Rev (00:02.306)
Okie dokie, local bitcoiners. Rev Hodel. Back again.

And I'm always here, as always, with Reed. And tonight, or I guess in this episode, we are we don't have a guest. And that's great because that lets us really dive into some of the cool stuff that we do at meetups, some things that we've learned through these episodes of the podcast that we've recorded. We're just gonna get into, you know.

some of our thoughts on meetups in general and some of the stuff that is interesting to us. But first, as always, I'm going to get into a meetup adventure. And this last meetup that I attended was the Southwest Michigan meetup, first Thursday, or I'm sorry, not the first Thursday, the third Thursday of every month at Dwellers Co-Working Space at 6 30 p.m.

this is the fantastic circular economy meetup where so many goods and services get exchanged, people wheel and deal there big time. And at that meetup, I think the biggest topic of the discussion was this idea of using Noster to enhance the commerce that we're doing at the meetups and at

i it just in general, the the circular economy. taking the idea of these split payments with in podcasting, doing the zap splits on the notes, and then also the web of trust reputation the record of that attached to your identity. Right now we have a pretty good reputational mechanism in that if you go to the meetups all the time for years and you never do anyone wrong, you end up with a pretty good reputation. But

Rev (02:06.608)
That's only for people who know you and who have also been meeting you for years. So if there was a way to record this reputation somewhere where somebody else could analyze it and look at it, now they might be able to trust you a little bit more quickly. And so that that was the Southwest Michigan meetup. And coming up here, I'm gonna be finally making my way. I've tried several times and life has gotten in the way. I'm finally going to the Chicago Bitcoin Collective for the first time next Thursday.

for their bit devs there. Now there's two bit devs in Chicago now. There's the bit devs on the second Thursday of the month, and that's at the strike office downtown 200 North LaSalle. And then there's now this other BitDevs meetup, which I guess is that the fourth Thursday? It must be the fourth third fourth Thursday of the month at the Chicago Bitcoin Collective in Portage Park.

And really the big reason why I'm I'm even finding my way over to this meetup is because I've recently butchered some lambs and I sold one to a repeat customer over there in Chicago. And so I'm gonna both deliver this lamb to the to the customer and check out a bit devs. And this is kind of gets back into my strategy when it comes to meetups is that I'm always trying to figure out how many different forms of capital I can stack

With each meetup that I attend. And so in this meetup, I'm gonna learn a lot about Bitcoin. I'm gonna get some experience transacting with Bitcoin, I'm gonna get some financial capital, and I'm probably gonna buy something from somebody there too. and so with that, I guess Reed, you attended a brand new meetup this month. How did that go?

Reed (03:53.782)
That's right. That's right. Yep. Yeah, meet up meetup number one for I think it's called CT CT Bitcoiners or CT Bitcoin. so yep, so that was last Wednesday, May twentieth, at Conspiracy in which is a bar in Middletown. it was a pretty cool venue. It was like an like an ups it was in like a downtown area, but it was like in a like a little hole in the wall kind of bar. You had to like go up

Some stairs to get there. It was it was pretty nice inside. It felt very kind of exclusive. We had like our own little area. great turnout. Like 10 people came. me and one of the guys from my meetup, we carpooled together. but they were, you know, we know some of those guys because there wasn't any Connecticut meetups as far as I'm aware of. so

They would travel up to ours. So those guys are pretty excited now that they have something much closer for them. For me, it's about an hour away, but that makes them our nearest neighbor. So I'm thinking an hour away is really not that bad. they also do Wednesday nights at 7 p.m., which is pretty good time for me too, because that means that I can still have dinner with the family and then just head out after that without having a you know.

make a big exception or try to skip dinner or eat on my way or something like that. So I'm kind of thinking that might just become a regular meetup for me, which will be cool. Then I'll be my meetup and the CT Bitcoiners meetup each once a month. So that'll be pretty nice. And it kind of got me thinking a little bit that we do have a bunch of other meetups in my general area, but they're all like two hours away.

And so I certainly I for me, a two hour drive both ways, you know, two hour drive each way for like, you know, a lot of times like a two hour Bitcoin meetup. It's worth it to see those guys every once in a while. but I'm not gonna make the trip every month. But it got me thinking that I actually haven't been to some of those in quite a while now. And so I'm kind of rallying the troops a little bit for my meetup and I'm gonna try to do some road trips here where

Reed (06:16.546)
Maybe our c our call our I will carpool and just drive a couple of people around. So the the ones I'm thinking of hitting up soon are Rhode Island. there's a Boston BitDevs. I actually I saw Boston Bit Devs I did go to this past fall. that was pretty good time. and then Albany, New York. So Albany, New York is also about two hours. And you know, we're friends with those guys too. So we you know, we these are all people that we know.

We just don't see each other all the time because two hours is a long way. So we're hoping that maybe this will foster a little bit more of the cross meetup culture and stuff like that. And maybe we can start sharing some ideas and seeing maybe they have people who are a little closer to us. Maybe they want to send some people out our way. We can talk about different strategies about what's working for them, how things are going. So

And and one other thing I didn't mention that I thought would be interesting to bring up on the Connecticut meetup is so two of the guys who go there, and these are two of the guys, they've been to our meetup a couple of times, but they were recently on stage at the Bitcoin conference with Jeff Booth to talk about this like physics paper that they wrote. and it has, you know, they've been getting some feedback, all kinds of feedback, good feedback, not as good feedback.

but it's been a very interesting experience for them personally. And everybody was super excited to just hear how everything went and how the conference was and you know, what they're doing with with the feedback, which they're they're taking everybody's feedback actually really seriously. This is not something, you know, they're not just kinda trying to bury it or something like that. They're very much embracing the conversation and and are looking to have as many conversations about it as they can. So

it was cool to give them a little bit of a a space to talk with their local people, which are us. So yeah, it was a good time.

Rev (08:23.728)
There's a couple things that I wanted to mention or just respond to in in all that. And the first thing is that these like more hole in the wall, you could say maybe it it pr provides the illusion of privacy a little bit.

When you kind of gotta do some work to get to the meetup venue in the first place, where it's a little uncertain if this is where the meetup actually is. it's bad for

Reed (08:53.122)
We walked by it twice. We literally walked by it twice. We couldn't see it. We were like, I'm looking at the map, I'm looking at the buildings. I was like, it's like not here. And then I was like, that little door there, that's what it is? okay.

Rev (09:05.465)
Yeah, it just makes you feel like, all right, I I'm really in the no on something here, some some really kind of underground cool thing. For me at that, I like that. I like feeling like I'm participating in this secret underground culture. And so when the meetup is not just obviously right there, it's cool. And the dinner thing is is something that I struggle with too, where a lot of these meetups are in right around dinner time, you know.

But if you're driving two hours to get there, well, you left way before dinner time. And so you either gotta be prepared to pack your dinner or you're buying dinner. Sometimes the meetup doesn't have food. Like the there's no option there. so you there is this is a challenge for me, even years later, of never quite being prepared with the food the way I should be.

And finally that so those guys that they were that I listened to that episode, the physics stuff on Preston Pitch. Is that the only podcast that they've done so far?

Reed (10:13.58)
Yeah. Yes.

Reed (10:19.128)
Think so. I think so. They had been talking about

Rev (10:20.508)
Okay. It was really good. I th I thought, you know, it's not very often after years of listening to podcasts and podcasts, and y there's not many completely like mind blowing new things that come up, you know. And there was some novel ways of thinking about Bitcoin that these guys brought to the table. Whether it's, you know, th this is I think where the the criticism comes in is is maybe

if you think about it even further, you end up circling back to like, okay, it's not really what they're saying it is, but it's it's definitely food for thought in a big way. And it's a cool podcast to check

Reed (11:02.55)
It's it's really honest honestly, it's my my takeaway on their topic is that they're using Bitcoin to point out limitations in our knowledge of our current time based universe. And so they're saying because we understand like we can view Bitcoin under such a microscope, right, because it's the

We can see the entire thing. It's right here. I run it on my node. I can see everything about this thing. It's all contained right here. Which is very much not like our universe, which is enormous and whatever, thirteen billion years old or however old it is. the other thing too is that in Bitcoin time moves by in ten minute chunks. That's Bitcoin's clock, is moves in ten minute chunks. the universe's clock

moves at this scale called like Planck time, which is some ungodly minuscule amount of time that I can't remember ten to the negative thirty seconds or something like that. It's a very small number. And so they're basically just saying, hey, because we can view Bitcoin, that's such a it's so much easier for us to view it. We can make some interesting parallels between Bitcoin and our own universe. And yeah, you're right. Like some of the physics people are

arguing terminology and stuff, like they don't like, that's not what that word means, or that's not what you think it is, or something like that. But to me, it's mostly just semantics. My takeaway was the same as yours, which is like, wow, this is a totally new way to think about Bitcoin. It's been a while since I read, you know, I don't know, the Mycelium of Money, or Bitcoin is Pioneer Species, or some other big concept that had was blowing my mind the first time I read it.

So yeah.

Rev (12:59.004)
Yeah, it it takes the the concept that Bitcoin is fundamentally a natural organic system. A complex system that most it's a digital complex system that mirrors nature more closely than anything else. And when you break it down into this you really drill down into it, this is the this these are the first people that've really like

drilled down into it and kind of created a framework of thinking about it beyond just relating it directly to mushrooms like mycelium and mushroom systems or pioneer species in nature and everything like that. It's they're they're direct they're drawing their analogies into actual physics concepts, much more deep concepts, more scientific concepts. so

Tonight we're gonna or I c I keep saying tonight and you know, w when you're listening, it's not tonight. It might not be tonight, but this episode. Since we don't have a guest, we we wanted to just kind of fire off some stuff that we thought was interesting related to Bitcoin meetups.

Rev (14:13.722)
And so I don't know if you wanna kick us off into that or

Reed (14:18.094)
Well I was thinking so the I guess the first thing to bring up is so for for this episode, you know, most of the time I I guess most of the time we have guests. Rev and I, we both do some preparation. And so we think about what kinds of questions we're gonna ask and things like that. Maybe we have a couple topics we want to bring up. but a lot of that happens, you know, it's conversation. So this episode we came a little bit more prepared. We had a couple

converse a couple topics written down and we'd like to kind of go through them, you know, a little bit with a little bit more structure. So it it reminded me of when I was listening to the forty ninth parallel podcast because apparently they come prepared with all kinds of lists of notes and topics and things that they can talk about during the episode and they're both viewing it on the screen at the same time and

I don't know. I think it's the engineer in me. That like the the hyper organized, like the guy who like I'm the guy that takes meeting minutes, like I type them out as I'm I'm I'm having phone calls with other Bitcoin meetup organizers. Like that's yes, I am a psychopath. I understand that. But it's that part of me that is like, dude, we should totally have a whole list of of topics so we can talk about them during the episode. So yeah, so here we are.

And that's what we did today. So I think the first one you're on mute.

Rev (15:50.394)
49th parallel is Boomer, who has been on the show, episode three, and Business Cat, who does the Rock, Paper, Bitcoin podcast, and who also is a meetup organizer. I'm I'm failing to remember exactly which meetup he runs. It's in Pennsylvania. I don't remember what they call it. But you know, those guys have been an inspiration for this recording.

Reed (16:06.19)
That's true.

Reed (16:20.055)
Absolutely.

So looking at the list here, I think the first one we wanted to talk about was your topic. Wanna dive into some circular economy stuff?

Rev (16:32.186)
Yeah, so th we talk about circular economies and and as I mentioned at the beginning, the Southwest Michigan meetup is is really where the circular economy stuff really started for me. And that's been going on for a long time to where we have a pretty robust circular economy. And when I say circular economy, I think people can get the idea that, that means that

You're living on Bitcoin and you can get everything you could ever want or need with Bitcoin. And obviously that's not the reality. These are small scale circulations of Bitcoin amongst a tight-knit group of people. But because we've been doing it for so long, we're seeing the the the benefits of keeping the sats moving amongst ourselves. And also it's it's led to this idea of how do we

improve the products that we're we're bringing to the table and expand how we can give other Bitcoiners access to this stuff if they can't just get to the meetup. And so the the circular economy started off as you know me bringing maple syrup and then somebody else saying, well I've I've got some some pork in my freezer. I could bring that and other another guy's got this and another guy's got that and we just kind of sell it to each other.

But we started getting in interested in more value add stuff. So one guy was making he was growing basil and he actually grew the basil with compost that he bought from me. And then from the the basil that he grew with the compost that he bought for me, then he started turning that into pesto and selling the pesto. And so then it became like, okay, I've got this value added thing.

That's basil grown from Rev's compost. And here's a piece of bread, and you can taste the pesto. And then we buy the pesto. And now it's gotten to the point where the same guy's gotten a freeze dryer, and I've mentioned this on other episodes. And so now we're starting to figure out like, okay, well, what are the what are these products that we're regularly sharing with each other? How can we utilize the processing of the freeze dryer to enhance to to

Rev (18:51.078)
First of all, make this stuff shelf stable because a lot of what we're doing is perishable food items. And so if we can value add it and at the same time make it shelf stable, now I can take a load of that, those goods, and bring it to somewhere like Chicago, bring it to Grand Rapids and expand the offerings of what we're producing here in Southwest Michigan to the broader.

