Rev (00:01.558)
Yee-haw, local Bitcoiners. We're back. Rev Hodel here. I'm back with Reid. And tonight we've got Eric from Portland to let us know all about what's going on in Portland with the meetup scene there. But as usual, before we get into that, we're going to hear a little story from my latest meetup adventures. And in the last episode, I talked about this, that I was biting my tongue. I couldn't really talk about this event until it sort of happened and I sort of teased it. I couldn't help myself. And so it happened and now I get to tell the story of it.

And that's, this is what we're calling Bitcoin Community College. So over the weekend, I went to Homestead here in Michigan with a handful of other local Bitcoiners and we got together and the whole idea with the Bitcoin Community College was to be, I don't know if you'd call it a symposium, but everyone's supposed to show up with some sovereign skill set that they're going to share. And we share it together and have some good food and just spend some time hanging out and try and get as much value.

out of our time together as we can try and have a little bit of organization, not just a weekend hang with the pals, you know. And so it was an excellent trial run. We definitely are confident that this is a format that we want to continue to do in the future. But basically we got together and the first night, on Friday night, we spent some time hanging out around the campfire and we couldn't get away from that campfire, you know. It was a

we ended up being up until two in the morning just talking about anything you could imagine. And that actually set up the next day quite well because we sort of figured out what everyone was sort of interested in for how to spend the Saturday working together. the key, the big, I guess, exchange of value was somebody came with all their firearms expertise, firearm safety.

techniques for concealed carry and just different positions for having your weapon on and just how to be comfortable with it and how to make sure that your concealment is good. And so we learned a lot about that. Just basically eating lunch and having him show us all these different holsters, different gun belts, different pistols, all that kind of stuff. And then after lunch, we went and did some shooting. And it was really cool because I haven't had a lot of chance to really try out a lot of different handguns. And so I've

Rev (02:24.906)
I got, I learned about the different ways, the different sizes of the guns, how they feel in my hand, how the trigger pull feels, all that stuff. And so I got a huge amount of value out of having that opportunity. And then at the end of it all, we, of course, the way that the Michigan meetups go is there, everybody had kind of some stuff to trade with each other, even though we all kind of see each other regularly and hang out regularly. So I ended up leaving that event with a couple of Bitcoin miners. I traded some maple syrup. I had some mushrooms with me, some

Golden oyster mushrooms, not psilocybin mushrooms, some golden oyster mushrooms, exchanged hands and so on and so forth. It was a great meetup. I'm still riding high off the vibes from that weekend. Reid, how about you?

Reed (03:09.346)
So I'll tell you, I don't have too many meetup adventures to cover. I wanted to, all the talk about getting the extra time in at the range and learning all those different things with different handguns, it makes me think of this. One of my very few successful orange pill stories was a friend of mine who's very big into Second Amendment rights. And we were having lunch one day and he knew I was into Bitcoin and stuff.

I kind of just said, hey, know, I've been meaning to tell you, you know, you're a big Second Amendment guy. I mean, that's really the reason why you should be into Bitcoin. And he was like kind of taken aback because he didn't understand it at all. And I was like, yeah, you know, it's like, what's the whole point of the Second Amendment? Right. It's to like be prepared so that if you ever needed to stand up against the government, you would have a population who's prepared to do so. And it's like, well, that's what we're doing here in Bitcoin. Right.

we're getting ourselves prepared so that the government can't just steal all of our money, which is what they do all the time. And so that's why you should be interested in Bitcoin. And he was like, totally blown, like taken aback. He was like, I did not realize that was what this was about. And that kind of started his rabbit hole. And now he's one of our regular meetup attendees. so I'm pretty, I was, let's, I don't have too many successful orange pill stories. So.

If I have one, I like to break them out every once in while. So our next Meetup is coming up on Sunday. So I've been getting prepared for that. One of the things I do to prepare for my Meetup, I send out an email. I have a big email list with everybody, and I do kind of a call for topics. So I did get one reply literally just right before this recording, so I haven't really had a chance to look at it yet. But I'll be spending some time here getting ready. I think I mentioned on the last one that we're going to be doing a

We're going to be spending some time onboarding people to Nostr. So we're going to have a bunch of different Nostr topics, try to explain to people that Nostr is not just Twitter on a different platform. This is not like a mastodon thing either. It's a whole new thing. And so we're going to be talking a lot about some of the other stuff that's out there. There's been a lot of really good developments on some of the other stuff. Mostly I'm thinking of like long form notes. I'm thinking of like marketplaces. There's been a lot of good...

Reed (05:35.16)
innovation these days on the marketplaces with Nip99 and GammaSpec. So I've been having fun learning about that stuff and trying to incorporate some of that into our website. And then next week, I'll talk about this more maybe at our next recording, but I think I shilled maybe about a month ago, one of our members is starting his own meetup down in Connecticut. And so I'm going to be making a trip down there on May 20th at Conspiracy in Middletown, Connecticut.

from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. So I'll show that again next week. But I think that's what I got for now. So Eric, welcome to the show. We're really glad that you could join us here. Why don't you spend a minute, introduce yourself, tell us about your meetup and what you got going on.

Eric B4E (06:20.666)
Yeah, thanks, Reid. Thanks, Rev. It's good seeing you guys out here virtually. We've met, I think, a few times in Nashville at the grassroots show that they put on there, which is definitely one of my favorite conferences of the year, just to talk to other organizers and see how everybody else does it. Yeah, so my name is Eric. I live in Portland, Oregon. it's a fairly old meetup. started in 2012. But that was before I was getting to Bitcoin. I didn't learn about the meetup until early 2020, right before everything changed.

And in 2022, the organizers were getting a little tired. And so they asked me if I would step in and take over. And so I've been doing been doing the organizing since 22. We have about six meetups in the area a month. The ones directly in Portland, we have First Tuesdays, which is Bitcoin for beginners. We advertise that one the most widely, like with Eventbrite, Meetup, etc. Second Tuesday, which is today, I'll be heading that, heading over there soon, is our workshop. And so we do like test a new wallet or

show a short film or something like a little more hands-on, but like it has a specific topic. Third Tuesday is just a social meetup, just beers and Bitcoin sort of thing. And then fourth Tuesday, we do BitDevs. And Portland Hottle is our probably most prolific Bitcoin developer, core contributor. And so he, I organize it, but he leads that up. And we invite everybody to come, know, BitDevs are a lot more technical, but my phrase is...

The way I like to think about it is it's kind of like thinking about the gym. Like if you go to the gym and your muscles aren't sore, you know, what were you really doing there? If you go to a bit devs and your brain isn't sore, you know, what were you really doing there? So I encourage everyone to go to it. We get technical people and non-technical to ask questions and it's a really good event. And that is one of our highest attended events, probably around 25, 30 people on average. And then we also have a couple other social, because that's in different parts of town. Cause not everybody can make Tuesdays. Not everybody can do right in Portland. So we have one in Beaverton and one down in Eugene.

coordinate that. And then the other big thing I do is I run the nonprofit called Bitcoin is for Everyone. And our main event is an annual conference. The next one's coming up May 22nd, 23rd here in Portland. We're going to do one day of hands-on workshops, Bitcoin-based board games in a room, and some Bitcoin films in the movie theater part of this venue, which is the same venue we had a conference in 24. And then on Saturday, the 23rd, we'll be at Revolution Hall, where our conference was last year.

Eric B4E (08:44.922)
And that's we have more traditional conference with three stages, including one stage totally dedicated to beginner content. get a lot of new people and they get a lot of plus ones. So I always like to make sure there's something that they can do. And one of the reasons we started this conference, my friend Eddie, he's since moved on, but we started it is because meetups can be kind of, can be kind of intimidating sometimes if you walk into a room and it's 10 guys that don't know each other, that can be a little intimidating. So I think it's good to try to have different ways of doing things. A conference is one or like a Bitcoin walk.

or things like that. yeah, that's just a little bit about me in Portland scene.

Reed (09:21.004)
Dude, that's awesome. Yeah, I remember hearing about all these different meetups that you're running and we're definitely going to talk more about the conference. But man, dude, that's so many meetups to run. I don't think I've ever really asked you this, but with that many meetups that you're running, are you running all of these? Do you have other organizers who are helping out with these? How do you keep track?

Eric B4E (09:44.548)
Yeah. So I, yeah, I organize them all. I'm sort of head in charge of that, but we have like seven other organizers that have been doing it over the years who step in, but like the workshops, I only do every other month. Will I do a workshop or has that somebody else doing those Portland HODL, you know, he runs the bit devs. just remind him to show up and, know, maybe offer some topics and things like that. And then, and then I have a different individual. got, we now we have one individual Shane who was doing all our beginner meetups. So he would just get, he would just do that every month.

But he recently decided to step back. So now I get volunteers. So I have a different meetup host now for each beginner's meetup, which also is nice because it kind of changes things up. Cause everybody says that, you everybody has a different approach. And so to have different people come through. So I don't go to, I mean, I go to most of them. can't go to all of them, but I don't, I do a lot of delegating.

Rev (10:34.862)
So is the main way that you're delegating, do you have a big group chat that all this kind of stuff happens in? How do you actually coordinate it all?

