BTC249: The Convergence of Bitcoin, AI, and Energy w/ Rod Roudi (Bitcoin Podcast)

Summary

We Study Billionaires: Bitcoin Fundamentals

BTC249: The Convergence of Bitcoin, AI, and Energy w/ Rod Roudi

Host: Preston Pysh
Guest: Rod Roudi, Founder of Bitcoin Park
Date: August 27, 2025

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Episode Overview

This rich and fast-paced episode explores the transformative intersection of Bitcoin, artificial intelligence (AI), and energy, focusing on how new developments in these fields are converging to reshape industry, investment, and community structures. Preston Pysh interviews Rod Roudi, the dynamic founder of Bitcoin Park in Nashville, about the latest on technical protocols like Ark, modular bitcoin mining infrastructure, institutional custody, and the energetic, community-driven culture blooming in tech-forward cities. The discussion dives deep into the ethos of early versus new wave bitcoiners, industry events, and Roudi's vision for fusing innovation across sectors at upcoming summits.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Innovation at the Edge: Lightning Network & Ark Protocol

[02:43–03:50]

• Ark is a new protocol making Bitcoin payments easier and more accessible. It’s designed to solve Lightning Network’s liquidity and channel management issues, creating “virtual UTXOs” so vendors can accept lightning payments without managing channel liquidity.
• Rod recounts hands-on experimentation at Bitcoin Park, highlighting the rapid, tangible progress in Bitcoin’s second-layer tech and praising the "gravitational force" of collaborative innovation.

Memorable Quote:

"Now you don't have to manage this inbound outbound liquidity... you can use this other protocol in conjunction with Lightning called Ark that allows you to just use it kind of seamlessly... which is massive, massive, massive."
—Preston Pysh [03:17]

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2. Hardware Revolution: Block’s Modular Mining Rigs

[04:13–08:47]

• Block (Jack Dorsey’s company) introduced “Proto”, a modular bitcoin miner, to great fanfare in Georgia, with live demos. These rigs are fully modular—broken components can simply be swapped out rather than replacing entire units, leading to longer hardware lifespan and adoption flexibility.
• Both large- and small-scale miners are engaged in feedback and iteration with Block, reflecting a democratized development culture.
• The team’s long tenure (many from Square/Cash App) now aligns around Bitcoin’s mission, a sign of maturing corporate commitment.

Memorable Quote:

“What Block’s doing right now... especially making these kind of modular rigs... You can put these boxed in. It's completely modular.”
—Rod Roudi [05:09]

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3. Custody and Institutional Adoption: Addressing Centralization Fears and New Solutions

[09:08–13:24, 17:17–24:11]

• The upcoming Custody and Treasury Summit (Sept 17–18, 2025) will spotlight custody innovation—from personal multi-sig to institutional-grade custodianship and proof-of-reserves.
• Deep dive into custody centralization: With spot ETFs (all routed to Coinbase custody), there’s widespread community concern about risk and systemic vulnerability.
• Rod and Preston argue more companies and custodial solutions will emerge, driven by necessity, with competitive market forces ensuring continued decentralization and innovation.
• Cultural tension exists between legacy, self-custody-focused bitcoiners and institutions entering the space with different requirements but similar survival instincts.

Notable Exchange:

"You can't be mad that institutions want to hold bitcoin. They're just trying to survive like you are at the individual level."
—Preston Pysh [21:39]

"I feel like we're at the lightning torch level of institutional custody. We're going to look back and be like, I cannot believe we're all custodying with Coinbase..."
—Rod Roudi [21:55]

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4. Community and Culture: Physical Spaces and Curated Summits

[26:54–32:18]

• Bitcoin Park in Nashville, inspired and now replicated in Austin, is a hub for collaboration, IRL (in real life) meetups, and cross-disciplinary summits.
• Rod amplifies the critical importance of "curating signal over noise," and how local, trusted physical spaces are driving new relationships and developmental breakthroughs—often with senators, policymakers, and economic giants (e.g., Dr. Art Laffer, Cathie Wood) attending grassroots events to learn directly from practitioners.

Memorable Quote:

"The in real life conversations are 100x better than any of the keyboard commando conversations that are happening online."
—Rod Roudi [26:49]

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5. Fusing Domains: AI, Bitcoin, Energy—The ‘Imagine If’ Summit

[32:54–43:38]

• Imagine If Summit (Sept 19–20, 2025) will serve as a "summit of summits," convening leaders from bitcoin, AI, energy, and freedom-tech sectors for collaborative ideation and action.
• Tennessee, thanks to TVA, Oak Ridge, and targeted investment in nuclear innovation, is positioning itself as a model region for this convergence.
• The event is designed for maximum serendipity: capital allocators, entrepreneurs, policymakers and technologists colliding to catalyze new solutions.

Memorable Quote:

"There’s a convergence happening right now between bitcoin, AI, energy and all these industries... and it’s going to be fascinating to see what happens."
—Rod Roudi [32:58]

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6. AI as a Superpower for Research, Organization, and Post-Event Impact

[43:38–54:16]

• Practical tips: Both Rod and Preston use AI to augment their workflows, automating repetitive tasks, synthesizing technical meetings, and maintaining competitive edge.
• At the Imagine If summit, they're considering recording, transcribing, and making all panel discussions queryable via AI, allowing attendees and remote participants to extract personalized insights quickly.
• For the future: Custom AI models trained specifically on event content could provide tailored recaps or highlight reels for different stakeholder categories.

Notable Exchange:

"You have to use [AI] in terms of your workflow... Experiment with AI... Commit... and just start using it as your default Google-like search."
—Rod Roudi [44:18]

"You could take transcripts of everything that happened... put them into your own transformer... then you just have some interface on the website after the event that [anyone] could go in there... and literally the transformer... can come back and respond..."
—Preston Pysh [51:08]

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7. Optimism for the Future and Call to Action

[54:16–end]

• Rod calls for broad community participation at upcoming summits, emphasizing durable, decades-long relationship building.
• The episode closes with gratitude and infectious optimism: despite frustrations, the space is dynamically evolving, and those who bridge the gaps (community, institutional, policy, and technological) are vital to Bitcoin’s next chapter.

