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 episode number 112 of Plebs Chain Radio.
Today is Friday the 16th of May, and we have a fun show ahead of you today.
Rick from CryptoCloaks, solo miner and 3D printer extraordinaire,
joins us to talk about everything solo mining, 3D printing, and much, much more.
and just a reminder folks
if you are listening to this show on Apple or Spotify
first of all thank you for listening
but I would urge you to hit pause
and switch over to the Fountain Podcasting app
where we can earn some sats
and support the value for value revolution
as you listen
this show is streamed live on zap.stream
and any other Nostra client that supports streaming
such as Amethyst and Nostra
and qw this is conference season but there is no second best bitcoin conference because btc
is it and you can go there between the 19th and the 21st of june this year and save some sats
on tickets if you use the discount code NOSTR, N-O-S-T-R, 10% off in fiat and 15% off if you pay
in Bitcoin. And for our meme readout today, QW, it is one of our old reliables,
the they don't know meme. This is the party in which you have couples happily dancing and
frolicking around, and our hero standing all by himself in the corner, looking at these
couples enjoying themselves, saying, they don't know, I have teeth.
And QW, you have been paying attention to Bitcoin and Nostoculture this past week.
What have you seen?
This last week, teeth equals scarcity, right?
Certainly.
I have teeth. Why aren't they worth a billion dollars or something like that? They're scarce. Yeah, that was a fun one. Great meme. Let's talk about sat-ter day. So tomorrow, Avi, we have three events on Nostra going on.
We have the, so number one, the Shredder live from 7th Street Entry, Minneapolis downtown, open mic on Toonster.
That actually got moved to tomorrow night.
So tomorrow, 10 p.m. Eastern time, that Shredder event on Toonster and maybe Fountain as well.
The live event will be streaming.
We have a dance party streaming live, Avi, from Arusha, Tanzania.
Our friend of the show, Man Like Quex.
Man Like who?
Quex.
12 p.m. tomorrow, 12 noon.
So a little dance party.
I think this might be their second or third one.
So keep a lookout for that.
The up-endo block party, it seems to be a very,
it's kind of a Nostra thing now.
So that's going on for six hours, trying to hit a block.
Avi will hit a block one day.
It's just a matter of time.
Vegas is around the corner.
It's like, I don't know, a couple less than two weeks away.
And we have the side quests that we've talked about many times.
Bitcoin Golf Championship, the 26th.
Golf starts at 8 a.m.
Kickoff party, 11 to 5.
The Bali High.
I said buy high last time, Avi.
And it's Bali High.
So let's correct myself.
I will be there on stage from 12 to 1.30.
Schilling Noster and Value for Value and all the beautiful things we're doing in the space.
NOS Vegas, 7 p.m. to 1 p.m. or Wednesday the 28th at We All Scream.
That's 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.
That'd be interesting, 7 p.m. to 1 p.m.
But that's going to be with your buddy Derek Ross, our buddy Derek Ross.
everybody that's involved we've done this show many times or talked about it many times but we
all scream i recommend checking it out and then again 300 feet away from there is satirize the
system the bugle boys bugle news rod palmer richard greaser they have announced that there's going to
be some some guests arriving i think maybe caitlin long will be there so we might have some political
influence or a somewhat political influence.
Then Nostra Bama, we'll keep talking about it, but as we get closer, we'll talk about
it more July 14th through the 17th.
And that is all.
QW, that is quite the lineup right there.
Let's just focus on tomorrow, right?
We got three events.
Yes, indeed.
But that said, QW, for our top zapper roast.
Well, Alvi, we might get to the point where we don't have enough time to talk about the culture.
And is that hyper-Bitcoinization?
That's right.
The whole show, we either do an entire show talking about all the events.
And that might well be it.
But QW, we found ourselves in a rather strange situation with our top zapper.
A person who I cannot name, zapped us very generously, I should say, during the live stream on Zap.Stream last week.
And she ended up being the top zapper over the course of the week.
And when I went to look up her NPUB so that I could write a nice roast, turns out she's disappeared.
So, folks, we've got a mystery worthy of a Bitcoin noir this week.
Our top zapper pulled in more sats than a lightning node on steroids,
then vanished into the digital ether faster than you can say hodl.
One minute, she's boosting like a boss.
The next, gone without a trace.
She's the ghost of Satoshi's past,
slipping through the mempool like a phantom in designer headphones.
No profile pic, no bio, not even a breadcrumb to follow.
Just a big fat zap that hit our wallets and then silence.
If she ever reappears, we promise to roll out the red carpet and maybe a few extra sats.
Until then, mad props to our stealthy benefactor.
You may be out of sight, but your generosity is still echoing through the show.
Just don't be surprised if we start calling you, the lady vanishes every time someone asks who the real MVP is.
And QW, you have got a sermon in store for us today.
I love the fact that before the show, you're like, hey, man, I can't find this account.
And I look it up on Nostra.
Of course, well, actually, we looked through the Zap wallet,
and it just said unknown or account deleted.
And that's probably the most random thing.
And she had a lot of replies, so she's been around a while,
but maybe, I don't know, Avi, maybe she gave you some sats,
and then she just instantly regretted it and disappeared herself.
Could well be.
All right.
So sermon today, printing the future, finding Bitcoin, finding Noster, finding Freedom Tech in the FOSS community creates a sense of hope.
So it really does create a sense of hope.
And the way you find yourself within this and expands your consciousness, expands your will to be a part of something bigger than yourself.
I know it's happened to me.
It did happen at the same time as becoming a father as well.
