Zac Guignard (Financial Freedom Content Associate at HRF) and Will Casarin (founder of Damus) take the stage at PubKey NYC with host Frank Corva to discuss the new generation of Nostr-native platforms allowing users to speak and transact freely without censorship. Are we finally in a new era for the Internet? Plus:

• Why centralized social platforms strip users of autonomy (and how Nostr’s open protocol restores it by design)

• How Damus lets users broadcast to 100+ relays simultaneously, making deplatforming nearly impossible

• The surprising real-world use cases emerging on Nostr: raw milk markets, uncensorable Reddit clones, and permanent Adblock

• How the Chinese government instantly banned Damus after 25,000 downloads in 48 hours

• Why vibe coding is radically lowering the barrier to entry for building decentralized apps

• What it means for a platform to go viral without an algorithm and how that changes incentives toward real value (and not ragebait!)

• What the future looks like if apps are created through voice prompts, monetized with Lightning, and deployed (without devs knowing a single line of JavaScript)

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PubKey meetups are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Good food, bad opinions, great company.

🧡 NYC Meetups: https://luma.com/user/pubkey

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

Adam Back and ArbedOut take the stage at PubKey NYC with host Thomas Pacchia to discuss the brewing tensions between Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Knots. Could we be heading toward a fork? Plus:

• How the OP_RETURN “flame war” revives a decade-old argument over spam, censorship, and Bitcoin’s purpose
• Why ArbedOut is choosing to steelman Bitcoin Knots and its alleged ability to filter "spam" transactions
• Why it's crucial to understand the difference between policy and consensus when it comes to BIPs
• The forgotten history of XT, Classic, Unlimited, and other Bitcoin forks (and what those client wars reveal about today’s split)
• Adam Back’s firsthand account of why OP_RETURN existed in the first place—did lazy developers force its creation?

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

🧡 https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

🧡 https://luma.com/user/pubkey

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

In this collaboration with the Human Rights Foundation, Christian "CK" Keroles (Director of Financial Freedom at HRF) sits down with Matt Ahlborg (Bitcoin researcher and creator of PayPerQ) for a fireside chat and open Q&A about:

• The emerging dilemma: why Bitcoin is the only way to access AI in countries blocked from traditional payment rails
• How PayPerQ lets anyone in the world (no credit card, no ID) pay for GPT-4 or Claude 3 via Lightning
• What Matt learned from investigating LocalBitcoins and working at Bitrefill during the global P2P boom
• Why privacy-preserving interfaces for AI will matter more than ever as models become more personal
• How AI startups that rely on Stripe functionally limit access to only ~20 countries (and how Matt thinks we can fix this)
• The long-term vision: a decentralized developer economy built on Bitcoin micropayments and API agents!

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

🧡 https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

🧡 https://luma.com/user/pubkey

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

Bitcoin OGs Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert take the stage at PubKey NYC for the wildest live show you've ever seen. They discuss:

• Why El Salvador reminds them of Renaissance Florence
• How their government-backed education program teaches financial literacy and node-building starting from age 7
• Why they think Bitcoin has “New York energy”
• Why they think Bitcoin treasuries are “bullshit”
• How Stacy experienced firsthand how the U.K. suppresses free speech through libel law and media regulation
• Why El Salvador’s Bitcoin strategy positions the nation as a testbed for the future
• What to expect at Bitcoin Historico and their Salvadoran golf invitational (hint: orange jackets, not green ones)

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

We got your proof-of-work right here. Join our friends Drew Armstrong and Will Foxley (co-founder of Blockspace Media) to learn what it takes to survive in the zero-sum game of Bitcoin mining and secure the next precious block in the chain. They discuss:

• How mining numbers get gamed by curtailment and Texas grid strategy
• Why Tether is now one of the largest Bitcoin miners (and how a joint venture with Swan blew up in UK court)
• Whether U.S. regulators will crack down on Bitmain and Congo’s mining footprint over national security fears
• How AISC manufacturers capture more value than miners

• The growing friction between Bitcoin Core devs and mempool policy (yes, we're talking about the ordinal censorship debate)
• Whether Marathon’s Slipstream model is smart opportunism... or a subtle form of transaction censorship

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

In this collaboration with the Human Rights Foundation, Femi Longe (Global Bitcoin Lead at HRF) sits down Anaïse Kanimba for a fireside chat and open Q&A about:

