21 in 21

0xSero joins Haley Berkoe on 21 in 21 to discuss local AI, open models, and his soon-to-be-released platform for benchmarking open models and hardware (local.ai). He explains how his team benchmarks models and hardware, why local AI is becoming more capable and affordable, and why ownership and control matter as more people build their work around AI. They also discuss open-source AI culture, agentic payments, and what people can do to start experimenting with local models.

FOLLOW:

https://x.com/0xsero

https://x.com/HBerkoe

LINKS

https://local.ai

Haley Berkoe sits down with Bradley Axen, who is leading many of Block's AI initiatives, including Buzz, a new open-source collaboration platform designed for humans and AI agents to work together. He also helped create goose, the open-source AI agent that was later donated to the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation.

They discuss how Block is using AI internally with tools like Builder Bot to help engineers navigate massive codebases, automate incident response, and collaborate more effectively. Brad also shares his thoughts on where open-source AI is headed, why model flexibility matters, and how new open source AI contributors can get involved.

FOLLOW:

https://x.com/bradleyaxen

https://github.com/baxen

https://x.com/HBerkoe

LINKS:

https://buzz.xyz

https://goose-docs.ai

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 Introduction & Brad's journey into AI at Block

2:17 What goose is and why developers should care

3:15 Open models, local inference, and switching between providers

5:00 Do AI models perform better with their own coding harness?

6:40 Why enterprises benefit from model flexibility

8:25 Why AI inference is becoming critical infrastructure

9:16 How Block is approaching AI and open-source collaboration

10:25 Builder Bot: Block's internal AI assistant

13:50 Buzz: the future of collaborative AI workflows

15:47 Will Buzz replace Slack?

20:00 How AI is changing the role of engineers

21:45 Advice for getting started in open-source AI

24:22 Where to follow Brad's work

Mic Neale, a member of the Spiral team at Block and a core developer of goose, an open source AI agent, joins Haley Berkoe on 21 in 21 to discuss goose, Mesh LLM, and open source AI. Mic shares how goose has evolved from a desktop app and CLI into the goose Development Kit (GDK), making it easier for developers to build AI applications. He also explains how Mesh LLM pools idle compute across devices, why local models and peer-to-peer infrastructure matter, and where he sees the overlap between bitcoin and open source AI. As a longtime open source contributor, Mic closes with advice for anyone looking to get involved in open source projects.

FOLLOW:

x.com/michaelneale

x.com/HBerkoe

LINKS

goose-docs.ai

meshllm.cloud

spiral.xyz

TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Intro & welcome

1:00 Mic's background

3:35 What makes the open-source AI community different?

5:02 What is goose?

6:55 Running AI models locally with goose

8:02 Why goose was designed differently from other AI agents

10:15 Mesh LLM and sharing unused compute across devices

13:20 Could you earn money by contributing inference?

17:05 Joining Spiral and the connection to bitcoin

19:11 The overlap between open-source AI and bitcoin

20:00 Career advice for aspiring open-source developers

22:00 Why open source still matters in the AI era

23:22 Where to find Mic online

Patrick Ball, Director of Research at the Human Rights Data Analysis Group, joins Haley Berkoe on 21 in 21 to discuss how data, bitcoin, and AI can help defend human rights. Patrick explains how his team uses statistics to document mass violence, how bitcoin can help protect the integrity of human rights evidence, and why nonprofits need decentralized tools and local AI to stay resilient.

hrdag.org

On this episode of 21 in 21, Calle discusses his work on Cashu, Bitchat, and Clawi. He explores how AI agents could use bitcoin-native payments and why privacy-preserving infrastructure matters in an increasingly agentic internet. Calle also reflects on his journey down the bitcoin rabbit hole, from early work on Lightning infrastructure to building eCash systems, and shares his perspective on the evolution of AI agents.

https://x.com/callebtc

https://clawi.ai/

https://bitchat.free/

https://cashu.space/

Linn Bieske, Co-Lead of the AI & Technology Track at the MIT Club of Northern California (CNC), AI Product Manager, and Co-Founder of Hack-Nation, joins Haley Berkoe on 21 in 21. They discuss the upcoming Hack-Nation event on April 25 and Spiral’s sponsored challenge exploring what becomes possible when AI agents can earn using the Lightning Network. Linn also shares her perspective on what motivates today’s AI builders, how to design experiences that lead to something more lasting than a 24-hour sprint, and why community and collaboration matter so much.