Bitcoin culture and community that we're involved with, without once again, without all these people having everyone having to come to our meetup.

And so what what we're kind of getting to the what's kind of holding things up is this idea of it's tricky when when you've got the volatility of the price of Bitcoin and you're trying to operate on a s on SATS as like your unit unit of account, so to speak. If I pay for processing of let's just use the example of my purple dead nettle allergy tea, I

I pay for the processing of the purple dead nettle allergy seat tea. It costs me 100k sats. So now I've got 100k sats tied up into this, but then I'm denomin- I'm I'm actually selling it. I'm trying to price it in dollars because that's what people understand. And as the price changes, I may win on that processing fee or I may lose big time, depending on how long it takes me to sell that tea. And at that during that, that from the time it was processed to the time that it was sold.

Maybe the prices run away from me. And that hundred K

Reed (20:28.322)
Well, so that's that I feel like that's a little bit of an opposite problem for most people, right? Like most people I feel like they're denominating their costs in dollars. So you have the interesting, you know, situation where your your costs, or at least one of your costs, is being denominated in sats. So like that would make me think this would be a great product for you to price in sats as opposed to dollars.

Because it I feel like that's the argument that I hear always the other way about well, why do you price your things in dollars? Well, it's because my costs are denominated in dollars. So have you thought about for that product specifically, switching it up and and pricing it in SAS?

Rev (21:10.928)
Well, once again, it's so it's like how much do you pay for your allergy medicine for a month's supply of your allergy medicine, right? And if it's priced in sats and from the when I when I actually produced this product, the the price of Bitcoin was a hundred K, let's say. And so I spent a hundred dollars in processing. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna include that a hundred dollars in processing, the hundred K SATS in the

My expenses of this is how I need to catch my margin here to sell this item. But the price is now 200K when I'm selling it. So that makes it just very fucking expensive allergy medicine if I price it in sats. If if the trajectory is correct that we think that the price is going to continue to go up by pricing your things in sats, the longer you hold the stock, if you don't, if you're not able to rotate through your stock, you can get trapped with some very expensive stuff.

And so that's the trick is is trying to cause it doesn't matter whether people believe in Bitcoin or not. It's they're not gonna be willing to give up that purchasing power on something that the trade-off is too high, right? To to pay twice as much for allergy medicine when they can just go get a natural remedy for dollars on Etsy that's similar or something, right?

Reed (22:08.952)
Yes.

Reed (22:31.438)
Well, so and so I don't really know if this is where you wanted to go with this. I it may very well may not be because we didn't we didn't talk about it. It's not on the list, so to speak. but it kind of makes me think of something that comes up a lot in my meetup, which is what like what is the reason why you want to spend your Bitcoin in the first place? Because a lot of people don't want to spend their Bitcoin. I am a person I want to spend my Bitcoin.

That's what I want to do. I want to use it as money. but I think that my reason for it for wanting to use Bitcoin as my money is different than what other people at my meetup will of about why they would choose to use it. the tax thing comes up all the time. And you know, we talk we've talked about that even on this podcast before about the importance of no KYC sats and stuff like that. But it's not even it doesn't have anything to do with that for me.

And it's not, you know, because I have all these Bitcoin that I don't know what to do with or something like that. No, it has nothing to do with that. It's just better money. Like it feels everything about the experience of using Bitcoin as money. It's just such a different experience than anything else that I've ever experienced using money. Like when I'm if I'm paying someone else in Bitcoin, like it's it's got like meaning behind it. Like it's I think about it like

I'm it's me. Like these sats, it's me. Like I spent my time and energy doing what I do best to help humanity. Like that's what I did to make to generate those sats. And now I'm giving them to you. And that's how much I value them. I value them as much as I value my own time. And I love the experience. It's just such a gratifying exchange.

That I that's why I want to be spending my Bitcoin everywhere. but that's like a pretty big mental hurdle. And like I don't open with that about like why you should want to spend your Bitcoin. so I don't know. I mean to me, if it was the more expensive allergy medicine, like dude, I just would not care. Like that just wouldn't be a factor for me. I mean, obviously within reason. But like, yeah, if it's a couple bucks more or whatever, but I get to pay

Reed (24:58.242)
Someone who made it w through that whole cool process that you just outlined, and I get to pay for it in sats, you better believe that I'm gonna be paying for that in sats, even if it's a a few bucks more than at the store.

Rev (25:10.906)
Yeah, and so the way I think about it, when you spend Bitcoin, this is how you define that you're in Bitcoin culture. The the money that you use defines what culture you're ultimately participating in. If you're spending the dollar, you're you're participating in the the culture of the dollar. If you're spending the euro, you're participating in the culture of the euro. And if you're spending Bitcoin, you're sp you're participating in the culture of Bitcoin.

And so you're supporting if you don't spend in Bitcoin, that is it's probably spending Bitcoin is probably the the the the number one way you can support Bitcoin culture. You're you're spending the Bitcoin with people who want to earn it, and you get the idea. And so that's kind of that that's what gets to the so instead of me paying up front this hundred K SATS for the processing fee, we're trying to figure out how

Do we both share that that risk, you know, of when I sell the tea, is there a way for me to have one payment that splits that I get my margin, whatever I whatever I wanted to get, and the the processor, the freeze drying processing gets paid for each sale of the tea? And so in order for this person to want to work with me, they have to be confident in my ability to actually

Just sell and utilize that work that they've done. And so it creates a whole different relationship when you can start to use this mechanism. And this is part of the problem is that we don't necessarily know how it a very simple way to do this. We've tried in the past where you know somebody has just given me products. Sell sell these when you go to the other meetups and give me my split, give me my cut when you sell it. And then I I sell it and I lump it in with

another you know someone buys eggs and maple syrup and then this other item and it's one big transaction and then I have to and and because we're we're we're still using dollars as the unit of account at the meetups because that generally is the way that people think about pricing. It you I think you put yourself at a disadvantage if you go to a Bitcoin meetup and you're pricing in sats and people have to do the the math about how much does this is this actually costing because that's what people do. Then I then I go try and do the accounting I'm like okay so I sold

Rev (27:36.988)
X number of these items from this other person, what was the price of Bitcoin at the time? What is their split? And it becomes very, very confusing and hard to keep track of, especially if you don't do that accounting right away at the end of each meetup. And so we're trying to figure out a way to when somebody makes a payment, the the the appropriate people get paid out proportionally for their work involved in producing that product from that point of payment directly.

And this is something that I think is like as far as the average person just going around with a bag of items and selling it, you you could use cash as an example. You cannot do that at a farmer's market style setting, right? I don't even know how what what mechanism would be an easy way to do that using credit cards or any of the other fintech stuff. But with Bitcoin, there's gotta be a way to do it. With it's just not

Totally obvious to us right now. And actually, this is kind of a call out for for anyone out there that has any ideas about how you could take physical products and and create payment splits on that with a good UX in person, phone to phone or whatever it may be. We're looking for a way to make this happen because it's it's gonna unlock a lot of cool potential ways for goods and services to cooperate in this circular economy that we're developing.

And so that's kind of the end of the my spiel on that.

Reed (29:11.896)
Well, so it it I wanted to bring up so there was this concept that was floating around at least it was floating around the Noster space, a couple of years ago. I think it was a couple of years ago. prison called prison payments. And you and I have talked a little bit about these before, but neither one of us really know very much about it. I I before this episode I read one short article that Geez wrote about it. And at the time

And again, this is dude, if you're talking about a a new-ish topic from two years ago in the Noster space, that is like so unbelievably ancient history at this point that there's probably like ten apps out there that have totally redefined this whole thing, and I just haven't heard of them yet. So forgive me ahead of time that I'm probably way out of date on this topic. But as I understand prison payments, it

It kind of just sounded to me like it was somebody's server. Like one person would get all of the SATS from the pay-e. That way it's one. Like when we do all these zap splits and stuff like that, like on our website and through Podcasting 2.0, those are all s separate invoices. Like each payment leg requires its own invoice. And so you're actually, if you're splitting a payment five ways, you're actually just making five payments. So

Prism payments would simplify that to be one payment, but then from there it splits out. So is there a way now if you're gonna do it that way, that requires some trust of whoever is controlling this server that they're gonna do everything correctly and that the splits are all gonna happen the way you want them to and things like that. Is there a way to do it trustlessly? Which of course we would prefer in Bitcoin? I have no idea. but it is a great it's

The fact that we have programmable money means that solutions like this can be thought of dre if you can dream it, you can build it, and eventually someone will build it. I just have no idea if we've gotten there yet.

Rev (31:21.68)
Well, in in that instance, it's the person is already trusting me. Right? They they've already said, I processed your product, I've given it to you, and I'm expecting repayment. And so if the payment comes to me first and then automatically goes out to the respective people, that's fine, because they're already trusting me. And like the reason why the why we why we wouldn't use

prison payments for something like the splits that we're doing on the show is because we don't want those the guests to trust that we're gonna do the correct accounting. It it just automatically happens. And so there's a good reason for both of these things. And in this instance, something like the prism payments sounds like a good solution. It's just the question is then how is d where is the UX how where is the thing with the good prism payment UX? Does that exist? And we haven't found it and we're looking for that.

Reed (32:20.354)
It almost kind of makes me th I know we've been talking about this for a while, but I don't know if you've ever used Boltz, like the for swaps. It kind of doesn't it seem like a service that Boltz could offer where you could set something up. Like th they already allow you to like back up your kind of I forget exactly what they call it, but you can like back up some instance that helps you identify like if a payment fails or something like that, like you have some sort of an identifier for yourself.

I wonder if there's a way that they could set up you know I I'm just saying, like people already trust them to do these swaps. Maybe they would maybe they have a good enough reputation at this point to be able to be trusted to do these prison payments and they could come up with a cool UX or or something. I don't know.

Rev (33:08.924)
There you go. Boltz, if you're listening, there's three people out there that want to use prism payments, and you should totally vibe code that up. No, I it it's it is it's just like that's the problem, right? Is that the what we're doing is at the frontier and there's not a lot of instances of people actually trying to to experiment and do these proof of concept ways of using Bitcoin at the next level beyond just like

Alice paying Bob. You know, there's so much more that we can do. But bec because most people are not inter like interacting in the Bitcoin culture exclusively, it just doesn't come up. And so it's coming up now. We've been doing this for years, and it's like, man, the solution to this these accounting problems is right here. It's Bitcoin. But we don't quite have the the technical chops to be able to do it. And

Mentioning vibe coding, when you start vibe coding with money, talking about bugs and all this stuff, it's like it gets to be a little bit of a scary thing to do. But certainly this is a cool thing that it's already happening with zap splits and everything like that. and the ek well, the the prism payments was a thing on NoSter for a while, like where there were certain conditions that would unlock the prism and then everyone would get paid out. The stats would be held, I don't know if you'd say in escrow, but like they were held by the trusted party.

Reed (34:16.632)
Definitely.

Reed (34:34.311)
was it actually implemented somewhere?

Rev (34:36.388)
Yeah, yeah. There was there was I think the dude was who was really using it was out of was on the West Coast. I I could be wrong saying that it was the San Francisco Bay Area, but and he was at the first Nostroville and I I I'm ashamed that I cannot remember his name because if I could then I would actually go and find him and ask him these questions directly. But if you're out there and you've done you've done this work with prison payments, get a hold of me because I I do want to dig deeper into this.

But maybe that maybe this is a good chance to to move into the the next thing. I think we've talked about this enough. We're kind of talking in circles here, but

Reed (35:17.166)
Alright. so if we're gonna move to the next topic, I I guess my suggestion would be I wanted to talk a little bit about meetups when it comes to proof of work. And really what I mean by proof of work in this particular case is that it it's really less about actual proof of work and more about proof of reputation. this is something you know

Reputation in Bitcoin culture is something that is extremely important. all Bitcoiners take reputation extremely seriously and it's something that you can lose instantaneously. this is why like in how many you know, whatever Bitcoin celebrity type people, you know, these people like the it's like a a a kill your heroes situation. Like so many. So many.

That people, you know, we trusted you, we looked up to you, we gave you tons of glaze, and then you went and started chilling XRP, you know, or some some other ridiculous nonsense that no one is getting behind, and your credibility is instantly lost. And so in Bitcoin in the Bitcoin culture, in the Bitcoin community, especially when you start getting into the

IRL spaces like the real life the meet space meetups and conferences and stuff like that. It's all about when you meet another pleb pioneer, so to speak, another average Bitcoiner.

That's, you know, we all have this shared common understanding of Bitcoin. We all have this shared background and and knowledge. we come into these spaces and we all kind of feel like family. And we all want to know like what is the cool shit that you have going on. Because once you especially once you start getting into the meetup scene, like every like it seems like such a high percent of people have such cool shit going on.

Reed (37:29.984)
Everybody's building something, everybody's doing something, everyone's exploring some unexplored territory, and we all just kind of want to know what everybody else has going on. And Bitcoin meetups is it's kind of like the it's if if you are one of those people, if you are one of those builders, pioneers, explorers, Bitcoin meetups is like such a perfect place for you. Like let's say you don't have this big following on the internet.

