Welcome to Pleb Chain Radio, a live show brought to you by Plebs for Plebs, which focuses
on the intersection of NOSTER and Bitcoin protocols.
Join QW and Avi as they run down the weekly news and developments, breaking down the current
thing and the future frontier with the foundation of decentralization, the builders, thinkers,
doers, and plebs.
All right, we are live.
Welcome, gentle plebs, to the Lightning Laced Airwaves. Today is Friday the 8th of August and it is 5pm on the dot on the east coast of the United States.
At the time of recording, this is episode 124 of Pleb Chain Radio and we have a fun show ahead of you today.
Rev Hoddle, mad scientist and decentralized permaculturist
joins us to talk about a recap of Lake Satoshi
and what other mad experiments he's been involved in
since the last time he's been here
and I dare say, Kirabi, this is a hat trick of appearances for Rev Hoddle
so looking forward to that conversation
each one has been better than the previous
and I trust this will be no different.
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This show is streamed live on Zap.stream and any other Nostra client that supports streaming such as Amethyst and Nostra.
And QW, you have been paying attention to Bitcoin and Nostra culture in the last week.
What have you witnessed?
yeah i just actually got um and i think it was two days ago i got an email because i'm i'm actually
in the phantom power mailing list uh phantom power media uh or music well you know the costello deal
but uh i guess bitcoin park this wednesday this upcoming wednesday the 13th is doing a
Toonster event, Avi. There's going to be multiple musicians. It's, I haven't looked very much into it
because it's kind of just was announced and it seems like that normally you don't announce
things so close to an event. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I too received that
phantom email. I must have been signed up for that mailing list as well. Thanks, T.W.
Yeah, but open mic. What's up, brother? It's going to be on Tudester. So I will be chiming in or looking into that. Anybody in the Nashville area, Bitcoin Park area, bring a friend, make it a cultural thing, enjoy some music. And I'm sure you're going to hear music from Ainsley and the Costellos.
I don't even know who the roster is, honestly.
It was just announced, so I didn't really look.
But anybody Wednesday, anybody around the globe on Noster, Toonster.io,
it's 5 to 8 p.m. Nashville.
Is that East Coast time, Avi?
I think Nashville might be Central.
Okay, it's on the cusp there.
So either 4 to, I guess, 5 or 6 p.m. Eastern time, whatever Nashville time is.
So keep a lookout.
Another thing that happened, and this was two days ago, Avi, the tornado cash ruling came.
So the conviction of Roman Storm, the co-founder of the cryptocurrency mixer tornado cash,
it sparked widespread concern with the crypto industry.
Legal experts warning it may set dangerous precedent.
for open source developers and privacy-focused technologies.
Basically, Roman was convicted of being a money-transmitting business.
He did not.
The other charges that did not work was conspiracy and the money-laundering one.
But I think the big thing for us as node runners or anybody that's maybe even relay runners, Avi, is this transmitting.
He did not touch it.
It's basically code.
It essentially sets a dangerous precedent for open source developers.
It emphasized that Storm did not control the assets transferred through Tornado Cash and that the ruling could extend to criminalizing developers of messaging apps, web browsers, or any software that may be misused.
So it kind of harps on the transmitting portion when you're not actually doing the act of it.
But because you are transmitting it, you know, where does that precedent, how far does it go?
Is it a slippery slope, Bobby?
You know, I have a question for you, QW, because you've been following this a lot closer than I have.
I've just been heads down on certain things over the last two weeks, and I've only just emerged.
So I haven't followed the Tornado Cash trial.
It's brand new.
There's probably a lot of stuff that needs to be talked about.
Here's a question for you.
Again, and I'm asking from a place of just not following this.
Is the money transmitting charge something to do with Ethereum's?
Because Clonator Cash was an Ethereum mixer, correct?
Right.
Is it something to do with-
And Ethereum put, I think, 500,000 into this thing to essentially fight this.
Yeah.
Now, does it have something to do with the account-based structure of how Ethereum moves versus the UTXO-based structure of Bitcoin?
So, for instance, a Wasabi CoinJoin or a Whirlpool, Samurai Whirlpool, whatever it might be, right?
Those would architecturally be very different because Ethereum is account-based and Bitcoin is UTXO-based.
So, are you aware if that had to do with the money transmission?
I don't, but I'd love to know more.
I'd love to maybe have a show on this too,
because it just seems like there's a lot of,
well, number one, the samurai basically pleading guilty.
Then the tornado cash,
actually the jury found him guilty.
So you're seeing these kind of not winning in court type of mentality going.
So I don't know.
I mean, at the end of the day, isn't it just code?
Yeah, I mean, if that is what the ruling found, that it's a piece of decentralized code that happened to be running on, happened to be created by someone, and they're being found guilty of that, of, I mean, money transmitter, first of all, it's a completely made up thing, right?
The government makes up stuff just to put people in jail, to exert their monopoly on violence.
But even set that aside for a second, and accept that it's a fair law, I think it sets a terrible precedent for node runners, for coordinators, for coin joins more broadly.
So yeah, I don't know what this means.
for relays avi nasta relays yeah i mean money uh any kind of nefarious acts uh that that uh
you know you have no part in but you happen to be the the relay of it uh it's all it's all up in the
air and we'll see i mean they're obviously uh most likely gonna kind of uh appeal this this this
this ruling. And, you know, maybe the war is not done yet, but it's something that we'll see.
