That's it, hot summer. That's it, open.
The signal is here. This is Bloodshed Radio.
Welcome, gentle pioneers, to the lightning-laced airwaves.
Today is Friday, the 20th of March, and it is 3.02 p.m. on the east coast of the United States at the time of recording.
We have a fun one ahead of you today.
Richard Greaser of the Bitcoin Bugle returns to the show.
He is the twisted mind behind Maxi Madness, a tournament I was unceremoniously dumped out of earlier today.
Dark forces at play, no doubt, and I will be demanding answers shortly.
If you are hearing my voice right now on Spotify or Apple, thank you for listening, but also welcome to the Legacy Feed.
It's a reliable signal, but it's read-only.
Over here on Fountain and Noster, the frequency is open.
This is a Valley for Value broadcast.
There are no corporate scripts and no algorithmic nudges here
because the producers of this show, that's you, feel the engine.
If you want to move from passive listener to active participant,
come join the signal on the V4V side.
Now for our sermon today
The price of a voice
Every poll you've ever taken was free
And because it is free, it was worthless
A Twitter poll costs nothing to rig
Create 10 accounts, click 10 times, walk away
The result is noise dressed up as signal
We've been conditioned to treat polling as democratic scripture
where in reality it's the cheapest possible performance of consensus
Zap polling just changed the equation
Zap polls attach a real irreversible economic cost to every vote
Your sats leave your wallet and they do not come back, win or lose
You're making a sacrifice
and sacrifice as a signal is almost impossible to fake.
But here's where it gets interesting.
The default range, at least in Primal,
which is the, with their latest release of Primal 3.0,
they introduced Zap polls.
The default range when you create a poll
is 21 sats to 21,000 sats.
That is a thousand to one band.
one maximum zap equals 1,000 minimum zaps.
Your voice is proportional to what you're willing to burn.
And that immediately raises an uncomfortable question.
If economic weight determines the outcome, is that fair?
And the honest answer is, it depends on what you mean by fair.
The fiat model privileges infinite duplication
because duplication and replication is free.
This model privileges intensity of conviction.
And neither of those two are necessarily pure,
but only one of them has a cost and makes gaming prohibitively expensive.
Which brings me to Bugle's March Maxi Madness tournament.
64 names, 32 head-to-head zap balls, single elimination,
and the game theory shifts from interesting to genuinely novel. First, the timing problem.
If you can see the running totals, which you can, once you vote that is, early zapping reveals your
position and gives the opposition a target. Late zapping lets you calculate the exact cost of
victory and strike with precision. And we're already seeing this. I mean, I was a victim of
this for heaven's sake earlier today. Poles flipping in the final moment because a single
large zap lands at the buzzer. It's eBay sniping, but with sats. And second, the resource problem.
A single pole is an isolated skirmish. A six round bracket is a war of attrition.
If you whale zap your champion through round one, you might have burned ammunition you need in the
semifinals. So do you go heavy early and hope the later rounds take care of themselves? Or do you
conserve and risk an upset before you even get there? And third, the coalition problem. A popular
figure with a thousand casual casual supporters at 21 sats each can be obliterated by a lesser
known name backed by one or two whales at 21,000. Wide but shallow loses to narrow but deep.
This forces communities to coordinate, to pool resources, to think strategically rather than
impulsively. That in itself is a new social dynamic. What we're witnessing is the emergence
of a genuinely new economic primitive. You can call it competitive proof of conviction.
Every move is transparent.
Every cost is permanent.
And the man who architected this whole twisted experiment
is laughing all the way to the bank
because every single zap flows directly to him.
Mr. Richard Greaser, welcome back to Plep Chain Radio.
Great to be here.
so richard uh uh happy and uh a profitable couple of days for you and the team at the bugle
yeah it's kind of weird uh to to earn some money you know for the first time in like the few years
that we've uh done that it's like i don't i don't know we don't spend a whole lot of times
trying to calculate our production costs versus our income.
But definitely not.
I haven't made a ton.
Just enough to afford some cigarettes.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, right.
Ron's got his Lightning wallet hooked up to the account.
So he's pretty happy.
He told me he had to mute his wallet
because every single Zap sent him a notification.
and I think about halfway through the day yesterday,
I think there were 700 zaps in these polls.
Yeah.
I glanced at the first round, which is 32 of these polls, right?
32 of two head-to-heads out of 64 people.
There seemed to be an average.
Actually, it was hard to tell the averages by looking at it,
But if I had to guess, it's something like 80 to 90 votes per poll.
So that's what are we talking about?
Let's just call it 100.
Just pick a round number times 32.
So you had 3,200 ZAPs at a minimum of 21 SATs each, many of them in the hundreds.
And a handful I did see at the max range of 21,000.
So we're talking half a million sats in that ballpark.
Are we not?
Probably, yeah.
Yeah.
It was like halfway through the day, it was like a quarter million.
So I think, yeah, probably close to half a million.
Yeah.
Did you actually, when you, obviously this is a bit of a race to the finish line
because Primal, I mean, Maxi Madness started two days after Primal 3.0 rolled out.
Now, Amethyst does support ZapPolls and has for a long time.
There are a couple of other clients that support polls.
And I believe the very first one that implemented the polling net was Polorama.fun.
Maybe I'm wrong here, but that was a while back.
I think that was the guy who came up with the polling net, but that's not ZapPolling.
Jumble does, Jumble, Wisp, and a few others support regular polling.
but I think at this point it's just
Amethyst and Primal
that's about Zap Poly. Is that right?
I'm not sure.
But yeah, I think so.
Whatever.
But I'm not very familiar with
all the different clients.
I was using Amethyst for a while
way back in the day.
Not Primal for a while.
just i just want my doodad to work and uh if whoever's running the doodad glazes me a little
bit that's i'll use your doodad that's all i uh need so zapstream got me that way
got me that way
yeah it was pretty impressive we were we were testing it out we didn't do a ton of testing
because we were so scatterbrained and busy last week
when we were talking with the Primal team.
And it seems like it's been a flawless delivery so far.
I'm impressed with the experience.
My only complaint is the web app doesn't really work.
But the mobile app seems to be working fairly decent,
better than usual.
I'm pretty happy.
Yeah, no, it's been, Primal 3.0 has been a very smooth experience.
I know there was some issue with Spark on the Spark side, just today, I think.
And today is March 20th, Friday.
But some people said their upgraded Primal Spark wallet balances disappeared.
I believe it was something on the Spark side, but it came back.
so all's well it seems but yeah it's been a largely smooth rollout but but i guess what i
was getting at is you know your maxi madness started two days after zap polling came out no
one's really experienced zap polling and i think a lot of people are learning the game theory
and economic these new economic primitives on the fly as you're playing around with these polls
Did you guys have a chance to think through what this might look like?
Obviously, the Twitter polls, we don't have to talk about them.
