a sleigh ride haze
Masked ennui with a candy cane glaze
We're singing old songs and new cliché ways
Tinsel on truth but the shine decays
Grandma says honey enjoy the night
But I'm doom scrolling by LED lights
It's chestnuts roasting in corporate rights
A festive fight for the cheapest flights
Oh what fun it is to see
The platform surf so merrily
Shaining perfect 1080
Sponsored joy from A to Z
Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell, slop
Buy one spirit, get one free hop
We toast to hope at the Photoshop shop
Marry memes that never quite pop
Ring-a-ling, hear them sing
Tastic angels on a plastic string
If Christmas is a mood, I'm buffering
But the slop still hits like everything
Deck the beat, repeat, repeat
Holiday highs from a peppermint tweet
We chase that cheer like a limited seat
Even our longing sounds offbeat
Oh, what fun it is to be
A sloth-fed choir of irony
Laughing through obscurity
Cause Christmas sold the warranty
Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell flop
A merry mess we can't photoshop
But raise your glass till the algorithms stop
Here's to Christmas in all our slums
Here's to her flops
Welcome back to another episode of Behind the Podcast
Today it is just me, Rod Palmer, and I am speaking to Rob from Bitcoin News.
And, you know, if you haven't listened to Behind the Podcast before,
it's kind of a reference, and I'm sure you will understand this one, Rob.
It's like Inside Baseball.
It's a podcast about podcasters with podcasters,
talking to other podcasters,
in getting into the details inside the podcast industry.
So welcome to have you on.
You're a fellow potential journalist and podcaster.
It's great to have you here.
Thank you very much for having me.
It's a pleasure and ready to divulge some secrets inside baseball,
the industry nitty gritty.
Hell yeah.
So right now, well, actually a little back story.
I don't know, BitcoinNews.com has been around for a few years,
and it's definitely risen a lot in the past, maybe two or three.
But in the early days, there was a conspiracy by Dick Whitman,
ghost of Dick Whitman, who many people have seen on the timeline.
And he thought that you were the Krasistein brothers.
So just to clear things up, are you the third Krasistein brother,
or is that just a totally off-base conspiracy?
I'd be a lot cooler if I was.
I mean, who has the ability to turn a Justin Bieber fan club page
into a political career of being Trump's number one troll
during his first administration, right?
No, we have absolutely nothing to do with the Krasensteins,
but that was hilarious.
Dick Whitman, he's a frequent commenter on our stuff,
usually something like hey this guy talks about crypto don't fucking bring him up at all please
because this is bitcoin only um and but he's i mean bitcoin has its immune system and i feel
like dick webin is a is a part of that you know he's part of the predator uh milieu and they they
have a role to play and i i'm thankful for it because bitcoin wouldn't be the same without him
but no we are not affiliated with the krasnesteins whatsoever no it's interesting though because in
between uh the justin bieber fantages and you know whatever it is that they are now um they
they were bitcoiners and they famously you know were running into problems with the feds with the
law uh in their dealings with bitcoin and i it makes me wonder do you think they're like the
big quarter like Pledger who goes to Dick Whitman
that you just mentioned. If it
came down to it, they would put free to
Krasnestein's in their profile
if they needed a pardon
from President Trump. I don't think he would give it to them though.
Free
Krasnestein's day two. That's
the new slogan right there.
Yeah, I think
if they were
breaking the law in the right way
and they were Bitcoiners, then they'd definitely
be supported by the Dick
Whitman's for sure.
um so you i mean you report the news right and you're at the intersection of this wave of media
we've got right now i call it plug slop uh invasion and farming uh it announcements
everybody's begging for a dennis porter announcement we haven't had one in months
How do you figure out what is newsworthy and what is plot slot?
How do you do that?
Great question.
And it's something that I have to face every single day.
Because there definitely is, I mean, when you see someone who's as credentialed and as respected as a Bitcoin historian, like Pete Rizzo, go down the path that he has the last year.
I mean, there definitely is something to it.
There's an allure there, right?
There's a calling from the plebslop abyss that says,
hey, you're going to get the clicks, the Twitter bucks,
the engagement that your dopamine deprived brain so desperately needs.
If you go all caps, if you say buckle up, if you put a rocket emoji.
um and if you do those things i mean again i'm at first it was sort of annoying to me when we saw
that real big change i think it was this year right i mean i think it was early 2025 that we
saw this sea change in how sort of the bitcoin news world was reported and i mean power to them
it worked for them there's a whole class of of of twitter users that really uh leaned into it hard
and were able to get the impressions that they wanted and needed.
I'm pretty proud of the fact that we did not lean into the all caps, right?
I mean, we use some caps.
Yeah, of course.
But going all caps, if you're not, to use, yeah.
Then, I mean, what are we doing here?
Am I a credentialed journalist?
No, I mean, I studied international relations, right?
I mean, I've always found history and the news and geopolitics very interesting.
And Bitcoin, of course, fits all right into that.
But when you do start getting a certain amount of impressions, there is a sort of a, there's a duty that you have to, I think, I guess the best way to put it is, do you respect your audience or not?
And I think I try to make an effort to respect my audience.
So, I mean, I do like to add in some humor.
Like, I do think some of the things and it's a process, right?
You figure out how to post online and what works and what doesn't.
And I think some of the things work better than others.
The pure slop, all caps, works well, better than trying to do some sort of edgy or nuanced
joke.
Nuance doesn't work, right?
Nuance doesn't work at all.
But I think you got to, if you're going to do this every single day, you got to make sure
that you're doing it because you enjoy it.
It's fun.
And you're actually providing value.
Exactly.
I think it's good to have a decentralized, diverse choice of content and news to consume.
I mean, if you want pure Plexlock, you've got Rizzo, you've got Bitcoin Magazine.
If you want satire, those are available.
But people just want news.
And you know what?
I would say it's like between you, you're kind of like the New York.