Maybe you're just not a social media person. That's totally fine. Totally understandable, in fact. Bitcoin meetups is a great place for you to come and talk about all the cool shit that you're doing. And if you're not one of those people, if you're just like a normal guy who or gal or someone who's just interested in Bitcoin and wants to learn more, if you end up going to your local meetup, you are going to get to meet some of these.

really cool people who have all kinds of really cool stuff going on. And you're gonna be able to start building a personal relationship with them. And you know, maybe you could contribute to their idea. Maybe you could be a beta tester for their products. Maybe you could help them out in some way. You know, maybe they could help you out back. This is what this whole ecosystem is all about. Like if you're gonna help me out, if you're gonna find bugs on my website, well I'm gonna reward you with sats or with

you know, some other thing that I have to offer you or some other form of capital, right? I'm gonna shout you out and make sure that you start building up that social capital. I don't know. There's I just feel like there's there's lots of opportunities to commingle like in the IRL Bitcoin space, specifically at meetups. It just it's because there's such high signal events. They draw in such high signal people. It's just a really great place.

For all those things to kind of come together.

Rev (39:27.704)
Everybody's got the ability to find their niche and how they can participate and be known for that. And eventually that can yield, maybe it can yield Bitcoin. But as we talk about, there's other forms of capital that it can yield. And just by participating and building that reputation over time, there's definitely something to be gained from it. And everybody wins when people when this is the way it goes.

the shoot, there there is a point on there that I w wanted to mention

Rev (40:07.664)
But you don't yeah, you don't have to be the person with the product, with the new idea. You can be the person being the sounding board, being the beta tester, being the person to consume the product and give feedback on it. And everybody, you know, help, you know, help everybody succeed.

Reed (40:30.06)
Even just listening to someone explain their idea, because a lot of people, especially if they're working on something new, it takes a while to find the right words. Like it takes a while to explain it in the right way for the light bulb to go off and for people to realize what it is that you're doing. And so when you come in cold, not understanding anything about what someone's working on, and they just get to explain it to you, they that's valuable feedback.

Whatever your reaction is, is gonna be valuable. Whether you get it right away or you don't get it right away, either one of those is still valuable because it's actual real life feedback.

Rev (41:09.924)
And there is a grapevine involved with the meetups where it's not just meetups are not isolated in themselves. There there are people that I I span a whole region of different meetups. And so I know people from all across the region and

If I meet you at one meetup in Chicago, let's say, and then I'm in Grand Rapids and some relevant connection opportunity comes up, I say, Hey, I know a guy in Chicago. You should connect. And so by putting yourself in this mix, you're you're you're actually exposing yourself to a much broader local community. You different, very different than putting yourself out there on the internet. And once again, the reputation.

plays a huge role in here in in this aspect because I'm not just gonna vouch for any I'm I probably won't bring it up if I just met the dude and I have no idea what they're you know it I get but you know it's if it's somebody that I'm I'm seeing them work on this thing forever and I'm like, yeah, that's really cool. And then I see over here somebody else is working on something forever and it's really cool. And if I link these two people together then they can even do better.

That's the idea, is that this reputation is important. It it will afford you the access to by going to the meetup, by coming to the meetup, you may find connections outside of just that one little group of ten or fifteen people. These meetups are overlapping and and they're overlapping more and more so as time goes on.

Reed (42:51.91)
So that brings up a g a good I I think I might I there was a there's another concept that I'm I'm trying to explore a little bit and this falls into the category of things that I haven't really found the right words of what what what is the point I'm trying to make yet is I I I'm still trying to work on that specifically. But part of it is definitely what you just brought up, which is that meetups are not just a singular

Occurrence is that a lot of meetups, now, okay, fine. I'm sure there are some meetups out there who are extremely isolated. I'm sure. I'm sure that's a thing. But a lot of meetups, there are people who go between meetups. you'll get visitors who are coming from outside who like see, you know, their regular meetup attendees, and they're just looking, hey, I happen to be in your area, and I'm just gonna stop by your meetup. And now you're now they're gonna know everyone at that meetup.

So we've talked on this show a lot about kind of the progression of meetups where sure you started out, whatever, maybe you post it on meetup dot com, one or two people show up. Okay, there you go. Meetup or you know, origin point started. But as it grows, the community grows around it. And then all of a sudden now you're doing more stuff with the meetup. Maybe now you got a circular economy or you're doing Bitcoin education stuff. But really at the same time, you're growing

outwardly. Maybe there's regional events in your area. Maybe you s maybe you throw a regional event, like a Lake Satoshi or a a Nakamotown or Bitcoin is for everyone. You know, we've heard about a lot of these regional events, the Sound Money Soiree. It seems like there's a lot of these like quote unquote bigger events that are supposed to draw in these larger communities where meetups a lot of times these are just people who go to the local meetups.

Reed (44:53.934)
Who are all going to the same event. And so you can see now how those networks start to grow. And now there's like these even bigger layers that are starting. There's like the Meshtidel, right? The how many meetups are represented in the Meshtidell. there's grassroots Bitcoin. How many different meetup organizers go to but grassroots Bitcoin? there's this podcast, right? Now we're starting, we've already had what, eight or nine guests.

on on this podcast from all different meetups. So there's all there's this other layer that's happening that's bringing together all of these communities. And we're talking about the regional events. So all you get access to this entire network just by going to your local meetup. Now you're going to start gaining exposure to this whole in-person network that you know we use Bitcoin as our money. We use Noster we use RSS.

We use the tools for communication, but you know, we're all connected together.

Rev (46:00.42)
It is very much a backwards way of developing a community where these small isolated communities start and eventually find connection points to other small isolated communities. That leads to those communities getting together in a regional event, which then leads to people that maybe are completely from outside that community altogether coming to the regional event and connecting those together.

And if you're not going to the Bitcoin meetups, you're not you know, you don't have access to this. You know, it's it's it's a different it it be it becomes like I said, the the the read the the territories of each meetup start to

encroach each other and overlap. And once they start to overlap, that's where the connection makes where the now the economy can be bridged between them. And once again, the economy doesn't have to be in sets. The economy can be of all these forms of capital. The the exchange of the capital can happen. And it's a much going back to episode two, you know, the the the Bitcoin meetups are the true trust. Like that's that's where the trust happens

Because it's so small, it starts off small, you have the ability to build your reputation amongst these people. And once the the the these communities start to overlap, everyone's kind of been vetted to to some degree, you know. We it and I don't want people to like get the idea that this this actually gets into the next concept, or the next kind of topic of of not being afraid to attend the meetups in the first place.

It it's not to say that everyone, every single person is vetted, but there are people that build up this reputation where you can vouch for them, you know, and and these these people that are vouched for can continue can overlap and connect and continue to actually develop the culture to the point where

Rev (48:04.856)
all the all these these these different regions are finally overlapping across the whole country, across the whole world. it's a slow process, but it's decentralized and it's very hard to stop. And by coming to the meetup, you're participating in that.

Reed (48:27.692)
Yeah, and I think a lot of this like Bitcoin meetup Bitcoin meetups have been around for a long time, but maybe not at the scale that we have today. And I feel like some of the scale that we have today has come from some of these higher level coordination mechanisms. Like it's I think I've said it on this podcast before, or if I haven't

I've said it in many different contexts. Decentraliz the fact that all these Bitcoin meetups are decentralized, like that is the way that they're supposed to be. However, just because we're decentralized doesn't mean that we can we don't have like we d we should be disorganized. Like what we're trying to do on this podcast and what other events like grassroots Bitcoin, for example, are trying to do is we're trying to help each other out.

Like there's no reason why we all need to be reinventing the wheel every single time we run an educational meetup. Whatever educational meetup you've run, someone else has probably run a very similar educational meetup. Why wouldn't we want to share tools with each other? You know? So there are ways for us to learn from each other, to communicate with one another, to just hear what other people are working on.

Even if you just hear the message about what someone else is doing, even if you don't do that exact same thing, it's gonna make you think of something that you wanna do with your meetup. even if you're not a Bitcoin meetup organizer, bring it up with your organizer. Hey, I'm hearing about all these circular economies going on at all these meetups. Like, how come we don't have one of those? You know, let's can I start bringing stuff to the meetup to sell for sats? Because the answer is almost certainly gonna be yes.

So I just think that there's a lot that we can learn from each other. And that is definitely one of the big drivers for why we started this podcast in the first place. I had I think I said on maybe it was just the last episode, like this was very much inspired by me attending Grassroots Bitcoin and getting to know all these other meetup organizers. I was like, my God, there's so many different stories out there. Like I would let's see if we can find a a way to give everybody a platform to really

Reed (50:50.252)
to really talk and share about what they got going on.

Rev (50:54.384)
Well and this is the definition of cultural capital. It's the collective intel intellectual capital and experiential capital of a group. And so when when we are able to o create overlaps in this knowledge and this experience, that means it becomes that much easier. Now that that creates the bar. It sets the bar. And so when you come in, you don't have to necessarily start from zero. You start at the the high watermark that we're at.

Because all this information is out there and there's people to assist and guide and help facilitate your meetup kicking ass and and doing what it's gonna do. Now, this kind of gets into the idea also of there so there's so many different meetups and they're all small and then they they kind of overlap into these regional things and so on and so forth. But I I was kind of jokingly when we were talking, saying, you know, this maybe there's like a Dunbar's number.

Of of the size of a Bitcoin meetup. And it could be somewhere between ten and twenty people. And a lot so as I've seen people share with me, you know, th they try and expand this idea of going to Bitcoin meetups outside of just Noster, into places like Reddit or whatever. And the comments on Reddit are like, Well, yeah, go to the Bitcoin meetup, great place to, you know, get wrench attacked and

they they see this as a as a threat. Going to the meetup is like you why would you s why would you put yourself in a position of danger for what gain? And I think what they're missing is that there's, you know, ten or twenty people, which if you go to the meetup and you you don't have to tell everyone everything about yourself the first time. You don't even have to tell anyone your name, your real name, whatever. You can introduce yourself as whoever the fuck you want. And over time you you develop trust and you

start to open up to these people. But you're really not putting yourself at risk. What you're doing is you're you're instead of i by not going to the meetup, you're losing all the potential, the potential of earning sats, the potential of gaining access to a product that is way higher quality and produced by somebody you know, versus going to the grocery store and getting it from Argentina or China or Mexico or wherever, you know. And

Rev (53:22.628)
The what you have to gain from attending one of these small meetups is much higher than what you have to risk. Especially if you're thoughtful about how you go to these meetups. We talked about like Jamison Lop's his wrench attack he keeps track of it. Yeah, a repo of of all these wrench attacks that happen. And if you really dig into it, it's

Reed (53:43.138)
He's got a repo on it. Yep.

Rev (53:50.064)
People that are just being careless and stupid and a lot of times it's people that aren't just Bitcoin only. They're they're fucking around with crypto and all this other stuff too. And so

Reed (54:00.632)
Well, I can I I I can weigh in on that too. So I took this stuff pretty seriously, actually when I first got when I first decided to run the Bitcoin meetup, I was like, before I hold the first one, I would like to do some thinking about OPSEC and about what I want to do. and that was kind of it was one of my many Bitcoin rabbit holes, but it was a rabbit hole I wanted to go down.

And that was when I I had found Jameson Lops stuff at that point. but it wasn't until a couple years later. Actually, I was just looking because I I pulled up the slides because I wanted to see what I I I ran a meetup topic on this. I called it it was right after I took my I took a firearms safety course. And I dude, the firearms safety course was so awesome. Like I learned all kinds of cool stuff. Like I w wasn't historically like a huge gun person.

But again, like as when I start going down this OPSEC rabbit hole, things like firearm safety courses all of a sudden come into my world. And so seeing how cool that was, I thought, hey, it'd be cool if we had a firearm safety course, but for Bitcoin. And so I called it self-custody security fundamentals. And so I had that was a meetup topic, presentation topic. It's actually one of the few topics that I actually went to the other.

meetups in the area, like I went out to Boston and I went to Albany and gave the same presentation because it got such good feedback. but one of the things I did for that was at the time, and this was two years ago, so I know a lot has changed in two years, but so I actually I read through like all at the time it was a hundred and sixty seven examples of of physical attacks that were tracked by James and Lop and started like categorizing them.

First of all, n none of them occurred at a Bitcoin meetup. Just just saying. Some of them were stupid. Some of them were not stupid. You know, some of them were tragic. there are some, you know, certainly I don't think any Bitcoiner would ever want to be in those types of circumstances. But like you were saying, a lot of times there are things that you can do to keep yourself out of a lot of these messes. Like how do you make yourself

Reed (56:26.52)
How do you not make yourself a target in the first place? you if you think going to a Bitcoin meetup is going to make you a target, like that is not what these people are looking for. Like they're looking to find out, are you like a high net worth individual? Like are you online flexing your stack and then going to a Bitcoin meetup? Because that would be a bad idea. And the going to the Bitcoin meetup part isn't the bad part of the idea.

It's the flexing your stack online or even in person. Like why would you ever go around talking about stuff like that? and so yeah, so we walked through a bunch of just like very practical, easy things that you can do that will keep you much, much safer than you would otherwise think.

Rev (57:16.134)
So do you wanna go over some of that stuff? I think it's it's useful to to hear.

Reed (57:21.56)
Sure. Yeah, so I'll dive in. let's see.

Reed (57:28.728)
Well, since I have some I don't know. Some of these numbers are out of date.