• How Anaïse is helping Senegalese women use Bitcoin to escape financial surveillance and support their families
• Why the CFA franc is just colonization by another name
• What NGOs miss when they ignore Bitcoin

• What inspired Anaïse to finally make the jump from corporate law to full-time Bitcoin activism
• What it's like to orange-pill your mom, your neighbor... AND your tailor (hint: word-of-mouth reigns supreme)

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

Thomas Pacchia sits down with Quoth the Raven (writer of the Fringe Finance blog) for a fireside chat and open Q&A on:

• QTR's unconventional journey from English major and bartender... to financial whistleblower and podcaster
• Why public frauds, central bank deception, and U.S. fiscal collapse all smell the same (and all lead to gold and Bitcoin)
• The Fed’s credibility spiral and why Trump ousting Powell could shatter confidence in the U.S. dollar overnight
• How inflation quietly transfers wealth to the rich while brutalizing the bottom 50%
• Why tethering the dollar to “literally anything with a finite supply” would, strangely enough, be better than our current path
• The bond market’s strange behavior, Treasury’s mystery bids, and whether a debt jubilee or gold re-adoption is on the horizon

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

⁠Jennifer Rosenthal⁠ (DeFi Education Fund) moderates a fireside chat and open Q&A with ⁠Frank Corva⁠ (Bitcoin Magazine), ⁠Eleanor Terrett⁠ (Crypto in America), and ⁠David Z. Morris⁠ (The Rage) about the Tornado Cash trial. They discuss:

• Why the U.S. government’s prosecution of Roman Storm could set a dangerous precedent for open-source code

• How the case hinges on the definition of “money transmission”

• What this trial signals about growing friction between crypto infrastructure and national security policy

• Why the outcome could shape how judges and regulators treat privacy tools, mixers, and even Bitcoin going forward

• How press coverage, legal framing, and political cycles are influencing the stakes of the case in real time

• Why the Tornado Cash case may be the most important crypto trial since Ross Ulbricht... and what comes next

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

⁠Thomas Pacchia⁠ sits down with ⁠Jonathan Melton⁠ (Head of Lending at ⁠Unchained⁠) for a fireside chat and open Q&A about:

• Why Melton left Wall Street to build Bitcoin-native lending infrastructure

• How Unchained’s multi-institution custody model protects against counterparty and rehypothecation risk

• What makes collateralized lending on Bitcoin fundamentally different from fiat debt markets

• Why most “bitcoin-backed loans” still rely on fiat rails

• How Unchained evaluates risk, liquidity, and client behavior across bear and bull markets

• Why Melton believes the next generation of bitcoiners won’t think of borrowing and custody as separate concepts

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

In this collaboration with the Human Rights Foundation, Frank Corva (political correspondent at Bitcoin Magazine) sits down with Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López for a fireside chat and open Q&A about:

• How the Venezuelan government used the central bank to silently tax citizens through hyperinflation

• Why López believes Bitcoin could have prevented the worst parts of Venezuela’s economic collapse

• What it took to build a resistance movement under constant surveillance, censorship, and arrest

• Why authoritarian regimes fear Signal, Tor, and Nostr

• What López learned from organizing protests from a prison cell and a safe house while being hunted by intelligence services

• How financial surveillance became a weapon, making privacy-preserving tools essential for political organizing

• Why the World Liberty Congress is building infrastructure to connect dissidents across 60+ countries

• Why U.S. and EU-based developers need to stop underestimating the real-world stakes of open-source tech

  
  

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: ⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

Drew Armstrong sits down with Alex Leishman (CEO & CTO of River) for a tavern chat and open Q&A about:

• How and why Alex started River (even though he isn't a "finance guy")
• Why most U.S. bitcoin companies are derivative casinos, and how River is different
• The challenge of building real bitcoin UX in a market addicted to speculation
• How Alex thinks about custody, nodes, and what it means to “actually use Bitcoin”
• Why ETFs might help price go up... but won’t help people become financially sovereign
• What it takes to raise capital in a bear market when you're NOT peddling garbage

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place, New York, NY 10011

🗽 ⁠⁠https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/⁠⁠

Follow us on X: ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

Thomas Pacchia sits down with Peter and Conor McCormack (the father-son duo behind Real Bedford FC) for a tavern chat and open Q&A about:

