Welcome to Local Bitcoiners, a podcast about Bitcoin meetups.
In this episode, Reid and Rev talk about their meetups, AI, and the Mesh to Dell.
Welcome back to Local Bitcoiners.
Rev Hodel here.
I'm here with my co-host, Reid.
And we don't have a guest tonight, so we're just going to talk Bitcoin meetups and see
where we go. But we like to start the beginning of the podcast off kind of going over some stories
from the meetups that we've attended recently or talk about our most recent meetup or show the
upcoming meetup. And so since the last recording, I have been to several meetups. But the coolest
one in the most recent one that I was at was in Grand Rapids. The Grand Rapids meetup has
switched from their founder's location for their social meetup to this brewery.
I believe it's called Two Guys Brewery.
And it's a pretty cool place.
There was good food, pretty good turnout.
And I finally had something other than a Bitcoin mining space heater to show up with
to share with the group.
And that was my Bitcoin-assisted maple syrup.
I use Bitcoin miners to help me make this maple syrup.
I produce here at the homestead.
And so I had that with me.
I did have a miner with me as well
and sold the miner, sold some of the syrup.
And I was also able to buy some cookies
and cupcakes and stuff.
There was a woman there selling some baked goods,
which was cool.
And it's really fun when you go to these social meetups
at the bar or whatever.
And people are kind of busting out stuff out of their bag
and there's this exchange is happening.
And you don't necessarily draw a lot of attention from other people in the place, but it just feels cool like, hey, we're in this place and we're taking it over and we're doing our own thing here.
And so a lot of the discussion in that meetup was around AI.
I think AI has really taken a big, prominent part of the discussion in the Bitcoin culture and community lately with OpenClaw and these advancements with Clawed and Vibe coding and everything.
So we just couldn't help ourselves but spend a lot of the time talking about that.
But tomorrow I am going to be going to the Chicago BitDevs meetup.
And I'm sure that we will not talk about AI nearly as much because that's focused more on the technical developments of Bitcoin Core and everything like that.
But Reid, how was your meetup experiences since we've last talked?
Yeah, so I have been to no meetups since we last talked, which I think was just about a couple weeks ago.
I love hearing, you know, it's incredible that you have so many meetups that are taking place so close to you.
Yeah, I don't know.
I like hearing the stories and I'm always so impressed with the, you know, these communities of people that come together and actually have goods to bring and share and sell.
And, you know, using Bitcoin as money is like the thing.
I feel like that's like, you know, if you're going to go around promoting Bitcoin as something,
we should be promoting it as money.
And I mean, that's what you're supposed to use money for.
So I don't know.
I love to hear it.
And I think we've gotten some other pretty good feedback hearing about your halls you
always walk away with from all these meetups.
So yeah, so I haven't been to a meetup since, but our meetup's coming up this weekend.
And so Western Mass, this is our, we meeting at our normal spot at Peppa's Pizza in East Longmeadow.
It'll be Sunday, March 15th.
And we, I'm still getting prepared for it a little bit, but I did, I picked our two.
I usually cover one technical topic and one Bitcoin history topic.
Those two things got a little bit blended this time because at our last meetup, it wasn't something I really was super looking forward to talk about.
But last meetup, we talked a lot about BIP-110.
That was like on everybody's mind.
And I got a bunch of people asking questions about it beforehand.
So we talked about BIP-110.
So this month, we're doing a history of Taproot.
And there was a couple of points I want to make.
Like the reason why I wanted to cover a history of Taproot, especially in the wake of talking about BIP-110, like I sort of want like a lot of the people there, you know, they weren't around when Taproot or don't remember or weren't plugged in or weren't paying close enough attention when Taproot got activated.
But it was it was two years between when it got a BIP number and when it got activated.
And that was for like, it was like the least controversial like soft fork for Bitcoin.
In fact, it had 99.7% of miners signaling.
99.7.
So this talk of like, oh, we need 55% miners, like this is nothing compared to how overwhelmingly supported Taproot was.
and you know when before it got activated or leading up to its activation some of the points
that I remember we were promised things like more private and more efficient lightning channel opens
we were promised more private and and more economical multi-sig transactions those are
things that I think are starting to come around now but this is years and years and years after
the fact um and so what did we actually get like we got a whole bunch of slop like added to the
blockchain and so the whole point the the underlying point i want to make with the covering taproot
is just can we just be humble like can we all just admit that we don't actually know what's
going to happen like after we decide all together to change bitcoin even we're all positive it's all
going to be rainbows and sunshine and all this great stuff like can we just like take a step back
and realize we don't actually know what's going to happen and it just takes a while for all that to
to work itself out so I don't know I'm looking forward to it I think it's going to be a good
discussion I think a lot of people in my meetup at least aren't going to know a lot of those things
so um then there'll be some other stuff we cover too some new stuff that I haven't actually prepped
for yet but um i think it's gonna be a good i think it's gonna be a good meetup i'm looking
forward to it yeah with the taproot stuff man i feel like um it just takes time for people to
to write the code and maybe well and you know this vibe coding stuff it's not safe to i wouldn't
consider it be safe to like be using for this sensitive stuff like money and long you know
Bitcoin transactions and lightning splicing and all that stuff.
But I mean, Async did get that channel splicing integrated.
And that's been a lot better.
That's upgraded my experience using Phoenix.
And I think that the, you know, I'm not an expert,
but I think that the Frost multi-sig stuff was enabled by Taproot
and the Miniscript stuff as well, right?
I'm not sure because Taproot has TapScript
and I'm not a technical enough guy to know
if the difference is between TapScript and Miniscript.
I think Miniscript might have been around,
but I'm not positive about that.
I guess the point is,
regardless of exactly what has been taken advantage of
via the Taproot soft fork,
it takes some time for people to develop the the tool and then it also takes time for people to
find it and start using it and for it to gain you know traction and so it's very easy for all
that work to get overshadowed when um somebody well this well Casey Rodemore you know had this
this ordinal's idea and it it was very quickly um there was a lot of excitement around it and so
people started using it a lot and it overshadowed all this other stuff that taproot enabled and makes
it seem like taproot was a bad idea but i think if we're patient we're going to find that all of
the fruits of taproot will be continuously it what it has to offer is going to continuously show up
there's a lot more that it can do that we haven't even explored yet.
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
Yeah, and I'm not trying to be a Taproot bear here.
I'm mostly just trying to point out that for a software
that had such an overwhelming support,
like the biggest debate during Taproot was like the activation method.
And it was like, you know, how bold can we be?
Like no one disagrees with this.
So, you know, what type of activation method can we actually go with here?
And so, you know, we touch on that a little bit.
But, you know, the point is, is that anytime you make a change to Bitcoin, like everything changes coming out the other side.
Like that's one of the big things about Bitcoin that is such an improvement over like this fiat system that we're in today is that the fiat system, they just change the rules all the time.
you know as soon as something starts going against the you know let's call them the elite or the
powerful or whatever they just change the rules you know and so anytime you can just change the
rules willy-nilly you know the whole economy has to shift after the rule change like everything
about the way that money works has to change after the money changes and so with bitcoin it's always
been like, don't change the money. Just leave it alone. And please don't take it like I'm saying,
we shouldn't, you know, maintain Bitcoin. Obviously, it should be maintained. And there
are changes that are going to need to be made. But I'm just saying like the underlying properties,
I think we should be as conservative as we can with how this thing goes. And so yeah,
so I guess that's the those are some of the key takeaways that I'm that I'm going for at this
meetup. We'll see. I mean, it's a Socratic seminar, so, you know, we'll be, I'm sure we'll
be fielding a lot of questions. We had some really good interaction and debate at the last meetup,
and I'm hoping that continues into this one. So, oh, and actually, you know what? So the other,
I, I, that's our Bitcoin history topic. We're also going to talk about Spark a little bit,
which I don't know, I am sort of getting a little bit more excited for now.