I mean, easy to rig and not, at least for me, not of particular interest.
But this is a whole different dynamic.
Did you and Rod have a chance to, like,
work through some of these permutations and combinations?
We had a little bit of discussion.
Not a ton.
You know, one of the problems with Maxi Madness is there's no way to predict what's going to happen.
The way that people show up and behave is incredibly unpredictable.
You know, there was some discussion that we had.
Like, I wanted it to be as close to like a true democratic process as possible, which is why we did the range.
allowing for people to like a larger you said whale but you know it's only 21 000 sads on the
higher end to uh to buy the election i think that's much more accurate the way democracies work
uh so that's been cool you know one of the features like you mentioned that makes it really
difficult to game it effectively which makes it interesting in my opinion where you have these
unpredictable last minute uh changes in momentum is uh that you cannot see what
the voting looks like until you actually vote you don't see the score
that would make it a lot easier to just get the election um and rig it that way i mean i guess
you can mitigate that by having one account that votes and then you can see it and then coming in
with another account but um there's a lot of crazy uh game theory at play here like you said
it is something you know somewhat novel i uh i think my my first experience ever with
zap pulling or something similar to it was you know guy swan i don know if he still has this on his website but years ago guy swan would rank articles that you wanted him to read next and you could uh zap it uh to boost
the article in the rankings i thought that was super cool uh and i've always thought like i i've
wanted to do stuff like this where i um have a website where i have all the various projects that
I want to do and, you know, set thresholds for how much funding I want to get in order
for me to actually do the project and then, uh, kind of have things ranked that way.
And, you know, if people want it, they'll fund it.
Um, but I, yeah, I think it's, I, there, there's so many possibilities with these types
of uh pulling mechanisms i'm i think it's very cool the the the most novel and interesting thing
that nostor provides in my opinion from a you know credential journalist a content creator
is how easy it is to get monetized you know from your audience directly using bitcoin it's just it
it is very simple.
It's very easy.
Um,
that combined with the discoverability of like a social media type ecosystem.
So it's,
it's Rod's been calling it an anti-social media ecosystem,
which I think is,
uh,
you know,
a fun way to describe it.
But,
uh,
yeah,
I don't,
we had no idea how this was going to play out.
And,
uh,
you know,
some people were like pressing us to limit the,
uh,
the voting to like,
you know,
one zap amount,
like 21 sats or something.
And I,
I said,
no,
like I,
I wanted the range because what makes maxi madness so fun is the
unpredictable nature of it and the variability of it.
And so when you can just unleash mayhem,
that's way more fun than uh you know having a buttoned down popularity contest in my opinion
i just i just realized though richard that you and rod both have a free
whales app because the stats go back to you right so if you if either of you want someone to win you
can just wait till the last minute and then unload your 21k at the very end that's true i mean i i
have been voting on it i don't think maybe rod's been voting on it a little bit but uh uh you know
we believe strongly in like we we don't try to manipulate the results of this at all we're not
involved with manipulating the results of this at all because i think if we do that it really takes
away from people involved having fun the participants in it having fun so while we can't
do that i mean one of the things that you can see who's voting which i think is also very cool
which you can't on twitter um actually can i say real quick on that richard uh for the folks
listening i know who voted against me and i have a very long memory go on well i voted for you
i know and i know who voted for me as well and i have a long memory for that too
that was a hard one that was a that was a really tough matchup because i i like both you and made
quite a bit and um i i i probably took at least three minutes to think about it
sitting there at the pole
no it's good fun good fun and medics is a good man um happy to lose as happy as one can be about
losing uh happy to lose to a person of that caliber um sorry i i interrupted uh something
I just wanted to let people know that I've noted their names.
That's all.
Accountability is a good thing.
I guess I will have to admit, I did give Noah Groomen a big zap today.
I got a 12,000 or 16,000 set zap today.
So I will own that.
well I did look at that poll
she's matched up against McShane
who's blown his load already
on himself
so
I don't know
I think it balances out
yeah I really hope Nostra can
learn who she is
because I think she's one of the
coolest people on Nostra
and in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Oh, for sure.
And we're going to, in a short while,
we're going to play her first Value for Value song,
which is kind of cool.
Yeah, I mean, it's been fun.
I mean, it's...
I got to say, I am impressed with the Nostra ecosystem.
like everybody involved is very uh committed and stubborn because they i've seen other
like in 2020 there was a a big move to mastodon when jack dorsey was censoring all of us for
telling people that they were retarded for wearing masks and whatever um
And that came and died really fast.
The Nostra ecosystem has been very, very vibrant, committed, excited about these technologies.
I will say, though, Richard, on the social media side, and I'm not the only one who's felt this.
So the last few months, Nostra has been getting a bit dull.
Frankly, it's just same people repeating the same cliches over and over again.
And people getting into silly fights.
And I've had to tune out a lot of that.
I think Maxi Madness has breathed a lot of life back into Nostra.
I mean, I don't know in how many people,
the weekly act of users is something like 10,000.
although i think that feels like a bit of a stretch to me it's probably a little less than that
uh but within that there's a strong subset that feels energized with what you guys have done
so it's been great yeah
this all kind of happened accidentally like the formation of maxi madness i i thought it was a
fun idea the first year i did it on twitter and um there wasn't a lot of thought putting it put
into it and it just like took off and became kind of a big thing and then rod came in the second year
and really you know accelerated it um and added just an incredible amount of value he he's been
you know very instrumental in uh the back end of a lot of this stuff of of a ton of the content
that is being created, bringing much more of like a professional feel to it
with a lot of the graphics and stuff.
And it really has turned into one of the most fun social-themed things in Bitcoin,
you know, both on Twitter.
I think Twitter felt has felt similar to the last few years that, that it has breathed life there. And I think, you know, part of the reason why is, um, I think it's important to take pride in the, in this social movement that we're a part of and, and like to understand the importance of it, which, you know, people might think is kind of ironic for me to say,
you know because in many ways we are um making fun of a lot of people uh but um or they may feel
that way but you know the stuff that we're talking about and the stuff that we're doing
is incredibly important because it's like what like bitcoin is like one of the very few
things in the world that's actually productive for promoting any semblance of freedom
and Nostra fits into that in a large way um and uh it's just like it's fun to to find creative
ways to celebrate um the individuals here to you know to have a good time and I think
where a lot of people misunderstand
what it means to be effective in accomplishing your goals like having fun is like one of the
primary ways to be effective in accomplishing your goals and promoting the ideas that are
important to you like you have to have fun um i i am a firm believer whoever has the most fun wins
and the great thing about like the way to win maxi madness and in the way to win
I think in general with dealing with the bugle
is you either join us and have fun
or you're going to have a bad time.
As many have found out by doing otherwise.
That is for sure.
