Latest / Life with Bitcoin / What It Feels Like to Mine a Bitcoin Block | Heather Larson

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What It Feels Like to Mine a Bitcoin Block | Heather Larson · Life with Bitcoin

• 0:00
  I'm, I'm a firm believer in that, you know, God has gifted you something that is amazing, that only you have,
• 0:06
  and you, you've got to share that with the world.
• 0:08
  You just have to, even if you think I'm not creative or nobody wants to hear it, BS.
• 0:12
  Somebody out there is going to appreciate what you have to give.
• 0:16
  And, and I think that's like the rent we pay on this earth is we have to participate.
• 0:20
  You know, we have to.
• 0:21
  Like, it makes the world a better place if we all do.
• 0:26
  It's just, it makes life To, you know, like my friend Sam made this shirt.
• 0:32
  Sam became a part, a part of Bitcoin history.
• 0:34
  We'll always have the memories of this Satoshi shirt.
• 0:46
  Welcome to Live with Bitcoin, where we delve into the human side of Bitcoin by focusing on Bitcoiners' transformations and live stories.
• 0:53
  I'm your host Ivy Lumi.
• 0:54
  Thanks for tuning in.
• 0:55
  If you like and want to support our mission on shining light on the human side of Bitcoin, remember to subscribe,
• 1:02
  comment, or leave a few cents in the link description or support our Noster profile.
• 1:08
  So today's guest is someone whose past lived together Other music, storytelling, open networks, and Bitcoin in a way that feels incredibly natural,
• 1:19
  but yet very unreal.
• 1:20
  Heather Larson is the host of Radio Detox, a passionate supporter of independent creators, and someone who believes technology is ultimately about bringing people closer together.
• 1:31
  And most recently, she experienced something very few Bitcoiners ever do-- participating in the mining of a Bitcoin block.
• 1:40
  And this happened very, very recently.
• 1:42
  I will be making sure to dive into the whole journey of that.
• 1:45
  What struck me the most about Heather isn't just how many different communities Heather is, is part of, but the common thread running through all of them,
• 1:55
  whether it's music, podcasting, Noster, or Bitcoin, she's consistently chosen participation over consumption.
• 2:03
  So today, I'd love to explore that journey, what curiosity has taught her, how open networks have changed the way she re- Ladies to people,
• 2:14
  what does it feel like to help mine a Bitcoin block, and where she sees the future of value for value,
• 2:22
  Noster, and the human side of the Bitcoin heading.
• 2:25
  Heather, welcome to
• 2:26
  Live with Bitcoin.
• 2:27
  Thank you.
• 2:28
  Oh, Ivy, I'm so glad to be on with you.
• 2:30
  Huge fan, and I'm so glad to be here today.
• 2:32
  We have a lot of work to do and so much to talk about, don't we?
• 2:35
  Definitely.
• 2:35
  Just to jump right into it, it was just last week, you've experienced something very few people get to experience,
• 2:43
  participating in mining a Bitcoin block.
• 2:45
  Some people understand mining intellectually, some people do it professionally, but for most Bitcoiners, very few participated in this historical moment for a Bitcoiner.
• 2:56
  So tell, tell us all about it.
• 2:58
  What surprised you the most about mining a Bitcoin block?
• 3:02
  I think my reaction to it was, we've been trying so hard, and for so long, you know, I work for Wrigley,
• 3:09
  we're a hash rate marketplace.
• 3:11
  We have been working for- For, well, let's see, I got hired around November of twenty twenty-four.
• 3:17
  So since then, so like nineteen months, we have spent doing what we call the block party, and it's where everybody joins in.
• 3:25
  You can purchase, you know, hash rate, or you can hook up a solo miner, you can hook up a farm,
• 3:31
  it doesn't matter, you just point your hash to our pool, hash rate as it is, and we just try to get as many people involved,
• 3:39
  we try to get as much hash rate as we can, we try to get as- Many solo mining machines,
• 3:45
  so your bitax, your brains miner, your avalon, your nerd miners, just bring them, right?
• 3:51
  You know, bring them in and, you know, we're just gonna try as a group to solo mine together.
• 3:57
  So we've tried twenty-eight times now, and on the twenty-eighth try on June twenty-seventh, twenty twenty-six, some nerds, you know,
• 4:06
  do the numerology or something for me, 'cause it was incredible.
• 4:09
  We hit block nine five five seven oh three.
• 4:12
  Three, and my reaction was like denial.
• 4:15
  I was, I was in total shock.
• 4:18
  We were live on a Twitter Space, me and one of my local friends, from Arizona here, Sean.
• 4:23
  he's gotten into our mining party, so he thought, "I'm gonna host a live Twitter Space.
• 4:27
  People will just come on and talk about mining."
• 4:29
  And like last week we did it too, and like a couple guys came on and talked about mining, and,
• 4:34
  you know, talked about the party and like, "Hey, this is cool.
• 4:36
  Like, we're actually like making a difference Part is bitcoiners, right?
• 4:44
  And so, like, we're just, me and Sean are just innocuous, like, talking on this X, X space, Twitter space,
• 4:50
  whatever you wanna call it, and I, I get a text message from our developer, and, and I look at it and I'm like,
• 4:56
  he said, "We got it," like, all caps, like, "We got it," and I'm like, "No way."
• 5:00
  And so I look at the mempool, I pull it up on my computer real quick, and I'm like, "Wait a minute,
• 5:12
  Boundary, we don't know, it's just unknown.
• 5:14
  And then I saw our pool, it said Solo CK Pool, and I'm like, "There's no way.
• 5:20
  Do you know how many times we tried to do this?
• 5:22
  " And I'm like, "Wait a minute.
• 5:23
  " And my dev's like, "No, we got it.
• 5:25
  " I'm like, "No, we didn't.
• 5:26
  " Like, like total denial.
• 5:27
  So we start digging into, you know, the mempool, we start clicking through, clicking into things, and I'm like, "Did we really just hit I just hit a block,
• 5:43
  and then I look at the Telegram group, and everybody's like, "Oh my God, is that us?
• 5:46
  Did we do it?"
• 5:47
  And I'm like, "My God, did we do it?
• 5:49
  Did we?
• 5:50
  No, we didn't.
• 5:51
  No, we didn't."
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  And so like that was- You can hear the whole recording, it's hilarious, 'cause I was like, "Oh my god,
• 5:56
  this is probably not live,
• 5:57
  hey?"
• 5:57
  Yeah,
• 5:58
  it was, it was my live reaction to hitting a block, is, is captured forever on X. So I'm just-- It's funny now,
• 6:06
  but like, I haven't listened back to the whole way through.
• 6:08
  It's out there, so if you wanna hear my absolute denial, I think I even said that whenever something major happens in life,
• 6:15
  that I, I go right to denial, right?
• 6:17
  If like, if there's grief, I go My brain, that's how I work.
• 6:24
  So I was just in shock, and so then we, we verified, my dev was like, "Jesus, Heather, we're like,
• 6:29
  we got it, we, we did it."
• 6:31
  So then, you know, word is spreading through our community 'cause we have, we have everything, we have X, we have Noster,
• 6:36
  we have Discord, we have Telegram, we, you know, everybody's all over, and so we're like, "Oh my God, we did this."
• 6:44
  And then the next question is, 'cause if, if How you pay out the block reward.
• 6:55
  So that was the next question.
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  They were like, "Whoa, when do we get our money?
• 6:57
  " 'Cause we had some people in there that really put money in, into the process, and that's, that's also what we do.
• 7:04
  the block reward shares are paid out based on hash rate contributed.
• 7:08
  So if you are a whale and you buy a ton of hash rate, you're gonna get a fat reward.
• 7:13
  And so I think the biggest reward that we paid out was probably about equivalent to twenty-five thousand US dollars.
• 7:22
  That was, that was Very small last minute purchase because I had been out late the night before with my Bitcoin friends,
• 7:28
  and I just kinda came home and like, half awake, like, "Oh, I gotta buy hash rate for the party in the morning 'cause I don't-- I'm gonna oversleep and I'm gonna miss the party start."
• 7:36
  So like, I just hit the YOLO button on my browser and I was like, "Oh, I'll buy hash rate,"
• 7:40
  you know, opened a wallet, made the purchase, didn't think about it, I, I bought like forty-two terahash, you know So I'm not gonna get a lot,
• 7:54
  'cause I know that I didn't buy in, so like, I'm not like excited about the money aspect, I'm like,
• 7:58
  "Oh my god, what do we do next?"
• 7:59
  Like, so everybody's like, "Well, when do we get our money?"
• 8:01
  I'm like, "Okay, now we gotta explain.
• 8:02
  Now that we've got people on board with understanding hash rate, understanding Bitcoin mining, understanding a solo miner, understanding how this whole gamification of the block party works,
• 8:12
  now I get to explain, and we hadn't done it before.
• 8:23
  So now we gotta do a little education here.
• 8:24
  Nobody, nobody goes through this, right?
• 8:26
  And then we had about a hundred and fourteen people who were part of the block party.
• 8:30
  So that's a hundred and fourteen people that had to get payoffs.
• 8:33
  So nobody Bitcoiner really like knows that, a lot do, but, you know, you don't know until it happens to you.
• 8:40
  And you mine a block, and it's like, okay, how do we do the rewards again?
• 8:42
  Well, you have to do a hundred block confirmations, or, you know, that's like fifteen or seventeen hours So you gotta go through the confirmations.