So a lot of that goes hand in hand.
But Bitcoin, Noster, and the culture and community surrounding these tools, they really inspire you to be your better self.
And maybe it's just kind of alleviating that darkness, that dark cloud of inflation, dark cloud of government, or, you know, I'm helpless in this situation.
It really inspires you to create a blueprint for yourself, print yourself.
Healthy living, family, passions, creativity.
creativity, it's all incorporated in the culture we have built. And another thing about our culture,
our community, it really inspires you. It really supports you. So if you ever go in IRL to pleb
events, everyone's on the same page. You know, we're all looking very, it's just the progress
goes where energy flows and we just have such a positive community. It's much different than
really anything I've experienced in the past. In a way, we are obviously 3D printing ourselves.
Imagine that. We're laying out the blueprint of our future where we're prior, you know, where we
were, where we want to be prior to becoming a pleb and now in the future. I mean, before, I never
thought really further than the night out on Friday or the sporting event on Sunday. We're truly now
and enjoying what we have and paving the road for tomorrow.
So printing that future.
And I don't know about you, Avi, but for me, this mission has bypassed myself.
I'm to that point where I'm a sacrificial lamb with my time preference and have moved
on to my son and my son's son.
And I think we've talked about this before.
I'm, I don't think you're at the sacrificial lamb stage yet, Avi, but, uh, you know, how
are you printing your, their future?
well by stacking
unfortunately
a stack that is prone to maritime
misadventures
yeah that's it so
printing the future it's something where
the further you go in the further you zoom out
I suppose and that's that culture's upstream
of adopting yourself too Avi
well said QW
Speaking of 3D printing, I think it's time to bring our guest on.
Welcome CryptoCloaks.
Thanks for joining us.
Hey, thanks for having me.
I'm sorry I was late.
All good.
Yeah, all good.
You're a busy man.
You've got to fill all those.
I mean, you basically run an Amazon warehouse, don't you?
I wish.
People think I do.
Yeah that what you mentioned before So we have a burning question There an earthquake where you are you you are and after you sort through the rubble so there an earthquake and you sorting through this rubble
you realize that your 3d printer has somehow become a 4d printer what do you do oh man that
means i can travel time and space right so i could go back to like 2009 talk to satoshi i see where
and like really stack way early
right 4D you can travel through time then right
that is right different universes man you could hop like actual like
Rick and Morty that'd be wild
not hop back and talk to Satoshi that'd be that'd be pretty crazy I'm not gonna
lie that's what I would do you'd have to
find him that is the problem right we still don't even know where he ever was
at least i could get early with bitcoin just don't hurt him all right
absolutely not man i mean we kind of need him at this point or we needed him at that at that stage
oh god yeah i mean it's where we are now and how bitcoin gave me like hope for my family and the
future i mean i would never change a thing to be honest so let's talk about your backstory um
You know, what drew you to Bitcoin beyond the NGU that we all seem to, before we can truly grasp what Bitcoin is?
Yeah, man, I think I don't think I have too original of a story.
I know like most people back in like 2017, we kind of, a buddy introduced cryptocurrencies to me.
And I went down the shitcoin rabbit hole of trying to always get the latest one.
And, oh, this one's better than Bitcoin and whatnot.
And then eventually after like six months, you just run out of time and getting sick of like rug pulled or realizing, oh, it's not finite supplies and stuff.
And that's where it really, really hit me is like after six months of just kind of gambling and playing the game, I just realized why I don't have this time to do this.
I'm just going to buy Bitcoin, stack it.
And it kind of all started from that.
love it and then you started crypto cloaks talk a little bit about that yeah so crypto cloaks
actually got started because after i got into the whole cryptocurrency thing right away about a
ledger obviously we all know that ledger is absolute trash nowadays but i mean back then i
mean it was pretty reputable so i got one of their hardware wallets and i got sick of it sitting on
my desk because that's just a terrible spot to even store that so I figured why not make a mount
so I can mount it under the desk and just get it out of eyesight so nobody knows that it's there
and I when I graduated college I had a 3d printer so I figured maybe I'd just
design my own mount and once I got it done I figured maybe maybe other people would want to
do that and so I kind of started an Etsy store and started selling on Etsy and after six months
of running an Etsy store,
I said, why am I giving all this money to Etsy?
It was like 35% of the time
for every sale they would take.
And I was like, well, I'll just start my own website.
And now we're almost eight years later
and things are cooking.
It's pretty wild.
You know, as you were talking about Ledger,
this is obviously an audio show,
but if it was video,
you'd realize that Avi's wearing
his Ledger necklace right now.
I mean, you can show off your bling
if you want to.
Did he tuck it in when he said that, Avi?
It's a leisure with 69 ETH on it.
That's all I have.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, if they take that, man, why not?
That's super funny.
No, it's just, it is pretty wild to see where the journey has taken me, to be honest.
Even talking about it, it feels like it's forever ago now.
so i know you have a hard stop so i'm gonna be uh i'm trying to gauge that what uh what's your
how much time can you give us today i got about 20 minutes okay all right kids man i know uh and
congratulations hey thanks yeah yeah i'm uh i'm harboring a two-year-old that's napping in the
next room right now nice my kid just turned one this year so i'm pretty jacked just wait till they
start running. He's almost walking and it's starting to get scary because I'm like, oh God,
this kid is going to get into so much stuff. So why is 3D printing such a pleb adjacent phenomenon
in the community? So my whole thing on 3D printing and Bitcoin is they go hand in hand.