So I do want to get back to the game theory of Zappos
because it's an absolutely fascinating topic
that I've been thinking of,
thinking about ever since you guys launched this thing.
And really, it comes to the fore in a format like this, right?
This type of elimination format gamified this way.
Because if I were to put up a Zap poll
with a range of 21,000 Sats and say,
hey, what color shoe should I wear?
Or whatever it is, right?
I mean, three people would Zap 21 Sats maybe at most.
So perhaps not as effective for something like that use case, but this type of elimination playoff type game, it just creates all sorts of possibilities because you're not just thinking about or you should not be thinking about just that one matchup.
You have to think long term, like how you strategically deploy capital across multiple rounds.
you also have a prediction market right predicts i wonder though
richard that if there's a way in which the the prediction market can be baked in
into the into the game itself for example if maybe next year you could i don't know if you
can do zap splits on the polls today but if half of it goes to you and the other half goes to the
winner at the end that sort of maybe there's some kind of hedging that can be done uh and the game
theory is completely different for that type of poll right yeah i agree i i really like i was
thinking about this the other night i really like the incentive if you were to split the the sass
with the participants in the poll i think that's um it's great you know because it's funny
you know the differences in currency between twitter and nostr like the you know the the
currency on nostr is bitcoin and the currency on twitter is engagement and glaze and so i think you
see um kind of different behaviors on uh both platforms for that reason
i i personally i i like bitcoin more than i like glaze i enjoy bitcoin a lot more um
so you know it's one of the reasons primarily you know like i i see a lot of value in the
the uh value for value ecosystem i i think for predex probably a fairly simple way
to make the platform interesting and and get it more integrated with the nostor ecosystem would be
to do something similar to Fountain,
where you tie your Nostra NSEC to your profile on Predix,
and every time you buy a bet it does like a post on Nostra I think that would be pretty good but I not sure how to directly bake the the prediction markets and I I kind of like not being directly involved with the
prediction markets that you know in more so seeing how people respond and interact with it
because anybody can go on predicts and create a market for anything
uh so i'm not sure specifically how to bake it directly into the contest next year but i i think
the the simple one i don't know if you can do splits on the uh on the polls but that would be
a really cool feature for next year that i would be a huge fan yeah so the primal team if you're
listening, Milian, Paul, any of you, just something to keep in mind. I don't, or someone from Spark,
I doubt if anyone from Spark's listening. But if there is a way to set up a split once things go,
well, it's interesting though, right? Because you won't know who's the winner until all the zaps
come in. So maybe this, then you need, you'll have to have the zap sitting at escrow until the
polls close. And then you do the split half to the author of the zap and half to the winner.
Oh, sorry. Author of the poll and half to the winner. Yeah. Interesting problems. Um,
I don't know how you solve something like that, uh, in a self custodial way.
I think the simple answer is generally the best answer.
And I think just splitting, like the winner doesn't have to take,
it doesn't have to be split going to the winner.
It could just be split amongst all the participants.
And like, you know, your incentive is to make it to the next round
in order to earn sats on that pool.
If that makes sense.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
yeah fascinating stuff um how obviously we're not talking large numbers uh on nostril right
just like maybe 100 we'll see what happens in the second round more people wake up more people will
up upgrade to primal 3.0 uh maybe so you know you can i'm sure someone can quickly vibe up uh
a zapping
oh sorry a zap polling app
desktop client
to do this
but the number
we're not talking about thousands and thousands of people
and I don't think that's going to happen
A because
Nostra is so small
but B because it doesn't
I mean like there's no incentive to
you know spin up bots to
zap when you can take care of that
with a whale zap
or a couple of whale zaps if you're so inclined.
But how does, I guess, the sentiment and excitement
around Maxi Madness on Nostra compare to what's happening on Twitter?
Because that's something I haven't gone to Twitter
in like a week or two at this point.
I have an open claw that occasionally posts for me.
So I don't even know what's happening there.
And I think I'm pretty certain I muted 100% of Bitcoin Twitter as well.
So I won't even know what's happening.
Yeah, the excitement's a lot more on Twitter.
And I think part of the reason why is it's a much bigger platform.
And we have more momentum there.
I mean, done it three years in a row.
So people have participated before.
They know what to expect.
uh probably a fair amount of the participants on maxi badness on oster this is their first time
seeing or participating in the event i think a lot of people don't know who we are uh
which always surprises me because you know we're we're the most credentialed journalist
bitcoin most thermodynamically sound bitcoin podcast but like
people yeah people definitely been excited but it is uh it's kind of crazy because there's like
there's like 24 7 coverage of us on twitter right now pretty much between all the different spaces
and podcasts and live streams that are going on over there.
That's remarkable.
So we have our friend Rev Hoddle in the comments saying,
I was thinking about fat zapping others in the bracket
that I might have a better chance of beating,
but I lost, so I'm back to just zapping my favorites,
which is kind of where I am.
And I wasn't fat zapping, though.
I mean, you guys have taken enough of my stats.
My budget is 500 stats per round.
But that was a, wow, that was a cruel matchup there, Richard.
Rev Hoddle against Jack Dorsey.
It's just the nature of Maxi Madness is it is cruel at the end of the day.
Like the fates and just, you know, raw victory in the last moments.
I was really rooting for a Rev Hoddle big fan.
That would have been just like one of the most incredible Cinderella stories.
And it was doubly cruel because when the matchup was announced before voting began,
obviously to the lazy observer, Rev Hoddle has no chance.
We're talking about Jack Dorsey here.
and then you see rev go into this massive lead going into the night and then waking up to find
that jack's beaten him by a whisker cruel doubly cruel i'm sorry rev
yeah for those that don't know rev hodl rev hodl is very committed uh bitcoin meetup organizer
and uh is definitely not a nobody that's for sure
and you should check out his uh podcast as well speaking of bitcoin meetups
um local bitcoiners right i think that's the name listen to a few episodes yeah it's great
like you you show up to like satoshi up in michigan rev hodl he's royalty jack dorsey shows up there
nobody's going to know who he is.
You know what I mean?
Like he's like an American folk hero.
Nostra folk hero.
Yeah, in his preacher's wagon,
going around dropping legs of lamb
at different points on the denim road.
Yeah, so what were the other big meetups,
sorry, meetups, matchups
that you had your eye on in the first round?
We can get to the second round in a bit.
But yesterday's matchups.
One of the crazy ones was Doot beat Lynn Alden.
That was wild.
Who is Doot?
Doot is somebody a Noster Insider told me to put on here.
Seems like he's just like grumpy posting about.
Hasn't been posting as much for a month.
but it was a it was a suggestion from somebody in the selection committee but it looks like he's
just like a goofball nostril goofball that likes to post about why uh block share prices aren't high
enough and he beat linalden that is interesting pretty wild um
lob beat um jb 55 very last minute that one shocked me milhan uh beat super test net super
test net was a shocker for me i didn't realize he was so popular on the roster but uh he was
looking pretty good and then milhan came in last second um i thought that lebanese hodl would have
a really good showing in the tournament
because he had a lot of followers,
but Max Hillebrand smoked him.