I remember when it got sort of like announced a little bit like oh hey this is going to become
a thing but it's always different when you start to see it get implemented you know and it kind of
hit my radar again when you know it got integrated into CakeWallet recently and so you know got to
listen to Seth for Privacy talking about that a little bit I actually didn't even realize that
it was already in while at Astoshi. That's pretty cool. And then I saw the Daniel on Noster. He
vibe coded or something. He came up with a really quick lightning wallet like PWA that you can just
spin up almost instantly. And it gets you a wallet that you can use for whatever temporary or
whatever. And that uses Spark. So I don't know. It seems like it could be kind of interesting.
I actually haven't dug into it too much yet, but interested to learn.
Yeah, the more options we have for how we can use our Bitcoin, the better.
You know, it's everywhere, trade-offs, trade-offs, trade-offs.
But if there's the more choices you have and the more trade-offs you can make
to tailor your usage of Bitcoin to exactly what you need,
the better off you're going to be.
it's it's really just about take being taking thoughtful and slow steps towards
integrating new things into your stack um i'm not very quick to
like this mini bits e-cash wallet that i've been using for no stir um i started off man i would
use like i would have like 5k sats in there and i'm like this is all i they rugged me they're
only going to get my 5k sats and i'll get to play around with this this and that was at the time i
was really looking for a nostril wallet connect um wallet and that seemed to be one of the easier
ones to use um and it's been good but then i'm glad i didn't like lean into it so hard because
here comes zeus a few like a month or two ago with their nostril wallet connecting and i'm like
well, now I finally have a good reason to start to play with Zeus
so I can get off Phoenix.
And then Zeus Wallet can be a wallet that I use for my transactions at the meetups
and I can use it for my Noster stuff.
And so I'm excited to just try Zeus.
But obviously when I start to switch over to Zeus,
I'm certainly not going to just immediately close my nice fat Phoenix Wallet channel.
I want to keep that available as well.
And so as time goes on, even existing wallets, they get better and better.
I mean, Cake adding Lightning, I mean, it's crazy to me that Cake hasn't had Lightning all this time.
So it's a successional process, you know.
Yeah, I feel like Bitcoin wallets, it all gets so personal, in my opinion,
because everybody uses Bitcoin differently.
You know, like if you're a merchant
and so let's say you're receiving a lot of stats,
well, it's hard to use Lightning
when you're receiving a lot,
like if you're receiving more Bitcoin than you're spending
because, you know, you got to keep opening up more liquidity,
you know, or dumping like the stats somewhere.
Like you can't just accumulate in a Lightning wallet forever.
And so, you know, and people who use Noster,
like that's got its own whole set of things, right?
Like Phoenix doesn't work for that, you know?
And so there's all kinds of different, like weird,
like intricacies that you just,
it just feels very personal,
like how you decide what your final implementation is.
And of course it's changing constantly
because new stuff keeps coming out.
But that's why we go to the meetups, right?
We go to the meetups to find out
what other people are doing.
and as new wallets come out and new features come out,
we like to talk about them because, hey,
maybe it's going to work for somebody else
or maybe it's going to work for you.
So yeah, looking forward to the meetup this weekend.
So I sort of want to take this opportunity to pivot a little bit
because this is the first meetup coming up
that I am starting to use AI to help me prepare for the meetups.
and I'm not going to lie so far it has not been faster it has been slower
I think the final product is it's probably an improvement like my slides and stuff I think look
a lot nicer but I'm also sort of figuring out the flow you know like I tried one thing it wasn't
really working and so we switched I switched to something else that was like a little bit easier
But so I do feel optimistic about using AI to help me prepare.
But I've been sort of coming at like, especially over the last few weeks, like I've, you know, I'm not going to lie.
And you can go check my nostril notes to confirm this.
Like I've been a little bit of an AI bear.
I'm not going to lie.
Like I've been like, I don't know if I'm like buying the hype.
and and for me it wasn't i i totally get the fact that it's like an extremely powerful tool
i'm not saying it's not gonna change the world i'm not saying it's not gonna have a huge impact
i'm saying for like the plebs for the pioneers or whatever like for those of us who are just like
right you know we're not build like we're not developers you know we're not running software
companies. We're just hanging out and running Bitcoin meetups and doing what we do here.
This stuff is expensive. You know, you listen to the stories and everyone's like, wow, my
thing is so cool. I've got it tracking all the prediction markets and pulling all this
data together for me and going through backlogs of podcasts. And yeah, and it's, oh yeah,
it's costing me like a thousand dollars a month, but it's so cool. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
pump the brakes. How much did you say? Like, are you really getting? And so this is my thinking was,
are you really getting a thousand dollars a month worth of value out of this thing? Or is it just
like, you know, pretty cool? Because, you know, I don't know if I'm buying like pretty, it's pretty
cool. I don't know if that's quite enough. Like maybe I think that you're going to have to get a
better than pretty cool. But I eventually sort of caved. And really what I did was I wanted to
wade in very slowly, mostly financially slowly. So I did get like a Claude.ai, like the Anthropic.
It's 20 bucks a month, which wasn't, you know, it didn't seem like crazily expensive
compared to some of the other ones.
And I was able to do some pretty cool stuff.
Again, pretty cool.
Not anything, it's not like it's going to make me a bunch of money or something.
It was just pretty cool.
Did a project with one of my book clubs,
doing like pulling stuff, pulling data out of the government,
stockpiles, wherever they have all this stuff.
We were reading the fourth turning.
And so I ended up pulling all this government data on and doing this whole little, I guess, presentation type of thing on how the generations have shaped like politics going back to like 1900.
So that was pretty cool.
A kind of little fun little project.
But, you know, it took a bunch of time.
but that kind of turned me on to how good it was at like doing html and doing like this front-end
design work which is kind of what gave me the idea to start using them for my bitcoin slides
i was like you know this thing is pretty good i can just kind of give it hey can you go do a
little bit of research for me and put together a chart of like how all this stuff actually works and
pull some data. So like for my Taproot slides, you know, I had it pull like it's using,
like I wanted to know how did the fees change over time and how did the block data change over time?
So it's got charts in there of like bar charts and stuff of how it changed like before and after
Taproot. Like I didn't have to go and dig up all that data and I didn't have to go put it in,
I don't know, Excel or however I would put it together.
And it looks a lot nicer than I could do.
So that's how I sort of started wading in to the AI stuff.
Yeah, there's like this permaculture principle
that I think kind of rings true here.
And a lot of what we've talked about so far already is like,
and it's called slow and small solutions.
And so with Bitcoin, when we want to fork, do soft forks and do all this stuff, it's better to just start small, make small changes and take a long time thinking about it and talking about it before we decide to implement it or each individual, each miner or whatever decides to adopt it.
