We Study Billionaires - The Investor’s Podcast Network - BTC249: The Convergence of Bitcoin, AI, and Energy w/ Rod Roudi (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Rod and Preston discuss Bitcoin’s rapid innovation, from ARK protocol transactions to new mining hardware. They examine custody solutions for Bitcoin treasuries, balancing institutional needs with community values, and preview the Custody & Treasury Summit and “Imagine If” event. IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN: 00:00 - Intro 02:01 - The latest Bitcoin innovations, including ARK protocol’s first transaction. 04:00 - Block’s new modular mining hardware and its market impact. 10:03 - Why custody solutions are critical for Bitcoin treasuries. 13:15 - The challenges and opportunities of institutional Bitcoin adoption. 15:05 - How Rod and Preston see Bitcoin custody evolving in the coming years. 23:02 - Insights into Bitcoin Park’s expansion from Nashville to Austin. 28:55 - The goals of the Custody & Treasury Summit and “Imagine If” summit. 33:10 - The vision for Nashville as a hub for Bitcoin, AI, and energy convergence. 36:05 - How AI tools are transforming workflows, events, and productivity. 45:20 - Plans for future summits and a 12-city tour to advance Bitcoin conversations. Disclaimer: Slight discrepancies in the timestamps may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Learn about the upcoming event at Bitcoin Park: Bitcoin Custody and Treasury Summit at Bitcoin Park. Read about the details on the first-ever Bitcoin, AI, and Energy convergence event: Imagine IF (Bitcoin, AI, and Energy Summit) information. Check out all the books mentioned and discussed in our podcast episodes ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Premium Feed⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. NEW TO THE SHOW? Join the exclusive ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Mastermind Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Stig, Clay, Kyle, and the other community members. Follow our official social media accounts: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X (Twitter)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Check out our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Bitcoin Fundamentals Starter Packs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Try our tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TIP Finance Tool⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Enjoy exclusive perks from our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠favorite Apps and Services⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Get smarter about valuing businesses in just a few minutes each week through our newsletter, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Intrinsic Value Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠best business podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. SPONSORSSupport our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: Simple Mining Linkedin Talent Solutions Alexa+ HardBlock Unchained Amazon Ads Vanta Abundant Mines Horizon ⁠Public.com⁠ - see the full disclaimer ⁠here⁠. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm

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. Rod Rudy, who's the founder of Bitcoin Park and just an all-around leader in the space. And on the show, we cover a wide breadth of topics, like what Rod's doing to work in the state of Tennessee that merges energy, AI, and Bitcoin. What his thoughts are on the current shift and culture clash that's happening between legacy bitcoins and all of these institutions that are now.

playing in this space. We cover his thoughts on the current market cycle, and if this time is different, among many other fun topics, this is a show you won't want to miss, so sit back, hold tight, and enjoy the show. Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to Bitcoin Fundamentals by the Investors Podcast Network. Now for your host, Preston Pish. Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I am here with the one and only Rod Rudy out of Bitcoin Park, Nashville. rod. It's been too long. It's been way too long. How are you doing? I'm doing very well, Preston. Happy Friday. Welcome back to the States. It's great to see you. Yeah, it's good to be back.

I love going to Europe. I just hate the flying business. Like the admin to get there is the part that's like just terrible. But once I'm there, I'm loving the coffee, first of all. Like, doesn't get any better than that. But yeah, no, I'm happy to be back home. Yeah. And it's just, I mean, you were in Riga, right? Yeah. It's all right? or Baltic Honey Badger. Just the people, what they're building, the innovation that you can touch and feel, it's just, it's simply amazing. How about the arc?

I, you know, absolutely. Yeah, I was there and I was just talking with Max and Anna. And they're like, oh, did you see that we did the first arc transaction? Yeah. With cooks and some of those folks. And I was just like, no, are you serious? Because the last thing I heard, you needed like a soft fork for that to happen. And they're like, no, they did it.

And I was like, what? So, yeah, that was a really big deal. You see, if we can go on like a tangent right now, because, you know, when I got into Bitcoin, which was like in 27 to 2018, we were doing, remember the lightning torch when we were just like trying to pass around a lightning invoice around? Yeah. Like Jack Dorsey to Odell to like Adam back. It was hilarious.

Yeah. Back then. But now you got Square introducing accepting Bitcoin at the POS. You got Arc on the layer two making a better implementation. to make Bitcoin money, it's simply amazing. For people that maybe not aren't very tech savvy, because we're like nerding out with some of the terminology here, but I'll just... And I'm not tech savvy either at all.

But in general, what this is doing. So ARC is another protocol that some of the best engineers in the space have been working on. And what it enables is, like, one of the challenges you have with Lightning Network is managing your channels. If you're going to do it, you're custodying the sides and you're opening the channel, and you're managing that liquidity, the inbound, outbound liquidity, it can be really burdens. So annoying. Super annoying.

And so what they've done is like these virtual UTXOs that then settle on chain. And what this is enabling is if you're a vendor and you want to accept lightning payments, you want to go layer two and accept these immediately settling Bitcoin payments. Now you don't have to manage this inbound, outbound liquidity. You can use this other protocol, the in conjunction with light. called ARC that allows you to just use it kind of seamlessly and not have to worry about the liquidity of the channels, which is massive. It's huge.

Massive. And honestly, like, at these local meetups, Alex from the ARC team, they were like, I'm pretty sure just like messing around with it in TestNet at Bitcoin Park back, I don't know, months prior to that. And it's just so cool to see it live and in action. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I was really surprised.