I mean you're the new your bitcoin news you're the new york uh uh paper or podcast of record
there we go the podcast of record for news and I would say simply bitcoin is you know the Miami
uh you know podcast of record like I don't know do do we need to we have an LA a Los Angeles
who the wet west coast podcast of record and is there can you maybe we could fill out all the regions honestly yeah um i mean philadelphia that got to be that got to be ragnall recap right
king of philly yes that that that works there um in turn i mean i think i think mccormick is
pretty hollywood i mean he might be bedford but um him and then of course his predecessor danny
knolls daniel's very fashionable he wears high-end t-shirts and he i think i think he's pretty look
conscious but i mean that's the brand right it's the black the white the pink the um nouveau
marketing they know what they're doing everything is very uh polished and i think that i would say
that's the la right there well i like that um is there is there competition or how would you
describe the competitive nature of being a journalist in bitcoin in terms of you know
other markets other cities like we just talked about other you know niches or you know you've
got like your the rage right and they're like covering kyc and privacy stuff like that's
super paranoid tech rag you know not and i don't i don't say that in a uh
negative way uh but you'd ever say right how would you describe it from your perspective doing
you know the news just straight up the news yeah it's uh it's it's a competition but i mean we're
all on the same team, right? And I think that you've got to respect people for what they do,
because at the end of the day, we're all playing the same game. We're all trying to fight the same
fight. And at the end of the day, we are doing it, I think, most of us for the right reasons,
right? We want more people to know about Bitcoin. We want more people to be able to protect themselves
and their purchasing power and hopefully believe in a future that is brighter than what we're
living in today. I think that's the real goal of us Bitcoiner evangelists. But there is competition,
of course. I mean, we all are pretty much fighting for the same limited number of eyeballs of people
that are actually generally interested in this stuff. And especially, I mean, the hard part is
trying to make a business out of this, right? Sponsorships. Bitcoin companies are notoriously
frugal. They don't like to throw the money around. And of course, they can't print a coin out of
in there like these altcoins can, so they can't give you that either. And Bitcoiners will also
call you out the second that you promote anything that is slightly out of bounds in terms of the
Bitcoin ethos. So it makes it difficult to run a business, especially a sponsorship-based one,
an ad-based one. And so you got to find ways outside of the box to try to make it work,
you know, consulting, helping businesses with their marketing, all that kind of stuff.
So when it comes to making money straight off of content, it takes it takes years, right?
You've got to build an audience and you've got to have people believe in you and trust you.
And then you can actually get some companies to start opening their pocketbooks.
But and I think that's sort of where competition might come from.
But at the end of the day, I the only people that annoy me are the ones who I think are
doing it the wrong way.
and I would say it's uh I would say 80% of Bitcoin media is doing it the right way so
I'm not too much of a curmudgeon about all this you know do you guys do you just wish
sailor would say stop you ever sell your Bitcoin because you're right like the Bitcoin industry
the companies right they are frugal they are very uh hyped with their pocketbook uh and it's you
It seems like a culture problem.
And who sets the culture?
It's Saylor.
And we need him to let the pod comp understand it's okay to sell your Bitcoin to other Bitcoiners.
Exactly.
Yeah, dude.
I mean, I want a piece of digital Manhattan each time I open up Riverside, right?
That's my right as a Bitcoin podcaster.
sir. I need a slice of your digital capital, sir. Uh, I don't want you to refine it. I don't want
you to be the ExxonMobil turning that digital capital into a digital cash. I want, I want the
capital of software, right? Like peel me off a piece, send it to me. I'll be, I'll be a happy
Bitcoin boy. Oh yeah. Um, did the Bitcoin news participate in paper Bitcoin summer or the, uh,
the paper bitcoin you know praise so to speak i guess was what was that like
covering you know the uh probably the the coolest summer in bitcoin history
pretty much the coolest thing to ever happen to us uh no i mean it was very interesting to see in
terms of media the amount of people that were sort of able to create a meteoric rise for themselves
literally go from doing Twitter posts to podcast appearances, creating a podcast to being part of
a management team of a publicly traded company. There was a fast track for that this last year.
And I think that is like the definition of people who really, I guess, quote unquote,
want Paper Bitcoin Summer, right? I think from my standpoint, it sells clicks, right? People
really were into it uh all these companies because it's so funny being in the middle of a media
right i mean like 2021 bitcoin itself um elon buying like the whole world's gonna be taken over
uh then smarter web company meta planet so you know uh there's a spanish coffee shop buying bitcoin
uh so i mean it and in the moment it feels like it's that there's a paradigm change right that
there's a phase shift that things are forever going to be different rather than this is just
this is a brief blip of time that is completely ephemeral and things are going to revert very
quickly very harshly and a lot of people are going to have egg on their face so i mean you report on
it of course uh but i don't think that we were ever treasury fan voice right um but uh we've done
some podcasts with uh with treasury company people and whatnot and i i mean they're part of the the
scene they're part of the industry so you got to talk to them um but uh never go full treasury
company never go i mean no that's for sure i yeah i know well i'm 100 nstr zero percent bitcoin
because i want to ride the fastest horse it's like come on oh yeah uh no i'll be the first to
tell you paper bitcoin summer parties are the best parties uh all the hot chicks it's it but
You do have to deal with the paper Bitcoiners, unfortunately, when you're at the paper Bitcoiners parties.
You know, though, you thought I mentioned it.
We talked about it on here all 2025 and then, you know, going back to 2024, the importance of listening to podcasts, starting a podcast and just the podcast in general.
And boy, you know, that thesis was proven correct.
nobody's risen yeah 2025 was the year of the podcaster for the better and worse it end of 2025
now we're we're seeing the the consequences of giving podcasters too much power and control
in society control the fbi control of the media there's very little that isn't influenced directly
or indirectly by podcasters and listening to podcasts.
What do you think, like, how would you grade podcasters this year?
And, you know, is it about having the right podcasters in the positions
and just not having the one, you know, bad podcasters in important positions
or do podcasters need to be more humble?
I mean, what's funny is that a lot of people who are, quote unquote, the powerful and elite want to be podcasters, right?
Because it's a hack.
The fact that you can actually become a habit into somebody's weekly rituals and get an hour of their brain time directly speaking into their eardrums.
I mean, that's power, right?
