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 revisit the old days of our podcast and how when we first started talking about the metaverse, almost nobody else was interested. We regularly had to question our sanity as the rest of the crypto market was focused on DeFi and NFTs. Now since Mark Zuckerberg has pivoted Facebook to the newly rebranded Meta, everyone is interested in the metaverse and why it will be important. We go into Decentraland and explore Metaverse Art Week and see some really cool displays. We then explore the paths to how humanity got to the point of creating these virtual environments to escape the real world. How will AI intersect with the metaverse and what will that do to the economy? Then we talk about the overall market maturing and turning into many independent sectors that have boom and bust cycles. Will DeFi be next?
In today’s chat we discuss on Mark Cuban’s disgust on people buying digital land. Then we go over Tornado Cash sanctions and the wider implications on crypto. Did you know that USDC and USDT could be frozen? The United States can arbitrarily sanction anything in crypto which means all of crypto is at risk. In this scenario, all innovation will move outside of the US jurisdiction and leave the United States behind in a legacy financial system that the rest of the world will not participate in. Which is the best stable coin to hedge against this possibility?
Vitalik Buterin sparks our debate on the merits of stock to flow and how it applies to Bitcoin. Is Vitalik right that stock to flow is a model that doesn’t apply to Bitcoin anymore or at all? The macro economics situation is another factor that is contributing to the value depression of Bitcoin in the last few weeks. The federal reserve has run out of options to get us out of the highest inflation since the 1980s. We discuss the ramifications of our current fiat monetary system.
With our first post since June 2021, we discuss Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard and what it means for the metaverse. Predictions for where Bitcoin is headed is made. We also go into the intricacies of building in the metaverse. Is Bill Gates part of an ultra secret club to take over the world?
When we started this podcast, we predicted that there will be a phase of the industry that would see the adoption of cryptocurrencies at the country level. This level would be the last phase before we would have world wide adoption taking place. Today was the first step of that phase. El Salvador officially acknowledges Bitcoin as legal tender for the country. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is setting a precedence for the rest of the countries as the adoption of Bitcoin is imminent. The Colonial pipeline hack compromised a fundamental part of the US infrastructure, however did the FBI really compromise Bitcoin? Finally we debate on whether we're going to see a resurgence of Bitcoin and the field of cryptocurrencies sooner rather than later.