• 8:55
  So after about sixteen hours, we can pay out the rewards.
• 8:59
  So everybody's like, "Whoa, where's my money?"
• 9:01
  And they're like, "Hold on, like, back to Bitcoin's perfect design.
• 9:05
  There is a hundred block rule.
• 9:06
  So Bitcoin essentially teaches us low time preference in every way.
• 9:11
  Like, even when you hit a block and you're waiting for that block reward, you see the Coinbase is there,
• 9:16
  you're like, "Oh, I got the block reward, and I'm gonna get it in sixteen hours because Bitcoin..."
• 9:23
  Wants me to wait, you know, Satoshi designed this perfectly, so Bitcoin wanted us to wait, so we did that,
• 9:28
  and we got through that, and that was, that was incredible 'cause somebody, not me, had to do all of those,
• 9:33
  somebody had to sit there and, and look at the addresses and go, "Whoa," you know, like, "We, we gotta pay these people now."
• 9:39
  So that, that was great that somebody else had to do that task, 'cause that's, that's not for me.
• 9:44
  I will, I will talk about mining all day, somebody
• 9:53
  Times, like twenty nine times.
• 9:54
  When you organize a block party, do you target a specific block or every-- I wish.
• 10:00
  Yeah.
• 10:01
  I've-- Everyone's tried to guess what block we would hit, like the whole way through.
• 10:05
  Like, I, I think there was a point where maybe we were doing a mining party around the time like block eight eight eight,
• 10:11
  eight eight eight would hit, and so like we were like, "Oh my God, wouldn't it be cool if that's the block we mine?"
• 10:16
  So like, they're impossible to target, right?
• 10:18
  'Cause sometimes they're TikTok next You'll sit there for like forty-eight minutes, and that is so punishing when you have like an eight-hour block party,
• 10:28
  and one of those hours is waiting for one block to clear, and we're just like, "My God, like we,
• 10:33
  we wanted more chances to hit within this eight hours, "and instead we just lost a whole hour to one block,
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  like, "Oh, painful.
• 10:41
  " So we've, we've, we've definitely experienced like the downside like that.
• 10:45
  We've experienced like the hard times where we're like, "Man, this party setup was so great, maybe the difficulty Felt like we felt so optimistic,
• 10:55
  like we would hit a block.
• 10:56
  Maybe we had a ton of people involved, or maybe we just had a ton of hash rate because we had whale buys,
• 11:01
  which has happened as well.
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  We mined one time with seven x a hash, which was huge, and didn't hit a block.
• 11:07
  So it's, it's kind of im-impossible to target like a single block, and every party has been different.
• 11:13
  So like, it's always a different amount of hash rate, it's a different amount of people, it's always a different vibe,
• 11:19
  'cause people kinda come People come and go, like sometimes people get really into it and they're with us for like a couple months and then they bounce.
• 11:28
  Maybe they move on to another pool, maybe they decide to put money into, miner, maybe they buy a more expensive miner.
• 11:34
  You know, like whatever, people come and go.
• 11:36
  And then we've got people who've been with us from the start because we started this with maybe a dozen people,
• 11:43
  and it was our founder Evan's dream that, hey, if we all pull our hash rate, maybe we can mine a block,
• 11:49
  'cause like that's the hardest thing From that far, we're just a twelve people or so, we're doing this to like,
• 11:58
  we welcomed in just like hash rate buyers to buy hash rate, essentially buying entry into the party and the,
• 12:05
  you know, the privilege of being able to try to hit the block and get that reward share, right?
• 12:09
  And then, I don't even remember at what point it started, but we opened it up for solo mining machines.
• 12:14
  That was by popular demand, so our users give us feedback, and everybody wanted to hook up these things.
• 12:19
  I've got one that's unplugged, 'cause I have To clean it before the next block party.
• 12:25
  And so like, we got so into these when we opened up solo mining, this came from Crypto Cloaks, that we started something we called the Alliance.
• 12:34
  So these Alliance casings came from Crypto Cloaks.
• 12:39
  Shout out to Rick.
• 12:40
  So Rick at Crypto Cloaks came up the Alliance.
• 12:44
  We had like an Alliance noster account, like, we, we all got one of these.
• 12:49
  Like, I bought this one, I tricked it out with a fan, and I- I gotta, I gotta clean it up right now,
• 12:54
  put it back together, and plug it back in in time for the Saturday party, which, you know, anybody who mines in between parties,
• 13:00
  can actually like, maybe hit a block.
• 13:04
  With the bitax, and then you would get like one BTC, and then the rest is split based on hash rate contributed.
• 13:10
  Hard to hit a block with a bitax, but it can be done.
• 13:13
  How long have you been trying this?
• 13:15
  You had twelve thousand people, now how many?
• 13:18
  Now you have over a hundred people participating in this very block, and how long does it take you to get to this point?
• 13:25
  It took us a long time.
• 13:26
  Like we, we had a pause last fall.
• 13:29
  We had a technical issue, screwed something up, shut down for a few months.
• 13:34
  Didn't do the party, so we probably lost some people there, and, and some came back too, because it, it is a community feel,
• 13:41
  and a lot of people never left.
• 13:42
  And so now if you look at the party now, I think we've got more, more people, I think close to four hundred,
• 13:48
  if you look on the Wrigley website, which is like Wrigley, w r i g l y dot io, we've got a few hundred people,
• 13:54
  which is shocking to me, 'cause we've always been very small.
• 13:57
  And then our goal, which we made recently Our new goal is get the community to a thousand people joining the party on a weekly basis,
• 14:08
  'cause that's one other thing we did last month, we decided that it would be a weekly party instead of like,
• 14:14
  we, we were doing bi-weekly.
• 14:16
  Like, we, we have tried so many things to get to where we are, we just kept reiterating, like, we started with you could buy hash rate only in auctions,
• 14:24
  like we would auction the hash rate, and it got really competitive, it got really wild, and, and so then we brought in the bid axes,
• 14:32
  and then eventually And we took them down because we found that people just wanted to buy hash rate, like they didn't wanna go through the auction thing.
• 14:39
  The auction thing was too confusing for a lot of people, although it was fun.
• 14:43
  The auction days were like the hardcore.
• 14:46
  We were very nerdy in the beginning, and so we finally realized, let's make it super easy for people to just buy hash rate,
• 14:52
  buy as much as you want, you know?
• 14:54
  And so then ultimately what we've done is we've made it super easy, and it's like eleven hundred sats for forty-two terahash,
• 15:01
  so like This latest party that we're doing, now that we've hit a block, everybody wants in.
• 15:08
  People are going crazy, there are whale buys galore.
• 15:11
  Everybody can just come in for forty-two tera hash as long as you use your team code.
• 15:15
  So like, for you, if you wanna join the party, they can just join code team Ivy, and then we've got twenty-one slots,
• 15:22
  and then they're out, so everybody can join in for forty-two tera hash for free.
• 15:26
  Just use the code team Ivy at your checkout, and then you'll have your own team.
• 15:34
  Checks out life with Bitcoin and listens, listens this far and goes, "Hey, I'm gonna use that Team Ivy code and,
• 15:40
  you know, get into this block party."
• 15:42
  So that, that can be fun too.
• 15:44
  We can see how many Team Ivy folks we got.
• 15:47
  but, you know, you're not gonna get a huge amount of block reward unless you contribute a huge amount of hash rate,
• 15:53
  and there are people who don't, just don't care.
• 15:55
  They just wanna be a part of the party.
• 15:57
  They just wanna, you know, the bragging rights are cool, you know 9 5 5 7 0 3.
• 16:06
  Me, me and my 113 friends, me, me and the Anons, we all mined this block together.
• 16:11
  It's like forever written in our history, like
• 16:14
  Yeah,
• 16:15
  it'll be in the bio, it'll, it'll, it'll be in everything, so it'll be, it'll be great.
• 16:19
  I know it's all very new.
• 16:20
  Do you see some sort of difference of how you look at Bitcoin community mining?
• 16:26
  Do you see any of these things differently now that have you participated mining the block?
• 16:31
  Yeah, the, the Bitcoin community is unbeatable.
• 16:35
  It is just-- I know there are different sectors of the Bitcoin community, right?
• 16:39
  Like, but at the end of the day, we're all Bitcoiners, and I think we, we all want to For Bitcoin,
• 16:45
  the right thing, buy Bitcoin, and, you know, obviously that right thing is gonna be like decentralization or standing up for wherever you fall in the mining spectrum,
• 16:55
  what you think is right, you know, that's your node to run, that is, you know, your choice there.
• 17:00
  And I just think that we're such a strong mining community.
• 17:03
  The mining folks, like, just through the parties, we have people who've helped us out, like Wayne, a shout out to Wayne at Megawatt in Indiana,
• 17:10
  there was a party where those guys pointed their hash rate from comes at us just to be cool, like just,
• 17:17
  "Here's the address, here's the info, just hook it up, you know, we'll take the hash rate from your mining farm.
• 17:22
  " You know, that's just a community thing.
• 17:24
  Like somebody just anonymously took the address, plugged it into their, their mining farm, and like, maybe they pumped us some hash for a little while.
• 17:32
  The mining community, I think, is pretty solid.
• 17:34
  You would, you would have to be.
• 17:35
  Mining is so damn hard, like we're, we're in it to support each other, you know?