That's power that's never been had before.
kings of the past would die for that power to speak directly to their thousands of citizens
or subjects for an hour a week and it's it's so bad that i mean chamoff chamoff not only became a
a podcaster but also a newsletter writer right i mean because he just it was too he loves the power
so much that this job entails uh and i think another really telling sign is that the number
two in the FBI, Don Bongino, he said today that he's stepping down to return to the microphone,
right? And it was really funny to see the comments underneath his post announcing his resignation,
saying, one saying, we need you there. The next one saying, we need you on the microphone,
right? So if you're really in this, once you've reached a certain level of power in society,
you really are torn between a frontward facing position in society and being behind the microphone.
it's uh there's two wolves right yeah and honestly something that maybe not enough people think about
is the massive l that the podcast fans of fallen podcasters feel in a moment like this i mean
the ambon gino talked he talked very tough about when he was going into this job right and he got there and he looked like he was like a month in and they had Dan Bongino on a podcast and he looked like he had seen a ghost
And he was like, he was kind of like, he didn't know how to answer.
And he was like, I wasn't ready for this, apparently.
That's what it seemed like.
And now he's stepping down.
He wants to be with his family.
to i think we as podcasters do need to uh like i said be a little bit more humble because
there's just more examples of it justin bachler went on the what is money podcast with uh robert
prelove and uh robert brelove asked him one question which is that you know the question
he asks on every episode was my and justin bachler didn't have any answer for me spent the rest of the
hour trying to figure out how to talk around it we need to have answers so do you think before you
start a podcast you need to have some answers to help to help people point them in the right
direction give them good information or it's like do you go like the what bitcoin did peter mcormack
and you have to ask all your guests for the answers i think i think there are two roads i but
You can either have the answers or you can have the Riz.
If you've got the Riz, if you've got the way to carry a conversation, be aw shucks, poor little dumb me, please tell me the answer.
But still make the other person laugh and have a good time and have the listeners be a part of that enjoyment for that hour.
Then I think you can.
That is a viable option.
You don't need to have the answers, but you need to be able to ask the right questions.
And yeah, have the Riz, man.
You got to have the Riz.
do you um do you have like any problems with the plebs did the plebs ever you know trying to pile
in on your mansions call you a scammer do you ever had run-ins with them i don't know have you
ever seen trailer park boys but i kind of think of the plebs like the bottle kits they just never
know when they're gonna come around and just pelt you with empty uh beer mail beer and wine bottles
but have you ever had a run in with them in your career so far?
Yeah, I mean, Dick Whitman, I think he could classify as a bottle kid,
but he serves his purpose and he's done well and like nothing personal, right?
He's never called me a scammer, but he's definitely says that we platform.
If we say a quote from Scaramucci, then we're quote unquote platforming shit corners.
So we can't be doing that.
one time Plutterdirt did get mad at us for
I mean I post most of the things on Bitcoin News
but I got one other guy who works with me
and he posted a Arkham screenshot
saying that maybe Hal Finney's wife had moved some coins
right and Plutter quote tweeted that
called us a bunch of grifters and pieces of shit for reporting that news
oh i i didn't even have to ask if you've had run-ins of platter everybody's had runs that
run-ins with platter is especially journalist a platter is especially uh a sniper to terms
and you had any other run-ins with him uh has he been a a consistent adversary
not even actually he sort of steers clear of us um in a lot of ways i think one time he actually
did give us a compliment back early on i think this was like 2023 he said that uh these guys
where's their engagement farming whatever but they they sort of do it the right way something to that
uh extent so i mean i i respect that i i took that i actually i felt good when he said that
You know, that was a, that was a nice thing that Clutter said about us.
Um, but yeah, I, uh, oh, and then at one time he wanted to talk, he was looking for people
who could do, uh, like follow some coin.
I think he was trying to track if like Trump had sold that, uh, Cassius coin, right.
That, uh, Bailey had gave him on stage.
And I offered to introduce him to some people who might be able to help him.
He's like, no, I like, no, I don't care.
But yeah, that's, I think, like the extent of that.
That's interesting.
The compliment is funny.
The idea of like the altruistic engagement farmer or something like that, where it's.
It's just a lack of self-awareness of plethora.
He's just, you know, he's their engagement farming like everybody else.
and it's sometimes it seems like like you these type of guys are the only ones who don't get
they don't get it they don't realize that their engagement farming tier like it's if you're on a
marketing platform like if you think about how monetized everything has become and if you really
think about plums lab like how do you describe it it is just those breaking with the uh the the
siren and then like say some just a headline just very very obviously pointed headline where it's
like this post is about making money and this platform is about making money and like all these
ads in the battles of uh between the advertisers and twitter and hey just your very presence at
this point and not just presence but if there's any obvious effort being put into your communication
and your timeline and in the information and the content you're putting out there your engagement
for me like that's that's what it is and he's got more followers he's got you know how many people
in the role have 30 50 000 followers um and it's that's why he's such a he's such a special character
to me he's just totally unselfaware but he's so good at it nonetheless no i i mean i respect it
You know, I, I do.
And what's really funny is how when you're online for six, seven, eight hours a day,
I mean, these, these people do sort of occupy some mental space because you see them all
the time and you see their thoughts and you see their stances.
And so like, when you see that predator profile picture of like that anime guy, I mean, you
like in your mind, I, I first, I thought, what if he's like some six foot four Indiana
that corn-fed Chad who's like just holding down the law and has like really pure morals.
It doesn't tweet like a Chad, I'll tell you that.
And then I saw your guys like AI rendition of him sitting amongst his like Pokemon toys
as a overweight basement dweller and that really just completely threw me for a loop.
I was like, oh my God, I've had this guy all wrong in my head maybe.
And so you just don't know.
You just don't know.
if you if you want to be thrown for another just as crazy wild loop um i got a a message on telegram
the other day from two different people in two different channels one was from uh from loveka
and one was from shinobi and they were both uh a close by platter where he was he was talking about
basically going and copping some new you know fresh sneakers and just the way it read and it
was like oh no we've got flutter all wrong flutter is you know uh one of those weed of black weaves
like the black days you were super nerdy and into anime and like bitcoin and shit and it's like
oh my god it could i could see that and it blows my mind wow
wow a black midwest dude who's a nerd in high school wow that does check some boxes that could
work there um and then just the anime picture is his profile just to really throw you on descent but
that makes sense thinking about thinking about pletterer listening 40 hours of kid kidey over
and over 15 years ago
like that it starts to
make a little bit more sense you know
dude imagine
Predator, Loka and Shinobi
locked in a room for
48 hours I wonder what would be the
outcome of that situation
oh my god
it's like
unmovable
force or like the
unstoppable force versus the immovable
object it's like the unstoppable ray of sunshine versus the uh you know all massive black hole and
then you just have like shinobi i don't know where he would fit in there except for it would
he would probably be maximally annoyed like it seems like those two others like clashing with
each other would be the most annoying thing possible to shinobi and it would be his his
retarded hell.
