We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC143: Local Bitcoin Education & Meet-ups w/ Rod Roudi (Bitcoin Podcast)

Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to TIP. Hey everyone, welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's show, I have Mr. Nashville, Bitcoin Park, Rod Rudy. During the show, Rod and I talk about how he participated in a local Bitcoin meetup in his hometown and took things to the next level by creating an entire park that has attracted numerous developers and Bitcoin builders to the city. We talk about some of the more profound events he's had at the park, like for instance holding a lightning summit, among many other.

Starting point is 00:00:30 events, how he's teamed up with Kathy Wood's arc for sharing important information about Bitcoin to all of her investors and much, much more. So without further delay, here's my interview with Mr. Rod Rudy. You're listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I'm here with Rod. Rod, we've been friends for quite a while now. We talk all the time. I don't know why it's taking this long for us to do a podcast recording together, but welcome to the show. Preston, the pleasure's all mine, man. And I haven't really had much to talk about yet. So I'm really excited to do this. That's not true. That's not true. You have a lot to talk about. For people who are not familiar with Rod, he is Mr. Nashville.

Starting point is 00:01:32 He is Mr. Tennessee. He is the guy that anytime you see Bitcoin Park in Nashville, he's the guy and Matt O'Dell. Those two are the guys that are really kind of making this happen. So I'm curious because when I was in Nashville, I went over and I toured the Bitcoin Magazine location. And I was talking to some of these guys and they were showing me like all the stuff that, you know, something that you don't think about with Bitcoin Magazine is they have to. store like the volcano and like all this. So like it's showing me the warehouse there in Nashville. Anyway, so we're walking down the street and they point to this like looked like a

Starting point is 00:02:12 warehouse. And they said, this is where the Nashville meetup used to take place. And Rod was the guy running it. And I didn't realize this. I didn't know that you were kind of doing this before Bitcoin Park. So tell us kind of your Bitcoin story. Tell us about the early days of these Nashville meetups and how it's evolved into this monster, this thing that you created there. Go ahead. Well, appreciate that. Definitely cannot take full credit. Actually, the meetup originally started when Mills moved to Nashville, and she was like, hey, let's do a Bitcoin meetup. And we did. How many people are you talking right now? You know, if the first one was August, I want to say 2021, and we had 20 or so folks come. And it was awesome. It was so magical.

Starting point is 00:03:02 It was a bit rainy. I'll never forget it. It was outside Jackalow brewery. We were just on park benches, going around, just introducing ourselves. We had folks that found out about the meetup and were visiting from, like, Philadelphia. They were at like some business convention. They popped over. We had older folks.

Starting point is 00:03:19 We had younger folks. And we're like, wow, this is pretty gnarly that we just posted this and people just decided to take their time, their most valuable precious resource and come here and hang with us and jam on Bitcoin. And then we moved to a more topic-focused meetup, which was kind of like in the in-between of a social meetup and a bit devs, where I think it was October. And I purposely did this because I knew the Bitcoin magazine guys were doing a quarterly off-site. So I knew a lot of people were going to be in town.

Starting point is 00:03:49 And actually there was another like Freedom Festival. Anyways, the Stefan Levera was in town and then Matt O'Dell was in town. And I was like, hey, guys, why don't you guys join me for a panel and let's talk about Bitcoin? And they're like, yeah, sure. And we jammed on it. And then we had like maybe a hundred people show up for that. So we went to 200, which was kind of impressive. And then next thing you know, this thing snowballed. And every month since we've been having a different topic focused Bitcoin topic each month. And I think it's been pretty special. I'll say that. Yeah, no doubt. So talk to us about the leap. I mean, this is like, so we're talking about

Starting point is 00:04:26 100 people where you're on park benches and like doing this kind of just ad hoc. I mean, really going all out and really kind of talk about the facility, Rod, because for people... Maybe I'll tell you a couple of stories that'll lead up to this. Please do. Please do. So, Jack LaBruery, shout out to Steve, the owner and their entire team. They were so kind. This was, you know, during COVID, you know, looking for a dedicated space such that we can host people. And this is out of our own, you know, out of pocket expenses. And this is a pro tip for any meetup organizers out there. your cost to zero because then it'll be a burden on yourself. So Steve was kind enough to give

Starting point is 00:05:06 us a dedicated space in Jackalope on Wednesday nights. And I was like, hey, what's your lease traffic night? And he's like, oh, Wednesday nights. I'm like, done. We'll do Wednesday nights and we'll do the second Wednesday of every month. We had our own space. They actually had a projector and so on. They had AV equipment and they gave us a bartender. No minimum, no anything. I just said, hey, we'll bring people there. And next thing you know, people start showing up buying beer. and we drove revenue to the establishment. But more importantly, people started traveling to Nashville for these meetups, which was really cool to see.