Bitcoin is freedom money. You can do whatever you want. You can send money wherever you want.
it's fuck you money and 3d printers i don't know if i can swear on here so sorry for that
uh you can okay perfect um so that is fu money and then 3d printing is a whole different self
sovereignty aspect in itself right um you can design anything and print it and have it you're
not always relying on somebody to make it for you you can download files that are already made
online and print it yourself or design whatever whatever your imagination can come up with and
you can have it printed in a couple hours or a day.
And for me, it's really self-sovereignty on a different level
than just where Bitcoin is that for money.
And that's what I try to tell everybody is,
if you're into Bitcoin, you should look into getting a 3D printer
because it is self-sovereignty on a whole different level.
Yeah, I think about, you know, when I think about self-sovereignty
and 3D printing, I think about,
And this was just headlines in the news over the years, ghost guns.
Yeah.
I mean, the one thing that has a serial number on an AR is typically the main chamber.
Yeah, your lower.
Yeah, the lower.
But anybody that doesn't know what that is, it's pretty much the handle, the trigger assembly, and that's about it.
But if you print that and you can basically build your whole thing and they call it a ghost gun.
But it's like the technology is getting in the way of a lot of what the government tries to regulate, right?
Absolutely. And I've printed so many of those lowers on ARs to SD40s to Glocks.
And I had to unfortunately get rid of all mine because Colorado became a very commie state.
and said if you own any ghost lowers, which they can't technically track,
but I'm not willing to risk it with a family and everything to even have them in my house.
But it's wild.
They're untraceable.
You can just literally print it on your printer, take a couple supports off,
put your barrel and your handle on, and you're ready to go.
And I've shot ARs and clocks, all 3D printed frames, and none of them exploded in my hand.
And they were pumping rounds through.
and and that film how how does that filament hold up is it like a polymer or is there different
styles a different different kinds that you would use in more of a high compression or yeah so there's
combustion environment there's specific filaments that you would use that are um less brittle than
pla and more heat resistant up to the elements uh you can use petg pla pro uh abs and it it's crazy
Like I said, I had an AR-15 lower that I had, and I pumped probably 300 to 500 rounds through it, and it didn't have a crack or a flaw at it at all.
And that was pretty wild to me, because that was the first one that I ever printed.
You know, CryptoCloaks, the Bitcoin Film Festival is coming up in about a week or so in Warsaw.
I was fortunate enough to be at the last edition in Warsaw again in 2024.
And one of the films featured there was Death Athletic by Jessica Solce.
She's a Bitcoiner.
And it's about, so the movie Death Athletic follows Cody Wilson,
who's one of the pioneers in 3D printed guns.
And it follows his story over the course of several years, actually.
I think almost seven or eight years.
Are you familiar with Cody Wilson and what happened there?
I'm not.
Is Cody Wilson Jay Stark?
Is that his real name?
I'm not sure.
Okay.
I'm trying to figure out.
I know Jay Stark got busted, and he was one of the huge pioneers behind it all.
It could be the same person.
Sorry.
I was trying to figure out if that's his real name or that was because his handle was Jay Stark,
and I don't know if Cody Wilson's his actual real name.
I should check out that film.
So hand-in-hand with kind of the ghost gun is an open-source community,
and I feel like 3D printing has a huge open-source community as well.
Is that true?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, just go to thingiverse.com or printables,
and there are millions and millions and millions of files out there
that you can just download and print, modify, remix.
It's wild.
That's the basis of a lot of the whole ethos
besides running a business and selling specific goods,
but there is a lot of stuff that is also open source
that you can just download and print whatever you want with no limitations.
and I just looked it up
yes it's JSTARC1809
that was his handle
the same guy
I didn't know his real name
I just knew Stark
Avi docks his people here
actually half of our audience
left after the USAID
funding ran up
so we should be alright now
I think Jessica's movie
did a far better job of doxing him than I did right now.
Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story, Albie.
So, yeah, the FOSS community, how involved are you in the community?
I mean, are you just live, ride or die open source?
Is that something you hold near and dear to your heart?
Are there, you know, I think at one point if you get,
Well, I guess answer that. Is that something that you live by?
I love open source, but I also hate it.
Yeah, that's kind of what I want to understand because you're running a market.
You're running an online market.
You'd like to open source everything, but at the same time, you want to feed the kid, right?
Yeah, exactly. So that's the tough part, right?
Basically, with 3D printing, no matter what, if you open source it or not,
somebody can easily just whip up a design of what you build.
and then just say, oh, this is open sourced and change one thing and give it out to the world.
So that's a whole different, it's a much, it's like a crazy ball game that I'm in.
And I just don't even, I can't even explain the environment.
It is absolutely wild because everybody with a 3D printer,
there so many like remarkable designers out there that they can just whip something up in like 15 20 minutes even if it open source or not just be like here it is here the world right and the whole gun gun ethos is
absolutely wild um and just every every aspect of it it's open source
open sources i mean closed source really doesn't exist in 3d printing
because you anybody can just design it and print it but it kind of also sucks when you try to run
a business in that and just hope that nobody like constantly rips off your stuff and sells it it's
just like if you get dyes or molds made in china they will literally take that mold and start
selling that product within like six months on amazon so you have to be careful of even getting
anything made in china half the time it's wild and there's i've heard about that too because uh
Whether you're getting a solo miner, let's say you're getting a bid axe from Amazon, maybe talk about that.
Trust is a huge thing.
And when I originally bought my bid axe from you, I knew who you were.
I knew your game for the last eight years.