How about instead I'll talk

Rev (57:35.12)
Yeah, just give give the general concepts, right? Just just some general, you know, things to be considerate of. Come into a meetup.

Reed (57:42.53)
So if we're just yeah, if we're if we're talking about opsec, so one of the things I wanted to mention, just if you're looking for good practices, we do have we've talked about it on this show before, it's in the show notes of every show. we I put together a GitHub repo where we have good practices for Bitcoin meetup organizers. How do you start your meetup? How do you grow your meetup? How do you advertise your meetup? how do you do the social media thing with your meetup? How do you find new venues?

Like we have tips and tricks and lessons learned and things like that that we've accumulated from this show, also from talking with other meetup organizers outside of the show, from our own experiences, from my own experience. I'm sure there's lots that we could add. We have community tips. If anybody has a community tip, you can submit it as an issue and we'll add it to the GitHub repo. But one of the sections I have is called disclaimers and risks.

And this is where we talk about OPSec. So one of the things I bring up right there on the page is that you know one of the things that makes it so easy to keep Bitcoin secure is that it's not physical. Right? So you can apply things like encryption to it. It's it's a non physical object. So it's actually much, much, much easier to keep things like that safe. But you, me, I, we are physical assets.

Like we must be kept safe with with things that are not encryption. Like we're operating in meat space. And so it's important that you think about this kind of stuff. Like I don't it's fine that the Reddit people want to point out this risk. I have no problem with them bringing it up. They're just missing, they're they're over exaggerating the actual probability of something happening. And they're totally missing like all the benefits that you gain from coming to a Bitcoin meetup.

So they're swinging and missing on both of those counts. But there's no harm at all. In fact, you should be thinking about security when you go to a meetup or when you go anywhere. This doesn't have to do with only Bitcoin meetups. Like I said, when I went through Jameis and Lop's list, none of them were at Bitcoin meetups. They were all out somewhere else in the real world. And every single one of those people on Reddit, they all operate in the real world. All of them do.

Reed (01:00:06.754)
Maybe not at a Bitcoin meetup, but they're all somewhere.

So some of the things, here are some of the operational security good practices for Bitcoin meetup organizers. don't use your full first and last name. I feel like that's you don't have to. I'm not saying that there's a big problem with that, but if you do, it's not the end of the world either. But hey, if you're gonna start your meetup and this is something you're concerned about, I don't consider just using your first name. I don't I don't see a big problem with that.

Rev (01:00:38.3)
start a meetup, attend a meetup, right? You don't have to tell everyone who you are. Totally fine. That's part of the culture. It's actually completely acceptable to go by a nim, right? It's almost cooler in some ways. I know people and I know their first name and I call them by their NIM because that's who they are to me.

Reed (01:00:42.658)
You know? If you're worried about

Absolutely. Yeah.

Reed (01:00:57.346)
In fact, it usually throws me off when people call you Carl. We've had a couple people on this podcast call you Carl and I'm like, What? You will be Rev to me.

do not post or otherwise share your home address with anyone you don't trust. Like maybe these things are obvious, but if you're a if you're a new meetup organizer and you think, Hey, I'm having a campfire at my house this weekend, I'll just put it on meetup dot com. Maybe maybe not. Maybe use a different communication channel to get that one out there.

Rev (01:01:30.67)
And to that point a little bit with the Noster goods and services sales and everything, a P.O. box is very cheap generally, and it's a way to put a return on address on the things that you're sending out to people where they don't get your your home address. Right. So having a P.O. box is valuable in that regard.

Reed (01:01:53.55)
Yeah, I have a I have a thing that I use it's like an iPostal. I don't know if if you've heard of that. I like go pick up my packages at Staples. If I if I'm if it's something I'm s if I'm concerned about my address being leaked, I'll use that.

Reed (01:02:11.282)
do not bring large quantities of Bitcoin or cash to a meetup. Again, if you're concerned about a wrench attack, w don't walk around with like thousands of dollars in cash or in Bitcoin. And so when I say don't carry it around in Bitcoin, I mean don't have access to it on your phone. Like don't be able to, I don't know, have a a mobile wallet with your seed phrase in it, even if it's password protected or whatever.

I don't see a big reason to have to walk around with access to that much capital. yeah, whatever. However much you're con you know, however much maybe you'd keep in your wallet. Like there's no problem walking around with money.

Rev (01:02:50.16)
Your fi yeah, how many dollars would you keep in your wallet walking around with? Maybe that's a similar number what you'd keep on your phone hot at the Bitcoin meetup.

Reed (01:03:02.97)
but that you know what else that applies to as well? Bitcoin exchanges. For all the people out there who are still keeping their sats on an exchange, especially if you have a large number of sats on an exchange, it means you're one password away from that Bitcoin, which is not very far. And so again, if if this is something that you're concerned about, maybe don't keep your Bitcoin on an exchange. Maybe withdraw them to self custody and keep them somewhere.

offline and private where you can't have access to them at your Bitcoin meetup.

Rev (01:03:36.77)
Or, you know, if you've got the apps on your phone, right, just find a way to obfuscate the fact that these apps are there. Cause if someone does corner you in the parking lot on the way, you know, on the way out of the meetup or something, like give me your phone, like open up your Coinbase account. I want to see what's in there. Maybe just like don't have that be accessible.

Reed (01:04:00.824)
And then some of the other stuff is just like, you know, just pay attention. You know, if there's the the new guy who shows up, you know, go engage him or her. Go talk to them and find out what they're all about. Get a vibe check. You know, there's something to just being able to look somebody in the eye. You can kind of tell a lot about a person. most people anyway, if you just go and look in the eye, you know, have a real conversation with them.

Find out is there something off or out of place about this person. And then I don't know, just pay attention. I remember hearing at one one of the times I gave this presentation, I heard a story that this is, you know, Bitcoin meetups, we're not the only community that has to worry about this kind of stuff. one of the big ones that I heard about was like poker players. People who go around, you know, they'll find these like cash games, and you know, you might walk out of there with like 10 grand.

There are people who will hang out outside of those places or inside and pay attention to who's got the big winnings and maybe follow out to their car. Like to me, that sounds like a much more dangerous environment than a Bitcoin meetup. And, you know, I don't know if if people on Reddit are talking about wrench attacks in in that community, but it seems to me like that would be a much bigger honeypot for for that kind of activity than a Bitcoin meetup.

Reed (01:05:33.41)
So the only other the the other stuff on here too, and and this came up during the Jersey City episode. I think it came up in another episode as well. Is about this is is this isn't really an IRL concern. It's more just about being aware of like your Telegram or your signal groups or your chat groups. there are people out there who will impersonate meetup organizers, especially. Like if you're the leader of the group, it's gonna be more likely that you get impersonated. It's happened to me.

And if it's happened to me with my relatively small meetup, and this was years ago when we had kind of first started, it still happened to me. It's gonna happen to you too, most likely. So just make sure that everybody knows that. Try to be selective about who you allow into your groups in the first place. You know, maybe you have to meet them in in real life before you'll even let them into the group. Like maybe don't advertise your chat group anywhere. Just keep that private and you have to come to the meetup to get it.

So those are you know

Rev (01:06:34.532)
I do have a story in related related to that. So I was kinda new I was basically only attending the Southwest Michigan meetup. And I was thinking, alright, this meetup is sweet. I want to go check out another one. And

Reed (01:06:37.87)
Yeah, let's hear it.

Rev (01:06:54.542)
I was kind of clouded with the illusion of this trust because I had been attending that meetup for several months and I knew everyone and we felt like family, right, already. And so I go to the Grand Rapids meetup for the first time.

And I was a little loose on how loud I was talking about what I was doing. And somebody was listening to what I was saying. And they got information that you would only know if you if you went to this meetup. And then they impersonated me on Telegram in the Grand Rapids, Michigan chat. and was was communicating with another person that I was at the meetup with.

And trying to get Bitcoin out of them. Now, this person was smart enough to I had a c a connection, a different connection, and they were like saying, Hey, are we talking on chel telegram right now? And I said, No. And all of a sudden it became clear that they were talking to somebody who was not me. But the point is, is that you do have to be considerate, especially when you're showing up to the meetup for the first time and you don't know anyone, you know, just

keep hold your cards a little closer to the chest. You might be the vibes might be riding high and you're feeling good and you can you feel like you can open up, but it's it's worth considering how what what you're talking about and how you're saying it. And once again, this is not to scare anyone from attending the meetup. The the whole point here is just to for you when you do because because when you attend the meetup, you're going to get so much out of it. These are edge case scenarios that we're we're talking about being considerate of.

And all you have to do is a little bit of thought before the meetup and and just prepare yourself and you you will never have a problem, right? Very very unlikely that you will have a problem. but yeah, be be thoughtful when you go to a new meetup for the first time and you're talking to people you know or whatever, other people can be listening to that shit and you don't know where they're you know what they're gonna use with that information they're overhearing.

Reed (01:09:10.296)
So yeah, maybe maybe just to round out this topic, I I'm I'm glad that we spent some time talking about this because this is it's really the only mildly valid criticism I feel like of Bitcoin meetups. When you when you get this feedback from someone, especially someone who's very privacy focused, and they bring up the OPSEC concern, the five dollar wrench attack concern, we're not saying that these are

Bad things to think about. Th these are very good things to think about. But again, it has to do with and I recently got on a Rev and I did a Twitter spaces this past week with B Bitcoin Veterans guys. And I they asked me a little bit about my background, which I haven't really talked too much about on the on this particular podcast, but very much so

My day to day life has everything to do with probability and consequence. That like is my career. And so when you trust thinking about what it is we're talking about here, what is the probability of this actually happening? And the probability is is relatively low. And then you have to think about what is the consequence. So because a low probability event with a very high consequence, you know, that can be something you still need to take seriously.

And so there's a a varying there there are degrees of things that could happen as a consequence. But you know, in the worst case, the consequence could be extremely high, which is why it is incredibly important that you do think about this kind of stuff.

But you have to remember that you're taking risks every day of your life. Every d every time you sit behind the wheel of your car and drive, you know, 70 miles an hour on the highway, you don't have control over all of the vehicles around you. Like you are taking huge risks. And a lot of times your children will be in the backseat. Like these people take risks all the time. And the question is, are the risks worth?

Reed (01:11:23.104)
I are there benefits out there that justify the risks? And so yeah, when

Rev (01:11:26.512)
Are you gonna go to the grocery store or are you gonna just, you know, pay the the premium to have everything delivered to your house, right? The the convenience and and the ac the benefit that you gain from taking the risk of getting on the road is worth way more than the potential of getting into an accident, right? That it's just that's why people do it every day. You know, it's just that's the way you gotta do it. It's it's it makes no sense to just stay at home all the time. So come to the Bitcoin meetup.

Reed (01:11:49.902)
That's right.

Reed (01:11:53.358)
That's right. And so

There's really th it's gonna be all right and you're gonna get access to this whole network of Bitcoin meetups, a network that's still forming right now. but that comes with some really cool benefits and and payoff structures for you personally and potentially for your family, potentially for your legacy. Going to a Bitcoin meetup could be the difference for you.

Rev (01:11:56.868)
It's gonna be all right.

Rev (01:12:20.412)
So

Rev (01:12:23.764)
I I think that's a good segue into I think this is the final topic, my third topic here, and that is selling Bitcoin for cash at a meetup. How do you do that in a way that is safe and good? Now I've been I've been doing this for years. And I've got kind of, you know, there's a lot of ways to do this. I'm just gonna to disclose how I do it.

And, you know, if there's a better way, great. You know, if there's there's, you know, it's it's only there is no the way, there's only ways with trade-offs, right? But I'm gonna talk about how I do it. And I think that a lot of people can learn something from the way that I do it. Because I sell Bitcoin at the meetups for cash. That's how I get fiat. I don't sell Bitcoin at on the exchange.

I sell Bitcoin at the meetups. I sell Bitcoin into my local Bitcoin economy. And so the what I've what I've arrived at in how to do this is first of all, you talk about you don't want to go to a Bitcoin meetup with a lot of Bitcoin on your phone or whatever. And so how do you sell Bitcoin at a Bitcoin meetup without showing up at the meetup with a lot of Bitcoin on your phone? Well, what I do is I

I work out, I I I basically say, Hey, in the group chats or however, whatever communication way I have outside of the meetup, I say, Hey, I've got some Bitcoin for sale. Does anyone want it? And people will raise their hand, you know, they'll they'll hit me up and we'll work out the con the the terms and conditions. All right, we're gonna lock in the price at this time leading up to the meetup, and we're gonna do the the deal at the meetup.

And so by locking in the price in advance of the meetup and getting the address that you're gonna pay out to, this allows you to actually make the Bitcoin transaction completely sign it and everything, but don't broadcast it. I've got the the person's address, their Bitcoin address that I'm gonna pay to. I draft the transaction in Sparrow, I sign it, and I don't broadcast it. I just copy and paste.

Rev (01:14:47.194)
That transaction, that signed transaction, and I save it somewhere. And so that way when I go to the meetup, the only thing that you can get from me is the signed transaction, which if you broadcast that transaction, it just goes to the person it was supposed to pay be paid to, anyways. So I'm not actually showing up to the meetup with any Bitcoin. I'm just showing up with the signed transaction. And so when I get to the meetup and I see the cash and I see that the person's good for it.