• 17:44
  We've broken up into different communities as well, like there's the music community, which you're in, Ivy, like, the value for value music community,
• 17:52
  then there's like the Noster community, you know, there's overlap between them, and then like there's, there's a bunch of us here in Arizona,
• 17:59
  and we like to get together and, and hang out, and, and so some of us are into mining and some aren't,
• 18:03
  but it's kind of cool what everybody's into and where the overlap is.
• 18:07
  Definitely, that's where the, where the magic happens, and All of these little sub-communities and groups, they all have their own way of fascination,
• 18:20
  and they have their, group traits where they have qualities, where they have so much to bring just from insights in their areas and what they're,
• 18:28
  they're building, they're doing, and definitely everybody can benefit from talking about it a bit more, I guess, between each other,
• 18:36
  for me at least.
• 18:37
  I'm not a technical Bitcoiner, I'm not coding or, or anything in, in different capacities.
• 18:43
  So Bitcoin mining The mining aspect have always been very mysterious for me.
• 18:48
  I've seen a lot of centralized resources getting pulled into Bitcoin mining, and historically that has been the case, where you have resources naturally gravitating towards different places just because of the nature of Bitcoin mining.
• 19:03
  But now this is something different, and thanks to you, so openly share the story, now more people get to understand this isn't the only way to mine Bitcoin.
• 19:12
  There's a decentralized way.
• 19:14
  Because it's like buying a lottery ticket every ten minutes, right?
• 19:17
  But, but the, the-- Right.
• 19:18
  It's just like buying a lottery ticket, the chance is so small, but if you get to pull your possibility,
• 19:24
  a little bit of luck and, and a lot of karma perhaps, like a lot of good karma, right?
• 19:29
  This also goes to show that, you know, like there's, there's a lot of peo-- there's a lot of work you've done to,
• 19:35
  to make this happen, and it doesn't take the first try, it doesn't take the tenth try, And it takes your poor,
• 19:45
  your heart and soul and sets into hope, into more light, into more love, in-investing in people and communities getting together.
• 19:54
  I think that's, that's what the, the block reward eventually is about.
• 19:58
  And then this is why, like, this is what makes it so special.
• 20:02
  What do you think?
• 20:03
  What's the difference or what make you feel instead of having institutional mining farms mine this block, now you have a hundred plebs coming together to mine this block?
• 20:13
  What do you think it is?
• 20:14
  It means for Bitcoin, for Bitcoiners and the community.
• 20:18
  That's great.
• 20:19
  great question.
• 20:19
  It, it's the future.
• 20:21
  It is the-- that low time preference future, that long term future where I see a future where maybe the mining party isn't just like whales making the block reward lopsided,
• 20:32
  for example, like we'd love to have a thousand people in it who are all buying small amounts of hash rate,
• 20:37
  so like more people get a smaller reward.
• 20:39
  I'm not-- I came into this as not a technical bitcoiner either, like I, I came into this like, "Hey,
• 20:44
  you guys need a marketer?"
• 20:45
  Like, you know?
• 20:46
  Like I'll learn about Bitcoin mining, like, then I started learning more of the technical side of it, and I was like,
• 20:53
  "Cool, like, that's not for me."
• 20:55
  But then I got interested in the, the bitax thing, and I'm like, "So I can just, like, mine from home?
• 21:00
  Maybe I'll hit a block, who knows?
• 21:02
  You know, like, but, but I can mine from home."
• 21:03
  I didn't think I could mine from home.
• 21:05
  I thought I had to have a basement and a big, loud miner that would piss off my neighbors, right?
• 21:14
  So Mining and that like foundry, man, like they-- I counted one day specifically, how many blocks did they hit in a twenty-four hour period?
• 21:24
  And it was like, it was like more than thirty, it was an obscene number.
• 21:27
  It was like, there was pretty much not an hour in a day that they didn't hit a block.
• 21:31
  Like they're so, they have so much hash rate, they have so much proof of work, I mean, they're-- they can just hit and hit 'cause they have so much power,
• 21:39
  right?
• 21:40
  And like, we're not gonna make a dent in that Miners about just the importance of, yes, put a BitX in your house,
• 21:50
  be a heat punk, you know, if you live somewhere cold, get the heat miner and like, like Heatbit just came out with,
• 21:57
  they're launching an air purifier, right?
• 21:59
  So like, people like me who live in the desert have a chance to do something, you know, to have another miner running in their house,
• 22:05
  you know, in addition to like the BitX, but it's probably not as hard as most people think.
• 22:11
  And if it, if you aren't non-technical and you wanna be High forty two terahash, see how it works, you know,
• 22:20
  the most you're gonna lose is that.
• 22:21
  I think the, the future is that every Bitcoiner has something in their house, right?
• 22:27
  You at least have a node or and or a Bitcoin miner or one or both or, you know, you go back and forth,
• 22:34
  whatever, whatever you got going, you have the power to participate in Bitcoin, right?
• 22:39
  Like right now, you can make your choice between Core and BIP one ten, if you're running a node, that is your choice,
• 22:44
  right?
• 22:45
  I've heard some people say And that's cool too, like that's, that gives you a voice, you know, one CPU,
• 22:52
  one vote, just as it was intended, right?
• 22:55
  So that's how we, we, we don't need to argue.
• 22:57
  The community's been arguing and arguing and arguing about this, you know, what is right and what is wrong, when really,
• 23:02
  like, there's no argument.
• 23:04
  Just run your node the way you choose, right?
• 23:06
  So just, do your thing, that's your vote, right?
• 23:10
  And so in the long run, the future of Bitcoin is that we And yes, it's gonna take a lot of little miners to beat the amount of hash rate that these major corporate miners have,
• 23:24
  but I think it is still important.
• 23:26
  It's important for us to understand and tinker a little bit as Bitcoiners, like, you know, self custody is like the first hurdle,
• 23:33
  and then maybe like you run a node, and that's the second hurdle, and then like maybe mining is another hurdle.
• 23:39
  Like, mining has become so much more possible for a person at home who has no technical skills that just do it,
• 23:45
  you know, just give, give it, give it a And if you hate it, you hate it, you know, like the,
• 23:49
  those, those NerdMiner V2s, like I, I just won one on Twitter, right, from, from Mana and from Altair Tech,
• 23:56
  and they're, they're like forty-five dollars.
• 23:57
  So if you just wanna learn how it works, how to hook up a miner, how to get online with like this,
• 24:03
  it's like the size of my key fob.
• 24:05
  It is so little and cute, it doesn't have much hash rate, right?
• 24:07
  So it's not gonna make much of a big difference in More technical with Bitcoin, and some people do that,
• 24:20
  and they're like, "Cool, I did it.
• 24:22
  Great, got it, done, right on.
• 24:25
  Didn't impress me much, whatever.
• 24:26
  And that's fine.
• 24:27
  And then some people are like- Wow, this is rad!
• 24:31
  I'm gonna have ten bit axes, and that's still not enough, and you then you become kind of an addict,
• 24:36
  right?
• 24:37
  You make friends, you know, 'cause you need-- 'cause you're gonna buy a bit axis, and you're gonna be like,
• 24:41
  "Oh my god, how do I hook this thing up?"
• 24:42
  And it's, it's not as hard as you think.
• 24:44
  You just have to go through it once, kinda like a node.
• 24:46
  Like, like I built a node once, and I'm like, "This sounds like the hardest thing in the Did build a node,
• 25:00
  right?
• 25:00
  Ultimately, like broke it and fried it, but I went through the exercise of doing it, and, and so I'm like,
• 25:07
  "This makes me a better Bitcoiner.
• 25:08
  This makes me understand Bitcoin.
• 25:11
  " And I think running a node taught me the experience of being my own bank and seeing what it's like to transfer my Bitcoin at will at nine o'clock on a Sunday night when the banks are closed and go,
• 25:23
  "Oh my God, I have complete, total control over this.
• 25:26
  " And also the tariff, I have complete and total control.
• 25:29
  Over this, right?
• 25:30
  So, you know, you have to go through it, I think.
• 25:33
  It's, it's like a rite of passage in Bitcoin.
• 25:35
  Maybe there's another area of Bitcoin that interests you, but I think in the long run, like the, my perfect vision Is that there's a miner for every Bitcoiner,
• 25:44
  right?
• 25:45
  Whatever it is, whatever size you're comfortable with what your budget allows, time, space, money, et cetera, you're armed for the future in,
• 25:53
  in such a way that's gonna decentralize.
• 25:55
  Maybe you get the heat miner, or if you're in the desert like me, you've got the air purifying miner.
• 26:00
  You start to just kind of get this collection and then One day you kind of turn around in your house and you're like,
• 26:05
  "This is, this is a Bitcoiner house, right?
• 26:07
  Like, there's, there's Bitcoin stuff everywhere.
• 26:11
  Maybe somebody walks in and they don't know I got this, this little guy here.
• 26:14
  We got-- This came from, BTC Social Co.
• 26:17
  Like, they gave me this for speaking Friday night, and this, this little guy, like..."
• 26:22
  My normie friends will walk in here and be like, "What weird, is that a yoga thing she's got now?
• 26:27
  " 'Cause, you know, he's a disappearing Satoshi, right?
• 26:29
  So he's, he's different depending on how you look at him, right?
• 26:31
  Yeah.
• 26:32
  but like the normie, the normie friends and family have no idea, right?
• 26:36
  Like, yeah.
• 26:36
  You start to have like, you start to have kind of like a rack of stuff, you know?
