The Coin Based boys (ArbedOut and Thomas Pacchia) take the stage in their LIVE AT PUBKEY show at PubKey NYC to discuss the latest Bitcoin technical buzz, Bitcoin Knots Flag Day, and:

• ArbedOut's steelman of Bitcoin Knots (and why even the best Knots steelman fails under its own logic)
• Why CSAM and terrorism keep reappearing as rhetorical dead-ends in protocol disputes
• The real stakes of BIP-110 and other proposals (do soft forks implicitly rewrite Bitcoin's social contract?)
• The interlinked relationships between node costs, UTXO bloat, protocol design, and political power
• Whether filtering hostile data creates new choke points for governments, miners, and regulators
• The uncomfortable idea that Bitcoin’s biggest threats may be social and political, not technical
• ...and more!

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Welcome home. PubKey is a bar and cultural venue located in New York City and Washington D.C. (With more locations coming!) We host FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC events for the curious, the rebellious, and the orange-pilled.

Visit PubKey:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

🇺🇸 PubKey D.C.

🇺🇸 410 7th St NW

🇺🇸 Washington, DC 20004

🧡 Register for FREE weekly meetups and events: https://luma.com/user/pubkey

🍔 Check out our food menu (yes, we discount 21% if you pay in BTC!): https://pubkey.bar/menu

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your nym.

Est. 735075.

Preston Byrne (Managing Partner at Byrne & Storm) and host Thomas Pacchia take the stage in their LIVE AT PUBKEY show at PubKey NYC to discuss the U.K.'s new Internet censorship law, deceptively named the "Online Safety Act." Plus:

• How the U.K.’s Online Safety Act attempts to criminalize constitutionally protected American speech (and impose extraterritorial censorship)
• How Preston coordinated a unified resistance strategy against the United Kingdom
• The danger of a future where foreign regulators and domestic convenience culture erode anonymity, encryption, and online free expression
• Why the UK’s free-speech collapse illustrates the bottom of the slippery slope (and what prevents the U.S. from following it)
• The complete failure of big law firms to defend free speech... and why only small independent counsel might be the last defense against these cases
• The blueprint for restoring global free speech and exporting First Amendment free speech principles abroad
• ...and more!

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Welcome home. PubKey is a bar and cultural venue located in New York City and Washington D.C. (With more locations coming!) We host FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC events for the curious, the rebellious, and the orange-pilled.

Visit PubKey:

🗽 PubKey NYC

🗽 85 Washington Place

🗽 New York, NY 10011

🇺🇸 PubKey D.C.

🇺🇸 410 7th St NW

🇺🇸 Washington, DC 20004

🧡 Register for FREE weekly meetups and events: https://luma.com/user/pubkey

🍔 Check out our food menu (yes, we discount 21% if you pay in BTC!): https://pubkey.bar/menu

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your nym.

Est. 735075.

CK (HRF Director of Financial Freedom) and Femi Longe (HRF Global Bitcoin Lead) take the stage in their LIVE AT PUBKEY show at PubKey NYC to discuss the Bitcoin Development Fund's mission to empower devs, activists, and human rights defenders across the globe—billions of sats at a time. Plus:

• Why the fund gives MILLIONS in BTC every quarter to projects around the world
• Why WhatsApp is NOT freedom tech... and why it still succeeds where Signal fails
• Do Bitcoiners preach too much—and build too little?
• Why marketing, unfortunately, matters just as much as math and fundamentals
• How (and why) to scale Bitcoin in the global south
• Why the world doesn't need another Bitcoin wallet or crypto exchange (and what the world needs instead)
• ...and more!

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

PubKey meetups are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions and enjoy a pint together. 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

Max Raskin (NYU School of Law) and David Yermack (NYU Stern School of Business) take the stage in their LIVE AT PUBKEY show in PubKey NYC to discuss how academia is grappling with Bitcoin: what gets taught, what gets missed, and why it matters. Plus:

• How NYU became the first university to teach cryptocurrency

• How you can get orangep-pilled from Pynchon'sThe Crying of Lot 49

• How Max Raskin went from Austrian economics nerd to early crypto reporter

• What Michelle Obama’s fashion choices and CEO private jets taught Professor Yermack about markets

• Inside the faculty wars: how Bitcoin went from fringe topic to NYU curriculum

• A first-hand look at why most economists still dismiss Bitcoin

• How NYU Law teaches Bitcoin using tort law, common law, and the “law of the car”

• Why (in Max's humble opinion) AI can never replace lawyers

• The future of stablecoins, CBDCs, and why Amazon scares the U.S. Treasury

• The future of Bitcoin education in academia and beyond

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

PubKey meetups are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions and enjoy a pint together. 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

Frank Corva and David Z. Morris (journalist at The Rage) take the stage at PubKey NYC to discuss the results of the Samourai Wallet trial—and what it means for the future of our industry. Plus:

• What Frank and David really witnessed inside the courtroom during the Samourai Wallet sentencing (i.e. why did the judge hand down the MAXIMUM sentence?)

• The legal gray zone around “unlicensed money transmission” and why it threatens open-source developers
• How tone and rhetoric shaped the case (i.e. at what point does "encouraging privacy" become an empty promise?)
• What this verdict means for future privacy tools like CoinJoin and PayJoin

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

PubKey meetups are FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. Join us to ask live questions and enjoy a pint together. 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

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)

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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?

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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!

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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)

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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)

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

  
  

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ 

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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