Straight, No Chaser

Gavin
  • 0.0 (0)
  • EDUCATION

Understanding Freedom through Money, Technology, Economics and Philosophy

  1. NOV 19

    Monthly Round Up 4: Freedom Needs Better Defaults: Self-Hosted AI, Community Custody, And Paying With Sats

    We trade war stories about AI coding that dazzles then stalls, and show how self-hosted LLMs and agents can reclaim privacy and time. The talk shifts to real-world Bitcoin: QR payments across South Africa, M-Pesa bridges in Kenya, community custody with FediMint, and a world-first open secure element from Trezor. • AI tools that impress early then hit walls • Self-hosted LLMs on Start9 for privacy and resilience • Defaults and data: using AI to summarise terms • Local hosting versus cloud trade-offs • FediMint community custody experiments and limits • Money Badger scaling Bitcoin at 700k+ South African merchants • Safety gains with Tando bridging Bitcoin to M-Pesa • How Bitcoin scales via existing rails and “change in sats” • Breez Time To Build challenge and OpenSats grants • Trezor Safe 7 with open secure element • China’s e-CNY, BRICS, and why neutral money matters If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, what are you doing? You can get 10% off your ticket if you use the code OKIN https://za26.adoptingbitcoin.org/ https://trezor.io/ https://x.com/BitcoinEkasi https://x.com/OKIN_17 https://x.com/OrangeSaaS https://bitcoinonly.io/ https://www.useorange.com/ https://btcpayserver.org/ https://btcpay386617.lndyn.com/login?ReturnUrl=%2F Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    1h 8m

  2. NOV 5

    Gerhard Wolmarans - If It’s Not 200 Years Old, I'm not Interested

    The news cycle says crisis; history says pattern. We sit down with political philosopher and lecturer Gerhard Wolmarans to test whether our moment is truly exceptional or simply another liminal passage where the old order fades and the new hasn’t yet taken shape. From Rome to Mali, the Glorious to the French Revolution, Gerhard traces how change arrives—sometimes as a flood, sometimes as a slow thaw—and why the health of politics often decides whether societies reform or fracture. We dig into the mechanics that keep a country steady: a capable state that can actually deliver, the rule of law that binds even rulers, and real democratic accountability that keeps power from curdling. Along the way, we wrestle with Aristotle’s timeless challenge: people want the good life, but cooperation at scale is hard—especially in diverse, mobile, secular societies where shared moral anchors are less obvious. Gerhard argues that wise leadership starts with reading context accurately, learning from the past without chronological snobbery, and prioritising with moral clarity. Then we zoom out to the big board: shifting demographics, the staying power of the US, the ascent of China and India, a growing Africa, and a likely future that’s plural rather than dominated by a single hegemon. Layer on AI and robotics—threatening both specialised cognitive work and manual labour—and the stakes sharpen. Gerhard's bottom line is simple and demanding: centre human dignity, acknowledge human complexity, and build institutions that tame power and enable flourishing. If we get that right, a liminal age becomes a launchpad, not a cliff. Enjoyed the conversation? Follow and share the show, leave a review, and tell us: which historical lesson do we most need to relearn today? Reach out to Gerhard Wolmarans on the University of Pretoria staff page. Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    1h 3m