• 26:41
  Like, you have like, you have like a nice shelf in your living room or like, " To go, okay,
• 26:52
  if the world falls to hell, right, I've got my own bank, I've got a way to mine Bitcoin, I'm still part of the mining community,
• 27:00
  maybe I hit a block, maybe I don't, maybe it's what I learn along the way.
• 27:05
  So that's kind of like, that's the future I see where we're all kind of learning but taking control of what we're doing and contributing to the community in kind of a positive way,
• 27:15
  where we're just kind of lifting each other up and teaching each other as we go.
• 27:18
  And this is right now, this First time to, to be a Bitcoiner, like people always say when they first come into space,
• 27:26
  oh, like, late, late.
• 27:28
  But at the same time, like, think about all of the resources that, that are available right now that weren't available before,
• 27:34
  and it's almost like if you want to do anything, like anything to create a new project, any project, any way to provide value,
• 27:44
  you're gonna find some interesting community, interesting information, interesting opportunities that are just like, Staying there on the internet, waiting to be discovered by you and,
• 27:55
  and to participate, and it takes only one side quest to change your life, and I'm sure that you have,
• 28:02
  you have experienced a lot of that.
• 28:04
  And, and what's really fascinates me of, of your story is about your border journey too, where is music, is radio,
• 28:13
  is Noster, is mining, is Bitcoin, there's, there seem to be this common thread of curiosity that's in you, the openness that's in you.
• 28:21
  So let's- Let's talk about that.
• 28:22
  What fascinated you when you were a kid growing up?
• 28:26
  You know, I think that, if you asked my mother, it would have been getting in trouble and being a nonconformist,
• 28:32
  right?
• 28:32
  I was, I was a bitcoiner, before I was a bitcoiner, I was just kind of like- I think as a kid,
• 28:37
  I was truly a hippie.
• 28:39
  Like if, if I could have gone down that path, i-instead of the path that I went down in life,
• 28:44
  like, I was just interested in like nature and writing and poetry and like, I, I was like a yoga person before there was yoga,
• 28:53
  right?
• 28:53
  Like I didn't find yoga until my teens, right?
• 28:56
  And so like to me, like, I could never get enough of like books or like, if there was something about like ghosts or energy or haunted houses and witches and stuff,
• 29:05
  like, I was- So into that kind of like stuff, and I'm like, looking back, like, I was a hippie,
• 29:09
  man.
• 29:10
  I was meant to be a yoga teacher, right?
• 29:11
  Like, I had a rock collection as a kid, I wouldn't have called it that, but now that I'm older,
• 29:15
  I'm like, okay, I'm way into crystals and stones and geodes and, you know, like, I'm just, I'm just a super nerd,
• 29:22
  and I just, I think I like to know what's underneath things, and that's probably why I liked things like rocks and geodes The places that are just still unspoiled,
• 29:38
  and like, you can really just like pull off a dirt road somewhere, and it's kind of sparkly, and you're like,
• 29:42
  "What are these rocks?
• 29:43
  " And you kinda go, "Now these look like if I dropped them really hard I could crack 'em open.
• 29:47
  " And you crack open these, these rough-looking rocks, and there's this beautiful, sparkly, like, geode inside.
• 29:53
  I think I've just always wanted to find out what was underneath things, or find out how things worked, or find out what,
• 30:06
  what's, So I, like, I was just always meant to get here, you know, and be this like, I don't know,
• 30:10
  yoga teaching, Bitcoin chick, and then I was like, "Ooh, mining's a rabbit hole," you know, like, people who can combine music and Bitcoin,
• 30:18
  that's a rabbit hole.
• 30:20
  I'm not mechanical, so I'm not literally gonna take things apart and see what's underneath.
• 30:24
  So I kinda like feel into things.
• 30:26
  I wanna study, I wanna learn how things work, I wanna, I wanna just see what's underneath, I wanna crack open every ugly rock
• 30:36
  Of yours, it's almost like it come with nature, right?
• 30:39
  It's almost like you were born this way.
• 30:41
  Were you ever overwhelmed by the curiosity, by the uncertainty of- I,
• 30:47
  I think that's just how my brain works.
• 30:48
  I mean, ultimately, did it lead to like alcoholism and drug addiction?
• 30:52
  Yes, absolutely.
• 30:53
  Like, you know, I'm, I'm 13 years sober now, so I can laugh at it, but, you know, it's, I just,
• 30:59
  I have that intense, I, I have that intense brain.
• 31:01
  My brain is really gonna, like, To mentor, Vic, shout out Victor Fitz, Victor Fitz, one of the greatest people I worked with in the addiction field,
• 31:13
  who's no longer with us in, in Wichita, Kansas.
• 31:15
  I'll never forget, but I quit my job and I, I said, you know, Vic, I re- I, I gotta follow my heart.
• 31:20
  He's like, "Yes, I know that you need to do this.
• 31:23
  You know, I'll, I'll miss you, but, you know, you gotta do things."
• 31:30
  He's like, "You know, you always, you just Or you, right?
• 31:37
  Like you just, you wanna know things so bad.
• 31:39
  And so like I went off and then, and kind of went on like a good seven year journey after that,
• 31:43
  and then, and Vic passed a, a couple years ago, but he was like, if you don't follow your dream and go after this curiosity that
• 31:50
  you have- What, what do you think is the relationship between people's development and people's path and curiosity?
• 31:57
  Like, do you think people are intrinsically curious, or it's something that it's a trait?
• 32:03
  Like, you're either a curious person or you
• 32:06
  Depends on the person.
• 32:07
  I think we all have some level of curiosity, like I think every human has a level of creativity, and then you're gonna meet people who are like,
• 32:14
  "I just don't care, don't need to go that deep, that's not who I am.
• 32:17
  I'm not, I'm not a reader, I don't wanna know."
• 32:20
  Some, some people are just more than happy to not dig too deep, and that's okay too, like it really does take all kinds to make up the world,
• 32:28
  as my grandmother would have said.
• 32:30
  But I think there are some of us Having a curiosity problem, like we just wanna know.
• 32:39
  Like, we will get together and have meetups just to talk about, you know, BIP one ten.
• 32:44
  I don't know, like, we will, we will get together to argue about, about Bitcoin things and, and we, we will discuss things to death,
• 32:50
  we will discuss Michael Saylor to death or, or beat up on him.
• 32:53
  You get Bitcoiners together and you really find out, you know, one, how intelligent everybody is and how inquisitive everyone is and,
• 33:00
  and just how curious people are about everything, all the aforementioned things You know, I, I feel like there's two distinct paths in Bitcoin.
• 33:10
  I think you either become a finance bro or a tech bro, and like some people are able to do both.
• 33:15
  And then I, I think there's kind of like a new, like, maybe emerging Bitcoiner who, maybe they're not gonna be curious.
• 33:21
  You know, maybe they're just gonna come here and go like, "What is this about?
• 33:24
  What are you people doing?"
• 33:25
  You know, like, "Why Bitcoin?
• 33:27
  Why are you guys so in love with this, this money?"
• 33:30
  I think over time, it's, At least in, in the US, I'm seeing some of these banks start to talk about it more.
• 33:40
  Maybe they're not doing it the most responsible way.
• 33:43
  I have a bank that loves to send me push notifications about crypto, so it's not Bitcoin centered, but people are talking about these things in a way that I'm,
• 33:52
  I'm seeing people become more curious, so I'm going, okay, well, how are these new Bitcoiners going to emerge?
• 33:58
  Are they gonna be as informed as we were?
• 34:00
  Because, I mean, there's, there's so much Bitcoin content out there, there's so I think that the, which is great,
• 34:07
  like keep it coming because you gotta reach people somehow.
• 34:11
  Yeah.
• 34:11
  You really gotta connect people to people that look like them, to people who talk like them, and, you know,
• 34:17
  it, it can't all be tech bros and finance bros, like we need to see real people.
• 34:21
  We need to see people that look like whoever we're related to.
• 34:24
  My, my family's biracial, and I know that my niece and nephew, if they're, they're gonna believe me 'cause I'm their aunt,
• 34:30
  but they're also gonna believe people who look more like them.
• 34:33
  Especially Gen Z, I mean, Gen Z is hardcore skeptic about things.
• 34:39
  like my generation, I think we're just coming along, like waking up, like Gen X, we were the slackers, and now we're like,
• 34:44
  you know, whipped awake, like, "Whoa, what did the boom Like us middle-aged folks, like we're like, "Hey, let's, let's do our part here,
• 34:55
  "because we, we were, we were coasting through the nineties, through the two thousands, through the twenty- We, you know,
• 35:01
  something about twenty twenty I think woke us all up.
• 35:04
  And so I think the, the newer Bitcoiners, we need some new blood, and we need a more broad, diverse group of Bitcoiners who maybe they're not here for finance,
• 35:14
  maybe they're not here for tech, maybe they're here for something else, and I think we really need Just bananas.
• 35:22
  Yeah.
• 35:23
  And so people are looking into, you know, as I did when I came to Bitcoin, I was like, "Where's the escape hatch?"
• 35:29
  In twenty twenty, I dabbled with buying Bitcoin and didn't understand it.
• 35:34
  And so in twenty twenty, I started like really like mainlining the Max and Stacey podcast and like things like that,
• 35:41
  trying to figure out, like, "They're talking about something that really appeals to me and I need to go deeper here."
• 35:45
  I don't know if every future Bitcoiner is gonna be like that.
• 35:48
  I think in, Yeah.
• 35:52
  Yeah.
• 35:52
  How do I get it?