And that brings me to a bigger point, Operation Chokepoint. You know, we talked about Chokepoint
in regards to Bitcoin and the on-off ramps, but freedom, the freedom chokepoint, the privacy
chokepoint. When I say chokepoint, you know, 10.0, I'm obviously kidding. But the reality is the
Privacies are being stripped at every level, and they have been for decades.
And I've been seeing in the news lately, like the last three, four weeks, it's nonstop about protecting the children, fighting terrorism.
So we're just going to keep pushing this KYC digital ID.
The latest one, I think, yesterday was we're basically we're on the cusp of KYC to play video games via stream, Steam, Discord.
board, you're basically going to have to put your picture up to like prove that you're,
you know, a certain age and whatnot.
Even Roblox, it's a children's game.
It's a children's app on the phone, on the, you know, mobile.
And maybe they got a PC version.
I have no idea.
It's Roblox.
But they developed an open source AI tool called Sentinel to proactively detect early signs
of potential child endangerment.
Early signs.
What the hell does that mean?
Uh, so, you know, they're, they're basically just going to be collecting as much data as
you can, um, to, uh, to, uh, while you're just playing a game.
So it's, it's not normal behavior, uh, but the governments and corporations are acting
like it is, and it's going to be normalizing it to the children too.
So, uh, KYC, there's, there's no end in sight.
So that's the privacy choke point.
That's my, that's my thoughts.
you know qw it's a real shame i have to say that none of us have the agency to watch this
and recognize that it's wrong and do something about it it's a real shame we don't have that
agency and you know what's an even bigger shame qw we don't have the tools we don't have the tools
to disappear completely to lead a normal healthy and peaceful life right there are i mean there is
There is no money that you can take off the grid, that you can transact in privately.
There is no communication network that you can interact with your peers in a censorship-resistant way.
It's a real shame, QW.
And the other shame is that there are no people.
The choke point is just it's pushing everyone to Nostra, essentially.
Pushing everyone to Bitcoin.
Look at the Freedom Convoy in Canada.
What money did they end up using?
So it's just a matter of time.
Pressure creates diamonds, and we're here.
We are the diamond.
So the sermon today, Avi, from hands to freedom,
basically from farm to freedom, proof of creation.
In our Bitcoin community, words fly like sparks,
ideas blaze like fire, and intellect builds a bolder future.
But a new tide rises, a circular economy of creators.
These plebs trade proof of creation, tallow-soap shaped hands, lamb and eggs raised under skies,
art born from the soul raw milk leather goods each a testament to work and will There power in this When you create with your mind your hands your time you not just making things you forging
freedom. You're saying, I am here, I create. And when you trade these proofs for Bitcoin,
sovereign permissionless money, you claim your independence. No gatekeepers, no chains,
just your work, your worth, and your way. Feel the pulse of this economy in every stitch,
every harvest, every trade. It's the rhythm of liberty. So what will you create? A tool,
a meal, a vision? Your creation is your power. Trade it for Bitcoin. And you're not just joining
an economy. You're building a free world. Step forward, create, trade, live free from farm to
table, from heart to horizon. Let's shape the future together. And I have a creator. I have
someone forging freedom. And that is our guest today, Avi. Welcome, the forger of freedom, Rev
Hoddle. Wow, my internet cut out while you were reading that. I didn't hear one second of it,
but it sounded like it was pretty darn cool. And I caught the end of it. I'm really happy to be
here, guys. Thanks for having me on again. I'm a big fan of your show. I listen to as many episodes
as I can.
And I'm really stoked to
talk today.
And you know,
it's weird. When you live a Bitcoin
integrated lifestyle
and you're focusing on your self-sovereignty,
the more you
realize you can't do it alone.
And you need
a community
behind you to participate
with, to trade with, and
to build with.
And it just so happens that
when you start working, you find these people through the lens of Bitcoin, through the lens of Noster,
that these are some pretty capable folks, and the power of all these individuals when they cooperate is amplified.
And I'm sure we're going to get into some more deeper details about that when we talk about Lake Satoshi.
But for now, I've been focusing mainly on my local meetup cultures.
I've been going to one Bitcoin meetup a week, if not two.
And so I've been putting the work in, and the incentive behind that is to, one, spread and distribute this cultural capital of the culture of Bitcoin, and two, is to share the value of the products that I'm producing and earn Bitcoin in return.
You know, Rev, I love all of that and looking forward to digging into every single one of those points that you brought up and more.
But before that, Rev, I have a burning question.
as we always do.
It has come to my attention, Rev,
that there is more than one rev.hodl on Noster.
Is this true?
Is there more than one rev.hodl?
Yeah, man, there's a guy,
he goes by Reverend Hodl.
I'm just Rev, you know.
And there's Reverend Hodl,
and he's a pretty popular guy, you know.
I haven't personally met him or really
Talked to him too much
I've met him in real life
Avi, I've met both of them in real life
Both Rebs
I've seen them, both Rebs
It is a glitch in the matrix
Yeah
And when he introduced himself
He knew that Rev Hoddle's been on our show
Twice
He's also a fan of the show
He actually works
Long and hard with the
Phantom Power group
the value for value
all that so he's
part of the mission
so shout out
Reverend Hoddle
Reverend Hoddle is definitely if you're not following him
another guy worth following along with
definitely doing his part
to build whatever we're building
here
but yes indeed there are two revs
one's reverend and the other's
me rev
excellent well i appreciate the clarification which which one are you going to visit on sunday
you gotta you can only choose one rev well it depends on how the show goes
pressure's on
so you you mentioned uh yeah because the last time we've talked you you know you you were
traveling to different meetups and I can't believe you said one to two a week.