- How buying a tiny English football club became a real-world Bitcoin test case

- How Real Bedford funds operations, pay players, and stacks sats without relying on fiat

- What it’s like for Conor to be Vice Chairman of a team his dad owns

- Whether Real Bedford is just following in the footsteps of Wrexham A.F.C. or becoming its own serious football project with its own ambitions

- The long odds of climbing the English football pyramid—and why Peter and Conor know they will eventually prevail

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place, New York, NY 10011

🗽 ⁠⁠https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/⁠⁠

Follow us on X: ⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/PubKey⁠

Thomas Pacchia⁠ sits down with Alex Gladstein (Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation) for a fireside chat and open Q&A about:

• Why government and corporate adoption doesn’t contradict Bitcoin’s cypherpunk roots
• Why democracies can thrive with Bitcoin, but dictators can’t
• How HRF became a Bitcoin-native nonprofit by actually using it, not just holding it
• Why 100 million self-custody users matter more than any ETF or price chart

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

• PubKey NYC
• 85 Washington Place, New York, NY 10011
• https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: https://x.com/PubKey

Thomas Pacchia sits down with software architect, Navy pilot, and author Eric Voskuil for a wide-ranging fireside chat about:

• The true story behind Libbitcoin

• Why Bitcoin Core’s architecture can’t scale and may already be eroding full validation

• A first-person account of Amir Taaki’s wild journey from Bitcoin dev to Kurdish militia fighter

• Why Voskuil sees “assume valid” as the beginning of the end for permissionless money

• Why the performance gap between Bitcoin Core and Libbitcoin matters

• How funding pressures, philosophical drift, and tech debt are shaping the future of Bitcoin infrastructure

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

• PubKey NYC
• 85 Washington Place, New York, NY 10011
• https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Follow us on X: https://x.com/PubKey

Drew Armstrong sits down with Will Foxley and ArbedOut for a wide-ranging fireside chat about:

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

• PubKey NYC
• 85 Washington Place, New York, NY 10011
• https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Frank Corva⁠ (political correspondent at ⁠Bitcoin Magazine⁠) sits down with ⁠John Dennehy⁠ (founder of ⁠My First Bitcoin⁠) for a wide-ranging fireside chat about:

• The moment John realized he wasn’t free... and how that set him on a collision course with state power

• Why every other Bitcoin education initiative in El Salvador failed, and how his survived without funding or permission

• How a noisy classroom of Salvadoran teenagers changed the mission for good

• The quiet war over curriculum (and what happened when the Ministry of Education tried to shut him down)

• Why teaching kids might be the best way to reach the adults

• The radical plan to bring Bitcoin literacy to every U.S. prison inmate

• How John’s open-source model is spreading to 39 countries and how the Bitcoin community can help

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

• PubKey NYC
• 85 Washington Place, New York, NY 10011
• https://www.meetup.com/pubkey-meetups/events/

Recorded on March 31st, 2025 at PubKey NYC.

Trace Mayer makes his first visit to PubKey NYC for a fireside chat with Drew Armstrong. They discuss Trace's perspectives on how the Bitcoin space has changed over the last decade and a half, and what the future may look like in another 16 years—and beyond.

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PubKey meetups are FREE and PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions, engage with experts, and enjoy a pint together:

• PubKey NYC
• 85 Washington Place, New York, NY 10011

Recorded on March 19th, 2025 at PubKey NYC.

Join us for a live AMA with Max Kei (CEO Debifi), Adam Back (CEO Blockstream), and Sean Bill (CIO Blockstream).

Debifi is building bitcoin-backed lending with their "Never sell. Borrow." mindset—helping you access liquidity without letting go of your sats.

Blockstream is building the backbone of a bitcoin-powered future, from the Liquid Network to Lightning and beyond.

Recorded on February 26th, 2025 at PubKey NYC.

Lawrence Lepard is a professional investor and author of The Big Print: What Happened To America And How Sound Money Will Fix It. He joins us to break down the hidden forces driving economic instability and explain why sound money is the key to restoring financial freedom. Don’t miss this chance to engage in a thought-provoking discussion on the future of money and markets.

Recorded on February 25th, 2025 at PubKey NYC.