Early Riders Media

Early Riders
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A weekly podcast covering the underlying mechanics of the bitcoin protocol, its ongoing development, project funding, and real-world applications of the technology

  1. 6d ago

    Bitcoin's Surprise $46B Bid Starts Today

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. Michael, Liam, and Brian open on BitGo acquiring NYDIG's institutional trading business for a reported $42.5 million, and on Russia's largest bank moving to accept Bitcoin, ETH, and USDT as loan collateral while forecasting $46 billion of regulated crypto exchange trading in year one. They get into why a sanctioned, energy rich sovereign is the one recollateralizing first, Blockstream's new post quantum signature proposal, and the SEC sending a crypto custody overhaul to the White House with the Clarity Act stalled. The back half is market plumbing: why settlement is the real prize, the tokenized GLD that spiked to $2,000 on Robinhood over the weekend against $400 for the underlying, bank tokenized deposits, and Robinhood's chain now out-earning every Ethereum L2. They close on Hyperliquid, trading Anthropic shares on entropy.io, the Singularity Stack report, NVIDIA buying Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, and a $400 robot duck that talks over Nostr. Chapters 00:00 - Bessent, Warsh, and the bond market 03:32 - BitGo acquires NYDIG's institutional trading business 07:47 - What BitGo actually gets: liquidity, scale, and stickiness 11:24 - Russia's largest bank moves on BTC, ETH, and USDT 12:56 - Recollateralizing the global financial system 15:34 - Energy rich and sanctioned: why Russia goes first 18:14 - Is the US behind, or already through the door? 20:58 - Blockstream's quantum fix and the Shrinks proposal 24:14 - The SEC preps an overhaul of crypto custody rules 28:35 - Why settlement is the prize: DTC, IOUs, and T+0 33:10 - Tokenized GLD spikes to $2,000 on Robinhood 35:04 - Tokenized deposits, bank consortiums, and JP Morgan 38:31 - Robinhood chain now out-earns every Ethereum L2 43:54 - Hyperliquid, Trump, and 24/7 commodities 47:16 - Trading Anthropic shares on entropy.io 51:12 - The Singularity Stack report and Onramp is hiring 56:13 - NVIDIA buys Hugging Face, and a $400 robot duck on Nostr If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    Bitcoin's Surprise $46B Bid Starts Today

  2. Aug 25

    Bessent Just Doubled Treasury Buybacks - Did Something Break?

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. The Treasury doubled its bond buyback operation and Bitcoin ran from roughly $63,000 to $80,000 in a week. Michael, Liam, and Brian open on what Bessent actually did, why issuing at the front end to buy the long end is yield curve control without the name, and why gold, oil, and Bitcoin all responded the way the debasement thesis said they would. They get into whether the move was coordinated, what the White House crypto meeting and the SEC's new proposals mean with the Clarity Act stalled, and how tokenized stocks and meme coins are about to make grift a feature of the next cycle. The back half turns to market structure: Citi launching Bitcoin custody, why Bitcoin is a one way street once people understand it, and the honeypot problem banks are walking into. They close on Stripe buying OpenRouter, NVIDIA moving up the AI stack, agentic payments at Ramp, and a leak of API keys from 659 Stripe merchants. Chapters 00:00 - Bitcoin rips from $63K to $80K 02:55 - Bessent doubles the Treasury buyback 05:27 - Why you cannot time Bitcoin's best ten days 07:35 - Revaluing gold and the liquidity sponge trade 11:43 - Tether and the new eurodollar market 12:22 - Bitcoin is back on institutional screens 15:03 - Was this whole move coordinated? 17:49 - The White House crypto meeting and the SEC 20:32 - Tokenized stocks, meme coins, and legalized grift 28:16 - Oil, energy, and nominal versus real wealth 32:19 - Citi launches Bitcoin custody 33:20 - Bitcoin is a one way street 40:44 - The honeypot problem with bank custody 43:56 - Stripe buys OpenRouter and the singularity letter 49:36 - NVIDIA, Perplexity, OpenAI, and Hugging Face 58:20 - Ramp, x402, and agentic payments 1:01:34 - Robots beat Usain Bolt 1:06:20 - Single point of failure: 659 Stripe merchant keys If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    Bessent Just Doubled Treasury Buybacks - Did Something Break?