I just trusted you.
And I didn't know you, but I trusted your brand.
And that's a big thing, especially when you're dealing with something as intricate as ASIC chips and motherboards and, you know, all the way down to even nodes or raspy pies or maybe don't sell those.
But, you know, those are things you I just don't want to buy it from Amazon.
Yeah, no, I totally get that.
And we used to sell nodes all the time.
We used to build raspy blitz.
We still make custom cases for all of those.
but yeah it's it's really tough running a business in bitcoin because we always say don't trust
verify but you really have to find the good companies that really are trying their best to
always put the best foot forward and never screw over customers and i i've always put that as like
my number one priority is i want people to trust me like i trust other companies where i buy products
for in Bitcoin because it is really that important.
Is there a distinction?
I just want to go back to what you said earlier about open source hardware.
That's not a world I'm familiar with at all.
What is the distinction between the open source hardware world and the open source software
world?
That's a great point.
For me, there really is no difference.
It's just, open source for me is basically the Wild West,
and anybody can do anything.
And you just hope that if you don't open source your product,
somebody doesn't just Wild West it and design your stuff
and be like, here it is for the world,
especially when you're trying to design things and feed a family.
it's crazy
there is no difference between software and hardware
it's the same thing
if you code and build software
and then somebody comes along and literally codes and builds
the exact same thing
and gives it out for free
that's a tough world
you've seen large entities
manage to capitalize on open source software
yep
but what about individuals
small businesses uh how what what is the playbook there if you're building open source
the big thing is donations because we we open source a lot of our stuff that anybody can
download it and print um you basically just hope that people are willing to pay or donate
sats for the hard work you put out there it might not happen but our file factory we have like a
limit of like you you can download our stuff and print yourself and do all this stuff for a thousand
sats but you can literally make it one sat which is basically less than a penny or maybe it's more
than a penny now at the price but it's uh it comes down to hoping you get donations or huge entities
that actually have the capital to donate or help fund those things
one of your uh top products i'd say well tell me about the bidx rage i mean everything seems to be
bidx bidx bidx and i i know there's other uh competitors out there and it seems like
anything that launches it sells out or uh you know they're looking for the it's always the
next one's coming the next one's coming yeah like the bid x touch i mean i've been hearing that
thing's been coming forever yeah it's just it's uh it's one of those things and how and how do you
get in front of that product because obviously if a product comes out you're gonna have to put a
molding out it's kind of like an apple case right uh when you have your phone case and they already
have the the cases available for it but how do you design for it when you don't know what the shape
is totally yeah it's it's wild so we i just tried to talk with the people that are designing those
products and work with them be like hey is there any way i can get a test board to even start
designing around so like the nerd nerd xq plus plus and stuff like that i would just get a board
and start designing as fast as i can around stuff like that and and with the whole home mining space
it's really blown up in the last year uh it's it's absolutely wild and i think the whole lottery
miner thing is here to stay because everybody instead of just buying a lottery ticket everybody
has now this little device that takes up barely any power and can do the same thing and you you
basically are just gambling or hoping that your little solo miner will hit a block and all of a
sudden you get three three bitcoin and it's uh and if the news says every day that the hash rate
is hitting all times highs do just everyday plebs say screw it i'm just going for the lotto
I mean, doing their part, decentralization, foundry, foundry, ant, ant pool, ant pool, foundry, foundry.
It's got to piss people off.
It's almost our way of saying, you know, fuck you.
Yeah.
And the only way is getting home miners to be just like trying to compete with the big boys like Bitmain and stuff.
It's, I don't think we're, we're so far away from decentralizing it with home miners because there's not enough, there's not enough out there, first of all.
And second of all, it, it's hard to keep up with the huge mining entities that are pumping out new, new miners that are like S21 XPs or whatever that are pumping out 300 plus tera hash for like four grand now.
and three three years ago i i bought an s19j pro for 12 and a half grand and that was like 96
terahash and that's just like a three-year span so it's gonna be really really tough and the
movement needs to get really big to truly decentralize it with home mining i think it's
definitely possible as the tech and the the devices that we're seeing come out where you
are getting more terahash your wattage is way lower and just more people are getting into it
it's a it's a wild game of like cat and mouse at this point but you can't stick it to the man the
man here being the large mining pools that seem to win every second block uh without coordinating
right i mean if everyone becomes a solo lottery man i mean achieves very little other than the
occasional block that they win.
So how many terahash is...
That's their block at that point, Avi.
That's a big win, man.
But if they coordinate, that's true, but they have a better shot with coordination.
How many terahash is a standard bitx?
So just a bitx gamma for $150 is 1.2 terahash.
so you would need a million
of those to hit the exahash
range correct yes so you
you're looking at even like the can and nano
threes that you can get for 340
bucks are 6.3
terahash
we're still talking about hundreds of
thousands yes
coordinating to get into the
exahash range it's not much
but it's honest work
and that's that's exactly what i'm saying
that it needs to the whole space
really does need to grow because you're competing with the big boys and these guys have endless
capital and are constantly making new machines that are pumping out 300 terahash and next the
next gen whatever bitmain comes out will probably be 500 terahash at way lower watts and it's yeah
it's it's a cat and mouse game but i think what i like about it though what we have nothing to lose
Exactly. You know, you know, a couple bucks on my power bill every month spread out by a million people.
It's it's really nothing for for us. Whereas they're over leveraged.
They're always trying to compete with each other with machines, always trying to repurpose machines, trying to dump more shares on their on their their stockholders.
Absolutely.