I didn't realize that it was going to be happening there and then seeing it. I was kind of blown away. But that's the thing. Like yesterday I was at Block's Proterig announcement in Dalton, Georgia. Oh, okay. Yeah. And it was like, it was fantastic. You got Arc, a small team building on the payments layer, right?

With nobody. And then you got a big company block that now is heads down building in the mining space. This is for people that. This is Jack Dorsey's company. Yep. Jack was there. Yeah. And don't trust Verify.

Do your own research. But with that said, there's just so many amazing people. And I truly believe like Bitcoin's this gravitational force and this is the common denominator just to build really cool stuff. And what Block's doing right now, especially with Proto, with Thomas leading them on the hardware side especially, making these kind of modular rigs. Because like before you'd kind of like rip and replace when machines would break or the whole rig.

the whole thing. Yeah. You can put these box in is completely modular. But one of the two things that kind of blew me away, because I hadn't really, I mean, I met the team, but I didn't really get to meet the team. Like Jack was like, and one thing that Jack mentioned to me was, Rod, you see all these people that are on the team. And I said, yeah, you know, what thing that's striking to me, Jack is you're saying 11 years,

16 years, 10 years at the company. You guys have been just building a Bitcoin company, I think, since 2018, 2019. So they were at Cash App or Square. before and now they're at Proto and Bitkey and so on. He's like, yeah. And if you go one layer below that, now they're all bitcoins too. Now they all get mission and they're all on the mission. Yeah. And I was just like, wow. I mean, didn't they get into like some big stock thing, like the Fortune 500 or something like that? Yeah, they recently hit the 500, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, it's so fascinating. And it's like, so much of this whole AI wave,

every day is just going to get better. Is Bitcoin going to get easier? to use and better money, every single day, it just gets better, which is so cool. I want to get back to the AI thing. But on the block announcement, the thing that I find really fascinating is he has these engineers that are hardware engineers, their production line engineers that, like, understand the whole production process, making sure that when you bring something to market that is hardware, that it's not immediately OBE because there's newer tech. So they understand the interoperability.

They understand the fact that you've got to be able to swap cards so that you're not throwing the whole. Totally. Like they understand all of this. What was the other thing that you would say was that came out of the big announcement there? Because it seems like the modularity of the cards and being able to kind of keep using the hardware and swap as better tech comes out on the cards. Was there anything else that you found like really fascinating with the announcement? I'll say two things just from my perspective. Yeah.

One was there was a lot of head nodding and meaning they did the work for a year plus on this. And when Thomas was doing his keynote, he was mentioning like, we went to a bunch of you guys. We went to sites. We went to each of the areas. And we're like looking and feeling the pain points. And they designed based on that kind of feedback. That's one. Two, you would think, because this is like product that's for all, but who are your biggest

customers? So it was really cool because we were at the core facility. and we actually got to see it live. Some people are like, oh, wait, don't worry, two more weeks, and we'll plug it in and it'll work, promise. But it was like live running at the facility. And you would think from a business opportunity standpoint, you would just be with Big Co miners there, right?

Because they're the biggest tickets. They would make the biggest purchase orders. It was awesome, Preston, to see my friends, Scott 9,000 from the Bidax Project, Eco from the 256 Foundation, the Wilson Mining Brothers, who are just these, like... Scott was in Riga, so he was... He must have gone straight to this.

He went straight there, took a two-hour ride from Atlanta to, like, wherever we were in Georgia. Yeah. And he was just like, I'm ready because he's been waiting for this for a long time. Yeah. But to continue on top of that, there was West Texas miners. Shout out to the Choya guys, Brad Cuddy. And then there was the Big Coal miners. I mean, like, you had Clean Spark.

Their entire executive team was there. Wow. Foundry CEO, Mike Collier was there. And so the fact that Jack and Thomas and the entire team, Jenia, they all invited all of these different groups was a testament to their going into the market and getting into the community all feedback, not just from one subset being the largest tickers or purchasers, you know, the Big Co's. Yeah. Yeah. So much of this is really difficult. I know Blockstream's been working on something

to bring to market, but I haven't really heard what their timeline is. I talked to Adam back, what, two years ago now at this point, maybe two and a half years ago about it. And it seemed like they were, it's not easy. This is like really hard stuff. Yeah, yeah. With that said, and not to put it a plug in for the custody and treasury summit, as well as Imagine if, but Adam and Sean Bill are coming along with you.

And I think this block stream asset management stuff that they're doing on the finance side. Yeah. Is really interesting. And I don't want to speak for them and so on. But like what Adam and Sean and the team that Sean's building around him, you know me. I'm not like the Tradfai finance guy. I'm like more of a community builder and entrepreneur,

but there is something there. A lot of it to me is still noise and just vaporware, but there is some signal within there, especially on the business side and then also on the capital allocator side to be able to create different investment vehicles that continue to get exposure to Bitcoin, the underlying asset.

So I think there's something there, and you know much better than I do. So I think Blockstream is really going to focus and they are focusing in that area. Yeah. Yeah. Adam's been coming up with super creative things for years now on this. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the custody summit. So tell me the dates for this. Yeah. September 17th, then 18th, on your calendar, Preston. It is, I swear. I know. No, no, you're the man. So like, it's really cool because there's so many things going on in Bitcoin. Like, it's just, it's fascinating. Every single second, it's like, wait, there's another thing going on. And all of them, like, just they seem cool. I think with the part. and you've been so kind to participate in a number of them is really creating and curating these experiences around something specific within the Bitcoin and Freedom Tech space. So I didn't really want to do this, but I felt inclined to create a custody and treasury

summit because a lot of the conversation is around the acquisition of Bitcoin and buying Bitcoin. And I do think custody and treasury need to go hand in hand. So if you're treasury, like you have a treasury strategy, absolutely. you're a small business owner, you're an individual, you're a large co. What's your treasury strategy? You're making $100 million of profit. What are you swiping into Bitcoin? What's the percentage?