Eric B4E (10:44.262)
Yeah, that's a good question. have just for tradition, you know, a ton of Telegram groups. And I know Telegram is terrible. We're trying to move people to Signal and other platforms, but these platforms are unfortunately pretty sticky. So that is like our main way of communicating that. And yeah, I just have lots of lots of groups, coordination. There's a good core group of, you know, I'd say like probably 10 guys that would, if you said, hey, we're going to have a meetup in the mud puddle over there on Tuesday, they'd be like, okay. And they'd be sitting in the mud puddle. Like they would go anywhere.

to talk Bitcoin. yeah, it's really relying on my core core members, I guess.

Reed (11:21.72)
So I didn't have a chance this grassroots that we were at. They had a little breakout session for the Bitcoin 101s. I don't know if you went to that one. So we have a lot of beginners to Bitcoin, but they're not complete beginners. It's not like this is... mean, they're at the meetup. So obviously it's not the first time they've heard about Bitcoin. When you run your Bitcoin beginners, do you advertise that for outsiders?

come to this if you know Zero or like who attends the like you have them every month. So it's like, do you get the same people coming to them over and over again or is it like fresh faces all the time?

Eric B4E (12:03.402)
Fresh faces, like some people go to any meetup no matter what the topic is. So I know there's always going to be like three guys there, three or four that I can talk to if there's no new people. Occasionally, no new people come, but most time we get between one and five new people, mainly through Eventbrite or word of mouth. They're like, hey, my friend who comes all the time, you know, I've been asking him questions and he's like, yeah, you should just go to the beginners meetup and, you know, hear it from somebody else. So that's our main, I'd say, yeah, word of mouth and Eventbrite.

Reed (12:34.06)
Nice.

Rev (12:34.606)
And so you mentioned that there's like these meetups kind of on the external, like outside of Portland kind of. Do you get a lot of people that are in the city that are kind of making the journey out as well to these other ones?

Eric B4E (12:48.454)
Some, mean, we didn't always have six a month. Now that we're up to this many, because now I think it's less likely to people to travel. just like, I'm just going to wait a little bit and go to the closer one. And I know there's a lot of debate, or I don't know if it's a debate, but there's different ways meetups approach it. Like a lot do once a month. And one nice thing about a once a month meetup is it's something special. So you kind of set aside the time. When you have it every week, I do think we lose some attendance because people are like, oh, I can't make it tonight, so I'll just go next week. I'll just go next week and then don't come for weeks.

But it would be hard now to to to pare back, I think, since it's been so established.

Rev (13:24.812)
Yeah, like in Michigan, there just seems to be like more and more meetups in Northwest Indiana and sort of the it's almost like from Chicago to my area, these meetups are starting to all kind of overlap in their territories, so to speak. And yeah, I used to find myself having to drive, you know, over an hour, sometimes two, two and a half hours to get to to make sure I could get to a meetup every week. And now as more of them pop up, I'm kind of staying closer in my

closer to home, you know, it's nice, but at the same time, I, there does need to be some sort of extra draw to get me to go these further distances now.

Eric B4E (14:01.798)
Yeah, and that's the other good thing, I guess, about the conference. You we have it for two days and we're the largest conference on the West Coast. Pacific Bitcoin shut down after their 23 conference. We did our first one in 24, not knowing they were going to shut down. you know, Seattle doesn't have a conference. Bay Area doesn't. LA doesn't. We're really the biggest thing going, which is a little surprising to me. That wasn't our that wasn't really our goal. But but it is fun to do it. And we get people from all over to come and people are willing to drive. A lot of people from Seattle come. lot of California are coming.

So even as far away as I heard someone from Missouri is coming out. So I was super excited about that.

Rev (14:39.106)
And so you kind of touched on at the beginning like that you weren't, didn't start, someone started running the Portland meetups back in 2012, but in 2020 kind of the baton was passed over to you. was that something that you kind of stepped up for? you, were you, how did that all, how did that exchange take place? And what was that like?

Eric B4E (15:00.39)
Yeah, so was in 20. So I started attending in 2020, but it was 2022. I would, I was just pretty involved. I was at every meetup and I, and I had heard of the grassroots conference going on in Nashville. I had just heard about it. So I was asking the organizers, I'm like, you guys going? And they said, no, no, they're like, but you should go. And I'm like, well, I'm not an organizer. It's like, you should go and start organizing this. We need a break. And so that was kind of, that grassroots conference really kind of kicked it off.

So that was really fun going there, meeting, meeting everybody. And then just starting to take over. Sorry, we had this long running meetup, but here I was going to be starting, starting to take over. But they asked me, I, it was kind of funny.

Rev (15:41.004)
I guess if you had some experience attending the meetups and everything, you kind of had an idea what it was like, but man, I could only imagine going to grassroots and getting all this information. And now you're like, well, it's, I'm going to be taking this over. What am I going to do? Did you, did you immediately kind of change up stuff from what they were doing or did you kind of go with the flow and then slowly work that information that you picked up at grassroots in?

Eric B4E (16:03.942)
Yeah, it was a firehose of information and it was great. So as soon as I got back, I set up like lunch or go out for drinks with each of the sort of other organizers separately and just wanted to bounce ideas off and what they thought. And so we just sort of worked out together what we thought would be a good thing. They were all, they were all very open to it. They're all very excited. I think there's some, you know, some fresh blood. Cause it's, you know, it's, it's hard work organizing meetups all the time. And, you know, I think people do definitely sort of burn out. So

Yeah, they were grateful for that. And I didn't want to make drastic changes, but I did start slowly implementing things that I learned at grassroots. And yeah, it's been fun.

Rev (16:42.926)
And so like when you get these, now you start, mean, I'm sure it was started off with just like one or two meetups and then eventually you started filling out the calendar till you had one every week and then the orbital ones as well. and then, so how, what was it like getting the people to help kind of co-organize or head the, run the meetup at the space?

was that just, once again, just people coming up, coming to the meetup all the time and you're like, Hey, you're coming to this meetup all the time. Maybe you could just run it or, where people kind of self volunteering, like I want to run a meetup. Can I just include, like, can I get on the meetup.com thing and just be rolled in as part of the, the event schedule.

Eric B4E (17:26.534)
That's how the satellite ones are. This wasn't my idea, let's have one out on the outskirts of town. People approached me, but they want to be part of the Portland Bitcoin group under that meetup header just for visibility. And I'm always telling people, yes, of course. Somebody asked, oh, is that going to be too much competition? I'm like, no, to me, it's not competition. I think there should be as many meetups as people want to do, as many conferences as people want to do. I mean, we're all in this. We all have the same goals. I don't see it as a...

competition at all. So I think it's great. And if somebody does it they're doing a better job than I am, I'm happy to step down. I'm here for Bitcoin, not for my ego.

Reed (18:02.956)
Yeah, Rev and I were talking actually before the show and you're actually one of the bigger cities that we've ever really had on. So it's pretty cool. Your general area is populated enough to be able to handle all these different meetups, even within proximity. And it sort of makes me think of a couple of points that have gotten brought up on the show in the past.

One of them was from a couple of episodes ago, which is like, cause I think as Bitcoin and Metaporganizers, like I know you've heard this and like I've heard it many times too. It's like consistency, right? Like consistency is like so important, but variety is important too. Like if you're only doing one thing, like over and over again, it's like, Hey, you know, people have other things going on and stuff like that. And so I think it's really cool that you're able to be consistent and offer all this different variety. Like the big...

I really think Bitcoin for beginners is just a great thing, especially if you're getting brand new people in the door. Just as a way to warm people up, like you said at the beginning, walking into a room, you feel like you don't know what's going on. You just assume everyone here is this ultra Bitcoin expert and you don't know anything. Walking into a Bitcoin for beginners, you can say, hey, yep, hand up, I'm a beginner. I don't know. And it's like, great, you're in the right place.

So yeah, and the other thing too is just like having meetups that don't get like, you you're not packing the rooms out. It's not like 50 or a hundred people at these meetups. You get a more personal experience. Like it's part of the reason why people go to meetups is because it's a more personal experience, you know? And so even if you get only three or five or eight or whatever people and it's like, this was like kind of a low turnout. It's like some of the low turnout ones are actually some of the best.

events. So I guess there wasn't exactly a question into there, but I don't know. I mean, what's your take on some of those different things that we've covered in the past?

Eric B4E (20:06.308)
Yeah, no, I agree. And I always you you get better attendees in the bear markets versus the bull markets. You know, you get fewer tourists. And of course, you know, we welcome them all the time because some of those tourists turned into Bitcoiners. You you never know when it's going to happen. But yeah, I agree. Even if it's only a couple of people at the at the meetup, which has definitely happened before. You know, it's like you just have a more in-depth conversation. It's actually know these people better. And it's interesting to me that Bitcoin is this pristine digital asset that we all

love. But the in-person events is what really makes Bitcoin work. mean, Bitcoin really wouldn't, for me at least, it wouldn't work at all without the in-person connections I've made. When I was first starting out, it was really hard to tell what was real, what wasn't, what mattered, what was a scam. But the first time I went to a Bitcoin meetup and met another Bitcoiner in person, all the pieces just started falling in place. And so that's one of the reasons I'm still doing this for five years later.

is like, really want to give as many people that same opportunity that I had. Give them some extra touch points. Maybe even a touch point they ignore. But if I'm one more touch point on their path to learning about Bitcoin, mean, that's what helped me. And I just want to keep doing that for others.

