Rev (00:03.389)
All right. Let's get it going on. Local Bitcoiners. Rev Hodel here. I'm back with my co-host Reed. And tonight we've got Johnny from Charlotte. The Charlotte meetup scene is quite diverse. There's a lot of, they got a lot of stuff going on over there in Charlotte. There's a lot to talk about. But before we get into hearing from Johnny and what's going on over there in Charlotte, I'm going to talk a little bit about my latest meetup adventure. And then also an upcoming meetup. And I kind of decided to...

fire from the hip and organize a pizza day meetup too, because nobody else was doing it. But first, the Grand Rapids Social Meetup, that's the second Monday of every month at Two Guys Brewery. I went to this one most recently. And what was cool about that is I've been sort of working some compost here at the Homestead. And I basically filled my car up with so much compost that I almost overloaded it. Like I had to check the weight of what my car could handle.

to drive this compost to the meetup. So I sold a whole bunch of compost at the meetup. That was super cool. And then we got into a conversation about, know, the Chicago Bitcoin Collective is starting to do a Bitcoin hub space in Chicago. And so now the guys in Grand Rapids are saying, hey, maybe we could do some kind of private club with places to stay for, you know, people, nomads that are passing by and have like, you know, have more of a private

members only type of a space. And so that's pretty cool to hear that these kinds of ideas are starting to bubble up in smaller cities, not just in Chicago. And coming up here on Thursday is the Southwest Michigan Meetup. And that's what I talk about is the circular economy meetup. And really what's cool is that I'm starting to develop a workflow with a fellow there who's got a freeze dryer. And so I'm going to be picking up some

Purple Dead Nettle tea that he's freeze dried for me. He actually helped me pick it along with some of the other members of that meetup. And then I'm gonna take that freeze dried nettle and then I'm gonna pass him over some excess eggs for my chickens for him to freeze dry and make some freeze dried eggs for me. But in the area too, there was nobody that stepped up and organized a pizza day meetup. Now in the past it was Pizza Carl from Cullen, Michigan. He's got...

Rev (02:25.951)
some pizzerias there that accept Bitcoin, but he wasn't able to do a pizza day meetup. So actually on Friday, we're going to be doing a pizza day meetup here in Bridgman, Michigan at Emma Hearth Market, which is a bad ass pizzeria, really good wood fired pizza, all organic ingredients, great stuff. And so that's going to be starting at 5.30 if you're listening, 5.30 on Friday for pizza day is going to be at Emma Hearth Market in Bridgman, Michigan.

That's all I got for my adventures. Reed, how was your meetup?

Reed (03:01.659)
It was awesome, dude. Yeah. So our meetup was this past Sunday. I think I mentioned at the last episode that the venue confirmed us for basically the rest of the year. Like I had sent them all our dates. I just kind of wanted to make sure we could get it locked down. And so they gave us the thumbs up, but it was fantastic. Like we talked to, I was able to talk to them about, you know, we had been discussing on the show and I had some other side conversations about it's a music venue, right? So.

Is there a possibility that we could possibly do some V for V music stuff there? Is this something we can take advantage of? Yeah, they were super down. They were very interested. They're like, yeah, we've been really meaning to get our live streaming capability up and running. And then once we do, if you're saying this is just like an add-on, we would definitely be interested in that.

That's a great sign. And I've got one of our other meetup members. He's in a band and he's very into the music, local music scene in general. And he is very jazzed up about this whole thing. So I've been passing him a lot of the value for value music content for him to help wrap his head around what it actually is. So yeah, so we're both into it and we're going to try to start learning it and see if this is something that we can actually bring to the venue.

But I wanted to real quick, so as we've discussed on the show before, we run a Socratic seminar for I'm Married Up. So I thought it might be useful for other Meetup organizers if I just ran through our topics real quick. So we always start with just a podcast recommendation and a book recommendation, just because, I don't know, everybody listens to different things. And I was always surprised that the podcasts that I like to listen to, no one else at the Meetup had ever heard of. And so it's like, well, I'll start doing a podcast recommendation.

And then we do a Bitcoin history topic. This is kind of like fan favorites. Everybody loves the Bitcoin history topics. So this month we did the Silk Road and I dug up some old stories from the Silk Road and we talked about Ross and we talked about him eventually getting pardoned and all this other stuff. But then after that, I mean, we do hit some news items, but really the rest of the time we spent talking about Noster and that was kind of the plan.

Jhonny D (05:07.549)
Thank you.

Reed (05:25.091)
And one of the big reasons for that is because I did roll out some limited capabilities on our website. This is not the full kind of Bodark implementation that I've been talking with Augie about. But some limited capabilities have been incorporated into the site to get people, if you have an end pub, now you can start listing stuff for sale on the website. And that way when you come to the meetup, you can start selling it for stats. So yeah, we had, we did great. We got a bunch of people onboarded.

We've already got one person posting some stuff up there and then I'll be trying to encourage people to do that throughout the rest of this month. So yeah, it was a great meetup. Really looking forward to it. got, I have another one coming up. Actually, we're going to talk about it in the booth section. Another one coming up that I'm going to head down to tomorrow. But yeah, it was a great meetup. So we got Johnny here with us, Johnny Fuego.

Johnny Delgado. Yeah. Thanks for coming on the pod. And yeah, we'd love to give you a chance to introduce yourself. Tell us about your meetup. Tell us what you got going on.

Jhonny D (06:23.878)
Hey.

Jhonny D (06:27.947)
Thank you for having me.

Thank

Jhonny D (06:36.002)
Yeah, of course. Again, thank you for having me. Thank you for wearing the Halloween shirt. That's pretty awesome. I'll make sure to touch on that topic at some point during the conversation today. A little bit about the meetup that recently we had. So I started a meetup in Lima, Peru, called Orangeville Peru. I work with Motive Peru as well, with the circular economies throughout the whole country. And then I help with Bitcoin Charlotte as well here in the United States. So last Monday,

Reed (06:42.203)
Hell yeah.

Jhonny D (07:05.806)
On the 11th, we had Motif Peru actually organize a Bitcoin meetup at a coffee shop in Miraflores in Lima. And it's been great because shamelessly, will say that every time we do a meetup with Orange Pail Peru, we do it at certain coffee shops or brewery. And unfortunately, we haven't gotten any of these businesses to accept Bitcoin as payment.

But now with the Bitcoin, with the Motive Peru team, got a coffee shop called Nando's Cafe in Grimado del Solar in Lima in Miraflores to accept Bitcoin. And it just worked out that LORE Bitcoin and BTC Andres, they came from Mexico and to be part of the meetup, you know, so we had some people come in, we had a lot of new people come in, just kind of ask for about Bitcoin and new people.

It's always great when we don't have just the core members meeting up together and we have a lot new people coming in. So that happened this past Monday on the 11th in Metaflores, Lima. As far as the Charlotte, we continuously have our Saturday markets, different locations where they do accept Bitcoin. One of our members, Scott, is the one handles the Socratic meetup.

but thanks for the feedback on that because it's always good to know how to kind of break the ice, kind of start going. We have a theme in mind every time that he's been handling pretty well, but you know, it's always good to kind of bring something on the table to get the conversation going, especially if you got new people that trying to get familiarized with everybody else is in there, they already know each other, you know? But yeah, that's a little bit of what is being happening in my meetup world in both places, the deep South of Peru and over here in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Reed (08:45.776)
you

Jhonny D (08:52.494)
We just came back from Vegas not too long ago. So, you know, like that started to wear off, but you still get that, the vibe going and bringing it to everybody else how high it went. We had a talk over there about Bitcoin meetups that went pretty well. We had our table at the Bitcoin Bazaar to kind of, it's the most decentralized table you'll find in the Bitcoin Bazaar in Vegas, where we just give access to everybody to come in and talk about the meetup, sell whatever they want.

and then just kind of decentralize such a centralized conference.

Reed (09:29.009)
Boy, I have a lot of different things that when I… That was like you just hit on like 20 different topics that I'd love to dive into. I know. I know. So first, let me just… I wanted to… Since you brought up the Socratic seminar thing, in the show notes to this show, and I think that we cover it in the outro. I can't actually remember now. But all of my Socratic seminar slides, they're all in this shared GitHub repo.

Jhonny D (09:32.449)
Yeah.

We're just getting started.

Jhonny D (09:44.324)
huh.

Reed (09:58.108)
But I've got other people's Socratic seminar slides too, like Jersey City shares their, Round Rock, they share their slides. And so it's like a big collection. I mean, I actually use it a lot because as I'm getting prepared for my meetup, I'm always just like, I don't know, what am I going to cover this month? Like, let me just go browse some topics that maybe I haven't talked about. And if nothing else, it just gives me ideas. So I was going to mention that before and kind of forgot.

Jhonny D (10:15.704)
Yeah.

Reed (10:26.651)
But I think what I'd like to do maybe is start with, since you just got back from the conference, we talked to little bit. So we talked with Liz actually from Tampa Bay now, formerly from Charlotte, because she was going to be down there. And so she gave us a little bit of a preview. But since you were there, what do you think the meetup vibes were like? She was telling us great stories from the years before. Were you guys getting good vibes from?

Jhonny D (10:39.246)
Boo!

Jhonny D (10:52.43)
Yeah.

Reed (10:54.747)
people looking for their meetups or how did that go?

Jhonny D (10:58.476)
Yeah, I feel like maybe this bias speaking, but our table was very busy. You know, there was just people all the time trying to figure out what we have going on. And then once they did, it's like, Hey, yeah, I don't know where my meetup is. I don't know how to find people. this time we had an interactive tablet that people can look up to see where they are and if anything close by and

It struck a lot of conversations, you know, and then of course I have my alpaca sitting up in front so people are just going crazy about what's going on with that. That's a very attractive thing for people to come and ask questions. So we got to share a lot of things about Peru and then everybody shared their own meetups. We had a couple Bitcoin organizers, meetup organizers come in and take different shifts. So I think everybody kind of shared the same thing. You know, there was always somebody coming in asking

what we have, what we're selling, what we got going on, how do you find Bitcoin meetups? And it's such an interactive table to have where everybody's trying to sell something in particular, right? It's like you have all over the things and it keeps changing because as people come to the table, they bring their own vibes, they're bringing their own things. And I love it. It's like a little bizarre within the bizarre, you know? But the feedback is always great. Throughout the years when we had it,

We always find new people to talk to that to the second day. We're already out of voice. You know, our voice is gone because we text so many people and which is I was a little worried about because I might not have a voice by the time we actually have to speak at a conference. But luckily we were good to go.

Reed (12:36.689)
That's awesome, dude.

Jhonny D (12:36.693)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it feels good to do that stuff, I always say, I repeat this, I don't want to participate in this big meetup, big conference. But then that reels me back in. It's like, OK, we'll have a space that we can kind of make our own and do the organic things that we like to do as Bitcoin organizers. Just show people where your local people are. And just come and make it community-based.

grow organically and just help people kind of find all of us, you know, and that you guys are doing it in digital way. So this is awesome. Yeah.

Reed (13:16.475)
bringing Meetup culture back. That's what we're trying to do here.

Jhonny D (13:18.334)
Exactly, yeah, back to the roots.

Reed (13:21.425)
That's right.

Rev (13:22.911)
So speaking of the roots, how did you actually find or get involved in Bitcoin meetups to begin with? It sounds like Charlotte was kind of this long established culture over there. So how did you find your way into that scene?

Jhonny D (13:38.734)
So I'll touch a little bit into like my Bitcoin origin story, right? The way that I went about Bitcoin was pretty lonely, lonely world to me. You know, I was a crazy word, crazy guy talking to friends and family and telling me to shut up and just stop talking about Bitcoin. But I used to live in New York City when I moved to the United States from Peru. And so I still had family there. When I moved to Charlotte, I always came back to visit them.

As I came back to visit and throughout the years, I started seeing a Bitcoin sticker all over the place, like Subway or here and there. And that's kind of what like triggered my curiosity to figure out what this Bitcoin thing was, you know, like, and after many times, then I started looking into it. There's a lot of, you know, shit information that you can find about Bitcoin and Spanish and English. And I just kept going until finally I found more information.

pull the plug and actually purchase a Bitcoin once I figure out you can buy just a fraction of it and learn more about it. So I did this whole thing by myself for many years up until pandemic came around. And during the pandemic, some friends of mine had a big Burning Man style festival in this big property by the airport here in Charlotte.

It's like a camping thing, you you stay for a few days, music, you name it. It was a lot of fun. I'm dressed up like a mushroom, just like from head to toe, just walking around, wilding out on this little property. And then I noticed this guy and we started talking. And then one word that came out during our, you know, what we were talking about was Bitcoin, but it didn't come from me, it came from him.

So I'm like, wait a second, know, am I tripping? Like what's going on? Like I was not, I had no idea what we were talking about, but then where Bitcoin came around. So next day I'm like, I'm looking for this dude. Like who was this guy? Like he mentioned Bitcoin and defined this. So that happened to be Jacob, Liz's brother. Yeah. So he was like, Hey, so I've been running a Bitcoin meetup for 20, since 2013. I'm like, what's a Bitcoin meetup? Let me find out more about this. So then he,

Jhonny D (15:59.566)
You know, he invited me to one of the meetups. I met some people and I'm just like, there's real people in the world here. They're as crazy as I am. And that's my first interaction with anybody in the real world about Bitcoin. And from then on, I'm like, look, man, I've been doing this for a while by myself and I made all the mistakes there is in this world. So you guys are using this to kind of show people how it is. So let me be part of this, right? Let me help however I can.

I have connections in Charlotte, I can get venues in. We can kind of work together as far as trying to educate people, not to make the mistakes that I do. Because that's what I tell my daughter all the time, learn from somebody else's mistakes. And yeah, and that's how it started back in 2020, 2021 with Bitcoin Charlotte. And just so happened, that's when Liz moved from DC over to Charlotte. So yeah, it just went on from there. Halloween.

all the meetups just started doing more and more. My cousin was an AV or he's an AV. So he helped us with recording some of the meetups that we had, or when we had speakers come in, start recording some of this. So yeah, we started kind of toggling with what to do with what we had, meetups, have people speak, have people come visit us from other places, started Halloween, and then move on through just different things that we always tried out, tried a little conference.

part of Halloween and not just a Halloween party. And then we did the Bitcoin vendor events because I was already selling the hot sauce. I was already attracting a lot of people to Bitcoin through the alpaca that I have with a big Bitcoin chain. Shout out to Crypto Cloaks on that one. But yeah, that's kind of how I started with the meetups. And then I guess I would add to this, after I saw the success and how everything worked.