Yeah, man, I've expanded my range a little bit.
But are you going, you're going to the same ones, right? One to two a week. You're not
finding these random meetups and hitting one or two different ones a week.
No, no, you're right. So there's regular meetups in my area, enough to where I could probably do
comfortably six different meetups a month, let's say. Now some of those, there's a couple of them
that are on the fringes that are reaching about two and a half hours away,
where that becomes a challenge because I'm basically committing my entire day
to attending that meetup.
And so there's got to be some capital involved there, some flow.
I'm not just going to talk about Bitcoin if I'm driving two and a half hours,
you know what I mean?
But, you know, anywhere from 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour, hour and a half,
I'll do the drive.
Yeah. And how hard are you pumping the velocity of Bitcoin one to two times a week in person?
Well, so, yeah, I show up with my stuff and I've been experimenting now with not just my own things, but aggregating other pled products and distributing them, you know, in an analog fashion, I guess, not through Noster, let's say, at the meetups as well.
which, because I'm finding that, you know,
when somebody buys a jar of maple syrup for me,
a month later they still have not finished that jar of maple syrup,
but they still want, you know, they're still looking to spend their Bitcoin.
And so can I find some other product good that they want instead?
And I don't necessarily have this consistency of the production level.
I'm not at a certain scale where I can just
make all different kinds of stuff all the time
so I need some help, I need more plebs producing
stuff so that I can
get it from them and I'll do the work
of taking it to the meet up
to distribute it
I'm picturing this
old school wagon, the trading
wagon that pulls
up and you lift up the
side, maybe it's like the old medicine
man, the doctor selling that potion
in the town square
but rev pulls up to the uh the meetup and everyone's like what's he got today uh what's
the special of the day uh we got some fresh fresh lamb uh we got some uh some some rabbit
fresh out of the uh maybe you know just just right off the yard uh do you do you have feature
products do you have i mean everything comes in cycles right because when you produce things uh
sometimes it's fresher than other times of the year sometimes it's fattier sometimes it's leaner
how is your sales pitch on this?
Have you been getting better?
Has your crops been stronger?
All these things.
So, I mean, you pretty much nailed it.
And so the idea is that there's a lot of these old things
that the way things used to work maybe 150 years ago or more
that have kind of fallen by the wayside,
maybe due to subsidy, maybe due to centralization,
the erosion of the cultural capital
technology improving, whatever
but now, because I'm trying to do everything I do
through the context of Bitcoin first
in another show, I think it was the last one
we were talking about pioneering
or maybe it was the first one
but now, when you try and operate
and live your life completely
through the realm and context of Bitcoin
participating in Bitcoin first
all these old mechanisms become useful again
and so to be the guy, the traveling salesman, the gypsy
is actually a viable way to live now
because you can go from meetup to meetup
you can get stuff from one meetup
bring it to the next meetup, sell it at that meetup
because those people don't have the desire or need to travel
the two hours between them
and you aggregate the goods and services
the goods, the products that are being produced in your local area.
And the best way I use, the number one way I forecast the demand for one meetup
is I simply just go on whatever the various group chats there are,
whether that's Signal, Telegram, for that particular meetup,
and I say, hey, I'm coming to the meetup this month.
Here's what I got for sale.
If I have a lot of eggs, for example, I might put the eggs on sale
just so I create an incentive to sell a lot of them.
So I reduce my stock and I don't have eggs go bad, right?
And just put it out there.
And so I get a feel for where there's interest.
And then if there's a lot of interest in a particular product,
I might bring a little extra because I know when I show up there,
there's going to be people that didn't see that group chat
or aren't part of it or whatever,
and they're probably going to be interested in that thing too.
You know, you mentioned, because you kind of pictured it like,
you put it in a frame of kind of the old way or gypsy. But to me, our FDA, our food has been so
abused, adulterated, completely just wrecked as far as nutritional value. It's amazing that we go
back to now, I'm buying it off the side of the road and that's better. It's just kind of weird
how the paradigm has shifted to kind of farm to table. For me, you buy it from a store, you think,
oh, it's going to be good. But then you find out, oh, it's got all these preservatives and it's got
all this antibiotics in it. It's got all this shit, essentially. If I'm buying from Rev, I trust
you. And there's a web of trust there, I suppose. How has that been trying to grow that trust?
you know obviously you get returning customers that makes you feel good
I think of like Soap Miner he has amazing soap and I don't want to buy
anything else anymore and it's not like the FDA tested it I
just know it's damn good soap maybe talk a little bit about quality
and and how it feels to have returning customers
well so this is this is a challenge you know because
when you're a lot of people when they when they first get into
Bitcoin, they don't understand what it's like to deal with the volatility of the price.
And especially when your stack is young and you don't have some time under your belt,
that volatility can be extremely emotionally challenging. And once you start to play around
with Bitcoin for a little while, you start to think about living the sovereign lifestyle,
and a lot of people tend towards homesteading. And then they start to homestead, and it's maybe
shocking to people when they realize like you think Bitcoin is volatile nature is even more volatile than that And so to produce a consistent high quality product year after year I realizing is challenging Now it not to say that
one year it's total trash, and I'm going to sell total trash, but there's like, maybe you could
think about it in terms of like wine, right? Like some years you just have those perfect conditions,
and the wine turns out amazing and the next year you can't do the same thing over again.
And this has been kind of the case with my lamb.
And I've experimented a little bit in changing the variables, right?
So not only am I finishing the lambs a little bit differently
or the natural conditions are leading to the lambs finishing out differently,
but I'm also using different butchering.
