Welcome to Local Bitcoiners, the podcast about Bitcoin meetups.
In this episode, Reid and Rev chat with Corey, aka Boomer, from the Ottawa Bitcoin Meetup.
Hey, all right. Back here, it's Rev, Rev Hodel, and this is the Local Bitcoiners podcast.
Tonight we're talking with the organizer of the Ottawa meetup in Canada, Boomer.
He's going by Corey as well.
Claim to fame is that he was the Maxi Madness 2025 champion.
Did the best at figuring out who was going to be the number one in the Maxi Madness.
You've got that bracket correct.
so we're going to talk with Corey tonight about what's going on at the Ottawa meetup
and before that I want to talk a little bit about just this
we're in a bear market okay sure the price is going down
the last recording I was talking a little bit about
at my South Bend meetup that I organized that oh we got bear market
vibes there's only a few people that showed up well man oh man did that flip over on its head
just a couple weeks later,
I went to the Southwest Michigan meetup
in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
And this meetup was just phenomenal, man.
It was out of control.
We had a huge turnout.
And this is one of those meetups
where there's a really good example
of the circular economy shining through.
And so there was a bunch of people there.
We did a MeshTastic workout or workshop.
I had one of my Bitcoin mining space heaters on display
so people could ask questions and learn about that.
But in addition to that, I left that meetup with four pounds of coffee,
two pounds of beet, two quarts of yogurt, a month's supply of collagen powder,
sourdough bread, and four dozen eggs.
You can't beat that shit.
It was just unbelievable.
And so this meetup really has raised my spirits
and let me know that the people, the true believers in Bitcoin,
the people who have conviction are coming out strong.
And Reid, how was your meetup?
Yeah, it's so funny that you say that, right?
Because I also, January, we had some kind of bear market vibes.
And then our February meetup, which was February 15th, was huge.
We like doubled our normal or at least the previous turnout.
We had like 15 people.
Yeah, we had great vibes.
I did a thing. I tried something new this time where I was I sent out a memo to everybody like a message like request like, hey, if you got any content that you want me to cover during the meetup, send me a message.
Because all of our group, everybody's always silent on our group chats and stuff like that.
And all of a sudden people started popping up and chattering and talking about topics.
And so I did have to cover a couple of topics I wasn't super thrilled about.
Like we had to I had to have a slide on Bitcoin Epstein connections, which was not have been on my normal meetup list.
But whatever, you know, at least they got, you know, their, you know, fearless leaders sort of opinion about how little that actually matters.
And, you know, we talked about, you know, even if there was like some connection that it really wouldn't matter for anything.
So, yeah, we actually had we had great vibes.
we talked about
I threw in a bunch of bear market content
we talked about
Bitcoin obituaries
which is always a fun thing
we played a funny video about
this guy always
talking about how Bitcoin always crashes
so you shouldn't buy it
so it was fun times
we had a great meetup
so Corey Boomer
how about you?
how was your last meetup?
what's up guys?
glad to be here
a big fan of your show already only two episodes in man and i'm i'm like like i told you guys before
we started recording like you you guys are like already by far head and shoulders rookie of the
year bitcoin podcast it's going to be tough to be you this is this is like lebron james in his rookie
year you know like you just knew that something special that was happening that's that's where i
feel like local bitcoiners podcast is so it's just such an honor to be here um yeah i'm the organizer
are the Ottawa Bitcoin Meetup.
Call it Capital Bitcoiners.
We meet twice a month.
So we meet on the first Wednesday of every month.
And that is kind of targeted towards newcomers.
It's called Bitcoin Basics.
We advertise it all over the place as being a place.
If you're curious about Bitcoin, come in and ask questions.
Come and just hang out.
Really inclusive to absolutely everybody.
and then on the third Sunday of every month we have something called Bitcoin Builders
and that's a little bit more focused on a lot of the guys who are developers because we do have a
couple of developers in and around the city that I live in and a couple of guys they just kind of
want to have a kind of like a mini bit devs type of thing where they just kind of talk about
talk shop and then people that are just been in Bitcoin a little while and they don't necessarily
want to learn anything about Bitcoin. They just want to talk to other guys about Bitcoin.
So we don't, obviously the two meetups have kind of blended into each other a little bit.
Once you come to one of the meetups, you kind of like it, you end up coming to the other one.
And it's kind of hard to tell the difference. But as the organizer, I kind of keep myself to
the newcomers. So like I'll say hi to the guys, you know, the same, just like your guys meet up,
I'm sure there's probably eight to 10 guys that are your core members.
And you're,
you're probably going to get five of them every single time you have a meetup.
Uh, you know, you might,
might be a different five every time because everybody has family commitments or
what have you, but you get five of the 10 show up.
So those guys kind of just hang out and do their thing.
And I kind of focus on the newcomers and try to answer some questions.
So the last meetup we have was a, was a builder's one.
And it was kind of small.
Like we didn't have a huge turnout because it was just shit weather up here.
Like it was just, it was pretty much like a snowstorm.
So we only had five or six guys show up.
And like Reid was saying, like it was right at the Epstein stuff.
I think it was actually the 15th as well.
I think it was the 15th or the 16th.
Was that a Sunday?
Was the 15th on a Sunday?
Mine's a Sunday, yeah.
That was the same day, same day, same day.
So yeah, we kind of talked a little bit about the Epstein stuff and what have you.
It's good.
It's always good to see the guys.
It's always good to talk Bitcoin.
And it just gives our family and our coworkers and our girlfriends and our wives, gives them a break.
Then we can go out and talk about Bitcoin instead of talking about it to them.
Right. So especially after Valentine's Day, it's kind of nice.
So we probably didn't talk about Bitcoin very much on Valentine's Day.
Yeah, it's funny. Those numbers you just rattled off off the top of your head for like the core group and the in and out.
Dude, that's like almost exactly like the meetup that we run too.
And I do the same thing as you do.
I end up spending most of the time with like the beginners explaining stuff.
And a lot of our slides are geared towards the beginners.
I always try to hit a couple topics that are like for people who are like a little bit more advanced.
But yeah, we got a lot of beginners at mine.
Yeah, I tend to get like a handful.
I mean, it's hard.
Bear market is bad.
Like you don't get a whole lot of newcomers when the price is going down.
And that's the same with everywhere.
But when price is kind of popping, you can get four or five newcomers every single meetup.
That's what I've found.
Like I've been running our meetup now for almost four years.
So twice a month, twice a month.
And we haven't, I don't think I've missed.
I mean, I missed a handful of them just because like family issues.
Like my dad passed away a couple of years ago.
So I missed a couple of meetups over that.
But aside from that, like we have not missed rain or shine, sleet or snow.
We've had meetups like twice, sometimes three times a month for the past four years.
And it's the same thing.
It's exactly the same pattern all the time.
You get 80% of the core guys show up and then a handful of newcomers, depending on what's going on with price.
You know, it's weird.
I don't know what's going on in my area, but so at the first Thursday of the month, that's my meetup, the South Bend meetup.
The second Thursday of the month, I go to the Chicago BitDevs meetup.
And then the third Thursday is the Southwest Michigan meetup.
And the BitDevs meetup is normally kind of, it's been pretty consistent, right?
The same kind of people show up, not really too many new people, a handful of new people here and there.
But this last one, man, was like everyone came out of the woodwork.
I don't know.
There was no chairs.
There was not enough chairs.
and people were standing.
And I was like thinking, okay, so the price is down.
Maybe the price being down doesn't make any sense
and everyone's coming to the meetup
to try and figure out what the hell,
why is this going down?
Is there something that I can't figure out
that I should be concerned about here?
