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.
When we first started The Block Runner podcast, it was at the very bottom of the most recent bear cycle for Bitcoin. If you listen to the earliest episodes we identify how the $3k price would be the low for this cycle. On today's podcast, we usher in the next stage of Bitcoin breaking the previous all time high and reaching as high as $23,500! We know that 2019 was the year for institutional accumulation and now they're beginning to discuss their investment into the first cryptocurrency. The non-linear regression curve has been a pretty accurate representation as to the trajectory of Bitcoin. Coinbase has filed for an IPO likely tapping into a larger source of funding, coming in at a perfect time at the beginning of this hype cycle. Finally, Microstrategy drops their cash reserves into Bitcoin because the US dollar is a liability.
Episode 96 covers a number of developments this week. In the metaverse, Corona Zombies shows a way to earn NFTs by participating in contracts. Beeple unleashes an all new record for the NFT space by launching physical representation of his Everyday art. Over 3 days, Beeple sold NFTs and their physical representation for $3.5 million over 3 days. Even Iman took part and purchased a an infected Pikachu art from Beeple! Finally the CEO of Nexus Mutual, which provides insurance for your staked crypto, got hacked and lost $8 million.
We take a step back to gain perspective on the DeFi space. There's an all time high in locked liquidity at $14 billion and we correlate the last DeFi bull run with the all time high GAS prices. Yearn Finance leads the DeFi race at the moment and the founder Andre Cronje has created an ecosystem to keep an eye on. One of those ecosystem projects is called Keep3r Network is one protocol gaining traction. Finally we end with a discussion on Steve Wozniak's splash in the cryptocurrency space with Efforce token.
We return to discuss some of the latest developments happening within Decentraland. This time Decentral Games releases their own Token called $DG. This token will serve as a governance token to decide on where to spend funds decided by the community. The token will also be used to incentivize players to gamble in their casino. This is the first sign of true sustainability within the metaverse and just the first sign of an activity that most projects will adopt. We also discuss Bitcoin logic where in 10 years we can see the price of Bitcoin go as high as $1M.
On this episode William and Iman speak with Daniel Kim from NFTBank.ai to discuss an NFT portfolio app that will help you evaluate your NFTs. We get the origin story on how NFTBank came to be as well as the most optimal way to use the app. We get into the details as to what kind of data is needed to valuate NFTs. Being able to collect and value a portfolio for NFTs is a large missing piece to on-boarding additional users to the space. Most NFTs are hard to evaluate, we get a hard look as to what increases value of NFTs.