I'm like, you know, let me apply this in Peru because for the longest time, my cousins and all these people that I love and I grew up with for my neighborhood and whatnot, they just hate me talking about Bitcoin all the time. So my mind was like, well, maybe I've been separated from the Peruvian world for so long because I've been living here for a while. So perhaps a Bitcoin meetup will be a good entry. Right. So let me start one because I couldn't find one. Everything was shit coinry in Latin America at that time as well.

Jhonny D (18:24.686)
So trying to copy what we're doing with Bitcoin Charlotte. Like let me go find some people that are actually down boots in the ground because I'm there but not there as much time as I am in Charlotte, right? Because I live here more than time. So I found a couple guys and we started at Orangeville, Peru and then started having meetups. So whatever I can, I can help. I send people over there.

I communicate with people that want to travel to Peru and then set up a meetup around people visiting Peru. And through that, I learned about Motive Peru because of the Orangeville Peru meetup group. And I was able to meet up with Rick and Valentin, which are two of the founders of Motive Peru. And they pretty much align with what I am in to Bitcoin for, know, like help the people, the people that don't have the resources, access to the banking world.

or whatever we call it. And yeah, I've been working with them as well. So that's kind of how everything kind of came together all from some crazy Bernie Men type party. And it just developed to whatever we're doing nowadays.

Reed (19:32.859)
Dude, Rev, you're on mute, bud.

Rev (19:38.645)
So the time you found the meetup in 2020, the Charlotte meetup, right? Okay. How long did it take you from that, like going to the, it sounds like, it was like me, dude. Your story sounds a lot like me where I show up to this meetup for the first time and I'm like, I found my place. Like this is my spot. Yes. These are my people. And so for me, took about,

Jhonny D (19:42.552)
Yes.

Jhonny D (19:51.703)
Yeah

Rev (20:01.299)
Well, a little over a year before I really started to think about organizing something myself, before I really felt like I understood the vibe and the culture enough to really dip my toes in as an organizer. So for you, how long was it from when you first started to attend the meetup to when...

you you started taking more of an organizational role in Charlotte. And did that organizational role kind of happen at the same time in Peru? Or did you kind of springboard off Charlotte then into Peru?

Jhonny D (20:33.262)
I'm terrible with the timing, but I want to say it was almost right away. I know the first time I went to the meetup, I'm just trying to understand what a meetup is. I haven't even really attended like meetup.com meetups, know, or conferences or anything like that, even though was, you know, into different things. I think that

I'm naturally a very social person and then again, I like to teach what I can because that's the best way for you to learn. For me to learn, mean by teaching and in the once I saw that what the meetups where I think I just went on to like hey, how can I help right? What can I do? I got some resources here that we can use and I think it was. I'm trying to think exactly when it was when we started doing it. Maybe it was.

Because at that time, I have already been taking Bitcoin for my hot sauce. And one of the first meetups that I was really involved in was a workshop that we did for Bitcoin for small businesses. So just kind of present what I've been doing and bring all these people that I knew, like all these normies who come to the Bitcoin meetup, just say, you run a business, you see me at different markets already.

you're being intrigued about it and I have more people that back it all up. So let's come over here and do it. think that was one of the original meetups that I was really part of presenting myself what I have to bring on the table. Other than that, I you know, again, I helped with maybe doing some of the recording, finding some of the venues that we can hold our meetups.

But that is what taught me once I kind of got the groove on things that I can kind of do this remotely in Peru. If I find the right people, they're also interested in forming something that's Bitcoin only. And I get to your llama coins or your kui coins and all these other packet coins that we had going on in Peru at that time. Which is a little hard, you because you see all these established Bitcoin meetups in Peru, but they were all around shit coin and they're very popular.

Jhonny D (22:53.1)
You know, so sometimes I tell the guys, maybe we should just go there and see, we can pull some people from there and kind of see what they're all about. But again, it's easier to say things to do when I'm not even there, right? So that we just kind of toggle with some things in Peru and kind of mimic what we have here. You know, it's like, hey, let's meet up at this place. Let's shout it out. Let's start our page in Nostr and X.

and just promoted and started a Telegram group. Our Telegram group grew up. There's a lot of people that came again just to visit Peru. So was able to get the guys to organize a Bitcoin meetup for them to come and meet the people and then least meet some Bitcoiners on the ground in Lima and kind of show them around. And that also helped with Motive Peru because they had already all these circular economies growing and throughout the whole country that they can go visit and do documentaries. So there's a lot of documentaries out there.

mainly towards like the Motive Peru. I know Isabella and the people from GitBased, Julian, they came and they did, they were part of one of the meetups with Orangeville Peru, but most of their documentary focuses on the about six or seven different circular economies that are formed by Motive Peru. But yeah, that's kind of how it started, know, like kind of

Bitcoin Charlotte helped me kind of formalize a way that I can structure and kind of work with people remotely to mimic it in Lima, Peru. And at the time, I didn't even know there were so many other ones, you know, you guys, you know, I would just, for me, Charlotte was the only meetup in the world at that point.

Rev (24:39.667)
Well, that's so that's like a great example. it's like these crypto meetups have are have kind of been around there around, you know, the the Chicago scene had this Bitcoin on block. I don't know this Bob meetup. And it was like a Bitcoin and crypto kind of meetup. And it was huge for a long time. And so there there must have been something about what Charlotte had going on that was Bitcoin only.

Like what were the aspects that you saw in Charlotte where you're like, okay, these guys have got it figured out. This is the stuff that I need to bring over to Peru to really, you know, clean that crypto stuff up, get it out and really solidify it as this is about Bitcoin circular economies. This is about Bitcoin.

Jhonny D (25:22.83)
I think that due to the fact that it has already been established and had a grand war going since 2013, that helped a lot to kind of make a presence that, this is a Bitcoin only event, right? We did have a couple of people come in and ask about the different coins and seeing the different responses that people will give.

As far as you know, like we had, remember very vividly this, older gentleman that came and it kept asking me about Dogecoin, you know, about how to invest and where he can go get it. And, so for me, that was a good, eye opening for many reasons. Like I went through the shit coin phase as well myself. Again, I made all the mistakes in the world, but before I've met Jacob and the Bitcoin Charlotte group.

I already made up a mind that what the fuck am I doing with this all this shit? You know, and I learned a hard lesson through that, which, I kind of kept it to myself, investing on one coin that I thought was going to be good and then it made good money, but then they retook it. And then they, the team just didn't know how to handle money. They were good software engineers, but they didn't know shit about handling money. So they went bankrupt. I was like, this is a hard lesson to learn. And I'm going to keep those there as a reminder of what not to do.

And and going to the Bitcoin Charlotte meetup, there was no mention on anything about any other coins, you know, and then that was kind of a relief in a way because my introduction to that was like, well, I don't know what I'm going to get into. Right. We talk about Bitcoin. That was it. And I talked to the right person because it wasn't somebody who's like, hey, you know, invest in this and that. was more of like, would you get away from all that introductory part of the crypto world?

that everybody, you you kind of see it from different aspects, like different parts of the world myself as well, is here a lot of people then to surface look at it as an investment or a scam, you know, and everything that comes with it. But then when I met Jacob, it was more of like, okay, you get through all that shit already and you go into the deeper meaning of it. So I didn't even think about it, you know, until you're asking me this question, like, what was the separation that was like, it was already a Bitcoin meetup legitimately.

Jhonny D (27:44.968)
And that's what attracted me more to be like, let me be part of this, right? Like, don't think, like everybody is very genuine about what their intention is to help people learn about this new currency that we have going on instead of just saying like, yeah, buy low, sell high, or look at this chart and whatever the fuck you want. That was never brought up to any of the initial meetups in a hat. So I think that's what kind of sparked a

good example for me to kind of try to start that in Peru and then that's when I really realized how the read the How different it was for me at that point, right because I went through my own my whole face I met people in real life. I started going to the Bitcoin meetup and Started helping organize and then when I try to do that in Peru everything that I found was Every other coin USDC, you know people not really wanted to talk about Bitcoin again my fans and family

I did just think I'm trying to scam them or I'm like brainwashed about something and I'm just like too into this. So it was hard for me to kind of explain it to them without them not having that example. There's only one Bitcoin and then there's many other copies of it, right? So I think going to the Bitcoin Charlotte helped me because I didn't see that at all. So I didn't have to fight through it until I tried to do it through Peru. And then that's what

like opened my eyes. like, okay, well then how do I find just people that didn't care about Bitcoin in Peru? Because it seems like nobody does, you know, and everybody is mainly trying to make money, which is understandable. mean, like people are just trying to make it somehow, you know, in the country, there's just a lot more poverty and a lot more issues, I believe. And thankfully, at that point, I think my first conference that I really went to

I can't remember if it was Miami. Yeah, it was Miami. But then I went to adopt in Bitcoin in El Salvador. And that's pretty much was like, okay, there's Latinos out there. They're only focused on Bitcoin. So let me focus on this little group to find my people. And that's where I found Diego. Diego is the other founder of the motive. I'm sorry, not motive, but Orange Build Peru.

Jhonny D (30:07.918)
And we met each other in a Telegram group from adopting Bitcoin when I was just like, Hey, anybody from Peru that cares about just Bitcoin? And that's how we linked up. And he's like, Hey, we actually have a couple more people too. They get about doing this thing that you're talking about, you know, start a meetup group and it's just Bitcoin only and just focus on that. So that made it an easy transition. How all this dots just kind of came together for that. Right. It's like, happened to me to go from here to there. then.

to find people in Peru from El Salvador. It's just crazy, but that's how it worked. And then we finally met at another Adaptive Bitcoin in real life with the people like Diego and all these other guys that started at Orangeville, Peru.

Rev (30:50.293)
So it sounds like what Charlotte really showed you is like what to look for. These are the kind of people that I need to know and to work with to now bolster this new meetup scene in Peru remotely. They had laid the groundwork for like, this is what it should feel like. This is what the culture is. And once you know it and you can feel it when you meet that right person, now you can go and do it somewhere else.

Jhonny D (30:55.436)
Right, yeah.

Rev (31:19.623)
Another thing is, so I get it, like in a place where maybe you're like you're saying you're trying to make money and you're going to use any means, whether that's USDC or any other shit coin or whatever, you're still focused on the culture is the Peruvian culture and you're just trying to get by in Peru. Now, what's happening here in the US is a little different because the way I see Bitcoin is it's actually defining border for a new culture.

And so this is where being Bitcoin only becomes important because if you're like you're selling your hot sauce for Bitcoin, we should talk about that. like that's where the if you sell yourself, if you go to I'm sure maybe you've even tried this. Maybe you show up at a market and you say, I'll accept whatever. I'll take Bitcoin. I'll take Ethereum. I'll take any any shit coin. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of sales that you get are going to be for Bitcoin. That's what people have. Bitcoin is the most liquid of as far as like a peer to peer.

circular economy, I'm selling my goods and services to another individual, the likelihood that somebody's going to have anything other than Bitcoin is very low. And so that's what makes it so attractive as the thing to focus on. And so that kind of leads me into the story with the llama and the big Bitcoin chain. think that was like when I met you in grassroots, I just remember that the pictures was like this iconic story.

Jhonny D (32:36.294)
Yeah.

Rev (32:43.701)
And so how did you utilize that technique with the LAM and everything to try and promote people accepting Bitcoin at these farmers markets and at these markets?

Jhonny D (32:56.884)
Yeah, I tend to tell people, so we named it. It's called Rocoto, R-O-C-O-T-O. So named after the pepper we use for all of our hot sauces right now. And so yeah, I tell people that Rocoto was the biggest orange pillar, you know, more than me, you know, because of that. I am trying to remember when is the first time we put a gold chain on it.

I can't remember what it was, but it's been a while ago. I stole that alpaca from my mom, you know, because she had it and they were like, that'd a cool addition to our booth just to attract people. then just because it looks cool. And ever since we replaced it for her, right. But now it's such an iconic thing that represents what we do.

And that's why I bring it to all the tables every time we have a like the Bitcoin conference is always there. Or if I travel somewhere, I'll take it with me. It's been to El Salvador, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, of course. But that again, by itself helped me a lot because it's struck the curiosity from other vendors to say, what's up with this coin? What's up with this llama? And why is it the Bitcoin llama?

It's an alpaca, but I'm okay with people calling it a llama. I'm fine with it. I do try to push more of the alpaca because that was kind of like the silent mascot in Bitcoin because back in the day, there's a kid that got his parents to sell alpaca socks for a lot of Bitcoin and that kind of became the alpaca story in that world. So that was another point that I was trying to make like, okay, alpaca, Bitcoin, cool. Let's put a chain on it.

But yeah, the first time we did an actual Bitcoin market was a side event for Halloween. And I think we had six vendors at that time, which three of them were already Bitcoiners. But then the other three or four were people that I pulled from markets. They already knew me. So they had that trust with me that, OK, let me introduce you to this new thing. I'm doing an event. Just come show up, sell your stuff.

Jhonny D (35:14.542)
At that time I was introduced into vendors to Bitcoin through cash app. So I'm like, you're already familiar with it. You don't have to download something new, learn about keys. Like I don't want to complicate your world to starting point, right? Once you get to that point, yeah, okay, we'll show you this and this. And then if you want to learn more, that's what we're here for. That's what we do the meetups just to introduce people to this whole new world. But that was a good entry point.

That helped a lot and then those members, those vendors are still part of the vendor events that we're doing to this day. You know, the next one will be this Sunday. And I think throughout the time it's so crazy. Like I tell people in their Bitcoin Charlotte group, I do these events in many places, right? I like to be in new places that I haven't been to, whether it be like a music festival or some city.

celebration or brewery and whatnot. And I've done a few, know, like Charlotte is a big banking city and I have done a few events inside the big bank of America building. And you'd be surprised how many people like, Bitcoin llama. just came over here because you had a Bitcoin on your, on your thing. I'm intrigued. What do you have? Like I have hot sauce. I sell for Bitcoin. What? I didn't know you can spend Bitcoin. I'm just holding it for fucking investment.

Like, how do you do this? So then I'm like, okay, let's go this, do that, send it here, now you can pay me. So I had so many people that I've never seen to the Bitcoin meetups that we had that they're Bitcoiners. They're like all these silent Bitcoiners that get out because they see Rocoto with his gold chain, Bitcoin. And like, I love that stuff, man. I love having people that come through me and it's just like silent people that I would never expect to be a Bitcoiner.

And that has helped me and board a lot of the vendors to the markets that we have to, you know, because now I have a couple more things on my table, this is Bitcoin, especially with Square, given all these free stickers away, I have them all over the place. But the main thing everybody looks at is that and it attracts kids and attracts like people with pets, like dogs always like, what the hell is that?

Jhonny D (37:24.192)
And then you hear little kids saying like, Hey, Bitcoin llama, Bitcoin llama. So that feels good too. Like little kids just walking around like six, seven years old already saying, dude, look at the Bitcoin llama. look at the Bitcoin llama. So it's like that, that that's always great. They'd already know what Bitcoin is, right? Just by looking at a beat on the llama. But yeah, that, that, that Rocoto by itself has been, has been such a great addition. And, and some people try to buy it from me I'm like, you know, that that's such an iconic one and it's not going away.