What's the strategy? Are there other ways to increase that exposure? You know, there's so many conversations to be had. But one thing, in my opinion, that needs to always happen is what is your custody? What is your counterparty risk associated with this? Yeah. And so one of the cool things at the park that you've been so kind to be a member and like just been supporting us and a number of other people, we're now able to make more investments

in education and research and more content. We're going to introduce a custody white paper that we plan to introduce every single year, really digging into custody. And it's like, cool, we got the treasury strategies. Here are the custody strategies. And I'm not even poo-pooing like full custodian, like a river, a strike or a bit go and so on. There is a strategy for that. But I want to just showcase and platform all the different flavors of custody. So from full custody to a collaborative cult custody multi-sig to single-sig to insured custody, what anchor watch and those guys are creating in that category. Yeah. So I think the conversation is going to be brilliant, like, you know, Parker yourself. How about just like institutional custody? So like, for example,

you have Nike, you have fidelity, you have, you name it, some of these really large players. And for or the thing everybody's talking about is Bitcoin treasury companies, if they're conducting institutional level custody, is that a topic that you guys plan on covering as well? Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. And so it's going to run the gamma from the institutional side

as well as down to the individual side. Yeah. Because I think when you speak to the institutional side, almost every single individual and their mom is like, okay, well, what about me? And if they can learn it on the individual side, they'll be better equipped to talk about it. in their boardrooms and in their other conversations.

Yeah. And right now, though, the unfortunate truth is, like, institutional custody is just with Coinbase right now. Yeah. There's not, like, a really big conversation. So I'm trying to level it up and just showcase all of the other solutions out there such that. And I think, I've got to give kudos to fidelity. I believe they're cusseting their own Bitcoin. Yeah, they are.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm just super bullish. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors. All right. I want you guys to imagine spending three days in Oslo at the height of the summer. You've got long days of daylight, incredible food, floating saunas on the Oslo Fjord, and every conversation you have is with people who are actually shaping the future.

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Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash WSB. Go to Shopify.com slash WSB. That's Shopify.com slash WSB. All right. Back to the show. I think with the ETFs, I think what happened there is the first ETF got through and they listed Coinbase. And I think everybody else that had an application in the mix was just like, okay, that That one's going through, so everybody just change it to Coinbase and then we're good because

that won't be a roadblock. And next thing you know, like, everybody's cusseting their ETF at Coinbase. I couldn't agree more. And I remember in 2017, in January of 2018, it was like two more weeks and the Winkle Voss are going to get their ETF approved and it's going to be like 100K tomorrow. And I'm like, holy smokes, really? This is going to be awesome. And then next thing you know, we go through this crazy, like choppy for five years and no line of

to an ETF being approved. But to your point, with ARC, with the BlackRock ETF, one was like, all right, this is the template. And this is, this is Kathy Woods Ark, not the Ark we were talking about at the beginning of the show. Go ahead.

Sorry. Yeah, Kathy, Ark Invest, Ark B, Her, ETF. And so you see, that's why I hold both sides of the argument, right? And I can totally understand just being worn down from just application,

conversations, being ridiculed. And then we're like, wait, what? We're the bad guys now? We just want to get a spot ETF, Gary Gensler. That's all we want to do. Not a, what were the other ones that were introduced that were just totally asinine before the spot ETF? It was like a, it was some other stuff.

That wasn't even like a close. Yeah. On this topic, so I found the custody, I'm really excited that you're doing this custody thing. Here's the why. So I was over in Lugano, given. a class on coin treasury companies and like how it all works, the mechanics, blah, blah, blah. And the class had incredible questions. And one of the concerns that just kept coming up, which is a super valid concern is,

Preston, aren't you concerned that all of this custody is getting centralized at one place? And I said, well, I share your concern, first of all. Like, I'm not trying to say that there's not a concern there. But I also think that more and more companies, if we just like play the tape forward, Right. Let's say we warp ourselves 15, 20 years into the future. In our opinion, every company on the planet has some form of Bitcoin treasury or savings that is sitting on their balance sheet in some form or the other. Now, whether it encompasses like a micro strategy level, probably not. But any company that is sweeping and retaining earnings, they might own other equity. They might continue to hold it in Bitcoin. And if they're holding it in Bitcoin, this means that look at how many companies exist in the world. publicly traded companies, they have to have some type of custody solution. Yes.

Right. So if these companies are going to buy the tens of thousands need some type of institutional custody, what does that look like? Is it going to be all consolidated into the hands of call it a coin base or just like three actors? In my opinion is, no, it's not. You're actually creating an incentive to have more institutional level custodians that are are, you know, the good actors are going to get the business. The bad actors, hopefully there

aren't any, but I'm not naive either, are washed out because they just didn't perform a good service at a reasonable price. So people, I guess where my frustration is in all of this is what brought us here are the hardcore Bitcoin zealots that self-custated their coins for the past decade plus. And they've brought us to the brink of now the world. it's finally getting it. Now the institutions are here. And now the companies actually want to hold it too. And they can't hold it the same way that you hold it because they have auditors and they

have like all these other rules that they have to play by. And I feel like the old guard and the people that helped us get here are looking at this scenario that's playing out, which is the institutions want to hold it too. And they're like pissed off about it. And but I'm saying this at two breaths here. Like, I agree with the concern that we don't want it to be centralized at all. I agree with this. But I also am looking at it and saying, you can't be mad that institutions want to hold Bitcoin.