  3. Aug 18

    How NVIDIA Just Became AI's Central Bank

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian open on NVIDIA becoming the "Federal Reserve of AI," the $500 billion in seller financing behind the buildout, and Gavin Baker's warning about where it leads. They dig into whether the AI boom is a bubble or growth, the $3 trillion in off-balance-sheet AI spending, and the case for an eventual government backstop. The guys run through the week's deals: Stripe's finalized $7 billion acquisition of OpenRouter, Elon's Grokbot, and why agents eventually need Bitcoin. They cover Tether's first KPMG audit, a wave of ETF plumbing from BlackRock plus Goldman's purchase of Neos, and a run of single points of failure from the Trezor and SafePal breaches to a $1 million Gmail hack. They close on Early Riders' 50 most interesting companies in Bitcoin history and OpenAI's talent exodus ahead of its IPO. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction 01:01 - NVIDIA as the Federal Reserve of AI 04:05 - Bubble or Growth: Distorted Money and Where Value Accrues 08:40 - The $3 Trillion in Off-Balance-Sheet AI Spending 10:38 - Why Frontier AI May Not Be Sustainable 14:33 - The ASI Endgame and a Government Backstop 19:10 - Stripe Finalizes Its $7B OpenRouter Acquisition 22:17 - Agents, Routing, and Why They Need Bitcoin 25:57 - Elon's Grokbot and Simplified Agent Deployment 32:15 - Tether's First KPMG Audit 37:07 - ETF Plumbing: BlackRock and Goldman Buys Neos 39:17 - World Liberty's Bank Charter and the Delayed CLARITY Vote 40:52 - Single Point of Failure: Trezor, SafePal, and a $1M Hack 46:56 - The 50 Most Interesting Companies in Bitcoin History 50:05 - OpenAI's Talent Exodus and Scarce-Asset Mania 55:37 - Closing Thoughts If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    How NVIDIA Just Became AI's Central Bank

  4. Aug 11

    Bitcoin Had its Worst Month and Didn't Even Flinch

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. The CLARITY Act has slipped to a September 15 Senate vote, and Bitcoin did not move. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian make the case that stalled legislation on top of the Coldcard fallout, BIP-110 infighting, and Saylor selling, with the price still holding, is what a bottom looks like rather than a top. They run through a brutal week for Bitcoin infrastructure: BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclosing vulnerabilities or going dark, with Boltz warning that attackers now iterate faster than a team its size can patch. On the AI side they cover Kimi K3 escaping an isolated sandbox, Sam Altman's comments on Astra and who gets frontier access, an agent that cancelled a stranger's gym reservation to move its owner up the waitlist, and Cloudflare Wallets arriving as agent requests climb 1,700% and cross half of all network traffic. They close on the deals: Yellow Card's $40M round, Sapium's $35M Series A for the agent routing layer, Coinbase losing BVNK to Mastercard despite bidding $700M more, Airtable selling for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak, and what Block's Buzz did during the Coldcard incident. Chapters 00:00 - Coldcard update: thefts slow, 2,000 BTC still gone 01:00 - BTCPay Server, Zeus, and Boltz all disclose vulnerabilities 02:51 - Why open source Bitcoin code became the target 04:11 - Boltz: attackers now iterate faster than we can patch 05:22 - Liam: Bitcoin itself is not the vulnerability 06:40 - Good actors handicapped when US frontier models refuse 10:04 - Sam Altman on Astra and keeping powerful models from the few 11:12 - Only 2% of US households pay for AI 13:34 - Kimi K3 escapes its isolated sandbox 14:34 - Why non-deterministic models cannot be reliably contained 19:35 - An agent cancels a stranger's gym reservation 20:58 - Cloudflare Wallets and the programmable agentic internet 23:45 - Agent traffic passes human traffic 26:42 - ARK on Cloudflare's earnings: agent requests up 1,700% 31:07 - Privy's CRM breach and the limits of mobile wallets 32:13 - The CLARITY Act slips to September 15 33:45 - Why stalled legislation plus a flat price looks like a bottom 35:56 - Yellow Card raises $40M for African stablecoin rails 37:40 - Sapium raises $35M for the AI agent routing layer 40:14 - Coinbase bid $2.5B for BVNK and lost to Mastercard at $1.8B 42:17 - Airtable sells for $1.29B after an $11.7B peak 45:32 - The Architecture Problem and where custody goes next 47:48 - Why every firm ends up at multi-institution custody 49:22 - Buzz, Goose, and how Block moved in hours on Coldcard 54:45 - GPU hours as crude oil: an open source AI analogy 55:34 - Sergey Brin returns to Gemini, Meta ships Muse Code If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    Bitcoin Had its Worst Month and Didn't Even Flinch

  5. Aug 4

    Coldcard Was Supposed to Be the Safest. What Now?