Then I broadcast the transaction through something like mempool.space has a transaction broadcast functionality. And so how I confirm, because I I'm not gonna be able to see my now there's ways that you can do it with watch wallets and all that stuff, but I don't have that. And I also this gets into the UTXO management component of using on-chain Bitcoin. But what I do is I never I never send Bitcoin.

with a change output that comes back to me. the way I accomplished this is I set I let's say that we'll use 100k sats to keep things simple. If I'm gonna send if I've got a UTXO that's 120k sats and I need to send a hundred K SATS to somebody at the meetup. Well when I draft that transaction instead of having that 20k sats come back to a change output

I actually add a secondary output of 20k sats to a wallet which I can swap into Lightning. So now when I make the transaction at the meetup, I see that this wallet that I have on my phone that can swap into Lightning for that change, it confirms that the trans yes, the transaction was broadcast. And so I can watch for the confirmation at the meetup versus

having to be at home at my computer and watching my sparrow wallet or whatever. And so now I get two things, right? I get to verify that the transaction was confirmed throughout the course of the meetup. And now once the the transaction that change output is confirmed in this swap wallet, I immediately swap it into Lightning and I consolidate all my change in Lightning. So I don't have to deal with any the the person that I'm transacting with, their visibility into this Bitcoin stops right there. They see that

Rev (01:17:10.992)
That 20k sat change output go from this address into some mystical lightning land, right? They cannot follow it as far as I'm concerned. It's not attached to me anymore. It's now in lightning. And once I get a big enough balance on my lightning channels to 500k, a million sats, whatever, then I just make a swap back out on chain and I keep that in my cold storage.

And so I'm consolidating all my change on Lightning. Now there's other instances in which you actually

Reed (01:17:46.03)
Can I ask you so can I ask you a couple questions about that that flow? Do you mind? That was really cool. I I didn't realize you did any of that. That's a really actually smart way to do it. Very smart. So I didn't realize so you can so if you if you're pre signed if you sign the transaction in Sparrow, is that what you so you there's a a place where you can paste that output into mempool.space?

Rev (01:17:50.692)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reed (01:18:17.068)
And you and you just do that on your phone?

Rev (01:18:17.712)
Yeah. Yeah, you just copy and paste it. The whatever

Reed (01:18:22.978)
Didn't know that.

Rev (01:18:23.064)
Sparrow says, there's like a whole string. A whole this is the Bitcoin transaction. Do you want me to broadcast it? You can click broadcast. I never click broadcast, I just copy and paste that whole thing and put it into an email to myself or whatever, a note. It could. And then when it comes to the when it comes to actually broadcasting, you just copy and paste that and pick your transaction broadcast tool. And this is also very if you're no noting it, right?

Reed (01:18:26.508)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Reed (01:18:36.536)
Yeah, yeah.

Rev (01:18:50.608)
or if you don't want people to see that you're broadcasting transactions from your node now it just is a random bitcoin transaction that gets broadcast from mempool.space. So it's also better for your privacy in that regard in some ways. Now I'm sure people can find edge cases where it's bad, but regardless, you know, it's my my what I what I'm trying to who I'm trying to seek private privacy from is the person I'm transacting with at the meetup. This is my main concern. I do not want them to see visibility into my stack.

Reed (01:18:59.054)
Sure. Yeah.

Reed (01:19:15.288)
That's right. Yeah.

Rev (01:19:19.982)
And so and the other side of that coin is if I have let's say I I don't have a UTXO that's large enough.

Rev (01:19:31.662)
And so I will pay them that that full UTXO on-chain. And then at the meetup, I will give them the difference on Lightning. Cause usually it's like 20 bucks or something that I'm short. So I'm every time I'm sending one UTXO to the recipient so that they only get visibility into that history of that UTXO. They I'm never cons I'm never sending two yet never combining linking UTXOs together.

And you can use Lightning in tandem with this to achieve that, right? So now I'm going to send you 100k sats, or let's say it's 80K, I have an 80k sat UTXO. I send them 80k sats and then I send them 20k on Lightning. And they get that their full 100K, but it's just through two different mechanisms. And because also, if you're going to a Bitcoin meetup, most of the time, very, very seldomly does somebody not have the ability to accept a Lightning payment, in addition.

And so you can use Lightning to and also this also works the other way, right? If I if I only have a hundred and twenty K sat UTXO, I could send them the whole thing and then they can pay me the difference on Lightning. If I if you know if I've got a good relationship with somebody and I know that they they're gonna have that liquidity on their lightning channel, I can I can skip the whole swapping into Lightning.

change output. I just send them the full 120k and I get my my twenty K SATS change from them on Lightning. And so these are all mech go ahead.

Reed (01:21:00.642)
So since sorry. So since since we're talking about your sp this specific excuse me, your specific setup here. I was gonna ask too about your how w what tools you use to swap to Lightning. Like I've done all kinds of different I I've tr swapped between on chain and and lightning in I think all the different ways. As many as I could find.

So I was just curious which which one like you could use moon, you could use Phoenix, you could use Bolts. Like what what's your swap mechanism?

Rev (01:21:35.948)
I use Moonwallet. And now Moon Wallet is really annoying because when you're using Moon Wallet, there's no coin control in Moon Wallet.

Reed (01:21:38.179)
Yeah, moon.

Rev (01:21:44.795)
So my moon wallet is always empty. And when I receive a payment into Moon Moon wallet, I immediately swap it to Lightning. Now the problem with that is that you have to kind of guess until you get the fees right in order to drain the wallet completely. You don't want to leave one sat left in there to now have that one sat UTXO or whatever link with the next one that comes in there. And so Moon is for I would not honestly recommend.

Reed (01:21:47.618)
You just swap it.

Reed (01:21:57.336)
drain it. Yes. Yeah.

Rev (01:22:09.818)
people use Moon for this purpose. Now there's all kinds of other wallets. and actually Blitz wallet is one that is gonna come up later in the boosts. But Bits Blitz wallet is one that you can use. you can use Aqua Wallet and s and swap into what's that sidechain to yeah liquid. There it

Reed (01:22:27.81)
Yep. Liquid. And they use bolts.

Rev (01:22:32.704)
And so and but bolts, the only limitation of bolts is that I think there's like a twenty K or twenty five K sat minimum for bolts. And s and so it doesn't quite sometimes it doesn't quite hit the threshold for the change amounts. Like you could end up with some smaller change than that that you you want to keep but deal with.

Reed (01:22:39.768)
There might be.

Reed (01:22:52.526)
So I would my shill for this if we're shilling products or mechanisms to switch between on chain and lightning. I've become accustomed to using Phoenix. So I use Phoenix. That's kinda like my mobile carrying around Lightning wallet of choice. Like there's lots of different choices you could choose. I it's really honestly, I use my my full Lightning node. Like I use my node as my like that's how I normally pay in Lightning, but

If I need a backup, like if my node is offline or something's not working right, I'd like to have a backup, and so my backup is Phoenix. Well Phoenix has this cool thing where you can if you receive SATS on chain, they give you an on chain address. And if you receive SATS to that, they automatically splice it into your Lightning channel. And so then it's a s a single payment gets it from on chain directly into Lightning. And it's pretty like I don't know. I

Like I said, I've I've kind of tried a whole bunch of different mechanisms for it, and it just seems to be the one that's the smoothest and the cleanest. and it's it's a pet peeve of mine having to do a second on chain transaction. Like I always try to want to do it in if I can do it in one on chain transaction, like that's what I want to do. And so Phoenix, you know, again, if you're already using Phoenix, it it gets you there kind of in one step.

Rev (01:24:23.022)
I I don't know I've thought about using Phoenix like that, with just splicing into my existing channels with my change. But because it's one address, I think you're still linking all of those UTXOs together, splicing into Lightning. I don't know. I don't know.

Reed (01:24:38.07)
Is it one address though? I think it's I th I think it chang it I think it changes. I think after you use one it gives you a new address.

Rev (01:24:48.156)
So that might be an interesting mechanism. I've I've personally been trying to get away from Phoenix wallet because they do offer a good service and their wallet works and the channels I've had channels open, big channels with Phoenix for a long time. Never closed, you know, could very consistent. Never had any problems with the wallet, but their fees are are a lot higher.

Reed (01:25:07.758)
Their fees are higher. Their fees are definitely higher.

Rev (01:25:09.178)
than than many of the other choices. And so I've been trying to switch to Zeus and I've heard that, you know, Zeus, if you're not active enough, they they w their their LSP might close your channels and stuff. And this is because I'm once again no noting it on the lightning side of things. But regardless, yeah, the the whatever swap wallet you use, the this is the this is the flow. Like you just don't want to ever have a change output that you're gonna have to consolidate.

on-chain. You want to consolidate your change on lightning. That's the key. Like just consolidate your change on lightning and then there will be no trade trail for the person you're transacting with to follow. It gets broken. Once it gets into lightning they can't see where those sats are going anymore. They can't follow it.

Reed (01:25:41.694)
Correct. Agree.

Reed (01:25:58.006)
This might be a good use case too, and I know I think we've spent quite a bit of time on this topic already, but and I don't know if we're ready to start a whole new conversation. But for this use case in particular, this might be a good one for Fediment. Because Feddy is on on chain to eCash. Like that's the flow. And so you could just get eCash out the other side. And and now that they have the gateways and stuff, the lightning gateways, I think that's what they're called.

Once you get it into the FedI once you have Fediment eCash or whatever it's called, you can now swap that to Lightning. And so that could be a flow as well. Now I haven't really played around with that one too much yet, but it's on my to do list is to try to do something more with with Fediment, specifically for the purpose of swapping. Like just as a swap service alone, Feddy Mint could be a very interesting idea.

Rev (01:26:57.882)
Yeah, I mean basically the my my stack, I I just don't for whatever reason I've never been into the coin join stuff. And so I've chosen not I've ch I've basically been like, well, what can I do to get a f the same effective or or close similar effective privacy from the people I'm transacting with without coin joining my stuff? And this the swap mechanism between lightning

because at this point, you know, the the sats are in my cold storage are coming as swaps out of lightning, right? And so if's if I'm transacting with somebody, I'm sending that UTXO, they're only gonna be able to follow it back to whenever it's swapped out of Lightning. They can't that's that's where it stops. So whenever you swap in and out of Lightning, that's where the trail, the chain analysis trail stops.

Now you can go levels deeper and s you can be the NSA and and track the the lightning transaction graph and all that shit. But once again, I'm not concerned about that. I just want the app the person I'm transacting with peer-to-peer to not see. I want to limit their visibility into the to my stack. And so that's how I do it. And and and the beautiful thing about it, man, is that you can now.

As the person who's receiving the cash now, I could walk out into the if people see that I get this few hundred dollars in cash or whatever at the meetup, they can try and take it from me in the parking lot. I don't I'm confident enough in my own myself to like not let that happen. Like fuck off, dude. You know, I'm not giving you two hundred dollars. Go home. But this gives you the opportunity to show the transaction ha happening at the meetup.

And so I didn't mention this yet, but I also when I make these transactions, I charge a premium for the sats that I'm selling for cash. Because this is Bitcoin that I've earned, this is Bitcoin that I've mined. This isn't just I I didn't just buy it from the exchange and sell it to you for a a two percent spread or something stupid like that, right? This is I put work into it. And it's it's to show also that.

Rev (01:29:16.304)
When when people see these transactions happening at the meetup, maybe they'll start to think, hey, Rev is catching a s he's catching a a a premium on his Bitcoin by selling at the meetup meetup. Whereas when I sell the Bitcoin on the exchange, I have to pay them to sell the Bitcoin. Yeah, yeah.

Reed (01:29:31.37)
A negative premium, that's right. Right.

Rev (01:29:34.554)
And so when you when you get liquidity at the and and guess what, dude, not a lot of people are selling meet Bitcoin at the meetups. And so when you do offer Bitcoin for sale, it's in my experience, it's been very easy to to have people line up and want to buy it. And so there's liquidity there, you know, to a certain d to a reasonable degree. I don't know if you're gonna sell a hundred thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin, you might not be able to find that at the meetup. But a few hundred bucks here and there, man, sh surely you can sell that at the meetup. And you can catch a premium.

And then you create an example for everyone else when they want to sell a few hundred bucks. Don't go to the exchange. Don't go with the convenience. Why would you pay 2% or 1% or half a percent even when you could make four, five, six, seven, eight? What it depends on what how many other people are in your local area selling Bitcoin for cash.

Reed (01:30:26.35)
There's a million reasons to not sell a hundred thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin in any circumstance. Definitely don't do that at the meetup.

Rev (01:30:34.65)
Yeah, that was probably a bad example. Yeah, that that was probably a bad example. I I'm never gonna sell a hundred thousand I I can't imagine a scenario where I could sell a hundred thousand dollars worth of Bitcoin. But you know, it but you know, f reasonable amounts. It's just it makes sense to wait a you know, lower your time preference, lower the convenience, go to the meetup, get an extra get a little bit of extra Bitcoin out of the deal or or cash out of the deal, right? Get more purchasing power.