And then when new Bitcoin wallets come out and new feature new like eCash and all this stuff it like start using eCash a little bit and learn about it and work with it small and slow And this AI stuff you can see the example of the people
who have gone big and fast and they ended up spending thousands of dollars
because they didn't necessarily realize that this little Claude bot
could gobble up so many tokens on such simple tasks if you're not careful.
and so small and slow solutions seems to be like in this ever-changing and fast-paced
development world now it's it's good to step back and just observe it for a while think about how
you want to step in and step in slowly I think there is this feeling especially when it comes
to the AI stuff if I don't learn about this now and don't do everything I can I'm going to get
left behind. But at the same time, like I've been kind of chilling back waiting because I feel like
to the point of the money and everything, like I'm not going to have to spend the tokens in the
learning process. I'll let other people make those mistakes and I'll learn from them. And then I'll
jump in once there's some more best practices around how to use these tools in order to do it
efficiently. Yeah. So, you know, efficiency. So that's what I started to learn right away
was I don't exact. Oh, I know it was on that do pulling the government data and stuff like that.
That was like one of the first things I tried to like use the claw thing for or not claw. Sorry.
That's different thing. The like just the clawed AI just like on the website or whatever, you know,
not an agent running around doing stuff for me yet.
And so it was all of a sudden absolutely ripping through my usage.
Like there's a little usage meter, like to tell you like how much you use.
I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Like maybe I need to start thinking about how,
because I like ran out like in the first session or whatever.
And so I was like, okay, well, I guess I'm taking a four hour break
while my like usage thing resets.
which wasn't the worst thing in the world.
I mean, get a four-hour break from a project,
that's, you know, it's okay.
So then I started paying way closer attention.
And in fact, when the next session started up,
I decided to start asking the AI about token usage.
I'm like, what happened?
You know, can you like explain to me,
like how do I limit this
so I don't blow through my tokens like so quickly?
And so then everything kind of came
and then I started getting,
okay, there are some like best practices here for like how to use this like a little bit more
efficiently. And it's like, hey, how about instead of you going and pulling all of this data and
trying to compile it yourself, how about you just write me a Python script and I'll run it on my
computer and I'll just give you the output. And then that way you don't have to comb through all
this stuff. You just write me a script, I'll run it and I'll give you the output. And then that
was really, we started saving a lot.
When all I just had to do,
and I didn't know how to do all this stuff,
I'm just like, how do you run a Python script?
And they're like, oh, you just do this.
And I'm like, oh, well, I didn't know that before
and now I know.
And so now I can, yes,
now I can effectively copy and paste into the terminal.
It's not the end of the world.
Who knew?
So it's like a fast track.
Yeah, you can even ask it to help explain to you how to use it better for what you're doing.
And asking those questions probably doesn't cost very many tokens.
Right.
And so spending a little bit more time just getting to know the system will save you in the long run.
I'm taking notes, man.
I'm surely going to do something with it here in the future.
but don't quite know exactly what yet.
I just, this vibe coding stuff is so cool to me
because when Noster first came out
and I started to think about what the implications were
of like anyone can run a relay
and all these clients are open source
and so effectively you can like create these closed ecosystems
of the siloed into particular relays
that maybe a local community are running or whatever,
and then fork the client so that you can adjust it
to match whatever you would need for that local community.
And I was thinking that was going to take years.
I mean, it's been a few years,
but it seems like now there's all these very specialized clients
coming up for these very niche uses,
and people are vibe coding all these really very particular Noster apps.
and here we are.
It's like you're going to be able to use,
you're going to have a Noster app to do anything you want
and the development process is quick now.
So I had, this is, I do want to,
maybe I'll just, I'll skip to it now
because that was kind of a good segue, right?
So Noster is one of the things that was immediately on my mind.
That this is obviously, if I'm going to do some sort of vibe coded project, like it's going to be on Oster because it's the thing that you can just plug into, you know, like it's going to be, all this stuff is all open source.
So there's a million repos out there to learn from, and you could just plug into the protocol.
You don't need permission, right?
There's no, you know, you just hit the relays and you're good to go.
um and so you know you you know you're bringing up special building specialized communities and
stuff like that and so this idea that you know i had talked to actually i had mentioned it to you
a little bit because um you know i started to learn more about these circular economies and
stuff that you're running and you know we're starting to be in a lot more of the same telegram
groups and you know i get to watch you drop these messages into the chats all the time about
hey I'm coming here I'm going there here's the stuff I'm going to bring you know let me know if
you're interested and you know I have sold stuff as well like one of like early on in in I mean it
wasn't that early on like back in let's say like 2021 I got a laser engraver and just started
making stuff with Bitcoin on it you know it wasn't I wouldn't call it art necessarily it's just it's
fun stuff that people thought was kind of cool. And it was a cool way for me to like bring in some
sets. Um, you know, and then I was certain, I was able to pay for the whole laser engraver that I
bought, which was pretty neat. Um, and got to learn a whole new skill and that was fun. Um,
and so I have also like, I bring stuff to my meetups to sell and that's like tailed off a
little bit because I sort of sold stuff to everybody who comes like all the regulars.
but yeah so you know as we started talking I started thinking more about well it sure would
be nice if rather than dropping you know random things into the group chats if we just had a place
for our meetup that people could just post stuff that hey I have all this stuff if you want me to
bring it to the meetup I'll just bring it you know like you know nothing big this doesn't have
to be like a big online sales platform or something like that. Just like, Hey, I have this stuff for
sale. And if you want it, just let me know. I'll bring it to the meetup. We don't have to do
payments over the app. We don't have to do shipping. We don't have, it's not like Facebook
marketplace, right? Where you have to like organize like a meetup time and figure out if it's going to
be some sketchy person coming to your house, or if you're going to go meet them somewhere else, or
lots of scammers in the chat
that you have no idea
like where they're coming from
or whatever.
If it's your meetup group,
you're all going to be
in the same place anyway.
You already all know each other.
And so like how hard is it
to just go like I have
a couple of things in my office
that it's like,
you know, I'm not going to sell this
on Facebook Marketplace,
but I can bring it to the meetup.
If somebody wants this,
I would, yeah,
like five, ten bucks.
Who cares?
Sure, I'll bring it to the meetup.
I'm certainly not going to take the time to do that otherwise.
So if anybody's interested, just let me know.
And so that was kind of the idea.
Like, could I make a Nostra app that was a marketplace that was private and local?
And so, you know, I started messing around with Shakespeare, Shakespeare.diy,
because that is like, I guess, the place you go to Vibecode Nostra apps.
and I knew about Flotilla, which is for private groups.
And I said, I want a private group experience like Flotilla,
but for a marketplace.
And started kind of hacking around with it a little bit.
And I quickly found out it is much more costly to use that kind of stuff
than it is to use the $20 a month Anthropic subscription.
So it was a fun experience.
I have what I would consider to be like a working,
like minimum viable product, like a working MVP,
which is pretty cool.
I'm going to show it to some of the guys at the meetup this weekend
and like see if we can get it to work.
But the idea is you just, all it is is it's a PWA.
You open it on your phone.
I'll bring, I can, you scan a QR code from my phone
that gives you access to my relay at my house.
It never hits the internet.
It never goes anywhere public.
It's a truly private little marketplace.
So yeah, so that's what I've been
sort of working on most recently.
I'm kind of planning on taking a little bit of a break.
Full transparency, this app,
like going back and forth with the Shakespeare thing
for, I don't know, a few solid sessions.
like ran me up like 120 bucks.
So, you know, full disclosure, right?