• 35:53
  How do I get more of it?
• 35:54
  How do I save it?
• 35:55
  How do I protect it?
• 35:57
  How does it work for me in the long term, especially if you're Gen Z, this is a low time preference revolution.
• 36:04
  So those, I, I feel like that's the generation that's really gonna benefit.
• 36:09
  I don't hold any hard feelings towards boomers, Gen X, and like, I don't, because I feel like every generation has their lessons to carry,
• 36:18
  their tasks, and they were having different restrictions.
• 36:21
  Strains, and they were just individuals trying to do their best having a good life, like just like every one of us in,
• 36:26
  in their generation and in that context.
• 36:29
  But I do feel like the, the next generation of Bitcoiner is probably not gonna care about the finance aspect or tech aspect of it,
• 36:36
  and this is why, like, big, had life with Bitcoin, we're, we're, we've been around for three years now from,
• 36:42
  from June, and I think this is one of the first kind of podcast that focused on the personal stories,
• 36:48
  and back then I was like, I The story is timeless, because it's exactly like what you said, you-- we,
• 36:55
  we need people to hear from people that are like them.
• 36:58
  And if you are, parent, and then you are thinking about how can I optimize for my parents, for my kids' future,
• 37:05
  for my family's future, and then you see these parents are Bitcoiners, and they have done it in a way,
• 37:11
  so on, so forth, so we demonstrate that there is a better way to do it, there's more connected, healthier way to do it with more love,
• 37:20
  more hope And everybody get to benefit from that process.
• 37:24
  So it's definitely up to us to create these type of content.
• 37:29
  And this, this started to resonate even more so after I joined the music community on Noster, be more community driven with Bitcoin and trying to bring everything together,
• 37:39
  and I see this is the way because we need to make Bitcoin relatable again.
• 37:44
  We talk about it like it's, it's, you-- they don't see eye to eye, but if you think about it,
• 37:49
  we were once not Bitcoin Winners.
• 37:51
  We came from somewhere, and the fact that we are all humans that transcend race, that transcend gender, that transcend age,
• 38:01
  and transcend where you come from, and 'cause we come together for, for love, we come together for hope, we come together for these things,
• 38:08
  and then hopefully in that realm, right?
• 38:10
  Hopefully in that realm, with more positivity next to you, you will realize, oh, it's a means to an end.
• 38:16
  And there's the other flip side of it is to make it about stacking sets only, not- Living your life,
• 38:22
  which I think you're not falling in that trap because you're living fully, right?
• 38:26
  Because you have so many other aspect of you long before Bitcoin, you have this, continuous passion for music.
• 38:33
  So let's talk about music.
• 38:34
  Yes.
• 38:35
  With your years of listening experience, with your experience interacting with artists in all capacities, what do you, how has,
• 38:44
  what has music taught you about people?
• 38:47
  Oh my gosh,
• 38:47
  what a great question.
• 38:48
  Music is like the perfect part of my- Our lives, right?
• 38:52
  You, you know this, 'cause you're such a creative soul and, and you're such a wonderful musician.
• 38:56
  Like, it, it is the perfect part of life is emotion, it's energy, like a fingerprint, you know?
• 39:04
  Like every, every song to me is like a fingerprint, like it's a different energy, you know?
• 39:08
  There's a song for literally everything, right?
• 39:10
  Like, it's endless human creativity, you know?
• 39:14
  You can't ever write the same song twice, and you're never gonna be the same person twice, like everything has just this unique- Fingerprint,
• 39:21
  you know, it's the same as if you, if you write a poem, if you write a song, you know,
• 39:25
  you're creating something that is in its own experience, just this perfection.
• 39:30
  Like the, the best part, like, of life is being able to relate to another human being.
• 39:35
  And you see that when songwriters will write a song, and, you know, the, the fans will love it, and it will mean something different to every single person.
• 39:42
  It means one thing to the songwriter, and you can have like thousands of fans who love this song, and everyone hears Reminds them of the best or worst time in their life.
• 39:54
  There's just the creativity that we experience soul to soul.
• 39:56
  I mean, there's just, there's no replacement for it.
• 39:58
  You could, you could try with AI to make something that is the same, and you might make something impressive,
• 40:04
  but it just doesn't have that like human fingerprint to it.
• 40:09
  Why do you think music creates connection so naturally?
• 40:14
  Like, what about it?
• 40:15
  You know,
• 40:16
  it, it creates community, right?
• 40:17
  Like, like look at Taylor Swift, you know, to, to pick on one of the most famous people in the world,
• 40:23
  her fans have created their own culture, you know, their own world, their own, like, it's just like to, to pay seven hundred and fifty dollars and wear a certain outfit to a show,
• 40:33
  they, you know, they, they find each other and, and, and, like, deadheads, right?
• 40:38
  To pick on another- Like famous example, you know, there was, there was a time when people could just follow The Grateful Dead around the country,
• 40:45
  and like everywhere you go, you had a friend, you had a fellow Deadheads, and they just got you, right?
• 40:51
  You go to a Taylor Swift show, your fellow Swifties, they've just got you.
• 40:55
  a-and why is that in music?
• 40:56
  Like we, we just, we connect on this emotional level, you know?
• 41:00
  Like music hits our nervous system.
• 41:03
  You have a bad day, there's a multitude of things you can do to reduce your anxiety, Is one of those things,
• 41:10
  like that, that is medicine.
• 41:12
  Yeah.
• 41:12
  And, and so like, we naturally can create community through the music that we love, like, we can, we can bond as Ivy Lumi fans,
• 41:20
  like, we, you know, like, wherever I go, I can find other, you know, Ivy Lumi fans who are gonna know the words to the songs that I love as well.
• 41:28
  And, I mean, that's just, that's powerful.
• 41:30
  You know, you, you can be having the worst day on the planet, you listen to your favorite song for three minutes You can absolutely reset your life,
• 41:42
  reset yourself, change up your day on a cellular level because of sound.
• 41:47
  That's why, that's why we, we, in yoga, we love sound healings.
• 41:50
  You know, like artists like Helene, you know, they, they have healing music, you know, and I could argue all music is healing,
• 41:57
  you know, even metal, you know, those, sometimes you need to scream it out, right?
• 42:01
  So you're gonna scream along with your favorite metal song, and you go to a metal show, and you find your fellow metalheads,
• 42:06
  and it's That's, that's the alcoholic side of me.
• 42:11
  Sometimes you wanna go where everyone knows your name.
• 42:12
  There's something that brings us together through music, through sound, and like, I've, I've seen that so much in the music business,
• 42:19
  where you just, you watch how fans relate.
• 42:22
  People get to meet a favorite artist, and it's, it's like the biggest moment of their life.
• 42:26
  Like, that's, people used to, doesn't matter now, but people used to camp out for concert tickets.
• 42:33
  Like, we used to camp out in a sleeping bag, get in a line, get To go like to a physical location to buy tickets,
• 42:43
  'cause if you didn't do that, you weren't gonna get a ticket.
• 42:44
  We didn't have apps on our phones to buy concert tickets, and then, you know, you're kind of in community there.
• 42:50
  You're with, you know, your, your fellow folks who are crazy enough to camp out at night to get those Tori Amos tickets,
• 42:56
  that's what I used to do anyway.
• 42:59
  I'm, to be honest, I'm a little bit jealous of that because it's, it's, it's such an experience to be so emotionally and physically invested because you have to travel to places and I kid you not,
• 43:12
  there's so many great conversations I've had and just waiting in line for something.
• 43:18
  Right, like that's how you just like randomly meet people, like talk to people, like in line for your driver's license,
• 43:24
  I don't know, but like, there's, there's something that we have lost because we are so online, and that you like,
• 43:29
  you don't go to the record store anymore the day the music comes out to buy the album, you know?
• 43:34
  You don't stand in line to get the tickets.
• 43:36
  You know, your only true experience of the music, you know, listening on your phone or listening in your car or whatever,
• 43:42
  you're, you're having an intimate listening A concert hall, you're at a stadium, and you're, you're seeing that music live,
• 43:53
  you're getting to experience music live, you're like literally feeling the vibration coming through the speakers, like that experience to me,
• 44:01
  i, i, it feels like it's slipping away because live music isn't what it was.
• 44:07
  It's, it's a struggle out there, you know?
• 44:09
  And unless you're going to see these major touring artists, like I, I bought tickets last year to go see Rustin Kelly,
• 44:16
  who I'm a big fan of.
• 44:19
  And I was so excited to go, I was gonna make my friend Phil go with me and everything, dragging him along.
• 44:23
  And the show happened to be on Super Bowl Sunday, so then like, the tickets didn't sell and the show got canceled,
• 44:29
  and I'm like, "I haven't seen him yet.
• 44:32
  When is my next chance to see Rustin Kelly?"
• 44:34
  And I mean, that's just like one story of like, gosh, even if you buy the tickets to see your artist,
• 44:39
  I'm a huge fan, like I still may not be guaranteed a show.
• 44:43
  It's kinda like Bitcoin mining all In the end, you actually get to go, it's just so like devastating for a fan.
• 44:52
  So like someday, Rustin, I'm gonna see ya, but, it hasn't happened yet.
• 44:56
  But we like, we kinda have to protect musicians, you know?
• 44:58
  Like we kinda have to protect you guys so you can keep creating.
• 45:01
  We have to keep protecting the live music scene, like we have to keep going to shows.
• 45:06
  Whoever's playing this weekend in your neighborhood, like, go, pay the cover charge, go see them, you know?