And it's the meetups,
like the Southwest Michigan meetup
and the BitDevs meetup,
obviously price is not really a premier point of discussion.
We talk about technical things at the BitDevs
and then more self-sovereignty type stuff at the Southwest Michigan meetup.
But I don't know.
I guess keep an eye out.
I think that there might be a wave of enthusiasm coming towards these meetups
just from the vibes that I've been getting from these last two that I went to.
I've got the Elmhurst, Illinois meetup on Wednesday,
so that would be tomorrow from the time that we're recording.
So we'll see what the turnout's like there.
One question I did have, though,
So you say you've been doing two a month for four years for a long time.
Did you start off with two?
Or how did you initially start doing meetups and why?
That's a great, absolutely great question.
Absolutely fantastic question.
The genesis of our meetups really starts with the trucker's convoy
that happened here in Ottawa.
That was really what started it.
I was relatively early in my Bitcoin journey.
Like I'm class of 2020, 2021.
So that's kind of when I first started getting into it during the lockdowns, during COVID.
And then when that literally just happened, you know, the whole trucker convoy and all that stuff, that's like 10 minutes up the road.
Like that just happened literally right over there.
And I actually got to meet quite a few Bitcoiners at the convoy.
You know, shout out to all those guys.
I'm not going to dox them, but, you know, I met, I met some people there that are going to be friends for life that they, that, you know, my brothers and my sisters.
And so that really left an impression on me, like just, wow, like that there are, there is a need for community and there is a need for this.
So that, that was in February of 2022.
Yeah, February, January, February, 2022.
to. And then in April, a couple of months later, Brad Mills, if you know Brad, a pretty popular
Bitcoin, Bitcoiner up here in Canada, he happened to be in town for, for some event. So he just kind
of made a, he just said, look, I'm going to be at this bar at this time. Any Bitcoiners want to come
out and hang out, you know, come on and hang out. So like I went and, you know, maybe another 10,
15 people went and they, at that, at that kind of meetup, kind of impromptu little meetup,
he kind of took me aside afterward. And he said, you know, like, you got to get something started
here. You got to, you got to do it regularly. Um, and I just kind of went with it from there.
Um, the first couple of meetups that I held, I, I, I had just pieces of paper on every table.
And I just told the people, it's like, what do you guys want? Like, what, what, what, what do you
want to do you want to learn do you want you want to hang out um and we had like pretty crazy turnout
right from the beginning like those first couple of meetups we're getting like 30 35 people
right away because it was was definitely like we were talking about we were talking before we hit
record like ottawa is not that far from montreal and montreal has probably i don't know maybe i
I can't say the best, but it's up there of like the best Bitcoin scenes in the world.
Like those Montreal meetups, they're pretty good, man.
They're like 80, 100 people and they're hardcore Bitcoiners that go to those Montreal meetups.
Like that's like bull Bitcoin, panties for Bitcoin.
Those guys, those guys are no joke.
So I think there were a lot of people that were living in and around the Ottawa area that were traveling to Montreal to go to their meetups.
And that's where they were getting their fix.
And then all of a sudden, there's this Ottawa one that pops up.
And now the Ottawa one is, oh, an hour closer.
So now they don't have to drive two and a half hours to go to a meetup.
They just have to drive an hour.
So I think I got a lot of those guys.
So from the first couple of meetups, I asked for comments.
I asked for anything, any feedback.
What do you guys need?
And it was pretty clear that there were two types of people coming.
They were the Bitcoin, crypto, curious people.
that just wanted to learn.
And there were a bunch of guys like me
who just wanted to be around other Bitcoiners.
So I kind of, okay, well, let's do two a month then.
So we do one for beginners
and one for a little bit more advanced.
And then in the summer, I also do like a Bitcoin walk.
You got to have that guy on.
Like wait until the summer.
The guy, Enzo, Endo?
I think his name is Endo.
Endo or Enzo?
I think he's in Scotland now
where he started like the Bitcoin walks,
where it's just like a kinetic Bitcoin meetup.
You meet Saturday morning, nine o'clock in the morning,
and just go for a walk.
So I started doing, I only do those in the summer.
So I, you know, and up here in Ottawa, trust me,
summer doesn't last that long.
So it's only a couple of months.
So that's how I started.
And it's just kind of been going ever since.
yeah that's sick man yeah i props to you man for for holding two meetups a month for
for all those years that's some serious dedication yeah we do some special events too like i i did
like one or two bit devs kind of events because i got one guy i don't want to dox him but one of
the guys that lives in town is uh working on the madeira project so uh he's he's like one of the
one of the developers so after the his madeira project i kind of wanted him to to do like a
legit kind of showcase like the technology that he's working on like he's a developer like an
e-cash developer he got an open sats grant so he i wanted him to do that um we've had you know a
couple of businesses a couple one one so far one business that want that got in touch with me
and they want to accept bitcoin for payment so they said well why don't you do a meetup at our
store. So we did like a special kind of little meetup at the store,
you know, did a couple of lightning transactions, you know, that was kind of cool.
And then we had like Peter McCormick in town to do a, he was in town doing a documentary about
the Freedom Convoy. So I organized like a pub night for Peter that, that to this day, that was
the best turnout I had for a Bitcoin meetup was when Peter McCormick was in town. We had like
65, 70 people show up, I think.
Yeah, there's something about, you know, it's funny, especially I mentioned before we started
recording that I went to the Canadian Bitcoin conference. I think it was 2024. But we were,
you know, I went up there with one of my buddies and we were saying, man, there's something about,
you know, like the legit, the number of legit Bitcoin, Bitcoiners in Canada, especially like
per capita? Like, oh man, like, I don't know what's in the water up there, but you guys got
some serious Bitcoin or like Bitcoin heavyweights up in, up in Canada. What's great about up here
is that every city has a completely different Bitcoin vibe. It's completely unique. Now you,
you went to Montreal that, that is hardcore crypto, cypherpunk, old school freedom money,
freedom tech type of vibe uh very different than toronto toronto it's that's ethereum
i'm not saying that there aren't good bitcoiners in toronto because there are
some of my friends but it's you go to a bitcoin meetup in toronto it's not the same as a bitcoin
meetup in montreal uh vancouver has a fantastic scene as well like the vancouver scene is very
like a circular economy a lot of people like the coin coin os guys the coin us guys are over there
and julian figueroa and all those guys those guys are like they're legit they're no joke over there
in vancouver uh calgary we got like ben perrin the btc sessions and his sats market um dave
bradley and all those guys sly goomba there's some good bitcoiners up in calgary um but man
And Ontario, man, it's rough.
Like, I'm in Ontario.
Ottawa, the Ottawa scene, Ottawa itself is just a strange place.
It's a government town.
Everybody's afraid of everything.
Everybody's boring.
There was no scene here until the convoy.
And I think even now, like, people that come to our meetups
and compare it to Montreal and Toronto, like, we're very much a little,
we're more on the developer side.
we're uh pretty much we're more privacy focused i know here i am using my real name and being
extroverted and all that shit but i'm kind of the exception uh most of the guys at my meetup
don't want to be doxxed um they're not walking around with bitcoin t-shirts uh but i i would say
pound for pound ottawa some really smart dudes at our meetup uh we're very much bitcoin only
but we're more on the developer side.
Developer slash energy.
There's a lot of home miners up here too.
Like this town has like got a lot of hobby miners,
me included.
I hate to, it kind of sounds like I'm bragging,
but like we're probably a more educated crew
up here in Ottawa than a lot of cities.