Rev (21:16.792)
You know, and if you spend a lot of your time in the only way you're kind of learning about Bitcoin or interacting with Bitcoin culture is maybe on Twitter or Noster or online in general and group chats. It's easy to fall into a tribal mentality. And we've talked about it on the show previously as well that like when you get together in person, this idea of purity testing sort of gets transcended and people are able to like actually have a real discussion with each other instead of just like flame warring.

again, you know, one tribe against another type of thing. You find that to be the case there in Portland.

Eric B4E (21:53.356)
absolutely. I think a lot of our members would, you know, hate each other if they only interacted online, but in person, it's not in disagreements, but no issues. No, nobody's mean. Nobody like everybody's respectful and actually listens to the other person that has a, you know, back and forth conversation, not just like, you're a whatever, pick your favorite word, you know.

Reed (22:15.938)
Yeah, that's actually, I've said this to some of the people at my meetup, like do social media these days. I look when people are like, quote unquote, like learning about Bitcoin on the internet, like let's face it, like they're probably on Twitter or whatever. And like, okay, fine. I was there too, especially back in the day. Like that's when Bitcoin Twitter was like raging and everybody was there and that was the place to be. But social media is different these days.

Just the whole experience is completely different. And I don't know if it's just because they've turned up the volume on the Rage Algos or something like that, but dude, every headline, every title, every clip art picture, just everything is just intended specifically to jazz up your emotions to the nth degree. And if that's the environment that you're learning about Bitcoin in, you're going to end up with some wild opinions.

And it's just become not a great place to learn about Bitcoin anymore. Like you said, I mean, when you come to the meetups in real life with real people, those rage algos, they're not there. And you can disagree with someone and just have a regular conversation and it's completely fine. And that's the way the normal discourse is in real life. And so getting people off the internet and into these real person events to talk about Bitcoin,

I feel like it's just going to be such a breath of fresh air for them that the learning then can be like start for real, for real.

Eric B4E (23:53.51)
Yeah, absolutely. I agree 100%.

Reed (23:57.187)
So it's great hearing about your meetup, but there's a lot of folks out there who are thinking bigger. you've got something pretty big coming up here. And so one of the things that I've been playing around with is this idea that, and we've talked about it a bunch on the show too. It's like Bitcoin learning, it starts with the individual. You find Bitcoin, you start going down the rabbit hole. But then it's like, then you discover the meetups. But then after the meetups,

These regional events are really a great way to pull in a bigger area less frequently. And I really feel like this is one of the premier big regional events. And so I would love to hear more about the conference, but I would definitely like to hear about how you plan for it, how much work it is, how you deal with websites and ticket sales. You don't have to go over those all at once, but...

We've got questions and I bet there's a lot of other Bitcoin meetup organizers who would love to hear more about how you got that going.

Eric B4E (25:01.734)
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm happy to talk about it more. I'll start off with, I knew it was going to be a lot of work and it's more. So that is just one morning out there. So yeah, my co-founder, Eddie and I, started this together, I guess, of 23, we put together as a nonprofit because we were pretty sure the first year, we were going be paying some out of pocket. And so wanted to be able to take advantage of that status. And the other reason we did a nonprofit though,

is Pacific Northwest is pretty anti crypto Bitcoin. They sort of see it like kind of lump all these things together. every time I, a lot of times when I was trying to talk to non-Bitcoiners about Bitcoin, they're like, oh, you just must talk about trading strategies all day, or it's just for tech bros and things like that. So I was like, well, no, I was like, well, if we have a nonprofit angle, it causes a cognitive disconnect in their head when I say, oh, I run a Bitcoin, Bitcoin is for everyone, it's a nonprofit.

Like people will stop and actually have to think for a second before they just give their default answer. Or they say things like, oh, you must love Trump coin. And I'm like, I actually hate it more than you do because of this conversation. But let's use this as a springboard to talk about Bitcoin. So that's what we did that. So that was two reasons to it as a nonprofit. We started this together. The first year, since we had never run a big event before, we decided we weren't going to take swan. We invited companies like Swan and Unchained, et cetera, come.

I know they would buy some tickets that would be like their sponsorship just because we wanted to do proof of work to show we could do this. And we had about 200 people the first year, very success. We had a breakout room for all beginner content that only held about 40 to 50 people. And the venue kept saying that the fire marshal is going to get upset and the fines are huge. So we had to kick people out of the beginner's room, which was unfortunate, but it was a good sign to grow. So last year we switched up to a bigger venue and it's also called Revolution Hall, which I think is just an awesome name.

for a venue where you have a Bitcoin event. And yeah, we had three stages. Yeah, much bigger, got sponsors, broke even. We had a near like 300 people. And so then this year I decided in my infinite wisdom, since my co-founder Eddie moved to Miami for some nicer weather and better tax treatment, and so the price is down a little bit compared to where it was last year's conference, I decided, let's expand to two days.

Eric B4E (27:21.99)
So that's just been a bunch more work. I am partnering with a few people now. For example, Kristen Thompson, she used to do head of events with Swann. Like she put on Pacific Bitcoin. So she lives here in Portland and she's always been of assistance, but now she's actually joined the board of Bitcoin is for Everyone. I've got a great set of volunteers. Yeah, so I mean, think, I guess, I'm trying remember what your actual question was, but for me, what was really important is just doing that for proof of work first, like put on that event.

Yes, it does cost a little bit of money. You don't have to do it that way and you don't have to do as big, but I think do some proof of work ahead of time. The meetups is a great example, but just having another event. then are sponsorships aren't as easy. I get approached by a lot of altcoin, web3 companies offering way more money than the Bitcoin only companies offer. But obviously, I politely thank them, explain the difference and say if they'd like to attend the conference, they might learn a thing or two.

But yeah, but we do have a great set of sponsors. Abundant Mines is a Oregon-based mining company. They've been our premier sponsor the last couple of years. They're extremely supportive of us. So they've been great. Unchained comes back year after year. One of their attendees says it's his favorite event. All year is to come, because it's a smaller event. Like you're saying, it's a smaller event, but it's not tiny. You get 200 to 300 people. You get fed a couple of times a day.

You really could have some good conversations with everybody. We do have three stages, but I try to keep the content fairly different, the sort of more general Bitcoiner content, beginner content, and then something like a little more like a debate over, I don't know, we're not gonna do a quantum debate, don't worry, but like things like that.

Rev (29:08.153)
So the out of pocket expense thing with the 501c3 kind of came up on our episode with Bitcoin Bay as well. that kind of never really crossed my mind because I've not participated in these meetups. There hasn't been a lot of big out of pocket kind of expenses for what we're doing over here. And so it does make a lot of sense that, OK, because like Bitcoiners, we hate taxes, but for some reason, we love to talk about taxes, right?

Eric B4E (29:34.032)
Hahaha.

Rev (29:34.047)
And so it's like, how do I live in the most tax advantaged way possible, right? I want to pay as little taxes as possible, participate in that system as little as possible. And so it sounds like this 501c3 format is a way to, you know, when you incur these big expenses from doing the event, now you have a place to write that off essentially. Is that how it works?

Eric B4E (29:54.086)
I mean, that is how I understand it works. You know, I'm not a tax expert. You know, we do have a reason to Toshi Pachio, the Bitcoin based accounting firm to answer all those sorts of questions. But it was not as difficult as I thought. And actually, Wesley from Bitcoin Bay, I talked to him before we got started because I just heard about him doing that must have been at grassroots. And so and he was a big he's a big he's a great resource. Super helpful. Always willing to lend some time. And now they put together some great resources on that on their website.

about how to do this sort of thing. yeah, I think those guys are great. I just need to figure out how he got Liz so I could get Liz out here.

Rev (30:28.91)
and

Rev (30:34.083)
Yeah, we got to capture the nomads and keep them around because they've been everywhere and they've got a lot of experience. The other thing that I wanted to hit on too was, like, so the first conference that you did, you maybe had like an attendance that was higher than what you expected. Was there a certain point when like when you started selling the tickets and everything that you're like, there's way more people coming than we planned for? Or was it just like a surprise?

kind of right up, right before the event.

Eric B4E (31:06.586)
You know, people wait to buy tickets. It's one of the more frustrating things about running an event is cause you have to commit all this, you you know, how many people are going to be there? How much food do you want to order? All these sort of things ahead of time. And people buying the last two minutes, the last two weeks, you know. and I understand it. Like I'm guilty of that for other conferences. Like I totally get it, but that is one of the hard things about doing that is planning that. So in terms of the first year, total attendance was, about what we're hoping for made a little higher than what we're, know,

But what was surprising is what we weren't sure of is how many people would want to go to the beginner content. We kind of thought we were just probably attract only Bitcoiners. I mean, I thought I had this idea that we would attract a lot of new people because it's easier to blend in. We didn't know if that was it was going to work out. And so it was great to see that part work out and then justify getting a larger venue for the following year and having more beginner content. Like I said, I have a full beginner's track this year because because we do get a lot of like I said, a lot of them are plus ones.

Rev (32:04.921)
That's a really interesting point. know, when you, when you put on one of these bigger events, it gives, it's sort of like the, those lights, those Hollywood lights, the beacon that, goes and draws in the people that might not necessarily hear about the little local meetup that's going on. But when it's this big thing that everyone's talking about and you hear about it, then they show up and then I'm sure that that helps bolster, the ability to continue to have good attendance at one meetup a week and then everything else. That's a, that's a very, a strategy that I hadn't really thought of.

in the past where it's like, yeah, if you do organize a big event, you're going to attract some people that aren't necessarily part of the culture that's already established.

