This episode of the Blockrunner Podcast breaks down one of the most revealing weeks we’ve seen at the intersection of crypto, AI, and creator monetization.
What began as a promising experiment in creator capital markets quickly turned into a live stress test for liquidity, incentives, and trust. We walk through the rise and collapse of the Ralph token, why it initially made sense, how it gained traction, and why it unraveled the moment the creator sold. The fallout wasn’t just about price action. It exposed deeper structural problems that most internet capital markets haven’t solved yet.
From there, the conversation expands into the accelerating timeline toward AGI, why looping AI systems and agent swarms change the nature of work, and what happens to human purpose when intelligence becomes abundant. We react to Davos conversations, including moments where Bitcoin is openly laughed at by legacy financial institutions, and explain why those reactions reveal more ignorance than confidence.
We then tackle the uncomfortable question most Bitcoin holders avoid: how the network remains secure long-term. Transaction fees alone are not a viable answer. We explore why Bitcoin’s security budget faces a real challenge over the next decade and why a second subsidy may be the only credible path forward without changing Bitcoin’s core protocol.
This episode ties everything together into a single thesis. Internet capital markets are early, powerful, and inevitable, but without proper incentive design and liquidity structure, they will continue to fail in dramatic fashion.
If you’re thinking seriously about AI, crypto, creator monetization, and Bitcoin’s future, this episode will challenge your assumptions.
Learn more about the second subsidy thesis at natgmi.com.
We interview a core community member of the Ord team which is working on building the virtual machine on top of Bitcoin called BOSS. This is a very much-needed initiative as it will bring in much needed functionality and robustness to the Ordinal space. As of right now, the BRC20 token standard is the standard mechanism to spin up a semi-fungible token ecosystem. With the BOSS system a new token standard can emerge enabling developers to build on top of more functions. If this works out it could be one of the biggest moments in Ordinals history, similar to early Ethereum days for the overall blockchain space.
We finally took a moment to peer outside of what is happening in web3 besides Ordinals and Bitmap. We haven’t properly analyzed the state of sentiment overall since we began heavily following Ordinals once BRC20s were introduced back in March and April. Since then, we’ve found ourselves in a much more positive sentiment as content creators because of all the rapid innovations and foundational value creations happening on Bitcoin. However, once we looked back on the rest of web3, we found a much more depressing outlook due to major hacks and exploits, SEC attacks on HEX, constant rugpulls, and overall notable influencers pushing an anti crypto narrative. This leads us to believe we are likely in a peak bear market stage which according to the Wall Street Market Psychology Cheat Sheet is the depression phase. Also, we introduce the idea of digital matter theory which speaks to the idea of creating digital value through non-arbitrary processes that are reliant on blockchain data and information.
We discuss with the founder of Ordswap.io, Jack Liu the origins of builder culture on Bitcoin. Through his extensive experience, he has identified what makes Ordinals the lightning in a bottle moment for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Now with so many interested parties dedicated to creating value for Bitcoin through Ordinals, the momentum will drive it to become a full-fledged developer platform. Also, why does he find Bitmap one of the more exciting innovations from the Ordinals movement? From his perspective, Bitmap satisfies all 3 of his criteria when determining if an idea has the potential to take over a market or not. Also, for the first time a guest turned the interview back onto us and asked us several questions about our experience and opinions on how this metaverse space on Bitcoin will develop, a first for us 😅
We discuss how our new platform launch went and how the market is reacting to Blockamoto’s parcel inscription standard. Why are so many fearful and reluctant of enabling parcel inscriptions this early? Also, we break down how important the standard of bitmap is to maintaining a consensus among developers who are building within the ecosystem. In order for new technical layers to be built on top of the ID system that bitmap represents, we need project founders to follow the mechanisms of land distribution in accordance with the standard. Will the xSpectre project who is distributing land in their VE outside of the parcel standard effect the outcome of their ecosystem negatively in the long run?
The crypto bull market is showing signs of progress after ripple case and with all the interesting innovations emerging especially from the Bitcoin ecosystem. Yat Siu, founder of Animoca Brands is paying attention to Ordinals and claiming it is the next sector to show cultural growth. This is important because Yat was a huge force in the NFT movement and legitimized a lot about those projects. We then talk about what the components of the metaverse are and talk about how important the operating systems will be to the growth and maturation of bitmap ecosystem. Without operating systems, developers cannot introduce the functions needed for engaging content and experiences to be deployed.