Memorable Quote:

"I've never been more bullish in my entire life."
—Rod Roudi [50:45]

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Essential Timestamps

• [02:43] — Explaining Ark protocol and Lightning Network improvements
• [04:13] — Block’s Proto modular mining rigs and Jack Dorsey’s vision
• [09:08] — Blockstream asset management and coming Custody/Treasury Summit
• [17:17] — ETF custody centralization discussion
• [21:39] — Institutional vs OG bitcoiner culture clash and the need for both sides
• [26:54] — Value of physical community spaces, relationship-building stories
• [32:54] — ‘Imagine If’ Summit and Tennessee’s unique position in the convergence of tech, energy, and policy
• [43:38] — AI use in workflows and personalized event knowledge extraction
• [51:08] — Vision for next-level AI-powered event knowledge distillation

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Notable Quotes

• Preston Pysh [03:17]: “Now you don't have to manage this inbound outbound liquidity... you can use this other protocol in conjunction with Lightning called Ark... massive, massive, massive.”
• Rod Roudi [26:49]: “The in real life conversations are 100x better than any of the keyboard commando conversations that are happening online.”
• Rod Roudi [32:58]: “There’s a convergence happening right now between bitcoin, AI, energy and all these industries... it’s going to be fascinating to see what happens.”
• Rod Roudi [50:45]: "I've never been more bullish in my entire life."
• Preston Pysh [21:39]: "You can't be mad that institutions want to hold bitcoin. They're just trying to survive like you are at the individual level."

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Resources & Event Links

• Bitcoin Park: bitcoinpark.com
• Custody & Treasury Summit (Sept 17–18, 2025): bitcoinpark.com/custody-treasury
• Imagine If Summit (Sept 19–20, 2025): bitcoinpark.com/imagineif

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Tone & Takeaways

The episode offers a front-row seat to the high-energy, interdisciplinary reality of Bitcoin's next era. Both Preston and Rod communicate with candor and warmth, balancing technical breakdowns and community tales, future shock and practical optimism. Listeners come away with tactical insights, a sense of historical perspective, and the contagious feeling that Bitcoin’s best days—fueled by relentless creators, AI-powered workflows, and new alliances between old and new—are yet to come.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

You are listening to tip.

[Preston Pysh]

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this Wednesday's release of the Bitcoin Fundamentals podcast. On today's Show, I have Mr. Rod Rudy, who's the founder of Bitcoin park and just an all around leader in the space. And on the show, we cover a wide breadth of topics, like what Rod's.

Doing to work in the state of.

Tennessee that merges energy, AI and bitcoin, what his thoughts are on the current shift and culture clash that's happening between.

Legacy bitcoiners and all of these institutions.

That are now playing in this space. We cover his thoughts on the current market cycle and if this time is.

Different, among many other fun topics, this.

Is a show you won't want to miss.

So sit back, hold tight and enjoy the show.

[Podcast Announcer]

Celebrating 10 years, you are listening to bitcoin Fundamentals by the investors podcast network. Now for your host, Preston Pysh.

[Preston Pysh]

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show.

I am here with the one and only Rod Rudy out of Bitcoin Park, Nashville. Rod, it's been too long. It's been way too long. How you doing?

[Rod Rudy]

I'm doing very well, Preston. Happy Friday. Welcome back to the States. It's great to see you.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah, it's good to be back. I love going to Europe. I just hate the flying business. Like, the admin to get there is the part that's like, just terrible. But once I'm there, I'm loving the coffee, first of all. Like, it doesn't get any better than that. But yeah, no, I'm happy to be back home.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. And it's just. I mean, you were in Riga, right? Baltic Honey badger. Just the people, what they're building, the innovation that you can touch and feel, it's just. It's simply amazing.

[Preston Pysh]

How about the ark? I, you know, absolutely. Yeah. I was there and I was just talking with Max and Anna and they're like, oh, did you see that we did the first arc transaction.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

With cooks and some of those folks. And I was just like, no, Are you serious? Because the last thing I heard, you needed, like a soft fork for that to happen. And they're like, no, they did it. And I was like, what? So, yeah, that was a really big deal.

[Rod Rudy]

You see if we can go on like a tangent right now, because, you know, when I got into bitcoin, which was like, in 27th, 2018, we were doing, remember the lightning torch, when we're just like trying to pass around a lightning invoice around.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Like Jack Dorsey to Odell to, like, Adam Back it was hilarious.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Back then. But now you got square introducing accepting bitcoin at the POS. You got ark on the layer 2 making a better implementation to make Bitcoin money. It just, it's simply amazing for people.

[Preston Pysh]

That maybe not aren't very tech savvy because we're like nerding out with some of the terminology here, but I'll just.

[Rod Rudy]

And I'm not tech savvy either at all.

[Preston Pysh]

But in general, what this is doing. So ARK is another protocol that some of the best engineers in the space have been working on. And what it enables is like one of the challenges you have with Lightning Network is managing your channels. If you're going to do it, you're custody the sides and you're opening the channels and you're managing that liquidity, the inbound outbound liquidity. It can be really burdensome knowing, super annoying. And so what they've done is like these virtual UTXOs that then settle on chain. And what this is enabling is if you're a vendor and you want to accept Lightning payments, you want to go layer two and accept these immediately, settling bitcoin payments. Now you don't have to manage this inbound outbound liquidity. You can use this other protocol in conjunction with Lightning called Ark that allows you to just use it kind of seamlessly and not have to worry about the liquidity of the channels, which is massive, massive, massive.

[Rod Rudy]

And honestly, like at these local meetups, Alex from the ARK team, they were like, I'm pretty sure, just like messing around with it in Testnet at Bitcoin park back, I don't know, months prior to that. And it's just so cool to see it live.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

In action.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah. I was really surprised. I didn't realize that it was going to be happening there and then seeing it, I was kind of blown away.

[Rod Rudy]

But that's the thing. Like yesterday I was at Block's proto rig announcement in Dalton, Georgia.

[Preston Pysh]

Oh, okay.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. And it was like, it was fantastic. You got Ark, a small team building on the payments layer. Right. With nobody. And then you got a big company, Block, that now is heads down building in the mining space. This is Jack.

[Preston Pysh]

For people that don't. This is Jack Dorsey's company.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. And Jack was there.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And don't trust verify. Do your own research with. But with that said, there's just so many amazing people and I truly believe like bitcoin is this gravitational force and the common denominator just to build really cool stuff. And what Block's doing right now, especially with Proto, with Thomas leading them on the hardware side, especially making these kind of modular rigs because, like before you'd kind of like rip and replace when machines would break or the whole rig. The whole thing.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

You can put these boxed in. It's completely modular. One of the two things that kind of blew me away because I hadn't really. I mean, I met the team, but I didn't really get to meet the team. Like, Jack was like. And one thing that Jack mentioned to me was, Rod, you see all these people that are on the team? And I said, yeah. You know, one thing that's striking to me, Jack, is you're saying 11 years, 16 years, 10 years at the company. You guys have been just building a bitcoin company, I think, since 2018, 2019. So they were at Cash App or Square before, and now they're at Proto and Bitkey and so on. He's like, yeah. And if you go one layer below that, now they're all bitcoiners too. Now they all get mission and they're all on the mission.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And I was just like, wow. I mean, didn't they get into like some big stock thing like the Fortune 500 or something like that?