Starting point is 00:05:40 And we kind of outgrewed the space. We outgrew the space in a number of people and also what we wanted to do there. We wanted to make it as free and open as possible. One time, I think in December, mining was the topic. And it was December, I want to say 2021. Harry Sudok, Kevin Zang, I mean, econoacomist, diverter. Colin Harper, the list goes on.

Starting point is 00:06:04 Max Guy Gliardi, Marty Bent, Matt, all these people came in town and it was like a mini mining summit. We had 250 plus people hanging off the stairwell and so on.

Starting point is 00:06:14 I'm like, dang, we probably need a larger space. And also, we need a space to do what we want to do. Then fast forward to, well, June, I want to say,

Starting point is 00:06:23 of 2020, or May in June of 2022, and we took the crazy leap, which I do not recommend unless you're crazy and got our own dedicated space, which is now Bitcoin Park. Tell people about the space. This is unreal. Yeah, the story behind the space.

Starting point is 00:06:44 So there was a band, a country band, and they were breaking up. Well, actually, let me back up for a second. My background, I was in tech for a number of years, then did angel investing and then did some real estate, both residential as well as commercial. I like to simplify my life and identify like really. I like really top level people in each of these different disciplines, whether it's legal, accounting, and real estate, commercial and residential, and just work with them. And they know exactly what I like and I know how they operate. One of the, my friends now is my commercial broker and I was like, hey, here's a unicorn idea and property that over the next few years I would love to look at.

Starting point is 00:07:22 One, it needs to have its own bar. Two, it needs its own co-working space. Three, it needs its own event space so I can host these meetups. Four, it needs areas or rooms to record podcasts and so on. And this is one of my good friends and he never sells me on anything. But he's like, Rod, I literally may have something for you. And it's like off market, these guys are breaking up and they want to do something like very under the radar. And the next thing you know in the heart of Hillsboro Village, which is walking distance of Vanderbilt and Belmont University,

Starting point is 00:07:54 we have Bitcoin Park, which is these, and you know, and I really appreciate you, Preston. I mean, you've been up so many times in supporting us and just participating, which is awesome. So I'm speaking to the choir, but they're two dedicated buildings and they're beautiful. They're really well designed, classical, the furniture. Everything stayed with the place, which is also kind of amazing as well. I actually don't even like talking about it because I don't do it justice until you experience it yourself. to include the Starbucks level coffee machine that was required that you take it upon receipt of the building, correct? Correct. And there's a funny story with that. So we take over the place in June or May June, and I forget what the price of Bitcoin was, but it was definitely higher than it was today. And we dropped down to whatever it was 15K. And somebody told me that that espresso machine would fetch anywhere from 10 to 20,000. I was literally this close to be like, get it out of here.

Starting point is 00:08:51 selling that, but taking a Bitcoin. But there's so many members that each morning were making their own espressoes and really appreciated the quality of the machine. And I couldn't pull the trigger and sell it even though. Boy, that's going to be a painful less than 10 years from now. It will, but I will say this, which is probably a not unpopular opinion. There's going to be a lot of painful. Oh, I spent, you know, 3,000 sats on buying stickers at the lightning machine to a number of these other things. I think using Bitcoin over time and finding joy will be better than any of those like, oh, I wish I just held it, if you will. So maybe it's like a joy versus want. No doubt. Yeah. No doubt. Here's the point that I want the listener to really kind of take away from

Starting point is 00:09:39 this conversation, not just us kind of oozing over the Nashville location. This is really about education. This is really about how can you, in a cellular kind of way, in your local community that maybe you love, just like Rod loves the Nashville area, take away this conversation to help educate your local domain where you love to be. And the do's and don'ts, the importance of such a mission, how you can find fellow Bitcoiners, things like that. So, like when you look at that broader mission of what we're trying to accomplish and educate people on, what are some of your top kind of takeaways from what you've learned doing this in style in Nashville, Tennessee?

Starting point is 00:10:29 So it's, I'll say the TLDR, then I'll go into a lot of detail. The TLD is it's very easy to do, very hard to be consistent and even harder to make it unique and excellent. And we're still learning on those last two areas a lot and tinkering a number of different things. It's easy to do in the sense that the tooling and the audience and the community support is there. You just got to do it. And don't over-engineer it. Don't think like the end product is a Bitcoin Park or a Bitcoin Commons or a Pub Key or a Reading Bitcoin Center or any of these other third spaces. It could be just you and your friend sitting at a bar with less noise around you bothering you and just enjoying a beer and talking about Bitcoin and the latest developments in