Like a lot of us are professionals
in something kind of related to Bitcoin,
but not really Bitcoin.
like a lot of developer a lot of people that work in tech a lot of people that work in economics a
lot of people that work in engineering um so that's kind of been our scene uh and i'm proud
you know i'm proud to be a part of that scene for sure um i my goal what when i started the meetup
was was kind of make ottawa the the place you go to learn bitcoin but uh you know i i think we've
we're kind of we're a part of that we're definitely a part of that but uh reads right man like
Canada's no joke up here, pound for pound for Bitcoin.
Something, so I'm pretty interested in this idea of kind of keeping your pseudonym, pseudonym,
your anonymous nature, right?
But still being able to show up in person at the meetup.
I think a lot of people who just participate in their, the Bitcoin culture online as a pseudonym
are kind of worried about going to the meetup because now they going to be like doxing themselves to people that they don know right That they not part of the community yet So they basically what I getting at is
like, how do you create or is there anything that you do to create an environment that gives people
the confidence when they come to a meetup like this, that this information is like, what comes
to the meetup stays at the meetup, you don't really have to worry about it. And then by doing
so by participating, you're actually going to get more value out of your Bitcoin because
of the network and the community and the culture that you're now a part of.
Yes and no.
I mean, one thing that I do a lot is to say no politics at our meetup.
Like you don't like that.
No shit coins and no politics.
Those are basically the two rules.
And we cheat a little bit on the no politics stuff and the no shit coin stuff.
If every once in a while Tether comes up or we don't really talk about anything other than maybe Monero comes up once in a while.
But aside from that, I'll shut down conversations if you're talking about anything other than, again, Tether, Monero, maybe.
But the no politics stuff is serious.
I'm sure Washington, D.C. is exactly the same.
I'm sure you go to a Bitcoin meetup in Washington, D.C.
or maybe not so much now with the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
They're doing good work over there.
They're kind of taking the stigma away.
But, you know, you're in this town.
When you're in a government town,
your feds are everywhere, guys.
Literally, they're all over the place.
So I just, I don't pressure people to use their real names.
We don't use name tags.
There's a couple of guys.
There's one guy in particular,
and he's probably going to listen to this.
I still don't know his real name.
Like, I've known him for four years.
I've seen him pretty much twice a month for four years, and I don't know the guy's birth name.
I know him by his name.
Now, are you pretty explicit about, like, no photos, no recording?
Do you, like, have to say that?
Is that just, like, a given understanding?
It's happened once or twice where I had to say it.
But the group that we have over here, they're very privacy-focused already.
so I wouldn't be the one
to have to say that
we would all say that
but it is something
yeah
I've been to other meetups
in other cities
where
you know
I personally don't mind
people taking my picture
I mean
but I
I wouldn't take anybody
I wouldn't take a picture
but
but I've seen that
even in the Montreal
even in the Montreal meetups
like that I go to
relatively
you know not
100% of the time
but I try to get out to
at least
half of them
there's people taking pictures.
We don't really,
it's not really a thing
up here in Ottawa.
Yeah, one of the things,
you know, it's funny.
So OPSEC came up
at our last episode too.
And I think it's probably,
I mean, I think it's fair
to talk about it.
It's probably like the one area
of let's say like criticism
that maybe we get,
not necessarily directed at us,
but for like reasons why,
like let's say like
hardcore Bitcoiners
are like, no, I don't want to go to a meetup.
It's like all related to like OPSEC.
And I think that that's fair,
but there's also like some pretty easy,
like low lift stuff that you can do, right?
Like, you know, when you're going to the meetup,
like you don't, even if you use your first name,
like you're not going in there with like
your full first and last name, right?
And if you're a Bitcoin meetup organizer,
you know, you're not,
it's not like you're doing it at your house or something.
You know, you always try to make sure
you're doing it in a public place and stuff like that.
So certainly we've never had any issues with that at ours.
And like ours is, I mean, a lot of meetups aren't huge anyways.
So like ours is pretty small.
I've never had to tell someone, hey, put your phone away,
like you're taking a video or something like that.
Like nobody's taking video at ours.
So it hasn't been too big of an issue.
But yeah, I mean, OPSEC is, it's a fair thing to bring up
every now and again related to Bitcoin meetups.
it's something to be aware of when you're organizing it and it's something i i try to be
like something like a well-lit parking lot like you should try look out for that like if you're
if you're organizing a meetup try to find something like you said it's it's in public and it's also
you know a lot of these meetups are in the they're in the evening so that they end at you know nine
10 o'clock at night uh have something where the parking lot is right outside the restaurant
or the bar and it's very well lit.
I think that kind of counts for it.
It goes a long way.
I just think the value, you know,
that you get from going to the meetup
and potentially, you know, revealing,
like when you go to the meetup,
you don't have to tell everyone like,
hey, I'm so-and-so on Twitter or Noster or whatever.
You can make up a completely different identity
if you want and no one will ever know,
you know, who you are.
I feel like the meeting people in person, toxing yourself, this fear is like irrational.
Like the benefit that you get from going to the meetups and participating in your local meetup culture gives you so much more than the risk that you take from someone finding out that you might have a stack of Bitcoin in cold storage.
Right. And it's just people want to cooperate and work together more so than they want to extract and scam each other at these things.
In my experience.
Yeah, me too. Me too. But I do get it.
I completely respect anybody who, you know, doesn't want to use their real name and doesn't really want to go get out there.
I we have a couple of guys like this.
We have a couple of guys that are like really shy and they take their upset very, very seriously.
but and and you know they can come and they can hang out a little bit and if they come back if
they come more than once and they get more and more comfortable and the next thing you know like
you get you become friends with these guys and there's there's trust earned right but but i'm
with you rev like at some point you got to put your name on it you got to put your face out there
because that's at some point like what are we going to do sit around like on our computers
all day on our, you know, on our like Linux machines running two or three different
Mulvad VPNs at the same time.
Like, what are you going to do?
Like, you can't, can't live that way.
Well, yeah, I don't put my face online, but if you want to see my face, you can go to
all of these meetups that I'm telling you I'm going to all the time and you can meet
me there.
Exactly.
And we're going to be great friends if you show up and meet me, you know, like this is
going to be awesome.
so you talked a little bit about um home mining and so is there like a pretty good mining home
mining culture in the meetup there a lot of people running space heaters and stuff like that yeah
yeah like a couple of the guys i went out for wings about a month ago like this was not not an
organized bitcoin meetup but it basically was it was like one of my buddies who lives on the outside
the outskirts of town and he doesn't like coming to the meetup because it's too far
He's got to work.
He's got kids and all that stuff.
So he's just, come on out for wings.
A couple of guys are coming.
And there was five of us, five Bitcoiners going out for wings.
And we just started talking about mining.
And four of the five of us are heating their houses with Bitcoin miners.
So that's pretty cool.
It makes sense up here because electricity is cheap.
and the climate is cold.
So, like I run, like I have an S19 Slim with a low-key kit.
So it's just like, it's not anything overly fancy.
It's just 30 terahash.
It's nothing.
But I haven't turned my heat on all year.
How many watts is that?
About 700, 720.
Nice.
So, you know, it's not that much.
It's not the same as like a bar fridge.
How many watts does a bar fridge use?
Like maybe 750?
I think it's less than that, but still.
It's certainly less than an electric space heater.
Those are like 1,500.
Yeah, so I'm only running 700 watts, 30 tera hash,
but it heats my entire condo.