They're just trying to survive like you are at the individual level. I think you nailed it, Preston, which is similar to the ETF process. It's like, now we want to be in this game. And we have our own security protocols. We have all these different protocols that we have built our institutions that we need to continue to conform to. Now, with that said, I do think to your point over time, like similar to the example I gave with the lightning torch, like I feel like we're at the lightning torch level of institutional custody. We're going to look back and be like, I cannot believe we're all cusseting with Coinbase because I think the incentives are there to have multi-party custodians,

to have better institutional custodians, to de-risk yourself and your career risk to have multiple parties other than Coinbase to be custodying your Bitcoin. I do think attestation reports, proof of reserves, all of that is going to come to light because it's just going to be a competitive advantage. And competition will lead us into this clarity. While on the other side, we should be chirping about protecting the properties that make Bitcoin amazing. That, I think, is the fundamental common denominator. Do not cut corners.

We need to be able to custody our Bitcoin at any single point in time. And that's where it's going to get really interesting to me, because with more and more treasury companies announcing more and more purchases. I'm waiting for one of our autist friends to go out and be like, okay, cool. There's 19. Whatever circulating million Bitcoin. And all you guys are adding up, I'm adding up all your guys's acquisition of Bitcoin right now. And we're at like 23 million Bitcoin. So what gives? Well, I think this is another talking point that I keep hearing in these conversations with the treasury companies. And like, I don't know what to tell people like in equities. When you value a business, it's a multiple of like their earnings capacity.

And that is always going to be the case. Like, you don't value the business because there's $100 in the bank vault or $100 worth of Bitcoin in the bank vault and their earnings capacity is that there's going to be more tomorrow or the day after. Like, this is the classic bird in the hand versus two in the bush, right? You're trying to figure out, like, is the risk to go after the two in the bush worth more than the one that you can capture or the one that's already in your hand. And this is just how you value businesses.

So if there's only 21 million units, but everything is going to be valued as a multiple, I don't know what to tell people. Like, it's just how the world. How many kids do you have? And you said, just try to get one Bitcoin per kid. I call it a day. Yeah. What it's showing to me is that there's a lot of people in this space that have never,

ever thought about like how things are valued in this world. And it's a bit of a culture clash that's kind of happening between the institutions and the people that are arriving that are finally, finally understanding Bitcoin. See, this is where what's that meme? It's like I'm trying to like get away, but they pull me back in. Preston. Your role in this is going to be front and center. Because I mean, not to boost your ego, but I truly believe this, you're so well-respect. within the Bitcoin community and well deserved, you know, you're being invited to Riga, to the Haltick Honey Badger,

to all the dev stuff, like you're the man. And then also on the institutional side, you have a great relationship with like the Senator Haggardies of the world to all these other folks that they respect your opinion. So I feel like there's a small group of people that are in this like middle area that are able to help bridge the gap.

And we're going to see this next evolution in Bitcoin, which I'm cautiously optimistic for. Yeah, I'm very optimistic. I just, if I have to be honest with you, it's getting frustrated. It's really getting frustrated for me because I'm trying to,

like, I don't know. Well, you're doing a heck of a job. Thanks. Let me just keep boosting you up because you're the deal. You're going, okay,

so there's three currencies, right, in my opinion. There's time, capital, and reputation. I think everyone, or not everyone,

there's a lot of people that overvalue capital for the sake of time and reputation. So they will just destroy their reputation, not destroy, but like, devalue the currency of reputation in order to increase capital. And they'll waste their time to increase capital as well. Like so, so missing time from their family and so on and so on. And I think you're doing an unbelievable job of putting your reputation in the appropriate places, especially bridging this gap, as well as your time, investing it appropriately and going to, like, I'm so thankful you're coming to Custin and Treasury Summit. I'm so, like, going to these other places in Riga, Latvia, of all places to, to,

all these other places. Preston, you're in like El Salvador, you're in X, Y, Z. And yeah, it's probably for ego death for a reason, but I know you care about it so much amongst a lot of other Bitcoiners. And so there is a lot of chirping, especially online and like a lot of these other things.

But going back to the arc, the payments, just seeing that gives me so much energy and gives me so much hope for what is to come that I'm like, you know what, I'll create another hundred summits to bring people together because the in real life conversations are 100x better than any of the keyboard commando conversations that are happening online. Yeah.

Yeah, amen to that. Let's talk a little bit about the physical spaces because you've expanded the network. And for people that don't know, so what Rod built there in Nashville with Bitcoin Park, there is now a Bitcoin Park in Austin. So walk us through this. What happened? Yeah, yeah. So it's the Commons. So Parker Lewis was the one who started Bitcoin Commons.

The mayor, Austin, Texas. Now head of business development at Zapright. He just focused on building Zapright. And he asked me like, hey, we really, like the Austin community is amazing. And by the way, the Austin community is amazing. The density, and I don't like to say this because Parker and I have this, like, frenemy competition between Austin and Nashville. But the density of developers, engineers, and entrepreneurs in Austin, press. is unbelievable, like straight up unbelievable.

I have been like basically going there a minimum once a month, but like beginning when we started it in February 1, I was going there weekly, just doing a day trip. And just texted like a few friends and then a few friends. And then for the first meeting, just to let everyone know like what I think the vision here is, but I really needs to be community driven. We had like 14 of the best bitquiners like that I would just be like,

are we, should we do a summit right now with all you guys? This would be amazing. And there's something there. But it takes a lot of work to continuously organize a community and rally the troops around meetups, workshops, and summits. And I do think it needs to be like a core focus. Like my time capital reputation is all in on Bitcoin Park. So it's super honored.