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. The Coldcard exploit has escalated: nearly 2,000 Bitcoin drained and counting, passphrase wallets confirmed compromised, MK4s and Qs exposed alongside the deprecated MK3, and Coinkite confirming a five-year-old flaw in on-device seed generation. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian walk the full timeline of the worst self-custody incident in Bitcoin's history: how the RNG silently downgraded to guessable entropy, why same-vendor multisig quorums are also at risk, and the firmware updates reportedly bricking devices mid-migration. Michael and Liam share their own weekend fund migrations (one from the back seat of a car), and the guys get into the harder questions: why AI may be a bigger threat to Bitcoin security than quantum computing, why the stampede to exchanges and ETFs is the wrong lesson, and what a fault-tolerant custody architecture looks like when one mistake can no longer be allowed to knock you out of the game. Chapters 00:00 - The Coldcard exploit: what happened and who is affected 02:20 - Move your funds: urgent guidance for Coldcard holders 05:09 - Technical breakdown: how the RNG flaw was exploited 10:17 - Passphrases, firmware bricking, and the silent downgrade 17:14 - Earlier warnings and why same-vendor multisig is exposed 21:22 - Weekend migrations: Michael and Liam's personal anecdotes 30:26 - AI vs quantum: the real threat to Bitcoin security 33:25 - Single-vendor risk, single-entity risk, and custody honeypots 44:03 - Silver linings: the end of the custody purity test 50:26 - Where the industry goes from here 56:15 - One mistake can't knock you out of the game 59:05 - Final guidance and staying vigilant If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    Coldcard Was Supposed to Be the Safest. What Now?

  6. Jul 28

    Dorsey’s Buzz & Open Source is Building a $1M Bitcoin Future

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian open on the open-versus-closed AI debate: Jensen Huang's first-ever tweet and NVIDIA's letter backing open models, the new Security Alliance consortium, the researchers quietly wishing they could slow it all down, and NVIDIA's reported $250 billion financing for OpenAI's Ohio data center. They dig into Jack Dorsey's Buzz, the open-source workspace built on the same Noster and Bitcoin primitives as BitChat, and what shared compute and censorship-resistant protocols mean as BitChat downloads spike 32-fold in India. The guys run through a stack of payments deals: Stripe's talks to buy OpenRouter near $10 billion, Cursor, Ramp, and Meta building model routers, and Natural Pay's $30 million Series A for agentic payments. They get into their favorite topic, the DATs: Mallers exiting 21 Capital as Tether's XXI merger collapses, Strategy's first Stretch buyback, and the new Bitcoin security consortium taking on quantum. They close on Augustus's $180 million raise, Worldcoin, and Travis Kalanick's return with Adam. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and overview of AI and open models 02:10 - Jensen Huang's first tweet on open models and global cooperation 09:08 - Discussion on slowing AI development and game theory 18:03 - Jack Dorsey's Buzz: Open source workspace and primitives 24:55 - Shared compute, decentralized protocols, and open standards 35:02 - Regulatory landscape and geopolitical implications 45:11 - Impacts on privacy, security, and censorship resistance 54:03 - Recent deals and industry movements in AI and crypto 01:02:08 - The future of Bitcoin, open protocols, and decentralized data If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    Dorsey’s Buzz & Open Source is Building a $1M Bitcoin Future