• 45:12
  Like we, we gotta support or it goes away Consuming music and, you know, if we stop supporting the artists,
• 45:23
  it's gonna dry up, and you, you will only have like the people who are famous on TikTok.
• 45:29
  You know, you will only have Chapel Rone and Taylor Swift for your pop music.
• 45:32
  You know, you're, you're only gonna have the stadium touring level famous artists.
• 45:38
  Yeah.
• 45:39
  And I don't want that world.
• 45:41
  I want the Ivy Loonies.
• 45:43
  I want, I want independent music to make it.
• 45:47
  And I know that I am just a very small part of trying to make that happen, and it, it is like pulling teeth.
• 45:54
  It is so hard to, you know, one, people aren't aware of the problem.
• 45:57
  You know, people, people aren't aware of how buried your music is when it comes to Spotify and Apple, but that you can walk into the Bitcoin community,
• 46:06
  put your music on something like Wave Lake and Fountain, and get on Noster or get on, Bitcoin Twitter or whatever,
• 46:13
  wherever you choose to go, Bitcoiners are probably or should be Likely to listen and be like, "Oh, what's, who is this artist?
• 46:23
  I can pay her in Bitcoin, what?
• 46:24
  I can send her a zap on Oyster.
• 46:27
  There are so many ways for people to get in touch with you, and you're, you're probably more accessible
• 46:31
  to them,
• 46:32
  obviously, than Taylor Swift is, you know?"
• 46:35
  But, you know, and, and it's funny 'cause like you made a Geyser campaign, a while back, and you weren't even asking for that much money,
• 46:42
  you know?
• 46:43
  And you, and you obviously like got your And, and the way you've collaborated with Helene and just the way you collaborate in the space is great,
• 46:53
  because you gotta get yourself out there, like, you gotta create, you gotta put out work, you know, that's, that's like breathing,
• 46:58
  right?
• 46:58
  You've gotta put out your creative work and you gotta get people involved and we gotta get people to know that,
• 47:03
  like, this girl's making awesome music and, like, hey, just, you're making videos, I mean, you've got songs, you're making videos,
• 47:09
  you're still putting out songs and your message of Number stuff.
• 47:19
  It is so much more than people arguing about mining.
• 47:21
  It is, it is so much more than even us, us nerds hitting a block, right?
• 47:24
  There are people who are creating on Bitcoin in so many ways.
• 47:29
  You know, like Need Creations, for example.
• 47:31
  He's Need Creations everywhere.
• 47:33
  He's a teacher by trade, but he wants to do some Bitcoin education.
• 47:36
  He's just a gifted teacher, right?
• 47:37
  A really nice person.
• 47:38
  I haven't met him, but I've heard he's really nice.
• 47:40
  And like, he's creating Bitcoin education, like he's putting that I am a musician first, like no, no agreement told me that,
• 47:50
  nor a gruvin from Stardust.
• 47:52
  I'm, I was a music maxi first, and that led me to Bitcoin.
• 47:55
  But none of you are trying to like approach this from the Bitcoin angle.
• 47:58
  You were all amazing musicians first, who said, "Here's an avenue where I can get paid, and I can kind of control a little more what I have and how I put it out there,
• 48:09
  and that people will actually see it, and it's not gonna get buried in like big tech algorith-algorithms like Spotify or Twitter or Chance,
• 48:18
  right?
• 48:19
  If I put my music on Fountain, and yes, it's gonna be a very Bitcoin centric audience if it's Fountain,
• 48:24
  if it's Wavelike or things like that, or if it's, it's like Epic Music, right?
• 48:28
  Ainsley Costello's mom made Epic Music 'cause she just saw a need, like, "Hey, we need a music app for independent artists,
• 48:35
  for discovery, and, you know, it's-- it maybe doesn't lead with really nerdy stuff, you know?
• 48:41
  Maybe epic music is gonna, you know, try to bring artists in Sneaky way, is that the right way to say it,
• 48:50
  but like bringing people into where they just kinda get the idea of the training wheels, if you will, of like the value for value principle of giving out value,
• 49:00
  getting value back, and so maybe what you start with, sadly, is fiat.
• 49:04
  Because, you know, we were-- This is a new idea for people, this value for value idea.
• 49:09
  I mean, it's been around for twenty years.
• 49:10
  Shout out to Adam Curry for being the podfather and creating all of this so that we could all sit here today and keep hacking away Put music out there and,
• 49:20
  I don't know, shake hands and kiss babies, essentially, right?
• 49:22
  We're essentially just trying to get it out there that, like, look at how many great musicians would love to receive your Bitcoin if you like their song,
• 49:28
  you know?
• 49:28
  That's, it's that simple.
• 49:29
  And so maybe the training wheels right now is saying, "Hey, just give an artist a dollar, right?
• 49:34
  " Like Tidal did that, right?
• 49:36
  Where like you can pay through Cash App on Tidal to independent artists, right?
• 49:40
  So that's like a training wheels thing.
• 49:42
  Julie Costello Independent artists served up to them like Instagram stories.
• 49:52
  Instead of just thumbing through Instagram stories, you're thumbing through songs, so you can just kinda like try a song on and,
• 49:59
  and discover music that way.
• 50:01
  Because what we've become attuned to is we can have all of the mainstream music we want in the world for sixteen bucks a month,
• 50:08
  you know, or whatever it is, your mileage may vary.
• 50:10
  You know, Apple Music, Spotify, tidal, et cetera, probably we'll say sixteen bucks a month, right?
• 50:15
  So then my music diet, maybe I'm happy With that, but there's so much more out there that I'm not aware of,
• 50:22
  yeah,
• 50:23
  because it's not being fed to me, like Spotify or like I use Apple Music, so Apple Music isn't feeding me Ivy Lumi,
• 50:30
  but I discovered you because you're a part of the Bitcoin community.
• 50:34
  So, I, there are a lot of Bitcoiners, like shout out to my friend DJ Val, you know?
• 50:39
  I think Val would be into anything and anybody if you said, "Val, they're a Bitcoiner."
• 50:45
  Val, so into music, and she has supported Valu- Value as well.
• 50:49
  So, we're all just kind of here, spread out through, through the online world, and every once in a while we get to do an in-person show.
• 50:57
  Every once in a while, like Noah Grumman was in Vegas, well, James was in Vegas, and, you know, Ainsley Costello's played all over now.
• 51:04
  DC, you know, she's based in Nashville, she just did Camp Nakamoto, played in New Hampshire on this gorgeous island in the middle of a lake,
• 51:12
  and got to do like music summer camp, you know At Camp Nakamoto, and that's, that's so cool.
• 51:21
  So we've, we've kind of been able to bring the music to like small microcosms of Bitcoiners, small gatherings.
• 51:27
  Like, the Vegas show's probably been the biggest one I've done, like where we'll have like Sarah Jade, we'll do a show,
• 51:34
  you know, with like the groom man was out there, Abel James, like I mentioned, and the Higher Low, right?
• 51:38
  And so like, you, you know, like that was a great show, and then we had Tatum turn up upstairs doing the DJ Can be a lot smaller.
• 51:49
  The first time Sarah Jade played with, with me here in Phoenix was, early 2024.
• 51:55
  I don't think at one time we had more than 30 people in the room.
• 51:58
  We had bitcoiners who like come and go, so like people would like literally drive up from the middle of nowhere,
• 52:02
  off-grid people who are like, "Hey, I just wanna pop-
• 52:04
  didn't say hello, you know, but super small audience. And even then value for value, she was
• 52:10
  able to make like $3 at the time worth of Bitcoin for like 30 minutes of playing her original songs.
• 52:15
  Like how often do you get to do that? You know, like, you know, usually you're slaving away
• 52:21
  doing the cover band Saturday night. You're not playing your own music. You know, you're just,
• 52:26
  you're doing the cover band thing, or you see people on TikTok, they they're on a keyboard
• 52:31
  and they're playing songs and they're taking requests okay like tiktok is great at this i'm
• 52:36
  almost jealous in a way right because we've been like we've been harping on this you know value
• 52:40
  verse thing send your sad up your big send your bitcoin to the artists it's like your tiktok has
• 52:47
  its own currency i don't get it because it's gonna be like little little animated things show
• 52:53
  up on the musician's head like you know and so people people buy into this and then they send
• 52:58
  these gifts and it looks absolutely absurd but you see these artists on tiktok and they're just
• 53:03
  like it's like a piano bar kind of feeling this is where i'm very bullish on osster because what's
• 53:08
  the missing thing is the adoption right but once people realize that you can do the same thing like
• 53:13
  support your favorite artist sue nosster with real value not some popped up 2d graphics
• 53:20
  It's like fake TikTok currency.
• 53:22
  I know.
• 53:23
  Right?
• 53:24
  It's so like...
• 53:25
  It's cringe.
• 53:26
  It's cringe.
• 53:26
  It's cringe.
• 53:27
  It's very obnoxious.
• 53:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 53:29
  So once they realize that what Nostar enables,
• 53:33
  and once we make sure that when you land on there,
• 53:36
  with whatever reason, and you're here,
• 53:38
  you stay because of the creators.
• 53:41
  We should make sure that the creators get featured.
• 53:43
  And when they find their way to Nostar,
• 53:46
  they get immediately interacting with the community.
• 53:51
  And this is where I can definitely attest
• 53:54
  me being a new independent artist
• 53:56
  because I came into the Bitcoin space first
• 54:00
  and then I worked in Bitcoin space for years.