Even like that Parker and the Austin community would just even think of me. And now hiring two amazing people, Andrew Davis and Jack Lesser, both leading Park Austin and Park Nashville. And then Rob Warren, who heads up our research and education. I mentioned that custody white paper. He's the one authoring it. And by the way, just a quick tangent, like going to your point, I do think there just needs to be more resources that are signal versus noise.

And so Kathy Wood, super kind. We've been doing that Bitcoin brainstorm that you've been on a couple of times. Her team and my team now with Rob are working. on research together. So one of our first papers we're going to introduce is called killing Bitcoin. Easier said than done. Because I want to bring the light about an age of like we need to be more adversarial in our conversations around Bitcoin and just be more vigilant. And so how cool is it like Ark Invest is going to publish this along with Bitcoin Park? And she's just been another double tangent, but she's just been so amazing. Dude, she's awesome. She really is awesome. I'm like a nobody.

And she's her and the team wanted to do this with Bitcoin Park. Yeah. I was like, oh man, they do the crypto thing and so on. Like, I'm really focused on Bitcoin. I don't know if it's going to jive. She's like, Rod, this is a big, we're called Bitcoin Brainstorm. You create and curate the show. We produce and distribute it.

And I want to be there. Yeah. I'm like, all right. And I thought you'd just be there by like one episode or whatever. We just recorded our 18th episode. And we've been doing it for two years now. Yeah. Just had Paolo from Tether on, which was awesome with Dr.

Laffer. and yeah, it's just been a blast. So I do think locally produced, globally distributed high signal Bitcoin and freedom tech news and information is going to be a huge need and differentiator. And that's what we're going to focus on. Yeah, love it. Yeah, I got a chance to meet Dr. Laffer and Kathy. Not only meet them. You were on the panel with Kathy and Dr. Laffer.

It was great. I know. It was a huge honor to really kind of sit down with both of them, thanks to you. and just tell the audience a little bit about him and how quickly he just kind of got Bitcoin, like, immediately. Yeah. But it's really neat this story with him. Yeah.

If you get the chance to meet Dr. Laffer, I would cancel everything you got and just make it happen. I love his energy. I love his curiosity. I love his directness. He's a big brain. Tell people his background for people that might not know who he is. Yeah.

So he was the former economic advisor for the Reagan administration. He was also the author of the Laffer Kerr. in economic history. And he's also Kathy's mentor, Kathy Wood's mentor. He was her teacher back in college, right? Yeah. Exactly.

And so they stayed very close. Yeah. And all the way, and I'm pretty sure he's on the board of ARC. They're very involved and have a great relationship. And honestly, like, he's just amazing. He's in Nashville.

His office is right up the street. His team comes to the park. I mean, it's, I pinch myself because I'm like, what timeline am I in? We got like all these people rolling through the park. I can honestly say, I don't know that I've been to the park. The last four times I've been up there, there has at least been a senator at the park.

The last four times I've been up there. And every time I'm there and I see just like the people that are coming around for the events that you're holding, I'm just like, is this real? Like, what is happening? This is so crazy. And they're in like dad jeans and new balances. They're like, and it's just, well, there's policymakers. They're great. But like it's like the doctor laughers and it's like the Kathy's and it's like these other really amazing people in their own respective industries.

Yeah. That want to just learn. They're there to learn from us. Yeah. And then develop relationships directly. And that's what, you know, one of our core values at the park with the team is like no gatekeepers. Like we are not gatekeepers here. So like we want to authentically create connective tissue amongst like our core, which is our member or Bitcoin Park member community.

and then our general Bitcoin Park community as well. But, no, Dr. Laffer is unbelievable. He's, and so like a little bit of the reason why I wanted to do Imagine F, to be honest with you. So imagine if. Yeah, explain this because this is happening after the custody summit. That's right. And then, yeah, go ahead. Run with it.

Yeah, so it's September 19th and 20th. And something I've been dreaming about for a long time. So I've wanted to do a summit of summits because I, like, and Kathy's the one that kind of planted this in my head. She's like, Rod, there's a convergence. happening right now between Bitcoin, AI, energy, and all these industries. And they're all converging and colliding right now. And it's going to be fascinating to see what happens. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? We need to like bring that conversation to light. And it would be very tough to do it. Even like our park summits are very focused on Bitcoin and Freedom Tech. And they're like 100, 150 people.

This one, I really want to bring a lot of the industry leaders across Bitcoin, AI, energy, and Freedom Tech together. And then on top of that, I just knew there's Kathy and Dr. Laffer every time I get them together, magic just happens between them. It's simply amazing. And so the ARC team, we have a weekly meeting with the team just to riff on a number of things related to Bitcoin. And I'm going to do this.

And I would love for you guys to partner with me. I'll do all the work similar to that create and curate, you guys produce and distribute. And they're like, auto, yes, let's go. And Kathy's been kind. She's coming. and Dr. Laffer's in. He's coming. Adam Back's coming.

Odell and all those guys are coming. I definitely want to ego death. Would love all you guys. And you guys are just crushing it. So I just want to give you guys a shout out. And it makes it really cool because now, you know, a lot of the policymakers and a lot,

they now know about these Bitcoiners. And when I'm like, oh, Adam Back or Preston Pish, oh, they're coming? Okay, great. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Tell them, I said, hello. And we're going to come and, like,

we'll just be in attendance. It's okay. And we just want to be there and support and learn from the broader community. Yeah. And the other second point, I like when they ask like, what's the topic, right? And it's not like normally other ones would ask, who's coming? What's the audience side? And so on.