Whatever it is, it just seems like, I think BitFarms is getting into AI now.
They just gave up or something.
So it's just funny to me that we have nothing to lose.
They have everything.
And it seems like I would never want to be in that position having to figure out,
oh, the Bitcoin price just dipped 50%.
Now we're not profitable anymore.
It's like sleepless nights and just over-leveraging, in my opinion.
Yeah, we'll definitely win with numbers.
That's the only way we can win.
Just remain hopeful, Avi. Come on.
Millions of people running one BitX.
That's what we have to hope for.
Yes, it's a long shot.
But you're just basically hoping that they over-leverage themselves
more than you just chilling on the sideline.
There is that scenario that they're over-leveraged,
which means they go out of business,
which means the hash rate drops.
And then maybe you don't need 10 million plebs in a pool.
Maybe you could get away with one.
right?
Yep.
And also,
also,
Avi,
lower your time preference,
please.
We're talking about,
you're talking about today,
I'm talking about in 2050,
you know.
When the hash rate is,
I don't even know what's up.
10x from now?
Zeta hash,
thousand Zeta hash,
whatever that is.
And everyone's competing for,
you know,
a block reward of like 0.2 or something.
You are forgetting,
QW that CryptoCloaks has a 4D printer now.
Anything is possible.
Yeah, I'm going to time travel, man.
You guys are on your own.
I'm going to get those blocks.
Let us know how many BitXs are out there in that time.
Right.
But it's important to know that BitX is not the actual manufacturer.
It's an open source project.
And when I first heard about BitX, I'm like, okay, cool.
Like that's created by somebody.
but maybe talk about the open source project
or just how BIDX came about maybe Yeah so BIDX is definitely an open source project There a bunch of people working on on the sidelines and then you have distributors that are getting either buying the
boards pre-made like what we do because i just don't have the machinery to build the boards or
you have also people that are building the boards and selling them like ixtech you got plebsource
that's now going to start making their own boards and selling them and then you have people like
public pool that are making the boards sell them for uh retailers where you're buying like hundreds
at a time um but yeah the the ethos is great it's uh it's just a tough one right you're i just
i hope that we can continue the advancement and i'm watching all the new projects come out like
the nerd axe which is like an offshoot of the bid axe and projects like that that are pulling
the more terahash.
And the big game is going to be
if you can try to get the open source project
to be as cheap as the closed source projects
with the same amount of terahash and power usage.
That'll be the gameplay for sure.
I wonder if there's a parallel here, Cryptocloaks,
with what's happening with AI models
where the open source models are only a couple of months
behind the closed source models.
And they're catching up, right?
Because there is power in those numbers.
And I wonder if we'll see a similar parallel
where these chipsets or whatever it is, right?
I'm not an expert on hardware,
but whatever is open source in the BitEx,
that's going to catch up to the closed source stuff,
the bit mains and what have you.
Yeah. No, I definitely think it is.
it just comes down to numbers, right?
Every open source project
versus closed source, it will literally come
down to the
amount of people putting effort
into the project.
Closed source has endless finances
where open source is usually people
donating their time or money
to make it happen.
There's endless passion
depending on the project. Basically.
Yep. I love
the trend. I love the eyes on the
projects. I love the discussion of the mempool and the block templates, everything we didn't
really, that was kind of put on pause for the past few years. And I think the BIDX or the BIDX
project is going to really reinvigorate people that just didn't even think about mining because
is so out of reach, and it really puts passion into understanding.
Yeah, I definitely love home miners for the fact that you get to learn about Bitcoin mining
and everything that it involves without dumping a lot of cash.
Yeah, so you said you have to leave soon.
Before you leave us, anything you want to plug?
Anything I want to plug? Oh, man. Okay. If you're going to Vegas, come see our booth in the Bazaar.
We literally don't sell anything, and we just give stuff out the entire time.
So we show you all about 3D printing, why it's awesome, and we just give stuff that we've printed out the entire conference there.
And just to say hi to the community and everyone that has supported us for now almost eight years.
So that's how we give back a little bit. So definitely stop by there.
If you are looking for a Bidax or a home miner, we definitely sell them.
There's also other good retailers out there, but we do have them if you're ever looking to get one.
Avi, they have Bidax earrings.
Yeah, we do.
They don't work.
Avi only wears one earring.
It's a dangly one, but it's perfect.
There we go.
We do indeed.
tell me i saw something um one conference that you were at that your sign was handwritten what
did it say oh uh so that happened because we were very cheap the very first bitcoin conference we
went to with we didn't have any money and uh we found a piece of cardboard and a big sharpie
and we literally hand drew crypto cloaks and then we said sold the real sign stack sats instead
and that's pretty much where the whole tradition has been born from.
So now every conference we go to, we don't have flashy stuff.
Our booth literally has nothing but a big, giant cardboard sign that says crypto cloaks on it.
And what are the space moldings?
I saw some 3D printed astronauts.
Oh, yeah.
So we have those astronauts that we usually, we just give those out, right?
And then we're also just showing even more prints that we're doing.
So we have astronauts.
We'll bring some BitXs just to show those off, show people what they're like.
We'll bring Bitcoin grenades.
We'll bring a whole bunch of different things that we even sell and print ourselves.
And any space heater, 3D-printed space heaters for like S9s?
Oh, I didn't even think about bringing one of those.
I might, yeah, my truck is already getting really full for the drive down.
But I will try to bring a space heater.
I know last year and the year before we actually did bring one just to show it off.
So thank you for the reminder.
I'll put that in my notes.