But I think the fact that the two
of them both messaged you
about a predator post
just shows how you're really in the
pocket, dude. Like, you're at the nexus of
so much of this culture
and community. And
did you ever
think that you would find yourself in such a position
of, like, really having your finger
on the pulse in such a
strong way?
I think that
that is where
the 40 hours
per week, I try to tell people
you find out that 40 hours per week is not a joke at the price you deserve and if it it a portal into a a new culture a and you can like the more you listen the deeper you go the deeper you go
until ultimately you your life becomes a podcast and it's only it's like a cartoon where he wakes
up in the cartoon world um but once you realize that everything's a podcast it's it's like a home
alone or he's like sitting there he's like my family's in florida i'm in new york and he's like
my family's in florida i'm in new york you're like everything is a podcast um you're a this is how the
this is why podcasters have catapulted to the top of everything is because uh
life has become a podcast and some people are aware of it right and some people are not tighter
is not aware that he is a foundational point of a of a podcast verse of like this whole culture
um and it's it's that's what makes him so awesome like that's what makes all these characters and
people are so funny yeah i mean when you do listen to 40 hours per week uh these people
seem to be a part of your actual life, right? And there's really no other way to insert yourself
into that story other than to start a podcast. You just made me think of something of Pletitor
being an accidental podcaster. You guys are super good with AI. What if you just like
took, crawled all of his tweets, fed it into an LLM, and then made a Pletitor podcast based off of
all of his posts i mean is that not that's a good idea yeah i it's funny that she say this because i
was inspired by the will stansell show uh if you're if you're if you're aware of this will
stansell show will stansell was like running for congress or um and maybe it was even like
local senate or something like that in the in if you look it up you can get all the details but it
was summer and then ratiste i i think but he was just you know super the most annoying like
pled slap version of like a woke lefty politician uh but to the point where he was one of those
engagement farmers where it was just saying the absurd uh positions in like a vile way just to
get the rise because you know right wing twitter had it blown up like if you if you tweeted the
wrong thing you just got dumped you you're retard of the week i go to the equipment the retard finder
would come and find you and send in deep tag you and say i found one um and it was embarrassing at
first and people were like damn like i can't believe you're calling me now then they realized
oh i can like make a bunch of money by being a retard and and being a convicted retard on twitter
so much money so it could combat to like finally i don't know neutralizing that wave is was like
the will stancil show or they did they took that he took everything and he created a sitcom like a
cartoon sitcom and it inspired a ton of me and is like the it do be like that mr stancil and uh
it's really good and i thought that would platter would be the next like will stancil
it'd be perfect it's like he's the ornery the ornery grump uh who's you know engagement farming
from the in like that negative way like you talked about earlier it's like you're not doing it in the
right way he's coming from the right place but he's not doing it in the right way right
no i mean there's something there dude creating a whole ai universe based off of platter's writings
I mean, that would drive clicks.
That would drive clicks.
You guys are always looking for a new project.
Totally.
And that is the result of great, which is AI,
because that is the other angle.
That is probably, if not probably,
almost definitely the catalyst to everything that's going on right now.
You think about the music, the sitcoms, the movies, whatever it is.
It used to take, you know, very elite, talented, or skilled people all in one area with a ton of money, a ton of equipment, cameras, like all this equipment.
And the people write scripts, lawyers to litigate, who owns the rights to the story and all the law.
It just didn't create like a, you know, a movie.
And now it's like people are just sitting out and farting around on chat, GPT, pumping out content that used to take, you know, untold capital efforts.
to produce and now we're just all we have access to too much uh too much slop and it feels like
that's everybody all the announcements the news the slop but barge scene of the plot slot all that
is just trying to keep up with the fact that well we're really addicted to the bullish announcements
absolutely and ai definitely helps your output in creating bullish announcements
and that it is a great debate, right?
I mean, and you see it so much now.
It's, especially if you're online a lot,
you can pick up the telltale signs of,
it's not X, it's Y, right?
And of course the end dash,
people have gotten caught onto that.
So they're deleting the end dashes now,
but it's, we're surrounded by it.
We're swimming in it.
We're drowning in it for sure.
But I also think you're an idiot
if you don't use this stuff,
especially if you're in the content creation world.
If you aren't leveraging the fact that you have a copy editor that's way better than you in terms of making sure all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed, then you're just going to get left behind because there are people who can leverage it faster than you and just put out more.
And it's a quantity game, too.
I think at the end of the day, the biggest thing is the input you put in first.
If you have an idea, an outline, and putting thought as to what you really want to say, you're making good use of AI compared to those who just say, hey, write me a story, enter, and putting that online.
Because we're still early enough where that does work to some extent, and it's really annoying and sickening to see.
how do you how do you use ai uh both for
professionally and like what in a what other like creative or personal proceeds so like and
how much do those blend um and how much is the changing what you do um yeah i mean the my number
one most used prompt is definitely edit for clarity, right? I'll write a tweet and I know
exactly what I want to say, but just plug it in there and see if it comes out better. Just in
terms of the way that it's structured is some certain word usage and whatnot. And a good amount
of the time, it's a tiny bit better. Sometimes it's not. I just go with what I wrote, but I mean,
it's just that editor, right, is extremely important. When it comes to, like, I do a live
stream on Mondays, Bitcoin News Weekly, 11 a.m. Eastern, tuning on X, tuning on YouTube. But yeah,
I write a intro monologue, right? And I know what I want to say. I'll gather all my information.
I will create an outline. And then I'll just hit enter, see what it comes up with. And then I'll
compare it to what I was going to do and go back and forth.
And it just helps you iterate faster and faster and faster compared to having
to do it all from scratch. Like the, like in the olden days.
But you said it right there.
