Bitcoin’s biggest risk isn’t the SEC, ETFs, or alt-L1s… It’s the shrinking security budget nobody wants to talk about. We break down why treating Bitcoin as “digital gold” creates the Empty Castle Effect: a multi-trillion dollar asset sitting on-chain with collapsing fees and a weakening incentive for miners to defend it long term.

We walk through the timeline of miner adoption of NAT (Non-Arbitrary Tokens) and why having ~60% of Bitcoin hash rate already touching NAT matters for security. From COVID and the failed “metaverse pivot,” to AI eating all jobs, to tiny homes and Ready Player One, we zoom out on how economic incentives are shifting and why Bitcoin’s fee market can’t be left to vibes and rainbow charts forever.

We also react to an AI-generated explainer built with NotebookLM, talk Jensen Huang, reusable rockets, and first-principles thinking, then deconstruct Michael Saylor’s latest “Bitcoin rocket” diagram and the pyramid accusations around it. Finally, we go deep on why “Bitcoin will just keep doubling” quietly violates basic physics, how that ties into the security budget problem, and where Digital Matter Theory (DMT) and NAT fit in as a potential answer.

If you care about Bitcoin’s long-term security, miner incentives, and what a post-halving world looks like when block rewards fade, this is the episode you shouldn’t skip.

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