I don't have a terribly big space, and it's open,
but at the same time,
and I only pay like $0.07 per kilowatt hour.
so like i i haven't paid for heat i i'm i'm not i'm not making a ton of bitcoin off my 30 terahash
but at the same time like i'm not paying anything for heat uh so i was uh i was moaning to i was
moaning to rev uh before we started recording i think right before you jumped on that i had to
so every winter for the last like four or five years i heat my basement with my i have an s9
yeah and uh this was the year i just couldn't do it anymore our electricity prices in massachusetts
were up around 34 cents a kilowatt hour it's literally insane oh yeah so i was bleeding money
into this thing you know and making like you know it was i run it uh at like 950 watts um which for
you know for the efficiency but yeah i'm pulling in like i don't even know like 150 sets a day
you know it's like nothing no no there's a lot of a lot of guys and shout out to my friend dave
like one of my one of my buddies up here my buddy dave he's he's kind of like uh are you guys you
know 256 heat twan like 256 heat that they're like yeah he's in he's in the heat punks i i see
a lot of he has really nice slick looking uh setups man yeah his stuff his his his are like the
the Bentleys of home mining equipment. Like he is no joke. Like he's like, he's an artist. Like
his, his machines are beautiful. So my buddy up here, Dave, Dave kind of had the, it's his part
time gig. He, you know, he's kind of got this idea of like, he's going to start doing something
like that. He has a 3d printer and he's, he's, I think he's an electrical engineer by education.
And he knows his way around, you know, like a circuit board and he can take apart a miner.
so he's been kind of doing it on the side just making little ones nothing fancy like what twan
has like so he made me mine and sold it to me at cost so i only paid 500 for this thing so so dave
dave like shout out to dave he makes these and he kind of sells them a couple of the guys have one
uh you know other other of my friends i got i got friends who hook up miners up to their dryers
so they've got two or three s9s that feed into their dryers uh i got another buddy of mine who
kind of he doesn't live off grid but it's semi off grid like he's kind of out there in the
countryside and so his heat is propane because there's no natural gas where he's at so he's
kind of been slow and he's got a pretty big big house so he's he's slowly buying an s19 every year
and hooking it straight into his house
to kind of at least supplement the propane
because propane is expensive.
Well, in my situation, man,
like, so I use Bitcoin mining to heat the homestead here.
And I don't have propane.
I've got wood.
I've got this rocket mass heater that I built
and I can burn wood to heat my place.
But, you know, the wood takes a lot of work to process
and I don't have a log splitter,
So I split all that shit by hand and I stack it up.
And so it's pretty valuable to me that wood.
And if I can avoid, like, so the other thing is, like, in this guy's situation, if he's off grid and I don't know, maybe he's on solar power or something like that.
and you want to have your propane or your wood
be sort of the backup in case shit really hits the fan
and use the Bitcoin mining stuff to save your backups.
I'm basically using the Bitcoin miners so I've got wood
in case my power goes out, my internet goes out
and I can't use the miners to heat the house
and now I've got this stockpile of wood
or it gets really cold or whatever.
and so I think like in addition to the sats that you get for in as like a rebate on your power
usage right you also are participating in the network right like you're you're securing your
own stack in in a way by owning and operating hash rate because if there's some funny business
going on you can choose the pool that you that shares the values that you want to support and
put your hash rate to work for you.
And so there's a lot more to owning
and operating hash rate than just getting the heat
and just getting the sats.
And so the other thing is like
acquiring these Bitcoin miners is kind of sketchy, right?
You could go on eBay and try and find a miner
and half the time it's broken and shit.
Or you can buy a full rig from like a mega miner
or some place online, Altair Tech.
They have a good reputation.
You know, you're going to get a good piece of equipment, but it's fairly expensive.
And then you still have to kind of do the modifications to make it work on the 110 volt or be able to use the set up your own 220 or whatever.
But at the meetups, this is like a perfect opportunity for somebody who like this guy, they can make these single board miners.
He can make the miners. He can distribute the hash rate, make it available to the local community.
And now you get to own and operate some hash, support the circular economy.
I think Bitcoin mining, like the Bitcoin miner, heat punk tinkerers, is a great opportunity for them to really get this hash rate truly distributed amongst the plebs, amongst the pioneers, and allow people to utilize it.
And I will say that there is no better subculture in Bitcoin than the home mining guys.
There are none.
These guys are the guys that, like you say, they're tinkerers.
they're incredibly helpful they always like we always want to talk about mining i've never met a
guy who home mines who doesn't want to talk about his setup everybody always wants to talk about
their setup everybody wants to just like compare notes and share pictures it's it's it's like like
women and their dogs or their kids you know they're showing pictures to each other it's like
oh, look, look, look at my kids, look at my dogs.
Home miners are like that with their mining rigs.
And they're super helpful.
Like, I think one of you guys, maybe, maybe it was you, I don't remember.
One of you guys yesterday messaged me and said that you heard me on the home mining podcast.
It's like, yeah, because the home mining podcast,
that's like the highest signal types of guys in the space,
especially during a bear market, are the home mining guys.
And there's so much to learn with having a miner.
Like you learn so much about Bitcoin just by tinkering around with an S9.
Or even like a bid axe.
Like you can buy a $100 bid axe or $150 bid axe and just learn a ton.
And go to your local meetups and talk about it.
And everybody's got a different type of rig.
Everybody's got a different nerd axe or bid axe or home mining.
And we all love to fucking talk about our machines.
Yeah, so you have the Bitcoin basics.
I mentioned that I have a lot of beginners at mine.
And I think you kind of nailed me there as a home miner.
I think the very first educational meetup that I did was on home mining.
and home mining has probably been the most persistent educational topic that I bring up
at my meetups. So, you know, but it's great. It's honestly, it's a great education tool because
even for people who don't even know what you're talking about, you can bring something in that's
physical, right? Like so much of Bitcoin isn't physical, but when you can bring in a miner,
like I brought in a broken S9. It's actually the one that's sitting behind me on the shelf here,
but I just brought it with me.
I pulled out the hash boards.
You know, I'm showing people this is how it works.
And these little chips here, these are the actual miners.
You know what I mean?
This is just a big thing.
And here's the control board and here's how it works.
And at a previous one, I had fired it up
and I was showing them Brains OS and stuff like that.
And we had a BitX workshop.
So, you know, it's really a great education tool
and it gets people like engaged and excited
because you're not just talking about numbers on a screen finally.
You know, you can bring in something and hand it around
and people can put their hands on it.
I think it's a great education tool for Bitcoin meetups.
And there's just like a lot of misconceptions about,
or maybe assumptions, like these miners are always loud
and they always take up so much power.
But we're moving into an era now where you can modify these miners
and now there's even direct-to-market miners that are targeted
at home mining that are quiet.
They produce just the amount of heat that you need.
And yeah, it's one of those things
where when you show up with the miner,
you can feel the heat coming out of it.
You can see how quiet it can be.
You can see that you can just plug it right into the wall.
The Wi-Fi is connected right up.
It's easy to a degree.
And it's like a lot of people,
they've started stacking.
They've got, you know, now they've got their hardware wallet.
They've got their node set up.
And it's like, what's the next step?
Now you got to own and operate some hash.
And then beyond that, it's like, well, then you start,
then you're already coming to the meetups.
If there is a Bitcoin maximalism purity test or whatever,
it's like you passed it, right?
You got the hardware wallet, you run the node,
you hash it home, and you're, you know, going to the meetup.
I'd say you're doing a pretty good job of participating maximally
and the Bitcoin community and culture.
Yeah, and it depends, again,
like what type of climate you're in.
If you're in a tropical climate
where electricity is really expensive,
like in Hawaii or something,
you're probably Bitcoin mining stuff,
not as important.
But you're in a place like,
the locations that we're in,
it's bloody cold up here in winter, right?
So I know Reed's paying a ton of money on electricity,
but like Michigan, what are the rates like in Michigan?
Well, their average is about 18 to 20 cents, I'd say, for residential.
I'm at 14 cents in the wintertime, and I can get down off peak below 10 cents in the summer.