But it's going through it, know, like his head is about to come off. It's like, need to fix it all the time. And when I took it to MediDat to the Bitcoin conference over there, that was the one time I got stopped. And I thought they were gonna tear it apart because they thought there was something on it. Yeah, they put me to the side. They took me to the room. They start asking me all kinds of questions. And I'm like, I have no idea, man.

What is the fur treated with? They think they had like liquid cocaine on it. What's inside? I was like, shit, what's happening here? But luckily they let me in. They just gave me a warning. It's like, don't ever come back with this to this country. It's like, okay, sure. And then the other time, which is funny enough, I took it to the conference when Trump and RFK was there and you know, there was a lot of security. There was secret service there.

This time when I took it to Vegas this time around I got stopped again and security this guy was super cool man I thought he was just trying to get a picture. You know he wasn't like a hard-ass asshole He was just like hey, can you come in to the side and he talked to you like what's up? It's like what is this? He's like I'm only allowed to get I mean I'm only allowing people to come in with a backpack. That's the rule right now

So we can take a picture of it. He like carried it, asked me so many questions. Then we started talking about Peru and he wants to go to Peru. And I'm like, well, here's my car, man. Let me know I do tourism in Peru. We became buds immediately. He said, you know what, man? You're good to go. I know where to find you. Because I was like, we're at this table. Don't worry about it. He's like, you're good, man. If I need you, I know where to find you. I'm like, that's where it's going to be. But that was the only issue I had with it. But yeah, Rocoto is where it's at. And there's a group.

Jhonny D (39:40.14)
man, have to, I always forget for some reason that I met in Adopt and Bitcoin last time I was there and they actually made a cartoon for kids off Rokoto. So there's like a little YouTube video clip that they made of it just to kind of teach kids about the alpaca story and Bitcoin. What was it? Free kid? Yeah.

Reed (40:04.187)
You know what's funny about that alpaca story is that the place that sold the alpaca socks, I don't know, 2011, like way back in the day, they're really close to my meetup. They're like 20 minutes from where I live. so, yeah, their business is still on like BTC maps or something like that. And it's like right nearby. And so one of our members went there because they still sell alpaca socks. And he was like,

Jhonny D (40:12.791)
Yeah.

Jhonny D (40:17.538)
What?

Reed (40:33.553)
So like, you accept Bitcoin? And they're like, oh, well, no, our son did and he moved away or something and they didn't know how to do it anymore. But yeah, it's funny. There's some weird history stuff, like Bitcoin history stuff nearby our area.

Jhonny D (40:56.526)
Well, that is awesome. Well, I'm going to put that down on the list to do. Maybe I'll visit that place and take out a rocoto there with me. That'd be crazy. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I do remember it because I shared a story and people always ask me about that. And from what I understood, they stopped taking the big belly and know that place was still there.

Reed (40:59.013)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reed (41:05.571)
there you go.

Reed (41:16.091)
Boom. Yeah.

Yeah, they're still there. They just don't accept Bitcoin anymore. So hey, I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the – is it Saturday markets? You have markets in Charlotte. If you want to tell us – I'd love to – we talk a lot actually on this show about circular economies and people do lots of – around the country, there's lots of different people who are bringing stuff to meetups and selling stuff.

Jhonny D (41:23.246)
Interesting.

Jhonny D (41:32.716)
Yes.

Reed (41:46.396)
But the market that you guys are doing is a bigger thing. And I'd love to hear how that got started or what you know about how it got started and how many vendors are there and what the traffic is like. If there's people, outside people coming in or is it all Bitcoiners? How does that market go?

Jhonny D (41:55.544)
Yeah, of course.

Jhonny D (42:04.622)
Well, so it started as a side event for Halloween, you know, because I was already doing markets with the hot sauce and with the alpaca that attracted a few vendors to accept Bitcoin. And we had mainly like six or seven vendors. So the first time again, I'm bad with timing. So that was a few years ago. After that, we thought

why don't we do this more often, right? Just as his own event without being a side event from Halloween and started organizing that event every quarter. So once every four months. Since I already ran a couple events myself through the hot sauce and just through vendor friends. I was like, yeah, I'll take home through this. Let's keep going it. But it was here and there.

We started doing it at this place called Southern Strain Brewery, a smaller brewery in a neighborhood called Plaza Midwood in Charlotte. So we had, again, six to seven vendors the first time. The second time we kind of took over the street as well and we had a food truck. We probably had, I don't know, 10 vendors, 12, 13. Yeah, there's...

There's a lot more for sure. So maybe even like 14 vendors that we had at that time. And then we did that a couple more times. Funny enough, the vendors kind of keep changing. There was a few of the core members that kept coming back, but we always kind of stayed around that average of like 12, 14 vendors. Once we realized we're outgrowing this place, and we try to use places they accept Bitcoin themselves.

So the brewery was one of the first places that we started doing our Bitcoin meetups and started the vendor event. So there was another place that I onboarded called Great Wagon Road Distillery. So it was a distillery around the road in another neighborhood in Charlotte called Noda. And they were very happy to start accepting Bitcoin. They actually were looking for me. They were like, hey, you're the Bitcoin guy. We heard about you. Can you help us do this? And then

Jhonny D (44:16.204)
got him onboarded to Bitcoin and they had a bigger parking lot. So once we outgrew Southern Strait Brewery, we asked them if we can go ahead and start doing our events there. From there, think funny enough, every single event that we did there, we had 21 vendors. It was like some would call out, some would come in, but at the end we only had 21 vendors. was like magic number, let's go.

So we read that one a few times until now recently, as far as the foot traffic goes, I think it was steady enough that vendors were getting sales, but it wasn't high traffic. The vendors were like, okay, this was a good one, right? That was kind of like the tough thing that I'm always trying to crack, trying to figure out how to track vendors.

I feel like the response generally in Charlotte was a little bit like, it's a Bitcoin market. I don't want to be part of it. It's a Bitcoin market. Like even friends of mine were like, hey, thank you for inviting me to your Bitcoin market. I don't know anything about Bitcoin. So I don't think I'm going to go. I'm like, well, we'll have a tent. They'll give you education. You can also pay vendors with any other means of payment. They just accept Bitcoin as well. But that kind of scared people a lot.

So we had a lot of Bitcoiners that come through. We have some people that were already at the distillery come through the vendors because they were like, okay, let's check out to see what these people had. We try to be interactive as well. I brought in friends that were DJs to kind of set the mood, the vibes with the beats and stuff like that. The last one that we had, friends in the band came and really good feedback on that. They were just jamming out in the background and set really good mood.

We had lot more people come through. couldn't tell you numbers. going to say like, we have a four hour spam on these markets and then probably had like 50 to 70 people come. But again, throughout the day, you know, so there's just like foot traffic coming in until not everybody at once. And then, now I reach out to one of the busiest, biggest breweries here in town called Old MacLumber Brewing.

Jhonny D (46:35.262)
And after many back and forth and many miscommunications and whatnot, we were able to lock them in. now they're wanting to do it. Originally they wanted to do it in July 26, but then the GM contacted me again last month and was like, can we do it in May? So I was like, cause I gave him dates throughout the whole end of the year. They handle one of the biggest markets there is in Charlotte, which is a Christmas market, which starts in.

like Black Friday weekend all the way to the last weekend before Christmas. And now they open another location about 40 minutes south. And both of those locations are just, you know, the biggest markets are like, all the vendors want to get in there. I had a little bit of help too, because the girl that organizes these vendor events I went to high school with. So I had a way in through there. I was like, hey, would you guys be open to partner with us to do this?

And I was very upfront to be like, this is going to be a Bitcoin market. We are rebranding it as the local block market, just to not scare too many people away, but still in the flyer, it mentions Bitcoin. We have the llama picture. And yeah, again, after a lot of back and forth, they were game for us. Then we have a meeting and that's when the GM finally brought up the whole Bitcoin thing. We also have a game, a very old school Peruvian game, which is called Sapo.

which is frog in Spanish. Everybody around here calls it the Peruvian corn hole. It's a board with a lot of holes in it, in a metal or a brass frog in the middle. And you toss these coins from about 12 feet away. And every time I did a market with just a hot sauce, I tried to just get people to get it into the frog's mouth. We turn it into a Bitcoin game because every single pocket has

points that you accumulate, know, whoever gets the most points wins and the points start at, I think, at 100 all the way to 4,000. So the idea was people pay a thousand Satoshis and whatever you make in, you get in Satoshis. So you make a thousand Satoshis, accumulated the points out of 10 coins toss, you get that many. But if you make it into the frog's mouth, you get a hundred thousand Satoshis, which was what everybody was trying for. Nobody made it. My dad's pretty good at it, but he didn't make it either.

Jhonny D (48:54.882)
the times that we were running it. We thought about bringing that as well to this market, but unfortunately this bigger brewery have a little bit more rules. So they're like, okay, no, that sounds a lot more like gambling. So we're not gonna do that. I'm still gonna bring the game for bragging rights as I usually did, you know, but we're not gonna be paying out Satoshi's as we did. Maybe down the line, I'll organize a little event where we just do a little tournament like that, but we'll figure that out later. But yeah, so the new...

Vendor market will be the local block market. We'll hold it this Sunday at Old Maccabit Brewery in the neighborhood called Lozo, which is lower south end. So they have two locations now. And it'll be from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. We have one vendor that comes all the time since the very first one from the Asheville group. So here in the mountains about three hours away, they always come to our meetups.

I mean, I'm sorry, they always come to our market. So they'll be there from Asheville. And we have all these other people that come in. And since I do a lot of the farmers markets, there's going to be like honey, produce, sugar cane, hot sauce, of course, and just another sauce, there's jewelry, there's handcrafted things, there's other members, they have their own services like AI consultations. And of course we have the Bitcoin Charlotte booth where we

teach people about Bitcoin, educate everybody, invite them to our meetups. Yeah, it's gonna be great. I can't wait for this one. This is gonna be definitely a bigger and better market that we're gonna have because the place itself, we're gonna have it, it's always packed. Like that one is already gonna have foot traffic going on and we're gonna be right in the middle.

Rev (50:45.119)
So it sounds like...

Reed (50:45.187)
And what was the date and time of that? What was the date of that one?

Jhonny D (50:49.036)
So that is this Sunday, May 24th from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time. and I like to mention this to take a opportunity that you guys give me the platform to share all of this, what we're doing as well. One of the vendors, so it's a friend of mine that just got into Bitcoin. So she's been a normie for a while. What her booth is doing is reselling

products from Bitcoin vendors from all over. want to, you know, just work out with her some type of deal. Last time we did it with LFO games and then BTC pins and also Bitcoin cacao. So they said they were products and she sells them. She's going to be back in July 26 to do that.

So if anybody listening that wants to sell you physical products, our vendor event on July 26, please reach out to me and I'll contact you to Nicole so you guys can work something out and see how it works out. I know Soapminer already told me that he's interested in doing it for July 26. But yeah, everybody's welcome. We're trying to make it again like the Bitcoin Bazaar within the Bazaar. So there's gonna be one tent dedicated to open up for everybody else to come.

Even CoinDad is going to bring his, like a smaller version of his Bitcoin Museum and a lot of Bitcoin memorabilia that he's collected throughout the years. He's going to be a vendor on July 26 as well.

Rev (52:21.941)
So sounds like you have, you've come at this, you started off with the markets for the hot sauce. And were you always trying to accept Bitcoin when you were selling that hot sauce? Was that how it started?

Jhonny D (52:29.795)
Yes.

Jhonny D (52:35.31)
Yeah, yeah. I, so ever since the first time I did a market, I used to work this corporate job at this place called Red Ventures, which is at the border of North and South Carolina. This place had a big campus and at the time I was, my title was a performance coach. So I had a team of sales people that would coach and help them sell.

One of my agents signed up for the market they were having there. So I had to freaking walk her over to the meeting. So when I get there, everyone is like, hey, don't you have something to bend because we need more vendors. We need to make this bigger event going. And at the time I was just selling like a big 16 ounce jar of the hottest one to friends and family. They asked for it because it came to a lot of the parties where we had the hot sauce. I mean, I don't really have anything legit, man.

I can't be selling. They're like, well, it doesn't matter. This is just employees only. We're going to here. You know, nobody's going to come here and be like, Hey, this is nice. The approved whatever case may be. So I was like, okay, well, there you go. So then I made up a sticker with my dad's face and he's like Delgado's Fuego is what I called it because everybody at the time said your hot sauce is fire. My last name is Delgado. It's made it fucking easy for us. Delgado's Fuego stuck with it. So yeah. And then I was selling it there.

And I remember, you know, the learning curves that you go through at the time I was like, I'm just coming in to sell. And then people like, how can I pay with Venmo? I'm like, I don't know what Venmo is. Can you pay with Cash App? I have no idea what Cash App is. I take Bitcoin and I take cash. They're like, well, Bitcoin takes forever because now I got to sit here for a transaction to go through and see if it goes through. I'm like, oh shit. And then they're like, well, there's this thing, Ethereum is a lot faster. I'm like, OK, I'll take that too.

So then I was taking cash Bitcoin and Ethereum or ETH at that time. And then I learned, you know, like to take, I did that market probably, I think twice. So like one year, two years in a row at that location. And then I learned about Cash App, I learned about Venmo. So I was using those. And then after that, my official first marketing to the public was like a year later.

Jhonny D (54:54.05)
But then at that time, I think I was only taking Bitcoin because I already learned my lessons. But yeah, my original business cards have like my Bitcoin address and an Ethereum address as well. But yeah, I started taking Bitcoin way back then for the hot sauce, which it was very minimum. Like I barely get anybody, you know, and I don't remember when is the first time I got the chain for the alpaca.

Well, at that point, I didn't even have the alpaca on the table. But anyways, yeah, so that's way before I got into Bitcoin Charlotte for sure.

Rev (55:33.331)
Well, and what makes me curious is what made you think to even try to earn the Bitcoin to begin with? What was the impetus for you to say, hey, I accept Bitcoin too, in addition to cash?

Jhonny D (55:48.622)
I think through the learning process that I had and I was still hesitant on the whole Bitcoin world, especially

Jhonny D (56:03.48)
just I guess the information that was getting. So my thought was, and it's always, it still is, know, so I tell people the same thing. Like I like to, this is how I like to obtain my Bitcoin is to offer a product or a service. And every time there's voting, whether it is voting in Peru for whatever thing is or United States, that's when I buy Bitcoin. Cause that's my way to vote.

that's always been my norm since then, you know, so offers a product and service. And that's why I started taking Bitcoin. It's like, okay, as I'm learning this and I have a little bit money here, might as well sell it and have people, you know, see, see, and then, and then also find Bitcoiners that way. but originally the thought was like, let me just offer my, my hot sauce for Bitcoin. just because, you know, I can in.