• 54:02
  And then went with tons of interesting roles,
• 54:05
  side quests, one side quest after another,
• 54:07
  I find myself writing songs because of my love stories.
• 54:10
  Then I found Oster as a platform
• 54:12
  to share this journey to build in public.
• 54:14
  And then the engagement or the support or the level of visibility I'm getting as an artist on Oster is very unmatched with everywhere else.
• 54:27
  Because there's no reach.
• 54:32
  People don't know you already exist.
• 54:34
  And the feed is so saturated.
• 54:37
  And I definitely remember these days, like years, even decades of listening to independent musicians on some sort of independent website where they just uploaded for free.
• 54:49
  I was those listeners growing up listening to these songs.
• 54:53
  And I think looking back, those were important factors that contributed to me being able to hear these melodies to capture them in a way that's not tinted by what's going on in the mainstream music industry.
• 55:09
  So I really feel like a part of that was really coming from the specific avenues where I seeked out the listening experience that's a little bit different from what you might find elsewhere, right?
• 55:24
  So as a creator yourself, you're very much bringing people together, creating content and sharing shining light on individual creators and having a lot of experience on the value verse.
• 55:37
  What do you think?
• 55:38
  What does receiving sats feel like that a like never could?
• 55:42
  You know, you don't get tired of receiving sats.
• 55:45
  You know, you just you don't get tired of seeing if you have notifications on your phone.
• 55:49
  Like you don't get tired of getting a zap or receiving sats because, you know, once you're a Bitcoiner, it's like, how do I get more Bitcoin, right?
• 55:56
  But I think it's the gesture that matters.
• 55:59
  You know, when somebody sends you some Bitcoin, like that's true love, right?
• 56:04
  Somebody's listening in an app to music and like sending a zap to an artist.
• 56:09
  Like I feel like it's a fan.
• 56:10
  Like if I get on Wavelake and I the other day like sent Alicia Stockman some sats just because she's got some new music on Wavelake.
• 56:17
  and I was like oh I didn't I didn't realize she had new music out like oh wow hey look look what's
• 56:21
  here it's like it's exciting and I'm like she's gonna see the sats I sent like because you're
• 56:27
  undoubtedly you're you're gonna keep track of the the bitcoin you receive like even at some point
• 56:33
  like you're gonna check that wallet you're gonna see that little message there where I just like
• 56:36
  say something like I love your song you know because I'm just such a fangirl and so I'm like
• 56:41
  okay she's actually see this like she she's going to know you know when people listen to your music
• 56:46
  right like you know you're getting listens you know somebody's listening but knowing that like
• 56:50
  maybe a certain person you know because that's the other thing too is like if you see this app came
• 56:55
  from ivy you know like if i see that you listen to radio detox and i got a zap or you know and i
• 57:00
  see it came from me i'm like oh she listened you know so there's like a personalization to it now
• 57:04
  i have since taken radio detox out of the value verse right so i actually backed away from it and because i kind of looked at the numbers and went okay looked at the amount of time I have to work on it and that it was really labor intensive and
• 57:17
  I was getting like I was probably spending 100 bucks a month on all the software and then I was
• 57:21
  getting like 13 back and the majority of that was always coming from the same person so it doesn't
• 57:25
  feel for me as a podcaster anyway I don't feel like the audience is there yet I don't feel like
• 57:30
  it's ready yeah I was like like I gave it two years I will happily come back but right now it's
• 57:36
  like a really time consuming thing to make music podcasts with all of the wallet switching and then
• 57:41
  picking out the songs i'm like this is really labor intense and i hate to leave however if i
• 57:47
  want to get this message that musicians are earning bitcoin and that there is an avenue to do this and
• 57:53
  now we have built rails to do this i feel like video is the best way to go right now and doing
• 57:59
  the mainstream thing like i put radio detox on a regular rss feed and i'm just gonna do video and
• 58:05
  it's just gonna be me talking to artists like yourself you know talking to different artists
• 58:10
  and just highlighting it in video because i hate it but yeah this is what people are conditioned to
• 58:17
  this is what social media feeds them is video yeah i totally see the the trade-offs there and i have
• 58:22
  my own confession to make last week i registered a facebook account for i mean right because you
• 58:27
  want to reach people and that that's that's what nostril lacks right now and i've seen it time and
• 58:33
  time again an artist like a new independent artist who's brilliant and gifted and just talented and
• 58:38
  wonderful personality amethyst mcintyre is a good example of that came on last august posted content
• 58:44
  like every day of august got like 480 followers whatever it was on nostr and then he kind of
• 58:49
  bounced and i've seen that with several artists they get on nostr they don't last they bounce
• 58:54
  because well they don't want to be on social media anyway first of all but uh we just don't
• 58:59
  have the network effect. So like, I get it. You're going to still, something's got to give,
• 59:03
  you've got to be on Facebook. You've got to be on Instagram. You've got to be everywhere.
• 59:06
  So you only have so much time in the day to promote your music on social media. What are
• 59:11
  you going to do? You're going to go where the people are. I think for me, the way it's still
• 59:15
  to go full on Noster. But the lesson here is that I need to be everywhere and have a minimum presence
• 59:23
  so that I can tell people exclusives are on Nostra.
• 59:29
  So if they see me, that's what I'm trying to do.
• 59:32
  You will see me having increasingly more active on X,
• 59:36
  increasingly trying to drive traffic here and there.
• 59:39
  And then because before I was for the past year,
• 59:42
  I think for the entire journey of Iving Lumi,
• 59:44
  I was very much exclusively on Nostra.
• 59:46
  And I think for me, the community really backed me.
• 59:50
  Like I really felt supported.
• 59:51
  like you Heather you're a really big part of that so I'm really really thankful for all of your
• 59:56
  support from you and your communities and there's so many I guess advocates on in this space for V4V
• 1:00:02
  music and out of their own love for music so I do feel very supported and grateful this for this
• 1:00:10
  community but I also see the need that more people should be here right and right like people like
• 1:00:16
  fight about oh use my client i have this client and yes we need clients we need different
• 1:00:22
  functionalities but yet ultimately people are gonna be creator driven because if you have some
• 1:00:29
  content that i want to see even if you're not the best relay even if you're not the best platform
• 1:00:35
  right i'm gonna nobody cares about the tech about you it's not about you it's about the content right
• 1:00:39
  So I think people will come to that realization once they have their project going on and they will realize, oh, I need content now.
• 1:00:48
  Like, I think it's a phase thing.
• 1:00:51
  So I'm just trying to stay zen and stay on the creation mode and then build in public.
• 1:00:56
  And I'm really resonating with that community aspect of I want to be emotionally invested with an artist, right?
• 1:01:04
  As a fan, as a listener, you want to be involved in their journey too.
• 1:01:09
  so you take on something that's bigger than you.
• 1:01:11
  So I'm coming from not a musical background,
• 1:01:15
  and I'm like writing songs in the past like two, three years.
• 1:01:18
  It's still very, very young, new artist in the space,
• 1:01:22
  and I'm making mistakes,
• 1:01:23
  and I'm not afraid of making mistakes
• 1:01:25
  and practicing in public to show that I'm not there yet.
• 1:01:30
  I was like, I'm taking my dancing lessons
• 1:01:33
  because now the music video is coming up.
• 1:01:35
  I want to be bringing on some choreography
• 1:01:38
  into the music video to create for the audience and to try different things.
• 1:01:42
  And I want to be doing live streams in the dancing class.
• 1:01:45
  Oh, that's awesome.
• 1:01:47
  And to show a little bit of this is what I've got after 45 minutes.
• 1:01:51
  And we're going to come up with that.
• 1:01:53
  So thank you for being part of this journey.
• 1:01:55
  I'm trying to create the world where people can actually participate.
• 1:02:00
  And this is why the CDs, why the campaigns with the pins is to create these artifacts
• 1:02:05
  to remind people that love is indeed the cure.
• 1:02:08
  Cause I do come from the Bitcoin realm first
• 1:02:11
  and I realized that everybody is so traumatized Like it breaks my heart to see and everybody is sad or angry or both like traumatized for different reasons And music it such a great way to feel first
• 1:02:27
  You feel so much to the point that you heal.
• 1:02:29
  The song can be a token, like an artifact of souvenir.
• 1:02:33
  It can be a scar.
• 1:02:35
  It can be something that you hold dear to
• 1:02:37
  for your own journey.
• 1:02:39
  It can mean different things to people.
• 1:02:41
  and the participation aspect is beautiful.
• 1:02:44
  So from your experience, being the listener,
• 1:02:48
  being the one who curate experience,
• 1:02:51
  how do you think we're moving from consumers
• 1:02:54
  to becoming participants of culture, community?
• 1:02:57
  God, that's such a good question.
• 1:02:59
  Like, I think at some point for me,
• 1:03:00
  I realized, like, do I want to just be a consumer my whole life?
• 1:03:04
  You know, do I just want to be a listener?
• 1:03:06
  Or do I have something in me that's creative?
