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The Block Runner is your final source for cryptocurrency technology, explanations and news.

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September 14, 2025

Summary

**Welcome back to episode 279 of The Block Runner Podcast.  As always, we have your host William talking with your cohost I-man as we discuss cryptocurrency developments while we make this new technology relatable to you. You can watch the full episode on YouTube AND stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.

Here are some of the topics they discuss today:**

First up, revisit Bitcoin DeFi through the lens of this cycle’s emerging “industry cook”: digital-asset treasury companies.

Next, Do we really need native Bitcoin primitives, or will off-chain/custodial routes—UTXO time-locks and loan products be enough to make BTC productive?

and Finally, we pressure-test trench metas like Pokémon “phygital” and map where the music could stop.

Alright, let’s listen in!

143

Summary

As we have been anticipating, there has been a surge in A.I. crypto tokens over the last 7 days. Most coins in that sector are up by 200% on average. This was predictable considering the massive amount of attention the Artificial Intelligence applications have been getting from the mainstream. The sector is small with only a handful of viable projects, but nonetheless, the application of leveraging blockchain to create distributed AI learning networks to produce consumer facing AI products is enticing to say the least. Also we speak on the overall market sentiment improving, how AI will continue to develop even outside of web3, and a major update to the Decentraland Worlds progress (ENS enabled).

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142

Summary

We interview Travis who is the head of product at Quadrata, a web3 identity solutions protocol bringing digital passports to the blockchain applications ecosystem. We’ve always known on-chain identity was a missing component to realizing the true potential behind DeFi and other blockchain innovations, we finally found a project who is working on delivering exactly that. Quadrata enables dApps to leverage digital passports as on-chain identity verification tools to determine relevant information about its users. What will this do to the progress of DeFi and the metaverse? Also, we get into an A.I. philosophical discussion.

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141

Summary

Decentraland has announced that DCL Worlds will no longer be constrained to a 4 parcel experience, rather it will allow DCL world owners to build without land limitation so long as they overall content experience being hosted doesn’t exceed 100MB. This move changes the game for Decentralands chances of gaining mass adoption due to lowering the barrier of entry and giving anyone the access to create value from within the metaverse. How does this affect the value of original land parcels in genesis city? Is it better to ignore the speculative risks to OG land if it means DCL worlds will bring in many more users and overall increasing the DCL ecosystem value? Also, how does AI play into all of this?

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140

Summary

Now that we are in a deep crypto winter, influencers and public figures are perpetuating a negative sentiment towards the crypto industry as a whole, labeling it as one giant scam operation. We take the liberty in explaining how not EVERYTHING in the crypto and web3 arena is being developed by scammers. A lot of what is interpreted to be scams are just projects that have good intentions looking to innovate and experiment, but simply are only able to prove a concept and not sustain their innovations for lengthy periods of time. This is due to the technologies of blockchain, NFTs, tokens, etc being so new, failure becomes a normal part of the growth and maturation of them. We also speak about AI and how it can be applied to spark a new crypto sector to evolve NFTs and DeFi.

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139

Summary

First podcast of 2023 we go over the last few weeks of 2022. We recover from the hot ones challenge where we eat a series of progressively spicy chicken wings. OpenAI takes humanity by storm and is now valued at $29 billion because Microsoft intends to invest $10B with a loan when paid back would give them 49% of OpenAI. We look into how the AI craze could have an influence on the crypto industry. We come up with theoretical applications of AI and the ethos of crypto where the community is incentivized to contribute data to an AI with rewarding them with a token. Listen in catch our take on the AI takeover!

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