But, you know, a lot of people have, everyone's got a clothes dryer, right?
And a lot of times their clothes dryer is electric.
And so it's like if you have somebody in your community who has converted their clothes dryer,
they're probably not going to go over to your house and do that conversion for you but like you
said they're going to be happy to tell you everything they know about it and guide you
and how to do it yourself and the same is true with hot water um i've developed some some techniques
that are that make doing the the bitcoin mining hot water uh really accessible nobody in my local
area has taken the leap we got one guy that working on a pool heater um which is an immersion set up right But once the mining is introduced into the culture and the community and people are discussing it now people are starting to try and find ways
where they can, if they're not in an opportune climate
or whatever.
And obviously when the summertime comes around,
you want to find ways to keep hashing anyways.
You've already got the equipment.
Give me an excuse to keep,
can I make a food dehydrator now
and go to the farmer's market,
buy a bunch of extra tomatoes
and make sun-dried tomatoes with my Bitcoin miner, basically, right?
Or whatever.
But yeah, there's a lot of...
This information is hard to find.
And it's hard to trust, too.
When you go and you're searching on Twitter or Noster
or on any of these weird group chats and stuff,
when you have somebody that you can call and talk to
and meet in person to guide you through,
it makes it a lot more accessible.
And this is how we strengthen the network.
And share ideas.
Yes.
And just collaborate.
And so also, I'm working.
I haven't perfected this yet, but I won a hackathon last summer for doing Bitcoin mining air conditioning.
And so hopefully soon the home miners will be able to take their space heaters and convert them into, you know, getting some cool air from it as well in the summertime.
That's interesting.
That's wild.
Are you using like, it's not inversion?
What is it called?
Like with the, not Freon gas, but something very similar to Freon.
and the same way a heat pump works?
Yes, you could do that,
but that's not very accessible to the average person, right?
Because you need to create a vacuum
and you need to work with some materials
that are not necessarily easily accessible.
But so the way that I'm doing it is I take,
it's basically a supercharged evaporative cooler.
And so I take the exhaust heat from the miner
and I blow it over a radiator
that's lined with this clay that's super hydrophilic.
It really loves to absorb water.
And so when you got this hot air blowing past,
it could be really humid outside.
You could be in a humid climate,
but because the heat from the miner is so hot,
there's a lot more room to absorb moisture in there.
And so when you blow it over this clay on this radiator,
you're forcing the clay to aggressively evaporate water off of it,
and which creates on the other side of the clay
that's next to the radiator, a cooling effect, right?
This evaporative cooling effect.
That's genius, dude.
And so I'm able to take the water
that's going through that radiator and cool it down.
And you don't necessarily have to get
to freezing temperatures, right?
If your water that's going through there is,
let's say it's 80 degrees in your house
and you want to get down to 75,
well, you can achieve that five degree temperature
differential with this technique.
And it's probably, if you compare it
to the energy efficiency of any of the other air conditioning techniques that you have.
It's not going to be very energy efficient.
But if you've already got the miner and the hash is there from the wintertime,
now you're able to continue hashing and supplement your AC.
It's very much in the proof of concept stage.
But soon I think people will be able to do this in a very accessible way.
I ordered all the shit to do this on Amazon.
You know, it's not like anything that you need to know anything special about.
You know, I've been meaning to ask you, Rev, how the hell did you come up with that idea?
Like, it's pretty smart, man.
Yeah.
Like, how did you like, did you know about this clay or had you seen like another application
that was doing something similar or like, how the hell did you come up with that?
I will attribute it to cannabis.
I use cannabis to to help me solve problems.
I like I enjoy cannabis but a lot of times what cannabis does for me is it helps me to think outside the box and I sort of had reached the pin like okay I made the Bitcoin mining clothes dry I'm drying all my laundry with Bitcoin miners I made the Bitcoin mining hot water heater I'm heating my water with Bitcoin miners it's like I've done everything to use the heat what's what's left it's like I need to figure out how to make cold and this was kind of like the holy grail and so
And I, you know, and this was right around when the AI stuff was starting to really become accessible.
And so I just looked on YouTube a little bit, trying to find, and I ended up with what we first talked about,
these complex methods of taking this like non, this mid-grade heat and using it to create cooling effects.
And these like grocery stores, for example, will have, they'll take all of the heat from the coolers and everything.
and run it through a process that basically makes it help supplement the AC of the building.
And I just was like, well, there's got to be a simpler way to do this.
And so the swamp cooler technique was like, okay, if I could just,
the biggest problem with the swamp coolers is that you have to have a dry climate.
And I was like, well, the Bitcoin miner creates the dry climate.
How do I just create the perfect environment for the evaporation to take place?
How much of the clay do you need though?
Well, this is, that's the, that's the, really the question is like, I can take right now with one hash board, like a five gallon bucket of water from 80 degrees to 75 degrees.
And so that might be enough to like cool your bathroom or something.
Right.
And so like I said, so if you're running like 700 Watts just to cool your bathroom, that's a pretty expensive air conditioner.
But this is at, once again, at a proof of concept stage where I haven't really insulated everything.
It's like super, there's energy leaking all over the system, right?
If I really tighten it up, I think it can get much better than that.
This is why Bitcoiners are the best.
Like shit like this, right?
Like it's not just genius.
It's also practical.
It's tinkering.
It's proof of work.
Like this is proof of work.
This is what proof of work is.
It's low cost.
Yeah.
It's just problem solving.
It's just engineering mindset all the time.
Like what's the problem?
How can we fix it?
How can we think outside the box?
So I do want to talk.
You are like the Olympic gold medal winner of podcast listening.
That's either me or Pies.
And I think Pies is like missing in action right now.
So I guess like as long as Pies is missing in action, like I'm the champ.
Well, and Pies is, you know, Pies boosts.
He's a good booster, right?
He's good at letting everyone know that he listens to podcasts.
Maybe everyone doesn't know that you listen to a lot of podcasts.
I think you have a situation where you can do 2x.
1.75.
Okay.
Yeah.
So almost 2x.
Yeah.
But man, I think that Bitcoin podcasts are like this.
To me, this is one of the big reasons why I wanted to start a podcast and shout out to
Bugle Weekly, Bugle News for really pushing everybody to start a Bitcoin podcast.
But I get this feeling like those kinds of podcasts remind me.
When I was living in Chicago, I was participating in this like underground DIY punk music scene.
Right. And a lot of the way that you found out information about what was going on in this culture was everyone was making these little printout Xerox zines and handed the zines out.
And you kind of collect these zines and you'd be looking forward.
You could go to the show and then get the zine from the person.
And it was cool.
and and bitcoin podcasting kind of like this podcast or whatever feels like that to me where
we're uh we're just sharing this information for the the sake of like building the culture
and um so i was curious like what are your like if you were to say like i know that you probably
get a lot of entropy in all the podcasts that you do listen to but like what are some of the
ones that you think are the are good ones for podcasts well you mentioned the bugle they were
my favorite podcasts of last year.
They were the best.
The Bugle was the best Bitcoin podcast of 2025.
It's not my favorite.
It's probably my second favorite, third favorite.
It's up there.
I think The Path to Bitcoin is the best Bitcoin podcast
out there right now.
The Path to Bitcoin is this guy.
I don't want to dox his name.
He's just literally one guy who loves Bitcoin,
loves thinking about Bitcoin.
He records whenever he feels like it.
Three of them can come out in a week, and then you don't hear from him for two or three months.
And then he's got one a week for a month, and then he disappears for a while.
He doesn't do it for the listens.
He doesn't do it for the clicks.
He literally, his podcast is literally just him organizing his own thoughts.