It's not super cheap,
but at the same time,
it's like how much would it cost
if this was a couple of years ago, right?
How much would it have cost me
to go hire a developer
to make me this custom app?
It would have been insane.
Like, I don't know how much,
like thousands of dollars.
So, I don't know.
It lowers the barrier of entry
to just try new ideas.
And I think that's one of the things that really makes Bitcoiners drawn to this is it's like, this is an opportunity to turn your ideas into reality at like probably a tenth of the cost of what it was before AI.
So, you know, it's not free.
It's not like ridiculously cheap, but it's way cheaper than it would be otherwise.
so that's I don't know it that probably doesn't fully encapsulate like my my AI sort of journey
I've been on but like all this stuff I'm talking about this was only over the last couple weeks
so you know the learning curve like the AI really it helps the learning curve itself
because as soon as you get confused you just say okay pause for a second I have no idea what you're
doing please explain and then they'll explain it and then it'll start making more sense and if it
Doesn't you just keep asking it questions?
So I don't know.
It's been kind of a cool experience.
I guess I would say, you know, I don't regret it at all.
It did probably cost more money than I was planning on spending.
But, you know, I don't know.
I feel like I learned some valuable lessons
and hopefully was able to bring some new ideas into the world.
And, you know, I do think it will help me with my meetup in the longer term,
especially if it can help me make my slides every month.
But it just takes all of that, the wheeling and dealing
a layer deeper into the truly private realm.
Because, you know, I am saying like,
hey, I'm selling all this stuff on Telegram
and on Signal and on Noster.
But really who I'm talking to are people
that I personally know for the most part.
I just know that they're going to get this message
when I put it in this place.
But you know who else gets to see it?
Everybody, right?
And so everybody knows what level of economic activity I am doing.
And in these group chats, they're certainly not locked down
to just the communities locally.
There's people that find their way in there from here, there,
and everywhere else.
And you don't necessarily know who these people are,
what their intentions are, what assumptions they're going to make.
about you when you start to post this economic activity.
Somebody might assume that I'm selling tens of thousands of dollars of merchandise
because of the frequency in which I'm constantly posting all this stuff.
In reality, it's very much less than that, right?
But if I can take that a layer deeper and present these offerings directly to the people,
and at the same time, they can find a way that...
I think, you know, there's some, we talk about it on the last several episodes every time.
It's like people are sometimes uncomfortable about attending a meetup in the first place
because of OPSEC, right?
So then if you expand that out to now, I'm going to not only attend the meetup, but try
and market some good or service that I have.
It might be uncomfortable to put yourself out there to everybody that way.
And so having it into this more private space might allow for more of this, for more of these
economic circular economy juices to flow in that particular local environment.
Yeah. And, and I, I think I just want to try it out. Like, I think if it's, if it's a good idea,
I think people will like it and people will use it. And, you know, I certainly will start letting
a lot more people, like if it takes off at my meetup, it's going to take off in other places
too. You know, and if it doesn't take off at my meetup, that doesn't mean it won't work somewhere
else. But I still think that that's okay. Like I, you know, there's actually, you know,
I think I gave you some misinformation early in the episode because I told you that I hadn't been
to a Bitcoin meetup since the last time we talked, but I forgot I was down in Charlotte
this past week and ended up hanging out with it. It wasn't like on the meetup.com schedule, but
I ended up hanging out with a bunch of the guys from that meetup.
So I feel like that counts.
And while we were there, lo and behold, number one topic we talked about, AI stuff.
And so I brought this point up with them as we were talking about it.
And the more I thought about it after I said it, the more I think that it's true.
It's just like one of the, like I said before, one of the reasons why Bitcoiners are like drawn to this AI thing is because it's like, you know, empowering.
Right. And it gives you the ability to like bring your ideas into the world.
But I think it might even be more than that, because as Bitcoiners, we all know cypherpunks write code.
And there's so many Bitcoiners out there who, like me, can't write code.
And now we kind of can, you know, and so it's not exactly the same.
Like I'm not like a cryptographer and I'm certainly not going to be working on real important critical infrastructure stuff.
But I have a mechanism now to bring freedom tech into the world.
Right. Like these private marketplaces, like maybe it's not going to change the world.
That's okay. But, you know, it brings another aspect of privacy and freedom, like two small groups of individuals. And I think overall, you know, it's all open source. It's all on my GitHub. Like anybody can go take a look at the code. And I can't tell you personally, like the cloud doesn't think there's bugs in it.
so far, you know, but I can't tell you that, but somebody else, you can go audit it,
I guess, you know, maybe your AI could tell you if there's bugs in it. I don't know.
So, you know, I don't know. I think that's what, it's one of the things that I think is what drew
me in, you know, is it's like, Hey, this is an opportunity to participate in the Bitcoin community,
the Bitcoin culture in a different way than I've really ever been able to in the past. So
So I don't know.
I think it's pretty cool.
It's so profound, man, that, you know, all of a sudden, right at everyone's, all the pioneers' fingertips, we've all got ideas.
We all wish, oh, if only this kind of thing existed, I could do so much more.
And now you can do that thing.
And not only can you do that thing, but you can tailor it specifically to your local use case or to whatever use case you want.
And because in the past it was so expensive, right, to develop these very custom applications or whatever.
And it took a lot of time.
And so you weren't going to spend the time or money or effort to do it unless you were going to be sure you were going to get some kind of return or some kind of adoption or some kind of something, right?
but now you can just kind of play and say, all right, here, check this marketplace out.
It might be like Taproot, dude, where you like unleash this thing on your local community
and they start using it in ways which you never expected.
And you're like, holy shit, more to this than I even realized.
And let's keep iterating on this and make it into a tool that's even more powerful for us.
And before you know it, you guys got like the thing that's perfect for your group
to do what you need to do and empower each other.
For when the shit hits the fan,
it's like, we don't give a fuck, dude.
We're fine.
We've got these tools.
Nobody knows how we're communicating,
how we're doing our stuff.
We are operating in a parallel system
to the existing system.
And as it crumbles down,
we're left standing
because we've already built the next thing.
We're operating in the first turning, right?
To kind of quote the bugle.
You know, everyone's still running into the fourth turning.
And the pioneers have already started realizing that, hey, we're in the first turning now.
Let's go.
So I actually had something that I wanted to ask you about because so you, you know, right when we started talking about doing this podcast,
one of the first groups that you invited me into was called the Mesh to Dell.
and I will be completely honest with you I very much thought it was like a mesh network group
like maybe it was like a ham radio thing you know what I mean like it was just like a radio
like that's what the mesh was was from mesh networks but now that I've been hanging out
in this group for a little while it does not seem like that's what this is all about
So I don't know.
Why don't you explain a little bit about what is the Meshadel?
What is the concept and what is that group all about?
Well, essentially, the idea of the Meshadel is a distributed citadel.
Because back in the COVID time, I think this meme of the citadel,
Like the Bitcoiners are going to be so wealthy and so powerful that they're going to create these citadels, these fortresses all over the place.
And they'll be, we'll be able to wall it off and keep all the shit coiners out and keep all the fiat out, keep everything out.
And we'll just do our own thing.
And so I heard a podcast back then.
I don't know if I heard it the first time on, you know, I can't remember where exactly I heard it the first time.
But there's a guy, Soul Exporter, him and his son,
started a game theory, this idea.