And so the return customers, I'm trying to improve the product every year.
and from the sounds of it, they're happy with the flavor,
but the yield is not necessarily always the same.
Sometimes I've got giant lambs, and the pastures are real good,
and they grow really big, and some years the yield is smaller.
And so when you buy one lamb from me, you might be getting 35 pounds of meat one year
and only 25 the next, and that's a pretty big difference.
But like you said, because I'm focusing on the quality,
and you're paying the same price per pound essentially regardless.
It's just some years I got a lot, some years I don't have a lot to meet that demand.
And so in the example of when you get to Soap Miner,
it's really a great example here because Soap Miner has figured out this advertising model
of you can zap the rabbit hole recap live stream
And you could just throw 21,000 sats at it multiple times during the show.
And that's like, you know, at this point, what is that?
$25 to get your name out there over and over again on one of the most popular Bitcoin podcasts live.
Zapatizing, man.
And so he's gotten demand now to the point where he can't meet it, right?
I think he recently said, you know, I've got to figure out how to make more soap.
And so this is a good problem to have.
But this also shows you that if he's running out of soap, there's room in the market for other people to make soap.
And this is what we need.
We need to start having so much demand for these products produced by Bitcoiners that when Soap Miner runs out of stock, then people have a second option, a plan B.
And it all comes down to also local, regional stuff, right?
Like Soap Miner is selling its goods and services on Nostra.
So he's got the entire Noster community as his market, right?
But there's a lot of people in my local Bitcoin culture here in Michigan that don't really use Noster or really know SoapMiner at all.
And so there's still plenty of room for me to produce soap.
And I can try and compete with SoapMiner on Noster.
But at the same time, I can access the local markets too.
And I'm getting a little bit off the topic here of the quality and consistency.
But ultimately what we need to be doing as plebs producing products to live on Bitcoin is find a way to figure out what the most consistent demand in your local area is.
And whether that means you go, and I've said this before, but whether that means you actually go and purchase, you use your fiat, right?
You buy that thing that everybody wants, you bring it to the meetup, and you just aggregate for them, sell it to them for the sats, or you produce it yourself.
We just need more people with more options.
I want to be able to go to a Bitcoin meetup and buy my groceries for the month.
That's the goal here at Southwest Michigan where we're at.
We're trying to get the production levels up to the point where when you come to the meetup, you can pretty much spend $100 worth of sats and leave with a pretty good grocery list.
you know, of your staples.
You know, Rev, there is an interesting,
just listening to you say all that about quality and soap.
By the way, shout out to another great Nostra merchant,
Great Key, who makes grass-fed A2 ghee
out from Virginia, I believe.
And another fantastic product that I purchased
with Zaps.
But there is an interesting,
and I dare say stark irony here,
in that you have all of these products
that are priced in Bitcoin.
Most of these vendors are on a Bitcoin standard.
And the prevailing mantra, of course,
is don't trust, verify,
at least at the monetary layer.
But when it comes to merchants,
and especially if it comes to quality,
we've really moved to a reputation
and a web of trust-based model,
which is, QW said that, he trusts you,
so he'll buy stuff off you on the side of a street.
Similar thing, soap mine, right?
So it is interesting that the don't trust verify
has become, well, trust within my web of trust
because it's based purely off of reputation.
there is too much at stake.
But, Avi, if you started fielding the extra orders
and started making tallow soap for me, I might not trust it.
Just because I trust you doesn't mean I trust those hands.
You know what I mean?
Trust, you know, but what I am saying is a trust in the person's craftsmanship.
Correct.
And I think as a merchant, your reputation stems from that, right?
The quality of your craftsmanship.
So it is interesting, Rev, to see that we're moving to a reputation-based economy.
It's baby steps, right?
We're not fully there yet, but with examples like Soapminer, Great Key, and a few others.
And moving away from what someone, I think someone referred to it as a high-velocity trash economy,
which is the general attention economy of the fiat world.
And let me add to that.
Let me add to that because Soap Miner was just,
I just realized he's now going to be selling lip balm,
like lip, like basically, you know, lip moisturizer, lip balm.
And I'm like, I instantly wanted it, but I'm like, well,
it's 118 degrees over here.
How's the shipping?
And he's like, that's not going to work.
I'm like, okay.
but because of his product quality of the soap tallow soap i'm like that 100 the next thing is
going to be just as good so when you build that quality that overflow into the next product is
you know the standards of the person selling it and it's it's going to add to it right
and so once again when it's when it's a reputation-based thing
if there is a problem
I will correct that problem
if there's any issue whatsoever
like the kind of
satisfaction guaranteed or your SAT's back
I live by that
if anybody really just doesn't like it
or for whatever reason
I'll sacrifice that sale
just so that person
is happy and they don't
feel like I scammed them
or pulled a fast one on them
there's this
So Michael Goldstein, right, Bitstein and Pierre Rochard have this Reorg podcast.
So they're going back through all the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute articles that they wrote years ago.
And the most recent one was Everyone's a Scammer.
And in that podcast, they were talking about even the people who are trying to earn Bitcoin, get you to spend their Bitcoin with them are scammers.
and so
but the issue there
with that is that
they are not looking at it through the context of
if you only have bitcoin
you shouldn't spend your bitcoin
because that's impossible right
if you live on bitcoin and all you have is bitcoin
you're basically holding as few dollars as possible
for as short a period of time as possible
and holding as much bitcoin for as long a period of time as possible
you do not want to go through the friction
of going back into the fiat system
if you have the opportunity to spend your sats
that's a way better situation for you.