Condeleurian beat Adam Curry.
I'm not surprised.
You're not surprised?
No.
Adam Curry would have won on Mastodon,
on the Zapples on Mastodon,
but not on Nostro.
Condeleurian reigns supreme in these parts.
uh of our digital village well the only reason why i was surprised about it was because uh curry
had such a large lead and you know i went to bed and then woke up and then saw corn delorean come
back i i thought he would have had a much larger lead throughout the tournament but uh
yeah tk beat ainsley that one surprised me
i was really shocked that made x beachy i was really confused by that
dark forces at play
and then uh another one i was really surprised about was that yellow beat uh
uh,
none of your business.
Cause,
uh,
like he's like probably the number two Noster podcaster.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
No,
Nani is,
he's a podcasting legend.
I mean,
he's done almost,
almost 2000 episodes at this point.
Uh,
Richard,
there's some interesting chatter in the live chat.
Apparently at,
uh,
sir,
Spencer Wolf of,
uh,
Casey,
Kansas City says Adam is a stable coin dude these days.
Is this true?
I haven't heard that.
It's been a while since I've followed Adam.
He's just like these Gen Xers have just some of the dumbest takes on things.
I really have a deep appreciation for Adam,
but he's got some pretty stupid opinions about things sometimes.
and it kind of bums me out.
That's wild.
I mean, I just, I've ignored the,
I know there was a memo that went around
telling all the Bitcoin maximalists
that maximalism is now being pro stablecoin and Bitcoin.
But I've just ignored it.
I'm not changing.
Wait, where did this originate from?
Oh, you didn't get the memo?
i certainly did not no is that because i'm not on twitter anymore
you're just not podconf and it went through all the podconf channels
okay and by stable coins they mean tether presumably yes yeah you know it's uh you
can't like any of the other ones besides tether like tether tether you know apparently palo is a
good bitcoiner um but yeah usdc is a shit coin but but the the memo according to podconf is uh
you know tether's okay yeah it's it's the pristine and refined petroleum uh in the petrodollar
backing tether um and um usdc is does it see presumably sound it stands for crude it's not
refined um yeah interesting stuff i'm i've i think this is one of the nice things about not being on
twitter anymore is um i i don't hear any of the tether stuff because there are no tether people
on nostr and i don't think there ever will be
well just wait when they've been working on getting tether on lightning
and when that happens,
they're going to start doing the Tether's apps.
Yeah, well, we'll see.
I think there are Monero's apps already,
if I'm not mistaken.
I'm not, I mean, I think they're on a different relay,
so I wouldn't know.
But very possible that Monero's apps are already a thing.
That sounds really non-functional.
Have you used Monero at all?
No.
I wear it as a badge of pride.
Like I've got like probably like $30, 30 USDT worth of Monero in my cake wallet.
And that gives me my shit coiner badge.
I failed the maximalism purity test because of that.
But, you know, you open your wallet and you have to wait like five minutes for it to sink.
it's like this really weird feature monero where your wallet has to sync with the chain
somehow uh so like every time you want to set a transaction you have to sit and wait
and it just you know the the more you use bitcoin the more you realize just like how great the ux of it all has gotten because it is just especially right now with transactions being so cheap it
just so easy to uh to send and you know while there are these um a lot of the lightning ecosystem
is custodial it's pretty easy to use uh it's becoming custodial light though with things like
spark i mean i don't know what spark is honestly it probably is custodial but it it it can pass
off as sort kind of sort of non-custodial i suppose i'm not going to try and explain the uh
mechanics of spark or arc or any of these other things but it seems like it's kind of like
something built on top of lightning so it's like another layer on top of it but yeah it uh
i'm surprised liquid hasn't taken off more
there is no liquidity on liquid yeah
yeah i mean i think it's kind of crazy like when you look at the stable coin markets
and the what people are doing
how bad the ux is to use like tether on tron or tether on ethereum it's just like a major pain in
the ass and i think what what this should be
apparently i mean you look at like the biggest betting platform i don't know how cal she works
but you look at something like polymarket and like part of the reason why i've never gotten
on polymarket was because i didn't want to go to trouble of figuring out how to get my hands on usdc
and then they had like a really complicated weird login process where you had to like
you either use a wallet that i didn't have or you know some sort of shitcoin platform um and uh
you're like a predix so you just you have a simple login you create your login and then you just
load a balance with lightning it's incredibly easy um like their liquid could be a significantly
better ux solution for using stable coins and yet it hasn't been adopted and i think
you know ux isn't everything like a big part of uh getting user adoption is marketing
i just it baffles me why so many people have gone in on the polymarket with uh
usdc like it's just crazy to me
yeah is don't they do uh i'm trying to remember was polymarket is it available in the u.s
meaning when i say available i mean if you're going in without a vpn and your ip address is
from the u.s then polymarket uh i think they do some kind of geo look up and block you was what i
hard yeah i think a lot of them are that way where you have to most people using they're using
some sort of vpn but i just never got that far i just like i couldn't even figure out how to log
in i was like no i'm not going to download metamask and i'm going to learn how to use uh
usdc to use your stupid platform how do you get usdc do you have to buy it on coinbase or something
yeah i think that's pretty much how it is you go to poll it uh or deposit uh
dollars into to get your paper dollar token
oh
lahav in the chat says don't metamask kids which is um yes wise words um
so let's get back to the matchups and this round which i think kicked off today
what are the big ones you have your eye on
well we got ben justman versus derrick ross that's a that's a good one
um both seem pretty active and excited about it and derrick ross is going to get excited
those guys are both very committed to Noster and they like Noster.
Ben Justman,
he is probably one of my favorite people that's excited about Bitcoin.
He's just such a good natured guy.
So likable.
For sure.
He loves slop.
Derek loves slop too.
um that's a fun matchup to watch uh you got like two great podcasters long-running podcasters you
got guy swan and daniel prince that's a good matchup you got brad mills and sessions that's
a good matchup canadian duel uh there's a tight one right now between uh no agreement and mcshane
I gave Noah a big boost, and McShane now wants to fight me.
Yeah, I'll keep an eye on that.
I already voted for Noah with my regular account,
but Plep Chain Radio has a primal account as well.
So I'll keep an eye on it in the morning.
I'm sure Lahav is lurking, waiting to snipe at the last minute.
but yeah that'll be a good one
yeah I
really like this builders category
because there's a lot of like really
cool and serious people
in it you got Kali
against GG
mass coding bandits against each other
GG's
more
I don't know what he is
full body suit yeah
yeah
Kieran, Fiat Jeff, Watt, Milhan
those are
I just think that you know the Nostra bracket
in my opinion is
a lot more fun
it's a lot less
politically charged
Twitter bracket is
incredibly politically charged you got a lot of
crash outs going on over there
but I
think there's a lot of
a lot more wholesomeness
to this tournament
and the individuals participating I think
the sportsmanship's a lot better.