I'll bring one.
Are you taking Route 66 there?
Getting your kicks?
I don't.
Do I take Route 66 from Colorado?
It's right there.
It goes right through Flagstaff.
God, I think I actually do take Route 66.
Well, hit a diner up, you know, maybe take your just channel your 40 printer going back in time.
Hell yeah, man.
Well, hey, I know time is scarce and I appreciate you making time for us today.
Anything else, Javi?
No, I appreciate you taking the time.
This could have gone on for a lot longer.
Maybe next time, cloaks, when your kid's a little more grown up.
and uh yeah definitely next time i will i would love to come back and like talk more about 3d
printing and all of this because i i really do enjoy it and thank you for having me i wish i
could stay longer but we we've never had a show like this so um i mean obviously it's
all of our shows are pleb or nostre adjacent but uh you know we have not gotten a 3d printing
and i think that open source uh 3d printing is a very intriguing topic that we can dive into yeah
If you guys will have me, I'll definitely come back after the conference.
All right.
Well, until next time, thank you very much.
Avi, we're going to do something a little different today.
We're going to keep talking.
Indeed, we are, QW.
And I have to say, it is an interesting show we have today
because our top zapper has disappeared from Noster.
so the roast was for
an anonymous
vanished person
and we're going to do our conversation
in two parts, one before the guest segment
and one after. There is always a first
time
Yes
And there is
a first time for something
else, QW
We will get into more
detail on the show
next week when we will have Oscar from Fountain
and Davidas from RSS Blue join us
to talk about something exciting.
But as some of you might have noticed on Fountain,
there is now a little subscribe button
next to the, or right under the Plep Chain Radio page.
And yes, we are going to offer subscriptions
the
Avi, is that a highly controversial
button?
I was going to say, it appears
to have kicked off a bit of a
hornet's nest
QW
because
we got some pushback
apparently this is not value
for value and we have failed
the movement somehow
yeah
it's, you know, honestly
when we when we first talked about you know jumping into this fountain deal a lot of it
just comes down to how we like to trailblaze we like to try stuff new we like to be on the
let's just look let's be honest we we have a very lightweight show Avi we don't we can bounce
around we're not someone that's uh we we definitely you know we're not on video we don't have our
background set up with our neon signs and all those bells and whistles that you see with kind of,
you know, your typical shows. But that also allows us a lot of movement. You know, we're audio only.
We've been with, we went from rss.com to RSS Blue. That was seamless. We've gone from Nostra
Nest where we've endured. We endured there. And now we're at Zap.Stream. We have no
problem jumping in a way we're kind of like those people that sell their house every two years and
just or maybe just rearrange the living room and make just to make you feel like it's a new room
right yeah indeed we are so do you want to talk a little bit about what what the subscription
entails yeah so the the subscription with uh fountain basically uh you know what they're
offering, let's say, everyday podcasters out there. A lot of podcasts have commercials. We do
not do that. So the easiest thing for these other podcasts would be, well, I'm going to sell you
premium and you're not going to have commercials, kind of like you see with Netflix, where, okay,
here's your Netflix subscription for 10 bucks, but it's got half of its commercials. So we'll
just offer you this other package which doesn't have commercials. Well, that's just not even an
option. We would never do that to listeners. So what premium gets you is early access. That's one
thing. But what I'm finding, Avi, after we kind of discussed about what could be premium,
is we start to create our off branch, our offshoots of of PubChain Radio.
So maybe I dive into more value for value music.
Maybe I dive into, you know, swimming with dolphins.
Who knows, Avi, whatever your passion is, maybe you start to we kind of branch off into kind of a subset of PubChain Radio.
I know you're a writer. I know you, you know, you have different inspirations than I do.
And I think discovering those and creating content around that, at the very least, it's a beautiful experiment.
Yeah.
Agreed, QW.
So really, these would be bonus episodes for subscribers only.
Maybe we'll play 10 or 20 minutes afterwards.
so that people can get a taste of what's in a bonus episode.
But for the rest of it, we'll be subscriber only.
These will be one-off.
Maybe we'll do one or two a month.
You do one solo, one bonus episode.
I do a solo bonus episode.
We'll release it every other week.
Makes it a couple a month.
And then, of course, our regular cadence doesn't change.
It's still on Friday.
It's still, honestly, going to be free and live on Zap.stream.
Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, you're still getting the same thing. If you don't want to, you know, throw sats and you just want to listen, you just want to listen on Spotify. Shame on you, but you can. We're not changing anything. So we're just creating another avenue. And maybe people want to pay with a fiat rail. Burn it. Burn it because it'll go right to sats.
mm-hmm well they will have to come to fountain to purchase the subscription if they want early
access and the bonus episodes well and another unique thing about that obvious uh 90 our stat
line is is crazy as far as our analytics we're like 90 fountain listeners uh i don't know if
there's a show out there that's got that then again we are highly promotive of nostor client
fountain that's kind of our base but it's a unique experience experiment and I think
ultimately we're also providing feedback to fountain because we appreciate what they've done
as they've created a social environment they made podcasting social
Oscar's always been there he's a friend of the show Dovidas was freaking amazing when we switched
to RSS Blue, we somewhat have some loyalty there
that, you know, it was hard to say no, right?
Oh, it certainly was.
And I will add, QW, we are the very first podcast
to be on Fountain Premium.
Or I should say Plep Chain,
taking this subscription offering from Fountain,
Plep Chain Radio Premium.
Godspeed.
Yeah, we'll see how this goes.
We'll see how it goes.