And so these people producing these products,
when you start to interact with them,
and it's on this Bitcoin standard-based economy,
your satisfaction guaranteed or your sats back.
And it's, like you said, the reputation is incredibly important
because if you start to see,
well, I bought some eggs from him,
and half of them were cracked and shit,
and I bought eggs again,
and if there's repeated problems and you don't address that,
this is just going to be very hard for you to stand up to the coming competition,
because this is what we need.
We need more people competing.
And when you look at, so people, this is another thing I want to say too,
if you're an aspiring producer here in this Noster economy,
your local meetup economy, and there's a guy that's already kind of sort of capturing the market,
Soap Miner is a great example, right?
This is just an indication to you that if they're being really successful,
and selling this good or service, this product,
that means that there's enough demand for you to try and start to compete with them.
And there's room.
We need more.
Don't be afraid that you can't make soap just as good as Soap Miner
and get some of the market share.
You should start to put your soap out there.
Maybe you got a different scent.
Who knows what the difference is that you could make
to make your product desirable to the Nostra community
or to your local Bitcoin culture.
What do you think it is, Rev,
that reputation took a back seat in fiat culture?
Well, the subsidy, right?
I think you were saying something
about the velocity trash economy, right?
High velocity.
The way you have to compete
against the devaluation of the currency.
And so that means you have to be doing high-volume stuff.
And so now, when we're looking through the lens of Bitcoin,
you can slow down and you can focus on quality
because you just want to guarantee the sale.
You want to just lock in.
You have to convince somebody to actually spend the sats with you.
It has to be good enough for them to give you that Bitcoin.
And if you can just lock in those sales on a consistent basis,
through a local economy,
and you have some runway between when you earn those sats
and when you ultimately have to spend them,
usually by the time you spend them,
they've not decreased in purchasing power,
but they've increased in purchasing power.
And when you start to look into a circular economy,
like we've got, and when I say circular economy, right,
we're not like living on Bitcoin,
but we're starting to set, it's got to start somewhere, right?
And so in Southwest Michigan,
I will spend my Bitcoin on coffee every month and then I will have something for that person to purchase something for me and I earn my Bitcoin back And so this is another heuristic that I coming to as I participating in this meetup culture more
is that I try and prioritize spending my Bitcoin
with an individual or entity in which I have the highest opportunity
to earn it back from them someday.
So when Steak and Shake starts to accept Bitcoin,
I'm not jumping in my car and driving two hours to the nearest Steak and Shake
just so I can make a lightning transaction with them
because I will never earn my Bitcoin back from Steak and Shake.
The person that you should be jumping in the car and driving to
is the guy in Cole in Michigan, Carl,
who's got five pizza shops that accept Bitcoin
because he's going to the meetups
and he might buy some of your goods or services someday
and you can earn the Bitcoin back from him.
And this is how you can literally circulate the Bitcoin
between each other in an economy.
Yeah, I think about like the tribal economies, the Amish communities.
I mean, if you research it, it goes into like Chinese immigrant networks, cooperative movements.
Essentially, it's just a collective welfare where you're economically keeping things between each other.
Reciprocity, mutualism to support collective welfare.
So basically everything we're doing, like you said, the pizza shop owner, he's part of the group.
So you know he's going to keep the velocity going.
The buck doesn't stop there.
So as long as everyone's pushing each other in that flywheel effect, that's how you really ignite a community.
And then other people, other merchants say, hey, I want to get involved in this.
You seem to be doing well.
I think that's really a strong approach to building that local community, knowing that there's a network of customers who would just opt into you just based off your association with that mutual support.
It's like a hyper-local, self-reinforcing flywheel that starts spinning, as opposed to the sort of negative sum globalization game that we've been stuck in.
Yeah, for sure.
Manage the subsidy and the cotillion effect, right?
And make cheaper products, out-compete,
and totally suck all the value and energy out of the flywheel.
And there's no incentive, basically, to try and compete with that
because if you do, you're getting extracted from either way.
Now, when you flip that on its head and you have Bitcoin,
this now becomes a huge advantage.
You now become the most profitable business in town
and the most profitable group of people working together
because every time you create one loop of that circulation,
everybody's left with more Bitcoin than they started with.
Because as the price goes up, right, I buy that coffee,
but it costs me less sats every time I buy the coffee.
And so that means that I have more sats in my savings,
which means that I have more sats to spend with a new entrant to the economy.
You see, and it just continues, like you said,
the flywheel actually gains energy rather than being drawn off of.
Talk to me about the success of Lake Satoshi. I know it's been going on for how many years now?
So this was the fourth annual Lake Satoshi.
And every year.
And talk about that.
Yeah.
Is it every year?
Let's maybe talk about the first year versus now, kind of the successes and how much that circular economy, goods, trades, whatever, is actually starting to grow and it's building that Bitcoin velocity.
So the first year, it was really just people that were local, hyper-local to that area.
Very few people even in Michigan made it out.
Very small event.
Maybe 50 people maximum.
The second year, it probably doubled in size.
The third year, doubled in size again.
I couldn't say how big it was this year because there was just people everywhere.
There's plenty of space to expand out into this area.
So let me just set the stage.
So Lake Satoshi is a 120-acre property just outside of Lansing, Michigan.
and the lake is basically
it's been excavated to sell the aggregate
from the, they drain the lake every year
they dig out the aggregate and sell it and so the lake grows in size every year
it gets deeper, it gets bigger
and they've basically made a campground surrounding this lake
which is kind of like a horseshoe shape
It's shaped like a horseshoe.