They're like, okay, so if we have a Citadel
and we got all these Bitcoiners,
these wealthy Bitcoiners in the place,
what's going to really happen here?
How do we actually protect ourselves from the whole world wanting to come and take us over And they came to the conclusion that it effectively impossible And a better solution would be to instead of having a big
fortress on the top of the hill, to have an invisible network of people all cooperating
together to build their sovereignty and to operate in sort of an invisible layer to the existing
society. And so this is what the Mesh Jadel concept is. It's a distributed mesh citadel
where all of these people who are trying to produce their own stuff, be as sovereign as
possible, can cooperate together and do so in ways in which is invisible to the existing system.
So therefore, it's very hard to attack. It's distributed and hard to see.
And so this Mesh Jadel group is kind of a group of people who are interested in trying to explore
and accomplish this goal.
Yeah, I think, yeah, it's such a good point too
because I remember the Citadel,
like when everybody was obsessed with trying to,
they were all dreaming of their future Citadels, right?
Where, I don't know, we're going to own an island
or something like that.
And all the Bitcoiners are going to go there.
But all of the current power structures
and systems and violent war systems, they're all designed to attack and destroy those networks.
And so that's how we ended up in this world with all the centralized power is because the only way
you can protect yourself in a world like that is to centralize everything as much as you possibly
can to stockpile as much defense technology as you possibly can into this one concentrated area.
And I think as Bitcoiners, we see the downfalls of centralization, you know, maybe better than
any other group. And so, yeah, I really like this idea. And this is the first time I had heard of
this. So I, you know, this is an amazing concept. I'm not sure how this hasn't gotten more traction.
I mean, maybe I'm just out of the loop. Maybe, maybe I'm the problem. But I mean, it really does
sound like this is the way to go. Like if we're gonna, if we really want to form these communities
that can't be disrupted by the current power structures, well, we can't just copy their power
infrastructures. Like, I just don't think that's going to work. I think we have to opt out just
like we do in Bitcoin, you know, opt out, take away their power, become, you know, become as
distributed as possible. Yeah. If you, if you get these Bitcoiners and this is kind of one of the
criticisms I have of like large Bitcoin meetups is that once it gets to be, you know, a hundred
people, it's impossible to really know who's all right and who's there for malevolent purposes.
And so if instead you get to the meetup, the meetup gets to be 100 people and you're like,
whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. This is cool, but like this is out of control. Let's just start
instead of having a meetup once a month or whatever, let's have one a week and kind of
try and distribute the attendance a little bit more or have instead of having one in the city,
let's have two in the city or three or four and decentralizing as you because this freedom tech
allows us like maybe through this marketplace app that you've developed, right? It doesn't
require us to all go to the same place at the same time at the same frequency. We can be everywhere
all at once and coordinate our activity through the Freedom Tech.
And that makes it very hard to disrupt because everybody's going,
like I'm going all over the place, going to all these different things.
If one meetup closes down, another one pops up over here.
Instead of having one big fire that you call the fire department
to come put out, you got thousands of fires everywhere
and there's not enough firemen to put the water on it.
It's impossible to stop all those fires.
and um and it's especially effective because when it's small it's it's hard to detect anything going
on to begin with in the first place it's like nobody can hardly even notice because the trickle
of this this economic activity this informational activity this exchange or whatever is just like
happening all at once everywhere at all the same time right in front of everyone's faces you know
and what we're doing is not illegal like the cartels and all these these like mobster guys
they i think this kind of these kinds of systems operate in a similar fashion
what we're trying to do i call it like a soft fork of society or a soft fork of the existing system
like we're doing everything within the rules of the system and we actually have even tighter rules
around how we're cooperating
and we're relying on much more on reputation
and social capital and all of this kind of stuff
in order to ensure that we don't have to,
when there's a thing that happens,
we don't have to go out to the actual legal system.
We can work it out amongst ourselves.
And once you have this stuff in place,
if the system that you have is the fallback,
like the great thing is that
we have a great opportunity here
because if this shit that we're trying to do fails completely,
guess what?
The fiat system still exists,
and we still just fucking,
we just ride that down into the burning flames of hell.
You know?
It's okay.
I can always jump right back out
and just, like, you know, use my real name,
stop operating under a NIM, whatever,
and just participate fully.
Become a normie again?
Yeah, just go back to fiat.
If it failed, we'll just go back to fiat world.
Yeah.
When in history has that been the choice
where you can like develop this new system
right underneath all of it while it's happening.
And then if it doesn't work out,
you still can just like without any penalty,
go right back into it, the old system.
And so it creates a lot of flexibility
and opportunity to play and explore and build.
Yeah, dude, there was so much good stuff in there.
You know, one of the first things you said
that really started to get my gears turning a little bit
is it's so funny that you should say that
about how the larger meetups,
they're not like, it's not the same as the smaller ones.
Because I've been to some of the bigger ones,
you know, like let's say 50 to 100 people
is like a big meetup and conferences, right?
Conferences are way bigger.
You know, even small conferences are way bigger
than like 100 people.
It's totally different.
And from my experience,
like meeting other Bitcoin meetup organizers, you know, and I know we're early in this show,
but we both know a lot of different meetup organizers from all over the country, all
over the world.
Like, I don't, I don't even know if I could put an estimate to it, but I've got to think
like the overwhelming majority of Bitcoin meetups are like, what, like six to 15 people.
Like almost all of them just happen to be that size.
And I've never really thought about it. I always just kind of thought about it. Oh, that just means we're early. Like, oh, these groups are so small. It just means that we're early. But I wonder if it just means that that's just the right size. And like, as they get bigger than that, like other ones pop up, like just naturally without even forcing it.
I don't know. It's a good question, but it is kind of an interesting coincidence. And when you put it
in those terms, it almost makes me start thinking, I wonder if there's more to it than just
like, oh, you know, it's so early because we can't get the word out and we're not good at advertising
and all these other things that I think a lot of meetup organizers, we like, I know I do.
Like, I sort of feel like this responsibility, like I have to grow this group. Like, I can't
believe more people aren't coming like we have to do more outreach we have to do more you know
getting involved with the community or doing more advertising or whatever it is but and and maybe
some of that we do need to do that maybe we do have a responsibility to like educate our communities
and and make sure that they understand bitcoin but maybe it's not our job to grow our meetups from
five people to 20 people to 50 people, you know, to a hundred people. Like I don't,
maybe that's just not the goal. Um, so yeah, I mean, I don't know. That was one of the first,
like, I know you covered a lot of different topics there, but that was one that I don't
know. I had never really thought about it that way before. It, I think like, um, great meetup
cultures tend to, um, a lot of the weight, a lot, basically the, the people and the person who's
running it, organizing it, or the people who are running it and organizing it. And then like the
inner group of like the regulars, there's like their homies, the type, the people who are get
tight in with the people organizing it, a handful of people. Right. And I've noticed this, you know,
where, um, if that person that's, that's pushing, doing that push to like create this community and
everything drops off, the community falls apart. And so if you, once again, it's like,
if there's a thousand fires, it's a lot harder to stop that, that blaze. And so if like one fire
gets put out, whether, you know, because the person can't do it or anymore or whatever,
if, if in an, in an area, there's several other meetups to go to now that it doesn't stop
anything, you know? And the other thing is that people, as a leader, as a meetup organizer,
you're essentially like a leader of your community. You don't have to take on that responsibility
and to what level you choose to like take that role seriously or not is up to you. But like,
ultimately people look up to you when you host the meetup and you run the meetup,
They have respect for you.
