Eric and Sync sit down with Thomas, the Amsterdam-based illustrator behind NoGood, for a conversation about Bitcoin art, Nostr, old hardware, open-source culture, physical media, and building a creative life outside the algorithm. Thomas recently released NoGood Volume 1, a self-published book collecting five years of illustration work, sketches, process, and context around the world that shaped NoGood. Topics: Value for Value We open with zaps, boosts, and streams from Cyphermunk House, NoGood, Mr. Bullish, Shadrach, Permanerd, and other friends of the show. Sync also explains why streaming sats through apps like Fountain feels different from a one-time zap. Nostr DMs, Cordn, White Noise, and private messaging We get into the current state of private messaging on Nostr: NIP-04, NIP-17, metadata leakage, relay uncertainty, spam attacks, multi-device sync, and why reliable private messaging still feels like one of the missing pieces. Cordn comes up as a promising new private messaging project from Gzuuus. Eric describes using it and says it felt smooth, fast, and close to the Signal-like experience people have been waiting for on Nostr. We also touch on White Noise, MLS, 0xChat, Iris, noStrudel, Yakihonne, Cashu wallets, nutzaps, locked ecash, and how ecash could help with smoother streaming payments inside Nostr. NoGood Volume 1 giveaway Sync built a Nostr raffle tool to pick the winner of the NoGood Volume 1 giveaway based on likes, reposts, and interactions with the giveaway note. Winner: Corto Cornelius Runner-up: Turiz The tool was vibe-coded using Shakespeare and Fable, then published through the Nostr-native nsite / ngit flow. Lake Satoshi We shout out Lake Satoshi, a Bitcoin retreat in Michigan running July 31 through August 2, 2026. The reason it came up is that Augie has been exploring ways to bring Nostr marketplace rails, ecash, FIPS, or other offline-friendly tools into the event environment. XMRBazaar, NIP-99, and open commerce Sync brings up XMRBazaar as another example of people building freer commerce rails. That leads into NIP-99, the Nostr classified listings spec. NIP-99 is payment-agnostic, which means people can build open marketplace systems without hardcoding one payment rail into the protocol. Open markets should be an open competition. Bitcoin should win because it is the best money, not because the spec artificially blocks everything else. Bitrefill, gift cards, and agentic commerce Sync floats a possible bridge between Bitcoin, fiat commerce, and AI agents: using services like Bitrefill to let agents convert Bitcoin into gift cards and complete purchases through existing fiat marketplaces. Conversation with NoGood Thomas first became seriously active around Bitcoin after watching Satoshi Radio’s Node Sack series about running Raspberry Pi Bitcoin and Lightning nodes. He set up a node, started experimenting with Bitcoin-only payments, and eventually used that as a way to merge Bitcoin and illustration. Thomas drew constantly as a kid, but early internet art-sharing sites had the opposite effect of inspiration. Seeing polished work from other artists discouraged him, and he stopped drawing for years. He moved into graphic design, became a freelance designer, and learned the practical side of creative work: deadlines, pricing, clients, licensing, print specs, book design, and production constraints. Eventually, graphic design started to feel too safe. Illustration brought him closer to the thing he actually wanted to do. Thomas describes NoGood as the moment he started drawing the things he was already obsessed with: Bitcoin, strange hardware, open-source tools, homemade infrastructure, radios, nodes, broken machines, and characters who look a little beat up but still keep building. The style did not come from one single piece. It evolved. But he remembers the moment the idea clicked: take the illustration work and focus it around Bitcoin. The name NoGood came from a headline about “Bitcoin’s very bad, no good year.” He liked the phrase because it matched how outsiders dismissed the tech, the money, and the community. One of the best threads in the episode: Thomas sees Bitcoin and Nostr as things that work, but often barely. Nodes take days to sync. Devices overheat. Nostr DMs show up in one client but disappear in another. Everything is clunky, weird, imperfect, and still alive. That tension shows up in his work: blinking lights, wires, patched-up characters, old hardware, stickers, bandages, radios, and devices that feel handmade and unstable but full of possibility. Thomas says Nostr gives him the same feeling as Bitcoin: not always a better user experience, but a more fun and inspiring one. The brokenness is part of the energy. There is still room to tinker, wire things together, and build your own corner of the internet. NoGood Volume 1 is a physical record of the first era of NoGood. Thomas was inspired to start the book after seeing Project Japan: Metabolism Talks, a book by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist documenting Japan’s Metabolism architecture movement. What inspired him was not just the subject matter, but the physical design: dense pages, thin paper, rule-breaking layout, and the feeling that a book could be strange, serious, beautiful, and self-contained. NoGood Volume 1 became a way to give the work weight outside the feed. Social posts disappear into the algorithmic void. A book sits on a shelf, waits to be picked up, and gives the work a physical place to live. Thomas included sketches and process pages partly because he wanted to show that the work is not AI-generated and not instant. A finished piece can look effortless, but the book shows the layers: sketching, revision, composition, failed attempts, and the slow process of making something good enough. NoGood started in Bitcoin, but Thomas is now seeing brands outside the Bitcoin/Nostr world ask for the NoGood style directly. He mentions Red Bull as an example: they referenced his Bitcoin work, Blockstream work, and TABConf work and asked for that same NoGood world in a broader magazine project. NoGood is becoming more than illustration: a website, shop, book, Nostr profile, NoGood Radio, zaps, and little experiments built around open tools. Thomas wants to keep adding more Nostr features to his site: feeds, zaps, inspiration boards, and other small open-web experiments that do not need permission from closed platforms. Links NoGood Studio https://www.nogood.studio/ NoGood Volume 1 https://www.nogood.studio/the-nogood-book/ NoGood work archive https://www.nogood.studio/work/ NoGood Radio https://www.nogood.studio/radio/ NoGood on Nostr https://primal.net/p/npub12hcytyr8fumy3axde8wgeced523gyp6v6zczqktwuqeaztfc2xzsz3rdp4 Project Japan: Metabolism Talks https://www.oma.com/publications/project-japan-metabolism-talks Cordn https://cordn.net/ White Noise https://www.whitenoise.chat/ 0xChat https://0xchat.com/ Iris https://iris.to/ noStrudel https://nostrudel.ninja/ Yakihonne https://yakihonne.com/ Frostr https://frostr.org/ NIP-17: Private Direct Messages https://nips.nostr.com/17 NIP-60: Cashu Wallets https://nips.nostr.com/60 NIP-61: Nutzaps https://nips.nostr.com/61 NIP-99: Classified Listings https://nips.nostr.com/99 Lake Satoshi https://www.lakesatoshi.com/ XMRBazaar https://xmrbazaar.com/ Bitrefill https://www.bitrefill.com/ Shakespeare https://shakespeare.diy/ nsite https://nsite.lol/ ngit https://gitworkshop.dev/ngit Take My Sats https://www.takemysats.com/ bullishMarket https://bullishmarket.onrender.com/