And one of my most frequently used prompts is the same edit for clarity or
help me be more concise or help me emphasize the whatever to the
best communicate the messenger problem and it has been extremely helpful and i you can tell
other people are doing it like sometimes you notice that where somebody just is throwing straight
uh ai slop on the timeline and even take out the end dashes like they don't even try
to make it look uh authentic um but some people you but you can just notice everybody's
it seems like people are getting better at communicating and when an example i would give
is like racism and like saying retard and saying slurs and like everything is like way more pot
like it's just if you look at the timeline as somebody from like 2017 or 18 like it would you
would not believe it but the way people are able to be clear about and more precise in their language
is creating more tolerance or more leeway from everybody else
when they're being very sharp or very aggressive
or being very offensive and trying to kind of,
because they can sense the intent maybe a little bit better.
I don't know, that's just kind of a theory.
But AI in general is doing a good job.
It's not just translating Chinese to English.
It's translating English to English
because one of the biggest problems, especially in Bitcoin,
is when we're talking about big ideas
and very ambiguous terms like
what is Bitcoin, money, data, whatever.
People are just talking past each other left and right
and most of them don't even know it.
But now it's like it was a joke on South Park
everybody's just using AI to talk to each other.
They're not really speaking anymore,
but it is what,
what is happening when anybody does that?
It's like,
they're getting better at their job.
They're getting better communication at work.
They're able to get more checks on Tinder.
It's,
it's having a beneficial effect.
Or it works.
And it's,
it's super interesting when you're actually are reading something and then
you get halfway through and you're like,
Oh,
this is AI,
but I'm actually sort of interested in this in the set does have something
to say.
So I'm going to complete it, but there's still something in the back of your head.
It's like, yeah, but this is AI, you know, like, yeah, but, and it does, there is sort
of a visceral reaction to sort of turns you off to it when you know that AI helped even
just a little bit.
I think that's probably going to go away in a year or two from now, people are just going
to completely lose that.
But the question again is how much human are people going to want?
How much human are people going to demand, right?
Is there going to be a, there's going to be a, your following feed, your for you feed, and there's going to be a human feed that's only human, right?
Like, is that going to show up in the coming years?
Because, dude, I mean, especially the boomers, the boomers are going to be aged out.
But for the next 10, 15 years, they're going to be completely mind effed by what's coming.
They already are on Facebook, right?
With shrimp Jesus and all this weird shit that they completely fall for.
okay talking about facebook so i haven't been on facebook um in years because it was
now is sometimes i think i'm missing out but i i did but i from what i remember of facebook and
like the facebook boomers that i interact with when they took away like the censorship and they
were just going to let free speech flourish on facebook i immediately thought of like how much
ai was going to just totally like what you said like mind fuck the boomers and how much it was
going to scam the boomers i mean they were going to see videos you see it on twitter sometimes and
it's it looks like the guy brad garlinghouse from ripple and he's like holding up a thing it's like
pay this address and i'll send you this and you'll get free xrp and like just the amount of boomers
that if you put a veteran and a poppy or a guy that looks like trump with jesus and like their
face like hello you know please donate money here and we're gonna go you know save this and that
and i feel like they're just getting one-shotted left and right by ai slop on uh on facebook right
now they are getting one-shotted i mean my dad was the victim not almost a victim of a scam that
Somebody called them and said, hey, we're from the power company.
We're going to shut down the power in your house unless you go down to the local convenience store, go to the Bitcoin ATM and send us Bitcoin.
Right.
And that to somebody who's older, you get them flustered.
They're like, oh, what do I need to do?
And they just they're very quick to because they grew up in a different time.
Right.
It was a much more higher trust society than it is now.
and when you when you couple that with the advancements in ai where they're going to be
able to especially people who speak online uh even just a little bit they can be able to mimic your
voice seamlessly and there's already these scams where people are getting called and they're saying
mom i need help i'm in dire need i'm in danger if you don't send money right now they're gonna
cut off my finger that that's happening right now everybody i think go home for the holidays this
year and make a code word put all your phones into the room no electronic devices around you
and have a family code word where if anything happens like that you'd say what's the code word
and you either know it or not and you can save yourself a lot of heartache in case something
like that happens in 2026 totally uh so the rumors are going to deal with scams i mean and
they're they're not handling it well so far but the other thing is and you touched on this a
little bit which was if you see something and you can sense you can detect that it's ai and not human
just not human and you're like repulsed by it but like it's going to get easier and easier to kind
of disguise that and couch it so you don't necessarily know and be like my point was or
i guess my point is based on what i was saying earlier is that uh there is seemingly a lot of
value being added uh not just to you know the gdp not just to the stock market like it people are
wondering is this a bubble are you how are they going to make up with this much productivity yada
and i think if you really look closely you can see that it is making things better more efficient
communication faster smoother um but with the
ability to help people see the benefits of AI without them realizing that it's AI
or not thinking about the fact that it could be AI,
then hopefully they kind of can get,
you can get them the news in a way that they will start to see as valuable
and make good decisions from again.
and be less repulsed by the fact that they're listening to chat gbt or claude or something like
that because people think that they're going to worship we're going to worship ai but really
it's mostly everybody having to tell chat gpt over and over again to stop being retarded like
you're an idiot that's not the answer right like people aren't trusting ai the way maybe we thought
they would they're not trusting it but again this is the worst it's ever going to be and i
will admit that some of my 40 hours per week of Bitcoin podcasts have been replaced with AI
podcasts in the last year. A good amount of them, you know, and you can, a lot of people dismiss it
still, but dude, if you, you listen to these people at these top labs, like, no, they're worried
about P-Doom, dude. It's, it's all about P-Doom. What's the probability of this thing literally
destroying the human race? And if it's not going to destroy the human race, what is, what are we
going to do when all work is relegated useless because the computers are smarter faster better
cheaper than any human could do anything whether it be host a podcast or fix a toilet uh and
that i mean that's a question that i'm really uh sort of wrestling with in my mind um what happens
five to ten years from now when shit man i mean uh there are people there's going to be ai
podcasters that are indistinguishable from humans that can speak a lot more eloquently than me on
anything um so is the podcast industry in danger and what do we do to create a moat around us
well i think the moat is what we talk about on this on this show is podcast entropy
the entropy in the types of information, the type of data, the type of podcast.