And that's a way for me to obtain it because back then it was what local Bitcoin trying to find somebody in the streets and try to send it and some crazy shit. And then Coinbase came through and they got hacked. So my info was out there. It was like, my God, if I offer this, maybe they'll just give it to me. It'll come to me instead of me going to it. You know, so that was kind of the thought originally format.

Rev (57:25.119)
So you take, go ahead, Reed.

Reed (57:25.201)
So we talked quite a bit about what you got going on Charlotte. We talked a bit about what you got going on in Peru. I guess maybe one final question I had for you about the Peru kind of scene is, so I know you guys have like in Charlotte, you guys have a lot of different types of meetups. We talked about the Socratic seminar, you've got other social hangout ones, you've got the market thing. What kind of meetups they got going like?

So you started the one in Lima, but there are other meetups there too. What's the meetup scene like in Peru these days for Bitcoin?

Jhonny D (57:59.512)
Yeah.

Jhonny D (58:07.214)
So the main two, there's one called the Bitcoin, Kerim exactly, but that every time they have something, it is more crypto. So they call themselves Bitcoin Meetup, but this is a lot more crypto going on there. I never attended any of them. I don't think any of our members have either. Maybe we have some people that come to both events, but I never talked to them about how they go.

I do know they have more sponsorships, of course, the restaurant, they make some money out of there. The ones that we handle with Orangeville Peru, it varies really. When I go visit, of course, we'll have a meetup. We try to meet up at a brewery, we try to meet up at a coffee shop, we try to bring whatever we can to the table. We have some Socratic seminars, so anytime somebody, there's a guy named Guillermo, he lives.

a little farther than Lima. So when he comes into town, try to formalize an event around when everybody can meet up. We try starting a BitDebs as well, but that has moved more into the digital form. So it's more like this, you know, we do it like a Zoom call, BitDebs, trying to grow up something like that as well. And then now Multi Peru started his own meetup. Some of the Orangeville Peru guys went as well. I'd love to know to come.

And then I think that is what's happening with Orangeville Peru, right? We're trying to board people. think more noise happens online. So more noise happens in the Telegram group. Anybody wants to join orangevilleperu.com, you can find all the links to it. And then we try to organize a meetup every 21st or around the 21st when everybody is able to do their schedules.

Lima is also a terrible place for traffic, like just, you know, traffic on the road. So it's always hard to try to get to some places and that limits a lot of the people's availability to try to make it to certain events. With Motel Peru, it gets a little bit more in depth, more, a lot bigger than a meetup. I do encourage everybody to kind of come see what we're having, what we have going on all over Peru because it's mind blowing.

Jhonny D (01:00:31.438)
is all over the place. Every time I talk to Valentin and then I want to see what the Motive Peru team are doing, it's always something new, then I can't grasp it. So last time they went to one of the biggest financial universities to talk about Bitcoin and they got some good feedback. We got a couple of Fedy federations going on as well.

There are certain places that only sell potable water through Bitcoin, tourism. You can visit Machu Picchu using Bitcoin. The newest thing they were trying to push right now, so we did a big event in Huanchaco, which is up north. It's a beach that has the longest side wave in the world. Yeah, longest running wave. So we did an event called Copa Bitcoin. So it's a surf cup.

Kind of was born in a idea through El Salvador that they have a lot of Bitcoin Beach, you know, a lot of surfing events We also have a lot of surfing going on in Lima Peru and all over Peru as well So that was born last year around September and we're doing a bigger and better again this year around my birthday since September 19th and 18 19th and 20th, which I'm trying to go but I'm still Trying to figure it out if I can make it or not But yeah the whole town of one charcoal like the the city officials there on board

bunch of businesses would try to make it more attainted to kind of like a mini conference this time around instead of just the cups, the surf cup, but the whole town is painted orange. There's big Bitcoin signs everywhere. It's like the whole city transformed into a Bitcoin city for just that event. And this is the second year we're doing it. So yeah, so if you focus more on like what Motive Peru is doing is just like by far so much.

so much bigger than what we do with the Bitcoin meetups in Orangeville, Peru. So the idea is always to kind of work together and what we're doing. But again, it's harder for me to kind of organize anything being not put to the ground. But we're still there. Everybody's still trying to figure out when we can do things and then implement.

Jhonny D (01:02:49.112)
Things that I learned here or people learn from their travels as well. There's other guys there from Peru that travel to other conferences. There's some people, they already moved to Peru from here because they found it a very nice place to live and affordable. So that always helps too when people come visit and always want to move there and share their stories and we organize meetups around that as well.

Rev (01:03:14.581)
So one thing that's really interesting to me about visiting Peru is the idea that I can pay for my stay in Bitcoin. What are the mechanisms? If they want to come there and they want to take a vacation or whatever, come to one of these events and they want to stay somewhere, is there a mechanism in which they can pay in Bitcoin and have a place to stay?

Jhonny D (01:03:25.25)
Yeah.

Jhonny D (01:03:42.188)
Yeah, absolutely. So we do to the fact that a lot of people show interest in seeing what Motif Peru is doing. We linked up with two of the main companies that do tourism in Peru and Orange building, right? So now it's like any tourist company. You come and say, hey, this is when I'm coming. This is how long I'm coming for.

And this is where I want to see you whether I want to go do a Yahuasca over here or want to go see Machu Picchu or want to stay at this hotel or want to go somewhere more remote to see what the circular economy looks like and kind of help out or spend my sats there We can formulate that you know I have right now packages around the copa surf that we're doing in September You know one is you always have to travel to Lima That's the International Airport before you take another flight to one Chaco, which is a few hours out

So we have a package and everything can be customized, of course. There's some people that like to just come in and spend their time doing the touristy sites and maybe add in a couple more through circular economies if they're in the area or places that they spend the Bitcoin. But nowadays you can stay in many hotels, different, you know, three, four, five stars that take Bitcoin, grocery shopping, the tourism as well. Again, you can go to

much Pichu and paying Bitcoin and everything is facilitated by the companies that we work with. We're pretty, we always try to tell people Motive Peru is not a tourism company, but we do work with a tourism company that can accommodate the package as you want it. There's a few people that come in and done those tours. Eric from Bitcoin is for everyone. He's done a tour in Peru with the people that I send them to.

They're seasoned travelers, right? So they don't like the, hey, I have to be here a certain time. I can only see this place for two hours and then go to the car and go over there. So they customize everything for them to be like, okay, you can just chill here as long as you want. But if you want to do this tour, you can do this too as well. And everything can be formed from there to your like, you know? So anytime you guys would like to.

Jhonny D (01:06:03.32)
find out how that works, all the packages that we already have in place, just reach out to me. Also, the unknown, the show notes, I think I sent it to you guys, motiveparu.ngo. You can also contact the team directly if I'm not available, and we can always help you how to do the travel. You can learn more about the event and what we do with the circular economies throughout the whole country.

Rev (01:06:31.229)
And so that's been like years in the making. sounds like you guys have been working on that. It's a slow grind, It's always small permaculture, right? Small and slow solutions. You work your way into these things. If you try and hyper Bitcoin A's too fast, it just becomes a cash grab. And it's not a real circular economy, right? Everyone's just flipping back into fiat or whatever shit coin they prefer if it's the llama coin or whatever they like down there. But, you know,

Jhonny D (01:06:34.79)
yeah.

Jhonny D (01:06:41.761)
Yeah.

Rev (01:07:00.905)
Talk about boots on the ground. you've been, so not only are you playing around in Charlotte, organizing these markets there and participating in that, you're playing around in Peru, you're helping to facilitate the circular economy there, but you also have this event coming up at PubKey, right? Bitcoin en Espanol.

Jhonny D (01:07:20.492)
Yeah, yeah, thank you for bringing that up. So the idea came from a friend of mine from Costa Rica, Melissa. We were talking about how we wanna do something more fun, know, something not just like a conference-like thing. And well, I mentioned the guys at PubKey are great. And I don't think there's ever been a Spanish-only event at their location. This is kind of before they opened the DC location.

But we also thought about doing it at both places at the same time or one after the other, because there is people coming from all over. I have people from Mexico, Costa Rica. I'll be representing Peru, Argentina, and Puerto Rico. So we have a few different speakers coming in to just tell everybody what's going on in the different locations around Bitcoin.

And I think that would be very beneficial because, you know, me living in New York, there's a lot of Spanish speaking population there that I don't know how much information they're getting. I know some of the Bitcoin organize meetup organizers around Brooklyn, New York, Manhattan, the Bronx and, you know, everything's in English. So, yeah, so I think that was a great idea to have something. It's going to be around the it's going to be July 11th.

And the actual meetup is going to be in between both semi final games for the World Cup. So in between then people are going to be at the bar anyways, enjoying the freaking World Cup. And as I tell everybody, don't be scared. Everybody there is going to be bilingual. So even if you don't understand what's going on during the talks that we're going to be having in the conference room, we're going to still going to be hanging out, chilling. I know Ariel, he's coming from Argentina and he

We're trying to work with the Pupke guys to figure out some type of beef steak or asado during the time that we're there. So we're still trying to work out how we can work onto that. But that was something, know, Argentina, they're big on their asados or their grilling. so hopefully that makes it happen. If not, we're still going to figure something out around there. But it'll be fun. Everybody's welcome to it. It's a free event, of course. It'll be a Pupke July 11th.

Jhonny D (01:09:45.004)
Yeah, so I know the show notes will have this at land is link if you want to register so that way we got some RSVPs going and I'm also listing who's going to be speaking. Of course, you're going to be able to get some hot sauce for me and Melissa and that he is going to be sharing their books as well. They wrote a couple of books about Bitcoin and they'll be selling them at the event as well.

Reed (01:10:14.257)
Yeah, dude. That's awesome to hear about. I was listening to you talk on another podcast that was just the other week with fundamentals. And it was interesting to hear too about how the time you spent in New York and I guess I was kind of wondering, know, what – so now you're going back to New York, right, for this PubKey event. Are you looking forward to that? You got people in the city that you're going to meet up with or, you know, are you looking forward to going back to New York City?

Jhonny D (01:10:25.794)
Yeah.

Jhonny D (01:10:44.668)
yeah, for sure man. I, you know, when I first moved here from the United States, that's where I lived. I lived in Hell's Kitchen. I lived in Jamaica, Queens. My family migrated all up north. They're kind of scattered now. Some of them come this way. So I, I feel like a lot of the times when I was in New York, a lot of the friends that I met were tourists. So was hard to keep up with some of them.

funny enough, pub key has been my go-to place every time I go back now, you know, so, so I'm glad to be back and that's my hangout spot. And then I met a few people from New York that I meet up with as well. I shout to Tessa, she's going to be there. I met her at actually a Vegas last year and she happened to be from New York. So every time I go there, I meet up with her at pub key. And, know, of course the whole team in, pub key, is also always awesome to meet up with. I have some family still there that I see.

And so I'll be able to see them there because I haven't been there since January when I went there to move my grandpa to down to North Carolina. Yeah, so it'll be nice to see all these people and new people coming in and just kind of show them around where I used to live. Yeah.

Reed (01:12:05.297)
All right, well, I think we're going to be starting to transition here to the second part of our show. But before we do, I know we talked about just a whole giant wide-ranging list of topics. But guess, Johnny, I wanted to start with you and see if you had any kind of final thoughts or anything that you wanted to mention that you didn't get a chance to or any kind of key takeaways from this conversation.

Jhonny D (01:12:30.796)
Yeah, I just want to thank you guys for what you're doing. This is awesome. know, just give everybody a platform to talk about what we're doing because I think that's needed for sure. You know, we try to do it within our communities. Whenever we meet up, we talk about what we do. And that's what attracts me the most about Bitcoin. know, it's community, how we can help each other. What are you doing right? What am I doing wrong? And help each other and grow that way. So, so yeah.

Definitely appreciate what you guys are doing. Thank you for having me and let me explain all the aspects that I have going on with the Bitcoin world and in my hot sauce and go get my hot sauce. Delgazosfuego.com is delicious. Hopefully, Pupkey will carry it somehow, someway at the DC location. And Forking Coin, anybody out there in the world of Bitcoin that has some type of restaurant

anything like that they would like to collab with us, please let me know. I would love to get into any of those businesses around the United States or anywhere else, you know. Here in Charlotte, I was able to get into a very fancy restaurant called Caroline Oyster Bar. So they use one of our hot sauces for their oysters. So I'm hoping to be first of many. But after talking to Harrison from New York City, he made a question that, stupidly enough, I never thought about.

We were at Beefsteak in Vegas and he's like, what are the top five companies you like to work with in the Bitcoin world with your hot sauce? I'm like, I don't know. guess, yeah, PupKey, Fork and Coin, but he's like, there's a lot of people that work food and whatnot. I'm I never thought about searching for these people. Or, you know, just, I hear is like, okay, let me get into it. So yeah, anybody out there that would like to do some collaboration with this delicious Peruvian hot sauce, please hit me up.

And yeah, and if you guys, anybody listening wants to meet and find your own people in the Bitcoin world, don't hesitate to start your own meetup because it's very easy. Even if you have three, four, five people, that's how we started. And this podcast will help you get in touch with everybody in your local community or somebody that you can reach out to. Any questions are open for us to help you in your journey.

Reed (01:14:56.123)
Sweet. How about you, Rev?

Rev (01:14:59.305)
You know, what I'm hearing from this conversation is that Johnny, you've got this perfect mix, man. It sounds like you've got the charisma, you know, where you can go to the airport and you can basically just like, instead of being interrogated, you're like orange-pilling the people, right? And so when you take that, you build up the social capital by just being involved. Like one of the questions that I had that I didn't really get to ask tonight was like, how do you have the time?

Jhonny D (01:15:17.184)
Yeah.

Rev (01:15:29.525)
to be involved in all this stuff. regardless, somehow you find a way to do it and be involved. You build up the social capital and then you take it and you amplify that in order to just build this, just propagate Bitcoin cultural capital and show people like, look, this is very important and it's gonna benefit you.

Clearly, that must be the way that you're getting all these merchants to start accepting Bitcoin, know, paint Peru orange, you know, with that big surfing event, all that stuff. And so it just goes to show like over time, the longer... Also, it sounds like you've been involved in Bitcoin for a long time. And so over time, the more that, you know, I say it over and over again,

The more you give to Bitcoin, the more you give in and you just dedicate yourself to it, the more you get out of it. And so it's seeming like it's starting to snowball for you. And it's just a fantastic story. The Charlotte Bitcoin scene is obviously the place where you got your start. It's a great Bitcoin culture there. And so Liz has been a part of that. I'm sure we're going to hear from

other people from Charlotte in the future. But this is just another great example of like how you can, well, and the other thing I didn't mention is fun, right? You got to make it fun, right? The alpaca, you know, the llama with the gold chain, that's fun, man. And that's what it just starts getting people to be curious. And so these are all kinds of techniques, right? You just, you be friendly with everyone. You don't push too hard.