And so there's a peninsula out there that's really cool where you can camp and you're surrounded by the water.
There's a workshop, like a big shop for, you know, working on their giant equipment in which they convert at this event into a place where there's panels, speakers.
And then outside, there's also an area to support the trade in the circular economy.
And the tickets are cheap, man. It's like 21 bucks. And it's very much the honor system. You don't have to really pay the ticket, but why wouldn't you? It's $21. You want to try and support these guys. And so they're effectively giving this event to the community. This is just a complete philanthropic effort that Lake Satoshi is providing for everybody.
and so this year has been the biggest year ever
and as far as the
what I'm starting to realize is that
we can kind of start to see
some other examples
similar types of events stirring up
around Noster
the culture shock in Phoenix
Noster Bama which was recent
recently happened
Noster Valley out in Pennsylvania
and then
the Nosterville
in
Nashville, right? Lake Satoshi is in the league of these events. And what the opportunity here
when it related to the circular economy, and this is going back to what I was mentioning earlier
about being the guy with the covered wagon going from place to place selling your goods.
If you create these hubs for people that are doing this to all meet and now trade with each other,
Now they can diversify the goods on their wagon and go their separate ways and hit those different markets and bring goods to the markets that were not available before.
And the more events like this that are happening, the more this becomes a potential lifestyle to live.
And so at Lake Satoshi this year, I was selling my syrup and my cannabis seeds and whatever I had.
And honestly, I had planned to, I grilled a lot of food.
I grilled, I cooked about nine pounds of rabbit and 15 pounds of lamb.
And I was intending to kind of distribute that value for value.
But I quickly realized like that wasn't even appropriate.
I'd just give it away.
It's fine.
But what I ended up leaving the event with was two dozen candles and a big sack of beef jerky from Barn Miner.
and freeze-dry Skittles, and so on and so forth.
And these are all goods that now I can take,
and books from Fundamentals.
Fundamentals wrote a book recently,
Bitcoin for Institutions.
And so I could take these products to the meetups,
and now there's options for people
because they weren't at Lake Satoshi,
and they don't necessarily have access to those products
because they're not local to the people producing them.
And so these events,
this creates this opportunity now
which wasn't, this is the first
realization of it at Lake
Satoshi this year, of this
Meshtadel, Meshconomy
concept coming to fruition
and it's very exciting
Did anybody
BitChat?
I have no idea
Maybe, maybe
BitChat did not come up in
conversations for one second
Yeah
Well, I'm just curious because it's like some of these little meetups, people are trying to break the record of the most in the network bit chats.
It's just something that seems like it would be an interesting opportunity going through Bluetooth and then being able to kind of communicate across the lake on that.
Because it has extended to data if you make your immediate connection via Bluetooth.
But yeah, carry on.
If you want to talk about mesh networks, and this is a really cool tangent to go on for a second here.
So I'm kind of doing a route through Michigan, right?
Like I said, I go to five or six Bitcoin meetups a month here in Michigan.
And then there's Otis Bitmeyer, who's roasting coffee.
And he's shipping this coffee, but he also wants to take the pop-up coffee shop on the road.
and he has a reason to go to Oklahoma and back on a regular basis.
And so his idea is that he's going to take this journey to Oklahoma and back
and distribute these other products that aren't necessarily his
along with his coffee through the meetups on that route.
And there's another guy who's willing to do a similar route
from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma and back.
And what we've discussed is that we should start to distribute these MeshTastic radios along that route in hopes of creating a true mesh network to facilitate totally encrypted private communications across it.
So that way, anyone who's in the know and who can tap into the mesh network now can talk from Oklahoma all the way to Grand Rapids, Michigan, and from Oklahoma all the way to Pennsylvania, and so on and so forth.
and so the bit chat thing is is hyper like literally in in your backyard you can be
chatting with somebody but the mesh tastic stuff has a range where you can realistically with some
high antenna towers and stuff uh create a true mesh network isn't the idea behind bit chat that
that it's it's not just limited to bluetooth but can scale to an actual mesh network because to your
point, Rev, right?
If you're in your backyard chatting with someone
over Bluetooth, you might as well be actually talking
to them like a human being.
But I think BitChat is supposed to scale
to other networks beyond Bluetooth.
Understanding is the initial was Bluetooth, then the latest update, so long as you can make a connection via Bluetooth, like in person, then the chat extends beyond via data.
But if you can omit just the cell towers and actually go through the mesh network, I think that's ideal for any cypherpunk mind.
Right. It's all about bridging from one mesh network to the next.
And so you can bridge from BitChat potentially into MeshTastic and then from MeshTastic into Nostra or directly from BitChat into Nostra.
But the idea is that if you have these private channels that you can operate through and then exit onto the Internet at some point, now you only need a few people with Internet connectivity.
and everyone can have these transactions
and communications taking place
that are completely off the grid, essentially.
Yeah, a couple of star links connected to solar or whatever, right?
Those are your internet hubs and the rest of them.
It's a shadowy way of ordering freeze-dried Skittles
that your wife doesn't know about, Avi.
Well, basically the argument of what if the internet goes out? How are you going to spend your Bitcoin? And this is like a true answer to that question. Now, how it all ends up shaking out and what it looks like at the end, we don't know yet because nobody's done it. We're actively experimenting with this.
But there is potential to accomplish this achieving transactions and communications over mesh networks and just finding these exits to the internet to connect to the broader network, right?
And it's very...