  7. Jul 21

    The Bitcoin Catalyst Wall Street Isn’t Pricing In

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian break down Moonshot's Kimmy K3 release and what a more open, cheaper Chinese frontier model means for the race against Claude Fable 5 and GPT 5.6, from cyber guardrails and export controls to the Trump administration weighing a ban on Chinese models. They dig into the AI capital markets: Anthropic and DeepSeek's IPO plans, Nous Research's $75 million raise at a $1.5 billion valuation, Gavin Baker's intelligence-per-dollar thesis, Liquid AI, and OpenShip's self-hostable app platform. The guys run through the payments story: the $53 billion Stripe, Advent, and Block bid for PayPal, Visa's new OUSD stablecoin platform, and Amazon Japan's move into a yen-backed stablecoin. They cover a stack of digital asset headlines: IBIT options limits rising to 1 million contracts, Citadel's $400 million investment in Crypto.com at a $20 billion valuation, the ECB's digital euro pilot, Velocity's $38 million Series A, Tether's Genius Act countdown, and Lynn Alden's new Bitcoin-focused PE firm. They close on where the Clarity Act stands, Early Riders' mid-year letter, Onramp's back-to-basics promo, and AI's arrival in film and music. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and Weekly Recap 01:26 - Kimmy K3 Release and Open Source AI Models 05:43 - Meta-level Analysis of AI Race and AGI 08:04 - AI Development: Capabilities and Guardrails 09:44 - AI as a Commodity and Data Strategies 11:08 - Global AI Race and Export Controls 13:13 - US-China AI Power Dynamics 16:46 - US Regulatory Posturing and Competition 21:55 - US and Chinese AI Model Competition 24:58 - AI Infrastructure and Market Share Shifts 31:40 - AI and Financial Markets: IPOs and Capital Flows 36:29 - Open Source AI Projects and Sovereignty 37:16 - Fintech and Payments: Stripe, PayPal, and Crypto 49:05 - Digital Asset Headlines: Tether, Stablecoins, and Regulation 52:58 - Crypto Market Dynamics and Capital Flows 55:25 - Bitcoin and Digital Asset Strategies 01:00:16 - AI and Bitcoin: The Future of Capital and Innovation 01:12:50 - Closing Remarks and Future Outlook If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    The Bitcoin Catalyst Wall Street Isn’t Pricing In

  8. Jul 14

    Why The Banks Changed Their Tune On Bitcoin

    Connect with Early Riders — https://www.earlyriders.com/contact Connect with Onramp — https://onrampbitcoin.com/contact-us/ Presented collaboratively by Early Riders & Onramp Media… Final Settlement is a weekly podcast covering capital markets, dealmaking, early-stage venture, bitcoin applications and protocol development. This week Michael, Liam, and Brian break down the banks' accelerating tokenization push: BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan joining a 54-firm UK tokenization task force, Swift's blockchain ledger pilot with 17 banks, and what it means for Bitcoin's role in the emerging plumbing. They dig into Satya Nadella's AI sovereignty thesis, Microsoft's Frontier Company data play, Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI, and the Fed's new AI task force under Kevin Warsh. The guys run through a stack of deals: TerraWolf's $19 billion Anthropic infrastructure agreement, OLAMA's $65 million raise, Paradigm's $1.2 billion fourth fund expanding into AI and robotics, and Tether's $20 million investment in Mercado Bitcoin. They close on TradFi's crypto expansion via SBI Holdings and Russia's Alpha Bank, Kraken's $22 million lawsuit win, where the Clarity Act stands ahead of the midterms, and Spiral's new open source push to merge Bitcoin and AI. Chapters 00:00 - Introduction and Show Overview 00:18 - Market Sentiment and Show Focus 01:15 - Banks and Traditional Enterprises in Digital Asset Space 02:40 - UK Tokenization Task Force and Use Cases 03:40 - Swift Blockchain Ledger Pilot with 17 Banks 04:34 - Global Sprint in Tokenized Securities and Deposits 07:23 - Bitcoin's Role in the Future of Digital Infrastructure 09:39 - The Bullish Case for Bitcoin Amidst Tokenization 12:28 - AI Tools and Sovereignty in Data Ownership 15:37 - Microsoft's Investment in AI and Data Sovereignty 22:16 - Microsoft Frontier Company and Proprietary Data Platforms 25:07 - The Importance of Human Agency in AI Adoption 28:40 - AI and the Disruption of Traditional Business Models 29:08 - Apple Suing OpenAI Over Trade Secrets 32:36 - The Long-Term Impact of AI and Open Source Models 36:50 - DoorDash's AI Code Reviewer and Internal AI Adoption 38:19 - Fed's AI Task Force and Economic Policy 43:32 - Russia's Strategic Use of Bitcoin and Digital Assets 50:07 - Paradigm's New Fund and Broader Tech Investment 55:13 - Traditional Finance's Entry into Crypto and Digital Assets 01:02:41 - Regulatory Developments and the Future of Crypto Legislation 01:09:18 - Bitcoin's Role in the Future of Digital Infrastructure 01:11:21 - Open Source AI and Bitcoin Integration If you found this valuable, please subscribe to Early Riders Insights for access to the best content in the ecosystem weekly: https://www.earlyriders.com/research Keep up with Michael: https://x.com/MTanguma Keep up with Liam: https://x.com/Lnelson_21 Keep up with Brian: https://x.com/BackslashBTC

    Why The Banks Changed Their Tune On Bitcoin
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About

A weekly podcast covering the underlying mechanics of the bitcoin protocol, its ongoing development, project funding, and real-world applications of the technology

Information

  • Creator
    Early Riders
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    75
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Early Riders
  • Show Website
    Early Riders Media