Jhonny D (01:17:03.246)
Yeah. Oh yeah.

Rev (01:17:20.885)
You make it fun and then once you got the relationships you start to see where you can take it further and it leads to all of this stuff where you've got 17 different things going on at once. It's beautiful. Reed, did you have any thoughts?

Jhonny D (01:17:33.539)
Thank you.

Reed (01:17:37.798)
Yeah, guess I've been, the last couple of episodes, I keep coming back to this, consistency and variety. And man, you guys got all kinds of different variety going on down in Charlotte. And then now you're taking that, like a lot of the stuff you learned in Charlotte and you're spreading it all around, You're bringing those lessons learned down to Peru and trying to develop the Bitcoin scene down there. And then you're bringing some of that fire.

kind of up to New York City, right? And so it's like, you're revisiting your past and spreading Bitcoin into all those areas, which is so awesome to hear about. But yeah, we're just so glad that you could come on and talk about all the different stuff you got going on. It's such an impressive resume and all the different areas that you're participating in the Bitcoin economy and all the meetups. And so, yeah, man, thanks again for coming on 100%.

Jhonny D (01:18:10.424)
Mm-hmm.

Jhonny D (01:18:39.17)
Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you, you guys, man. Again, give me and all of us a platform to be able to share what we do.

Reed (01:18:47.153)
Sweet. All right. Well, I think we're going to start transitioning to the second part of our show. So Johnny, we told you beforehand, you're welcome to stick around. And while we're going to read off basically a bunch of the boosts from previous episodes, talk about value for value and what it means to our show. So you're more than welcome to stay, but if you got to drop off, we understand too.

Jhonny D (01:19:11.246)
I want to mention one more thing now that you just reminded me of it. So one thing I'm trying to do as well during the media during the Bitcoin market, as I mentioned, I'm bringing in some artists to perform live music. I'm not sure if we're going to have time to implement this. I talked to open mic, know, set stream is doing it as well, but to do the value for value to get these best performers to come to

Reed (01:19:14.001)
Sure. Yeah.

Jhonny D (01:19:41.016)
to play during our Bitcoin events and get them tipped and get them out there and then people to see them. There's a lot of good friends of mine that just kind of share their time for us to have music during the event, you know? So I'm hoping to have it done this weekend. There is threat of some rain happening. since this is an outdoor event, then we might save it till July 26. So be on the lookout for that. If we don't do it this Sunday, we'll definitely do it in July 26.

But yeah, I just wanted to add that to the value for value part.

Reed (01:20:14.833)
Perfect. Perfect.

All right, so I guess we told you guys last time, so I think we started this in last episode, but one of the things that we're going to do is rather than start with the boosts, we're actually going to start with our leaderboards. So our leaderboards are doing kind of a bunch of different cool things for us. The number one thing that they're doing is they're allowing us to give value back and really give some strong shout outs to our biggest supporters of the show.

And in addition to that, it kind of gives some signal. I like to say kind of that Sats are the signal. And so when we're looking at our leaderboards, that's really what we're looking at. We're looking at where are the Sats flowing and using that to help just try to inform people about like what are our best episodes or what are some of the coolest things that our members have going on. So I think I'm going to get started here with our first leaderboard. And so I like to start with the...

our top episodes. So the cool thing about this leaderboard, this is a great place to start. Like if you don't know, maybe this is your first episode that you've been listening to and you think it's kind of cool content. A lot of our episodes are pretty evergreen. We're not covering like the news or topical events. We're learning about other Bitcoin meetups around the country, around the world. So if you want some of our, if you want to go back and listen to some of our top episodes, here are our top five.

So our number one episode is still episode 9 with Sir Spencer. And boy, this one has really separated itself from the pack here since last week. So we're up to 95,022 sats on episode 9. Episode 9 was Growing Slow Builds Strong Communities with KC Bitcoiners. And again, that was with Sir Spencer and...

Reed (01:22:12.539)
That again, we've been talking about it here the last few weeks, but that was a great episode to learn more about Value for Value and Podcasting 2.0. We kind of shared some stories with Spencer about what we're trying to get going on. He kind of shared with us some of the stuff that a lot of the other Podcasting 2.0 people are doing. We talked about decentralized music. We cover all kinds of stuff in that episode. So yeah, that's our number one.

episode right now on the leaderboards.

Rev (01:22:44.841)
Yeah. So the one thing I like to say about that episode is that this podcast is a value for value podcast. This is how we're trying to, instead of having sponsors, you know, the listeners of the podcast are, you're our sponsors, right? And so you can take the opportunity to, participate here and support us. And this isn't just this value for that value concept is not just for the internet. You can also take it.

to your local meetup because there's one way or another, you're gonna be spending some money. If you're a meetup organizer, you're gonna be putting out pizza, you're gonna be doing something, you're gonna be spending some sets. And so you can take some of the concepts that we talk about in this episode, you can apply it to your meetup and you can find ways to keep the value chain reacting locally with peer to peer in person at the meetup.

So check that episode out for some ideas about how to get people to participate in the meetup. If you're out the value, hosting the meetup, how the attendees can push value back in your direction too.

Reed (01:23:59.57)
Yeah, and we do talk about some of those bridging concepts in episode 9. Maybe that's something we can start talking about more, more tangible ways that you could do that at your meetup. Alright, second place is episode 5 with Augie. And so, Kansas City locking down the top two spots, 63,681 Sats. And that too, that was a great one for talking about circular economies.

We talked about, what is it, farm-pilling Bitcoiners instead of orange-pilling farmers. Yeah, excellent episode with Augie. That one's been up at the top of the leaderboards, basically since it dropped. So title of that episode is, The Meetup is the Farmers Market, Kansas City.

Reed (01:24:55.409)
All right, third place is episode one. yeah.

Rev (01:24:57.959)
I want to talk about Augie's episode real quick. Sorry. so that is like an, iconic example of like all of the little things that you can do. If you think that you don't have anything to bring to the meetup to sell, to earn sats, you don't know how to get the circular economy started with your meetup.

You got to listen to this episode because Augie brings like 20 different examples of different little things that you can do in order to start to facilitate this exchange of sets and get people into the vibe of, the beat, the Bitcoin meetup is a place where we get together and we have beers. The Bitcoin meetup is a place where we get together and we learn about Bitcoin. The Bitcoin meetup is the place where we get together and go for a walk, whatever.

But at the same time, you can always bring your little magic bag of goodies and exchange that with everybody. This doesn't have to be your job. It's just another way for you to earn a little bit of KYC free Sats and support the, just participate in this circulation of the Sats amongst your local community. It's an excellent episode for that.

Reed (01:26:11.461)
Lots of great lessons learned. All right, third place is episode one, going all the way back to the beginning. We got just a ton of support that poured out when our first episode dropped. It was really, really great. That episode, I think, meant a lot to both of us, just seeing that kind of support right out of the gate for this podcast. And it's still in third place overall with 59,934 Sats.

I think we'll continue to say that is a great episode to get started with, like if you're looking to start a meetup. I talked about it earlier in this episode, but we do have a GitHub repo with all kinds of lessons learned and tips and tricks. And we have updated it a few times with additional lessons that we've learned from running this podcast. So we're trying to use that as a repository of all the little tips, tricks, great ideas. We actually added a community section to it.

So if you have other tips or tricks or ideas, just open up an issue on GitHub or reach out to us in any way and send the show a boost if you've got good ideas and we can get them into the repo that way. But yeah, episode one got all kinds of good stuff. Great place to start.

Rev (01:27:28.115)
And so this continues to be, so we talk a lot about, you know, if you want to start a meetup, the best way to kick your meetup off is to go and attend some other meetups within your range, whatever that range might be. And this is kind of a similar concept where it's like, if you're starting a podcast, just before you start the podcast, go start getting involved, boost other podcasts, you know, let, as,

Spencer was talking about, kind of just hang out and, you know, yeah, lurk for a while. And so the same thing is true. You can lurk in the podcast scene, you can lurk in the meetup scene. And when it's time, you build these connections. then once you, time comes to kick it off, boom, there you go. And this first episode for us was a great example of that. We've been hanging out, listening to, our 40 hours per week for a long time, participating and...

Reed (01:28:00.367)
Be a Lurker.

Rev (01:28:24.285)
You know, that was reciprocated. neither is it like Reid already mentioned, like it is just a great place. If you're looking to start a meetup, you started episode one, we lay out all that you need to know that all the nitty gritty stuff that you need to know to get the meetup started.

Reed (01:28:42.565)
Alright, fourth place, episode two. This was with GC and James from Jersey City. And that one's still clocking in really high too. That was one of our most popular episodes. And that's at 47,154 sats. Yeah, that was, I think I've said this the last few times, this has passed by, but that was definitely one of our most clipped episodes. Just some great takes.

there and we talk all about how, like the importance of IRL events, right? And I think I kind of made a point in the last episode as well about, you know, just the social media algorithms are not your friend. You know, they're pitched to you like, hey, this is going to help you find content that we know that you're interested in and this is these algorithms of these great things. But they do not have your best intentions in mind. They have...

their best intentions in mind. And when that happens, really what they're trying to do is get your emotions to start running hot. And it's just not a great, it's become over the years, no longer a great place to learn about Bitcoin. When I was learning about Bitcoin and we were on Twitter in 2020, 2021, I thought it was great. That experience it seems has degraded significantly. And now with the rise of all kinds of

fake information and scams and other things. Yeah, GC and James did a great job of breaking down how important it is to make sure that you have these real-world connections. So episode two is great place to start.

Rev (01:30:26.707)
Yeah, I mean, and the biggest thing is like, my biggest takeaway from that episode is that Telegram is a shit coin. And if you've got, know, if you're starting a new meetup, just avoid Telegram to begin with, because you're going to get all kinds of scamming bullshit and you're have to do stuff at the meetup to prevent that. Just go straight to Signal or hopefully, you know, Noster might be coming around.

With this new Amethyst update, it sounds like the white noise DMs are live there, and maybe that's working now. signal at the very least. Don't just skip Telegram if you're starting a new meetup and you want to get a group chat.

Reed (01:31:11.217)
100 % agree. Yeah, and I hope, well, I certainly think Nasr will be there. But yeah, if you're going there right now, expect it to be a little bit rough around the edges, just like most things on Nasr. But I think over time, it will do nothing but improve.

Rev (01:31:31.817)
Yeah, we're pioneers, man. The revolution will have bad UX. We got to be tolerant to that. Next up.

Reed (01:31:32.113)
All right.

Reed (01:31:36.092)
That's right, absolutely. And last on the list of our top five most boosted episodes of all time is episode seven, which was another kind of solo rip with me and Rev that really kind of our... It gave us a place to sort of map out what we were thinking for the show when it came to Value for Value. We had certainly been talking a lot about it behind the scenes and we thought...

this would be a great time for us to have an episode and really kind of bring that conversation out into the public. And we debuted a bunch of things in that episode that we're still doing today. And so if you want a little bit more about the history of how we were thinking about that and some of our first thoughts about how value for value could be used for Bitcoin meetups, that's another good episode for you.

Rev (01:32:30.025)
Well, and listen to Johnny tonight. He's talking about the llama, you know, with the gold chain around it. He's talking about having this Peruvian cornhole game where you get the coin in the frog's mouth and win a hundred K sats. Gamification and having fun is the way that we prove that these concepts work. And that was what that episode was really about. It was like, how do we take this podcast and we make it fun and we, we turn it into a little bit of a game for everybody.

So if you're looking for some brainstorming ideas, that's what we were doing on that episode. We were brainstorming about how do we make the podcast listening experience more fun and more like a game.

Reed (01:33:09.647)
And now we have this whole value for value section. And I can't remember if we talked about this before, but another giving you guys a little bit of the behind the scenes here that Rev and I have talked about. We honestly think about this half of the episode and it's become basically half of the episode. We think of it as a whole separate podcast. This is our V for V podcast. And so this is our time that we get to spend interacting with the people who

are our biggest supporters. And we get a lot of joy out of that. We certainly love connecting with all the Bitcoin meetup organizers, but we also love connecting with the people who are benefiting from the show, the people who are getting value out of the show.

So that takes us basically into our second leaderboard. And so this leaderboard, I like to call the Rider Dice. So this is the listeners who have boosted the most number of episodes all time. And so we've been talking about this one a little bit because with a lot of the website tools and things that we've rolled out, we've made it pretty easy to start going back and filling in gaps or if you've boosted a lot of shows but you haven't gotten quite all of them.

pretty easy to just log on to the website and just hit a few more. So we've got our top three listeners who have boosted the most episodes all time. so we have Matthew D has now boosted every episode. So Matthew D is at 11 episodes. So I think he was one shy for a few weeks and he's apparently gone back and found that episode. So he's got 11 episodes out of 11 episodes. Thank you.

Rev (01:34:40.319)
Perfect score.

Reed (01:34:54.809)
Matthew D. You will be talked about more towards the end of this episode. Second place, got Shadrack. Shadrack was also someone... We were sort talking about it in the last episode. It kind of seemed like Shadrack maybe was going back and filling in some of his gaps or maybe playing into some of the gamification things that we've got going on here. So Shadrack is shot up to second place and he's boosted seven episodes.

And then third place is God's Death with six episodes. So you guys, this is our ride or die list. You guys are our ride or dies. Thank you so much for your support and for being long time listeners to the show and giving us constant boosts.

Rev (01:35:40.807)
And so one thing to mention about Shadrack is I think that maybe he would have more episodes boosted, but I think he, by mistake, maybe have boosted anonymously. And so it's a good chance to like kind of talk about how the rules work in all this. Like we could tell that it was Shadrack boosting based on his numbers, but sometimes maybe he didn't click the right

Reed (01:35:59.823)
Yeah, that's a good point.

Rev (01:36:08.895)
tick box or whatever to make sure that his end pub was connected and our bots that the things that generate these leaderboards for us do not see that we can know but it's just too hard for us to keep tally on it. Right. And so you do you know there are some some hard rules around getting on these leaderboards and so boosting anonymously does not.

Reed (01:36:23.215)
Make exceptions. Yeah, every time.

Rev (01:36:37.557)
Even though if we kind of know that it was you, you know, it doesn't qualify

Reed (01:36:43.515)
Well, yeah, we're trying to incorporate the anonymous boost as much as we can. We're just trying to do it in the right way because really the problem with anonymous, it's not a problem at all. But when it comes to the leaderboards, you can't tell if an anonymous person is one person or an anonymous person is a whole bunch of different people. And so like if this leaderboard in particular, right, listeners who have boosted the most episodes all time, well, if we counted anonymous, that might be...