Starting point is 00:11:15 the Bitcoin space, whether it's on the economics and incentive side, on the technical side, whatever your specific passion around Bitcoin, follow that and then create a meetup page. Still, we need to use Meetup. It's kind of like YouTube and so on. They just have the distribution. Then go from there and then, you know, tag me. We have a telegram channel with almost 200 Bitcoin meetup organizers and supporters. I'll say, the hidden sauce, especially for Mills, Matt, and now Harry who's joined us is there's a small group of just dedicated bicorners that just want to help in your community. We have an unbelievable one in Nashville. I can just go down the list of folks that have just been there to help set up

Starting point is 00:11:59 the AV, to help take out the trash, to help clean up after folks. Although I will say Nashville's a little different. Everyone cleans up after themselves, which is just awesome. And just starting. And you'll be surprised by the number of people that, you know, come out of the woodworks, like a Preston Pish that you'll meet in the courtyard and have a beer with until 11 o'clock at night and be like, wait, you're that guy on that investor's podcast, right? What are you doing here in Nashville, Tennessee? Rod, so as you look at your mission and what you guys are really trying to accomplish there, walk people through just so they can kind of get a feel of how you've laid it out and what you're trying to, like maybe short-term and then long-term objectives with the park?

Starting point is 00:12:43 So simply, Bitcoin Park is a community-supported campus here in Nashville, Tennessee. And we're focused on grassroots Bitcoin adoption and a home for Bitcoiners to work, learn, collaborate, and build. I think I have a somewhat unpopular take, and I'm nuanced in the wording of this, which is hyper-bitcoinization versus grassroots Bitcoin adoption, where, yes, hyper-bitquinization is great and it could happen. But I think, you know, I'm a big compounding interest guy and compounding of my time and reputation and capital. I think with grassroots or grassroots Bitcoin initiatives in your local community, that's the best thing you can do in terms of fostering education amongst your local community.

Starting point is 00:13:25 Because yes, number go up and Bitcoin, all the economic properties. But you also want to support your local community and educate them because that's where you're raising your family. that's where you're putting your roots and hopefully looking out 10, 20, 30 years. I know my wife looks at me like perplexed a lot of times, but one time in particular, I was like looking at one of our kids and I was just staring at her and I was like,

Starting point is 00:13:47 I can't wait to give you your toast at your wedding. She's like, she's three years old. What are you talking about? That gives you a sense of my low time preference of how I'm thinking about these things. And so similar in that vein with Bitcoin Park, we do a number of things that are just completely different. We max have about 200, 250 people that can attend because of a limited space.

Starting point is 00:14:08 We have a no social media, no photos policy. We're in this day and age. And no knock, it just differentiates ourselves so that we can have more intimate conversations and deeper conversations, which I think are, and more importantly, in real life, which are lacking in general. So, long story short, I think you can start within your community in a number of different ways. So I was up. This was probably, I don't know, six months ago with my family. And we were just kind of sightseeing around Nashville.

Starting point is 00:14:39 And one of the big sites to go see is this Parthenon. And yes, I said Parthenon for people that aren't intimately familiar with in Nashville. So back in 1897, there was like this fair that was happening in the Nashville area. And there was this major call, his name was Eugene Lewis. who really kind of doubled down on this idea that Nashville was branding itself as the Athens of the South. And so this major was like, we need to literally build a full-scale Parthenon in Nashville. And so they did. They built this thing, you know, over 100 years ago.

Starting point is 00:15:20 And I was reading, when I was up there visiting, we visited it as a family. I was reading about this major who brought it there. and this idea that Nashville was, they were branding it as Athens of the South. And later that weekend, I was over at Bitcoin Park and I'm talking to Rod. And he says this phrase, him and Matt are standing there. And you guys go, yeah, we want to brand Nashville as sovereign valley instead of like Silicon Valley. And it was just too coincidental for me as I was literally touring this Parthenon the day before and then branding Athens of the South. and then you and Matt are standing there saying, yeah, Nashville is going to be Sovereign Valley.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And so for people that aren't intimately familiar with what you're doing there, you are truly making this happen with this brand. And where I see at most, Rod, is you're actively involved in the political environment in Tennessee, in Nashville. I mean, I've gone over there and I've seen literally senators, U.S. federal senators walking around the park. and I've heard from the governor's office that they're involved and that they're going over to meetups. And you're just acting on this idea of Nashville being Sovereign Valley. There's a question where I'm going with this. A lot of Bitcoiners, they don't even like the idea of interacting with politicians. They're like, well, Bitcoin's going to be successful no matter what.

Starting point is 00:16:46 And I think you see it differently. I know I see it differently than that opinion. And I won't say my reason why, but I'm going to ask you why. Why do you engage in the politics when you and I both know Bitcoin doesn't need the politicians? It's going to be successful in the long run one way or the other. But why? Why would you engage in politics like that? So you said the word active.