And they're asking like, what's the topic? Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Of course, they're going to want to know who the audience is, but they can glean in to what's happening. And so at this one, we have like 65 companies over 200 folks registered already for imagine if we have like companies like, XAI coming with mostly the boring company, like those type of companies. And imagine like a block

stream, an anchor watch, a BDK foundation are also going to be in the attendance. Energy companies, like TVA, shout out to them. They are going to have a pretty significant presence and probably a participation as well. And then there's other energy providers. Like where it gets really fun, especially on the Tennessee side, Preston is on the nuclear. And so you got like Tyros energy, Orano, Ocla. Like, we're tracking to have all of those folks in attendance too. So I could see a conversation. And that's why I titled this Imagine If.

And I want people, and it's dreamers and doers. You know, you got a Jack Dorsey, for example. He's dreaming of we need to decentralize Bitcoin mining and really compete at the rig level. And then he's got an amazing team of doers that just execute on that mission. And so I want to bring both of those groups together. And I want us just to dream much bigger and what those possibilities are and then implement the world that we want to see. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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risks, charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the income Funds Perspectus at fundrise.com slash income. This is a paid advertisement. All right. Back to the show. It's interesting because those three things are just converging, almost like three different galaxies just kind of converging and are just kind of smack into each other all at the same time.

So the fact that you're like putting that all together to me is just freaking brilliant, first of all. And I just can't even imagine like what's going to come out of that because if I was a policymaker, if I'm an elected official or whatever, and you're not like crazy hyper focused on those three things for your state or jurisdiction. Like I don't know what to tell you. You're totally missing, missing the boat on where everything's going, right? Well, and that's the thing. And I am very biased to Tennessee because that's where I live in Nashville. And I'm, you know, all the governor's team and all these, we have an unfair advantage with the TVA.

and Oak Ridge. We need to leverage this unfair advantage. Yeah. And especially on the SMR as the small module reactors. And how do we accelerate? The state did a really good job of creating this like $70 million fund to like kickstart investment in the state around nuclear companies. Yeah.

And what I want to do similar to the Bitcoin side where we kind of made Nashville, where Bitcoiners like in the US as well as globally kind of come and work, learn, collaborate and build. Well, every year in September for Imagine If I want to bring all three, of those industry leaders and doers, you're not going to be able to probably make it every year, but at least in Nashville, Tennessee, every September, imagine if it's happening. And you've got to tune in and be a part of this because that's where we have really deep and meaningful connections and conversation. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, from the policy standpoint, they need to just open the

floodgates for promoting these three entities to just set up shop, whatever they've got to do from a tax standpoint to promote it. And the thing is, is like, you put that governance or that policy, the laws in place, you're just, it's going to be like a magnet for them to come into the region. So hopefully they realize this. I don't. And I think they, and I'll share like Georgia, I think is doing a good job of that, especially with the data with core scientific incentivizing them there. There was a reason why we were in Dalton, Georgia yesterday for the proto announcement. Yeah. The core has a number of facilities all over. I don't know what the reason was, but it's seem like Georgia power, the Georgia government, the lieutenant government or lieutenant governor,

the state senator, the council people, they were all lined up. And so that's another thing. We're talking about the policy side. And there's the capital allocator side. This is really interesting to me as well. So we're probably, you know, so for imagine if you need a request an invitation, because I want to make sure, like I always say even at our smallest meetups to our largest experiences that we host, I always say one thing when I kick it off, which is I take a lot of responsibility in making this the best Bitcoin and Freedom Tech experience, you'll have all year. And so I want to make sure you're here at the best place. But the capital allocators are really interesting because now they're like, okay, this is interesting. I cannot deny that Bitcoin is

like this unbelievable investment. The administration seems like they're supporting it. There's more air coverage in terms of supportive legislation. Okay. Now let's, how do we allocate towards this space? Okay. Well, do we go the Picks and Shovels route and go into, to the infrastructure side, or do we go straight to the treasury side and to the entrepreneur side? Do we go straight into the asset side? And so on.

And the type of high-net worth individuals, family offices, institutional investors, and these folks that wanna learn more and it's so funny, they're like bringing like a physical notebook and being like, okay, Preston, you said this about this, like now I wanna dig into what you meant by this,

because I really wanna learn more about this. That's why I take a lot of pride and responsibility, not only in the content curation, but in the people curation, speakers as well as the attendees, to maximize the time for all of us to be there. You briefly mentioned AI at the beginning. And literally as you were talking,

I had an idea that popped into my head that I think could be useful for all the attendees as they go back home and they're trying to decompress, like, everything that happened at the event. Before I throw out whatever that idea is, I want to talk,

and I just want to kind of get, your overall opinion on using AI now. I know you have talked about this recently in some of your interviews where you're doing browser extensions, you're doing this, just the speed at which you can create content and bootstrap things with funding and whatnot using AI. Give us your rundown. Where are you at with AI? What's happened? It's kind of like you have to use it in terms of your workflow. Whatever workflow you have, you need to augment it, experiment with AI. So for example, I use voice to text pretty much now for everything I do.

