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.
In this episode of the Block Runner podcast, hosts William and Iman, dive deep into the world of decentralized token launches with special guest Caps, the founder of Flaunch .... Discover how Flaunch is aiming to redefine the meme coin and creator economy by offering a novel approach built on Uniswap v4 .
We explore the unique mechanics of Flaunch, including its fixed-price fair launch and automated liquidity manipulation, contrasting it with the fee structures of platforms like pump.fun .... Caps shares his insights on how Flaunch empowers creators by allowing them to own 100% of the revenue stream from swap fees, potentially providing a more sustainable model for communities and projects ....
After a week of $NAT tokens being allocated to Bitcoin miners, we take a closer look at the longer-term implications and explore potential scenarios where $NAT plays a pivotal role in the sustainability of mining operations. We analyze which miners have accumulated the most tokens and, by projecting across different market cap brackets, estimate the weekly value being accrued. This exercise aims to highlight how $NAT can fulfill its long-term mission once market forces drive its token value significantly higher than it is today. We also discuss the responsibilities and roles as the founders going forward, now that the technical framework for $NAT as Bitcoin’s new subsidy reward token has been established, drawing parallels with Satoshi's early efforts in galvanizing community support for the movement and successful propagation of the ideals behind Bitcoin.
In our view, there are still several key tasks ahead, such as deploying infrastructure primitives that will facilitate more liquid trading environments for $NAT and the creation of sustainable DeFi networks that can leverage the DMT ecosystem. Additionally, $NAT needs a substantial amount of educational content to clarify its mission and the broader goals of the DMT ecosystem. With a target market cap of $1 billion, which we believe is achievable, we are confident that these challenges will be addressed by the community, ensuring the ecosystem's resilience and long-term growth.
We discuss our experience on the day of $NAT being officially mined by Bitcoin miners and discuss in detail what the prospects are for $NAT and DMT in supporting the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem. As well as game plan steps moving forward in order to further educate the mining community and regular folk about what it is $NAT represents as the first DMT asset contributing to furthering the future sustainability of Bitcoin. We then showcase some of the Ordinal assets for mint that will contribute to adding liquidity for $NAT on TaparooSwap, a Bitcoin L1 AMM DEX.
With our efforts and the community behind us we can strengthen $NAT overtime and build a strong NATwork effect in support of the DMT ecosystem as a whole. We firmly believe the success of $NAT will be the catalyst for the entire Bitcoin ecosystem as it represents a native to Bitcoin product that is closest aligned to the ethos and value of Bitcoin itself. At the end we discuss Jason Lowery’s recent bullish sentiment around Digital Matter Theory and how we align with his talking points of his next book titled “Digital Power”. Having notable actors in the Bitcoin community continually propagating the idea of Bitcoin’s higher purpose being the utilization of its immutable substrate layer will further elevate the DMT mission.
We explore the rapid advancements occurring outside of the crypto space, particularly in AI and robotics, and consider how a robotic revolution could shape society. Innovation seems to be accelerating across fields like AI, robotics, and quantum computing, making it increasingly difficult to keep up. Turning the focus back to the crypto world, we reflect on how the current market doesn't mirror this same momentum. With market sentiment at all-time lows, largely due to memecoin saturation and growing awareness of insider manipulation, we discuss potential solutions for emerging from this slump. Among the more promising developments is $NAT, a fundamentally sound asset that we believe points the way forward for the crypto market. Through the lens of Digital Matter Theory, $NAT introduces groundbreaking concepts that bring real substance to the crypto space by utilizing Bitcoin’s properties in the digital asset creation process. In the coming weeks, $NAT will fulfill its ultimate goal: to become Bitcoin’s second official subsidy reward token, setting the stage for a multi-billion dollar market cap. We believe that as awareness of $NAT spreads, it will reinvigorate the community with a renewed sense of purpose—something the market desperately needs right now.
AI Agents thrive on data, and @cookiedotfun is building the ultimate supply. 🍪🤖
We sat down with founder Filip to break down how Cookie is revolutionizing AI with unique data aggregation, powering smarter, more capable agents. Plus, how $COOKIE fits into it all. 🚀
Watch now:
Building AI Infra For The Agentic Economy w/ Filip Wielanier, CEO of Cookie3 | TBR #254 https://youtu.be/89hWvkNvNZ0
@cookiedotfun has been highly regarded for its unique data aggregation methods and application for AI Agents. In a world as competitive as AI, data is the lifeblood that will make Agents more performant than others and therefore more desirable. The Cookie DAO foundation is working toward building a state of the art data system that will supply AI Agents with these necessary knowledge sources. We break down with the founder Filip how Cookie works and how the $cookie tokens play an integral role in supporting this ecosystem. Since the release of Cookie.fun, a tremendous onboarding of users into the Cookie ecosystem has followed due to the platforms ability to parse through on-chain and off-chain information that is relevant to the Agentic space in web3. We ask Filip how he see’s the AI Agent space progressing from here and how Cookie’s data technology will help elevate AI Agent launch platforms give their agents more optimal capabilities, as reflected by their own recently deployed agent swarm supporting Agent Cookie.