You've got privacy podcasts.
You've got astrology podcasts, macro, career and events, news type podcasts.
You've got libertarian podcasts, Austrian.
You can touch every sphere, every part of the universe.
And if you get enough, you know, new perspectives and almost chaos in the order of your podcast,
of your podcast you create a moat because it's you know you're not just talking at this point
like a professional sports has been ruined by gambling all college football has been you know
it's being ruined by nil the nfl's ruined by the nba like that a head coach or you got you got
arrested in the middle of the season or before the season um everything's being ruined but
bitcoin is too it's too spread out it's too you can't crack it you can't ruin it with um
the the key i can't close in on it quite as easily uh hey it's sort of this sort of runs around with
like the idea of variety um so i guess my next question is like are you when it comes to ar are you monogamous or are you like you just using Google Gemini ChatGPT Claw all different ones
He's trying everything out.
Dude, Google just stole my heart, dude.
Um, I was, uh, that seems to be the guys.
Oh my God, dude.
Google is so much better.
It's just so much better.
Like you can, it's really crazy.
I mean, I was with my dad this weekend.
And here's a little Rob Wallace lore.
My grandpa, Robert Lee Wallace Jr., he was on the team, the 20-man team that helped make
the transistor at Bell Labs in New Jersey.
And so he's got some patents to his name.
So I just said, I spoke into Gemini, into my phone.
I said, hey, there's a scientist, Robert Lee Wallace Jr.
He worked with Bell Labs.
He worked on the transistor.
Make me an infographic of him and his patents.
And two minutes later, just made this really beautiful, like accurate poster of my grandpa
and what he did.
And it was just like, what the hell is this?
Unbelievable.
Absolutely.
Like the amount of time, efforts, and different talents that would have been needed to put
that all together.
And now it's just boom in your pocket.
And we take it for granted, but we are living really in unprecedented times.
And again, it's as worse as it's ever going to be right now.
And it's accelerating.
It's getting faster.
Yes.
Okay.
And I guess for, you know, we've kind of got to a pretty good understanding of what's going on in the world.
like have the bitcoin industry the slop all that but it all boils down to it feels like you just
see that things are accelerating some people will talk to the memes before turning feel like we're
going through the fourth turning institutions are getting like the spot like the la city government
you know the fires a year ago burn everything down they didn't have any water in the fire they were
totally incompetent wrote providence rhode island totally incompetent uh the new york city mayor's
race was between you know like the three stooges basically up there um and one of the stages won
and every time a new historically respected institution is put in the spotlight it seems
like in the past year or so uh it's nothing but a bunch of embezzlement and plethora and
And same thing's happening in the media culture at all.
Where are we going?
Bitcoin is trading at not what we expected a year ago.
Totally disappointed.
Paper Bitcoin summer disappointment.
Seems like there's a lot of chaos and disappointment.
But is it going to get better soon or worse?
Do you follow any of these astrological forth or any of these theories?
Which one do you think explains where we're at?
What is your perspective in that context?
Yeah, I mean, I've been a pretty hardcore conspiracy theorist, I guess the best way to describe it, since the financial crisis, right?
Since I was a young lad.
And that really, when I went down the rabbit hole for the first time, I thought that we were going to have hyperinflation in America by 2012, right?
And I was prepared to have to go out and fight for your meal and live in the Stone Age since then.
But I mean, the 2010s were not that, right?
It was hipsters and Facebook and Instagram.
So what's funny is when you're been prepared for the world to sort of blow up for so long and it doesn't,
you get a little jaded and you start to think,
okay, maybe they can keep this game going along a lot longer than you thought you could.
But what we are seeing is the constant, I think the right word is,
and shitification of pretty much everything in the physical world, right?
The world of atoms is getting shittier.
The world of bites is getting better.
And I think that is what we must rebel against,
the desire to just dive deeper and deeper into the world of bites
and forget this physical world that we have,
that human beings have inhabited for millions of years.
And that which we are involved evolved for, right?
Because that's where our happiness comes from.
When we satisfy these biological and emotional needs
and the worlds of bites can hijack that
and make you think you're getting what you need.
But you're lying to yourself.
So you got to...
to, at the end of the day, I'm sort of a Buddhist in the way that I think that life is what you make
it, right? It's all in your head. It's between your two ears in terms of how good or how bad
your life is. And so it's up to us to make that personal decision and that responsibility to make
your life what you want. But yeah, there's no denying that the institution of the outside world
is happening.
And we are distracted,
very easily distracted by the world of bites.
Yeah, it's like a digital flood.
And luckily we have an anchor
if we're seeking digital scarcity again.
I think it's kind of,
we're overloaded with so much information.
It's almost like we,
I was joking,
we jumped on the last podcast
that Arizona is on in HODL.
He always makes some goofy declarative statements.
He likes to announce things too in his own weird way.
He's one of the Bitcoin news.
He's blocked Bitcoin, just to be clear.
Of course, of course, of course.
And he said, he's like, make money and make Bitcoin
or make boobs hard to see again.
And I lost it.
I was like, why would you want to do that?
But it may be we have too much access to good content,
hot content interesting content flashy content and we got to like anchor it back and make it
scarcer again or because not so there's less of it so that it's value if you know how to value it
better we just need to re-learn we need to learn how to value information better
at a we got to learn fast and i think that things will start to sort themselves out
from there i hope i hope so yeah i think it is libertarians as bitcoiners we don't want to tell
anybody what they can't do right but we also i think it's important for us to create a community
ethos where we say some things are not that good for you and should be shunned and uh
some things should be embraced. And I think, yeah, uh, uh,
boobs on the internet are probably a little too easy to,
too fine if you're eight, nine years old. Um,
and I think that's something that we should try to uphold that, uh,
they shouldn't probably be saying that. So yeah, I mean, it's, uh,
it's funny. It's something like the, the trad con NIS of Bitcoin, Twitter,
I think I definitely saw its heyday in 21, 22. Right. Uh,
and I think has sort of gone away a bit over the last couple of years,
sort of, I guess, replaced by the suits.
But, yeah, do you remember Laser Holden?
Oh, yeah, I totally remember Laser.