Yeah, and strengthening the infrastructure with Noster, whether it's Ham Radio, whether it's MeshTastic, or BitChat, these are all just simple communication.
and then enabling the Bitcoin on a resistant infrastructure.
But it's once again, like we're rebuilding a lot of things that have,
they already exist and they have existed.
And we're taking a lot of these concepts from old times or old techniques.
And because we're looking at this, the rebuilding through the lens of Bitcoin,
the Bitcoin culture and community is,
especially the people that are willing to go to the meetups
and really focus on this circular economy aspect of things.
It's very small, very tight-knit,
and this affords us the opportunity to experiment
and build out the infrastructure.
Once again, tying everything back to permaculture,
we need to have the opportunity to work in small and slow solutions.
And so this is our opportunity now
to build these small proof-of-concept examples
Um, so that way when, when people really need this, we've got the groundwork laid out and some of the issues we've got the experiential capital built up and the cultural capital built up to welcome the people when they start to come fast.
yeah so going back to lake satoshi um what are some of the wins and losses uh how how involved
are you in actually uh planning this or you just do you just attend and enjoy any shout outs to the
the planners uh anything you want to kind of talk about um as far as how it went well it's definitely
worth recognizing Mike and PF
who they run the
MidMichigan Meetup. Mike
owns Lake Satoshi.
He
puts a lot of his time
and effort and finances into
upgrading that property
every year to make the event better and better.
PF does a lot of work
in organizing and
making sure that
everyone's needs are met, answering questions
and everything.
and those guys it's really i mean there's more people than that but those two guys are like the
the ones who are really dictating what's going on and they're doing an amazing job and um beyond that
the the event is just um you talk like if you want to compare it to a bitcoin conference right basically you have to do a lot of work to get there in the first place It fairly remote It not really close to any major airport And it a camping event So now you
got to figure out how you're going to get an RV there if your family needs to have a little bit
more comfort and you don't want to do a tent. And if you're flying, you've got to figure out how to
get all your gear there. And so there's this proof of work in getting to the event in the first place.
and so when you're there
you're totally immersed
it's not like you can
like when you get off the plane and you take your Uber
to the conference area and then your hotel
is like a few blocks away
and you go hang out at the conference
for a little while, see a talk here or there and you go back to your
hotel and chill out and you can kind of like
go explore the city, no, when you go to Lake
Satoshi, you're at Lake Satoshi
and that's what you're doing for the weekend
and so you're completely immersed
in the culture that's generated there
and the ultimate result of this event.
And I think this is a great example
of ultimately what Bitcoin is
and what the Bitcoin culture represents.
Have you guys listened to the Telepathy Tapes podcast
or heard about this at all?
Tell us, Rev.
So this podcast is, you know,
it's not really a Bitcoin podcast.
It might not count towards your 40 hours
of Bitcoin podcast per week.
but I recommend anybody to explore it.
And so the podcast is basically exploring this concept
that nonverbal autistic people have the ability
to access subtle energies.
And they have the ability to be telepathic
and communicate in a way that we don't necessarily understand.
They understand the world completely different to us.
and the only way that their abilities are effective
is if there's love involved
there's love energy
and the way that they define love and love energy
is anything that unifies
and so there's a little easter egg at the end of the podcast
where they kind of go through this montage of these folks
that have been part of it
and this is after hours and hours
10 hours of listening. And there's just one little blip in there that someone says,
there's going to be a new currency and the currency is going to be based on love.
And if you know nothing about Bitcoin, you could probably hardly imagine a currency based on love.
But if you understand that their definition of love is anything that unifies,
then you might start, and you know about Bitcoin, then you might start to make the connection
that Bitcoin is an incredibly unifying force.
And therefore, in their definition, pure love.
And when you go to Lake Satoshi,
you realize this,
that Bitcoin is what's brought us here.
Bitcoin is what has unified us.
And the collective interaction of all the people
is pure love.
Rev, are you saying all the people
who showed up at Lake Satoshi
are non-verbal autists?
Well, I don't know if I met any.
They might have been there.
No, no.
But that is a beautiful way
of looking at it, Rev.
The currency of love.
I couldn't agree more.
Just imagine.
At this point,
do anything other than unify people.
Yeah, and when you say pure love,
I also think of pure life, pure vita, and how that's so synonymous with NOSTA and the community too.
And so this event, you're basically immersed.
It's like an overdose on social capital, on cultural capital, on spiritual capital, all these more intangible forms of capital.
I used to go to the event in the past and look at it as a way to participate in the circular economy.
And this is kind of the events come a little bit about this.
But now this year it's culminated in something so much more where all of that stuff exists.
But the ultimate result is like you get this huge, you're drinking from the fire hose of this connection with people.
It overwhelming and I recommend everybody in Lake Satoshi I don think is like um unique in this I think that like I said I think you can find these events elsewhere And a lot of
these Noster events are probably similar where you just find your people and you just, it's like,
you've known each other for a hundred years, you know? Um, and when, when it's like 300 people
that you've known for 100 years.
This is an intense,
there's emotional aspects to this
that you don't find at a Bitcoin conference.
We heard about similar things
at bush bashes as well.
I think they do some in Colorado,
certainly in Australia.
Heard very similar stories, Rev, about that.
How many people were there?
Because I've heard the same things.
And so this isn't a unique phenomenon limited to Lake Satoshi, but it's an example of like when you immerse yourself in the Bitcoin community, you finally realize what Bitcoin is.
Pure love.
Love it.
How many people were there, Rev?
