Bitcoin Audible

The Roundtable is back, and we are kicking off 2026 with some stories that I definitely didn't have on my bingo card.

After catching up on Jeff's frostbite scare and Steve getting the cops called on him for sleeping in a gym lobby, we dive headfirst into the Epstein files. The released documents have implicated some major names in the space, raising the uncomfortable question: did a compromised elite try to co-opt Bitcoin early on? We debate the "Andy" Back theories, the influence of the MIT Media Lab, and whether any of this actually threatens the protocol today. We also discuss the sudden departure of a core developer and get into a heated debate over BIP-110 and the true power of listening nodes.

Can a small but stubborn group of node runners actually block a soft fork, or are we heading toward a chaotic chain split this August? Equal parts absurd and sobering, this episode hits hard.

Check out our awesome sponsors!

HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)

OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)

Guest Links

Steve Simple Nostr (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3s6a8yn8)

Steve Simple on X (Link: https://x.com/stevesimple)

Bitcoin Mechanic Nostr (Link: https://tinyurl.com/2tm827ut)

Bitcoin Mechanic on X (Link: https://x.com/GrassFedBitcoin)

Jeff Swann Nostr (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3sjc3bcp)

Jeff Swann on X (Link: https://x.com/agoristview)

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)

"Bitcoin is a lifeline. It is a money that cannot be shut down. Native money for the internet. But what happens when the internet gets shut off?"

Iran's currency collapses 98%, the government kills thousands and cuts every wire connecting its people to the outside world. Uganda shuts down the internet the day before an election. And somehow, hundreds of thousands of people find a way to communicate anyway. What does it actually look like when Bitcoin's promise meets the brutal reality of authoritarian control — and what happens when the very infrastructure it depends on disappears?

Check out the original article from the Financial Freedom Report: Financial Freedom Report #104 (Link: https://hrf.org/program/financial-freedom/financial-freedom-reports/)

References from the episode

Andreas Antonopoulos received the Finney Freedom Prize for the 2016–2020 era. Absolutely deserved. Look up the prize and the trophies Cryptografiti made — they're gorgeous.

Bitchat is the peer-to-peer Bluetooth messaging app that hundreds of thousands of Ugandans downloaded when their internet got shut down. Worth knowing about.

FEDI went fully open source on January 3rd — Bitcoin payments and encrypted messaging built on the Fedimint protocol.

Zeus wallet added support for South Africa's retail QR code standard via Money Badger — making Bitcoin spendable at everyday merchants from a self-custodial Lightning wallet.

Torreable is a new tool for publishing censorship-resistant websites as Tor onion services directly from your own computer.

Open Sats announced their 15th round of Bitcoin grants, including Braidpool and Dana Wallet.

Thor Halverson wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing against just swapping one authoritarian for another in Venezuela.

Anna Chekovic did an interview with Unchained about how Bitcoin sustained Navalny's anti-corruption foundation after Russia kicked them out of the banking system.

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: http...

"You can’t open your own private mint moving that kind of liquidity and hope to stay under the regulatory radar."

~ Roy Sheinfeld

Stablecoins are booming, but are they building toward something bigger - or just recreating the old system with a crypto coat of paint? Roy Sheinfeld breaks down why centralization guarantees regulation, and I go deep on why the real shift isn't technological - it's monetary. If stablecoins can't escape the state, and Bitcoin can, who wins the utility race in the long run?

Check out the original article: Stablecoins: Evolution, not a Revolution (Link: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/featured/stablecoins-evolution-not-a-revolution)

References from the episode

My recent conversation with Roy on Chat_157 - It's Time to Walk the Walk where we discussed the evolution of Lightning, Breeze, Spark and PearDrive (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/EpG58Rgz9cWjjLckHhD6)

BTC Sessions' "Why Are We Bullish" panel show with Matt Odell, Brandon Quittem and myself. (Link: https://fountain.fm/episode/EHSfEfSKtnHd3HWYhud8)

The film Black Rain by Ridley Scott, cited by Roy in his article as a reference for how seriously states take control over their currency. (Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woY1UH9Ki28)

Historical sociologist Charles Tilly's book Bringing the State Back In and its Chapter 5: War Making and State Making as Organized Crime, calling states "protection rackets" and "organized crime". (Link: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/bringing-the-state-back-in/war-making-and-state-making-as-organized-crime/7A7B3B6577A060D76224F54A4DD0DA4C)

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)

Check out our awesome sponsors!

HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.

"It's a dangerous business to help people out of slavery. But so what? We have to do this. This is a moral obligation, an ethical obligation, as a technical possibility, and a lot of fun.

So the risks of it are real and substantial and have been forever, especially in the last 30, 40 years or so. Countless builders have gotten into serious trouble or even been kidnapped or killed. And that's a hard fact of reality that we have to deal with.

But I'm way more scared of the alternative of not working on this code and seeing us lose the grip on freedom that we have, rather than increasing it and making it flourish. So for me, it's really a no-brainer. They're so angry about this technology precisely because it works real damn good, and that's what we have to double down."

~ Max Hillebrand

I sat down with Max Hillebrand for a conversation that ended up being far more optimistic than I expected. In this Chat, we dive deep into the mechanics of digital privacy, breaking down exactly how CoinJoin achieves trustless coordination and why the "code liberation" movement is just getting started. What happens when everyone becomes a programmer through AI agents and vibe coding? We then explore this explosion of productivity and how it feeds into new protocols like Marmot and the White Noise application.

Finally, we discuss the philosophy of the "Second Realm" and why the tools to exit the system are already here, ready for us to build a quiet, global resistance against surveillance. It is time to stop hurting yourself with broken systems and start building the new ones.

Check out our awesome sponsors!

HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)

OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)

Guest Links

Max on Nostr (Link: https://tinyurl.com/2ujwmsf5)

Max's Website (Link: https://towardsliberty.com/)

Max's article The Code Liberation (Link: https://tinyurl.com/yc2ybnk7)

Anarplex.net (Link: https://anarplex.sirion.io/)

Marmot protocol's Repository (Link: https://github.com/marmot-protocol)

The Second Realm by Smuggler XYZ (Link: https://tinyurl.com/46z4cd93)

Sedition, Subversion, and Sabotage by Ben Stone (Link: https://tinyurl.com/yee65zuy)

True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier by Vernor Vinge (Link: https://tinyurl.com/5atu4xcx)

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

"PearDrive is like, how could you make stuff seamless across devices and how can you leverage that device that has a lot of storage to get the most out of the device that has a little storage?

How do you make it so that when I boot something up, it just syncs to my Linux? And if I delete anything from my phone or my MacBook, I still see the thumbnail and I still connect to my Linux to bring it up and I can even play it directly off of my Linux machine. And if I want it locally to edit with or to share with somebody, I just hit download.

How could you actually make it visually aware of where the data is and make it feel like the data just exists everywhere it wants? That's what we're trying to do."

What if we could rebuild the digital world without the servers, the clouds, or the middlemen that control our data today?

I joined the crew at Ungovernable Misfits - Q&A, Max, and Seth - on Freedom Tech Friday 25 to explore the revolutionary potential of the Holepunch and Pear ecosystem. We break down the magic behind connecting peer-to-peer through firewalls and why the birthday problem changes everything for network resilience. We also dive into the philosophy behind Keet, the current state of Pear Drive, and why file sharing is the foundational layer of a truly decentralized web.

It is time to discover how we can finally reclaim control over our digital lives without sacrificing the user experience.

Check out our awesome sponsors!

HRF: The Human Rights Foundation is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies. Subscribe to HRF's Financial Freedom Newsletter today. (Link: https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/financial-freedom-newsletter)

OFF: The Oslo Freedom Forum is a global human rights event by the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), uniting voices from activism, journalism, tech, and beyond. Through powerful stories and collaboration, OFF advances freedom and human potential worldwide. Join us next June. (Link: https://oslofreedomforum.com/)

Guest Links

UGMF on X (Link: https://twitter.com/ungovernablemf)

UGMF on YT (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@ungovernablemisfits)

UGMF's Website (Link: https://www.ungovernablemisfits.com/)

Host Links

⁠Guy on Nostr ⁠(Link: http://tinyurl.com/2xc96ney)

⁠Guy on X ⁠(Link: https://twitter.com/theguyswann)

Guy on Instagram (Link: https://www.instagram.com/theguyswann)

Guy on TikTok (Link: https://www.tiktok.com/@theguyswann)

Guy on YouTube (Link: https://www.youtube.com/@theguyswann)

⁠Bitcoin Audible on X⁠ (Link: https://twitter.com/BitcoinAudible)

The Guy Swann Network Broadcast Room on Keet (Link: https://tinyurl.com/3na6v839)