And he's legitimately, I think, there's a lot of smart guys in Bitcoin.
You know, I'm talking to a couple of them right now.
but this guy's up there
the smartest of the smart
so the path to Bitcoin
my favorite
the bugle
I'm wearing the rock paper
Bitcoin t-shirt right now
those are my guys
like fundamentals and business cat
they're
like they've become
two of the most important people
in my life
over the past few years
like
incredibly close friends
like I was having a bad day
a couple weeks ago
and I called fundamentals
nine o'clock in the morning
on a Monday
and he talked to me for two hours.
You know, like that's,
and Rock Paper Bitcoin,
I know you guys are listeners.
Rock Paper Bitcoin,
it's not even a Bitcoin podcast.
It's just two guys who met through Bitcoin
who record and sometimes talk about Bitcoin,
but they more or less,
Bitcoin was just how they met.
I'm a big fan of the Canadian Bitcoiners podcast
in a similar way.
Joey and Len have become my friends.
But I also think that it's important to get news.
If you're listening to the Bitcoin podcast,
get an idea of what's going on in the community,
what's going on out there, regulations or whatever.
You should listen to one news podcast a week.
I know Rabbit Hole Recap is probably the most popular one.
That's the one, Marty and Odell, they're great.
but but to me like joey and len are my guys so like i'll go to canadian bitcoin podcast
um and then number five i think i'm at was that five four or five uh i think the bitcoin matrix
with cedric youngerman is the best interview podcast right now there's a couple other ones
that are up there i think discovering bitcoin is really good um all time i think john ballas was
the best.
He was the best
interviewer I found in the Bitcoin space.
So shout out to John Vallas,
wherever he is. I hope he's on a beach
enjoying his life.
I do miss John Vallas.
Bitcoin Rapid
Fire was prime.
That's S-tier Bitcoin podcast
stuff. I think discovering
Bitcoin is kind of like the
closest thing that we have
to John Vallas' old
stuff. DJ's great.
very philosophical that one i i know that one uh i don't listen to every single one but
makes you think right yeah it's good it's good uh and i like the niche ones like i like you guys
like you guys are only two episodes in i seriously guys i'm not blowing smoke up your ass you guys
are already in that conversation two or three episodes in you guys are are in the top 10 for
me right now um i also the whole mining podcast with my two sats also i put out there especially
bear market vibes like you want to listen to something very positive um i like i i'd like
what two sats does um you know paula at bitcoin edge if you're looking for like plebs you know
the way that john ballast used to just have on just people you know like names that you've never
heard just random ass people and they go on his show and you're like oh this is cool and you just
check this person out on twitter and they got 100 followers or something like i think what paula does
at bitcoin edge is something similar she just she'll have anybody on and i think that's really
really cool so what's that that probably gives you close to 10 podcasts right off the bat there
There's too many, right, to list off.
But what do you think, like, what's important about the podcast?
Like, what do you think they do for Bitcoin?
Why do you listen to them?
Well, I'm a learner, right?
Like, I love to learn stuff.
And I can read.
I can read.
But I don't love to read.
I'm more of an audio learner.
so I prefer to just throw on the podcast and just listen so I can get information that way
over the past few years it's honestly the the bitcoin podcasting space has become my social
network where this you know I do have the meetups like the in-person meetups but that's twice a
month and and obviously they're important to me like those guys are my friends and like
they're family to me like that that's my my crew but uh you know like with business cat and with
fundamentals and joey and len and rod and dick at the bugle like those guys are not just
entertainment to me like i i literally message those guys all the time like like they're my
friends i ask them questions they ask me questions i'm involved in their shit like i i right so it's
become like the social layer for me. Now, somebody listening to this, that might sound a little crazy.
And I get it. It would have sounded crazy to me if I, you know, six months into my Bitcoin journey,
if I was listening to somebody and saying, it's like, oh, all my friends are Bitcoin podcasters.
Like, that's kind of nuts. But that's what it is for me.
You know what I think it is that you're describing a little bit? It really makes me think of this
because I've wrestled with this a little bit
and talked with a few guys about this too
because I don't even know,
hard to put a date on it.
Like 2020, 2021, like Bitcoin Twitter was just,
dude, that was just like where it was at.
Like that was like the Bitcoin social layer.
And you can blame it on Noster
or you can blame it on Elon
or whatever you want to blame it on,
but it's just not the same.
Like everyone agrees.
Like Bitcoin Twitter is just not the same. And I wonder if it almost kind of sounds like what you're saying. And I think I almost kind of agree to some extent. Like I wonder if the social layer has just moved, you know, the barrier to entry now for podcasts like Rev and I starting this podcast, like this extremely low barrier to entry. Right.
And it's like if you really want to have a voice, I could blast a note on X.
I have like 100 followers.
Nobody's going to ever hear that.
It'd be way easier and better for me to be, hey, if I want to have a voice, I'll produce a one-hour show and talk in great detail about all the stuff that I really want to opine on.
And that's like actually maybe a better mechanism for the social layer of Bitcoin.
and it bridges the gap between the Noster crew and the Twitter crew
because we all fucking listen to podcasts, right?
And so I think that what the podcast scene in Bitcoin has become
is kind of like the glue.
It's kind of like the glue that Twitter used to be
and maybe before that, I don't know, Reddit or the Bitcoin Talk forums.
I wonder if we're slowly starting to migrate over into this sphere as opposed to just this text-based online chit-chat or whatever.
And it's also becoming a little bit more niche.
You can find your tribe.
When I first got into Bitcoin, 2020, 2021, there was a handful of podcasts out there.
You could listen to what Bitcoin did.
and get the same, you know, 10 interviews over and over and over,
those same 10 guests.
And then those guests would go on, you know, Preston Pysh's podcast,
and then they'd go on the Swan podcast at the time.
And it's just like, it's good.
Like, I got nothing against listening to Larry Lepard.
Like, you know, I like listening to Larry Lepard every once in a while.
But I don't need to listen to Larry Lepard three times a week.
Say the same things.
I just don't need that. But what you can happen now, and I'm going to agree with Rev, I think the Bugle really did this. I think they're the ones that really started it to do something completely outside the box, completely different of what was going on in the Bitcoin space.
and it just had a bunch of people now started to be like,
oh, we can do something different, right?
Like what you guys are doing
and what Fundamentals and Business Cat are doing.
It's just different, right?
There's a new podcast out.
I haven't even listened to it yet.
It's like the Muslim Bitcoin podcast in English.
I'm not Muslim, but I think it's cool as shit
that they're making that type of niche podcast
and they're all over the fountain charts now.
They're like three or four episodes in and they're like, all of their episodes are in the top 30.
So they must be doing something right.
So you can kind of find your tribe within your tribe.
I mean, look, we're on a Bitcoin podcast about Bitcoin meetups.
That's cool as shit, guys.
Well, so the meetups, I think all this stuff is what I'm, I talk about this eight forms of capital all the time.
And cultural capital is one of the things like you you get Bitcoin, right?
That's your financial capital.
But in order to like maintain your conviction in Bitcoin, you need to be sure that like you're not just the only one in out there.
Yes.
You know, and so the meetups create this this true sense of local culture.
Correct.
Where you meet people and you know that there's other people in that you know in person that you can meet in and interact with.
But the same thing happens in a digital form with the podcast, right?
Like you start listening to these podcasts, you become friends with the podcasters.
And then there's often group chats.
And this is something that we didn't really talk about.
If you have a group chat associated with your meetup, but you end up in these group chats
and you start to build relationships and cultural capital around whatever that podcast is.