  3. OCT 27

    Bridge to Bitcoin - Money Changes Culture Before It Changes Policy

    Want to see Bitcoin move from theory to till? We sit down with Bridge to Bitcoin—the team quietly onboarding UK pubs, cafés, galleries, and independents—to unpack a playbook that starts with footfall, not hype. Their pitch is disarmingly simple: free setup, native Bitcoin stack, and a customer base that seeks you out. That’s why hospitality leads the charge. When a venue accepts Lightning, meetups follow, and revenue does too. Owners can auto-convert to pounds on day one and later choose to hold a slice, once they’ve seen the green ticks become repeat customers and CSV lines. We widen the lens to corporates and policy. For big organisations, “accept Bitcoin” is rarely step one; education and risk management are. Put Bitcoin on the risk register, assign a small team to understand the tech, and map both threats and new markets. Think in demographics and brands: how do you speak to a rising cohort of Bitcoin-native customers without turning payments into a science project? The same principle applies to politics. Bottom-up value creation drives top-down attention, not the other way around. That’s why community infrastructure matters: 60-plus meetups across the UK, a weekly events newsletter, and conferences that link merchant adoption with real demand. We don’t dodge the UK mood: inflation, heavy regulation, and talent flight strain builders. Yet the grassroots story is bright. A sticker on a door can pull in travellers from an hour away—or overseas—because spending sats is a moment you remember. If you run a small business, the lift is light and the upside is real. If you’re in the C-suite, start with education, scenarios, and timeframes. And if you’re a listener curious about the “circular economy,” visit a meetup, pay for something with Lightning, and feel what changes when money settles at human speed. Enjoyed the conversation? Follow the links in the notes, subscribe for more, and share this episode with a merchant or manager who needs a pragmatic path into Bitcoin. X: @Bridge2Bitcoin www.bitcoinevents.uk https://spotify.link/xlL74qk6NXb Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    1h 39m

  4. OCT 22

    Dirk Roeder - From 21 Wonders To Energy Freedom: On Travel, Grids, And Human Prosperity

    What does freedom look like when it’s not a slogan but a daily practice? For Dirk Roeder, it starts with owning his time—and he stress‑tests that idea by circling the globe with his wife, mapping an eight‑month route through 21 wonders across four categories. The stories are vivid and honest: planning around seasons, securing the rare Machu Picchu slot, and discovering that people are kinder than headlines suggest. El Salvador’s transformation becomes a standout moment, not as a hot take but as a lived encounter with safer streets and proud citizens. From there we switch gears to the engine beneath modern life: energy. Dirk unpacks why there is no such thing as a rich, low‑energy country. Everything that lifts living standards—food systems, clean water, lighting, healthcare, logistics, and now AI—rides on abundant, reliable electricity. He explains how real grids work in plain language: frequency must hold, forecasts miss, weather swings, and operators use 15‑minute auctions and real‑time dispatch to keep supply and demand in balance. Spinning turbines provide crucial inertia; sometimes generators are paid to curtail or factories are paid to pause, all in service of stability. We also explore a surprising ally for reliability: Bitcoin mining as a flexible load. When solar overproduces at midday, miners can absorb surplus power and turn it into revenue, then power down at peak demand to free capacity for homes and industry. Call it digital monetary photosynthesis—the conversion of stranded electrons into economic value. This is the market doing what it does best: rewarding responsiveness, aligning incentives, and enabling more renewables without sacrificing resilience. The broader message is clear: prosperity grows when we scale clean, affordable, dependable energy and let free markets test ideas, iterate, and win on merit. If you care about travel that widens your view, energy that expands human freedom, and practical ways to keep the lights on while cutting emissions, you’ll feel at home here. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who geeks out on grids or globe‑trotting, and leave a review with your top insight—we’d love to hear what surprised you most. https://21hemoon.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@21hemoon Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    59 min