And so a lot of, if there's many people that are leaders like this,
of these small groups of people, and once again, the mesh, right?
If they're meshed together, if all these little meetups are connected,
now you have this like, it's once again, another distributed system.
It's an ecosystem.
It's an ecology of all these different opportunities and bubbles
to overlap, to intersect.
And it's one thing to be the leader of 100 people
versus being the leader of 15, right?
The overhead on being the leader of 15
is much less lower.
Where like now you're doing a lot of work, right?
To develop all this educational content,
to use AI, to improve the level
in which you can educate your local area.
And imagine the pressure if that was
instead of for 15 or 10 or five people or whatever,
if it was 100, you know, that would become overwhelming
and beyond what you could do in addition to,
that would be your job, you know.
It's not just a thing that you do in addition to everything else
that you're doing, your day job, your family, and whatever.
And so it just makes it much more accessible.
Plus, it's so much less personal, right?
Like, there's so many opportunities right now
for people to learn and get educated in these gigantic groups, right?
Like you can go watch a YouTube video that has a million views, you know,
or like people with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
And, you know, we already have that not very personal like education sources.
like you don't need to come to my meetup to get that um you can go to these conferences and watch
you know i don't know like jimmy song talk to a whole room of you know 300 people like that one
to many thing like that's we already have like that in spades like tons of that content what we
don't have a lot of is this these close-knit personal groups and and that's what i mean like
it was very early on, maybe not very, maybe like, um, about a year. So let's say 10 to 12 meetups
into, um, my switch over to do an educational content that I realized I, this is this model
where we pick one topic and I do this big presentation and talk on and on about this
one subject, like this, I, you know, I don't think this is what people want. Like this just isn't,
like there's so much better opportunity for me to use this small space that we have right here.
And so switching to the Socratic seminar format is, it's been fantastic because it gives me breaks
to pause and look around the room and say, you know, how about you? Like, what do you think?
you know and people you know as they warm up they chime in on on all kinds of stuff and and i think
that's what you don't get that from podcasts right you don't get that from youtube videos you know
you don't get that from going to a bitcoin conference you know maybe inside discussions
like here and there um like when you are in a bigger group of bitcoiners but there's something
cool about having like that core group who's always there that you know are going to be there
that you get to know really well.
And you get to trust and rely on
in a way that you just can't do
in any of these other venues.
So that's kind of what I mean.
Like maybe Bitcoin meetups
were never meant to grow
beyond like 15 to 20 people, let's say.
I don't know.
The ideal size is yet to be discovered, I think.
And maybe it'll change over time.
But right now,
the small size meetups are very powerful
because like as we talked about,
we've got now at our fingertips
these AI vibe coding tools
where we can develop freedom tech
directly for that provides value
very specifically to the few people,
this small group of people
that we're interacting with.
And when those small groups of people
start to go and interact
with other small groups of people
and we can share this,
once I talk about it
in terms of cultural capital, right?
You're developing a lot of cultural capital
amongst a small group
and you figure out things with each other
that are powerful and good.
And then all it takes is one person to go from that meetup
to the next meetup an hour away
and be like, yo, over here, we got this cool shit going on.
Have you guys heard about what we're doing?
And then they say, no, we never thought about it.
That's really awesome.
We should start using it too.
And then they say, by the way,
we've got this cool thing that we've tailored to our stuff.
And you say, oh, well, that's a little different
than what we might need,
but shit, I could just fork that.
and clawed it up and tailor it right to our group.
And you can imagine, dude, it's just like,
this is not like an app that you're gonna go,
that's on the Google Play Store
that the NSA can shut down or some shit.
It's just all these little tools that we're using
and we're sharing with each other.
And it just becomes, in my mind,
just like a truly decentralized, unstoppable thing,
much like Bitcoin.
yeah, I don't know, man.
First turning vibes.
Feeling optimistic.
Feeling like we're going to win.
We'll see.
Yeah, I mean, I came into Bitcoin, you know,
because this homesteading stuff that I do,
the reason why I started homesteading in the first place
was because I felt like the world was very uncertain
and that I needed to insulate myself from all the potential problems, right?
So if the food system was going to have a problem,
and I was realizing that I can't even buy the food at the quality that I want
for any reasonable price, so the only choice is to make it myself,
to grow it myself.
And then that leads to like, what else do I need to do myself
because this is all unreliable?
And the only thing I couldn't do for myself was find money, like money, right?
Having a good money.
and when COVID happened and they started to airdrop the fucking stimmy checks and all this shit,
I was like, it's over, dude.
This system is fucked up.
The government can't just give people free money because of a virus or something.
This doesn't make any sense to me.
I was like, this is going to cause inflation.
As a business owner, I was just imagining like, okay, I got a free $1,500.
You got a free $1,500.
I know everyone got a free $1,500.
I know everyone's got extra $1,500 to work with
doesn't even have to have any market pricing dynamics
to get me to realize that I could probably raise my price
because I know everyone's just got free shit
and they're going to spend it with me
and so I immediately saw that the prices
were going to go out of control
and I was like how can I stop that bleeding
like I got savings
and everything's going to get more expensive overnight
and I was
I meditate every day after lunch
I try to at least
and for about 20 minutes
and I was laying down on this meditation
and this idea was like churning in my mind
and I sat up from the meditation
and something told me
check the price of Bitcoin
and I checked the price of Bitcoin
and it was like 3k
and it had just come down from like 12,000
or 14,000 or whatever it was at
and I was like well I'd heard about this before
and at the time I didn't have two nickels to rub together
to play around with it
and it seems like now is a good opportunity
to try and figure this shit out
because this is a money that I don't know
I didn't actually exactly know
but I had this peripheral understanding
that Bitcoin was this money that couldn't be fucked with right
and as I learned more I was like
this is exactly the solution that I need.
Now I've got my sovereignty in my food,
my sovereignty in my power,
my solar panels and all this shit.
I've got my wealth.
I've got all this stuff.
And now I've got money that I can just use
outside of the existing system.
And so basically from the time that I learned about Bitcoin
to the time that it took me about six months
before I had no money in my savings account anymore
and I only had Bitcoin.
Like I went all in immediately.
It's a lot easier to go to take those kinds of rash moves when you don't have a lot.
I think what Bitcoin really offered too is this idea that it's the renaissance of the subsistence lifestyle.
Where the subsistence lifestyle used to be good.
The homesteaders of the late, well, the early, I don't know, in the 1800s.
When the movement West was going and these people didn't even have a lot of money, but they had a lot of sovereignty, right?
They had a lot of skills. They knew how to take care of themselves. They knew how to cooperate with each other.
This was giving me the same kind of feeling like, all right, now I don't necessarily, I don't need a lot of money to live because I'm producing a lot of my own shit.
And so if I just use this Bitcoin thing now, the little bonus on the purchasing power of my savings is going to enable me to do so much more with a meager income than anything else that was ever available to me.
And it's been working out like that, you know.
Yeah, yeah, that was a good time for sure to go in.
Yeah, it's funny.
I feel like so many of us, I had some Bitcoin,
not a lot, like before COVID.