Yeah, it's a nicer place in general than X.
Last year, there were some shenanigans on X.
Some absolute nobody basically bought some votes somehow, right?
Through bots or whatever to win.
Oh, it's just the way democracy works, you know?
Like if it's, you know, democracy is all about buying votes one way or another.
And, um, if you don't like that, then I guess your alternative is like monarchy.
And then we can all like bend over worship Michael Saylor or whatever.
Um, I thought, yeah, last year's tournament was a lot of fun.
I had a tremendous time watching that.
There were a lot of people that were very upset at Teddy bitcoins.
It was like kind of the nail in the coffin of the Swan media mafia.
Because part of the reason why people didn't like Teddy Bitcoins is he was very antagonistic against Corey and Swan.
And so I think that that was where a lot of the hatred came from.
And so, you know, Corey thought he was too cool to not participate in the tournament, got knocked out round one.
And then had his arch nemesis go and steamroll everybody.
He beat sailor.
He beat Lynn Alden.
Um,
and,
uh,
you know,
then Corey decided to start crashing out.
So this year,
Corey's boycotting it,
pretending like he doesn't even know it exists.
Uh,
but that,
that was really the nail in the coffin.
I think for,
for Swan of having any sort of relevancy,
like it seems like Corey has been just like grasping at straws.
He's just,
he's out there just complaining about,
um,
his poor decision to partner with Tether on Tron and how he got screwed for
shit coining.
Um,
but he doesn't believe that he was shit coining.
I don't know.
They did get rugged by Tether,
didn't they?
Since you're on the topic,
um,
Swan.
Um,
yeah,
that's what he claims.
Um,
is that he got rugged.
They,
they had some sort of agreement.
and then it all fell apart and uh you know there there's multiple sides of the the story and uh i
just don't care enough to take a side it's just like you know cory you suck you're uh
you you're not willing to you know engage at maxi madness and then uh it's like tether you suck like
you're actively working to prolong the existence of the dollar
like keep the people in power that tell me where i can't smoke cigarettes
so i just don't really care about either yeah so maxi madness is uh on twitter is doing its thing
uh what what what kind of uh vote size are we looking at i mean the 5 10 20k range
um it really ranges uh depending on the poll uh you're looking at
see
right now in round two some of the polls are up near a thousand and some are in the couple hundred
range um there haven't been any massive moves in amounts and i i think what happens is as
the the tournament progresses the the people with the most active voting bases um start to match up
against each other you know the people that are more committed to win uh like the first two rounds
are pretty much just kind of weeding out the individuals that aren't very committed to the
tournament just painting um sometimes there's like tragedies of you know individuals that are
very committed like uh adam samaka got beat by sailor adam was very amped up and excited about
the tournament and i was disappointed to see him go uh i i was hoping that kit sats was going to be
very like excited uh but but she didn't show up at all for the tournament she liked a couple tweets
that was about her commitment i don't know what she's doing
just slopping
about beef tallow or whatever
but uh
yeah there's some pretty hardcore shit talking
happening
twitter right now and uh
i'm enjoying it
it's pretty fun to watch
you had Aaron Redwing
go up against um
Ross Ulbricht
yesterday and
she was talking shit
saying that
she wants Ross to get locked up again.
That was
pretty intense.
Yeah.
Did Ross have anything to say?
No, I think Ross is
I think he's really enjoying his time right now.
As he should.
Yeah, no.
Ross gets a pass for not participating in Maxi Madness for sure.
So wait, did this person beat Aaron, you said?
Aaron?
Yeah.
So she beat Ross?
She beat Ross.
It was unbelievable.
Wow.
Okay.
Interesting stuff.
Okay, so Richard, one of the things you've done differently in this year's Maxi Madness
is you have a real human singer perform the Maxi Madness song.
What was the story there?
Yeah.
So I started talking to Noah right before Maxi Madness last year.
And so this was like one of her first impressions of me
was seeing maxi madness and i think she got excited about it lahav got excited about it and um
so we're talking about it this year and uh you know i she she's been one of my big inspirations for
taking my musical career more seriously and
And so we talked quite a bit about music and, you know, different mechanics about it.
She has been incredibly helpful for me on that front.
And so I wrote the Maxi Madness song and I sent it to her.
And she got very excited about it and took it upon herself to record herself singing it.
and then she convinced Peter Todd
to do a rap portion for it
and then her and Lahav went and shot
this unbelievable music video
oh yeah
it is an incredibly high quality music video
unfortunately we won't be able to play the video itself
this is an audio podcast
but we'll play the song in a minute or two
but yeah
for anyone who hasn't watched it
I will put the link to the video itself
in the show notes
so you can go check it out
Lahav obviously masterful
video editing and filming
and camera work as well
really well done
so how did you write the song
Richard, did you compose it on a piano, the melody,
and then how did you do the arrangement and everything else?
I just wrote it out and put it through a doodad, pretty much.
No, it wasn't like super, super involved.
I mean, I guess like the writing of the song was like years in the making
with the previous Maxi Madnesses.
So I think there's a lot of history and meaning to it
to kind of build what it's about.
But it was a relatively simple process of writing it,
and then Noah just took it and brought it to the next level.
all right well why don't we listen to it this is i do want to mention uh revolution rocks
oh yeah yeah yeah we'll talk about it after the okay cool why don't we talk yeah yeah we have time
We'll talk about it after.
I had it on the list.
So this is Maxi Madness written by Richard Greaser performed by Noel Grumman.
Starry up, who made it all the way to the end? Harness destiny to be their friend. Will they be a hero of the plebs? Or will the villains spin their webs?
A hard fought battle away to decide Maxi Madness' fate.
They've been training all their lives.
Hear the crowd of the moment arise
Maxi Madness, Maxi Madness
This is a battle for eternal glory
To design the one who is worthy
I'll put everything on the line
In order to attempt the climb
Only one will take home the crown
Can you feel the madness all around?
Who will be the champion?
Like the legends from history, before them their enemies will flee
Their weapons are their minds, trying to heal the world that is blind
The most important contest of our time, exposing the money printer's crimes
A hard thought, a battle away, to decide Maxi Magis' fate
They've been trading all their lives
I hear the crowd as the moment arrives
Maxi Madness, Maxi Madness
This is a battle for eternal glory
To decide the one who is worthy
They put everything on the line
In order to attempt the climb
Only one will take home the crown
Can you feel the madness all around?
Who will be the champion?