It just started to kick the Horton's nest.
Yeah.
And you know what?
I would love to see Avi in the future.
And I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, I can't wait till our show with Dovidas and Oscar.
Because I think there's features that we aren't talking about.
And I'd love to learn more.
So I'm sure there's some other stuff that's...
I mean, there's one thing Fountain's always been doing is evolving.
and I love what they've been doing with the live streaming.
So typically, Toonster will be live streaming
and you have your boost for Zaps.
I just love that they've supported music,
they've supported creators, they've supported musicians.
It's a space that, at the very least,
it's an alternative to what we're used to,
Spotify, Apple, where it's really a contender at this point.
And it's a real product.
And I'm just happy to be a part of it.
And I'm excited.
And maybe it sucks, Avi.
Maybe we're just, it sucks.
But at least we're trying.
No, certainly.
There's always that chance, QW.
And that's Nostra, right?
We are at the tip of the spear of experimentation.
And this is a grand experiment we're undertaking.
We've already gotten some pushback on it.
So we'll see how it plays out.
One other thing I'd add about Fountain is they will have streaming.
I don't think it's available just yet.
I know you mentioned the tunes for streams,
but for the podcast itself, that is something that should be available.
So there'll be a second avenue for folks to listen live.
And again, listening live is free, right?
you just have to be there at the time the show's been recorded.
One is on zap.stream, and the other one will be on Fountain
once that's available.
And I wonder if they're going to be synergetic in regards to the comments.
Because Avi, I know right now you have your Nostr on your one phone up.
You have your Amethyst chat up.
You have your zap.stream.
I mean, you're clearly talking with everybody as you normally do.
but I wonder if we're going to need
Fountain Up too to make
sure we're on top of all the chats that are
going on How many phones do you want me to buy Kid Ovi Looking like yeah just got a lab in front of you But I would like to see them all kind of combined So you wouldn be able to tell
who's chatting from, let's say, Fountain or, I mean, essentially, that's what Nostra is.
So how does that, hopefully there's cohesion there. This should be, Nostra does a pretty good
job of bringing it all together.
When we used to be on NostraNess
and stream live to
Zap.Stream simultaneously via
NIP53, we used to get
the comments from everywhere in
Nostra, whether
people were listening on Nostra and sending comments
in the chat there, whether they
were listening in on NostraNess
and commenting there or on
Zap.Stream, they would all funnel
in on the Nostra
feed. I'm talking about N-O-S-T-E
the ios app um shout out fabian shout out fabian indeed the swiss army dev the swiss army knife
of nostril development uh but yeah so i i suspect it should be possible if there is a separate
fountain chat as long as it follows the same standard the same nip that the chats here follow
I think we should all merge in.
Maybe we'll find out next week, right, Avi?
Well, it is a fitting show to be our first episode of that sort.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I don't know.
Do you have any remorse?
When you got that first pushback,
what was kind of your initial reaction?
Well, I was somewhat expecting it, QW.
Is there a definition of value for value?
No, there is.
This is the issue.
You're going to run into the no true Scotsman fallacy anywhere, right?
It's a pure.
It is going to be impossible to pass a value for value purity test for anyone.
Because just if someone comes and says, well, I have the purest interpretation of value for value, there's going to be one other person is going to say, ah, but you said X, Y, Z.
So therefore, I have a purer definition of value for value.
No true Scotsman, no true value for value, right?
So that is, I have no interest in getting into conversations
that will end up in some kind of reductive absurdity.
So yeah, that was my reaction when I saw it.
Avi, do you even run your own relay?
I do, I do.
Do you run your own node and your relay?
what's your sovereign stack for using Noster?
Nice try, Fed.
But no, I mean, we see this in the culture no matter if,
and that's why I think there's so much synergy too
with value for value all the way to the pleb,
Bitcoin pleb and run your own node.
If you have a miner, you need to be mining to your own node.
You need to go to decentralized stratum mining pool.
All these things, you get in this kind of,
just get pulled in to where you need to be doing everything correct
to be a perfect pleb.
But what I'm saying is that is a losing game
because you will never be perfect.
There's always that next thing you could be doing.
Yeah.
Not to knock Odell,
But remember when he was just ragging on Waller Satoshi back in the day when we were first on Noster?
And everything was, it's just like, you know, custodial this, custodial that for pocket change, really.
But eventually, you know, even Odell is at primal.net now.
So there you go.
Custodial and soft KYC, which Waller Satoshi did not have.
so yeah uh john smith from uh costa rica soft kyc so kw what are you thinking about for your bonus
episodes oh like i said i think um one one thing i'm i'm kind of hobbying right now and maybe it's
just hobby stuff maybe it's things i'm kind of playing with so i got my bid axe uh i would like
I'm kind of passionate about this whole mining deal
and uniting the clans, getting miners together.
I know Heather just posted in our chat we have 29 workers now in our pool And what we did with our pool is we doing a one Bitcoin bounty If anybody finds that block then the rest would be spread through our pool
But we also have, like tomorrow, the same pool is going to be run with 150, 250 petahash block party.
So there's things like that.
I think it's intriguing.
It's fun to talk about.
just making it more of a creative space
and really talk about, you know, even like Man Like Quex
and what he's doing with Poa in Tanzania in the dance battle.
Maybe not the mainstream, but maybe the niche stuff.
I mean, obviously mainstream, we're already pretty niche,
but maybe even micro niche.
Yeah.
What about you, calligraphy or something?
You know, with our shows, I mean, we have fantastic guests, but I think we are limited by the fact that it's a once a week show.