30 different people. And so if you've got 11 episodes straight with some anonymous person boosting, well, you can't really exactly tell who that is or what's going on. So that's why they're not included in this leaderboard, but we do have other places where they'll show up. And actually that's going to come up. It's going to be a topic here in the next leaderboard.

Rev (01:37:37.043)
Yeah, and so I just want to take a moment and, I don't know if Shadrach is going to come up again or if God's death is going to come up again. But, so Shadrach has got this monthly podcast that he's participating in with the Vanu.

the Pasnian Radio Network. And it's kind of like a new show and they've invited me to come on and talk this month. I haven't actually confirmed with them if I am available or not, but I'm gonna try my best to be on there. anyways, this news show with Shadrack and Rayo too is a pretty cool thing to go check out. Definitely worth mentioning. It's very in line, you know.

They're talking about this concept of the second realm, which is ultimately what the mesh detail is and ultimately what these meetups are working their way towards, right? Developing circular economies, building parallel societies. So when things crumble all around you, you've got a community to work with. And so if you're interested in that kind of thing, you should check out the Pasnia radio network.

Their content is all about that kind of stuff. and Shadrach is involved in that. And then God's death, you know, I mentioned it last time, but like God's death is he, he's an example of somebody who is not only participating in our show, he's participating in a lot of other shows. And, and so this is when we talk about this value chain concept and the velocity creating these, these small transactions frequently.

God's death is a shining example of that, where he's listening and he's letting us know he's listening by boosting. and that's all it takes. You know, if, if you just listen to these shows all the time, just Chuck them a hundred sets, you know, just take the second at the end boost. it when you're drinking your coffee in the morning, you're scrolling on Noster or whatever. Stop that. Go on to your favorite podcasting 2.0 app and go back through that. Some of the shows that you listen to and boost them.

Rev (01:39:49.855)
Just give them something, let them know you're listening. Because this is important stuff, This velocity is how we are going to create the new internet. This is how we're going to build the culture.

Reed (01:40:03.825)
Hell yeah, fully endorse that.

All right, we ready for the last leaderboard? So this leaderboard is pretty cool because I like to think of this leaderboard as... This is our ad reads. So if you have an event coming up, if you have a brand, if you have something you're trying to sell, hey, all you have to do is get onto this leaderboard and we're going to reach out every episode. So this is like an evergreen...

Rev (01:40:10.762)
Let's go.

Reed (01:40:37.841)
type of boost that gets read off over and over again as long as you're on the top five boosts of all time. So we have our top five list here of the single biggest boosts ever sent to the show. All right, let's just dive in and then I want to talk to you for about some of the rules here. But let's start with Sir Spencer. So Sir Spencer, of KC.

42,069 Sats for 2069 on episode 9. And I'd to read his boost message off. says, thanks for having me on. Hope to continue to improve bullafterbull.com and continue to evolve alongside your local Bitcoiners.com site. Iron sharpens iron and I greatly value hearing what you guys are discovering on your value for value journey. Long live the value chain. And again, that was from episode 9.

So yeah, so we're happy to promote Sir Spencer's show, After Bowl, excellent podcast. And also his website, which is also like he's saying in this post, we're coming out with a lot of value for value things on our website. And he is also coming out with lots of really cool value for value stuff on his website. And we already talked about episode nine a little bit, but yeah, mean, he's been working on really cool value for value things as part of that show for a long time.

And so highly recommend his show and check out his website, bowlafterbowl.com.

Rev (01:42:11.071)
So if you go to bowlafterbowl.com, what can you do? think you can, so he's got a Pod Roll feature on there, which showcases a lot of the podcasts that he's in, the good stuff. You can find some entropy for your 40 HPW over there. Find some podcasts that you haven't really heard of that bowl after bowl endorses. Additionally to that, you can boost the show.

through a similar, very similar to our website, right? Where you can use a Nostra Wallet Connect or you can use any Lightning Wallet. And it's just another example of like every website will be a Nostra client. It's super cool. And in addition to that, the Lorian, the co-host of Bowl After Bowl has a really cool DMU, Value for Value music.

a show called Homegrown Hits that you guys should check out too. I'm gonna throw that in there because that goes kinda hand in hand with what they're doing.

Reed (01:43:19.291)
Yeah, every website will be a NOSTER client thing. I like to think that our website, Bull After Bull's website, these are early examples to start showing people the possibilities of what you can get when you start logging in with NOSTER. And yeah, I would say we're not done. We still have more ideas about cool things that you could be able to do on the website if you log in with NOSTER. So yeah.

Definitely go check out After Bowl. Alright, so next, I want to talk for a minute. So second place looks like a new entry, but it is not new entry. It's actually from back in April. going back to a little bit of the rules of our boost bots, it had been skipped over. And it was because it was sent in as an anonymous boost, even though in the message, it said who it was from. So the next biggest boost is from BTC Russell.

15,000 sats on episode eight. And so this should have been on the leaderboard for some time, but again, it had gotten skipped over. the rules are now different for this particular leaderboard. And I've changed the rules so that even if you are anonymous, it will just show up as anonymous. And because, hey, we're going to read out your boost regardless of who you are. So this was, I would say, an oversight and something that's been corrected. And now that it's been corrected,

BTC Russell is number two on the list with 15,000 sats. So let's read off his boost. It says, to all the folks out there boosting and thinking about starting a meetup, I would highly encourage you to take the leap and start one. Seems intimidating at first, but if you build it, they will come. You may be surprised that there are other Bitcoiners in your area. It's easier to get attendance in more populated areas. BTC Russell.

So thank you, BTC Russell. And BTC Russell, I think, might be coming on the show sometime soon. So we'll get to talk a lot more to him then. But yeah, thank you so much for your support and apologies for not getting you on this leaderboard earlier.

Rev (01:45:37.397)
Yeah. And so BTC Wrestle is doing the Columbia South Carolina meetup.

I don't remember at what cadence he's doing it. He has boosted the show in the past. So that's a cool thing you can do. You can go to the website, scroll through the boosts. You can find that information there. But yeah, I really look forward to hearing about what BTC Wrestle has going on over there in Columbia. And it's a great message. It's so true. Just start the meetup. Just start the meetup, yeah.

Reed (01:46:10.745)
If you build it, they will come. That's right.

Just do the thing. All right. So next up is Bitcoin is for Everyone. We talked with Eric on the last episode. And of course, he came up again on this episode. But Bitcoin is for Everyone, May 22nd, May 23rd. So he sent in 12,020 Sats on episode five. And I will read off this message yet again.

Join us for the largest Bitcoin-only conference on the West Coast, Bitcoin is for Everyone, May 22nd, May 23rd, pizza day weekend in Portland, Oregon. Bitcoinisforeveryone.com. Use discount code NOSTERINSIDER for 21 % off. So this episode, we're recording this on Tuesday the 19th. It's going to come out on Wednesday the 20th, which gives you just a couple more days. So if you're thinking about making a last minute trip out to Portland and you haven't gotten your tickets yet,

go to bitcoinisforeveryone.com and use Nostra Insider and get 21 % off.

Reed (01:47:20.497)
So normally these two... So Bitcoin is for Everyone is on the leaderboard twice. They've been on the leaderboard twice for quite some time now. However, they're no longer next to each other. So we had 12,020 Sats from Bitcoin is for Everyone, episode 5. But we have a new boost that's come in this week for 11,000... I think the original one was for 11,111 Sats.

This one is showing 11,109 Sats. So possibly that was two Sats for a lightning fee. So 11,109 Sats. And that was a show level boost from the website. And that is from Cleveland Bitcoin. And let's read the Cleveland boost. Cleveland Bitcoin presents Bitcoin Pizza Day 2026, Friday, May 22nd, 7 p.m. at Saucy Brew Works downtown. Free pizza by Rhino Bitcoin.

Venue accepts sass for beer. Win prizes, meet plebs. See you there." And he has a link to the Nostr event with all the details.

Rev (01:48:39.861)
And so first of all, what a cool event, right? Pizza Day is coming up. You're going to be listening to this. If you're in the Cleveland area, you're going to have a chance to go check that out. You can buy your beer with Bitcoin. The pizza has been donated. Amazing. And in addition to that, they use the tool on the website to embed their Nostra event, right? And really,

propagate now that meetup is on all of the Nostra clients that will render that meetup that that event kind and Just amazing. We're I mean the Cleveland guys they will be on the show I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast yet, but Before Reed and I met I tried to do this this local Bitcoin local Bitcoiners podcast by myself and

I wasn't able to technically pull it off. I needed a guy like Reed, a nuclear engineer, to help me out. No, it's not that complicated guys, but really it was just like, I'm a homesteader. I don't have a lot of time in front of the computer. And I feel so terrible for recording an episode with these guys and then never putting it out there. So the Cleveland guys are due for some time on the show. And, you know, I really appreciate the Cleveland meetup scene.

participating here and promoting their event and using the tools. I did, you know, for the people that use the website right now, because it's new, if you put your meetup and give us a boost, you might boost 100 Sats, you might boost 200 Sats, guess what? You're gonna get a thousand Sats back, maybe even a little bit more for just using that. Just to show it off because...

This is the value chain.

Reed (01:50:39.003)
Yeah, there's some other bonuses too, right? If you boost through the website, it gives you a way to... There are some extra fees that get kind of removed. Like if you boost us on Fountain, 2 % of your boost goes to Fountain. If you boost on the website, all the Sats go to the Zap splits. Or in this case, you Zap the... If you're submitting an event, a third goes to Rev, a third goes to me, and then the last 34 %...

instead of 32 % goes to our ad budget, which is basically giving Rev permission to go boost everybody, to send some zaps back for using the tools, as he says.

Rev (01:51:21.855)
Yes, I will zap you. I will zap you for playing around with our stuff. So play around. Get some sats.

Reed (01:51:29.937)
All right, and last on the list is again, Bitcoin is for everyone, May 22nd, May 23rd, 2026. Says, the Portland Bitcoin group has six meetups or meets has meetups six times per month. Come check us out. And if you want to learn more about those, of course, we had Eric on in episode 11. So our most recent episode. And that rounds out our leaderboards.

So thank you again to all of our supporters. We have, like I said, some more tools. We're going to actually debut some of those at the end of this episode because I think next we're going to be transitioning to just go through the boost that we've received since last time.

Rev (01:52:15.113)
Look at the signal there, man. When you go away from sponsors and you just have your community around your show, around your meetup, around whatever you're doing, supports you, the signal bubbles to the top. That, I feel like, was all high signal stuff, you know? Really cool, really amazing. Thank you, everyone. So let's get into the boosts.

Rev (01:52:47.495)
Alright, so the first boost we have since our last recording is 500 Sats from Fountain and that's from Battersea Bitcoiners. They say, great episode. Shout out to Simon who runs the Meetup Breakdown, a weekly newsletter detailing all the upcoming UK Bitcoin meetups each week. You guys should check it out.

And so if you're in the UK and you want to find a meetup, it sounds like the meetup breakdown is the place to go figure that out. And I'm guessing that Battersea Bitcoiners is also running a meetup and their note when they boosted this is on our end pub. out there and you can go find

Battersea Bitcoiners and go check out that meetup too. Thanks a lot. Battersea Bitcoiners has been boosting us a lot. And so I really appreciate it. Super cool to hear what's going on in the UK.

Reed (01:53:54.149)
Yeah, we've had some folks reach out from Europe to come on the show before. I feel like we're, so far, Europe is a little underrepresented. So we'll be circling around and learning more and trying to get some folks on from that area eventually. And so UK maybe would be a good fit for that. We'll see.

Rev (01:54:19.731)
Yeah, the European time will come. Don't worry. If you're out there waiting to hear more about European Bitcoin meetups, that will happen. Next, we've got 418 Sats via Fountain. And they say, more boosting options. Check out boostmebitch.com for other ways to boost a show. Great site.

chatf and 33 others more boosting so that comes from chatf and i wonder if this is another issue with our bot okay do you want to

Reed (01:54:54.769)
I've got a story about this one. Yeah, sure. So I saw this one come in and so I actually have a couple. So I try to keep an eye on the boost that come in for oddities, right? I think, why did that come in that way? Because this boost did not come from Fountain. It came from BushMeBitch.com. And so I was like, why did this come in? Why does it say Fountain here? So worked with the agent.

figured out what the issue was. And basically now we are all set up so that any boost that comes in from BoostMeBitch is going to be properly tagged and allocated and accumulated on our stats page. We actually, there's a link here that has a Tardbox.com and that really has all the information you could ever want about this boost. And so that's really where we're going to get it from going forward.

So thank you again, Chad F. I think Chad F has sent us some other boosts that have challenged our bots, so to speak. challenge accepted and appreciated. So thank you for that.

Rev (01:56:05.373)
Yes, thank you Chad F for breaking our stuff constantly. That's what we need. And also like the 418 sats I'm willing to bet that was intended to be 420. Yeah. So and we're paying attention to the meme numbers guys. So if you got your meme numbers, we're trying to get the bots to comply with the meme numbers. Next we got a thousand...

Reed (01:56:08.923)
Hell yes.

Reed (01:56:17.681)
I'm thinking that was $420. Yeah.

Reed (01:56:25.157)
We're doing our best.

Reed (01:56:32.081)
And just, sorry, just on the meme number thing, just to explain why this is a little bit more challenging, most of it is because of the splits. So like every single one of these boosts that's coming in is getting split, you know, three, four, even five different ways. And so the stats that come in to my node, which is where the data is coming from, is like a quarter or a fifth or a third of what the total is.

Rev (01:56:34.985)
Go ahead.

Reed (01:56:59.375)
And so there's like a little bit of math there that we need to do. So that's part of it. And then the fees, if there are, you know, sometimes in Lightning, you'll pay a SAT, a couple of SAT fee. If it's a bigger boost, sometimes it's a little bit more. And so that throws off the numbers a little bit too sometimes. So I'm trying to figure out other ways to try to get the exact amount, but have not ironed out all those wrinkles yet. Still working on it.

Rev (01:57:25.043)
Yeah, I mean, the more important thing is that we are doing the splits, you know, and so if your meme numbers get broken by our splits, just know that it's for a good reason because everyone's getting paid the way they should. Next, we've got 1000 Sats via Fountain from Permanerd. And Permanerd says, here's some V for V.

cross pollination, Noster's advertising, join Oshi and myself discussing Bitcoin business, Noster and other intriguing topics on You Are the Algorithm podcast. End of note. And so the Yada podcast is a podcast that has been, it's worked its way into my 40 HPW. I listened to that podcast whenever they released one, but they're doing a great job. I said on the last episode that they have a mailbag segment.

on their podcast where their listeners submit their questions via boosts and they're great questions and there it's a lot of high signal in there and it's just a great place to hear about what it's like being a person trying to earn Bitcoin selling your goods on Noster. These guys are doing awesome stuff. They're making awesome products and you know go check out the Yotta podcast. Go buy some stuff from them.