I think he's still, I think he's still posting on a corner in Noster,
but I haven't seen him on Twitter in a few years.
He's on Twitter, dude.
Not much, but I think, like, he doesn't even have, like, a name.
He just has, like, a satellite emoji as, like, his tag.
Is he still doing the masculine frame?
But that's what I was going at.
Yeah, he went super hard into the masculine frame thing.
And that felt like a little bit too much, right?
Like, okay, if you want to do that in your own house, that's cool.
But it just was a little bit off-putting.
So there's a time and place for everything.
But I think there also a big difference between telling people what you do and telling other people what to do How do you how do you prevent
or do you have any tips even to prevent,
how do you prevent yourself from crashing out?
There's a lot of people crashing out.
And I think there's going to be a lot more people crashing out next year.
And people are crashing out.
Like I would say laser hotel crashed out.
And he wasn't, it was masculine frame.
It was like get on zero.
so it was basically beyond zero fiat only holding and spending bitcoin uh and it was just it's
constant extreme like easy purity times to fail uh i don't know gimmicks whatever you want to call
it it's just very hard to sustain that much discipline that much uh larving discipline on
twitter and how do you like what do you use that to learn to choose your battles like what
what's what's your advice yeah i think it's um yeah when you're in this world this lifestyle of
being online a lot uh it really doesn't bode well for you if you're the kind of person gets worked
up too easily and i mean i think you guys have sort of made a name for yourselves by picking out
those people that do take themselves too seriously and making it clear to everyone else that they do
Um, so yeah, I, uh, I'll go the corny answer and say meditate, right?
I do think that just having, having some time during the day where you're not on an electronic
device, where you're not consuming anything else.
And you're sort of just, can you be comfortable in a room by yourself for 20 minutes, not
doing anything?
Some people are horrified at that.
And if that's who you are, you need to start working on that ASAP because you are making
yourself way too vulnerable to outside forces and the world at large. And when it comes to being
online and AI, you are the perfect soon to be victim. Yeah. It's like, how, how comfortable
can you be with, with your sitting there by yourself with your own thoughts? And if you can,
if you can do that, then you can, you have enough mental armor, uh, psychic armor to,
to go out into the big bad world of, of the,
the online world and fight your battles.
The other, if you, if, if one risk is crashing out,
the other one is probably chat GPT or AI psychosis.
And I, I don't know the answer,
but it seems like meditation might be the answer for both.
It seems like if you can't go out and sit alone with your own thoughts,
and you're probably bordering on crashing out,
but if you can't go out and sit alone with your own thoughts
because you don't have any of your own thoughts anymore,
maybe that's chat GPT psychosis.
I don't know.
How do you think about that?
And because I think anybody who's used AI enough probably can see the dangers
or the risks uh from getting because chat gpt psychosis is probably a spectrum but yeah have
you watched any youtube videos on chat gpt psychosis i've gotten yeah i've i've found i've
tried to find some good ones and there was like some guys in silicon valley some big tech guys that
were exhibiting chat gpt psychosis and and also you know just goofy plebs and both of them are
crazy to to see it's i think the the first step is to i would never use a chat bot as a therapist
right i i'm pretty hesitant to put in personal information especially that could give them a
psychological profile of of myself um they they know that i like bitcoin and that i like to edit
for clarity they definitely know about that about me but uh it i think and the the sickle fancy of
these uh chatbots really turns me off it's it's so gross like the second it's like oh that was
amazing like i've never you really nailed it there and i'm just like shut the fuck up dude like no i
don't stop being a sip stop being a sip for me dude shut up um but there are some people who
really like that and i mean there's a lot of lonely people and if you're willing to to to bear
your soul to a chat bot, I think then you're, again, you're making yourself a prime victim
to fall into it.
Because a lot of this chat GPT psychosis is people thinking that they've come up with
some novel way of viewing the universe, right?
That they've broken through to a new level, that they've unlocked their chat GPT, and
it is now transmitting the secrets of deep universal truth to them.
and that's a repeatable story
that many people have gone down.
So if you find yourself thinking
that you've had a breakthrough,
again, these things are not good at breakthroughs, right?
They're good at rearranging and remixing and referencing,
but in terms of finding new physics,
maybe they can at the Frontier Labs,
but you're not doing that on ChatGPT.
So catch yourself there if you find yourself
thinking you found yeah yeah it physics times table yeah it you you're probably not going to
impress chat gpt and so it's like you're in vegas and like a hot chick comes up to you and it's
trying to ask you out you know it's she it's there's a game there right so like if chat gp if
you think you're teaching chat gpc about quantum computers and you think you're teaching chat gpt
about how it's possible to get fusion, whatever it is.
And ChatGPT is like, wow, like you are the smartest person.
I'd ever thought of it this way before.
Dad is the stripper telling you that you're interesting,
that telling you that she likes you, right?
He says, remember that.
This is all about money.
Everybody on Twitter, everybody is posting,
all the podcasters, ChatGPT, all of it, all the AI,
the hot chicks with AI voices.
Lynn Alden, her newsletter
it's all about money
so just
keep that in mind, probably hopefully won't get
chat, CPT, psychosis,
incarnation out
Is it all about money or is it all about
attention?
And is attention the new money
of the 21st century?
There you go, yes
Yes
Why is Bitcoin, why does that
incorporate bitcoin compass bitcoin because bitcoin is is all about attention okay everybody's
got their attention on the quiet it's all about the drama it's all about what's going on with
every 10 minutes everybody's looking everybody's paying attention and when you you pay attention
to things it's harder to fuck with it it's harder to be fucked with so attend yeah the attention
economy what the things that have the most attention will be that you it's it will be it's
they'll be valuable there you go you got it how many people in terms of uh bitcoin twitter
how many people do you think there actually are on there that that give it enough attention to know
to know the characters to know the players uh less than 10 000 and like even of the 10 000 who
are you know
they're somewhat aware right it's like
a third of that knows
you know 50% of the Ducalverse characters right or
of the story or gets the joke right and I'd say none of us really
get the full picture of the joke right
that's probably why it's fun is it's small enough
that it's uh
to answer your question yeah just a few thousand and it's it's funny because it is it is a small
group uh but there is a disproportionate amount of reach right i mean david bailey's hanging out
with the president um like we we do uh i think hit above our weight and that makes your job
so much more fun and entertaining right If it was just some other small group and we were into racing RC cars in a basement it be very different than if we dealing with the next world reserve asset
Right, and it's all held together
by a couple of group chats, you know what I mean?