And I guess I had most, look,
I had a small investment right And let just call it cryptocurrency right And okay a good chunk of that was Bitcoin But yeah like a good chunk of it was not Bitcoin And you know this
whole thing was just in my mind, it was kind of like a gambling thing. But I also had this little
thing in the back of my head. And it's why I always made sure the majority of my stack was Bitcoin
was because I always had this feeling that,
hey, if shit ever hits the fan,
like if our whole system here starts to fall apart,
this Bitcoin thing, this is what's going to be the thing
that you are going to want to have.
And so I want to make sure that I always have some of that.
And I can go gamble with all this other stuff
because I don't know what any of it is anyway.
And then when COVID hit,
And the entire economy looked like it was falling apart.
And Bitcoin crashed with everything else.
I was like, wait a minute.
I thought this was supposed to be the thing that was going to shield me from this.
And it was that.
So I was, you know, beside myself contemplating what is going on.
You know, my 401k crashed.
my savings like there was very little savings you know and the savings i did have that was in this
crypto stuff like it all crashed and so i was like very feeling lost and confused and
the only thing i could think to do because i just like you i was watching the price of bitcoin as it
was crashing harder and harder and harder and the only thing i could think to do i was like i you
You know, I honestly, I have no idea what to do right now.
The only thing I can think to do is buy more Bitcoin.
That's all I can think of.
And so right then, right in the heat of the dip, I bought a bunch of Bitcoin.
And, you know, that was a smart move in hindsight.
But really what I did was after that, I realized that this was the moment.
I must figure out what the hell just happened.
because I didn't understand anything.
Like I wasn't like a gold guy.
I wasn't like a sound money guy.
Like a lot of the guys on my meetup,
they were like,
oh, you didn't know any of the sound money stuff?
It's like, no, I didn't know any of that.
I was very ignorant about money and investing.
I had never bought a stock before Bitcoin.
I bought Bitcoin before I had bought any stock.
It just wasn't a thing that I knew anything about.
and so um covid was like i must figure this out and so i actually didn't even start with bitcoin
i started with figuring out how the dollar works and then i started figuring out how bitcoin worked
and i also went hard down the rabbit hole in 2020 and um yeah i i would not say that maybe
even ever I got to the point where I had like no dollars or whatever. But you know, I would say I
took to the rabbit hole, so to speak. I honestly, I never really stopped. I still, like I just said
in the opening, I'm about to go down this rabbit hole to go learn about Spark.
Because this is big. It's just became what I do now is I'm so hooked. I'm so locked in to this,
to this new thing that I don't know, I can't get enough.
It's funny. I was talking with the Charlotte Bitcoin guys.
And you sort of just made the same point to me that they made, which is,
I think that my meetup,
like we need to find a way to start distributing a little bit of the
leadership, let's say, because I do take an extremely central role.
and I don't know I think I'm just a psychopath like I put in yes I do I put in a lot of time
into this stuff and I get very little very little quote-unquote like out the other side
at least very little that's measurable right but I think I am gaining a lot in this like what you
call cultural capital yeah and this comes down to the the number go up is one thing and a lot of
people come to bitcoin for number grow up that was i mean very enticing to me in addition to this idea
that i could have this money that couldn't be fucked with it's like oh wait you're gonna tell
me i have like a lot of freedom in my my money and at the same time this shit's gonna also just
like explode in purchasing power over time as well.
Sounds like a really cool thing to get involved with.
And people that get attached to the number go up,
they probably just haven't gotten to the meetups yet
and realize like once you go to the meetups
and you start developing a community
and a culture around your Bitcoin,
around Bitcoin in general,
the freedom go up is like immense as well.
And this comes into the,
But when you start like, okay, so you got the financial capital figured out, right?
We all know Bitcoin is the financial capital that we all want.
We don't want anything else.
Gold, silver, whatever.
Fuck that shit.
Bitcoin allows us to really do a lot more than all that stuff.
And so it's like, what forms of capital do you need to balance your capital portfolio
when it comes to these nine forms of capital?
Well, it's like you got to have social capital.
You got to know people.
You have to have a community.
When you need to spend your Bitcoin, if you don't know anyone, what the fuck are you going to do? Sell it back on the exchange for dollars? You're fucked. What happens when the exchanges get locked down? When their exchange gets hacked and all your financial information gets leaked to everybody? This is terrible.
And so you look for social capital.
You find social capital at the meetup.
You start to meet the people.
You start to build a culture.
You build cultural capital.
You build experience by going to the meetups.
You get to now have a great place to learn from everybody
about how to use the tools and what tools people are using
and what's good for your local area.
And so by running a meetup, you get so much.
You might not get a fight.
You spend Bitcoin.
You spend financial capital in order to do it, but you get so much more in return over time, especially lower your time preference, right?
The meme, lower your time preference.
Over the years, the first year, you might not get anything out of it.
The second year, you start the ball rolling.
The third year, the fourth year, now it's like turning into something magic, you know?
And everybody's winning, you know?
The meetups, I've just, as I've been doing this, I can't remember the first meetup I attended.
It must have been in 2021 or something like that, right?
So it's been four or so years, four or five years, I don't know,
that I've been going to these meetups.
And to watch the community and all the people,
it's just like everyone is a complete badass, you know,
doing amazing things.
And I get to, like, interact with these people on a monthly basis
all the time, and then in addition to that, more on the side.
And it just becomes, like, you just realize, like, wow,
these are powerful groups that are developing here.
And once again, back to the very beginning of the podcast,
like, oh, Taproot came out, we didn't get shit but ordinals.
And it's like, yo, yo, just wait, just wait a little bit.
And people are going to start to use Taproot to do amazing things.
And the same thing is true, like, oh, I started this Bitcoin meetup
and I've been running it for a year and I didn't get shit.
And it's like, just wait, you know.
eventually as the connections get made and the interoperability between other meetups and stuff
start the connections start to form it becomes very powerful yeah man so speaking of uh of being
powerful and and being able to to communicate messages with your uh with your money what do
think good time to transition to boosts sure yeah we could read off the boost we got dude we've been
getting so much good support um we were joking at the when we started trying to do this podcast like
you know okay so it's just going to be uh the meetup organizers listening to this and learning
about meetups and the community on noster and everywhere else has has told us otherwise like
everyone's coming in with boosts. It's amazing. I really appreciate it all.
I very much assumed we would have tens of users or tens of listeners to every episode. And I have
been very much proven wrong. And so, yeah, I think I've said it before. It's the amount of
engagement we've been getting and the support we've been getting has been literally amazing.
It's kind of blown me away. Yeah. And the whole dream here is that
And I just want, I think we agree.
Like really what we want people to realize is like,
by interacting with this podcast, by boosting your meetup,
by sharing, just commenting in general,
and just letting people know that you got a meetup going on.
When people listen to the podcast, they hear the boosts,
they see the stuff on Noster.
It's just a continuous reminder that there is a meetup going on
somewhere close to you.
There's a lot of meetups everywhere, and meetup culture is really good.
And with that, we've got Otis Bittmeier.
He boosted 5,420 sats.
Thank you very much.
And he says, if I hadn't attended the Southwest Michigan meetup,
I may not have met Rev Hodel.
Today, Rev helped me solve a mining issue not even AI could figure out.
Back to AI.
So there's some things AI can't figure out.
And it turns out humans are still the purest form of signal and meetups are the greatest place to find them.
And this is from our last episode with Boomer, which was titled, what was it titled?
Meetups and podcasts are the signal.
Yeah, yeah. Meetups and podcasts were the, that was the topic. Yep.