And there are so many topics and so many people to have these conversations with.
So I think I will focus on some of those conversations, perhaps more on the philosophy side, maybe more on the deeply technical side of either Bitcoin or Nostra.
And I don't think about it, but I think those two seem immediately compelling to me.
We haven't had enough philosophers on the show.
We've had a few, but in my mind, not enough.
And again, it's just a factor of this being a once a week show.
And there's too many amazing people and not enough shows to have them on.
What if one of my episodes gets 10,000 views and yours gets 100?
You know, I would be really happy because that would mean we have 10,000 subscribers.
There's a rising tide.
Truth to light, dark to light.
Well, in fairness, QW, I suspect you gravitate towards topics that people resonate with a lot more than I do.
I mean, think about it.
If I got some guy or gal and we spent an hour talking about Kierkegaard,
how many views do you think that would get versus you talking about Valley for Valley music?
Yeah, I definitely lean to the very emotional side of things.
A little bit of philosophical, but mainly positive emotions.
And you do too, but you certainly have a different background in education.
education, I'd say, and engineering.
Yeah, so lots to look forward to.
Obviously, the Friday shows will always be the main focal point
where we will get, well, I mean, it's just math, right?
I don't think we will have as many subscribers
as subscribers plus non-subscribers.
so this will be the focal point
the Friday shows will always be the ones that get the most listens
and the most downloads but it's an interesting experiment
and it's the new chapter in PCR, I'm looking forward to it
Yeah, I just need to negotiate time
that's the one with the toddler
if this project can afford a babysitter
during my extra time I have to use, that would be amazing
You know, it's nice to not pay for a babysitter while you're doing the Lord's work there.
According to Lorian just said, greetings from Noster.
Looks like Fabian has revamped the integrated live stream experience.
So he must have, we were already talking about N-O-S-T-U-R, Fabian,
but it sounds like there's been an update in the live stream experience is that much better.
So anybody that has iOS, check out Noster, especially during the live shows.
I would say the most versatile Noster app I've used.
Now, granted, I've never used Android, so I don't know what Amethyst is like.
I've heard good things.
but from my experience
the velocity with which Fabian ships
features and he's got his ear to the ground
all it takes is for someone to make a comment about some missing feature
and not even directed at him but he picks it up and
it in the app within the next build in a couple of days not only that it it not as it not it seems like whenever he updates there not a lot of errors you know bugs
It seems just pretty smooth.
It does.
Hey, so Fabian, if you are listening, all you have to do is fix your UI to make it look
slick and smooth.
And I promise you, I will, Nostra will become my number one app.
Oh, and you need Zaps, which I think now that Apple is...
It's all Rostr Wallet Connect.
Yeah, you can do it.
Yeah, but that's true.
Don't tell anybody.
Yeah, I saw someone today on Noster.
They're like, just got Zapping set up with Noster.
It took a little bit, but I got it.
Wow.
So, yeah, if there's a will, there's a way,
but there absolutely is a way.
yeah and Korn says use the
new black and white theme
Kornelorian's
he's quite the Noster salesman
he is
some say QW he's on
primal's payroll how can someone
who praises Noster so much be on
primal's payroll it's opsec
Javi that is true
it's a clever decoy
just for the record folks
Condolorin is not on Primal's payroll.
I saw someone post that on Nostra the other day.
And frankly, utterly absurd thing to say.
I'm here for it.
Embrace the chaos, Avi.
Well, I think that's it.
I mean, we extended it to...
What happened here is our guest was set up
and he had a little family stuff to get to.
So we roll with it.
We wanted to give a solid hour plus, give you the respect, respect your eardrums.
Anything else you want to talk about, Avi, or you want to wrap it up?
No, I think I'm good.
This was, I have to say, a unique show, QW.
I don't think we've done anything like this.
An anonymous top zapper or, I guess, a redacted top zapper.
I don't even know what to call it.
plus our guest
I just can't get those zaps back
I'm sorry about that
not to account it's been deleted
that is true
and then having this filler section
which I'm glad we got a chance to talk about
the subscription and so on
but much more on that
on next week's episode
when we will have
Oscar and Dovidas
talk about their exciting new upgrade
that is coming to Fountain
you know i was just thinking the one of our best performing episodes avi was just you and i talking
uh i don't know why but maybe it was because it was our hundredth show uh but we had no guests
and uh it seemed like it uh we we didn't we had no notes we just kind of we just went along with
it right uh today just two dudes with an acute case of the dunning kruger effect episode number
100 yes indeed i i think the the noah and lahav scardust episode i think just overtook that
recently that's another one of our big performers but i would say in the last six months the two of
us chit-chatting on that on show number 100 was the second most popular episode so that is something
yeah maybe something to think about no i don't think people want to i think that was uh is pent
up demand and if the more we talk the the more the uh dunning kruger comes out that is true that is
true all right well i think that's it for today yeah uh thank you crypto cloaks uh awesome i i i
really wanted to talk more um i think it's an intriguing uh guest i think that space itself
with 3D printing.
You can't get more competitive than that.
And good luck governments or regulators
trying to figure out how to get in front of that technology
because the printers just keep getting better.
Shout out to the BIDAX solo miners out there.
I love the movement.
The trend is in the right way, so let's keep rocking.
And thank you very much, everyone listening live.
if you're going to listen to the recording
please please please listen on
Fountain maybe even hit the
subscribe
hit that
hornet's nest a little bit
hit the subscribe and we'll see you next week
goodbye
and
printer is coming