Eric B4E (32:43.684)
Yeah, a lot of people haven't heard of our meetup, which it always sort of surprises me. But when you do a bigger event like in something like, so Troy Cross lives here and he's always talking about the benefits of Bitcoin for the environment and mining. you so when he tweets that he's speaking at Bitcoin is for everyone, I mean, that gets a huge surge of attendance and people like, didn't even know there was a meetup, you because nobody tweets about ever. People like that aren't like saying, I'm going to the meetup.

Reed (33:11.244)
Yeah, so throw a conference to advertise your meetup. Noted. I will remember that. That's a good tip. So I wanted to ask another question about the 501c3 angle, but also combine it with a question about getting sponsors. So we started to kind of touch on this actually on our last episode, just like a little bit. I think that there's sustainability, right, is a word that we talk about a lot in Bitcoin meetups because running Bitcoin meetup,

Eric B4E (33:14.063)
Hahaha

Reed (33:40.227)
For a lot of people, it's not free. If you're doing meetup.com, that's 30 bucks a month. And it's kind hard to bring in 30 bucks a month to a meetup. Your meetup is a lot more mature and older and bigger. And like you said, you're in a more populated area maybe than a lot of other people are. So getting sponsors. And I know you're getting sponsors here for this big conference and it's going to be a bigger draw and things like that.

But you are also combining that with the 501C3. So do you think that the 501C3 plays any role in getting sponsors? Are they more willing to give a donation or supply something for you if they can get the tax breaks for the 501C3, or is it not really a factor?

Eric B4E (34:28.402)
It's a good question. And I thought I've never asked anyone directly that question, but nobody and nobody's mentioned it. So I don't, I actually don't know. I'm just, I really just started to focus on, you know, the event we do the attendance, we attract, you know, we have some highlight videos on Twitter of like how the other conferences go. I just focus really on that part, not the nonprofit part, but we are, we have gotten some, some donations and that's one area I haven't really pushed.

hard. mean, if I had more time or another person involved, I would really try to do, you know, do a Geyser fund and like really try to get the donations, get on, you know, do more like how Bitcoin Bay is doing. Like they're a much more sophisticated organization than we are because right now it's kind of just me here. So it's yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot.

Reed (35:18.936)
Yeah, I bet it's a lot. Oh, go ahead, Rob.

Rev (35:19.321)
So I talk about these magical moments that happen at the meetups, and I'm sure the same thing is true at a conference. One story that I could tell is there was a guy in the Grand Rapids culture that was kind of getting set up to leave, and he wanted to sell a bunch of his stuff. And he happened to have a freeze dryer. And I was like, I would like a freeze dryer. But it just wasn't the right.

time for me to, it was just too spur of the moment and I couldn't move on that offer. But, and then I go to the Southwest Michigan meetup like a week later after hearing about this and one of the guys there.

was talking, he had this big plan of how, cause we all do this kind of circular economy thing at the Southwest Michigan meetup. And a lot of us are homesteading, we're producing the products that we're bringing to sell. But he didn't necessarily have the space to be in a production mode. And so then he gives us this presentation about like how, you know, we could, we could value add a lot of the stuff that we're doing and, know, expand the economic activity once you make these things shelf stable.

to the other meetups and everything. And so he was like, basically I need to buy a freeze dryer. And I was like, guess what? I know a guy that's gonna sell a freeze dryer and he's gonna take Bitcoin for it. And so then he goes and picks up this freeze dryer. And now just the last time I met with him, I gave him this a bunch, well he actually came over to the homestead with me and we picked a bunch of this purple dead nettle that I use as allergy medicine. I make a tea out of it. And so we picked a bunch of this purple dead nettle plant.

He put it in his freeze dryer and then he gives me the freeze dried product back and I pay him for his processing fee on that. And it's just like one of those magical intersections where it's like, if we weren't participating in this Bitcoin culture together, this whole value chain, so to speak, would have never gotten started. So was there like any magical moments that have happened in the conferences? Any cool stories that you can think of or the meetups, you know, in general?

Eric B4E (37:23.91)
Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. I'm trying to think. So one fun thing for the conference, it was our first year. We wanted to get some local politicians. Like we tried to get local media to talk about it. That has been, I've been totally unsuccessful there. So we thought, well, maybe we could get some local politicians. I think it just be interesting for them to see what's going on. And so we did manage to get one, his name's Representative Nose, and he's in area. very, I mean, he's Portland, right? So he's very liberal, big into healthcare and unions and these things.

So he had, I'm like, no, just like free ticket, like come, think you would enjoy it. And he was very skeptical, but he's like, all right. And he came in and he said, he felt like he walked into a church. Not because people were being, but it's just like, we all had this common goal, all focused on one thing, all trying to like make humanities better. know, cause we have, our conference, like we try to focus on a lot of different areas. Like we have people come from Human Rights Foundation and you know, people like I've said earlier, like Troy Cross talking about how this is actually beneficial for the.

for the environment. So he was just in awe and he put it out even in his newsletter, basically saying, know, guys, you'll never believe where I went. Yes, a Bitcoin conference. And wow, it is not the way I've been thinking about it. It's something I need to learn much more about. And then last year he came and told that story on stage. had, had somebody interview him on stage and tell that story. And so that's just like a really fun way to make an impact. Somebody who thought they would never have anything to do with Bitcoin is now speaking at the conference. So that's probably one of our better ones.

Reed (38:52.472)
Dude, that's a great story. That's awesome. And actually, it's a great segue because I wanted to ask you... I was asking some questions before about how you're preparing for these things. And I think you actually mentioned a bunch of people already who are, I believe, going to be speakers at this upcoming one. You mentioned Trey Cross. You mentioned Portland Hottle. You mentioned, I can't remember, a few other folks, but...

Eric B4E (39:18.543)
Yeah.

Reed (39:18.957)
I guess for the locals, that's great that you already have those connections, but generally speaking, how are you filling up your stages? How are you reaching out to these people?

Eric B4E (39:28.09)
Yeah. So it was one of the reasons Eddie and I were a really good team to form this together is because he, he manages a home office and he's a very minor player in some of these VC funds. So he knows a lot of the suit coiners, what you call them or things on that level. And then after me, you know, going to all these meetups and grassroots, you know, I sort of know like, you know, sort of different parts of the, of the ecosystem. And so it was a really good partnership together. And then we, you know, we've traveled, you know, I go to like five.

five or six conferences a year. And so it's just, you know, it's just exposure. So you get a little bit of exposure. You know, I get an introduction from Eddie or from one of, you know, somebody he knows. And then it's just, you know, the FaceTime going to the, that's one of the reasons I like the bigger conferences is not for the content, but it's for the, that's where all the people are. Like I had a great time in Vegas recently, not for the talks, but it's just like all the Bitcoiners are there. The side events were fantastic. And it was just great to, you know, just, just meeting more people in person and having those conversations. And it's like, Hey, I'm putting on this.

thing in Portland and I, oh man, I've heard about, you know, we're in our third year, people have heard about us. So it really just starts to snowball. So, you know, start small, make those connections and, um, you know, really is it's the proof of work and then people will say good things and word of mouth is the best way. I think.

Rev (40:46.767)
So the amount of time, I think, is a key thing to note. This Bitcoin Community College event, you could say, that I just went to last weekend, we see each other at the meetups. We know each other. But we don't get to spend a whole evening until 2 in the morning together and then a whole day together the following day. And so when you go to a meetup, you get a few hours together. And a lot of times, there's so many even people at the small meetup that

the discussion kind of gets fragmented and you can't, it's hard to even stay on track trying to figure things out, so to speak, or really share that intellectual and experiential capital with each other. And so yeah, it does make sense that when you go to these conferences, you're there and you're just immersed in it for the whole day, the whole couple of days or beyond. And so that's, that's pretty cool. I, the other thing, so you probably, said you're not making it to all the meetups anymore. And I wouldn't be able to, I mean, maybe, but it's,

It becomes work at that point to go to one meetup every week. So do you have a favorite? Do you have like one that you really look forward to?

Eric B4E (41:53.254)
Well, that's it. You know, the most the workshops and the bit devs are the two like I really like hands on the hands on things. I social stuff, just social is great. I mean, I like these are like some of my closest friends now in Portland are, you know, through Bitcoin. So that's great. But I like when there's just like just a little something to do at least. And yeah, and Portland Hottle, he does. I he does. He's such a humble guy and it's incredibly talented.

It's really great just being in same room with him, hearing him describe how the latest BIP or how this protocol thing changed, or this cool way he figured out. He created the most responsive mechanical keyboard ever. And he just did that in the spare time. So he kind of went through that. it's just fun stuff like that is what I look forward to the most.

Reed (42:45.558)
Yeah, it's talking about how much time everything takes. So you're doing so much with all these weekly meetups and now the conference on top of that. How are you doing with your time management? Especially, you're coming up on crunch time right now. You got a week and a half to go until the conference. So this is kind of crunch time.

Eric B4E (43:07.696)
Yeah.

Reed (43:10.028)
Like how's your time going these days? You feeling the pressure or things going good or you got a lot of support or?