It's slopping away to the top since a tale was born
Dropping the molten fire, teaching the plebs about corn
This battle is about Bitcoin or slavery
And the champion is the one who shows bravery
Defeating shadow bands when they thought we were not
Fred running banks, running circles round
Fiat cops, podcasting, cause the TV won't televise a revolution
Cipherbunks, right-corn, the country value solution
We're building the world into the first turning
We're building as all the institutions are burning
Making a room for compromise
We're gonna fight till the day's beyond time
They've been trading all their lives
Hear the crowd as the moment arrives
Maxi Madness, Maxi Madness
This is the battle for eternal glory
To define the one who is worthy
They'll put everything on the line
In order to attempt the climb
Only one will take on the crown
Can you feel the madness all around?
Who will be the champion?
Maxi Madness, Maxi Madness
That was Maxi Madness by Richard Greaser and Noah Grumman.
As always, folks, the 90% splits are in the song chapter.
So if you like what you heard, then hit that rewind button
and hit that boost button.
90% of all boosts will go directly to the artist,
which I presume gets further split, Richard,
between you and Noah.
Yeah, I set it up so it's 90% to Noah.
I hope she gets rewarded for it.
It'd be awesome if you guys boost,
because it's just, this is,
it's a very cool moment for me you know to be able to do this type of collaboration uh you know
with individuals of this caliber and um uh and also i believe this is pretty monumental
moment in uh bitcoin cultural history for a lot of reasons uh and i think it will continue to be
going forward. I think
Scardust
and the individuals like Noah
and Lahav that are
involved in one way or another with Scardust
it really
marks a major shift in
the
Bitcoin social ecosystem
and specifically the music
ecosystem quite
a bit and I think
is a tremendously, tremendously big deal.
Have them there.
And so it's just, I'm really grateful for the relationship
that we, you know, have built with each other
and more opportunities to do these types of collaborations
with them.
It's been incredible.
Yeah, I can only imagine.
But I will say, Richard, Maxi Madness is Noah's second
best Bitcoin song.
The first best being
Rip, of course.
Although that's more of a video than a song,
but it all ties in.
Yeah, Rip's a good one.
I was listening to it last night.
Really, I genuinely
really like the song.
I thought, you know,
for all of their, all of
Skardos music, that was
probably the
the best choice you know to do a bitcoin themed music video i thought it came out very very well
and uh video is incredible the message is incredible there there's so many cool easter eggs
in it you know bitcoin talk forums uh the white paper it's just a lot of a lot of bitcoin history
packed into this video and um i agree that's definitely their best uh
their best bitcoin song for sure yeah so maxi madness um richard has sponsors this year i don't
remember if you had sponsors last year but this year it's zeus uh predicts the right the prediction
market on lightning soap minor and uh an interesting new entrant into the space called
revolution rocks uh what do you know about revolution rocks richard i am so excited about
this so this is a music festival happening in belgrade serbia and i i never thought to say that
i would be going to serbia uh that that was a plan for me but uh now that this is happening i'm for
sure gonna be going out there but it's a two-day event happening june 19th and 20th so the 19th
is gonna be a music portion of it i got some great bands it's it's a good variety of individuals uh
this is going to be my first time ever seeing scar dust.
They're going to be headlining the event.
And I think there's going to be some more artists that are added to this
lineup.
Uh,
but you got scar dust headlining and then you got longy I been familiarizing myself with their music a little bit i not familiar with yeah um and then joe martin who i actually seen perform live uh you know he a great performer
great musician low very fun band um and then the the legend uh roger 9000
oh yeah
I think there's going to be some more artists
I guess I will have a DJ
role somewhere in the
festivities
at some point
so I heard
I've been working
real hard on
a new electronic album
or that specifically
I'm really excited to get out there
when I wrap it up
but I think it'll be fun.
I think music's incredibly important.
It's incredibly important to coincide with a social movement.
And I think we're at the point where it's time to build these,
just energy around music natively in the bitcoin ecosystem and it doesn't have to be
pleb slop music i think it could be like really really good music like i think there's a lot of
things to write about other than buying bitcoin on a kyc exchange and putting out a hardware wallet
like there's um or how the number's going to go up or you know whatever like there there's like a
million things that you can write about uh but you can write things about topics that are relevant
to individuals that are in this ecosystem and like you can get together with people that are in this
you know social movement and i think one of the common uh frustrations that many people that are
very interested in bitcoin have is they just feel very disconnected from a lot of other people
because like you become very interested in this technology you you read a lot you learn a lot
about topics that the rest of the world doesn't think about or know about and you you you start
to live in this completely alternate reality from the average person and it can feel kind of
isolating and so i think there's you know building ways for people to interact is together this is
why like the conferences are so popular is because they're they're ways for people to you know kind
of get together and around each other but you know at this point i think a lot of people want
something more than just listening to panels or listening to you know talks for people uh you know
which most of the talks at conferences are people just like selling whatever their product is um
I think people are really looking for ways to really, you know, connect to each other, build these long lasting relationships with each other.
And music's a great way to do it.
I think music's one of the best ways to do it.
Uh, and it's just, it's cool to have a festival with individuals that are all kind of coming
from similar perspectives, have similar passions in a, in a really, really talented.
Um, so I'm, uh, I think this is probably going to be one of the most important events that
happens this year um and and i'm hoping that it's going to set a very real precedent uh and will
continue to be a thing going forward because i think there's a lot to a lot to prove like if um
and i'm confident because of the individuals involved with it that it's going to be executed
very well but um when it's executed well it's it's gonna show
it's gonna make a pretty big statement in my opinion um and i i hope that it's it makes a
big enough statement that other people want to uh to replicate um and uh you know one of the
challenges for scardust has just been you know consistently getting booked at shows they have a
you know very big following but they they have trouble getting booked at shows and um i think
there's an awesome opportunity to show up and support them especially when they're putting so
much energy into like noah's out there doing live streams in front of you know tons and tons of
people uh shilling nostor it's pretty cool to watch um you know talking about using she's using
her platform to like teach people that are interacting with music about the value for
value music industry and um i i believe that you know a community that is passionate about
these technologies and ideas benefits greatly from you know supporting somebody like that
and rewarding them for doing that that way you know other artists that are also talented and
accomplished you know see the see the value in an ecosystem like this to really bringing
like cultural enrichment to it no absolutely uh the agree with just about everything you said
there richard the other thing that this um festival is aspiring to do and i believe will be able to do
uh did you ever read that manifesto that roger 9000 put out maybe a couple of months ago
I think he called it Sats for Sound
and
I'll give you some, if you haven't
I'll give you and the listeners some background
on this, so I spent a bit of time
well, Roger and I
go back a few years, but I got to
spend quite a bit of time with him
in England
around BitFest, which is
November of 2025
also filming
the Finding Home
fourth episode with him, which will be out
in a few weeks.