Reed (01:30:42.69)
Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Rev (01:31:04.652)
And don't put your Bitcoin back into the KYC ic ecosystem. When you when you give when you sell the Bitcoin to somebody at your local meetup, you might be able to earn it back from them someday. You know that they're it's probably just going into their cold storage at least and they're not just gonna turn right around and sell it. Why the hell would they do that? Why would they pay a premium, get the Bitcoin and turn around and sell it a few months later? They're stacking that shit. They want to hold it. So

Reed (01:31:34.584)
Alright. Well, I think at at this point that was our episode. So no guests this time. but we are trying our best. And I wanted to give this this is maybe my little segue here because I think I might have mentioned it at the last show, but if not, you know, because we've been spending a fair amount of time on our what I'm calling like our V for V section of the show.

And part of the reason why we spend so long on the V for V section of our show, which I don't know, may maybe we spend more time than other shows. maybe we don't spend as much time as some shows. I guess I haven't pulled the entire industry here, but it seems like we do spend quite a bit of time on it. but that's because you know, we are trying to find as many ways as we can to reciprocate the value that you're sending us. And the value chain starts with.

us producing high value content and putting it on the RSS feed, putting it on the podcast stream. And so we had been talking about, you know, we have had the last five episodes in a row, we've had guests on. those have been some very high signal episodes. If you haven't listened to all those, highly recommend. I can't even think of an episode in the list here that didn't come with some really high signal content. So with this kind of solo rip with just Rev and I

This was our attempt to try to make this as high signal as we could. Like what are some of the best what's some of the best content that we could have out there that we haven't talked about yet that we really think people are asking about, that we think maybe people are underutilizing. So hopefully you found this episode valuable. And so now we're going to transition to the V for V section of the show and we're going to find out what you guys found valuable from our past episodes.

So the way we like to start these is we like to start with our leaderboards. And so I think no no real big changes to the fundamental structure about how we're actually calculating and displaying our leaderboards this time. So this should be mostly just same old, same old. And so we'll see if there's any changes this this week. so the last time we ran our leaderboards was almost exactly one week ago when we recorded episode 12. And so

Reed (01:34:00.422)
if I'm looking at our leaderboards right now, we like to start with our episode leaderboard. So these are the the s the episodes that have received the most sats. So I believe this is still the same order as it was last week, starting with episode nine with Sir Spencer. That episode is up to ninety-five thousand twenty-two sats. and that was growing slow, build strong communities, KC Bitcoiners.

Second place is with Augie, episode five, sixty four thousand six hundred and seventy two SATs. the meetup is the farmers market. That was the title of that one. And as we've mentioned before, also Kansas City.

third place is episode one, our pilot episode. Still up way up high in the leaderboards here with fifty nine thousand nine hundred thirty-four sats. Episode two with G C and James from Jersey City. their episode, episode two brought in forty seven thousand one hundred and fifty four sats. and that was titled Meetups are the ultimate web of trust, which we talked about just here tonight.

And fifth place is episode seven with just Revene again, where we were talking about a lot of V for V stuff with 39,513 sats. and that was how meetups can benefit from V for V, Noster, and Value Chains. So I believe that's pretty much the same order that they were in last time. I will repeat again what I like to say about this leaderboard. The reason why this is a leaderboard is because these are the episodes that are

the people who listen to our show think have brought the highest value content because that's what they've zapped, right? Sats are the signal. So if you're looking for an episode, if you're new to the show or you are trying to think, maybe you should if you're trying to weigh, maybe I should go back and listen to their old ones, maybe there's too many now. Well, maybe start with this list. This would be a great place to start. These are apparently the the episodes that our listeners have found to be the most valuable.

Rev (01:36:13.628)
So we haven't that it's very interesting that episode one has been hanging around this whole time. We haven't really gotten a lot of new boosts to that episode. It was almost it was it's very much like when you f when you start the the new like the Connecticut Bitcoin meetup, right? And everyone comes from far and wide to to kick it off.

Reed (01:36:27.276)
Every once in a while.

Rev (01:36:40.408)
That episode was much like that where the support came to just get us off, get us going. And I really do appreciate everybody that boosted that first episode and built the momentum for us and got us excited. But needless to say, that that episode is also, you know, it's very much like what this this episode and that first episode are kind of like linked together, I think, where

If you listen to the first episode, after listening to this episode, you will get a very clear picture of a lot of the potential of what like how to start the meetup and how to get it rolling, and then from there what it can really do for you.

Reed (01:37:27.374)
So I'm going to use this opportunity since I I just pulled it up myself as you started talking about it. I'd like to highlight a feature of our podcast website. So localbitcoiners.com. Each episode has its own page now. So episode one is localbitcoiners.com forward slash EP001. or you can just you know go to the site and click on episode one. So

On that you can see the stats for that episode. you can get the links to the hosts and the guests, and you can see the trans you know, the transcript, and you can get the the show notes and everything. But you can also see the boosts that have come in just for that episode. And that's that's why I came over to this page, because you said we haven't gotten one recently. And you would be right. So the last time we got a boost on episode one was twenty days ago. I don't have the

Doesn't say the date on the website. here it is. May May 6th. And before that it was April 4th. So not not a ton of new ones on it. But there are, you know, people are still going back, it seems like, and and listening from time to time.

Reed (01:38:47.714)
Alright, so let's move on to our next leaderboard. So this is the leaderboard of our ride or dies. Listeners who have boosted the most number of episodes all time. So here we do have a small change in the leaderboard from last time. first of all, we've got Matthew D still at the top of this list with a perfect twelve out of twelve. So last week he was eleven out of eleven. This week twelve out of twelve. That's what we're talking about. When we talk about

Bringing consistency to the meetups, Matthew D, bringing the consistency to the leaderboards. then we've got Shadrach, second place, with seven episodes. and now we've got a tie for third place with God's Death, and Noster Gang is in there now in the top three. So tied for third with God's Death, Nostergang at six episodes. So

Rev (01:39:42.8)
We've been talking about Noster Gang coming up there. We're like, man, Nostra Gang's been boosting them. Where are they gonna be? Where th they're gonna show up at some point. Here they are. Welcome Nostra Gang to the leaderboards.

Reed (01:39:56.716)
And so again, I'm going to take another minute here to show a little bit of some of the cool stuff we've got on our website. So on our website, I talked about it a little bit last time, but we've got a stats page now. And so on the stats page, if you're interested, like, well, where am I on this leaderboard? Well, you can come down to our episode leaderboard, and if you switch over to excuse me, it's the wrong section. If you go to our supporters leaderboard, you can see if you go to episode supported.

And there you'll see, there's our top four just like I read off. But then we extend that down to our top ten. So some other notables that didn't make the kind one nostrenote but are on our website would be like Alice A, Otis Bitmeyer, Jair, Wartime, they're all tied with four episodes apiece. also KT and William the French, three episodes apiece. So you can kinda if you're wondering how far am I from getting onto this leaderboard, well you can go to

onto our website, check the stats page and see if you're, you know, if you're in the top ten, you know, maybe you can figure out how to get up a little bit higher.

Rev (01:41:05.796)
And it you don't have to boost a lot to get on the leaderboard, you know, go back and just shoot us whatever. You could say nonsense. I don't care, you know, that you might as well get some capital out of it if you're taking the time to boost. But whatever you want to do, you all you gotta do is go back and boost episodes you haven't boosted and you get on the leaderboard. So join us. Join join the the ride or dies.

Reed (01:41:09.646)
That's right.

Reed (01:41:16.366)
Totally valid.

Reed (01:41:32.142)
Alright, and the last leaderboard, these would be the single biggest boosts all time ever since the show. So this is what I've been referring to. These are our ad reads. And so if you have a product, if you have a meetup coming up, if you have a regional event coming up, if you have something cool going on that's your meetup that you want people to know about on a recurring basis as opposed to just one boost, well, if you can just get in crack our top five.

then you're gonna be on this leaderboard for as long as you're on the leaderboard and we'll read off your note over and over and over again.

Rev (01:42:03.472)
Could be a podcast.

Reed (01:42:09.87)
So, and and actually a podcast, that's our first our first boost here is kind of promoting his podcast. So Sir Spencer sent us forty two thousand sixty nine sats, four twenty sixty nine. And his message was thanks for having me on. Hope to continue to improve bowl after bowl dot com and continue to evolve alongside your local Bitcoiners dot com site, Iron Sharpensiron, and I greatly value hearing what you guys are discovering on your value for value journey.

Long live the value chain. So there you go. Perfect example. He's using this as a way to boost his his own stuff, right? Go check out bullafterbull dot com and go listen to bowl after bull on your podcasting two point client of choice. Which I'm pretty sure well he always boosts us from podcast guru. I guess I don't know if that's what he actually listens to as podcasts on. I'm gonna assume so.

Rev (01:43:06.608)
Well n and the cool thing about what Spencer's doing is like you can Spencer had an episode where he broke down some some of the stuff that we were talking about on this show and he gave us a value split on there. So if you go find that and you boost bowl after bowl on that value split, then we get a kick we get a little bit of sats from it too.

And this is the what Spencer is doing, you know, Spencer's been doing the value chain for a lot longer, you know, for a long time. And that dude has got some tricks up his sleeve, and it's really cool to watch what they're doing. I mean, DeLorean, the the co host of that podcast, also has homegrown hits, which is leaning into more of the value for value music side of things.

And I've been listening to that podcast recently. And I find the just if you're looking for cool creative ways to take this concept and actually put it out and and utilize it, they are setting a a a really great example for all that.

Reed (01:44:17.336)
And that's why we were so excited to have Spencer on the show, because we are new to this and there's so much that we can learn from them and we're still learning from them. so definitely if you that's right, and if you haven't checked out Bull After Bull, highly recommend Bull After Bull and you can check out their website, bowlafterbull.com.

Rev (01:44:30.444)
Iron sharpens iron.

Reed (01:44:40.568)
Alright, second on the leaderboards here is fifteen thousand sats. this is from BTC Russell, although it's submitted as an anonymous boost. the message is 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 might you may be surprised that there are other Bitcoiners in your area. It's easier to get attendance in more populated e areas. BTC Russell.

So BTC Wrestle I think is coming on this show in two weeks. So we're gonna get to hear about all the cool stuff that he's going on at his meetup, which is in I can't remember what the top of that Columbia, South Carolina, yes.

Rev (01:45:17.948)
Yeah.

Rev (01:45:26.044)
Columbia. Columbia, South Carolina. Yeah. So bit BTC Russell is is a Meshdelian. You know, he's part of the Meshadell group. And you know, this is this next. So we we just recorded with Johnny from Charlotte. And between Johnny and BTC Russell, we're actually teasing this a little bit, we're gonna be talking with Source Node.

And so this is this we're we're this is kind of showcasing a little bit of a new format that we're kind of doing where we're gonna try and hit kind of three people within three meetups within a region. And so with the idea hopefully that these folks can can get stoked on on hearing the podcast and and finding out the just getting the the the gears turning on ways

That they can continue to bolster these regional interactions and create some overlap between all the meetups. And so it'll be Charlotte, SourceNode. I I'm pretty sure that he's in Greenville. Source note, I apologize if it's not Greenville, but I'm pretty sure it's Greenville. And then BTC Wrestle in Columbia. And these meetups are all within the range, right? You can you can kind of hit

all of they're they're all in the same region. And and that's cool, you know, so check you know get ready 'cause

Reed (01:47:02.242)
Yeah, we like to we we we like to do what we can't like we we talk we and we talked on this episode and we've talked about it in a number of of previous episodes as well. The the like all the cool benefits that you get from coordinating and communicating with and going to and and working with your other local like other meetups that are in your general area. And a really good way to do that is w with these regional events.

but we're trying to foster kind of a new way, which is trying to promote all these things a little bit together, give them this shared experience of coming on our podcast and and hopefully getting all of their, you know, meetup members, you know, to listen to not just about their podcast, but to go listen, hey, if you haven't checked out the Charlotte meetup, go listen to what Johnny's got to say about it. He's been on the he was on the podcast that I was just on. So that that type of thing to try to just get

more of this cross meetup pollination going on.

Rev (01:48:07.344)
Well and to to BTC Russell's boost here, it's like if you're in between one of these meetups, now you could start a meetup at your just in your hometown that's like only a half hour away from here and a half hour away from there. You're right in the middle, or roughly whatever. And now you can create additional opportunities for cross pollination. And so that it's it's just kind of

trying to create some cohesiveness around a region where the the Dunbar's number of a Bitcoin meetup may have been met, you know, and now you can be the one to take that overflow, right? Start to synthesize.

Reed (01:48:53.88)
Alright. Next boost on the list. Bitcoin is for everyone, May twenty second to twenty-third, twenty twenty-six. So I haven't heard much from the conclusion of the Bitcoin is for everyone event. but that was last week. So the message is, and I'll read it here, maybe maybe we'll just do this one last time, and then going forward, maybe we'll just give them a shout out here. But join us for the largest Bitcoin only conference on the West Coast, Bitcoin is for everyone.

May twenty second, May twenty third, Pizza Day week in Portland, Oregon. Bitcoin is for everyone dot com. Use code discount code Noster Instagram for twenty one percent off. so Eric had we had the good fortune of coming on and we were really glad that we could get him in before this event, because he has been one of our longtime supporters and we have read out these boosts now. This boost came in on April twenty second. So that is just over a month ago. We've been reading off these boosts. So

There you go. I mean there's a perfect example, right? If you have a message that you'd like us to read off week after week after week, perfect. Just get it onto the leaderboards.