Starting point is 00:17:08 I wouldn't say I just slight reframe. I would not say I'm active, but more reactive. And now I am, yes, correct, engaging a little bit, even clicking up a little bit. I think we've been fortunate to welcome all sorts of people to the park. And that makes it super special. Going back to that meetup back in August of 2021, we had, yeah, like grandparents, even after that, grandparents, high school students, one high school student, now he's at Vanderbilt, would take two buses when his parents were out of town just to come to the meetup and he'd bring his math books in front row. And he just, I was like, I'm investing in you, by the way. Stay close to me. And I won't docks him, but I'm definitely going to be investing in that kid. We had a number of different types of people. There was no make and model of a bitcorner in, especially in Nashville, Tennessee. There's no sub-mining.

Starting point is 00:17:56 I mean, although now mining is very prevalent here, don't get me wrong, but there's no, oh, it's tech-focused, it's this focus. We're just Bitcoin-focused here in Nashville. Yeah, and at first, I'll be honest, you know, when a number of these teams would come and engage us or try to engage us, I just didn't know what to talk to them about, so I just politely decline.

Starting point is 00:18:15 And very, very fortunate, and a huge shout-out to the Bitcoin Policy Institute, grant David and Stephen, who work out of Bitcoin Park. At first I mentioned a couple of these meetings, and they're like, please take these meetings. Let's jam with these folks. So I just bring them along,

Starting point is 00:18:30 and then they've been great to follow up and engage with these folks. I guess my long story here is it's not proactive, it's more reactive in the sense that what's the end game? The end game is to drive even greater local Bitcoin adoption and then hopefully influence some policy makers who carry a lot of weight,

Starting point is 00:18:50 fortunately or unfortunately around educating them on Bitcoin and the values around freedom, censorship resistant and permissionless freedom money. And I think we've done an okay job. I think there's still a lot of room to go. But I will say rather than on the legislation side, one of the areas I'm really interested in is driving Bitcoin entrepreneurship here in Tennessee in general, as well as specifically in Nashville. You know, 1031 doubling down in Nashville. other Bitcoin investors doubling down here in Nashville, other Bitcoin entrepreneurs moving from wherever they are to Nashville, Tennessee. That's just going to compound and attract even more talent, more developer talent.

Starting point is 00:19:32 We're doing even more things like in the open source community. Big shout out to Steve Myers. We have Matthew Ramston who just recently quit his job and got a grant from Spiral, working out of the park. I mean, Preston, like I have goosebumps talking about this kind of stuff because it's like an honor and a privilege to like host these folks and be a vessel for them to build and create, collaborate and learn here in Nashville. And the best is yet to come. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in

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Starting point is 00:24:06 All right. Back to the show. Rod, this is what I think is the essence, knowing you, right, having gotten to know you, this is the essence to your response. You love Nashville. You love that area. You don't want to leave that area. Correct.

Starting point is 00:24:22 You want to make sure that the people around you that are in your vicinity get it right. And that's why you're involved in that way. And the only way to actually involve yourself is through. through education. You don't care if it's Republican, Democrat, or whoever. You just want to make sure that they actually understand what the hell they're talking about when they talk about Bitcoin. And all these ancillary alt coins that are a disaster and that they actually understand what they are, right? Like, that's why you're involved. It's because you don't want it to go to some other jurisdiction or domain. You want it to be in your domain where you want to live. And 100%, right? Like, that's it. And so I, I guess I get a

Starting point is 00:25:03 little frustrated with folks. And I think what it does is it actually speaks more to maybe their dissatisfaction with where they actually live than anything else. Yeah, 100%. And I'll say this, one of these well-known politicians said to me, I want to be on the right side of history here. So I want to do the work to learn about this. And I was like, you and me both, my friends, you and me both. I'm putting my time, capital and reputation all in on this Bitcoin, the capital be the monetary network. And Bitcoin, the lower case B, the reserve asset. I think Bitcoin, the capital B monetary network is going to serve as the money protocol for 8 billion people across the globe. I think Bitcoin the lowercase B

Starting point is 00:25:44 in one sentence, it preserves my future purchasing power better than any other investable asset ever created. End a story. So with those two, as I'll say, constants or knowns, how do we go and build from there? Well, it's around recruiting developers, recruiting entrepreneurs, recruiting users, recruiting all these people. And then what's the common denominator amongst all that? It's education. And education, in my opinion, is by doing. And so here at the park, we accept Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:26:14 So it's one of the coolest things when some of these folks that are, whatever, back in 2013 or even 2017, when they're like, can you buy a cup of coffee with Bitcoin? Well, when you come to Bitcoin Park, I'll buy the cup of coffee for you with Bitcoin. And they see their eyes light up. And then I'll point over to the lightning vending machine. and I'm like, hey, would you like to buy a sticker? And I'm like, Zappa, you know, not Zap, but use lightning and buy a sticker. And they're like, where am I?