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah, they recently hit the 500, I think.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

500, okay.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

It's just. It's so fascinating and it's like so much of this whole AI wave, every day is just going to get better. Is bitcoin going to get easier to use and better money? Every single day it just gets better, which is so cool.

[Preston Pysh]

I want to get back to the AI thing, but on the block announcement, the thing that I find really fascinating is he has these engineers that are hardware engineers.

[Rod Rudy]

Yes.

[Preston Pysh]

They're production line engineers that like, understand the whole production process, making sure that when you bring something to market that is hardware, that it's not immediately ob because there's newer tech. So they understand the interoperability. They understand the fact that you got to be able to swap cards so that you're not, you know, throwing the whole totally like, they understand all of this. What was the other thing that you would say was that came out of the big announcement there because it seems like the modularity of the cards and being able to kind of keep using the hardware and swap as better tech comes out on the cards. Was there anything else that you found, like, really fascinating with the announcement?

[Rod Rudy]

I'll say two things, just from my perspective.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

One was there was a lot of head nodding and meaning they did the work for a year plus on this. And when Thomas was doing his keynote, he was mentioning like, we went to a bunch of you guys. We went to sites, we went to each of the areas.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And we're like looking and feeling the pain points and they designed based on that kind of feedback. That's one.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Two, you would think because this is like product that's for all. But who are your biggest customers? Like, so it was really cool because we were at the core facility and we actually got to see it live. Some people are like, oh wait, don't worry, two more weeks and we'll plug.

[Preston Pysh]

It in and it'll work.

[Rod Rudy]

Promise. But it was like live running at the facility and you would think from a business opportunity standpoint you would just be with big co miners there. Right. Because they're the biggest tickets, they would make the biggest purchase orders. It was awesome. Preston, to see my friends, Scott 9000 from the Bitax project, Eco from the 256 foundation, the Wilson Mining brothers, who are just these like.

[Preston Pysh]

Scott was in Riga, so he must have gone straight to this.

[Rod Rudy]

He went straight there, Took a two hour ride from Atlanta to like wherever we were in Georgia.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And he was just like, I'm ready. Because he's been waiting for this for a long time.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

But to continue, on top of that, there was West Texas miners. Shout out to the cholla guys. Brad Cuddy. And then there was the big co miners. I mean like you had CleanSpark. Their entire executive team was there.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Wow.

[Rod Rudy]

Foundry CEO Mike Collier was there. And so the fact that Jack and Thomas and the entire team, Jenny, they all invited all of these different groups was a testament to their going into the market and getting into the community. All feedback not just from one subset, being the largest ticketers or purchasers. You know, the big coast.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah. So much of this is really difficult. I know Blockstream has been working on something to bring to market, but I haven't really heard what their timeline is. I talked to Adam back what, two years ago now at this point, maybe two and a half years ago about it and it seemed like they were. It's not easy. This is like really not easy.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

With that said, and not to put a plug in for the Custody and Treasury summit as well as imagine if. But Adam and Sean Bill are coming along with you and I think this Blockstream asset management stuff that they're doing on the finance side.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Is really interesting and I don't want to speak for them and so on. But like what Adam And Sean and the team that Sean's building around him. You know me, I'm not like the trad fi finance guy. I'm like a more of a community builder and entrepreneur. But there is something there. A lot of it to me is still noise and just vaporware, but there is some signal within there, especially on the business side and then also on the capital allocator side, to be able to create different investment vehicles that continue to get exposure to bitcoin, the underlying asset. So I think there's something there and, you know, much better than I do. So I think Blockstream is really going to focus and they are focusing in that area.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Adam's been coming up with super creative things for years. Totally on this.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Let's talk a little bit about the custody summit. So tell me the dates for this. Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

September 17th and 18th on your calendar, Preston. It is.

[Preston Pysh]

I swear.

[Rod Rudy]

I know. No, no, you're the man. So, like, it's really cool because there's so many things going on in bitcoin. Like, it's just. It's fascinating. Every single second. It's like, wait, there's another thing going on. And all of them, like, just, they seem cool. I think with the park and you've been so kind to participate in a number of them, is really creating and curating these experiences around something specific within the bitcoin and freedom tech space. So I didn't really want to do this, but I felt inclined to create a custody and treasury summit because a lot of the conversation is around the acquisition of Bitcoin and buying bitcoin. And I do think custody and treasury need to go hand in hand.

[Preston Pysh]

Yes.

[Rod Rudy]

If you're treasury, like, you have a Treasury strategy. Absolutely. You're a small business owner, you're an individual, you're a large company. What's your treasury Strategy? You're making $100 million of profit. What are you swiping into bitcoin? What's the percentage? What's the strategy? Are there other ways to increase that exposure? You know, there's so many conversations to be had, but one thing, in my opinion, that needs to always happen is what is your custody? What is your counterparty risk associated with?

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And so one of the cool things at the park that you've been so kind to be a member and, like, just been supporting us and a number of other people, we're now able to make more investments in education and research and more content. We're going to introduce a custody white paper that we plan to introduce every Single year, really digging into custody and it's like, cool, we got this. Treasury strategies, here are the custody strategies. And I'm not even poo pooing, like bulk custodian, like a river, a strike or a bitgo and so on. There is a strategy for that, but I want to just showcase and platform all the different flavors of custody. So from full custody to a collaborative custody, multi sick to single sig to insured custody, what anchor watch and those guys are creating in that category.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

So I think the conversation is going to be brilliant. Like you know, Parker yourself, how about.

[Preston Pysh]

Just like institutional custody. So like for example, you have Nydig, you have Fidelity, you have, you name it, some of these really large players and for the thing everybody's talking about is bitcoin. Treasury companies, if they're conducting institutional level custody, is that a topic that you guys plan on covering as well?