• 1:03:08
  you know and i think like i've had like many blogs over the years and i was like do i spend more time
• 1:03:14
  blogging or do i spend more time like consuming reading like and it can go into like we all do it
• 1:03:19
  right like we all sit and watch something on tv you know like that's we get into that where like
• 1:03:25
  i just don't think as a human being there's a balance like if all you're doing is watching
• 1:03:30
  like if all you're doing is like binge watching shows and like i get it like if you love tv and
• 1:03:35
  movies and that's your real house like that's what makes you happy like good for you but it can't be
• 1:03:41
  good to always be the consumer like there has got to be a balance where you put something back
• 1:03:46
  but you've got to share your talent with the world and I think that comes so easy for us who
• 1:03:51
  are creatives and like not everybody sees themselves as a creative at some point you've
• 1:03:55
  got to cross that bridge and go okay I'm gonna do it I'm gonna stop being a hundred percent of a
• 1:04:01
  consumer and like I'm going to put myself out there I am going to put my creative work into
• 1:04:06
  the world whether it's writing whether it's music whether it's film whether it's like teaching yoga
• 1:04:12
  I mean like or writing bitcoin content a lot of people out there love to write bitcoin content so
• 1:04:18
  there's got to be a point where you cross that bridge and you believe in yourself and your self
• 1:04:22
  worth and your worth as an artist or creative however you want to put it you've got to believe
• 1:04:27
  that what you have to share is valuable and that you can't keep it unless you give it away. You've
• 1:04:33
  got to put it out into the world. And part of that is immortality, right? Whatever I put out into the
• 1:04:37
  world is going to be there, especially in this digital age, it's going to be there, you know,
• 1:04:41
  for my niece and nephew's kids, you know, my daughter's kids. They will consume that later.
• 1:04:48
  Oh my God. So in my family, somebody just digitized all of the home movies from like 25 years ago.
• 1:04:54
  this is back when aunt heather was in her partying heyday and now the kids are that age and they're
• 1:05:01
  like i watched a video of you dancing at mom's wedding and i'm like oh my god i'm mortified it's
• 1:05:07
  your immortality but it's something that you put out into the world it's like one you never know
• 1:05:11
  where it's gonna lead right you never could have told me 25 years ago that the kids would be
• 1:05:15
  watching me be silly at you know their parents wedding like life comes at you fast but like
• 1:05:20
  you are putting something into the world that could be timeless you know like no your music
• 1:05:27
  can outlast you this is this is amazing and it's a drop in the in the bucket right like you also
• 1:05:33
  inspire other people to go you know what she did it i'm gonna pick up a microphone too i'm gonna
• 1:05:39
  sit down and get some studio time i'm gonna write a song i'm just gonna do it because ivy did it
• 1:05:43
  you know she she made me see that i could stop consuming and start creating so like we're here
• 1:05:47
  to inspire each other you know we're just but a part of it is self-belief a lot of self-esteem
• 1:05:53
  yeah yeah you really it takes a lot of balls man it just it takes so much courage to put yourself
• 1:06:00
  out there even just to write a tweet for some people some people cannot be online people some
• 1:06:05
  people are like happy to lurk and it's like dude you're brilliant you need to tweet more you know
• 1:06:10
  you need to write more you need to talk more on spaces i don't know but like there's so many
• 1:06:14
  brilliant people in Bitcoin who like maybe they're not the biggest voices in Bitcoin. And like, I
• 1:06:20
  don't know why that is because they're great. And there's there's so many great, great Bitcoiners out
• 1:06:25
  there who like probably could stand to say more. And then there's probably some who could say less
• 1:06:30
  to, you know, but like, like, you just got to step forward and do it, you know, like the world needs
• 1:06:34
  your gifts. I'm a firm believer in that, you know, God has gifted you something that is amazing
• 1:06:39
  that only you have and you've got to share that with the world. You just have to even if you
• 1:06:44
  think I'm not creative or nobody wants to hear it. BS. Somebody out there is going to appreciate what
• 1:06:50
  you have to give. And I think that's like the rent we pay on this earth is we have to participate.
• 1:06:55
  We have to. Like it makes the world a better place if we all do. It's just it makes life
• 1:07:00
  more interesting, less dreary. Bitcoiners are great at that. We find the courage to do it,
• 1:07:04
  right? You know, like my friend Sam made these shirts. You know, they became a part of Bitcoin
• 1:07:09
  history and, you know, the lightning store has gone offline for now. But I mean, this is like
• 1:07:13
  one of the things that he's he's made so many great things but this is one of the things that
• 1:07:17
  you know it always be there we always have the memories of the satoshi shirts you know in the end is the live with bitcoin that the live itself that yes bitcoiners choose to to walk to walk And this is in a lot of ways our choice So it a really great inspiration Heather
• 1:07:32
  to see you really unapologetically live your life,
• 1:07:36
  be so curious and be so straightforward about your passion
• 1:07:40
  and be so courageous about sharing them with everyone
• 1:07:44
  and give shout outs to creators
• 1:07:46
  and help them grow in their own way.
• 1:07:49
  This is ultimately one of the most rewarding aspects of doing what we do, being a Bitcoiner and share about it and then actively participating in the culture beyond being a consumer.
• 1:08:00
  Because if you're just huddling, in a way, you're a consumer, right?
• 1:08:03
  It's somewhat transactional.
• 1:08:05
  But if you're participating in the culture, actively living your life on the Bitcoin standard, then it's really something that's exponential, inspiring and transformational.
• 1:08:16
  And this has been proven to so many Bitcoiners, at least for all of them that I can test have been on this show before.
• 1:08:24
  Everybody's life has been changed by Bitcoin.
• 1:08:27
  And we hold the key.
• 1:08:29
  We hold the key to that.
• 1:08:31
  And then it's for the first time, Bitcoin is giving individual chances to really level up from their creativity, from their unfair advantage.
• 1:08:39
  and there's really no more excuses right now with the tools and information and resources that's
• 1:08:47
  available to us for each individual so it's really the the best time to create to participate
• 1:08:53
  to be curious about anything really so for those of whom who are looking to start something to
• 1:09:00
  start looking up something start trying something start being creative on something what would what
• 1:09:07
  would be one thing one tip that you wanted to share that helped you that you think it helped
• 1:09:13
  them it's just put yourself out there you got to do it i think the scariest thing is you you really
• 1:09:19
  think that like oh god nobody nobody's gonna care nobody's gonna listen and then you realize oh
• 1:09:24
  maybe somebody does and it's always like the people who kind of like become your audience
• 1:09:29
  not always the people you would expect you know and that's kind of how relationships start to get
• 1:09:34
  built. Don't rob yourself of that like one to one fan relationship. You know, that's so precious.
• 1:09:41
  And so like, yeah, we're all looking for that connection. I think more than ever, you know,
• 1:09:45
  because the world is kind of weird right now. It's tough out there for a lot of people. And it's
• 1:09:50
  going to continue, I think, to get worse with the inflation. And of course, Bitcoiners know it's
• 1:09:54
  not going away. And we really need to connect on a human level. So just don't be afraid to do that.
• 1:10:01
  Like if you're a writer, like I do, one of the many things I do, it's not just about putting the words on the page.
• 1:10:06
  It's about that person who needs it, the person who needs to read that.
• 1:10:11
  You just got to have that human connection.
• 1:10:13
  And it's in this age of AI slop, right?
• 1:10:16
  Don't forget that like humans need you to be human and connect to them and show like your human emotional, like relatable side.
• 1:10:25
  Like that, I think that is so going to be so much more important over time as the world kind of goes through what Bitcoiners know it's going to go through.
• 1:10:34
  You know, don't forget to keep that warmth there and don't be afraid.
• 1:10:37
  That's a perfect note to end this conversation on.
• 1:10:41
  And Heather, thank you so much for sharing your experience.
• 1:10:46
  I catch you in a very interesting time.
• 1:10:49
  So glad to be a part of your journey in that process and document this very special moment for you and 140 people.
• 1:11:05
  113, yeah.
• 1:11:06
  130 people that participated in this experience and then more to come in the future.
• 1:11:12
  Yes, it's an exciting time.
• 1:11:14
  You're the first podcast I've been on since we Mind a Block.
• 1:11:17
  and it was so great.
• 1:11:19
  We'll do it again.
• 1:11:21
  Thank you so much for your support
• 1:11:23
  personally for Ivy Lumi too
• 1:11:25
  and it's definitely been a pleasure
• 1:11:27
  and a new experience coming out
• 1:11:30
  as Ivy Lumi as an independent artist,
• 1:11:33
  independent musician
• 1:11:33
  and I've been receiving so much love
• 1:11:37
  and kindness and support in that process.
• 1:11:39
  Stay tuned of what's to come.
• 1:11:41
  Lots of new development on the music side too
• 1:11:45
  in the coming months and years.
• 1:11:48
  And I'm super bullish on the community.
• 1:11:51
  And every day, my heart is more warmed
• 1:11:53
  to see more people joining in,
• 1:11:56
  more people start sharing
• 1:11:57
  and more people starting to explore
• 1:12:00
  their own way of creativity.
• 1:12:03
  Either it's inspired by music
• 1:12:05
  or inspired by Bitcoin
• 1:12:06
  or inspired by whatever.
• 1:12:08
  But the subcultures, the subgroups,
• 1:12:11
  The fascinating things are always sometimes in the details.
• 1:12:16
  And now it's time we bring everybody together and all have a blast.
• 1:12:21
  Absolutely.
• 1:12:21
  I'm looking forward to seeing you dance.
• 1:12:23
  That's going to be fun.
• 1:12:24
  That's coming.
• 1:12:25
  Yes.
• 1:12:25
  Thank you, Ivy.
• 1:12:26
  Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of Live with Bitcoin.
• 1:12:30
  I'm your host, Ivy Lumi, and we'll see you in the next one.