Eric B4E (43:16.462)
You know, it's kind of all the above, actually. I definitely feel the pressure because there's a lot of balls in the air still. Things going, but it's coming together really well. I said it's a two day event, but there's now side events. Jeff Walton of Strive is doing a Bitcoin for Businesses on Thursday, the 21st. And then Abundant Minds is doing a tour on Sunday. So now what was a one day thing is now a four day event. I've got after, you know,

after parties and after dinners and things like that going on. yeah, fortunately my wife is extremely supportive. We've been together well over 20 years and she's extremely supportive of all that. So that helps a lot. But I am starting to feel it. I'm starting to feel it. Like if you start asking me next week, like, are you doing this again? I'll be like, no way. But you asked me during the conference and after it'd be like, oh my gosh, that's how I remember feeling last year. Like the day of the conference, I'm like, this is great. Everybody's...

coming up to me, everyone's having a good time and actually the pieces did fall into place, works out and like that's, I mean, that's the reason to keep going.

Reed (44:21.624)
Hell yeah. So I guess we want to be respectful of your time because we know you have a Bitcoin meetup that you need to get to. So this is actually a little bit early for us to start thinking about transitioning, but I will say we wanted to have you for the first part of our V for V section because you, my friend, have been on the leaderboards for quite a while for this podcast. But before we start transitioning to that, why don't we just kind of wrap up a little bit here and...

I'll ask you Eric, maybe first, if you have other things that we didn't talk about yet or any kind of key takeaways or maybe like if you want to spend a minute just giving a pitch about Bitcoin is for everyone and try to get people out or I guess any kind of last words or last thoughts?

Eric B4E (45:08.986)
Yeah, no, thank no. I just want to thank both of you guys for having me on. I think it's a great idea doing the local Bitcoiners podcast. Like I said, people don't even know about these things. And so the more we do to help spread the word, I think is great. So I'm really supportive of you guys. And that's yes. Yeah. I didn't realize we were going to be your top booster for a while there, but we wanted to, you know, get the name out there, support you guys as well, of course. And yeah, for all the listeners, Bitcoin is for everyone dot com is our website. It's easy to find.

Check the Nostra post here, you'll get a 21 % discount code. And May 22nd, 23rd, Portland, Oregon. Come out to the Pacific Northwest, it's gonna be beautiful. We should have beautiful weather, really good time, really solid Bitcoiners. Portland's not as scary as you may hear in the news. Things are actually, it's weird, but it's good weird.

Rev (45:57.741)
I think for me, like what I'm hearing out of this conversation is that, you know, the, as much as we think that these things that we start will remain static, this, like when you start a meetup and it's going well for a few years, you can't really imagine ever wanting to stop. But at some point that baton needs to get passed. And when it does get passed, like in your instance, it's now it's like.

all of sudden you go to grassroots, you get all this cool information. And then just maybe even happen by a happenstance of how you got the baton passed to you that set up the way for you to find help in this have the, it sounds, really sounds like the community is sort of doing all of this together and taking advantage of that population density. think is I'm just extrapolating here, but I'm assuming that that's really what helps make that possible. So

places with this higher population density do have this opportunity to really blossom out and to have this diverse variety in all the meetups and have more than just one. The Chicago Bitcoin Collective is just getting started, but that's becoming a hub for these more... There's going to be a lot of meetups happening in Chicago now because of this one place. So yeah, it just seems like the opportunity there to...

the community and let people kind of even the orbitals, right? Come on and get on our meetup.com. Share that information out there. It just grows. And now you've got these conferences going on. It's just sounds like a cool scene over there. I mean, the last thing I'll say is, and maybe you have something to respond to this. And when we did the grassroots recap and we are reading off the boost fundamentals was on that episode. He does the Philly suburbs meetup.

And he was like, man, talk about running a meetup behind enemy lines. And you've kind of mentioned it, that the like culture of the Pacific Northwest or even Portland in general might generally be kind of opposed to this idea of crypto and Bitcoin. And so you're proving that, hey man, even in like one of the most culturally adversarial places for Bitcoin, you can really make something happen and get it going on. So cool to hear.

Eric B4E (48:15.718)
Yeah, you can. Yeah, just one last little thing. People always ask me, like, why are you doing this here? And I could move somewhere and make my life a lot easier in Bitcoin terms. But I want to really improve where I live. And I think if everybody had that attitude, we would really do OK. I'm like, yeah, if I can run this many meetups in Portland, Oregon, like any part of the country, you should be able to get a few people together to chat Bitcoin and see where it goes.

Reed (48:40.64)
Yeah, you we've had... It's funny. you know, I'm out here in Western Massachusetts and we are also one of the top liberal places in the country. And yeah, when I talk to people around here about Bitcoin, like they also... Like I've gotten the Trump coin comment myself, you know, and it's just like, come on, guys. But, you know, I feel exactly the same way. Like I want to make my area better. Like, of course, that's what I want to do.

And I love it here. I grew up here. it's just like, love the weather here. And I love the environment that we have here. So I want to make my local area as good and as strong as possible. One of the key takeaways that I had, I know I said this during the episode, but it's just like, there's the consistency and the variety. I feel like those are just two really great things. And especially when you're

Meetup gets mature and robust enough, growing into these regional events. It's a huge unlock. These are huge wins. Bringing politicians down to see and experience Bitcoin culture, when you get a bunch of Bitcoiners, really in their element. When you're inviting all these really great speakers and they get to experience that firsthand, that's a huge win. We really love all the stuff that you're doing.

Like we were saying, Dirk, before the recording, we're really glad that we could find a way to have you on. I'll talk about it more in a minute, but because you're one of our top boosters for the podcast, we're actually, and I, just to give a little bit of a teaser, we're talking about trying to figure out ways to get some of our top boosters more exposure to the actual podcast itself. So we've got some ideas.

And we'll talk more about those maybe in future episodes, but hey, you're one of our top boosters and you got your whole episode right here. So we're really glad that we can have you on.

Eric B4E (50:45.604)
Absolutely. Yeah, thanks you guys. I gotta head out, but appreciate it.

Reed (50:49.634)
All right, thanks, Eric.

Reed (50:55.266)
All right, so I think we're ready to transition to our V for V section of the show. And Eric just dropped off, but he's got a good excuse because he's literally leaving to go run a Big One Meetup. So I feel like that is completely valid. So we're switching up the format just a little bit here. We usually start with the boosts, and Rev will go through a big long list of everybody's boosts.

But we're switching it up a little bit because we want to make sure that our top boosters and our most consistent boosters are getting a little bit more of the spotlight here. And so we're actually going to start with the leaderboard section of the show. And maybe just before we get to the leaderboards, I wanted to share with the audience here something Rev and I talked about after the last episode. And it was really something that Rev needed to remind me, which is that...

the value chain that we're trying to promote here, which is the way that when you guys send us value, we want to get the value back to you. But none of this is possible unless our episodes, unless this podcast is valuable to you to begin with. And so that's one thing that we're going to be... We have been focusing on that the whole time, but we're going to be trying to make sure that we're bringing the fire, right? That we're bringing high value content. And so when you boost the show,

If you have other ideas, if you have questions that you have or things that you wish that we would cover or things you've always wondered about Bitcoin meetups or any kind of information that you'd like, throw it in a boost. And because then we will definitely spend the time to talk about it. If you ask a legit question in a boost, we will dedicate a portion of the show to that concept. So again, we're trying to provide value here. Back to you.

And so we really appreciate everyone who supports the show. It really is going a long way. It's making a huge difference for us. Anything to add, Rev, before I start into the leaderboards?

Rev (53:03.021)
No, I think you got that covered real well. Let's get into those leaderboards.

Reed (53:08.512)
All right, so we start here with our top boosted episodes of all time. So this, we are recording right now episode 11. So we've got 10 episodes on the streets. And so we're going to cover our top five, which that top five is going to become a more and more exclusive club the more episodes we get out. So episode number one, and this is in rank order of how many sats have been received for each episode. And let's face it, sats are the signal.

If you're willing to vote with your Sats, well, that's a much bigger vote than just a download or something like that. So our number one episode is episode nine with Sir Spencer. And so that was our episode where Growing Slow built strong communities with KC Bitcoiners. And so that episode received 78,372 Sats.

One of the things that we've been saying about that episode, that episode was just a really great kind of capstone for this. We spent multiple months trying to figure out in our own heads, what is the best way to be doing this value for value stuff. We talked about in that episode how Rev and I are kind of like rookie podcasters here. We're still trying to figure all this stuff out. So having Spencer on to kind of show us, he's got so many more years of experience with podcasting and podcasting 2.0 than we have. Really great to hear.

from him about how we're doing and other things that we could take away. So that was a great episode for us. And apparently it was a great episode for everybody else too, because that's our top boosted episode.

Rev (54:42.403)
Yeah, there's just like a, that episode has this really nice through line of how you can take this. If you're seeing what's going on with Value for Value on Nostr, if you're seeing what's going on with Value for Value on podcasting, there's some, there's definitely ways to bring that mentality and that culture to your meetup. And so check that episode out for some ideas about how to get Value for Value going on at your local meetup.

Reed (55:08.182)
All right, the second most boosted episode that we've had is episode five with Augie, 63,637 sats. So Augie was there, he was in first place, episode five was in first place for a long time. Very popular episode. The meetup is the farmer's market with Kansas City, Missouri. And so that episode, we just shared so many different stories about how you can, I think Augie said it.

He wants to farm pill Bitcoiners instead of orange pill farmers. He wants to farm pill Bitcoiners. So that was a great episode and it's number two all time for us.