[Rod Rudy]

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And so it's going to run the gamut from the institutional side as well as down to the individual side. Because I think when you speak to the institutional side, almost every single individual and their mom is like, okay, well what about me? And if they can learn it on the individual side, they'll be better equipped to talk about it in their boardrooms and in their other conversations.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And right now though, the unfortunate truth is like institutional custody is just with Coinbase right now there's not like a really big conversation. So I'm trying to level it up and just showcase all of the other solutions out there such that. And I think, and I got to give kudos to Fidelity. I believe they're custody their own bitcoin.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah, they are, yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. And so I'm just super bullish. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

[Preston Pysh]

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[Rod Rudy]

Alright, back to the show.

[Preston Pysh]

I think with the ETFs, I think.

What happened there is the first ETF got through and they listed Coinbase. And I think everybody else that had an application in the mix was just like, okay, that one just. That one's going through, so everybody just change it to Coinbase and then we're good because that won't be a roadblock. And next thing you know, like, everybody's custodying their ETF at Coinbase.

[Rod Rudy]

I couldn't agree more. I remember in 2017, in January of 2018, it was like two more weeks and the Winklevoss are going to get their ETF approved and it's going to be like 100k tomorrow. And I'm like, holy smokes, really? This is going to be awesome. Like, and then next thing you know, we go through this crazy, like choppy for five years and no line of sight to an ETF being approved. But to your point, with ark, with the BlackRock ETF, with all these ETFs, one was like, all right, this is the template and this is all the Cathy.

[Preston Pysh]

This is Cathie Wood's Ark, not the ARC we were talking about at the beginning of the show. Go ahead. Sorry.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. ARK Invest, Arkbi her etf. And so you see, that's why I hold both sides of the argument. Right. And I can totally understand just being worn down from just application conversations.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Being ridiculed and then being like, wait, what? We. We're the bad guys now. We just want to get a spot etf. Gary Godzler. That's all we want to do. Not a. What were the other ones that were introduced that were just totally asinine before the spot etf, it was like a. It was some other stuff that wasn't even like a close.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

On this topic. So I found the custody. I'm really excited that you're doing this custody thing. Here's the why. So I was over in Lugano, given a class on Coin treasury companies and like how it all works, the mechanics, blah, blah, blah. And the class had incredible questions. And one of the concerns that just kept coming up, which is a super valid concern, is, Preston, aren't you concerned that all of this Custody is getting centralized at one place. I said, well, I share your concern, first of all, like, I'm not trying to say that there's not a concern there, but I also think that more and more companies, if we just like play the tape forward, right, let's say we warp ourselves 15, 20 years into the future, in our opinion, every company on the planet has some form of bitcoin, treasury or savings that is sitting on their balance sheet in some form or the other. Now, whether it encompasses like a microstrategy level, probably not. But any company that is sweeping and retaining earnings, they might own other equity, they might continue to hold it in Bitcoin. And if they're holding it in bitcoin, this means that look at how many companies exist in the world, publicly traded companies. They have to have some type of custody solution.

[Rod Rudy]

Yes, right.

[Preston Pysh]

So if these companies are going to buy the tens of thousands, need some type of institutional custody, what does that look like? Is it going to be all consolidated into the hands of, call it a coinbase or just like three actors? And my opinion is no, it's not. There's. You're actually creating an incentive to have more institutional level custodians that are, you know, the good actors are going to get the business. The bad actors, hopefully there aren't any, but I'm not naive either, are washed out because they just didn't perform a good service at a reasonable price. So people, I guess where my frustration is in all of this is what brought us here are the hardcore bitcoin zealots that self custody their coins for the past decade plus. And they've brought us to the brink of now the world's finally getting it. Now the institutions are here and now the companies actually want to hold it too. And they can't hold it the same way that you hold it because they have auditors and they have like all these other rules that they have to play by. And I feel like the old guard and the people that helped us get here are looking at this scenario that's playing out, which is the institutions want to hold it too, and they're like pissed off about it.

[Rod Rudy]

And.

[Preston Pysh]

But I, I'm saying this at two breaths here. Like, I agree with the concern that we don't want it to be centralized at all. I agree with this. But I also am looking at and saying you can't be mad that institutions want to hold bitcoin. They're just trying to survive like you are at the individual level.

[Rod Rudy]

I think you nailed it, Preston, which is Similar to the ETF process. It's like now we want to be in this game and we have our own security protocols, we have all these different protocols that we have built our institutions that we need to continue to conform to. Now with that said, I do think to your point, over time, like, similar to the example I gave with the lightning torch, I feel like we're at the lightning torch level of institutional custody. We're going to look back and be like, I cannot believe we're all custodying with Coinbase because I think the incentives are there to have multi party custodians, to have better institutional custodians, to de risk yourself and your career risk, to have a multiple parties other than Coinbase to be custody your Bitcoin. I do think attestation reports, proof of reserves, all of that is going to come to light because it's just going to be a competitive advantage and competition will lead us into this clarity. While on the other side we should be chirping about protecting the properties that make bitcoin amazing. That I think is the fundamental common denominator to like, we do not cut corners. We need to be able to custody our bitcoin at any single point in time. And that's where it's going to get really interesting to me because with more and more treasury companies announcing more and more purchases, I'm waiting for one of our autist friends to go out and be like, okay, cool, there's 19 point whatever circulating million bitcoin and all you guys are adding up, I'm adding up all your guys acquisition of bitcoin right now and we're at like 23 million bitcoin.

[Preston Pysh]

So what gives? Well, I think this is another talking point that I keep hearing in these conversations with the treasury companies. And like I don't know what to tell people. Like in equities, when you value a business, it's a multiple of like their earnings capacity. And that is always going to be the case. Like you don't value the business because there's $100 in the bank vault or $100 worth of Bitcoin in the bank vault. And the earnings capacity is that there's going to be more tomorrow or the day after. Like this is the classic bird in the hand versus two in the bush, right? That you're trying to figure out. Like is the risk to go after the two in the bush worth more than the one that you can capture or the one that's already in your hand? And this is just how you value businesses. So if there's only 21 million units, but everything is going to be valued as a multiple. I don't know what to tell people. Like, it's. It's just, how many kids do you have?

[Rod Rudy]

And you said just try to get one bitcoin per kid. Call it a day.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah. What it's showing to me is that there's a lot of people in this space that have never, ever thought about, like, how things are valued in this world. And it's a bit of a culture clash that's kind of happening between the institutions and the people that are arriving that are finally, finally understanding bitcoin.