Starting point is 00:26:39 And I'm like, Disneyland for Bitcoin. That's where you are. It is better than that. So when I was up there, you have this video game that's set up. What's the name of the one that's like the snake where it's like going after that it's like Oh, chain duel. That's another cool game. So there's this game chain duel, like full arcade style there at the park.

Starting point is 00:26:57 And I was there, I was playing with mags. And so Max is like, Preston, you want to play this? I was like, yeah, how do I play? We basically put, I don't know what it was, like a thousand sats on deposit, 10,000 sats on deposit on each of our sides of the, she was player one, I was player two. We both load the thousand sats into the game. We play the game. I won.

Starting point is 00:27:18 And at the end, there's a QR code that pops up. Yeah. And it's like claim your sats, which, you know, if we, I don't remember what we loaded into it, but let's just say it was a thousand each. there was like 1,900 sats that I could collect after the game was over. So I just pull out my Bitcoin wallet. I scanned the game and I got 1,900 sats on my phone. The other 100 sats, some of them went to Bitcoin Park and some of them went to the developer of the dang game.

Starting point is 00:27:46 How awesome is that? It's unreal. And it was a blast. Like we're competitively playing against each other. You get paid. The developer gets paid and the winner of the game gets paid. And I'm just like looking at this. I'm like, there's something.

Starting point is 00:27:58 big happening here. Like, this is just wild. For people to be able to experience some of these things that you have on display there, just it's wild. Yeah, even another one. So we hosted the Lightning Summit here in July and thanks again for coming up. And we wanted to bring Lightning to life. And a huge shout out to George Vicaro.

Starting point is 00:28:19 He created from scratch a Bitcoin Park kiosk arcade. You just play arcade games that you pay via Lightning. You can toggle different screens. within that arcade game. It's now affixed to our wall with beautiful Bitcoin Park branding. I need to take another photo and just post it on Twitter. But in Noster, it shows Bitcoin stats like Mempool and Clark Moody's dashboard and then Time Chain Calendar. And it's now like a really fun member benefit that they can use it as an entertainment center. There's videos, there's memes. It's got like a nice trackball with a joystick. Human ingenuity is just so amazing in that Bitcoin

Starting point is 00:28:55 space. The people that are creating this kind of stuff, like the lightning sticker vending machine I mentioned before. A massive shout out to Tommy and Joe. They're the creators of this with Sam from Lightning Store. Did I go and say, hey, can you do this for me? Selfishly, they

Starting point is 00:29:12 brought that idea to us and we're like, of course, we'd love to be the vessel or the platform for you guys to demo your beautiful games or your beautiful creations and try it out with the community. And I think that's where this third space, which one is Bitcoin Park, could go.

Starting point is 00:29:28 eventually is within those local communities. It's like your own mini demo days and mini workshop areas where, hey, I'm tinkering on this idea. I want to go and see if I can find my first customer or find my first couple users. Yeah, we have now our meetup pages over, I want to say 13 or 1,400 people. We post a little workshop, you know, XYZ. And then we get anywhere from 10, 15 to 100 people to show up. And it's like, whoa, this is amazing.

Starting point is 00:29:55 I've got a question for you on Noster. So I've been up to the park a couple times and you know, you are hyper focused on Bitcoin, right? And then there's this Noster like social media, decentralized social media thing that Bitcoiners are also, I'm going to use the term obsessed with. And it keeps coming up at Bitcoin Park, but it's not Bitcoin. It's this other thing. It's this like free speech platform. And it seems like everybody at the park doesn't mind getting away from Bitcoin to talk about this Noster thing, this decentralized social media communication layer. Why do you think that is that Bitcoiners are so willing to give up their time focusing on building and talking about layer two or whatever they are on Bitcoin to talk about this communication layer?

Starting point is 00:30:49 So I think the underlying or the I keep using the word common denominator is around freedom tech. and I think we're going to see more freedom tech movements. Bitcoin is the money protocol for freedom tech, in my opinion. And then there's going to be social protocols around the freedom tech stack, and of which I think Noster's fantastic. Jack Dorsey was on Jack Muller's podcast, the Money Matters podcast, and eloquently laid this out in terms of this stack from money to social and then to messaging with Simplex.