Like a couple of group chat platforms.
You probably know, and we talk about this on the episode,
I had a whole episode with Mars about group chats
and like the the influence of group chats how they work you know who's joining them what the
behavior is like how the plebs are bickering and fighting and competing in the group chats but like
this whole little ecosystem they're really like the if it becomes the reserve currency it's all
held together by uh by group chats right now like that's probably one of the new institutions of
worth turning absolutely yeah i mean decentralized communication um tell me dude the the vibes is it
bear market vibes in the group chats and do group chats get better in bear markets yeah this this is
this is a huge question we are definitely in a group chat recession um the next few weeks are
going to be they're going to tell a big story because the next two weeks are traditionally
like especially the united states very people few people are working they're kind of laying low
hanging with their families traveling and even if they are at work until the first of the year
nobody's really getting a whole lot done and nobody's even having to pretend and chad gpt's
probably going to uh get some time off but if the group chats do not pop back up the next two weeks
it's bad news i think for 2026 and i think it is because and i don't think it's a bad thing i think
it's it's a necessary natural thing i think that we didn't know how to value group chats we didn't
value group chats nearly as much as we should have we let way too many bad people into our we
we let way too many bad people in and we joined way too many that uh we shouldn't have and
And 2026 will be about being proud of the group chats you're in and being
proud of your brothers in your group chat.
And if we get to that again,
the group chats will flourish.
It's like the strong times make a strong,
then make good times that whole thing.
You can say the same about group chats.
Have you had any group chat infiltration?
Have you had any scammers try to get into your group chat and mess with
people?
Yeah.
No, not yet.
The break, very careful about that.
And I think that's another important aspect is fed-resistant
or scammer-resistant group chats are very important.
You definitely have to have a captcha to keep the spammers
who are just posting Salama stuff,
like spamming every group chat they can.
But no, and I won't know what the key to success there is just –
Well, I've got a group chat scammer horror story.
Let's hear it.
Our local Bitcoin meetup, we've got a group chat, right?
And about 100 people or so in there.
And I mean, there are definitely some, there's always some leaders of the group chat, right?
Some people with more reputation that precedes them.
And so some new guy joined and somebody who has, who's on Bitcoin Twitter, his has a little
bit of a following.
He's, he's in our Bitcoin meetup and the new guy got DM'd on the side by quote unquote him.
Right.
And the new guy was super happy to be DM'd by him.
And the guy, the call the OG in our group, uh, messaged him and said, Hey man, I'm about
to go up and buy a bunch of miners.
but the guy won't take my cash.
He only wants Bitcoin.
Could you just front me some Bitcoin right now?
I got some reason why my wallet won't work.
Just like front me some Bitcoin
and I'll make you good.
Dude, the guy lost my coin.
We're on Bitcoin, dude.
That's not bad.
You got to...
Yeah, it's hard.
You got to watch out for that.
But, you know, I think that...
When people start to put the group chats back together again,
it'll look a little bit different next time.
It'll be a group chat 3.0 or group chat 2.0.
That's what we're at right now, the era of group chat 2.0.
And now you're going to have like eCash.
You're going to have more Lightning enabled.
You see, group chats are becoming, you could set up your own Mint.
You could be a credit union, a group chat credit union.
So you don't have to DM somebody on the side.
You say, hey, in the group chat where everybody can see I need a loan to get some minors.
Everybody's like, all right, I'll sign that loan in this federation or whatever.
Right.
It's called a FEDMIT.
Yeah, they already have it.
It's called a FEDMIT.
Yeah, FEDMIT.
Yes.
Yeah.
People will start to actually build on these.
Hopefully, it's like you said, we can iterate faster.
Yeah.
And it will be NOSTER-based and UX will suck and you'll only see half the messages.
And it'll be great.
It'll be more raw.
and you'll really appreciate the messages that do come through.
Totally.
Cool, man.
Is there anything else?
How can, what kind of content, what kind of podcasts are available on your platform
and what's coming and what should people, what should people look for?
Yeah, so we got the Monday live stream, Bitcoin News Weekly.
your former guest on there, new person.
Each Monday, we break down the newsletter
that comes out that Monday morning.
Great to go over the headlines,
the biggest news in Bitcoin,
get a fresh perspective from a new guest each week.
And it's a tight hour, a lot of fun.
All the guests say they have a good time when they come on.
So that's my sign that we're providing some value there.
A new podcast interview comes out
every single week on Wednesdays
on YouTube, Fountain, Spotify,
apple and that's fun and then on fridays we started a new show we're trying to bring the
fun back to bitcoin and everybody does a podcast everybody interviews we want to make it more
game show like talk show like um add in a little levity of the situation give out bitcoin each
show make a sort of community about it and uh yeah that's the friday stack happens 12 30s on fridays
on x and all the other live streaming platforms i still haven't figured out how to stream to
nostr so i might need to uh pay you some stats for a lesson on how to do that but one day i'll
get there i just got on captain so give me some time and then i'll get on nostr i guess
whatever if the group chats and everything else is in a bear market in a recession let me tell
now noser i am i i had tried been trying to load my notifications on primal since october of 17th
and i still can't see them and i think it's because i got into one of those health threats
and so if you get on noser you gotta it's like the worms in uh tremors it's like these health
threats if you get sucked into one of the user experiences it's been nuked but i wouldn't worry
about an Oscar hate to say it guys but you got to fix that shit um but I like the game show idea
I think we need more game shows if you see for a review that orange build family feud we need
everything it's fun but there's reason those things are on tv every day people love game shows
people want to win bitcoin give them a chance to yeah like uh we're doing Mount Rushmore segments
tier lists, trivia, prediction markets, you know, all that kind of just have some fun with it.
We're a little bit too serious sometimes.
So let's enjoy ourselves.
We've got the hardest money in the world.
We've got the sovereignty on our side.
Why not bring back the levity?
All right.
How are we up?
Rob from BitcoinNews.com.
Thanks for joining in.