I support what they're doing fully.

Reed (01:58:51.409)
100%.

Rev (01:58:54.965)
All right, next we've got 5,000 Sats via fountain from Matthew D. And Matthew D is probably our biggest, you know, ride or die. Matthew D has boosted every episode. Thank you, Matthew D. And Matthew D says, great to hear there's a big BTC scene out in Portland. It's a beautiful city. I love to make it out back out there and get to a meetup.

And then after that, Matthew D says, Ann Arbor meetup is the last Tuesday of the month, 526 at venue by 4M from six to eight PM. So if you're looking, if you're in Ann Arbor and you're looking to go to a meetup last Tuesday of the month, this most upcoming one is 526 at venue, name of the, the, the, the name of the place is venue by 4M from six to eight.

And so you can go meet Matthew D at Venue by 4M and buy some soap from him.

Thank you, Matthew D. Really appreciate it,

Okay, and here it is. This is how Matthew D did it. The next boost. 5000 Sats via fountain from Matthew D. Boosting episode three. This was the one I missed. So there he found it, and now Matthew D has a perfect score on boosting every single episode. Awesome, dude. Really appreciate it. I can't wait to see Matthew D again. It might not be until Lake Satoshi, you know.

Reed (02:00:10.704)
Here it is.

Reed (02:00:20.827)
Found it.

Rev (02:00:34.653)
Matthew D out in Ann Arbor. He's quite a ways away from me. We run into each other in Grand Rapids every so often, but you know, don't get to see him too much and you know, but surely I'll see you at Lake Satoshi Matthew D. Make sure to please bring some tallow bomb because I need to stock up. All right.

Reed (02:00:51.675)
Yeah, we'll, again, we'll tease in for later in the show here, but know, Matthew D is our number one supporter, really, overall. Boosted every episode. He's boosted the most number of sats total. So, yeah, we're going to be talking about, you know, the whole point of this value for value section is to give back to our biggest supporters. And so we have more ideas. More ideas are coming.

We have other things to continue to give back to our biggest supporters. And that very well may start with Matthew D. So we'll see.

Rev (02:01:29.597)
It's a whole value chain reaction. know, this is the catalyst that causes the reaction of capital to flow and get built here. All right. Next we got 500 Sats via fountain from Battersea Bitcoiners once again. And Battersea Bitcoiners says, thanks again. Loved hearing all about the Portland meetups. And I guess I've been sort of, I've been falling off the ball here, but

Reed (02:01:32.622)
Absolutely.

Rev (02:01:57.183)
So obviously Battersea Bitcoiners is boosting episode 11 with Eric about the Bitcoin is for Everyone conference and everything that's going on in Portland.

Rev (02:02:09.895)
Next we got a 2100 sat boost via localbitcorners.com. And this is from the Western Mass Bitcoin Meetup. I wonder who could have done that. Reed? Thanks Reed.

Reed (02:02:22.021)
It's from our Western Mass Bitcoin end pub, which does not get a lot of use. So I was like, hey, if I want more people to follow my meetups end pub, the best thing I can do is to boost the show because then it's going to get shouted out and it's going to get linked in all our notes and people can find us easier. So I thought it'd be a good way to show other meetups that, if your meetup has an end pub that's just been kind of sitting on the shelf and doesn't get a lot of use,

maybe consider boosting the show from your Meetup Standpub. And then that'll maybe breathe a little bit of life into that account.

Rev (02:03:00.819)
Yeah, we're showing some examples of how we think that these tools can be used. And Spencer kind of set it on, I don't know if it was the most recent bowl after bowl, but it was one of the last two where he's like, yeah, I'm building this website and I've got my ideas about how it should be used perfectly and all this stuff. But what I really need is for everyone to come in here and use it to see how you're trying to click these buttons.

and they don't work the way you think. I need to know that because I can only use it the way I think I've designed it to be used. And so we're just showing off here that this is a cool thing that you can do when you boost the podcast. can boost from your Meetup Send Pub. And then in addition to that, Reid has attached a message. I've started a monthly blog post for the Meetup that I share with the group as long as a long form note.

These have been helpful when I have something I've been thinking about, but don't have a place for it in the monthly meetup. So here's the May, 2026 edition. And then there's a link to that long form note. So you can also embed Nostre notes into your boost and the boost will render, you can, you can, you can increase the density of the information in these boosts by using the Nostre events.

Rev (02:04:28.167)
Next we've got a hundred sats via fountain from Noster gang and Noster gang says gang gang. Hey, thanks Noster gang. Noster gangs, you know, I I'm just shocked that Noster gang has not found their way onto the leaderboards yet, but they've been a very consistent booster and we really do appreciate the support.

Reed (02:04:35.279)
gang. Let's go.

Rev (02:04:52.359)
And Nostra Gang is out there. Nostra Gang is not just boosting our show. Nostra Gang is boosting a lot of other shows. They're one of those exemplary participants that's like, yeah, I'm here for value for value. Let's do it. I'm getting value. I'm sending value back. 100 Sats? Hell yeah, I'll take 100 Sats, Nostra Gang. Thanks a lot.

Reed (02:05:13.563)
NostraGang will come up again. we'll get to the stats page on the website after the boost section. But don't worry, it's coming back.

Rev (02:05:19.761)
Okay, so Noster Gang is making a mark. All right, good to know. Okay, so next we got 221 Sats via Fountain. this says, check out nvp at takemysats.com forward slash Noster value pack and use promo code for 11 % off. I don't know what the promo code

Reed (02:05:48.581)
Yeah, so this is, so yeah, I think it says it in the, this message gets cut off. And I was saying before how I try to keep my eye on these posts for weird things because I really thought we had solved this issue of the boosts getting truncated and almost none of our boosts are truncated anymore. Even these big long things. so that was, as soon as I saw this one come in, I went back to the agents and I was trying to go through the...

logic and the code in our boost bots to find out what exactly happened here. So fortunately, the fix for this is in. And so going in the future, we found another edge case that has been solved for why this got cut off. So apologies for cutting this off. But yeah, it's fixed going forward.

Rev (02:06:41.053)
And is this, is this why the, the end pub didn't register either? Cause there's no like attribute. I'm assuming this is Alice or Satoshi chef.

Reed (02:06:55.097)
I would guess that too. don't know if that's why. It looks like it got... if it says via fountain, it probably was anonymous.

Not 100 % sure about that.

Rev (02:07:06.045)
Well, I'm almost a hundred percent certain that Alice or Satoshi Chef has been doing these Nostra value packs. And so there is apparently an 11 % off discount code that you can get if you listen to this show. And we'll have to just, we'll figure it out. I'm sorry that we weren't able to reveal that to the audience here today, but.

The 221 sets is in good hands. We'll make sure you get that value going back your direction.

Rev (02:07:42.833)
And next we've got 209 sats via localbickwerners.com, another great use of the website. And this is from Reed. Reed's saying, Western Mass Bitcoin Meetup is tonight. And he's actually tagged the end pub in the note there. Here are my Socratic seminar slides for this month. We're doing a Noster onboarding workshop so we can use our website for NIP99 classifieds. NIP99 classifieds are super cool.

And Reed has got a link in here as well for the GitHub slides and also an event link. So you can, when you look at this note, you can see exactly the event that he's talking about, the Western Mass Bitcoin Meetup number 45.

Reed (02:08:34.203)
So again, just playing with the tools, trying to pack as much information into these boosts as we can and showing off how they can be nice and big and long and contain lots of other information like having links to where people keep their meetup slides, also having the event itself quoted in the note, and again, tagging my Western Mass Bitcoin Meetup End Pub, which is under followed.

and also underused. I feel like it's not under followed, but hopefully we'll be getting some better use out of it.

Rev (02:09:09.555)
It's just like you. So if you want, you can just say, love you. Thank you for the podcast. We love that. But if you've got something, you've got a meetup coming up, you've got an event, it doesn't even have to be your meetup. It could just be the meetup you love that you go to all the time and you want to promote it. You can make that meetup event. No one's stopping you. know, share that, share that information out there. You can post a link to your favorite Bitcoin information.

You can post a link to your Nip99 product that you're selling. This is what we want. We want to be able to use this portion of the show to let everyone who's listening, if you're listening, get your, these are your people, right? We're all in this community together.

Let's promote the cultural capital, right? Let's talk about the events that we're doing. Let's talk about the products we're selling. Let's share this information out there. No, it's a great way to let people know what you got going on. Get that value chain to react.

Rev (02:10:19.699)
And so next we've got 10,421 sats. And this is a contentious boost from Otis Bittmeyer. And Otis Bittmeyer says, top tier 40 HPW for hashtag first turning.

We're only scratching the surface of what's possible with these communities built on abundance and value for value. All three of you are an inspiration. Speaking of value for value, the first turning supper club is a collective of folks planning a collaborative feast of your, your, or our dreams during Lake Satoshi.

This is an opportunity to play with value for value in the flesh. Send me a message to lend your time, treasure or talent. And that was on episode nine with Spencer from Casey Bickhouners. And so I think Otis Bittmeyer was in the top boosts, the biggest boosts of all time section. And I think maybe it was that boost of that we

that anonymous boost from BTC wrestle that Otis Bittmeyer was not seeing and it popped out there.

Reed (02:11:42.161)
So we had two new ones. Yeah, we had the BTC Russell one, but then we also had the Cleveland one. And so this would have been number five on the list, but it got bumped to number six. So just fell off the leaderboard.

Rev (02:11:56.127)
You're just shy, Otis Bittmeyer. regardless, Otis and I and several others have been planning this. I don't know. Lake Satoshi is an interesting event because it's very, it really embraces the vibes of anarchy, right? PF and Mike, they put on a great event. They do a lot of things. But at the same time,

we're at the campground, dude. We're free to kind of organize what we want. And so at Lake Satoshi, you can come to Lake Satoshi, you can do whatever PF and Mike have planned and get your campsite. But in addition to that, you can also join us and we're gonna be putting on a killer dinner with, it's not necessarily a potluck, but we've got a lot of cool stuff that's in the works. And if you want to participate in this,

You can join us, you know, if that means that you want to, you know, wash dishes, if you got dishes, because maybe we don't even have enough dishes, whatever, you got something you want to, you want to come have dinner with us at the Mestredale Hill over there at Lake Satoshi, join Otis Bittmeyer and I, and many other people from across the globe at this point, some really high signal Bitcoiners. This is going to be a killer little moment within that Lake Satoshi event.

So the first turning supper club is what he's calling it. We are calling it the feast for a long time, regardless of the name, it's gonna be killer. So hit up Oda Spitmeyer, hit up me if you want to get in the Signal Chat and you're coming to Lake Satoshi, you wanna participate in this, let us know.

Reed (02:13:37.583)
Dude, the closer and closer that we get to Lake Satoshi, the more FOMO I have for it. I will not be able to attend this year. I've never attended this event, but boy, with the amount of information that I now have on this event, I am extremely disappointed that I am not going to be able to attend this year. It sounds like it's going to be an amazing time.

Rev (02:14:04.809)
Well, and you know, the, the, the Bush bash came up on, on Noster recently. And I've been kind of reposting some of that stuff through the local Bitcoiners and pub and the vibes of the Bush bash from what I'm getting at, like what the feelings that I've never been there and I don't really know exactly what it's about, but you could imagine it's, it's similar in the vibe, you know, where it's just people showing up somewhere and everyone just kind of cooperating.

And there's kids there and there's stuff for the kids to do. there's just a time, a weekend where Bitcoiners are together. And it's like, what can we do to maximize the amount of fun we can have and the amount of signal that we can share with each other? And so this, this feast thing is going to be a level up to previous years, I think.

Reed (02:14:56.869)
Sounds amazing.

Rev (02:15:00.021)
All right. Next, we've got 500 Sats via localbitcoiners.com. All right. Boosting from localbitcoiners.com. There's a lot of boosts from localbitcoiners.com tonight. That's great. And this is from Bullish Market. Come to the hashtag bullish market this Thursday from 6 to 7 PM Central Standard Time. It's a virtual farmers market with a jukebox, Bitcoin faucet and more. What? There's a Bitcoin faucet there.

Come support our Nostr merchants and use Bitcoin as money. Set your reminder and bookmark bullishmarket.onrender.com. so Bullish Market has also embedded a Nostr event in here, which you can click to get all the details. And so we've talked about, yeah, go ahead.

Reed (02:15:53.788)
So this goes back... Yeah. Yeah, this goes back to, right? That we've talked about this before. Like, Nostr... When we do meetups on Nostr, these are meetups. They just aren't in a physical location. And I think that the bullish market is one of these cool events that it's really starting to play with some ideas about how we can make this feel more like a physical place even though that we're all hanging out on the internet.

So I will be at this one. I missed the last one. It was, I think it was right before one of our recordings and I got distracted and forgot and so missed the last event, but I will be there. This Thursday, I have some limited stuff that I have sold in the past. I have a little laser engraver. I think I've talked about it before and just kind of sell some little trinkets on the side. This is, it was one of my, it was,

Really the impetus for starting it was to start my no KYC stack. And so this is what I do. I have make little things and try to sell them to people on the internet and appreciate anybody who wants to buy any of it. So yeah, you can find me there and a whole bunch of other vendors will be there this Thursday. It's the 21st of every month. Easy to remember.

Rev (02:17:18.549)
Well, and the other cool thing is like, you know, I bring all I bring my magic bag, you know, I don't know if you ever heard seen that like, Felix the cat cartoon, where the dude's got this like purse that he opens up and it's like magic and you just pull anything out of there. That's how I I feel like that at the Bitcoin meetup where I'm like, I show up with this bag dude, and you might just, could pull out like 10 different things that are available for sale, but the market is, is fairly thin.

Reed (02:17:33.689)
It sounds vaguely familiar. Yeah.

Rev (02:17:46.963)
You know, like a lot of this stuff is kind of niche and maybe I'm not going to sell it all the time at the meetup directly. But if you go to the bullish market, now you've got this much broader access, you know. So if you've got some things that are a little niche that you might, you think, I'll never sell anything at the Bitcoin meetup. Well, come to the bullish market, maybe you can sell it there because there's a lot of different people checking it out.

Reed (02:18:17.521)
It's been getting bigger too, month over month. Every month there's more attendees.