[Rod Rudy]

See, this is where. What's that meme? It's like I'm trying to, like, get away, but they pull me back in. Preston.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Your role in this is going to be front and center because, I mean, not to boost your ego, but I truly believe this. You're so well respected within the bitcoin community and well deserved. You know, you're being invited to Riga, to the Haltic, honey badger, to all the dev stuff. Like, you're the man. And then also on the institutional side, you have a great relationship with like, the Senator Hagerty of the world to all these other folks that they respect your opinion. So I feel like there's a small group of people that are in this, like, middle area that are able to help bridge the gap and we're going to see this next evolution in bitcoin, which I'm cautiously optimistic for.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah, I'm very optimistic. I just. I have to be honest with you. It's getting frustrating. It's really getting frustrating for me. I'm trying my best to, like, I don't know.

[Rod Rudy]

Well, you're doing a heck of a job. Let me just keep boosting you up because the deal you're going. Okay, so there's three currencies, right? In my opinion. There's time, capital and reputation. I think everyone, or not everyone, there's a lot of people that overvalue capital for the sake of time and reputation. So they will just destroy the rep. Not destroy, but like devalue the currency of reputation in order to increase capital. And they'll waste their time to increase capital as well, like so missing time from their family and so on and so on. And I think you're doing an unbelievable job of putting your reputation in the appropriate places, especially bridging this gap as well as your time, investing it appropriately and going to like, I'm so thankful you're coming to custody and Treasury Summit I'm so, like, going to these other places in Riga, Latvia, of all places, to all these other places. Preston, you're in, like, El Salvador. You're in X, Y, Z. And yeah, it's probably for ego death for a reason. But I know you care about it so much amongst a lot of other bitcoiners. And so there is a lot of chirping, especially online and, like, a lot of these other things. But going back to the ark, the payments, just seeing that gives me so much energy and gives me so much hope for what is to come that I'm like, you know what? I'll create another hundred summits to bring people together, because the in real life conversations are 100x better than any of the keyboard commando conversations that are happening online.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Amen to that. Let's talk a little bit about the physical spaces because you've expanded the network and for people that don't know. So what Rod built there in Nashville with bitcoin park, there is now a bitcoin park in Austin. So walk us through this. What happened?

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah, yeah. So it's the commons. So Parker Lewis was the one who started bitcoin commons. The mayor in the mayor, Austin, Texas, now head of business development at zap, right. He's just like, focused on building zap, right? And he asked me, like, hey, we really, like, the Austin community is amazing. And by the way, the Austin community is amazing. The density. And I don't like to say this because Parker and I have this, like, frenemy competition between Austin and Nashville, but the density of developers, engineers, and entrepreneurs in Austin, Preston, is unbelievable. Like, straight up unbelievable. I went. I have been, like, basically going there a minimum once a month. But, like, at beginning when we started it in February 1, I was going there weekly just doing a day trip and just texted like, a few friends and then a few friends, and then for the first meeting, just to let everyone know, like, what I think the vision here is. But I really needs to be community driven. We had like 14 of the best bitcoiners like that. I would just be like, are we. Should we do a summit right now? You guys, this would be amazing. And there's something there, but it takes a lot of work to continuously organize a community and rally the troops around meetups, workshops, and summits. And I do think it needs to be, like, a core focus. Like, my time, capital, reputation is all in on bitcoin park. So it's super honored even like, that Parker and the Austin community would just even think of me and now hiring two amazing people, Andrew Davis and Jack Lesser, both leading Park Austin and Park Nashville. And then Rob Warren, who heads up our research and education. I mentioned that custody white paper. He's the one authoring it. And by the way, just a quick tangent, like going to your point, I do think there just needs to be more resources that are signal versus noise. And so Cathie Wood, super kind. We've been doing that bitcoin brainstorm that you've been on a couple times. Her team and my team now with Rob are working on research together. So one of our first papers we're going to introduce is called Killing Bitcoin. Easier said than done. Because I want to. I want to bring to light about an itch of like, we need to be more adversarial in our conversations around bitcoin and just be more vigilant. And so how cool is it? Like, Ark Invest is going to publish this along with Bitcoin park and she's just been another double tangent. But she's just been so amazing.

[Preston Pysh]

Dude, she's awesome. She really is awesome.

[Rod Rudy]

I'm like a nobody and she's her and the team wanted to do this with Bitcoin Park.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Like, oh, man, they do the crypto thing and so on. Like, I'm really focused on bitcoin. I don't know if it's going to drive. She's like, rod, this is a called Bitcoin Brainstorm. You create and curate the show. We produce and distribute it. And I want to be there.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

I'm like, all right. I thought you'd just be there by like one episode or whatever. We just recorded our 18th episode and we've been doing it for two years now. Just had Paolo from Tether on, which was awesome with Dr. Laffer and yeah, it's just been. Been a blast. So I do think locally produced, globally distributed, high signal bitcoin and freedom tech news and information is going to be a huge need and differentiator. And that's what we're going to focus on.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Love it. Yeah. I got a chance to meet Dr. Laffer and.

[Rod Rudy]

And Cathy, not only meet him, you were on the panel with Kathy and Dr. Laffer. It was great.

[Preston Pysh]

I know it was a huge honor to really kind of sit down with both of them. Thanks to you. And just tell the audience a little bit about him and how quickly he just kind of like got bitcoin, like immediately.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

But it's really neat, the story with him.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

If you get the chance to meet Dr. Laffer. I would cancel everything you got and just make it happen. I love his energy. I love his curiosity. I love his directness. He's a big brain.

[Preston Pysh]

Tell people his background for people that might not know.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. So he was the former economic adviser for the Reagan administration. He was also the author of the Laffer Curve in Economic History. And he's also Kathy's mentor. Cathie Woods. Mentor.

[Preston Pysh]

He was. He was her teacher back in college, right?

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah, exactly.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

So they stayed very close.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And all the way. And I'm pretty sure he's on the board of ark. They're very involved and have a great relationship. And honestly, like, he's just amazing. He's in Nashville. His office is right up the street. His team comes to the park. I mean, it's. I pinch myself because I'm like, what timeline am I in right now? We got, like, all these people rolling through the park.

[Preston Pysh]

I can honestly say I don't know that I've been to the park.

[Rod Rudy]

Park.

[Preston Pysh]

The last four times I've been up there. There has at least been a senator at the park the last four times I've been up there. And every time I'm there and I see just, like, the people that are coming around for the events that you're holding, I'm just like. Like, is this real? Like, what is happening? This is so crazy.

[Rod Rudy]

And they're in, like, dad jeans and New Balances to, like, Like. And it's just whether it's policymakers and they're great, but, like, it's like the Dr. Laughers and it's like. Yeah, Kathy's. And it's like these other really amazing people in their own respective industries that want to just learn.