And Reed, you made a great point in that this is a bridge that there's no, there's, there's
no um no stir twitter whatever you're using the podcasts are ubiquitous right and so they're
incredibly important in that regard for the propagation and and promotion of cultural capital
across uh these niches of bitcoin and bitcoin obviously is a decentralizing force so it makes
it only makes sense that it would start off uh five six seven years ago that there's only a
handful of bitcoin podcasts and now there a thousand right and they on various different subjects about everything you can imagine Now the challenge with that is deciphering signal from the noise
And as there's going to be more and more Bitcoin podcasts,
there's going to be a lot of good ones
and there's going to be a lot of bad ones.
Right?
And where I'm trying to do with my Twitter,
and I think you guys follow me on Twitter.
I try to pretty much only talk about Bitcoin podcasts
on my Twitter account.
And I try to just share one or two a day
where it's like, okay, this is one I really liked.
And I try to do it, this one was original
or this one was interesting
or, oh, this is like not your typical Jeff Booth interview.
This was something different.
Or, oh, this is an interview with someone
who in the finance world
who doesn't usually talk about Bitcoin,
But on his finance podcast, he just spent an hour and a half talking about Bitcoin and he kind of sounds like he's getting it.
So I'm trying to share those to kind of be like a filter a little bit.
And I mean, and I know I'm biased, right?
Because I'm going to like what I like and it might not be what other people like.
But at least I can attempt to do that a little bit.
Share some of the signal, right?
Share some of the signal.
I found some of the signal through the noise.
Yes, amplify what I think is signal.
And that's why I've shared both times your episodes.
I've made sure to share and I've made sure to on Noster and on Twitter
because I think people should be listening to this one.
I legitimately think that you guys, by the end of the year,
you're going to be in that tier with the best of the best.
You will be recognized that way because you are that good.
your last episode with the Jersey guys,
it was unbelievable.
That's your second episode.
Like it didn't make sense.
Like I remember listening to it,
I was in the bus on the way to work
and I'm like, how are these guys
on their second episode?
It sounded like you guys
have been doing it for years.
It was that good.
And it's super high signal.
And it was, as a meetup organizer,
like I was taking notes
because there were some really good information
in there uh that's got to get out there like and and and it will like you guys will because
it's good well that that's the point is like there's not enough cultural cap like there's
there's all these memes in bitcoin right not your keys not your coins these these kinds of things
are um little tidbits of cultural information to help people that are new to the culture to bitcoin
to get off on the right foot and to not make big mistakes.
We've made big, big mistakes.
Everyone's made big mistakes.
And we developed these nuggets of cultural capital
to help the Bitcoin succeed, new Bitcoiners succeed better.
But there's not a lot out there about Bitcoin meetups, right?
So that's why we thought it was incredibly important
to like help people learn how to start meetups,
learn the value of the meetups, what you can get out of them.
and like twitter is is a is a way of of it's it's a location right you develop culture
so money is a is a border of culture if you go to europe and you have dollars you need to get euros
in order to buy shit typically right so there is the money that people use as a border of culture
location is a border of culture right and so with this digital world like we've got these different
borders of culture. One border could be a group chat. Another border could be Noster. Another
border could be Twitter, right? But the whole idea is that these nuggets of cultural capital
need to propagate. And meetups are the best way to propagate cultural capital across your local
community. In the meet space. Yes. And this was like something that was missing, you know?
people need to realize the power in this
you can imagine if there's a meetup in every city
and the federal government
or the deep state or whatever decide they don't like Bitcoin
and they want to try and stamp it out
well good luck trying to stamp out a thousand different fires
in every state, in every province, in every place
all over the world, you can't do it
because everyone's going to be equipped with all this cultural capital
and the way to prevent, to harden the system against attack.
Yeah, especially if we're having these meetups
and we're incredibly good customers when we go there.
Like at my meetup, we go to, we switched around a little bit,
but we've been at the same restaurant now for about 18 months.
And the waitress fixes her shifts to make sure that she's there for us.
like we're her favorite customers she's got a wallet of satoshi we tip her in bitcoin
she loves it like she and and she like and she talks to the other servers about like yeah you
guys got to get on this too and she's been doing it for a year and a half and she's like stacked
a quarter million sats just from five ten bucks at a time you know people having a beer having a
pizza or whatever and her boyfriend she talks about her boyfriend all the time she's like say
yeah, my boyfriend's into the crypto stuff
and he's jealous that I'm getting all this Bitcoin
for serving you guys.
Well, what Rev just said there
about the government trying to clamp down
on the Bitcoin meetups.
Well, it wouldn't go very well
if they went to Big Rig and clamped down on us
because on a Wednesday night,
we're the best customer.
Because you know what I mean?
We tip well, we tip well, we tip in Bitcoin.
We don't cause any problems.
We're very nice to the staff.
If all the Bitcoin meetups do that,
talk about cultural currency, right?
You're spreading Bitcoin in a different way.
You're creating in the minds of people,
oh yeah, that Bitcoin group, they're super nice guys.
Maybe when the TV tells me that Bitcoin is for a bunch of criminals,
like, well, maybe it isn't. So I just want to say, um, I, especially going over your, uh,
elaborate and, uh, and, and very in-depth, uh, podcast listening career. Um, you know,
the praise you have for our podcast is, is amazing. Uh, I really appreciate it. And, uh,
probably this is the best possible segue that we can get, but, uh, why don't we,
So one of the things that we do, right, is when we get boosts for the show, especially if we get boosts from other Bitcoin meetup organizers who want to announce when their next meetups are or promote their meetup in some way.
We, you know, we like to make sure we give them some airtime.
So, Rev, you want to transition and start reading off some of the boosts from the last episode?
Yeah. And before we get into that, I got it pulled up here on my phone.
I just, I'm curious, Boomer, what, from this discussion, what do you think was the big takeaway?
What do you think was the most important thing that people needed to hear from this discussion?
I mean, with all your podcasts, the social layer is important.
The meat space is important.
Like, you have to go out there, like, what you said before,
right at the beginning of the show about your last meetup,
how you showed up with four bags of coffee and some tallow and some collagen
or whatever the hell you bought.
Like that is so freaking cool that you can go somewhere in meatspace
and meet Bitcoiners and participate in peer-to-peer exchange.
And aside from learning from each other and helping each other,
you're improving each other's lives by buying products
and paying with the soundest money man has ever created.
Right. Like that. That's just beautiful. So just keep going. Everybody's got to go to the meetups.
And one thing we read mentioned it about the conferences. Conferences are too intimidating.
They're great. I love going. I love going to the Canadian Bitcoin conference. It's amazing.
But it's a commitment. Right. Showing up to a local meetup on a Thursday night, on a Sunday night.
it's not a lot of work.
Just show up.
Well said.
All right. Excellent.
I agree.
The meetups are super important.
It's one of those things
just much like having a Bitcoin miner
put in front of your face
until you have the Bitcoin miner right there.
When you see it, you can feel it.
You don't really get it.
You got to experience it.
Not until you go to the meetup for the first time
do you really understand
how powerful this shit can be.
And so there's a lot of meetups happening
and we got some boosts
to let other people know
that these meetups exist.
And the first one is from Sean Summers.
He's got the Niagara Bitcoin meetup.
He's got a Canadian flag emoji in there,
so it must be Niagara, Canada.
And that's the third Wednesday of each month.
And if you want to find more information about that,
You can find them at NiagaraBTC on Twitter.
So third Wednesday of the month, Niagara Bitcoin meetup, NiagaraBTC on Twitter.
We got an anonymous boost.
This one is talking about the North Chicago Bitcoin meetup in Long Grove.
And they actually, so somebody else boosted last month or last episode about this meetup.
So somebody else is promoting it. It must be a good one.
North Chicago Bitcoin meetup in Long Grove.