Rev (01:50:04.698)
And you only gotta beat it by one sat. And it would be really cool if someone would boost us so we we don't have to read that that stale event anymore, right? It's it's that that Bitcoin is everyone has right. If you wanna keep hearing about Bitcoin is for everyone over and over again, s promote your the next thing, right?

Reed (01:50:15.586)
Maybe that's a reason to keep reading it. Right? I'll just keep reading it and until that's right. The repetition will continue. Well, next on the list is is a new ish one. I think this we read this one off last week. and it came in from Cleveland Bitcoin, and I'm almost positive when it came in, it came in as a row of sticks.

eleven thousand one hundred and eleven sats, even though on the leaderboards it says eleven thousand one hundred and nine sats. That came in from the website and it says 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 sats for beer. Win prizes, meat plebs. See ya there. and they linked to the

the actual event. the nostr event for for their for that meetup.

Rev (01:51:17.926)
You know, and Bitcoin Pizza Day was we this is kind of maybe an opportunity to like recap Bitcoin Pizza Day. Because I think I forecasted it in the last episode and it hadn't happened yet, but now it's happened. And the be the Bitcoin Pizza Day meetup in my area was super cool, man. People brought it was a meetup where people brought their families, you know, and and people's families got to interact. And it wasn't just like

It was a different vibe than just your average monthly meetup where it's just the dudes, you know, talking about what generators they run and what kind of fuel they run in the generators and all this kind of stuff, right? The the nitty-gritty technical aspects of Bitcoin. It was people, you know, hanging out as families. And it it was a very cool

thing. I I think that it it was an opportunity for something different to happen around a meetup. And I I hope that that was the case at Cleveland. I know Cleveland has a really strong meetup culture and I they will be on the show. I I will commit to that now. Live on air. You guys are gonna come on. Cleveland we gotta represent. They're doing a lot of cool shit over there.

Reed (01:52:40.716)
And I'll just say in in a in a quick shout out to Bitcoin Pizza Day. So Bitcoin Pizza Day is it's it's probably I I'll be completely honest, I think it's probably Bitcoin's number one actual holiday. There are some other events that we celebrate, you know, like white paper day and you know January third and and all kinds of stuff like that, like cool things that have happened on chain at certain times. But Bitcoin Pizza Day is like

It's really it's on every Bitcoin calendar. It's it's the original real Bitcoin holiday. And it's my favorite holiday, because Bitcoin is money. That's what it is. Bitcoin the reason why gold failed is because gold stopped being money. People stopped using it in day to day transactions for actual purchases. Nobody was using in 2010 when this Bitcoin transaction was made, I guaranteed that no one used physical gold to buy pizza that entire year.

Probably that entire decade. No one in the whole world used physical gold to buy pizza. But they did use Bitcoin. And that's what we do in Bitcoin. And that's why Bitcoin is better than gold, is because you can actually use it as money. You don't have to just leave it in some bank's vault somewhere and transact with pieces of paper or something. You can actually use the real bearer instrument of of Bitcoin to make transactions. And so that's why we celebrate it. We celebrate it because

This is why Bitcoin's gonna win because we can use this stuff to just buy pizza over the internet.

The killer it's the killer app.

Rev (01:54:17.36)
Beautifully said.

Reed (01:54:19.436)
Alright, the last one on the list here is again Bitcoin is for everyone. And I'll read it off this time because if you haven't if you didn't know already, the Portland Bitcoin group has meetups six times a month. Come check us out. So there you go. And that rounds out our leaderboards.

Which takes us to the next segment of the show, which is reading out the boosts that we've got since last recording, right?

Rev (01:54:45.594)
That's right. We've got eight boosts tonight.

Super stoked on everyone's usage of localbitcoiners.com. that's super cool that people are really transitioning into putting that as their primary source for boosting. Maybe it's not the primary, but it's it's it's coming up. And so the first boost that we've got tonight on this recording, not tonight. It's it might not be tonight for you.

I keep saying that. We've got a we've got a thousand sats from via fountain from William the French. And so we mentioned earlier William the French is on the borderline of of getting into the leaderboards. We we appreciate your continued support, William the French. And William the French says, Genuinely enjoying this space. So different than number go up 24 7. Thank you for that. Question.

Is there any folklore around the twenty one million number? Did Satoshi decide on twenty one? Many thanks. So I don't I don't know. I how d I like twenty one because it's like, you know, s I like seven and seven goes into twenty one three times. It's cool.

Reed (01:56:07.758)
It's also half a forty two. Forty two is a cool number.

Rev (01:56:10.402)
Yeah. Yeah, forty-two. well I like forty I like forty-two sat zaps more than twenty-one sat zaps, I'll say that.

Reed (01:56:18.318)
There you go. Isn't that the it was from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Isn't for I think forty two is the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Or something like that. Forty two is a big number.

Rev (01:56:30.626)
is it? Okay. Wow. Well so maybe that maybe Satoshi was a fan of that.

Reed (01:56:37.122)
Well, half. Half a fan. It's half a forty two. But no, I think so tw well, twenty one million I guess for those of you maybe who don't know, like maybe Rev doesn't know, twenty one million's not actually in the code anywhere. Because that's not how Bitcoin it it wasn't a prescribed number of coins. It was you just define the supply schedule. And so

Rev (01:56:42.832)
Well, maybe that's part of the code, you know, Satoshi had to you know, he had to make it complicated.

Reed (01:57:05.88)
You know, when Bitcoin first came out, it was fifty bitcoins in a block. 50 bitcoins per block. It's two hundred and ten thousand blocks between halvings. And that goes on until you can't split up the Bitcoin any smaller. It just keeps getting cut in half and in half again until it goes from two sats down to one sat, gets cut in half to one sat per block. And then it goes from one sat to zero. And then that's it. And then the whole supply has been released. And so when you do that math.

just add up all those numbers, you get a number that's very close to to twenty one million. It's not actually twenty one million. It's I forget exactly how close it is. It's it's quite close. It's twenty million nine hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred ninety nine and it's off by like three million sats or something like that. Very close.

Reed (01:57:58.35)
So there you go, William the French.

Rev (01:57:58.648)
So there you go. Yeah, it there's not I guess there's not s anything super exciting about it. But we can we can we can make it up, you know. Well, there's no folk folklore, you know. Satoshi didn't believe like twenty one was some magic number to like of sacred geometry or something, right? And by choosing twenty one that would unleash the full potential of human flourishing or something.

Reed (01:58:05.858)
That's pretty exciting. I thought that was exciting. No.

Reed (01:58:27.01)
Another thing that's cool though about the supply schedule is so okay, so think about it this way, right? So in the first epoch, right, the first halving epoch when the bitcoin it was still fifty bitcoins per block. Well, by the end of that period, fifty percent of all the bitcoins had been mined. So fifty bitcoins, fifty percent. So though then the next block is twenty-five bitcoin per block, and after and that epoch contains twenty-five percent.

of all the Bitcoins are from mind. And then twelve and a half is twelve and a half percent of all the Bitcoin. So it's kinda cool. It works out that way. I don't know. I always thought that was cool.

Reed (01:59:10.178)
I'm a nerd though. Comes with the territory. Admire the beauty of it. That's right.

Rev (01:59:12.41)
The engineer in you can't help but come out.

Rev (01:59:19.204)
It's worth paying attention to. Next, we got a hundred and twelve sats via fountain from Nostra Gang. And they say website looks great. SmileyFacian emoji. And we appreciate that feedback. And the website's gonna look a lot greater coming up here because we've been working behind the scenes with Soul Exporter on some cool new graphical design for our.

Reed (01:59:46.826)
man, I'm super soaked. I'm very excited for that.

Rev (01:59:47.768)
all of our stuff. And so that that that's we don't have a a time when that's gonna be released, but it is happening. And the website is gonna continue to look even greater. But Nostergang, congratulations on on hitting the leaderboard. Thanks for the boost. And you know, we'll keep pushing that value in your direction. Thanks for the feedback.

Reed (02:00:02.04)
Let's go.

Rev (02:00:14.436)
Next, we got 2021 sats via fountain from Simon James. And they say, sitting in my car listening to the pod when I suddenly hear a shout out from Batter C Bitcoiners. Great show, guys. Thanks. Or this is the signal. And so Simon James, I think, is shoot, I can't remember now offhand.

But I think that they're doing some kind of newsletter or

Rev (02:00:48.506)
Just aggregation of all the stuff that's going on in in the UK right now around meetups. And so you if you if you go to the the local big coiners end pub, you will see me renoting stuff from Simon James and and this NPUB. I sorry Simon James, I can't remember what it is right now. But yeah, thanks for the boost. Batter C Bitcoiners, I think, might be in this one too.

At least they were in the last one. Next we got two hundred and twenty one sats via fountain from Alice A. And they say, I have reservations on boarding merchants to coin coin os. my local hot dog merchant was using it for a few years and had his entire balance swept. Two hundred thousand plus K sats. Or you know, yeah. Two hundred K sats gone from the Coin OSS had some

Reed (02:01:43.158)
Ouch.

Rev (02:01:48.876)
issues in the past with their I I don't know what what's happened, but it is a custodial service, right? And so you're trusting them. And if they mess up, and it sounds like Coin O Coin OS has messed up in the past, you can lose your Bitcoin. And so two hundred K sats is a lot of Bitcoin for me to mess around with on

some kind of custodial service like I use minibits wallet for a lot of my no-ster interactions and there's no way I'm ever keeping 200k sats on mini bits wallet right like this just and so this this this comes into the cultural capital component of the thing where you know when you onboard somebody to a wallet or a service or whatever

Reed (02:02:24.269)
Agree.

Rev (02:02:35.566)
And that shit changes over time. I mean, there was a time when I was telling everyone that Moon Wallet was great. I love Moon Wallet. And then the transaction and it

Reed (02:02:43.628)
It was great for a long time. I mean, that was kinda the best that was like the setting the stu I used Moon Wallet for a long time. That was my go to wallet of choice for a long time.

Rev (02:02:53.562)
And it still is great. It just wasn't great for a period of time. And when when the fees were high on chain, Moon Wallet stopped to function the way you would expect Moon Wallet to function. And so then I I had to go back and kind of tell everyone, like, look, maybe you should not use Moon Wallet. And so this is where the meetups can come into play. Where it's like instead of you onboarding the merchant.

and taking all the responsibility of the stack that you tell them to build for themselves and how they're gonna manage their Bitcoin and all this stuff and all the responsibility is on you. Instead, you bring the merchant to the meetup. And at the meetup, they can get an aggregate of all the different shit that people are using and and choose for themselves.

But either way, if you're using custodial services, be very considerate or aware that this is a custodian and they can rug you at any time. And it might not be through malicious reasons, right? They might not be terrible people. They might be the greatest people you you ever met. But shit can happen. And they're the custodian and it's their Bitcoin.

Reed (02:04:01.646)
This was I already since I already mentioned it and I already have it open and so it's kinda top of mind. When I did my self-custody security fundamentals, that's actually how I started. I started by saying, okay, you know, your coins are on the exchange. And some people I guess I I had a in this presentation I had a screenshot of Uti saying you should keep your bitcoins on the exchange because

All people are idiots and it's much safer on the exchange. and then I proceed to explain how many exchanges have been not careful at all with your Bitcoin and have lost it and have gotten hacked.

Rev (02:04:46.264)
Exchanges are also idiots, right? They can also be idiots, just like you.

Reed (02:04:51.564)
And it's not even their Bitcoin. Like if it's your Bitcoin, you're gonna be a lot more careful with it. But it's not even theirs, it's yours. They're just holding it for you. And so, you know, it's leaving your Bitcoin on the exchange is actually not safe at all. I would not recommend it. And in this case it didn't work out. And that's a real bummer because that's a really bad experience for a merchant who got onboarded to Bitcoin.

Rev (02:05:12.815)
Any in in

Rev (02:05:19.268)
In any c in any instance where you're using a custodian.

The strategy in my recommendation should be that the custodian is a pass-through, right? You're only you know when you're interacting with this this custodian that you're only gonna be cus let letting them custody that Bitcoin for a period of time, not forever. you have a plan to eventually get that out of their control and into your control.

at whatever threshold or however whatever mechanism you decide. But the the strategy should be approaching that relationship is that they're providing a service of convenience for you. And that convenience can end at any time. And so you have to be willing to risk only what you you have to decide what you're willing to risk there. And in this case, 200k sats is a lot to risk in my opinion. So it's unfortunate, but

It happens and it's a good lesson to learn from. Next we got a hundred sats via fountain from Bullish Clips. And Bullish, you know, Bullish has been interacting with our NPUb a lot, and we really appreciate that. And the you you just did the the sats market, didn't you? On Thursday? You missed it.

Reed (02:06:34.808)
Dude, I missed it. I can't believe I had to miss it again. It was I had a family commitment that I had not remembered at the time. And so we I was not I couldn't I couldn't attend, which was unfortunate. I did sell a glass though. I I did make it I did make a sale. I my storefront was there, I just wasn't there. so I did

Rev (02:06:51.61)
You missed out. You missed out on some sales, man.

Reed (02:07:01.772)
I did make one sale. I got it I got that in the mail this morning, actually. So yeah.