[Preston Pysh]

They're there to learn from us.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And then develop relationships directly. And that's what, you know, one of our core values at the park with the team is like, no gatekeepers. Like, we are not gatekeepers here. So, like, we want to authentically create connective tissue amongst, like, our core, which is our member, our bitcoin park member community, and then our general Bitcoin park community as well. But no, Dr. Laffer is unbelievable. He's. And so, like, a little bit of the reason why I wanted to do imagine, if. To be honest with you. So imagine.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah, Explain this, because this is happening after the custody summit.

[Rod Rudy]

That's right.

[Preston Pysh]

And then. Yeah, go ahead, run with it.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. So it's September 19th and 20th, and something I've been dreaming about for a long time. So I've wanted to do A summit of summits. Because I like. And Kathy's the one that kind of planted this in my head. She's like, rod, there's a convergence happening right now between bitcoin, AI energy and all these industries. And they're all converging and colliding right now. And it's going to be fascinating to see what happens. And I'm like, yeah, you know what? We need to like, bring that conversation to light. And it would be very tough to do it even. Like, our park summits are very focused on bitcoin and freedom tech. And they're like 100, 150 people this one. I really want to bring a lot of the industry leaders across bitcoin, AI energy and freedom tech together. And then on top of that, I just knew There's Kathy and Dr. Laffer. Every time I get them together, magic just happens between them. It's simply amazing. And so the Ark team, we have a weekly, like, meeting with the team just to riff on a number of things related to bitcoin. And like, I'm going to do this and I would love for you guys to partner with me. I'll do all the work similar to the create and curate. You guys produce and distribute. And they're like, auto, yes, let's go. And Kathy's been kind. She's coming. And Dr. Laffer's in, he's coming. Adam Back's coming, Odell and all those guys are coming. I definitely want to Ego Death would love all you guys and you guys are just crushing it. So I just want to give you guys a shout out and it makes it really cool because now, you know, a lot of the policymakers and a lot they now know about these bitcoiners. And when I'm like, oh, Adam Back or Preston Pish. Oh, they're coming. Okay, great. Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Tell them I said hello and we're going to come. And like, we'll just be in attendance. It's okay. And we just want to be there and support and learn from the broader community.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And the other second point, I like when they ask like, what's the topic? Right. And it's not like normally other ones would ask, who's coming? What's the audience side so on. And they're asking like, what's the topic? Yeah, that's interesting. Of course they're going to want to know who the audience is, but they can glean in to what's happening. And so at this one, we have like 65 companies, over 200 folks registered already for imagineif we have like companies like Xai coming with mostly the boring company like those type of companies and then imagine like a block stream anchor watch a BDK foundation are also going to be in attendance. Energy companies like TVA shout out to them. They are going to have a pretty significant presence and probably a participation as well. And then there's other energy providers like where it gets really fun especially on the Tennessee side. Preston is on the nuclear and so you got like Kairos Energy, Orano Oklahoma like we're tracking to have all of those folks in attendance too. So I could see a conversation really and that's why I titled this Imagine if and I want people and it's dreamers and doers. You know you got a Jack Dorsey for example. He's dreaming of we need to decentralize bitcoin mining and really compete at the rig level. And then he's got an amazing team of doers that just execute on that mission. And so I want to bring both of those groups together and I want us just to dream much bigger and what those possibilities are and then implement the world that we want to see. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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It's interesting because those three things are just converging almost like three different galaxies just kind of converging and are just going to smack into each other all at the same time. So the fact that you're like putting that all together to me is just freaking brilliant first of all. And I just can't even imagine like what's going to come out of that because if I was a policymaker from an elected official or whatever and you're not like crazy hyper focused on those three things for your state or jurisdiction. Like, I don't know what to tell you. You're totally missing, missing the boat on where everything's going.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Rod Rudy]

Well, and that's the thing. And I am very biased to Tennessee because that's where I live in Nashville and you know, the governor's team and all these. We have an unfair advantage with the TVA in Oak Ridge. We need to leverage this unfair advantage.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And especially on the SMRs, the small modular reactors. And how do we accelerate. The state did a really good job of creating this like $70 million fund to like kickstart investment in the state around nuclear companies.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And what I want to do, similar to the bitcoin side where we kind of made Nashville, where bitcoiners, like in the US as well as globally, kind of come and work, learn, collaborate and build. Well, every year in September for imagine if I want to bring all three of those industry leaders and doers, you're not going to be able to probably make it every year, but at least in Nashville, Tennessee, every September, imagine if it's happening and you got to tune in and be a part of this because that's what. Where we have really deep and meaningful connections and conversations.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

I mean, from the policy standpoint, they need to just open the floodgates for promoting these three entities to just set up shop, whatever they've got to do from a tax standpoint to promote it. And the thing is, is like you put that governance or that policy, the laws in place, you're just. It's going to be like a magnet for them to come into the region. So hopefully they realize this. I don't.

[Rod Rudy]

And I think they. And I'll share like Georgia, I think, is doing a good job of that, especially what they did with Core Scientific incentivizing them. There's. There was a reason why we were in Dalton, Georgia yesterday for the Proto announcement. Core has a number of facilities all over. I don't know what the reason was, but it seemed like Georgia Power, the Georgia government, the lieutenant government or lieutenant governor, the state senator, the council people, they were all lined up. And so that's another thing. We're talking about the policy side and there's the capital allocator side. This is really interesting to me as well. So we're probably, you know, so for imagine if you need to request an invitation, because I want to make sure, like I always say, even at our smallest meetups, to our largest experiences that we host, I always Say one thing when I kick it off, which is I take a lot of pride and responsibility in making this the best bitcoin and freedom tech experience you'll have all year. And so I want to make sure you're here at the best place. But the capital allocators are really interesting because now they're like, okay, this is interesting. I cannot deny that bitcoin is like this unbelievable investment. The administration is. Seems like they're supporting it. There's more air coverage in terms of supportive legislation. Okay, now let's. How do we allocate towards this space? Okay, well do we go the picks and shovels route and go into the infrastructure side or do we go straight to the treasury side, into the entrepreneur side? Do we go straight into the asset side and so on? And the type of high net worth individuals, family offices, institutional investors and these folks that want to learn more and, and it's so funny, they're like bringing like a physical notebook and being like, okay, Preston, you said this about this, like now I want to dig into what you meant by this because I really want to learn more about this. That's why I take a lot of pride and responsibility not only in the content curation, but in the people curation, speakers as well as the attendees to maximize the time for all of us to be there.