  5. OCT 15

    Monthly Round Up 3: Silent Rails, Loud Implications

    The mood swings of the market don’t define the mission—and this roundtable proves it. We swap war stories from live demos and travel to Lugano with an update on a coastal Bitcoin hub in South Africa, then dive straight into the most charged question of the moment: what really happens when crypto dollars move on Bitcoin rails via Lightning and RGB? There’s clear utility for cross-border payments and the global south, but also a live risk of compliance creep, node capture, and cultural drift away from self-sovereign money. We unpack the geopolitics, from Washington’s embrace of Tether as an inflation export and Treasury buyer to the EU’s CBDC-first strategy, and ask what builders should assume about state incentives and surveillance. Privacy gets a practical boost with Sparrow’s silent payments—clean, reusable addresses that still protect receivers on-chain. We compare use-cases with BTC Pay Server, celebrate how Shamrock and Aqua lower the bar for merchant setups, and share the simple tactics that convert sceptics: reimbursements over Blink at a Bootlegger meetup, real coffee paid with real sats, and the “green check” that beats any debate. On the flip side, we call out a local bank app’s contact-grab “feature” and talk about why spam thrives despite privacy laws. The fix we want to see? Pay-to-message and pay-to-call with sats—economic friction that stops bots without forcing IDs. The highlight might be the momentum on the ground in South Africa: Money Badger’s integrations lighting up hundreds of thousands of merchant endpoints, community groups testing daily, and a treasure hunt that’s almost too easy because you can pay with Bitcoin nearly everywhere. It’s adoption the grassroots way—bottom-up, permissionless, and practical. We close with clear takeaways: stack sats, master your craft, and build tools that keep people private by default. If money routes shape power, then making Bitcoin the easiest way to move value—without gatekeepers—is how we win. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a sanity check after the selloff, and leave a review with your take on stablecoins over Lightning. https://x.com/BitcoinEkasi https://x.com/OKIN_17 https://x.com/OrangeSaaS https://bitcoinonly.io/ https://www.useorange.com/ https://btcpayserver.org/ https://btcpay386617.lndyn.com/login?ReturnUrl=%2F Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    1h 3m

  6. OCT 13

    Carl Kritzinger - If money is freedom, what happens when 600,000 stores switch on Bitcoin?

    Ever scanned a supermarket QR and paid with Bitcoin? That quiet click is a big story. We sit with Carl from Money Badger to trace how South Africa’s retailers—led by Pick n Pay—went from a scrappy Lightning experiment to nationwide Bitcoin payments across hundreds of thousands of tills. It’s a tale of timing, grit, and a country that loves to leapfrog: COVID-era QR infrastructure met Lightning’s instant, low-fee settlements, and suddenly sats bought bread. Carl shares the builder’s journey—early doubts in 2014 and 2018, the rough-but-working Crypto QR bridge, and the wallet integrations that turned a clunky flow into something you barely notice. We go inside the pilot strategy (Stellenbosch, Sedgefield, Mossel Bay, and an on-campus Cape Town store) and how communities like Bitcoin Ekasi created real demand: shop owners restocking with sats, locals moving value seamlessly, and traction that convinced decision-makers to scale. We also unpack the name change from Crypto Convert to Money Badger, the reason language matters with banks and Bitcoiners, and why the mission stays simple: Bitcoin should work as money—every day, everywhere. The conversation moves into the real-world frictions: exchange wallets vs self-custody, why stablecoins appear at the till, and how Lightning’s custodial convenience rubs against decentralisation. Carl explains the lingering “scar tissue” from 2017’s on-chain pilots and why the past six to eight months mark a shift—retailers who once said “you’re crazy” are now asking “how soon?” We explore the evolving protocol landscape and why open competition, not committee rules, keeps Bitcoin resilient. If you’ve ever wondered how a medium of exchange emerges from a store of value—and what it takes to get there in practice—this is your front-row seat at the checkout. Enjoyed the conversation? Follow us, share with a friend who spends sats, and leave a review so more South Africans discover how to pay with Bitcoin tomorrow. X: @MoneyBadgerPay https://www.moneybadger.co.za Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    49 min