I don't know if you answered that already, but I didn't catch you.
Hard to say for sure.
I would say there was more than 300 people there.
No doubt more than 300.
But it was 500. I wouldn't say much more than 500 between 300 and 500 people.
I'd say there's people everywhere, everywhere you go.
There's a group of people over here, 50 people over there.
There's 200 people at the shop. You know, there's this, this property is huge.
It's, it's 120 acres and there's little bubbles of, you know,
the Cleveland Bitcoin community has their little camp set up over here in the
Michigan, the mid Michigan Bitcoin community has their,
they're holding down the shop and the people from Pennsylvania over there.
And, and, you know, like there's just all of these little bubbles that are formed.
And then there's like these congregation points or by the lake, people at the beach,
people at the playground with all the kids.
This is the other thing is that it was a family event.
There was, uh, at least 50 children there, if not more, everyone brought their dogs.
You know, it was, uh, it's not everyone just hanging out, eating food,
talking about whatever, not necessarily about Bitcoin,
and sharing what they have with each other.
Rev, that sounds amazing, but I have one nagging question.
I suspect I asked you this when you were here last year
to talk about Lake Satoshi.
The plumbing oven.
Where do all of these 500 people go to the bathroom?
Well, so this is where the circular economy
can really come in handy.
rev rev powers is minor uh with methay well you know people show up they rent these rvs from from
i don't know what website or whatever they get the rvs parked for them so they show up you know
your rvs all set up ready to go people bring their own rvs in and um you know it's 500 sats
take a shit in in that rv right and so you can uh do a little value for value you can either choose
to poop in the port-a-john
or you can go in someone's RV instead.
And so that's how it kind of works.
Interesting.
Are you sold, Avi?
I'm grappling with it.
Everything Rev said sounds spectacular.
The family element, the camaraderie, the nature.
Except for this one thing,
walking into a stranger's RV.
Avi, I will pay you 10,000 sats to use the port-a-john.
it could be like, uh, it, it, you know, it might be just a monumentous moment for you.
They put in power pedestals. They put in like dozens of power pedestals this year. So all the
RVs could plug in and have power and who knows, maybe next year they're going to have hot showers
and, um, and flush toilets. I'm not sure every year they invest a lot into this property.
it gets better and better
and if you really like
if the camping aspect
is disinventageous
to you, you don't like it, whatever
you don't want to deal with it, you can find a hotel
outside of town
and drive in and go back to the hotel
and just hold your shit
until you gotta go to the hotel, right?
There are a few flush toilets at the shop
don't get me wrong
I don't want to do the place disjustice
there is some flush toilets there
you're not going to find a hot shower
unless it at an RV the facilities are well there a lake lake Lake can be a shower That not the end of the world
Well, that was the joke.
The indoor plumbing.
Like, you're going to go to the lake.
The only soap that you're allowed to use in the lake is what soap that the local guy was selling, right?
My homie Matt, the man Arbor, he makes tallow soap too.
And he's like, dude, if you want to, you know, you come, you got to buy my soap.
I'm going to take a, you know, bathe in the lake.
You've got to bathe with my soap.
Just like a rite of passage.
Everything.
Anyway.
Was there, was there good fishing in that lake?
There is good fishing and people ate the fish, uh, from the lake this year.
Does that, does that freezes over, right?
That lake?
It does.
Yeah.
What?
Yeah.
So a lot of native and, uh, is it fully stocked or is it a lot of natives there?
I'm not sure how much they stock it
but
they must because there's good fish in there
it is good fishing
yeah
yeah I
would say that
it's
the lake
to call it a lake it's a very large pond
it's like on the border between being a lake
and a pond
so how big
Can lakes, how big can this event get? I mean, what's the max occupancy in the forest?
Well, the beautiful thing is that it's right next to a state park.
So if they max out the lodging at the camping at the site, there can be overflow at the state park.
And so I would say that there's not really a theoretical, like if it got bigger to the point where there would be so many people,
there it would be a problem the event would be too big anyways and it wouldn't be any fun
you know um so there's plenty of room to scale there i think the bathroom situation acts as a
great filter rev even people who would be enthusiastic otherwise such as myself
that's the the last mile problem is a is a bridge too far for me
it's definitely like you know it separates the people who are uh
used to pooping in a bucket excuse me one second
he's viciously yelling at his dog right now
always something going on i'm getting a delivery there's time for you i gotta i gotta amazon
My dog doesn't like Amazon delivery drivers.
I'm sorry.
I feel like we're on a call when you get put on hold.
Has he taken his dog for a walk?
All right, folks.
Looks like we've had a few technical snafus this episode,
but I think we were able to extract
a pretty decent amount of signal from Rev Hoddle.
When Rev Hoddle speaks QW
and when we can hear him speak,
he stays spoken.
There is some good stuff in there.
So thank you all for listening.
If you are listening to this,
if you are listening to this as the podcast,
then you will hear some odd glitches.
That's because we had quite a few technical issues during the show.
The homestead internet isn't quite there.
The revolution, as we know, will have bad UX,
but we appreciate your patience.
And to our live audience who listened on Zap.Stream
and any other Noster client that supports streaming,
such as Amethyst on Noster, we thank you for your patience.
we thank Rev Hoddle
for joining us and sharing
his wisdom with us
anything from EQW before we close out
you know Avi, can the
stack be too sovereign
you know, his stack
might be too sovereign for
communications
but maybe Meschadel will fix
that in the future, but no
that's it, thank you for tuning in to
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Until next week, gentle plebs, farewell.
Goodbye.