But one of the things he told me
was actually pretty shocking to me
is, you know, you see more and more
Bitcoin conferences add on,
not quite a music festival,
but a music night at the end, right?
There's, you know, they get a few bands,
you get someone like Joe Martin
or someone else, right?
The UK, you have folks like Roger and others.
And the vast majority of the time,
the artists don't actually get paid by these conferences.
They're told straight up by the organizers,
look, you get the exposure if you come here and play,
but we're not in a position to pay you.
And a lot of these musicians, they bite the bullet
and they actually have to pay for their, you know,
either their entire ticket and hotel
or if the conference is gracious enough,
they, you know, cover part of it.
but the musicians still having to pay to be there which which was was mind-boggling to me
like obviously the conference sees the value in the individual conference or meetup or whatever
it might be right sees the value in this artist enough value to want them to come and perform
right so there's a recognition there but they don't want to return the value to them now this
This is my color on it, Richard.
Obviously, Roger's Sats for Sound Manifesto,
I think that's the name,
was a lot more measured than the way I'm framing it.
But it's basically a call to any organizers of Bitcoin events
and to Bitcoin musicians saying,
look, we've got to get paid
if we're showing up there and performing our work.
And to me, that is the most obvious statement anyone can make.
obviously it's not true today so and there's a lot more uh nuance and detail in that manifesto
around this topic but what we want to do is what the conference wants to do is raise enough money
not conference the festival raise enough money to be able to actually pay all the performing artists
first of all cover their expenses and then actually honor the value that they're providing by
by showcasing their art there
I think that's a great precedent to set
and uh
I think it's totally possible yeah
it's wild when you
actually get into the world of music
and I
I think it's important to have a conspiracy
theory view of the world
and why things are
the way they are
you know there's a reason
why
music is so gatekept and it's because it's so powerful it's such a powerful medium of uh
communication and expression and if you can control the levers of who makes it and who doesn't you
you really can retain the um control over the levers of power at the end of the day it's like
why was uh you know all the shenanigans with diddy happening i mean you see that you see this
in hollywood with with movies you see this in the media you see this with um just anywhere there's
you know any sort of power there there's a tremendous amount of control and you know the
the music industry is very like beast or famine in the sense of like you know you you're
open mic talks about a lot like you're you're making a lot of money when you're at the top and
you can um get these uh you know big stadium tours with uh live nation you know or whatever
and then you're kind of screwed at the bottom i mean it's like crazy where musicians will go
you know i see this in in places like you know your your average musician at the bar
that going and playing like an hour or two set might make like somewhere between like or which 80 dollars which is um you know really really kind of bummer and astounding and they you know some of these places like they just like world
renowned musicians and it's kind of wild to see uh
who makes it and and who doesn't you know oftentimes some of the musicians at the top
you know while they're very like talented they they are not the most talented uh there there's a lot of
effort that goes into you know kind of making certain people and cherry picking um
cherry picking some and and not allowing others to uh really um like break out and have success and
I'd like to see that change
and I think
one of the reasons
one of the ways that you can change that
it's not just
changing the mechanisms
like Spotify or
going to Wave Lake or
things like that. I think it's really about convincing
individuals of the importance
that
individuals
like musicians and artists provide society and why they should be actively engaged if they if
they find value in what they do there's a there's a lot of ways to to to show up and support people
uh besides just you know giving them monetary support but i also think it's important to give
them monetary support you know however you can and um afford it because they they do have costs
at the end of the day but like you know for individuals that are like well i don't have like
tens of thousands of dollars to to be you know a notable patron of this musician like there there
are tons of ways that you can you know support them because a huge part of what is limiting to
a lot of musicians is discoverability um and and just the way the algorithms kind of make or break
people and i i feel like you know if if you want to have dissident opinions and and you want to take
them places you kind of have to think of of like an think like an underdog and a dissident of like
you you can't play the game the way that the game has been constructed and you have been told to
play you have to come up with creative um solutions to to operate outside of the the rule sets uh that
are assigned to you um and uh and i think events like this is you know a big part of it is just
like if the system isn't working for you then you you kind of have to build your own at the end of
day and um and so my my hope is that people can get really you know excited about this event um
and see you know how much of a big opportunity it is uh to to actually you know make a meaningful
difference in the world of music and like really support some incredible artists that that deserve
being supported.
Yeah.
Definitely
an event
to look forward to. By the way,
it is, the location
is in Belgrade on the Danube
River. It's a
floating bar
called Zappa.
How perfect is that?
A Zappa bar for a
Valley for Valley
live concert.
yeah that was pretty great i mean one of the things that um has been wild for me is like i
have a lot of uh good friends that are musicians that have gone about things a different way
than i have because my only experience with music has been engaging in the bitcoin value for value
community and um i think i've had a lot of cool opportunities you know that they they haven't
because um the mechanisms of uh earning and stuff are here are so great but yeah it's going to be a
toaster event which is going to be live streamed which is going to be you know great but yeah the
location is cool i think belgrade i did some research on belgrade the the first thing that
i started reaching researching was um was it safe uh and from what i've seen it's it's relatively
safe it's probably safer than paris france that's that's pretty low bar
the only bit of research that i was able to see about any potential issues is you want to
you know potentially watch out for like pickpockets or something but i think that's
pretty promising.
Yeah.
Pickpockets are par for the course in
any city, any big city.
Yeah. I mean, that's pretty easily
mitigatable, but
yeah, I don't know. Have you ever been
on a concert on a floating boat?
On a...
There's a
yes
in a manner of speaking
there's the Jones Beach Theater
in Long Island
and I went
to see Dream Theater perform
there a couple of times actually
so short answer
is yes but
it's more like a barge or a
wharf than a boat I suppose
it'll be a first time
for me I'm sure it'll be a lot
of fun oh yeah
I'm just wondering how much is going to move around
and how that will impact the Scardust mosh pit
I mean, you know, the photos look great
obviously you have to be there in person to get the real sense of it
the photos of the venue itself look great
I think the capacity is about 800 people
so it should be a nice
tightly packed
and warm event for that time of year
one of the things that I'm excited
about is I think because it's in Europe
it's going to be largely a
European scene
I think the first person that told me
about this event actually was Daniel Prince
and
it would be a very different scene
than what I'm used to
you've been to europe though right yes i have been to europe been a long time but i i have been to
europe i'm going to try and avoid the uk at all costs that place is just so horrible but i think
is pretty nice you know i i will just to not not that i have any particular or specific reason to
defend the UK but my trip to for BitFest to London and to Manchester was was very pleasant
it was very nice actually so there's that I've never been to Serbia myself so I'm looking forward
to it is the week after BTC Prague so for those of you listening who will be at BTC Prague you
know it's just a short I don't know if it's a short drive but I'm sure the flight is an hour
at most, maybe less, and incredibly cheap once you're in Europe.