It's the first Saturday of each month at Joni's Pizza, 1130 a.m. to 2 p.m.
I'm sure if you look on meetup.com or something,
you'll be able to find more information about that.
Lonely Pumpkins.
This is a business cat, Pennsylvania-related homie.
So he's digging the pod, and he started a new meetup
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania area.
Bitcoin in the burg is what he's calling it.
That's my guy.
Coffee meetups every, you know Lonely Pumpkins?
Wasn't that Business Cat's?
Well, Lonely Pumpkins and I think Business Cat
were related in their,
I think maybe they started a meetup together.
I don't know the exact details,
but I know Lonely Pumpkins and Business Cat,
they know each other for sure.
And so Bitcoin in the burg,
It's a coffee meetup the fourth Sunday of each month.
And they're putting on a Bitcoin versus crypto educational session on Saturday, March 14th.
So that's coming up in a few weeks.
And you can find the details on Noster or Orange Pill app, or I guess it's called Club Orange these days.
Keep spreading the signal, Lonely Pumpkin says.
Thank you, Lonely Pumpkins.
And then to follow that up, we got Business Cat, right?
So here, you know, these two guys roll together apparently.
Business Cat has got the Central Pennsylvania Bitcoiners, which meets the third Thursday of each month in Enola for the Bitplubs.
He's calling it Bitplubs.
They discuss Bitcoin news and developments from the past months.
And you can find more information about that meetup on meetup.com or Club Orange.
and so that's all of the meetups
and then we've got some other boosts
Senate Mike BIP 110 says thanks for the info, keep it up
there's also Satlantis if you're trying to advertise and find events
and so Satlantis is one of those NOSTER based meetup or event things on NOSTER
where you can make an event on NOSTER, promote your event
and then it's interoperable with all the other meetup apps
or event apps on Noster.
So it's kind of cool.
I haven't used Satlantis myself or anything.
Have you guys messed around with Satlantis?
No.
Not yet.
Well, maybe it's worth checking out.
Yeah.
One of the cool things about Satlantis,
and it sort of makes it worth just trying it out,
is that if you post your meetup on Satlantis,
it's going to post on all the Noster Meetup compatible apps.
And more of them just keep coming out.
I think we talked about, what's the one that Derek Ross made?
Plectos or something like that?
Plectos, yep.
Yeah, you know, and just especially in this era of the vibe coding stuff,
you know, people are going to keep coming out with these apps.
And the coolest thing is that they're all just on the same protocol.
And so if you post on one, you're going to start showing up in all of them.
So I think if nothing else, it makes it worth it to just,
if you just start posting your meetup there,
then at least you're going to know that you're going to show up in all the Noster apps.
Yeah, and I do make Noster events for the meetups that I run on Plectos,
and I know that it shows up on Phloxster.
Like I said, I haven't tried out Satlantis yet, but I'm sure they'll be there too.
So anyone looking for meetups, you can try Satlantis to find a meetup on there or promote yours on there.
Why not?
We got an anonymous boost.
Just sharing some love, loving that we're amplifying the meetups.
Keep up the good work.
You know, attend your local meetup, and if you don't have one in your area, start one.
That's the meme here, you know.
Get out to your local meetup, and if there ain't one, if you can't find one, you got to start one.
And Shadrach, he's got some love too.
And Shadrach's got the A to B.
He's really trying to create this,
connect the meetups together with his service A to B
so we can take the beef and the lamb
and everything that's happening in Michigan
and move that to Indianapolis and move that to Chicago
and get these goods and services available to the meetups
that don't necessarily have the food and the stuff that everyone wants.
and so Shadrack's doing a great job with that.
Check out A to B.
Can't stop to pant
and he said he's interested in starting a meetup
so get going.
Can't stop to pant.
When you go to a meetup, let us know
and let us know how it went.
Wartime, once again, he boosted last week
or the last recording
And he's a big noster and meetup proponent.
So he's loving it as well.
And then finally, to finish it out, Boomer, you boosted.
Thank you, Boomer.
He says, another great rip, gents.
This fills a very important gap in the Bitcoin podcast space.
Already contender for 2026 Bitcoin podcast of the year.
I'll take that and I'll live up to it.
I'll try my best, Boomer.
All right.
So I think we're about getting ready to wrap here.
But I guess, Boomer, Corey, I want you to kind of give you a little bit of the last word.
You want to tell us where people can find you on the Internet if they're looking for you.
But more importantly, you know, about your next meetup and where they can find you at your next meetup.
Yeah, I guess meetup.com is where we're getting the most success with the people.
I got 500 people in my meetup.com group.
like we don't we don't have 500 people that show up at the meetups but like for whatever reason the
meetup the meetup.com group has really picked up traction for us so uh that's the easiest place to
do it also on the orange pill app club orange it's on there as well too um capital bitcoiners
on twitter is also uh you know we are on twitter as well uh i can be found on twitter on nostr
anywhere where the bugle is posting
you can probably find me I'm in the comments
wherever the bugle is at but
the ruler is broken is where I'm at
on Twitter
and guys you know thank you so much
for not just having me on
but for starting this
because like I said in that boost
this is important stuff that you guys are doing here
you guys are already pros
and I'm just
super excited to see
what you guys are going to be
in a year
and it's an honor to be on the third or the fourth episode
wherever this is going to end, wherever this comes out.
I'll be able to say I was one of the early guests on this show
when you guys are at the top of the PodConf ratings,
when you guys are all popular and shit at Bitcoin Las Vegas
and you guys are big whales and popular,
I can say, yeah, I was on one of their early shows.
So thank you.
Yeah, well, thank you again for coming on.
And again, I'm telling you, man, high praise.
High praise.
I know Rev and I, we really appreciate it.
And like Rev was saying before, you know, we will do our best to try to live up to it.
And hey, I mean, if it means that, you know, a couple, even just a couple new meetups get started, I'll take that.
Well, it sounds like one already did, right?
In that comment, didn't one guy?
It sounds like you got one guy motivated to do that.
Think about the butterfly effect, that one thing that you could have done.
Like that one guy now starts a meetup and somebody shows up at that meetup that was shit coining and he's going to go to this meetup.
He's going to meet this guy and now he's not going to shit coin anymore.
Save his family.
Save his legacy.
And then who knows how many other people they onboard to Bitcoin and maybe they start a Bitcoin podcast or a Bitcoin meetup or a Bitcoin company or whatever.
Right.
It's beautiful.
It's absolutely beautiful.
Well, yeah, man. And we all know that you can't actually save any time. You can save your Bitcoin, but you can't save time. You're always spending time. And tonight you spent your time with us and you showcased all the work that you're doing for Bitcoin. You're passionate about it. You're running two meetups a month and you're doing everything else, promoting the good podcast, keeping the cultural capital flowing.
and keep up that good work too, dude.
We're all doing something important here
and this is the whole point.
This is the DIY.
This is the underground.
This is the shit that everyone needs to hear.
We're not fucking talking about buying hardware wallets
or putting any ads out there.
We just want people to know that Bitcoin
is going to help your life improve
and participating deeper in the culture
is going to be beneficial to you and everybody else
and you're doing a great job of being an advocate for that.
So keep it up.
We all got a role to play and just find your role
and keep trying.
All right, guys, let's wrap it here.
We'll catch you guys later.
Thanks for coming on.
Thanks, guys.
Episode complete.
If you run a Bitcoin meetup and want to talk about it here,
reach out.
Check the show notes for contact info,
link to meetup organizer resources on github and more send us a boost of any size and advertise
your next meetup we'll read it out in the next episode and remember attend your local meetup or
start your own local bitcoiners are always just one meetup away