Starting point is 00:31:22 I need to do a little bit more on Simplex. as well. And I think taking the principles of what makes Bitcoin great and applying it to all these other areas that have been captured, your audience already knows how the internet is structured with TCP IP and HTTP and SMTP and FTP, but those protocols are super lean. And the application layer has taken over and monopolized and become super centralized. So this is again going back to the low time preference, going back to doing my daughter's speech at her. wedding. This is a super, super long game and put on comfortable shoes, everybody, because it's going to be a long freaking game. As we are redoing and unwinding a lot, not even unwinding,

Starting point is 00:32:05 just going to another stack of amazing technology, it's just going to take time. It's not going to work perfectly, but I think it's going to be working better. And that's where, to answer your question directly, that's why I think a lot of folks, especially in the Bitcoin community, are super enthusiastic around these other freedom tech oriented platforms. It almost seems like a coordination layer. Like you got Bitcoin, which is this ultimate exchange of energy. So like if you perform work for me and I need to pay you for that work that you performed, we want to use Bitcoin because it's the most secure, immutable ledger of this energy exchange that has taken place between the two of us. But in order to coordinate that where I put the request to you through a communication. channel in a way that can't be destroyed or screwed with or controlled by some outside entity. We need some type of layer that's not happening on that money layer, but that's happening on a coordination layer.

Starting point is 00:33:10 I don't know if that's the way that you would define it. And maybe that's why Bitcoiners are so they can see that harmonious relationship between the need to coordinate and the need to exchange energy. they kind of like go together like peanut butter and jelly. Is that how you view it? Totally. Wherever there's a middleman, a bitcoiner is ready to go and blow it up. And honestly, that's not providing a ton of value in the broker's side. So one of which is on the Facebook, the Twitters, the Instagrams of the world, again, this is going to take a long time. I'm not saying it's happening tomorrow. But I will say with Noster adoption, you're getting folks like the Jacks

Starting point is 00:33:50 of the World, the Presidents of the world, the Odell's of the world, and so on behind this and where they're investing their time and energy and making this their primary platform, I think it's got a faster adoption curve, if you will. And then the best marketing is around when people get canceled, censored, or booted off any of these platforms. Then they realize that even though they still need to use the platform,

Starting point is 00:34:16 they're building their business and their potentially livelihood on Quicksand. Someone going back to the money side, I think like pay I haven't read up on this but PayPal introducing their stable coin and now they can just freeze or delete the dollar stable coin in their balance people are going to get a rude awakening in terms of when they cannot use their money and it's just a painful lesson but I guess Preston a lot of folks just need to touch the stove including myself to learn and really drive personal responsibility and personal adoption and I think it's just so fascinating like I'm a big glass half full type of person. And selfishly, by the way, I'll finish this thought and I want to tell you about why Bitcoin Park is also the most selfish thing I've ever done. But it's surrounding myself by all of these builders that are building so much amazing

Starting point is 00:35:07 tech. Like the Mutiny guys are a great example, that progressive web app that they're building around you can just take 12 words, pop it in, and you have your whole lightning wallet full stack ready to go. No one's going to mess with you. And you've got to go take that wherever you want to go in the world. and how cool is that? And we're just at the beginning.

Starting point is 00:35:25 I remember when we're doing the dang lightning torch pass with Jack and all these other folks. And you had to go into the command line to basically send a lightning payment. Now we're bitching and moaning from wallet of Satoshi being too centralized versus like a moon now being too centralized to now mutiny being the next best thing. How awesome is that that we're having those type of debates? Yeah. So I'll leave it there. and then maybe I'll come back to the most selfish thing.

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Starting point is 00:39:29 these guys are just hearing such deep conversations around the engineering and the tech that I think most are not getting access to. I know it's way deeper than the stuff that I cover on my show personally. What is something that you have seen in maybe the last six months that you just kind of went home at night and you're like, wow, I just saw, I saw the neatest thing in the world today at the park to your wife. Yeah. So that is a good segue because Bitcoin Park is literally the most selfish thing ever done before in like 20s. I was traveling around to meetups, conferences just to go hang with Bitcoiners. When Matt was in New York, I would fly to New York to do cold card workshops with him and learn like about how to use cold card. Then go to bit

Starting point is 00:40:14 devs and and it was a lot easier when I had zero kids but flash forward to today with like you know four kids all very young I'm glued to my house that changes that changes things it does and and by the way this was like you know 2017 2018 when I got into bitcoin so kids happen fast and it's been awesome so not some bitcoin OG or anything like that I then I was like okay this is a another constant which is probably limited not probably it is definitely limited travel what can I do to because I love meeting people. I love hanging with you, Preston. I love sitting out in the patio and just jamming on life, Bitcoin, and everything.

Starting point is 00:40:52 Like, how do we do this? So we did the meetups and it's like, all right, we'll do a monthly cadence and we'll invite our friends to come and talk on a panel. And we did. And people flying, driving, and so on, and coming into town. So that's why it's the most selfish thing I've ever done is because it's about them coming to us here in Nashville rather than us going to them. And I'll never forget that.