Rev (02:07:10.192)
Well, okay, so let's read what Bullish has to say. And Bullish says, Bullish on y'all's thoughts on Bullish Market. Hope to see you at the next one. Read and looking forward to seeing some teas from Rev. And as I teased, I've got not just teas, I've got a lot of shelf stable, good products to ship out to anyone on Oster that wants to buy them.

You know, I I'd say having a podcast and and choosing to have sponsors is like, why would you have sponsors when you could just use the podcast to promote the the stuff that you're doing already? And so in this instance, like everyone's listening, hey, I'm gonna have some stuff for sale. If you want to support me and the podcast, you could just buy my stuff. And guess what? When you buy that, you're gonna get some high quality, valuable stuff for it for whatever sets you put down.

And that's the whole idea of how economies should work. But yeah, the the bullish market is something that I'm I'm super keen on and I'm looking forward to participating in myself. It's a bad time because it it lines up with a Bitcoin meetup for me. And so,

Reed (02:08:24.056)
Well, next month should be better because so it's the twenty first of every month and it changes. That's right. So then but the next the next one it looks like is a Sunday. June twenty first is a Sunday. And so usually if he does on Sundays, I guess I don't know what he's gonna do for the time. but you know, it's a weekend, so it'll be at least different. and just

Rev (02:08:29.916)
it's the twenty so it does change. It's not every th always on a Thursday, yes. This one was a bad one 'cause it was on a Thursday for me.

Rev (02:08:52.07)
Bullish, you're playing Russian roulette with your with your twenty one with the twenty first of the month, man. You never know if it if it's gonna land in on a weekday when it's a meetup, then no one's gonna show I don't I'm not I'm just Joshin, but

Reed (02:09:05.974)
And just for your knowledge, so when when you get your stuff available, I'm presuming that you're gonna put this stuff for sale on like a NIP ninety nine type shop. well when you the bullish market, technically, he likes, you know, because he doesn't know exactly, maybe you don't want all your products for sale at the built bullish market, like maybe if some of them are only for your meetup or something. So he has you kind of build your little storefront before the market thing starts.

And now he's got an import from NIP 99. And so when you log in with Nasser and you go to build your storefront, you can just click, import from my existing listings, and you just checkbox the ones you want and bam. That just like my I set up my store in like out like 30 seconds. Like I just logged in, clicked the ones I wanted and hit OK. And then my storefront was built.

Rev (02:09:58.234)
That's sick. So much cool sick stuff happening with the marketplaces, man. And I'm gonna keep my I'm keeping my eye out for the developments of that. The Airbnb, like short-term rental stuff specifically, is what I'm really keeping my eye eye out on.

So next we've got four hundred and eighteen sats via localbitcoiners dot com, but I'm assuming that was four twenty. and that's that's from Reed and

Reed (02:10:27.704)
Definitely was.

Rev (02:10:31.834)
Well well actually not read, but read via the Western Mass Bitcoin meetup. And they say boosting our next meetup from localbitcoiners.com forward slash meetups. And linked in the just embedded right there in the boost, there is a meetup event for Western Mass Beat Up W Western Mass Bitcoin meetup number forty-six.

Sunday, June seventh, six PM to nine PM at one Northampton Street, East Hampson East Hampton Mass. And let's see if I click on it, if there's any more details.

Reed (02:11:18.52)
So while that's coming up, I'll talk about one other website feature I wanted to mention. So we did add a feature to the website for adding to make it easier to add your meetups. So for example, I had already added all of our upcoming meetups into Noster as NIP what is it, twenty three? I forget the number. like r you know, meetup like events on on Noster. And so now when I went to go boost my meetup,

through the website, I can just, when I logged in with Noster, it just it'll give me, I can say, my meetups already on Naster. And it'll just I click a button and it'll show me all my meetups. And I can just pick off the one, which one do you want to boost? And so there's a each one will have a little boost button. And then if you click boost, you can add some sats to it, add a little message, and it shows up, you know, on our boost page, just like just like this note did.

So this was partially a test of the tool, partially wanted to do it to kind of show people that it was possible and I figured it would give me a good hook to to talk about the developments on the website.

Rev (02:12:34.16)
We're always trying to make it easier to we r we recognize like all right, if you wanna boost your meetup and it and it should be a noaster event and you you only have it on meetup dot com or whatever. We're just trying to create the least friction possible so that way you can get the get the signal out there, put the meetup out there on Noaster and and gain access to

We're we're looking forward to the we're zooming out here, dude. We're look we're low time preference. We're looking forward to the future where all of these meetups will be on Noster and then there will be all of these maps and everything else that's aggregating all this meetup information.

So when you go on a road trip or you're traveling, you're moving to a new place or you're you're you're just learning about Bitcoin meetups, you can go search on NoSter and boom, all the meetups are there for you to access through whatever lens, you whatever your favorite place is to look at that shit. And so it's we we're just trying to exemplify the tools that we're building while while we're playing around.

Rev (02:13:48.1)
It it it's really cool guys. You should you should do it. Just just play. Just join us, man.

Reed (02:13:52.724)
And if you and if you boot if you boost your meetup via one of these functions, now on our meetups page, so localbitcoiners.com forward slash meetups, it will actually feature all the meetups that have been boosted will be listed on our website. So if you want another place to get the word out about your meetup, you could boost it and it will show up on our meetups page of our website.

Rev (02:14:22.778)
Yeah, so the the website is also becoming one of these aggregators just by people boosting the meetup. And this is all because Nostra is cool and it's all integrated and it's easy to do. So next we got 5,000 sats via localbitcoiners.com. And that's from Matthew D, True Ride or Die. And Matthew D says

Boosting from the website for the first time using Blitz wallet via Noster Wallet Connect. Sometimes it just takes a little push for me to use the tools. This took a little bit of work on my part, but I had fun doing it. Check out Blitz Wallet. It's a great wallet with very active development.

And so, well, first of all, Matthew D that's really cool that you went through the friction of trying to boost from the website. It sounds like you got it figured out. And Matthew D got it figured out via Blitz Wallet, which is another guy in the Michigan culture. just in the l Lake Satoshi area. he's been developing this wallet for years. And, you know, I I

I've not actually played with it yet until Matthew D did this boost and I downloaded it and I played around. And I would say that it's as far as a custodial wallet goes, it's it's a good one. They've it there's a a bunch of cool stuff like you can do like if you're at the the restaurant, you're at the bar before the meetup or after the meetup and you wanna do a split.

split the check and everyone pays you bitcoin. There's kind there's a way to kind of do that in this wallet. And you can buy you know you there's an events map in there or or like places merchants accepting bitcoin map much like Cash App has where it's BTC maps you can go look around where you can spend your Bitcoin. you can do swapping in and out of USD some

Rev (02:16:31.924)
USD token. I don't know exactly how it works. But anyways, the guy developing Blitz wallet is is a Michigan guy, and Matthew D is using the wallet to boost the show. And so it's another great example of going to the meetups, meeting the people, learning about the stuff that they're building, and making that value chain react. You know, look at look at how many connections have just been made with just this one boost.

Reed (02:16:58.242)
These are the types of connections that you make when you actually take the time to go to the Bitcoin meetups.

Rev (02:17:06.256)
Thank you, Matthew D. Next, we've got well actually not next, but finally. This is the final boost in the night. 2,221 sats via fountain from KT. And KT says, love all the work you're doing, pioneering in this space. And you know, KT, I appreciate that, and I'm glad you recognize it because we're trying hard.

We are trying hard to like prove that some of this stuff like these tools are out there. We we can do this shit. And we're just showing some way of of using all this stuff to make it happen. And hopefully people, when you listen to this episode, not only can you learn about how to do your best at the Bitcoin meetup, but also how you can interact with Noster.

to an effective degree to build capital to get this value chain reacting.

Reed (02:18:11.339)
And I'll just say on a a personal note, I I've been I was thinking about this just recently, and it must have been when I was listening to a recent Bugle episode, but I was reflecting a little bit on my Bitcoin path or my Bitcoin journey. And I very much feel like maybe it was with this podcast specifically, but I kind of feel like this has been

a transition of sorts for me going from the pub space into the pioneer space. And you know, maybe that started with the Bitcoin meetup. I've done there's other proof of work stuff. You know, I've written articles and things like that in the past, but a lot of those aren't necessarily exploring new territories the way that we are on this podcast. Like we're trying out new stuff. We're we're we're using the tools. We're building the tools.

And it's just been an incredibly fun and rewarding experience. so very excited to be kind of on the other side of that pleb pioneer divide, so to speak. So it's been a fun and interesting journey. I'm really having a good time with this doing all the cool things. So thank you, KT.

Rev (02:19:33.86)
And as one last final shout out, well and actually so KT had a a a call out to try and help get a bit Bitcoin meetup started where they're at. And I think I was actually able to make a connection to where this might start to happen. So so KT's interaction with the show has has led potentially, I'm I'm pretty confident that this is gonna lead to a new Bitcoin meetup getting started. And so this is

This is what we're trying to do with the show is allow people to find these connections out there, get connected up, get some Bitcoin meetups going, and start to overlap the territories until we're one cohesive culture. Right now, we're a diaspora, and that's great. That's decentralized, it's hard to stop. But once we start to all overlap and and get together, that's where we can start to see some fireworks.

And, you know, Reid, you kinda mentioned as far as the podcast goes and everything, we we've we're kind of in a in a cohort, we've noticed, of some other podcasts that that are that have kinda popped up at the same time. And I feel like it's worth it to just shout them out too, because I've been enjoying the content. as much as I haven't been able to like boost their their shows and

Reed (02:20:52.172)
Me too.

Rev (02:20:55.888)
It's I get it, you know, you you can't boost every episode of every podcast on schedule. It's just hard to keep up with it and say something thoughtful. I mean, maybe, you know, it should you should just say like great episode with a hundred sats, just to like a thumbs up, but I've even failed to do that. But needless to say, we've got the Yada podcast, You Are the Algorithm.

with Perma Nerd and Oshi and they're they're putting out a good podcast right now and I've been enjoying their content and listening to what they've got going on and seeing how they're trying to educate their audience. And we've got we've already mentioned it the 49th parallel with Boomer and Business Cat and they're taking this more thoughtful approach of of curating the content of their episodes to hit on certain

aspects around what it's like to to actually be a bitcoiner and and truly live in bitcoin culture and how that affects your psyche and everything. We've got the open markets podcast, which is really shedding light onto all of the cool shit that you can do now that this Noster thing exists and there's actually users in it and people are trying to spend their Bitcoin and participate in Bitcoin culture by using their Bitcoin as money.

And the Nip ninety nine Gamma Spec and all that, and that's been a great podcast to listen to. And I'm there's one more, I'm forgetting it. R do you do you got it? What's the other one?

Reed (02:22:25.192)
Rev (02:22:29.308)
Shit. Well,

Reed (02:22:31.906)
What is the other one?

We were just talking about all pre show.

Reed (02:22:47.714)
I'm looking.

Reed (02:22:58.286)
Yeah, I'm sorry.

Reed (02:23:12.366)
We said those ones.

Reed (02:23:17.922)
Was there not a fourth one, so I got Yada?

Reed (02:23:24.555)
Open markets.

Rev (02:23:25.007)
Maybe that's it.

Maybe we're the fourth podcast.

Reed (02:23:30.631)
I maybe that's what it is. In the forty ninth parallel.

Rev (02:23:34.758)
But we all got started at the same time, roughly, you know, and and we're all doing this together and and we've all got a different angle for how we're we're we're putting this value out into the noster community. The big the big key here is that we're all very noster fac facing podcasts. We're focused on the noster culture. You know, the listeners are people on noster. And we're just so happy to be

you know, part of this this movement together. And so everyone out there, you know, all these podcasts, all these people starting meetups, this is how we're doing it.

We're we're talking about each other, we're we're we're reacting the value chain and we're getting this cultural capital built together.

Reed (02:24:29.814)
And real quick on the so on those other I you know, I the way that I'm kind of thinking of them is there's a handful of these podcasts that we just listed off that we're all very much leaning heavy into the nostr ecosystem in different areas, which is so cool. And we all happen to start right around the same time, like within a few weeks of each other almost. And so we're all and and the other thing too is I think all those

podcasts we're all except for maybe business cat we're all relatively new to being podcasters and so we're all kind of learning this this whole thing together. And so it's been really cool to see what like how are they doing the hey did you notice like we were talking pre-show, you know, hey did you notice the Yada guys started doing their boosts at the beginning? Like, that's very interesting. Like maybe we should think about doing that. Or, you know, like a a lot of the other things that they talk about. I've learned a lot about the Nip ninety nine stuff.

from the open markets guy, but also from the Yada guys. and the forty ninth parallel is it's just been it's been a very nice piece of I guess entropy as you would say to my forty hours a week, even though I don't listen to anywhere near forty hours a week anymore. I'm sure I did at one point, but no longer. but it's really nice to just hear it's just Bitcoiners talking about I mean I think it's it's kinda like men's issues, but you know

It's just nice to hear other guys talking about what it's like to be a Bitcoiner. because it's it's it's kind of a unique experience. So I've been enjoying all of those podcasts. So great to give a shout out here at the end.

Rev (02:26:17.062)
All right, Reed, well if you got you don't have anything else to say, if we if we got it all done, is that it?

Reed (02:26:23.021)
Roll the outro.