Rev (55:50.223)
Yeah. And so just look, the top two are the Kansas city culture. Now they're, the only ones that have had the opportunity to have be on the show twice, but it's just, it just shows how exemplary that, that meetup scene is down there. I say it, you know, they've got the workings of a true mesh, Jadal going on. They've got the whole stack of the local meetups. They're trying to involve the kids and, move on up to these regional meetups with their block parties. And hopefully when Augie kicks off, Naga, Naka Motown,

Just a great, great thing they've got going on.

Reed (56:24.31)
All right, third most boosted episode of all time is episode one. And like we've said many times, episode one is a great place to start if you want to learn more about what it means to start a meetup and some good tips and tricks for getting your meetup started. That one was just with Rev &I. It was kind of like our pilot episode. And that episode got 60,847 sats.

Anything to add on episode one?

Rev (56:53.037)
Yeah, that's that is just the place to start. You know, we go over kind of the nuts and bolts, a lot of things to consider, how to find a venue, how to how to even figure out how to find people to come to the meetup. Just all the nitty gritty getting started stuff. It's a great episode. If you want to start a meetup, check that out. And there's a lot of good information for you there.

Reed (57:14.488)
All right, fourth place is episode two. That was with GC or the Bitcoin breakdown and James from Jersey City. And so that episode has 47,071 sats. And let's see, the title of that one was Meetups are the ultimate web of trust. And so that episode continues to be, I believe, one of our most clipped episodes. More clips are coming out, by the way. We got some more clips coming.

But we definitely had a lot of really clippable quotes from that one. Those guys were really bringing the fire on episode two and it shows because they're fourth place all time out of our now coming up on 11 episodes.

Rev (58:00.771)
Yeah, greatest thing, know, Bitcoin meetups are the ultimate web trust. What we really kind of drilled into there was how do you be vigilant to when scammers start to find their way into your group chat, find their way into your meetup, and how you can utilize the in-person relationships to maintain your vigilance and keep the community strong.

Reed (58:26.292)
And fifth place was episode seven. This was another, what we like to call solo rep, even though it's Rev and I, so no guess. it was episode seven was how meetups can benefit from value for value, Noster and value chains. And that was, I think that was the episode where we kind of, Rev, I think you kind of termed that coin value chain. And that was where we started to do a lot more cool stuff with the boost bots and getting the value, getting all the, doing all the splits and doing Zap splits and stuff like that. So we talk about a lot of cool stuff there and.

That was kind of like a direct, that episode I believe was almost like a direct tie-in to the episode that we had, episode nine with Spencer, which was, I think he heard some of the stuff we were talking about. We heard some of his stuff that he was talking about. And so we're like, dude, we need to have you on the show. So, but yeah, I'll continue to say, so the reason why we have this leaderboard, the whole point of this leaderboard isn't for us to flex like how many sats we're getting. It's a signal back to you guys to let you know.

that hey, these are our top episodes. And so if you don't know where to start, 10 episodes is too many, you don't wanna go back to the beginning, listen to all of them, you should probably start with our top episodes of all time. And so that's the whole point of the leaderboard. And so we hope that it provides you guys some value back.

Rev (59:42.403)
Yeah, lot of, I mean, a lot of really good potent information in all those episodes. Definitely, you can add those right to your queue, blast through them. And if you're getting started with the meetup, there's like the framework of how to really get, tie in a lot of the different ideas that we talk about over and over again, all in one place. So, or all in five places, I guess, but you get the idea.

Reed (01:00:07.67)
all on one friendly RSS feed. All right, so our second leaderboard, this one's a lot shorter. And maybe we'll expand this one. We started out with this being a top 10 list of our top 10 listeners who have boosted the most number of episodes. It was getting a little bit redundant because we had so many people with like three or four episodes boosted. So we decided to go with the top three.

But ties are allowed. So if there's five people tied for third place, then it will be, you know, we'll just read them all off. So, but now that we have some folks here who, and I believe maybe some of these people were going back and trying to fill in some of the gaps that they had missed. But our top three listeners who have boosted the most episodes all time. So first place is still Matthew D. Nine episodes. So I don't know which episode he missed, but only one missing for Matthew D.

Second place is Shadrack. Shadrack climbing up the leaderboards quickly here up to seven episodes. And I believe Shadrack also has a bunch of anonymous boosts. So anonymous boosts, I guess for full transparency here, anonymous boosts are not counted in these leaderboards because they would all get aggregated under the same anonymous header. Like anonymous would be boosts every episode. So that doesn't mean anything. So even if you put your identity in the message or something like that,

We don't count them. So we only count them if you've boosted with your end pub. And fortunately, now that we've got the website going, there's another place for you to go do that. Like maybe you don't want to log into Fountain with your end pub? No need. You can log into our website with your end pub and boost us there. And so we've got you covered. And so if you're looking for another way to boost us, if you want to get onto our leaderboards, you can head to our website and just go and boost every episode if you want. 100 sat minimum, just so we can get...

across that threshold for all the different zap splits that we do for all the different episodes, but that's kind of the secret formula.

Rev (01:02:12.301)
And another thing to bring up real quick before we move on is that if you're listening on a podcast 2.0 app or any podcasting app really, and you can't boost from that app, maybe you're listening on Spotify right now. You can go to our website and boost there. this is also a way for people that aren't necessarily using all these common podcast 2.0 apps to have access to this boosting ability because

The way that it works is you log in with Noster, you connect your Noster Wallet Connect wallet, and that allows the boosting to take place. And so if you're already using Noster, you probably already have your Noster Wallet Connect set up. It should be a familiar experience to you. And if it's not, once again, give us some feedback. We might zap you if you give us some feedback too.

Reed (01:03:02.754)
We almost definitely will zap you you have, especially if you're finding bugs for us, that's definitely zappable. And I'll just say too, if you don't have NWC, we also do the WebLN, which means that if you have like Albi browser extension, can zap through that as well. So, rounding out the top three for listeners who have boosted the most episodes all time. So we had Matthew D with nine, Shadrack with seven, and God's Death coming in with six episodes.

Rev (01:03:19.747)
Good to know.

Reed (01:03:31.5)
So I will say I sort of teased it a little bit. When we're mentioning our top boosters, these are the leaderboards that we're talking about. So the listeners who have boosted the most shows, and then the next leaderboard, which is the folks who have given us the biggest boosts. So if you're interested in trying to participate more with Meetup Culture, if you're trying to participate more with this podcast or with Rev and I, get yourself on a leaderboard. No announcements today.

But we've got some cool ideas for how to get you guys more engaged. So be on the lookout for possible announcements here.

Rev (01:04:11.119)
And so the last thing I want to add is, well, Matthew D, we're going to talk about him in the boost section. But as far as Shadrack is concerned, he actually was on bowl after bowl with Spencer in a Bowls with Buds episode, which was really great. And actually, if you listened to episode nine with Spencer, with us, Shadrack and Spencer really kind of actually drill a lot deeper into

A lot of stuff that we talked about more specifically with the bowl after bowl stuff because he's doing amazing stuff with the value for value stuff and the bowl after bowl website and everything and the music. So that's a good episode to go check out as well.

Reed (01:04:54.112)
I really enjoyed that episode a lot. It's a great... If you liked the episode with Spencer that we did, episode nine, that's a great follow on. So definitely go check out Bowl After Bowl.

All right, so which takes us to our last leaderboard, and I will continue to say this leaderboard, these are our sponsors. We don't have ads, we don't run ads on the show, we don't get sponsors, we have our listeners. And so our listeners, you guys are the ones that we value because you value us and you send us value. And so we want to return that value. This is all part of the value chain. So the reason why I say that is because if you get yourself on the...

on this single biggest boost of all time leaderboard, we're going to go ahead and reread your message. So if you get on this board, so this is like an evergreen kind of boost where it gets red over and over again until somebody passes you, until you fall off the top five list. And so we've had some of these on here for several weeks.

I think since we've been running this leaderboard, we've had WeAllE and Otis Bittmeyer. These guys have been on here. Bitcoin is for everyone. Sir Spencer took over the top spot. I guess let's run down the list here. So first place is Sir Spencer, who sent us $42,069 for 2069. And his boost from episode 9, the episode that he was on. Thanks for having me on.

I hope to continue to improve bullafterbull.com and continue to evolve alongside your local bitcoiners.com site, Iron Sharp and Zion. And I greatly value hearing what you guys are discovering on your value for value journey. Long live the value chain. So thank you again, Spencer. And we really appreciate your support of our show. And we would really love to send our listeners over to check out bull after bull.

Reed (01:07:00.216)
Okay, second place and third place is still Bitcoin is for Everyone, May 22nd, May 23rd, 2026. The first one was 12,020 Sats and then 11,010 Sats, and those were both on episode 5, which was Augie's episode. So the first boost, join us for the biggest Bitcoin-only conference on the West Coast, Bitcoin is for Everyone, May 22nd, May 23rd in Portland, Oregon, bitcoinisforeveryone.com.

So here's the real key, since we covered so much of this event during this episode. Use discount code, NOSTER Insider, all one word, all caps, NOSTER Insider for 21 % off. So that's definitely a good deal, and you all should take advantage of that if you want to head out to Bitcoin is for Everyone. And then his second boost... Oh, go ahead.