The majority of what I do on the keyboard now is voice to text because it's just voice is like five to ten times more efficient than it is to text. However, the lift to actually get myself into that habit was very high, but I forced myself and now I'm running. Similar to AI, I would not say,

oh, I just used it, it gave me an okay response or I didn't really, and then I'm just going to go back to Googling and doing whatever. My first suggestion is commit, don't pay an annual fee, a monthly fee for whatever AI service, I have no recommendations on one or the other, but just use one and just start using it as your default Google like search. It's so funny when people

ask me questions now or even like a question about something else, I'm like, did you ask whatever service? You're like, oh, no. And then there's the answer right then and there. So that's first and foremost. Second is you'll be, and you do this really well, is anything that's repetitive in terms your workflows that you're looking to do, and especially that takes away your energy, should be most likely automated through an AI agentic type of, either delegated purposely or through some sort of AI agent, full stop. Like, you got to get that off your workload. Because if I'm able to go, like, you take one step forward and I'm able to take one point one step forward every single day, I'm going to be light years ahead of you. Even though you could still see me

right now, you're not going to be able to see me in like half a year from now. Yeah. And but I will say it's not like, oh, well, the AI tooling, still people are creative and thoughtful. And you're going to, there's so much slop out there. And you're just like, dude, I know you're using AI. You're not like, I immediately do not read what you're saying. But then when, for example, I've always wanted to write more.

I have this like series called This Is Dumb, but Hear Me Out. And I have all these topics that I want to write about. And now I can go to that backlog of notes and I can just start talking with the AI and just start getting my thoughts more crystallized. And now I write, and for me, it's somewhat therapeutic because it's just a great habit to develop. And I wouldn't be able to do it without AI. So I would say in terms of a suggestion, it's just you have to include it in your workflow. And it is just so unbelievable. Yeah.

So for me, taking meetings, especially engineering, tech-heavy type meetings, which I take quite a bit of. We'll sit there, we'll talk for a half hour or an hour. And, you know, some things I'm picking up, some things I'm not picking up. And a lot of the times you don't want to slow down the conversation because it's kind of moving very quickly. But what I found is we use like a Firefly service where it's giving you and even Zoom has this now where you can get the full transcript of the conversation after you're done. And what I find myself doing is, if it's a recurring conversation engineer, let's take ARC, for example, that we were talking about at the start of the show, which is a really

technical thing with these virtual UTXOs and blah, blah, blah. So I have a context window and I would take the whole, let's say it was a conversation for a half hour, an hour about ARC. And I'm literally catching like 10% of what's being thrown down. I can take that entire discussion, rip it out of the AI is giving me. the word for word, right? I can then ingest it into the context window via PDF. And then I can go back and I can say, hey, there was something that happened in this

conversation, like maybe 25% of the way through that was in reference to this. And I didn't really understand what was being said. Yeah. And it knows exactly. It can immediately interact, I can interact, almost like I have the best expert on the planet. Is it unbelievable? It's unbelievable. But then where I think it even goes further is I might have another three conversations.

I'll ingest those conversations into that same context window. And now it's just getting smarter and smarter. And my ability to query anything is like off the charts. And so why I was smiling when you were talking about this event that you were having, the whole time I'm thinking, oh my God, they need a transcript of every, like if you have a website or something like that after the event's over, that has a transcript of every panel, right? And then you could even have roll-ups and you could even have things like if, let's say you were a politician or you were a person from the energy sector or you were a person from this

branch of whatever, you can have an AI recap and like the so what? Like, why is this important to you? Or what did you, like, you can get all of that out of there and that you could have these files that people could extract for themselves that could then help them chew through the value capture that they can get that maybe they just didn't have. have the time or bandwidth to be able to handle while they were there or they didn't even attend, but they want to be able to ingest all of this. Dude, it's crazy. It's crazy. It is totally crazy. And just like the website, which is Bitcoinpark.com 4 slash imagine if, shout out to Jack on my team, he vibe coded that brilliant website together. And it looks so nice. Yeah. All of that.

And then think about it. We have speakers, the profile picks. All of that is just like, I think we were using cursor AI for that one. And it's just so easy. And that's where Preston, the curation of content is going to, and that's where I'm dumb and bad at like 99 out of 100 things. One thing I think I'm pretty good at is curation of signal. Yeah.

And this is like me, like Marty and I joke is like, and this is our time to shine, you know, the thought boys or whatever it's called. But being able to curate all of that signal, and then distill it into like clear bites of information such that you could be the policymaker,

you could be the engineer, you could be the entrepreneur, and you're like, wait a minute, I'm just wanna be an entrepreneur that makes these widgets. Oh, I can use Bitcoin plus this AI customer service widget, and now I'm banned of one that I have unstoppable money that I'm accepting while I have my customer service department that I would have to pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars

in a call center or whatever, and I'm making it. able to just focus in all my craft that actually gives me the most energy. Yeah. And I enjoy it. Preston, for our kids and where we are right now, I've never been more bullish in my entire life. Yeah. Here's another weird idea.

You could take transcripts of everything that happened at this, you know, imagine if. Let's say there's 30 panels or whatever, right? You take the transcripts of those 30 panels. You put them into your own transformer so that you train it on everything that was said, right? And then you just have some like interface on the website after the event that I could go in there. I'm politician, whoever, or I'm from the energy sector, CEO, whoever. And I go in there and I'm just like, hey, I'm out of the energy sector.

Like, what is something that happened during this, all these panel discussions that would be really useful for me to know? And literally the transformer that's been coded up on all the conversations that happened that thing can come back and respond and give that specific person exactly what's. they need to know that was insightful or a novel that came out of the conversation. Totally. I think our, at least my vision here, you're totally right. And you could actually use Claude, probably in Chad GBT and all that other stuff, as long

as we make it available, which I don't see any reason why we wouldn't. One of the areas, I will say this, most people are, though, lazy, including myself. So they're not going to even want to maybe even do that interaction and step. They're going to want to go click and show me the clips, show me the highlight. And it's like the Instagram feed. But there's going to be a good percent that want to go choose your own adventure and go down that rabbit hole. I do think this allows us because we've done such a great job of curating a lot of conversations at the park. We're sitting on a treasure trove of just amazing content, similar to how you are as well.