[Preston Pysh]

You briefly mentioned AI at the beginning and like literally as you were talking, I had an idea that like popped into my head that I think could be useful for all the attendees as they go back home and they're trying to decompress like everything that happened at the event. Before I throw out whatever that idea is, I want to talk and I just want to kind of get your overall opinion on using AI. Now I know you have talked about this recently in some of your interviews where you're doing browser extensions. You're doing this. Just the speed at which you can create content and bootstrap things with funding and whatnot. Using AI. Give us your rundown. Where, where are you at with AI? What's happening?

[Rod Rudy]

It's kind of like you have to use it in terms of your workflow. Whatever workflow you have, you need to augment it. Experiment with AI. So for example, I use voice to text pretty much now for everything I do. Majority of what I do on the keyboard now is voice to text because it's just voice is like 5 to 10 times more efficient than it is to text. However, the lift to actually get myself into that habit was very high. But I forced myself and now I'm running similar to AI. I would not. Oh, I just used it. It gave me an okay response or I didn't really. And then I'm just going to go back to googling and doing whatever. My first suggestion is commit. Don't pay an annual fee, but pay a monthly fee for whatever AI service. I have no recommendations on one or the other, but just use one and just start using it as your default Google like search. It's so funny when people ask me questions now or even like a question about something else. I'm like, did you ask whatever service like oh no. And then there's the answer right then and there. So that's first and foremost. Second is you'll be. And you do this really well. Is anything that's repetitive in terms of your workflows that you're looking to do and especially that takes away your energy should be most likely automated through an AI agentic like type of either a delegated purposefully or through some sort of AI agent. Full stop. Like you gotta get that off your workload. Because if I'm able to go like you take one step forward and I'm able to take one point, one step forward every single day, I'm gonna be light years ahead of you.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Even though you could still see me right now, you're not gonna be able to see me in like half a year from now.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And but I will say it's not like, oh well, the AI tooling still people are creative and thoughtful and you're gonna, there's so much slop out there and you're just like, dude, I know you're using AI. You're not like, I immediately do not read what you're saying. But then when, for example, I've always wanted to write more. I have this like series called this is dumb, but hear me out. And I have all these topics that I want to write about and now I can go to that backlog of notes and I can just start talking with the AI and just start getting my thoughts more crystallized. And now I write and for me it's somewhat therapeutic because it's just a great habit to develop and I wouldn't be able to do it without AI. So I would say in terms of the suggestion, it's just you have to include it in your workflow and it is just so unbelievable.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

So for me taking meetings, especially engineering tech heavy type meetings, which I take quite a bit of, we'll sit there, we'll talk for a half hour, an hour and you know, some Things I'm picking up, some things I'm not picking up. And a lot of the times you don't want to slow down the conversation because it's kind of moving very quickly. But what I found is we use like a Firefly service where it's giving you. And even Zoom has this now where you can get the full transcript of the conversation after you're done. And what I find myself doing is if it's a recurring conversation engineer. Let's take arc, for example, that we were talking about at the start of the show, which is a really technical thing with these virtual UTXOs and blah, blah, blah. So I have a context window and I would take the whole. Let's say it was a conversation for a half hour, an hour about ARC and I'm literally catching like 10 of what's being thrown down. I can take that entire discussion, rip it out of. The AI is giving me the word for word. Right. I can then ingest it into the context window via PDF and then I can go back and I can say, hey, there was something that happened in this conversation, like maybe 25 of the way through that was in reference to this. And I didn't really understand what was being said.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

And it knows exactly. It can immediately enter. I can interact almost like I have the best expert on the planet.

It's unbelievable.

But then where I think it even goes further is I might have another three conversations. I'll ingest those conversations into that same context window. And now it's just getting smarter and smarter. And my ability to query anything.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Is like off the charts. And so why I was smiling when you were talking about this event that you were having the whole time, I'm thinking, oh, my God, they need a transcript of every. Like if you have a website or something like that, after the event's over, that has a transcript of every panel. Right. And then you could even have roll ups and you could even have things like if, let's say you were a.

Politician or you were a person from.

The energy sector, or you were a person from this branch of whatever. You can have an AI recap. And like the. So what, like, why is this important to you?

Or what did you.

Like you can get all of that out of there and you could have these files that people could extract for themselves that could then help them chew through the value capture that they can get that maybe they just didn't have the time or bandwidth to be able to handle while they were there, or they didn't even attend. But they want to be able to.

Ingest all of this.

Dude, it's crazy. It's crazy.

[Rod Rudy]

It is totally crazy. And just like the website, which is bitcoinpark.com imagineif Shout out to Jack on my team. He vibe coded that brilliant website together and it looks so nice.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

All of that. And then think about it. We have speakers, the profile pics. All of that is just like. I think we were using cursor AI for that one. And it's just so easy. And that's where Preston. The curation.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yes.

[Rod Rudy]

Of content.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Is going to. And that's where I'm dumb and bad at like 99 out of a hundred things. One thing I think I'm pretty good at is curation of signal.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And this is like me, like Marty and I joke is like, and this is our time to shine, you know, the thought boys or whatever it's called. But being able to curate all of that signal and then distill it into like clear bites of information.

[Preston Pysh]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

Such that you could be the policymaker, you could be the engineer, you could be the entrepreneur. And you're like, wait a minute. I'm just want to be an entrepreneur that makes these widgets. Oh, I can use bitcoin plus this AI customer service widget. And now I'm a band of one that I have unstoppable money that I'm accepting while I have my customer service department that I would have to pay like hundreds of thousands of dollars in a call center or whatever. And I'm able to just focus in on my craft that actually gives me the most energy.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And I enjoy it, Preston. For our kids and where we are right now. I've never been more bullish in my entire life.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

Here's another weird idea. You could take transcripts of everything that happened at this. You know, imagine if let's say there's 30 panels or whatever, right? You take the transcripts of those 30 panels, you put them into your own transformer so that you train it on everything that was said.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Right.

[Preston Pysh]

And then you just have some, like, interface on the website after the event that I could go in there, I'm politician, whoever, or I'm from the energy sector, CEO, whoever. And I go in there and I'm just like, hey, I'm out of the energy sector. Like, what is something that happened during this? All these panel discussions that would be really useful for me to know. And literally the transformer that's been coded up on all the conversations that happened at the thing can come back and respond and give that specific person exactly what they need to know that was insightful or novel that came out of the conversation, like totally.