  7. SEP 17

    Walker America - When Two Podcasters Talk Bitcoin Magic Happens

    Have you ever wondered what Bitcoin actually is, beyond the headlines and jargon? This conversation with Walker America, host of one of the fastest-growing Bitcoin podcasts worldwide, breaks everything down into refreshingly simple terms that anyone can understand. Walker's own journey mirrors what many experience—dismissing Bitcoin in 2014, dabbling in cryptocurrencies at the 2017 peak, then finally grasping Bitcoin's significance during the 2020 pandemic. His candid admission that "I knew absolutely nothing about money or economics" before exploring Bitcoin resonates with anyone who's felt intimidated by financial systems designed to seem complex. The heart of this episode focuses on answering the question: "Am I too late to Bitcoin?" With Bitcoin currently representing just 0.2% of global assets ($2 trillion compared to $1,000 trillion), Walker makes a compelling case that we're still remarkably early. His explanation of dollar-cost averaging (DCA) as a simple approach—regularly buying small amounts over time—strips away the complexity that often prevents people from getting started. Perhaps most powerful is Walker's perspective on how traditional economics functions as deliberate gatekeeping: "They benefit from making things seem incredibly complicated." He contrasts this with Bitcoin's simplicity: earn money, save in Bitcoin, and watch your purchasing power grow over time—no financial advisors or complex investment strategies needed. The conversation extends beyond Bitcoin itself to explore how questioning our monetary system naturally leads to examining other established structures from energy markets to healthcare. Whether you're completely new to Bitcoin or already knowledgeable, this episode provides clarity and perspective that's hard to find elsewhere. Follow Walker on Twitter @WalkerAmerica or visit bitcoinpodcast.net to continue learning from his accessible, insightful approach to Bitcoin education. Links: https://fountain.fm/show/68gcLZFDRxOzgGeZmXq6 https://fountain.fm/episode/6vtEdgehdhsP7KJtlBND https://x.com/WalkerAmerica https://x.com/BTCsessions Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    1h 4m

  8. SEP 10

    Monthly Roundup 2: The Rise of Bitcoin Warlords

    Currency failures are sweeping the globe at an alarming rate. In August alone, we witnessed the North Korean Kwon collapse, Iran's real lose 99% of its value, and multiple countries hacking zeros off their denominations in desperate attempts to mask hyperinflation. These aren't isolated incidents—they're symptoms of a fundamental breakdown in the fiat system. What's particularly fascinating is how Bitcoin fits into this new geopolitical landscape. Countries traditionally labeled as "rogue states" may be the first to fully embrace Bitcoin out of necessity. North Korea's state-sponsored Lazarus Group has already stolen billions in cryptocurrency, reportedly funding their nuclear program. Iran, facing both currency collapse and military pressure, could follow a similar path—using Bitcoin to preserve economic power despite international sanctions. As one host provocatively suggested, the formula for national sovereignty might be reduced to "nuclear weapons and Bitcoin," with Bitcoin being the more accessible of the two. Meanwhile, governments worldwide are cracking down on cryptocurrency—Burma banning VPNs, Algeria outlawing all crypto activity, and Turkey even detaining an academic for writing a research paper about blockchain. These desperate measures reveal growing institutional anxiety about losing control over financial systems. The podcast takes a philosophical turn, questioning whether democracy itself is fundamentally flawed as a mechanism for decentralizing power. Small, self-sufficient communities like Urania in South Africa might represent a glimpse of the future—places where people bypass failing governments altogether. On the technical side, Miniscript (BIP 379) is revolutionizing inheritance planning by allowing programmable spending conditions without lawyers or third parties. However, a concerning trend of sub-one-satoshi transaction fees raises questions about Bitcoin's long-term security model as block rewards diminish. Will the system remain secure when miners rely primarily on transaction fees? Ready to dive deeper into how Bitcoin is reshaping our world? Subscribe to Straight No Chaser for monthly roundups of the most impactful developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem and beyond. https://x.com/BitcoinEkasi https://x.com/OKIN_17 https://x.com/OrangeSaaS https://bitcoinonly.io/ https://www.useorange.com/ Links: www.bitcoinforbusiness.io X: @gavingre X: @BTC_4_Biz Primal: GavinBGreen@primal.net NOSTR: npub12qv07tpwk8x8fy2uuqczghpappap395npuxvsx8pgksh97pezv7s8r7qta

    1h 6m
See All (15)

About

Understanding Freedom through Money, Technology, Economics and Philosophy

Information

  • Creator
    Gavin
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    15
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Straight, No Chaser
  • Show Website
    Straight, No Chaser