Rev (01:07:49.017)
Yeah, if you're one of the people that hasn't got your ticket yet, because it's, know, like you said, a lot of people buy their tickets about two weeks out. Now you've got a pretty sweet discount code to go and use. So it's good that you waited. So now you can go get there cheap.

Reed (01:08:09.332)
And Bitcoin is for Everyone boosted again. The Portland Bitcoin group has six meetups a month. Come check us out. And so think we heard a lot about those six meetups a month on this episode. So I know Eric had to leave because he was going to his meetup, but thanks again, Eric. We really appreciate your support of the show and we're really glad that we can be a champion for your event. And we hope that people will go and check out Bitcoin is for Everyone.

Rev (01:08:37.103)
And another thing to note is that all of the guests on the show get splits in this. while we're seeing these totals, these totals aren't, we're not getting all of those Sats. A third of those Sats are going to the guests. And so if you like what Eric's doing and maybe you're too far out of the range, you can't make it to the conference or whatever, you can boost and throw a little Sats Eric's way as well.

Reed (01:09:09.144)
And I think you've brought this point up before, Rev, but what that means is that if you've been on the show and you give us a big boost, like Bitcoin Bay, maybe, if you got a big event coming up, well, if you boost your own episode, you get a little bit of subsidy. Some of those Sats go right back into your own wallet. So definitely a good thing to keep in mind. Fourth place on our top boost of all times is Otis Bittmeyer. 10,420 Sats on episode one.

So we will continue to show Otis Bittmeier's excellent coffee. He roasts the beans himself. He sends those out. Is it a coffee club? I should really be in that coffee club. What does he call it again?

Rev (01:09:54.125)
Yeah, the coffee club.

Reed (01:09:55.565)
The Coffee Club, yeah, yeah, And he runs a great podcast, the Sound Coffee Podcast. And Rev and I were actually fortunate to be guests on that podcast to talk about this, what we're doing over here. So, Oda Spitmeyer's boost was, I'm thankful for the Southwest Michigan Meetup where like-minded humans gather together in downtown Benton Harbor on the third Thursday of each month for fellowship and meaningful conversation spanning many domains.

I leave inspired to continue building the world I want to see. Join us if you're in the area. So thanks again, Otis Pittmeyer.

And fifth place is We All Eat. And We All Eat boosted... Let's see. this was also episode 5 with Augie. And the message is, LFG, get out and go to your local meetup. Find a meetup when you travel. Can't wait to see you fellas at Lake Satoshi in a few months. So Lake Satoshi will continue to be a topic that gets brought up here increasingly as that episode creeps ever closer.

think it's – what is it? Is it like the last week of July or maybe that first weekend in August?

Rev (01:11:07.043)
Yeah, the first weekend of August.

I think it's Saturday, August 2nd.

Reed (01:11:14.828)
Definitely more information will be coming out about Lake Satoshi. Can't wait to talk about it more. All right, well that rounds out our leaderboards. So thank you all to our top boosters, to our ride or dies, our most consistent boosters. And yeah, hopefully that top list of episodes gives you a good place to start if you're looking for episodes you might have missed.

All right, should we transition over to the regular boosts?

Rev (01:11:37.229)
Yeah, thanks everybody.

Yep. Now we're moving into the boosts. So this was the last from the last time we recorded with Sean and out in Niagara. These are all the boosts that we've got since that recording. And so the first boost we have is a thousand stats from Fountain with no comment. And that was on keeping meetups fun and sustainable Bitcoin Bay episode eight. Thank you.

And next, another week, we've got a thousand sats via fountain with no comment from episode eight as well. So maybe you're the same person, maybe not, but thanks for the sats. Those, know, so of that thousand sats, know, Liz and Wesley get a third of that. So you're supporting Bitcoin Bay when you boost the Bitcoin Bay episode.

Next, we've got 209 Sats via localbitcoiners.com, the website. Great place to boost. And that was for me. so this was what I wanted to do here was just to show that actually, can't remember if I, yeah, I must have done this with the Meetup tool that we just built. And so Reed has recently created a portion of the website where you can

If you've got, you're making your meetups on Noster, you can just copy that string, the event string. What is it like? Natter, one, two, two, you know, that event.

Reed (01:13:17.186)
Yep, it's the addressable event ID, yep.

Rev (01:13:20.205)
Yep, you copy that and you can paste it into this tool, add your boost. And now your meetup with that event is attached into the boost. And then this goes, not only does it show up here on the website, but it shows up on our feed on Noster, on our end pub. And then it propagates out. So this is a great way for you, if you're making your meetups on Noster, you can go to the website, put that meetup in there and get the word out. And if you don't have a meetup,

Uh, on Noster that you an event that you've set up, you can actually build that right there on the website as well and, start transitioning your meetup from, or not even that transitioning, but in addition to meetup.com, Alluma, Avento, whatever you're using. Now there's an easy place for you to make a Noster version of your meetup, uh, event and get it right out of here on the show. So I, I boosted and I said, uh, I just talked, talk about the Southwest Michigan meetup. So Southwest Michigan meetup is the third Thursday of every month, 6.30 PM at dwellers, coworking space.

Benton Harbor, Michigan, and there's the event linked right there.

Reed (01:14:25.484)
Yeah, and one of the reasons why we want and I know we've said this before, but it's good. It's good to reiterate some of these points. The reason why we're so focused on getting meetups onto Nostr is not because we think that Nostr is a better place for people to find your meetup. We think it's good place to put your meetup in addition because Nostr is so good for discoverability.

This is, if we can start getting a critical mass of meetups to actually post on NOSR, dude, so many more discoverability tools can be built. Like all these different maps and stuff like that, that require significant, like tremendous amounts of effort to go try to scrape and aggregate from like all these different, there's probably like 10 different platforms. And then there's some people who don't post it even on any of those. Maybe they just have it on their website or something like that, which is...

virtually impossible for people to find unless they specifically know about your Meetup. But with just one, more or less, this is like a two-minute ask, you can just throw your Meetup out on Nostr as well. And now all these discovery tools can just pick it up. They'll just scrape it right off of Nostr for free, very easily, almost instantaneously. So that's why we keep pushing the Nostr route for getting Meetups posted.

And so yeah, I'm really glad that we got this tool. It is definitely not the only place. I'm not going to say it's the best place, but it is a place. And if you're on the website and you're about to give us a boost and you're like, hey, I'd really like to show my Meetup, I can just drop the event ID right here. And so that's kind of the idea behind it is we want to give your Meetup as much attention as we can. And so this is just one more way that we can try to help you do that.

Rev (01:16:17.891)
Yeah, just as simple as copy and pasting that event. And you don't have to think about or type out all the different details. It's all right there. And then the signal, the value chain goes on. It gets propagated. The chain reacts. Next, we've got 2,000 Sats from Fountain. And they did attach an end pub, but it's not rendering here. And there's no comment. And that was on episode 9 with Sir Spencer. So I.

Your boost did go out to our feed and everything, but I unfortunately don't know who to credit you with there, but thank you for the 2000 sets. Next we've got 500. Oh, go ahead.

Reed (01:16:56.874)
I have theory about that, by the way, and I don't know. But I sort of get the impression that some of these no comment boosts that are coming in and some of the anonymous boosts are coming in, I think that there might be some people out there kind of playing with some different tools and some different ideas. Like when I looked at this end pub, I almost feel like this might have been like an ephemeral key where you just kind of spin it up and you don't...

You don't need to go fill out a profile to have a Noster key. It's just a Noster key. You can just snap your fingers and now you've got a key pair. And so it could be something like that. And of course, we can't know because this is all anonymous. And so we just don't have the information. But we definitely thank you for the 2000SATs and continue experimenting. Maybe you can help us learn some more about how these...

like payments come into our nodes and we can help try to decode and decrypt some more messages if there was one here that we just missed. So we will continue to look into it. And thank you for that.

Rev (01:18:04.651)
Next we got 500 sats from Fountain. No comment on episode eight with Bitcoin Bay. And then another 500 sats via Fountain for episode eight with Bitcoin Bay. So Bitcoin Bay is getting a lot of love here. Maybe it's somebody trying to get Bitcoin Bay up into that leaderboard again. Because they didn't, they're boxed out now, right? Yeah, they were on there, but now they're not anymore.

Reed (01:18:29.272)
could be.

Reed (01:18:33.112)
They're not there yet. Yeah, it seems to like, it does take a few weeks, I think, for everybody to get their boosts in. And so it's possible just not enough time has passed, but I can see it too. That episode's probably starting to climb up the leaderboards there.

Rev (01:18:34.477)
or they're not there yet.

Rev (01:18:50.371)
Alright, next we got 1,236 sats via fountain from God's Death who says, thank you gentlemen. And that was on our most recent recording with Sean from Niagara. And that's episode 10. And so God's Death coming in here, boosting as usual. Thank you very much God's Death. We appreciate all the support.

Rev (01:19:16.833)
Next we got 100 Sats via fountain from Nostergang. And they have a orange heart and a purple heart emoji. And that was on episode 10 with Sean in Niagara. So thank you, Nostergang.

Reed (01:19:32.246)
Orange Heart, Purple Heart to me has always meant Bitcoin and Nostr. I forget. Bitcoin and Nostr are just... The more time I spend on Nostr playing around with these tools, Nostr, feel like it's really building out a new internet experience. And it's really all got Bitcoin baked in almost practically at the protocol level. And so it's just really great to see

Rev (01:19:37.241)
That's right.