Unlike in the States, Richard, New York to Boston can go up to 500, 600 bucks sometimes.
But in Europe, that distance would be under 100 euros, maybe even 20, 30 euros.
That's one nice thing they've managed for some of these shorter, I guess you could call
of domestic in some sense domestic to europe flights they've managed to control the cost
somehow yeah i think the state subsidizes a lot of a lot of the flights believe is how it works but
um yeah it's uh europe's it's wild living in the u.s because it's just like such a big and
and vast country and you can kind of go all around europe because it's uh it's just it's crazy how
like culturally diverse it is and um how small it is at the same time like the u.s is pretty
culturally diverse uh here but we like all almost all universally speak english correctly
and they they all have like some people speak english incorrectly some people don't even speak
English. It's crazy.
Yeah.
Gotta teach him, man.
Alright, let's...
Last thing I wanted to talk to you about is
podcasting.
Or rather, the state of podcasting.
I am sensing,
and I have been sensing
in the last three or four months,
some
strong
bear market apathy
vibes from the podcast
listening audience.
Downloads are down.
I know we were talking about this
a month or two ago, Richard,
but I was talking to Daniel Prince about it,
a couple of others as well.
Downloads are down, boosts are down,
zaps are down.
Are you seeing something similar now
or was that just a passing thing
for you back then when we spoke?
I think our downloads are up,
but that's just like a number i'd never pay attention to because i don't think it matters
like the the only number that i really pay attention to boot is boost and the boosts are
definitely down uh yeah it's definitely like a bear market like people pretty discouraged right
now uh kind of universally i think like when you start to go and you look out at the world around
you it's just psyop city out there right now like the world is at war um and it's behaving like it's
at war the internet's behaving like the world's at war where there's a there's a ton of ton of
narratives um that are going i think what what being revealed is like a lot of the plebs like what keeps them going is getting glazed by like influencers and and you know companies you know with vc money that are incentivized to glaze the plebs and like
the vcs aren't funding those companies anymore so like the glaze isn't being funded and so like a
lot of people are getting sad because they were like hooked on it on on glaze um and uh it's a
combo of that and i think the combo of like there there's some pretty intense psychological
pressures happening on people right now um as they're just looking at the world around them
like i think a lot there's it's one thing to be listening to macro doom slop you know for years
of like you know listen to these gen x zoom or gen x um doomers go on you know podcasts and talk
about like how everything's gonna fall apart um and then actually watching it happen and experiencing
it like i think a lot of people had this expectation in their heads of like oh you know
we listen to 40 hours of bitcoin podcast so that when everything falls apart we're gonna
like you know have a great time and everybody else is gonna have fun staying poor and i just
like that i think that was a really bad expectation um to have uh and so i think it's just it's it's
beyond just like the price of bitcoin it's you talk to the average person right now and they're
very discouraged like i think this summer is going to be a very very intense time like you know you're
watching uh energy prices skyrocket globally and like in the u.s they they are a lot like um i don't
think it's it's close it's not quite double what they were uh earlier this month at the beginning
of the month but it's like approaching the range of of gasoline prices doubling in a month and um
you know you you look at a lot of these plebs and like just to make ends meet like a lot of
have driving delivery jobs like people are um doing things like contracting for amazon or driving
uber lyft or uber eats or you know postmates things like that uh to try to try and get by
um as they're they're dealing with increasing inflation and it's just it's like you you have
all of these these things coming together and i think there's a larger reason than just like
people don't have conviction in bitcoin like i think it's a really difficult time um emotionally
and like everybody you interact with is either crashing out on on the verge of crashing out
and so i think generally speaking people are discouraged and exhausted and it's it's hard to
be unaffected by that and so i think that's part of the reason uh on top of the you know just the
kind of unexciting um like the influencers aren't glazing you the world is hard there's a lot of
emotional pressure going on there's wars happening crazy shit happening um and i just think it's
important you know for the podcast listeners and podcasters to just realize like the responsibility
that you have right now um to be able to you know do something like if you're not a complete retard
and um you have some semblance of what's going on in the world like you're really in a powerful
place where you can do a lot of uh offer a lot of good to people um and uh i i i've never been
more excited personally so i think um i've just been trying to invite people into the first turning
like you know i know things are hard but it doesn't mean that you have to have a bad time
and have a club slot pity party like it's uh like the whatever you're dealing with and like
the struggle that you got going on doesn't mean that you you have to have a bad time like struggle
brings you into the potential of being your best self like it pushes you in ways that the easy times
don't like it's an opportunity to grow it's an opportunity um to to really you know find
your limits and and that's ultimately you know an awesome thing like when you can look at the
struggle instead of just like oh fuck like you know i was supposed to have like an easy like
fiat the old life where i could have a timeshare like you know my boomer parents did or whatever
um and you know do nothing and then retire and then go gamble my my social security away at
slot machines like you're like resentful and pissed off about that um i think that's a bummer
because it's just like the ease and the comfort is the wrong thing to to desire in my opinion
Like it's the best thing to desire in life is a sense of purpose and meaning.
And I think one of the most exciting things about being in and around Bitcoin is you have the best potential out of almost anybody in the world right now of being able to achieve that sense of purpose and meaning.
because you have so much more freedom than other people do
because of these technologies if you use them correctly.
And so I don't think it's something to squander, discourage,
or take for granted.
I think it's something to be very excited about and grateful.
And I truly am.
I truly am because I will go and interact with normies from time to time,
just be talking to them, smoking cigarettes,
and they're fucking in outer space.
They have no idea what's going on right now.
Yeah.
That all makes sense, Richard.
Largely been my experience as well.
There is a lot of despair,
but there's hope as well.
And perhaps what's needed is a nudge.
That's all people need sometimes.
So anything else, Richard, you want to talk about?
I think we covered pretty much what we needed to on Maxi Madness.
The Bugle, by the way, congratulations.
Celebrated your 100th episode recently.
I remember I had you on the show.
you just had your first or second episode
so
it's about almost two years then right
um
yeah yeah
I guess
104 would be two years
because we do one every week
that's kind of crazy
yeah
that's great
yeah
I appreciate the support
Clubchain
you guys have been one of the biggest supporters of Beagle
from the very beginning.
You've been kind of what has kept me interested in Nostar
and the Nostar ecosystem single-handedly.
So I appreciate that.
When you guys went to Foundations subscriptions,
i jumped on that immediately because i i think that plug chain
has a very important role and uh you know i've continued to see that with you as you continue
to jump on um stuff that's cool and interesting and matters with your finding home series and
being involved in the
music
value for value music
ecosystem
being involved with this music festival
yeah
I appreciate you a lot Avi
and likewise
Richard thank you for those
kind words
certainly both
you and Rod are
Bitcoin culture would be very, very different
if the bugle hadn't been there.
So appreciate you as well.
All right.
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