Yeah. Meetups and podcasts are the signal. And here you go.
A connection that I made with Otis Bittmeier at the Southwest Michigan meetup.
Now he can call me for trouble that he's having with his mining issues and solve that.
And this isn't a question that he could find an answer to on AI.
And so, yeah, super high value going to the meetups because then you meet someone like you or I who can help you figure shit out when you get stuck.
Next is Lonely Pumpkins.
once again Lonely Pumpkins from last week
and Otis was also on the last
recording so thank you guys for
the continuous boosts
and Lonely Pumpkins has 5,000
stats and he says
keep the pod
high signal thanks for the shout out
gents
well thank you Lonely Pumpkins
keep doing what you're doing keep running that meetup
the Pennsylvania
I hope I can experience the
Pennsylvania meetup culture
someday. It really sounds like there's a lot of cool people hanging out over there.
Lonely Pumpkins, you know, maybe you guys need to do like a Noster. I don't know if Lonely
Pumpkins is super heavy on Noster or not, but it seems like when you do these Noster meetups,
people show up to them. There was... Are you talking like a corny chat or...
no no like in state college i think in pennsylvania
those man i'm i know seth was doing one i think it's called noster valley
it's like seth and pickle dan and a couple other guys from that area they do these they've done it
twice now i think they have this noster meetup and with content and everything but yeah put
noster meetups our bitcoin meetups and uh thanks again lonely pumpkins i won't go on any further
next we got business cat business cat also boosted last last episode business cat boosts
4,444 sets palindrome boost palindrome boost also pennsylvania right yep another pennsylvania homie
and he just says powerful boomer uh bicep flex emoji next we got wartime uh 3,333 sets
and he says, banger, firecracker, firecracker, pure signal.
Another one from wartime, he's got another 333,
or 3,333 salute, beers, cheers, emojis.
Then we've got Boomer.
Thank you, wartime.
Yes, thank you, wartime.
You know, and I know wartime.
I like wartime.
he's a good friend and so
I really do appreciate the support
wartime
so you say Boomer is next so Boomer
boosted his own podcast
that he was on
you know whenever I go on a podcast I tend to boost
it as well it's just
it's fun right
you just gotta keep the sats circulating around
confuse the IRS as much as possible
it's like what the fuck you paid yourself
to be on this show
like what's going on here guys
you paid yourself 10 cents
Why? This is a taxable event.
So, and thankfully, Boomer is in Canada, so he doesn't have to deal with the IRS.
Maybe it's much worse there. I don't know.
So Boomer's got a thousand sats.
And he says, it was an honor to talk to you guys about our new crew up here in Ottawa.
Or just, well, no, not new crew, about our crew.
And he says, meetups are truly the social layer to Bitcoin.
And I can't agree with that more because how can you get more social than hanging out with people every month that you know and at the place where you know, the drinks that you know, the food that you know.
And can't get much more social capital than people right in your backyard.
Yep.
Thanks again, Boomer.
We got Shadrack.
And Shadrack is putting, well, Shadrack with 939 sats.
he says, Bitcoin is backed by Bitcoiners in the first turning.
Blood, sweat, and spring.
Get to work.
40 HPW.
And so Shadrach is putting on a really sick event
in tandem with South by Southwest.
God, he's going to kill me because I can't remember
the fucking name of the thing that he's doing.
But it's this weekend.
I think it's starting on Thursday,
which at the time of this recording is tomorrow.
so actually maybe by the time this recording's out
this thing will already have happened, I'm sorry
but I will be on one of the panels
talking on this
South by Southwest live stream thing
it's super cool, they're doing a bunch of
they're doing live acts, they're doing
pre-recorded acts, everything's
live stream over Noster, it's all value for value
there's a bunch of panels
and stuff being involved in this
and so
Shadrach just continues to
make
he's one of these people that just
It's like, dude, Bitcoin number go up?
Well, guess what?
Freedom go up, and I'm just going to do whatever I'm free to do.
I'm going to build what I want, make the world I want to see.
So thank you, Shadrach.
Next up, we've got God's death, 237 sats.
He says, thank you, gentlemen.
Well, thank you, God's death.
God's death is another diehard podcast listener.
He's everywhere.
You can find him boosting on many of your favorite pods.
And finally, we have Jer with 100 sats, and he says,
three legends, so Jer must know Boomer.
Thanks, Jer.
I guess so.
I know Jer.
Jer is from the – I know him from the Rock Paper Bitcoin podcast community.
He's a candy guy, right?
I believe so.
I don't know for sure.
I know him from now, sir.
Yeah.
Jer, sorry if we doxed you.
I don't know.
Are you in Canada or not?
Let the world know.
And that's the boost for the last one.
So thanks, everybody.
It's really cool.
This, you know, just, I want everyone to just,
if you got a meetup, boost the information.
You don't got a hundred sats.
I think fountain, the minimum is a hundred sats
if you boost your fountain.
But Reid's got a node that all the boosts go directly to his node.
So if you send a message through a boost from another podcasting 2.0 app,
we will see that and we will be able to read that.
So don't just think you need to boost through Fountain
that we're like a Fountain-only podcast.
If you want to interact with us on Noster,
the local Bitcoiners Noster account,
share your meetup on there.
My goal and my hope is that
at the end of these podcasts,
we read off like more meetups than anyone can stand.
I want us to be reading off so many meetups
that you get tired of listening to me read off the meetups
and you turn the podcast off, okay?
So get your meetup out there.
Everyone needs to know that these meetups exist
and that this stuff is happening
and that this stuff is powerful, you know?
This is how we're going to hyper Bitcoin. Hyper Bitcoinization starts at your local economy and your local culture. Hyper Bitcoinize your own world first. And do that by boosting the podcast and sharing that, letting everyone else know.
we will amplify your signal to the best of our ability, right?
That's, and, and that's, that's why we want you to boost.
It's, we want you to boost to advertise your meetup.
That's what we want.
You know, um, like we said, we, our, our audiences is growing.
And so, you know, the more, um, boosts that we get, the more meetups that we can read
out, you know, the wider, the audience, our audience gets, you know, the more that, uh,
Rev will just completely put you to sleep.
Reading off, meetup after meetup after meetup after meetup.
That's what we're going for.
All right, Rev.
You got anything else before we wrap this one up?
I don't know.
I think the key takeaway from this discussion is that
even if your meetup is small, it's super powerful.
Give it time.
Let it mature.
Just like any good ecosystem,
It takes time for a fruit tree to bear fruit.
And you just got to be lower your time preference.
Let it let it grow.
And you will reap the rewards from this.
And not only does number go up, but freedom goes up, especially when you start to interact with your local Bitcoin culture and community.
Yeah, and and and use the tools.
Right. And and I don't just mean AI.
I know we did talk about that in this episode, but, you know, use whatever tools that you have at your disposal to maximize your ability to be a sovereign individual in this world that we have.
And one of those tools is your local meetup.
So, you know, go meet your community, you know, reach out.
if you have
one thing that I think we say
in the closing
credits so to speak
if you'd like to come on the pod
and talk about your meetup just reach out
our meetup
email address is right in the show notes
so if you want to come on
reach out we'll have you on
we'd love to talk to you about how your meetup's going
we'd love to let you get your
message out and hear all the cool stuff
you've been working on
alright so I think
we're ready to wrap it up. We'll talk to you next time. See you, Rev. Bye.
Thank you.