[Rod Rudy]

I think our at least my vision here. You're totally right. And you could actually use Claude probably in chat, GBT and all that other stuff. Yeah, as long as we make it available, which I don't see any reason why we wouldn't. One of the areas, I will say this, most people are though lazy, including myself, so they're not going to even want to maybe even do that interaction and step, they're going to want to go click and show me the clips, show me the highlight and it's like the Instagram feed. But there's going to be a good percent that want to go choose your own adventure and go down that rabbit hole. I do think this allows us because we've done such a great job of curating a lot of conversations at the park. We're sitting on a treasure trove of just amazing content similar to how you are as well. And we just distribute it on our just regular Bitcoin Park Twitter account. Well, we now have 18 episodes of Bitcoin Brainstorm. We have all these meetups, workshops and summits that we've produced and published. Now we're going to organize them around these summits that we've created. So we have the Energy and Mining Summit in January, most likely Fossil be February. March is Bitcoin Takeover in Austin. April is our grassroots Bitcoin and the list keeps going to September, which is imagineif and the Custody and Treasury Summit. October we do Global Bitcoin Summit and then there's a Bitcoin Payment Summit. There's Noster, the list goes on, every single one of those. Preston, I'd like to produce a annual white paper that is a good primer for the audience to come and learn more. And you don't even need to read the whole paper. The paper is just published. And then you can use your own agent interface to query it and be like, hey, you know my style and my learning abilities. How best should I prepare? I want to go to the Custody and Treasury Summit September 17th and 18th. What are five bullets I want to know about? Great. Oh, who else is speaking, by the way, on MPC Multi party Custody and are they speaking on this? And what should I pick up? I was like, oh, Rob Hamilton and Adam Backer doing XYZ on this and what are the risk factors that I. And then all of a sudden it's like, you know, that's why I wrote this piece, how conferences just suck. And they're just like a lot very vanilla. And look, I get them and there's a purpose for these type of things, but like curated experiences like these summits, in my opinion, and now having more information to be better prepared to go into there to maximize your deep knowledge as well as getting your connective tissue exponentially increased. That's what I care a lot about. And I think if someone gave me that resource ahead of time going into a hundred person summit, I'd be like, holy smokes. I'm like cooking with gasoline right now. Meeting, like catching it with Preston and catching it with this person on X, y or z. Yeah.

[Preston Pysh]

All right, Rod, we could just talk all day long, but if people want to attend this or they want to learn more about you, give them a handoff where they can learn more.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. And Preston, I want to just sell you this. I know there's some days where it's like, oh, man. And especially traveling and what you do, what you do is phenomenal, man. Thank you. And keep up the energy because it means a lot for the community, the bitcoin community, probably the investing community. And we still have so much work to do. We're still so early in bitcoin that we need more. So thank you for what you.

[Preston Pysh]

Thank you, Rod. That means a lot. It really does.

[Rod Rudy]

Yeah. So I'm excited to see you in Nashville September 17th and 18th at the custody and treasury summit. I would recommend just going to our meetup page, Bitcoin Park.com or we'll go to Bitcoin Park.com forward/, custody, hyphen, Treasury. We'll probably put in the show notes as well and then just go down and join the wait list. We're going through that. That one, unfortunately, is going to be sold out here sooner than later. But we have a great lineup. Like you, Parker, Lewis, Adam back. I'm just pulling off the top of my head. Sean, Bill from Blockstream Odell's going to be there and the list goes on. It's just, I'm humbled that you guys are all coming. So thank you. And then, yeah, imagine if this is the first one. This is the Summit of Summits. September 19th and 20th. We rented out the Fisher center for Performing Arts, which is walking distance from Bitcoin Park. It's this beautiful theater. We'll probably have like 300 to 500 people when it's all said and done. And this is like capital allocators, policymakers, entrepreneurs across the bitcoin AI, energy and freedom Tech space. And I just want these to be, like, crazy natural collisions amongst these groups of people. It's going to be pretty gnarly, in my opinion. So we'll see how it goes. I'm consciously optimistic.

[Preston Pysh]

I'm bummed that I'm missing that. I'm excited about.

[Rod Rudy]

Well, you have a family obligation, and that is honestly the most important thing.

[Preston Pysh]

So I've got to describe this family obligation to you so you understand.

[Rod Rudy]

Okay.

[Preston Pysh]

I have a really good friend that I flew with in South Korea whenever, you know, I was a pilot over there. Wait, our mutual friend, or no, no, not. But our mutual friend is also. He's going to be. Our mutual friend is going to be at this wedding.

[Podcast Announcer]

No way.

[Preston Pysh]

But anyway, and that's a whole nother story, but we flew together when I was in South Korea. And the joke, you know, because that's where I met my wife. I was flying in South Korea. So she knows him really well. And the big joke amongst all of us was he is never getting married. He's never, ever, ever getting married. And that weekend, it's his wedding. And we're. This is. This is my buddy Joe, and we're going to Joe's wedding.

[Rod Rudy]

So I love.

[Preston Pysh]

It happened. It happened.

[Rod Rudy]

Well, congratulations to your buddy Joe. I will say it's similar to what we're building at the park. What we're building is to be durable for decades. And that's where we value the time, capital, and reputation. And so not this year for you, especially next year, but for this year can be more thankful for Kathy, Dr. Laffer, Senator Hagerty, and a bunch of other folks. Senator Blackburn. A bunch of other folks. Especially on the energy side, I'm really, really interested. Like, we have such deep relationships in bitcoin right now. Preston. I am very interested in developing this level of relationships on the energy side, but especially on the nuclear side. I feel like these guys have just.

[Preston Pysh]

Been like, I think it's going there, Rod.

[Rod Rudy]

I think it's going there. They've been pushed away, pushed to the side for so long.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And now they're feeling the love a little bit.

[Unidentified Guest/Participant]

Yeah.

[Rod Rudy]

And us bitcoiners can be like, hey.

[Preston Pysh]

Like, the doctor got your back. It's the Dr. Evil meme. Right. Where come. Yeah, exactly.

[Rod Rudy]

I love it. But that one, if you go to bitcoin park.com for slash, imagine if you just hit the request invitation, I'm very proud to offer complimentary tickets for our bitcoin park members like yourself and others. And so that's like a small token of appreciation to increase the member benefit is just adding to it.

[Preston Pysh]

Well, you guys heard it here first. We'll have links to all of that in the show notes. And I hope you guys enjoy Nashville if you do attend. So broad. Thank you.

[Podcast Announcer]

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