Rev (02:18:23.381)
Well, like I said, I've got some stuff like allergy tea and these herbal smoke blends and stuff that is not necessarily, the market can get saturated very quickly locally, but for the bullish market, it sounds like a perfect product. So I will be there as soon as I, just coming out of the freeze dryer guys, just wait, it's on its way. Okay, next we've got,

Okay. This was supposed to be a row of sticks. All right. It was it, but really it's yeah, it's 11,109 sats, but really it should have been 11,111 sats via localbicowners.com. And this is from the Cleveland Bitcoin meetup, Cleveland Bitcoin. And they say Cleveland Bitcoin presents Bitcoin pizza day, 2026 Friday, May 22nd, 7 PM at Saucy Brew Works downtown.

Reed (02:18:58.289)
I'm pretty sure.

Rev (02:19:24.405)
Free pizza by Rhino Bitcoin. The venue accepts sats for beer, win prizes, meet plebs, see you there. And they also have their event linked right here in the boost. So you can get all the additional details that you might need about that meet up there. And so we've talked about the Cleveland Bitcoiners already. Just an exemplary group. And to piggyback off it a little bit, like the pizza day.

event is a Bitcoin holiday. if you're looking for an excuse to go out and meet your local Bitcoiners, Bitcoin Pizza Day is a great excuse to do that. If you don't go to the regular meetups, get out there for the pizza day. Shoot. If you go to Cleveland, you're going to get free pizza. Come on. And you can buy your beer in Bitcoin. I don't know how many places you can buy your beer in Bitcoin at, but that seems to be few and far but

between so they've done a lot of work to get to make that happen. Check it out. Gonna be worth it. Great crew down there.

Rev (02:20:31.189)
All right, and final boost of the show here. We got 209 sats via localbitcoiners.com. Boosts keep coming from localbitcoiners.com. Thank you so much. We redid the work to make that a possibility and everyone's using it. So it's awesome to see that. And this is from CT Bitcoin and CT Bitcoin, and that's Connecticut, right?

Connecticut Bitcoin CT bitcoins first meetup event is happening Wednesday May 20th at conspiracy in Middletown This meetup is for all Bitcoiners from OGs to newcomers, and they've got a couple links in here www.conspiracy C Y C T comm and C T Bitcoin comm come hang out with come come hang out and meet C T local Bitcoiners

And so this is the new meetup that's spinning up in your area, right?

Reed (02:21:33.221)
Yeah, that's right. the guy who's starting this is, he had come to a couple of our meetups. Our meetup is over an hour from him. And then we got the new venue and we were like more like an hour and half from him. And so it was like even further. But after the first meetup he came to of ours, we were talking about the distance and I kind of mentioned, hey, maybe it'd be a great idea for you to start a meetup.

closer to you. And he took that very seriously. And you can tell from this, so he boosted the show from the website and he included, so this is his first meetup and he's already got a website. So it was like, he's taking this real serious right off the bat. And we're kind of rallying the troops a little bit here. So I'm going to be there tomorrow night and I'm hoping some of the other...

Some of our other meetup attendees are going to come down as well. But we have actually some Connecticut Bitcoiners who normally come to our meetup that have not been coming for a little while. So I reached out to all of them and a bunch of them are going to be there as well. So should be a good turnout. I'm hoping to get him introduced to a lot of the people in the Connecticut Bitcoin scene. And yeah, I'm really excited. They will be our closest neighbor meetup, at least by minutes.

from me. They'll be like, I think it's a little under an hour from my house to where this brewery is. So looking forward to having a new nearest neighbor.

Rev (02:23:10.943)
Totally in range, man.

Rev (02:23:15.967)
Yeah, before you know it, man, you're going to be going to a Bitcoin meetup a week like me, you know, maybe more. With the Chicago Bitcoin Collective, I could go to a Bitcoin meetup two times a week. It's crazy. That's great to hear, And this is just another example of like, you go to the, if you're, if you want to start a meetup, the best way to kick it off is to just go spend the time.

Reed (02:23:29.574)
Yeah.

Rev (02:23:43.497)
drive an hour, hour and a half to your other meetup, local to you, whatever you can get to, meet those guys and say, hey, I'm going to start one. And they'll come, you know, at least a few of them will come and support you and at least make it so it's not awkward, you know, and you'll get it off, you'll kick it off and you'll get some momentum.

Reed (02:24:07.217)
Yeah, it's funny. We've talked about how many meetups have started just like this one. I think you said yours kind of started this way. Eric said his started this way. It's Sean. that's what I was thinking of. Yeah, Sean said his started this way. And it's just, this is, we're watching one live. That's what we get to do. Their first meetup is tomorrow night. So we're watching this happen live and I'm really excited for it.

Rev (02:24:17.749)
Sean?

Sean from Niagara, yeah.

Rev (02:24:38.291)
And this is when you participate in the show, this is what happens, guys. The new meetups get created. The Bitcoin culture gets more solidified in your local area. You build more resilience. You get more utility out of your Bitcoin. You have now a market to sell your goods and services into and earn Bitcoin. You hyper Bitcoinize your own world.

Reed (02:25:04.857)
And I forgot to mention too, by the way. So I was already kind of saying how impressed I was that he's already got a website. Well, he's also already got an end pub. I was, cause I was like, Hey, you should use your, your meetups end pub because you know, it's brand new. Like nobody knows about it. So you can go follow CT Bitcoin on Nostra now. He's already got all kinds of high, high signal content on his end pub. All right. He hasn't even had his first meetup yet.

Yeah, this is going to be a great meetup. I can tell already.

All right, so that concludes our boost section. And normally, this is where we'd be wrapping up the pod. But I wanted to spend a couple minutes talking about some new website features. So the big highlight here is that we now have a stats page. So originally, I was like, hey, we should have a page. We have a page for the boost. We should have a page for the leaderboards. But then I started thinking, with a whole website,

I can do a lot more with a website than I can with just a simple kind one, Nosternote, which is our leaderboards. And so I started digging into the data. And so I started basically pulling as much data as I could from my node, from a whole bunch of other sources, including Fountain, including BoostMeBitch, including a lot of the Cast-O-Matic and a lot of the other sites that publish, they have APIs and things like that, that you can pull from to get more details.

and was able to pull in all of our data, get as much of it into one place as I could, and then start playing with ideas about what would be cool to put on the stats page. So I'm going to run through it quick because we've already been going for just about two and a half hours. But definitely you can check it out. It's localbitcoiners.com forward slash stats. Sorry, stats. Sorry about that.

Reed (02:27:07.121)
So the first thing I have on here is Podcast Value. And I'm trying to use some kind of keywords here because that's what I'm trying to convey in this first plot. And so I was able to aggregate all the sats we've ever received. So the podcast as a whole has received... Actually, I think this hasn't... There we go. I needed to refresh the page. 472,361 sats across 11 episodes.

And I've got a plot of that, what that looks like over time. And I've also got lines on here for where, like when each episode dropped. So you can kind of see after an episode drops when the influx of Sats comes in. The other cool thing I added to this was a breakdown. We talk all the time about these splits, right? That when you boost the show, when you see these big Sat totals against these episodes, keep in mind that these are all being split up.

Now you can see the split that goes to Rev and to myself, but also the split that goes to our guests. And then you can also see this new split that we have for our ad budget. And you can also see the split that ends up going to Fountain. And I thought it would be cool if I could also just kind of show, and this is not exactly based on hard data, so this is hard-coded in.

But we have monthly recurring costs to run the pod. And that's the whole idea, right? Is that we're going to try to get some SADs to cover our costs. And so it's really cool because now you can kind of see that in the very beginning, of course, we are not profitable at all because we had upfront costs that needed to get covered and monthly costs and we were just starting out. But then there'll be these little blips where we're like, we just got profitable. And then another month of...

Fountain and another month of Riverside hits, and then we go back into negative, but then it pops up again. And then starting just around episode six is where we started to kind of be net positive. Like we're showing that this value for value model is leading to sustainability. And so I'm hoping that's what this chart will continue to show over time here.

Reed (02:29:28.699)
The other cool thing on this first one is you can check it out by app. So we have all these breakdowns about where the SATs are coming from. And you can see on here that we're still getting about 82 % of our boosts come from FALINT. And this is 82 % by SATs. So not by number, this is by SATs because SATs are the signal. And you'll notice here, I don't know, Rev, if you've got it on your screen, but the localbigwinners.com slice.

is growing, especially in the last few days even. So yeah, we've got Podcast Guru and that was mostly from Sir Spencer, 53,000 sats. This is like 11 % of our boosts. And LocalBitcoiners.com is 20,000 sats, which is about 4 % of our boosts. But that slice is growing.

Rev (02:30:27.037)
Yeah, it's the, the, well, and we only have been, anyone has not the, the boosting from the website is a new thing. I don't know when we, when we started that just a few episodes ago, maybe it was with Spencer. maybe it was between episode eight and episode nine. And so the fact that everyone is kind of going to the website and boosting, means a lot like that. That's a cool thing that you're, everyone's willing to kind of click through.

Reed (02:30:37.019)
Brand new, yeah.

Reed (02:30:43.045)
It was right before that one. Yeah.

Rev (02:30:56.371)
Go to a different website, log in with your end pub, connect your wallet. But once you're all connected up, now you're hooked up, you know? And the website is going to continue to be a cool place to hang out. if you go through the friction of setting up in the website, there's going to be more cool shit. There's going to be a lot of cool shit that you're going to be able to do when you get over there. So make the effort.

Reed (02:31:11.259)
We got more stuff.

Rev (02:31:24.553)
boost through the website. It's the best for everyone to do. And just to exemplify, right? Every website's gonna be a Nostra Client. This is our way of gamifying and showing off that websites are Nostra Clients.

Reed (02:31:42.13)
So I'm not going to run through everything on this stats page, but I will give a few teasers and you can go check it out for yourself. So basically, all of our three leaderboards, all of the data from them, it's all represented here in some way, shape, or form, but there's more. It's extended. So instead of the top five episodes, you get the top 10 episodes. So this way you can see, for example, if I look at...

The top five episodes by Sats Received gets cut off at episode 7 with 39,513 sats. But episode 8 is right on its heels. And so episode 8 is at 36,768 sats, which is only like 3,000 sats behind. So if you thought, hey, I'd love for episode 8, I'm from Tampa Bay, I want to get episode 8 on the top five list. Well, now you know that's how much room you have to... If you can cover that much ground...

then boom, then you can get your episode up on leaderboard. And the same thing with our top supporters. So I've got the number of episodes supported, which shows Matthew D up here, number one with 11. And then look at that, Nostergang is just outside of the top three, which our leaderboard right now is the top three. Nostergang is number four. So Nostergang, if they go back in and...

maybe hit a couple more episodes on the website or from Fountain or wherever they boost from, that would be, maybe they'd flip their way right into the top three on the leaderboard.

Rev (02:33:16.265)
Yeah, so you can go and see, you know, if you feel like, man, I've been, what the heck? I feel like I've been participating. Why am I not on the leaderboard? You can go to the website and see how close you are. You know, if it's important to you to like get up there, you can now find out how close you are.

Reed (02:33:36.625)
The other thing we've got, have now, we only had very limited ways to give shout outs to the people who are streaming us Sats, because the streams don't come in with a boost message and things like that, but we get the data and it is aggregated into the totals for all the episodes, but now we have a section dedicated explicitly to our streamers. And so it's funny that We All Eat dropped off of our...

our leaderboards there for the biggest note of all time. But WeAllE is still our number one streamer by Sats with 5,712 Sats streamed via Fallon. And then right below that is Chad F, who streams as Sats, and he has streamed 5,536 Sats via Cast-O-Matic. And so we've got a section dedicated to streamers, and we also have a section dedicated to our top zappers.

So if you're zapping a stats on Gnoster and you're doing that with an actual zap, like if you're zapping a note like associated with your NPUB, we'll pull that data too. And so now we've got a section dedicated to our top zappers. And our number one zapper right now is Paul, who has zapped us 2,100 stats via Gnoster. So thank you to all of our supporters and we hope that the stats page gives you more.

Shout outs to all the cool stuff you've got going on. And yeah, check it out. It's a cool looking page.

Rev (02:35:12.149)
And so just to give Chad F another shout out. So Boost Me Bitch is a really cool tool because as we mentioned, we've got this, all the sats that end up in this shared Primal wallet that we have. We're going to be using that to either zap people for, you know, trying out our stuff, but also to be boosting other pods that we think are worth listening to, you know.

And Boost Me Bitch has actually turned out to be the Nostra integrated lowest friction way for me to do that with my mobile only setup. I don't really have an easy way to do all the shit on desktop. And Boost Me Bitch, I've been able to get that to work on mobile. And so now I can just go find the podcast that I think is awesome and send a boost through there.

via Boost Me Bitch. And so that is a very, if you're looking for a clean UX way to just boost shows with your Noster keys, right? Like if you want to connect a Noster wallet connect and do it kind of how you would do it on our website, but for any podcast you can imagine, Boost Me Bitch is the way to go.

And so there was another little anomaly that we didn't really mention, which was that a fellow from your meetup just zapped us directly to the Primal Wallet thinking that they were boosting the show just out of their inexperience with the whole thing. And so that was like 10K sats, right?

Reed (02:36:52.837)
It was 10k sats and it came from, I was able to out of band, I suppose, to verify that this was from BTC Jackalope on Noster. So thank you BTC Jackalope and we did get your sats and we totally appreciate it. He told me again, out of band, he would like his 10,000 sats to be a vote for episode two. Episode two was his favorite episode so far.

It's not exactly counted in our totals but message received. So appreciate the stats.

Rev (02:37:31.679)
Well, all right, man. That episode with Johnny was killer, dude. It's so much fun going through all this value for value shit. I love that the community is building up that we're that meetups are starting based on what we're doing. Go everyone, go out there and find your your local pizza day meetup. You know, I've got one going here in Bridgman, Michigan at Emma Hearth Market. We're going to be meeting up at five thirty and we're closing that place out.

best pizza you can get in the area. So if you're in northwest Indiana, southwest Michigan, come on down. Yeah, it's just amazing, man. The meetups are strong. There's high signal. The meetups are reviving, I feel like. And we can see it here with all the activity around the show.

Reed (02:38:26.373)
Yeah, it's so great to see. It gives just so much more encouragement to what we're doing here to see Bitcoin Meetup culture making a comeback here. I really hope that we'll start seeing that. We heard from Johnny today about how it went at the Big Bitcoin Conference and we hear every week from people who are boots on the ground, getting Meetup started.

We hear in the boosts and the value for value section, people getting new meetups started, submitting their meetups, getting more people to come out. This is exactly why we started the podcast. So I really hope that if you're a Bitcoin meetup organizer, we hope that you're getting value out of this. And even if you're not a Bitcoin meetup organizer, just learning more about Bitcoin meetups in general and about all the culture and all the work that goes in kind of behind the scenes.

So yeah, it's really encouraging and just love to see it.

Rev (02:39:34.793)
Alright, roll the outro.