Apply by April 19 to join the upcoming hackathon, or follow along for the next one.

https://hack-nation.ai/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/linn-bieske-189b9b138/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/hack-nation/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/haleyberkoe/

https://spiral.xyz/

Rainey Reitman joins 21 in 21 for a conversation on financial censorship, free speech, and her new book, Transaction Denied: Big Finance’s Power to Punish Speech. Rainey co-founded Freedom of the Press Foundation and serves on the board as president. She also spent 11 years at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, first as Activism Director and later as Chief Program Officer.

Drawing on years of work in civil liberties advocacy, Rainey explains how lawful speech can still lead to frozen accounts, denied payments, and exclusion from the financial system. She also shares how these issues connect to journalism, whistleblowers, privacy, and Bitcoin’s promise, and limits, as a censorship-resistant tool.

Links to Book:

Amazon: https://a.co/d/04WK0Qek

Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/lists/transaction-denied-big-finance-s-power-to-punish-speech

Audio: https://www.audible.com/pd/Transaction-Denied-Audiobook/B0FJZRQXXR?source_code=AUDORWS0718179KY7

A portion of every book sale goes to support Freedom of the Press Foundation.

“In her timely and necessary book, Reitman illuminates the shocking and widespread censorship exerted by the American banking system, details how Orwellian financial surveillance and control has become the norm, and makes a powerful case for why we must push for change if we want to preserve freedom and privacy in the 21st century.”

— Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer, Human Rights Foundation

Follow:

https://x.com/RaineyReitman

https://x.com/FreedomofPress

Michael Saylor joined Haley Berkoe on 21 in 21 for a rapid-fire conversation on bitcoin, AI, and what’s coming next. He shares what’s top of mind for 2026, why he sees this year as a major turning point, and how he thinks bitcoin could evolve as digital capital beneath new layers of credit and currency.

Then, Saylor gets into how AI will radically transform civilization, and how that shift could make bitcoin even more important in a world where autonomous agents need to transact constantly with digital capital. He points to Strategy’s use of AI in creating digital credit products like Stretch (STRC), and shares the kinds of bitcoin products he hopes to see, from deeper integration into everyday technology to applications powered by bitcoin.

Saylor emphasizes that we’re entering one of the most fertile periods ever for building, and encourages builders and young people to spend a lot of time learning AI tools and continually pushing themselves to create something new and useful. There are also a few fun detours into MIT prank stories and the AI-generated X profile images he’s become known for.

Follow:

https://x.com/saylor

https://x.com/HBerkoe

https://www.youtube.com/@PresidioBitcoin

Links:

https://www.michael.com

https://www.hope.com

https://www.uncute.com/products/here-comes-bitcoin

Andi Pitt of Ego Death Capital joined me on 21 in 21 to talk about the rise of new startups in the bitcoin ecosystem, how the funding landscape has changed, and the growing intersection of bitcoin and AI. She also shares what she looks for in founders and offers advice for launching a startup. Beyond venture, Andi discusses her recent research into mind control and cognitive sovereignty.

Note: We recorded this while Andi was in town last November for the HRF AI for Individual Rights Summit.

https://x.com/1andipitt

https://egodeath.capital/

https://clyrapassages.substack.com/

Mark Suman, co-founder and CEO of Maple AI, a privacy-first AI chat platform known as “the Signal of AI,” joins Haley Berkoe on 21 in 21. Mark explains how Maple AI uses secure enclaves to deliver a ChatGPT-like experience while getting as close to local-AI privacy as possible, without requiring users to run models on their own machine. He also covers why verifiability is essential for trust, the importance of thought privacy, the shared ethos between Bitcoin and AI, and why AI in schools deserves more scrutiny.

Maple AI: https://trymaple.ai/, https://x.com/TryMapleAI

Mark Suman: https://x.com/marksuman