Starting point is 00:41:13 around some of the panels and some of the things that has blown me away. A slight reframe on that and I'll answer it directly, but the people that I've been able to meet that I otherwise would either not have met or maybe have met at a conference or just passing through for like a quick drink where I can have deep meaningful conversations, whether it's just a number of plebs to even you and I getting a much deeper relationship. I mean, with this six or seven times where we get a, see each other per year, which is just awesome to a number of other Bitcoiners.

Starting point is 00:41:47 But I'll say, so we started with the meetup. We expanded to the BitDevs, now monthly BitDevs, which is the Tuesday before our monthly meetup, which is Steve Myers and Matthew Ramson and P host that BitDev's, and they do it an amazing job. But then we're also doing these workshops. One in particular, Craig Raw from the founder and lead developer of the Sparrow Wallet. Man, you want to talk about Big Brains, Preston? that guy is a big brain

Starting point is 00:42:13 and he just did basically a 15, 20 minute demo and then stumped the Bitcoiner and took another 40 minutes to an hour of questions and it was just awesome. Another one, Wizz has always been great. It always comes through the park multiple times a year

Starting point is 00:42:28 and we'll always do a mempool. space and our own chain analysis demo and I'll send a transaction and he'll follow the transaction along which is always fun. Other ones like NVK doing a 10 Vivek, doing a tap signer and demo to the community.

Starting point is 00:42:44 Bringing the Bitcoin to life and showing it with the founders, I think, goes such a long way, where then after they're done, somebody can come shake their hand, buy the product from directly, or just ask a follow-up question. And I will make one more point,

Starting point is 00:43:00 and then I'll stop rambling, which is, I think the other thing about what makes the park unique, but also other meetups, as another pro tip, is around allowing open questions, to be asked and not recording those questions so that our meetups. I mean, another good one was back in June of 2022 when we, our topic was investing and building

Starting point is 00:43:22 in Bitcoin and we had a panel with you, Marty, Grant Gilliam from 1031 and Larry LaParte. And you guys went just deep and wide. And the questions that were coming from that packed room, again, filled to the brim, were freaking awesome. And I love that about the intimate conversations we can have amongst each other around Bitcoin. Otherwise, you would not have on Twitter when you're doing your keyboard commando or on a space when you're doing your telephone tough guy type stuff. So you got an issue next year. Next summer, Bitcoin Magazine is coming to Nashville. And I think you're going to have a lot of people that want to come over and see the park,

Starting point is 00:44:06 but there's only so much space of how in the world are you going to handle this? We are working on it and workshopping it, which I'll give the honest answer, which is I really hope everyone comes and visits us 11 months out of the year. You know, we have a free and open meetup. You go to the meetup.com or Bitcoinpark.com for slash meetup. Just join and you can stay up to date. We have the free bit devs. We have free workshops and so on. For the Bitcoin conference, they're probably going to have 20,000 people plus more maybe attend that conference, which is so amazing. and it's going to be down in downtown Nashville, an awesome venue with all the bars and so on downtown.

Starting point is 00:44:45 We're not that far away from the, I mean, it's about two mile walk. We're probably max capacity, 200 to 250 people, max max. And we're tracking to have 200 members, Preston honored that you're one of the members. And we're going to make it like a member benefit and member focused time at the park. And it's not excluding anyone.

Starting point is 00:45:03 It's just we have limitations around size. And by the way, it's me, Matt, Harry, and Josh. that's Bitcoin Park. So we don't have a team or anything like that. So we need to do a couple updates. We'll, you know, we've been toying around a temporary fence, which we need to do for a number of reasons, but maybe even building a beautiful wall as well. But long story long, I would just highly recommend taking a visit. Here's another pro tip. Go and this is what I always tell my Bitcoin friends to come to Nashville and jam with us at the meetup. I'm like, let's just say nobody shows up to the meetup and it's a terrible topic.

Starting point is 00:45:38 and I suck, which all high probabilities, go and find a band that you like and they always undoubtedly, you know, come through Nashville and then go and see them or go and be like, you know what, I'm going to go downtown to the honky tonks for the first time and enjoy that, or I'm going to go to this amazing restaurant or experience Nashville. And stay at the Gaylord. It's a very nice hotel with beautiful plants and whatever inside. And there's tons of things that do in Nashville. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:46:07 There really are. There really are. So don't come during the conference, come some other time for one of the meetups. So definitely go to the conference because the conference is going to be awesome, but definitely come for one of our other meetups for sure. And I will say even the week before that, we're going to have the, by the way, I don't think we've announced it yet, but we're going to have the Lightning Summit the Thursday, Friday before the conference.