Reed (01:20:02.411)
real world Bitcoin usage and adoption. really the number one example I think of that really in the whole world right now is Noster. Noster is just, it's really the place to be if you're a Bitcoiner.

Rev (01:20:17.721)
Yeah, the sats are really flowing over there, man. I love it more every day. Next, we got 5,000 Sats via Fountain from Matthew D. And so Matthew D is talking about white paper soap. So white paper soap is building along with local Bitcoiner's Pod. I can't accept BTC yet through my Square website. But if you want soap, hit me up on Noster. So yeah, think I did. I have said in the past that you can buy the soap from Matthew D.

on his website, but it sounds like if you want to pay with Bitcoin, the best place is to go find him on Noster. His end pub is all over the leaderboards and everything, so you should have no trouble finding him and reaching out if you want to see, or if you want to actually buy the soap. Check out his website, White Paper Soap, see what he's got available, then go over to Noster and hit him up so you can buy it with Bitcoin. And he boosted episode 10 with Sean from Niagara.

So thank you, Matthew D. I did save that because I knew you had boosted in there. you don't just have to boost thank you or a meetup. I'm more than happy if you're boosting. If you've got a product that you're selling on Nostra or something and you want to get the word out there, that's cool too. want to create. Bitcoin meetups are a lot about circular economies. I think Nostra is a place where Bitcoiners are meeting up in this digital.

space in the digital frontier. And so, yeah, feel free to come in and let us know what you got for sale and we'll get the word out there. Next, okay, so this is the first person to actually use our meetup tool. And so this is Wahid X, W-A-H-I-D-X. Wahid, I don't know. If I messed that up, let me know. But so they boosted 209 Sats via localbitcointers.com.

And they've linked their event here. And let me just click on it for the information.

Rev (01:22:20.951)
And actually, Reed, this is defaulting to open up into mynoster.app. So eventually, we'll hear about mynoster. OK, so this is the McKinney Sound Money Meetup in McKinney, Texas. And that's on Thursday, May 21 at 6 PM. And it's on the patio at Sticks Ice House in McKinney. And it says,

Reed (01:22:27.756)
Yeah, looking forward to talking more about that as we have more time.

Rev (01:22:49.229)
Whether you're new to Bitcoin or an OG, we welcome you to McKinney SoundMoney Meetup. Come to learn, share, or just chat in a casual setting. There's no set agenda, but we will probably talk about AI and Bitcoin. No required reading or knowledge and no sales pitches. So no shitcoins, please. Thank you Wahid X for trying out our cool tool on the website. And you know, did because he...

They were the first person to use that tool. did go in and they boosted us 209 sets and I went back and I boost, I zapped him a thousand sets for that. use the stuff, man. You guys might get, I can't guarantee that I'll be able, we'll be able to fund out of our Primal wallet. Everybody, if everybody starts boosting or boosting their meetup, but if you're early on this, as long as we got sets, I'm going to shoot some back your way for, for trying our tools out and

getting more of these meetups on our boost lists. I really hope that we can just read meetup after meetup after meetup product after product, you know, just all the cool shit that you can find on Noster and at your local Bitcoin meetup culture. Come on here, let us know about it and we'll get the word out.

Reed (01:24:04.312)
And just as a reminder, in case people have forgotten or maybe didn't catch one of our earlier episodes where we talked about it, so when Rev is saying he's zapping from our shared wallet that we have here, we talked about a couple of times already on this show that if we have a guest on, they get a third of the splits. Well, we've had a bunch of episodes without guests. So instead of just splitting the stats 50-50, what we do is we take that third split, the last third,

and we drop those into our shared Prima Wallet for the show. And so that's our V for V bucket. And so we're taking those Sats, and the goal is for us to send those back out. That's kind of like, maybe you could think of it as our advertising budget. We talk about how we're reading off our sponsors here, our boosters. Well, we have an advertising budget too. And so we want to send those Sats out to you guys to do things like,

tell us when there's a bug on the website or to try out our new tools or if you have something really cool that you share on Nostr. We want to zap you for that. And maybe if you run an adjacent podcast, there's a bunch of new podcasts, I feel like, that are centered around Nostr. And a lot of these people are Bitcoin Meetup organizers or go to Bitcoin Meetups. And so we're probably going to be getting on the podcast feeds too and trying to send out some boosts and try to spread the word about...

this podcast and about, and the more that we talk about our podcast, the more people are gonna hear about your stuff. So it's all part of the value chain.

Rev (01:25:41.657)
That's right. We want to keep those, those transactions happening, the velocity high and you know, create positive incentives for people to participate. Next we got 500 sats via fountain from Paul Myra. So I, I apologize, Paul Myra. did read your name incorrectly. and I do appreciate you, sort of changing the way that the capitalization is. So I could read that correctly. but 500 sats via fountain from Paul Myra and

they say, want it. And I think this is in regards to, well, so they say, I want it. And then there's a lightning emoji and a rocket emoji. so at the end of episode 10, well, she's boosting episode nine, but maybe this is in response. And at the end of episode 10, was like, kind of getting on my high horse about the price going up and feeling, you know, feeling that number go up vibe. so,

Reed (01:26:36.514)
Could be.

Rev (01:26:37.679)
I could be wrong now that I'm realizing that it's the episode nine. But thank you, Palmyra, for the support.

Rev (01:26:46.509)
Episode nine, Casey Bitcoiners with Sir Spencer. And finally, and this boost just came in 12 minutes ago. So the boosts are still kind of flowing in, trickling through, keeping them coming guys. We really do appreciate all the boosts. It's become a big part of the show and we are looking forward to how it manifests what we're, you know, this is in a lot of ways an experiment. There's not really exactly a format or anything that we're necessarily following.

So we're just playing here and we do appreciate all the participation. But the final boost is 1000 Sats via fountain from Jer. And he says, can't get enough of these rips. And that was from episode 10 with Sean from Niagara. And so really, if you didn't listen to episode 10 yet, I didn't read the actual name, the title of that episode, but it's entitled, Evolution and Development of a Meetup. And so.

Sean really kind of broke down in that episode, how he went from, kind of like followed the path that a lot of us have followed. Like that's how I started my meetup. I was started off going to other meetups, meeting other Bitcoiners, realizing that I should have one closer by, start a meetup. And, you start, you kind of fumble through a bunch of different venues and a bunch of different, different formats. But as you stick with it, the, the, the culture starts to, to congeal and turn into something.

tangible and that leads you down this path. And so that that episode is a really good listen. If you're, if you've been maybe discouraged, you've been running a meetup for a while and you're like not thinking that it's going the way you expect, go and listen to that episode and you might be able to imagine the future if you stick with it. But thanks, Jer. I really appreciate the support.

Reed (01:28:33.752)
100%.

And I just wanted to add something real quick too about, because I think you said just a second ago, it's like this is a lot of the V for V stuff that we're doing. It really is kind of an experiment. mean, what we would like to do is to play around with this and hope that in our kind of small way that we can come up with a playbook or a strategy here or there that can be added to the long list of strategies that like the Podcasting 2.0 guys have been playing around with for years.

And that was one of the real benefits of talking to Spencer on episode nine was to try to find out what that community has been working on for all this time. The route that and I are going is we are trying to lean real heavy into Noster. We think that Noster is already a group of ride or dies because if you're on Noster and that's like where you live, you're already a ride or die as far as we're concerned.

and we already share a ton of the same values with you, you are our people. And so this is the direction that we want to go. And again, what we want to do is we want to provide as much value as possible into the Nostr ecosystem. And so if you are on Nostr and you happen to catch one of these episodes, we're going to be interacting with you a lot because that's what we do here is we want to find ways to give back to you.

and keep this whole cycle running with this long, long value chain.

Rev (01:30:10.605)
Yeah. So, so go, if you, if you're not following the local Bitcoin, Bitcoiners and pub, go give that a follow. It's, there's, there's meetup content that I'm finding out there that I'm renoting. and so it's, it's a good feed of, a bunch of different events. and there's just all kinds of stuff beyond things directly rated related to the show there. so it's, it's definitely worth following. Check it out. And, and you know,

We got a budget for zaps, so, you know, we'll be zappin'. I like to zap. I got a trigger finger for the zaps, guys.

Reed (01:30:50.39)
Yeah, so since we've talked about it in the past, guess, just to, I don't know, just tell you a little bit, some behind the scenes stuff about how this podcast works. I've been able to do some cool stuff with the website, but Rev is really running our social media account for the most part. Like, okay, I do the bots and stuff. So if you see the automated replies, a lot of those came from bots that I've created, I guess. And sure, I do log into the NSEC every once in a while, but Rev is doing just a ton with our NSEC.

And so I really appreciate all the stuff you do, Rev. And I think our community does as well. So I appreciate your itchy trigger finger there on this app. So think that's exactly the right thing to do.

Reed (01:31:32.982)
All right, well, so compared to the last two episodes, this one's a little shorter, but it's kind of right on the money here at about an hour and half. So I think we're doing good. And I hope you guys all enjoyed this episode. I don't know, any final words here after the boost section rev?

Rev (01:31:50.073)
Thanks for listening, everyone. Thanks for participating. Let's get this value chain reacting. Let's, you we kind of, you'll hear it in the outro, but if you don't have a meetup near you, start one. Otherwise, go attend your local meetup. Go get out there and participate in your local meetup culture. All right, roll the outro.