And we just distributed on our like just regular Bitcoin Park Twitter account. Well, we now have 18 episodes of Bitcoin brainstorm. We have all these meetups workshops and summits that we've produced and published. Now we're going to organize them around these summits that we've created. So we have the Energy and Mining Summit in January. Most likely Fossil be February. March is Bitcoin takeover in Austin. April is our grassroots Bitcoin.

And the list keeps going to September, which is Imagine If in the Custody and Treasury Summit. October we do Global Bitcoin Summit. And then there's a Bitcoin Payment Summit. There's Nostra. The list goes on. Every single one of those, Preston, I'd like to produce a annual white paper that is a good primer for the audience to come and learn more. And you don't even need to read the whole paper.

The paper is just published. And then you can use your own agent interface to query it and be like, hey, you know my style and my learning abilities. How best should I prepare? I want to go to the Custody and Treasury Summit September 17th and 18th.

What are five bullets I want to know about? Great. Oh, who else is speaking, by the way, on MPC, multi-party custody? And are they speaking on this? And what should I pick up? I was like, oh, Rob Hamilton and Adam Backer doing X, XYZ on this.

And what does it? the risk factors that I and then all of a sudden is like you know that's why I wrote this piece how conferences just stuck and they're just like a lot very vanilla and look I get them and there's a purpose for these type of things but like curated experiences like these summits in my opinion and now having more information to be better prepared to go into there to maximize your deep knowledge as well as getting your connective tissue exponentially increased that's what I care a lot about and I think If someone gave me that resource ahead of time going into a 100-person summit, I'd be like, holy smokes.

I'm like cooking with gasoline right now, meeting, like catching it with Preston and catching it with this person on X, Y, or Z. Yeah. All right. Rod, we could just talk all day long. But if people want to attend this or they want to learn more about you, give them a handoff where they can learn more. Yeah.

And Preston, I want to just sell you this. I know there's some days where it's like, oh, man, and especially traveling. and what you do is phenomenal, man. Thank you. And keep up the energy because it means a lot for the community, the Bitcoin community, probably the investing community.

We still have so much work to do. We're still so early in Bitcoin that we need more. So thank you for what you do. Thank you, Rod. That means a lot. It really does. Yeah. So I'm excited to see you in Nashville,

September 17th, at the Custody and Treasury Summit. I would recommend just go into our meetup page, Bitcoinpark.com. or we'll go to Bitcoinpark.com forward slash custody hyphen treasury. We'll probably put in the show notes as well. And then just go down and join the wait list. We're going through that.

That one, unfortunately, is going to be sold out here sooner than later. But we have a great lineup like you, Parker Lewis, Adam back. I'm just pulling off the top of my head. Sean Bill from Blockstream. Odell's going to be there. And the list goes on. It's just I'm humbled that you guys are all coming. So thank you.

Of course. And then, yeah, imagine if this is the first one, This is the Summit of Summit, September 19th and 20th. We rented out the Fisher Center for Performing Arts, which is walking distance from Bitcoin Park. It's this beautiful theater. We'll probably have like 300 to 500 people when it's all said and done. And this is like capital allocators, policymakers, entrepreneurs across the Bitcoin AI,

energy and freedom tech space. And I just want these to be like brazing natural collisions amongst these groups of people. It's going to be pretty gnarly, in my opinion. So we'll see how it goes. goes. I'm much to say optimistic. I'm bummed that I'm missing that. I'm excited about the family obligation and that is honestly the most important thing. So I've got to describe this family obligation to you so you understand. Okay. I have a really good friend that I flew with in South Korea whenever, you know, I was a pilot over there. Wait, our mutual friend or no?

No, not. But our mutual friend is also friend. He's going to be at, our mutual friend is going to be at this wedding. No way. But anyway, and that's a whole other story. But we flew together when I was in South Korea and the joke, you know, because that's where I met my wife. I was flying in South Korea. So she knows him really well. And the big joke amongst all of us was he is never getting married. He's never, ever, ever getting married.

And that weekend, it's his wedding. And we're, this is my buddy Joe and we're going to, Joe's wedding. So it happened. It happened. Well, congratulations to your buddy Joe. I will say it's similar to what we're building at the park. What we're building is to be durable for decades. And that's where we value the time, capital, and reputation. And so not this year for you, especially next year, but for this year can be more thankful for Kathy, Dr. Laffer, Senator Hagridi, and a bunch of other folks, Senator Blackburn, a bunch of other folks, especially on the energy side. I'm really, really interested.

Like we have such deep relationships in Bitcoin right now, Preston. I am very interested in developing this level of relationships on the energy side, but especially on the nuclear side. I feel like these guys have just been like... I think it's going there, Rod. I think it's going. It's going there. They've even pushed away, pushed to the side for so long.

Yeah. And now they're feeling the love a little bit. Yeah. And then us Bitcoiners can be like, hey, we got your back. It's the Dr. Evil meme, right? Yeah. Yeah, come. Yeah, exactly.

I love it. But that one, if you go to Bitcoinpark.com for slash Imagine If, just at the request of invitation, I'm very proud to offer complimentary tickets for our Bitcoin Park members like yourself and others. And so that's like a small token of appreciation to increase the member benefit is just adding to it. Well, you guys heard it here first. We'll have links to all of that in the show notes. And I hope you guys enjoy Nashville if you do attend. So.

Broad. Thank you. And until next time. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Bitcoin Fundamentals on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only, before making any decision consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by the Investors Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcast. casting.