Starting point is 00:46:31 So that's going to be 200 folks, ticketed folks, and we're going to run that at the Lightning Summit back. That was one of my favorite summits, by the way. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. And then, yeah, it's going to be, I mean, I hope over time we can, I don't even know what the right word is, but to your point around Noster and Freedom Tech and a number of these things, it's like ingrained in the Tennessee culture, I will say.

Starting point is 00:46:54 That's why I think I've gravitated and assimilated myself so well to the community here. Sovereign Valley, man. Sovereign Valley. And I think by doing, we're going to accelerate that more and more. I think it just takes time, you know, being a small business owner, and now I have a newfound appreciation for other small business entrepreneurs around payroll, utilities, taxes, licensing, all the BS that nobody really talks about that takes up too much mind share.

Starting point is 00:47:24 And then you sprinkle in and say, oh, and by the way, you should accept Bitcoin. They're like, dude, I'm barely trying to survive here. And you're telling me I got to adopt this like new technology. but I will say I think there's paths to drive further Bitcoin adoption here in our local community. And over the next number of years, I'm really bullish on that. One of which, hopefully, is an exciting, is the conference. Last thing I want people to know is you have teamed up with Kathy Wood and Arc creating some media. What is it like once a month?

Starting point is 00:47:56 And I participated in this last conversation that you released and just really bring it on some brilliant things. thinkers and it's really neat that like how did you link up with Kathy and like put this together first thanks for joining that that was awesome what would you think it was awesome it was just tell me your perspective no it was it was just a it was an awesome group we had mallers obi and some others and it was just an awesome group to kind of jive on where we kind of think some of this is going and maybe why on the one of the things I remember is like the immediate settlement side like why isn't that moving faster? Like, what are some of the incentives that are driving that? And it was just a great chat in general and really a lot of fun. But yeah, yeah. Big shout out to Kathy and Yassine. They've been believing in the Bitcoin Park mission for quite some time. So the idea, which was proposed to us, was around all these great monthly topics that we're bringing in having in-person conversations around. How do we leverage ARC's production team and distribution and then combine it with us creating and curating the content.

Starting point is 00:49:04 And if that, you know, that worked out where we were able to create a different topic each month. So it's called the monthly Bitcoin Brainstorm. We just released episode number one. We did have, yeah, Preston was on, Jack Mahlers was on, Kathy was on, Yassine Almondra was on. We had Obie, we had Harry Sudak on. And it was just an amazing discussion around a few different topics

Starting point is 00:49:26 and so, or a few different subtopics. The overarching topic was building and scaling. And then each month go forward, we're going to do this, hopefully the last week of every month we're targeting and whether we're going to curate a different conversation. So we have some ideas around Bitcoin and the economics and incentives of Bitcoin. We have AI and Bitcoin. And yeah, I'm just super bullish on Arc and the Bitcoin Park podcast. And I'm cautiously optimistic on this partnership. And I think this audience that they have, which is slightly overlaps with the Bitcoin Park audience, which is around.

Starting point is 00:50:01 on high net worth individuals, family offices, private equity, institutional investors, as well as just Bitcoin curious folks, we're able to create that content. And the cool thing is them giving us the controls around making this Bitcoin focused. They have their other crypto and other investment vehicles around their disruptive technology mission. But we're going to stay Bitcoin focused and produce it every month. Awesome. All right, Rod. Well, we talked about quite a few different things there. We'll have links in the show notes to the items that you mentioned. And if people do want to come visit the park, hopefully between now on the conference, we'll have a link there where they can kind of go to the meetup portion and

Starting point is 00:50:40 reach out. Any other highlights that you have or links that you want to highlight for people to follow you or the park? No, I mean, we'll just put them in the show notes, but I just want to say thank you so much. I think this is my second podcast I've done. I just, it's seriously an honor and a privilege, Preston. You've been doing this for so long. And just to be a guest on your platform is truly an honor. Thank you, sir. It was wonderful having you, and it's been a lot of fun up there up in Sovereign Valley. That's right. All right. Thank you for making time and coming on the show, Rob. Absolutely. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow the show on whatever podcast application you use. Just search for We Study Billionaires. The Bitcoin specific shows come out

Starting point is 00:51:23 every Wednesday, and I'd love to have you as a regular listener. If you enjoyed the show or you learn something new or you found it valuable. If you can leave a review, we would really appreciate that. And it's something that helps others find the interview in the search algorithm. So anything you can do to help out with a review, we would just greatly appreciate. And with that, thanks for listening and I'll catch you again next week. Thank you for listening to TIP. To access our show notes, courses, or forums, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permissions must be granted before syndication

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We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC143: Local Bitcoin Education & Meet-ups w/ Rod Roudi (Bitcoin Podcast)

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