Thomas Pacchia sits down for a livestreamed chat in the PubKey Parlor with Alex Li (Bitcoin development lead at the Human Rights Foundation) and Alex Gleason (currently Soapbox, formerly ex-Head of Engineering at Truth Social). They discuss:

• Why Nostr's keypair system makes it more secure than Twitter (or even Mastodon)

• How Alex Gleason’s open-source software got co-opted by Truth Social, and how he discovered Trump Media wasn't TRULY interested in free speech

• The massive vulnerabilities in Bluesky’s architecture and why it’s still “fake decentralization”

• How AI is unlocking creative potential for both activists and developers on the frontlines of freedom tech

• Why Bitcoin is still the glue that holds it all together... and why we need “freedom go up” alongside number go up

  
  

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Thomas Pacchia⁠⁠ and ⁠Drew Armstrong⁠ sit down for a livestreamed chat in the PubKey parlor with ⁠⁠Alex Leishman⁠⁠ (CEO and CTO of ⁠River⁠). They discuss:

• Why River prioritizes operational excellence over financial engineering
• How states like Ohio and cities like Roswell, NM are quietly becoming pro-Bitcoin
• Why the rise of Bitcoin treasury companies could create systemic risks (and how River’s approach differs from the $MSTR playbook )

• Whether "paper Bitcoin" is a threat among custodians like Coinbase

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Thomas Pacchia⁠ and Mike Germano sit down for a livestreamed chat in the PubKey parlor with ⁠Peter McCormack⁠ and his son ⁠Conor⁠, the father-son duo behind Real Bedford FC. They discuss:

• How buying an F-tier football team accidentally became a Bitcoin branding masterstroke
• What it takes to build a winning squad while orange-pilling a town in real time
• Why Bedford might become the first truly Bitcoin-native city
• The challenges of stacking sats, managing payroll, and selling out stadiums without fiat crutches
• How Real Bedford balances serious football ambition with a global internet cult following

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Thomas Pacchia and Drew Armstrong sit down for a livestreamed chat in the PubKey parlor with ⁠Antoine Poinsot⁠ and ⁠ArbedOut⁠. Partway through, ⁠MrHODL⁠ crashes our studio to stir the pot. They discuss:

• What really caused the OP_RETURN firestorm, and why it’s about more than just inscriptions

• How the push for more data storage is creating incentives for harmful workarounds and network bloat

• Why Bitcoin Knots is no longer “just a slightly modified Core," and why that should concern you

• The tension between “community values” and miner incentives in the age of alternate implementations

• The uncomfortable legacy of mempool policy: from anti-spam fixes to today’s shadow consensus

• BONUS: the French idiom that perfectly captures why decentralized decision-making is so hard

  
  

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The team is back from Bitcoin 2025 and the Oslo Freedom Forum! Thomas Pacchia hosts a packed post-conference debrief with Mike Germano, Drew Armstrong, and Frank Corva to break down what went down in Las Vegas and Oslo:

• What ACTUALLY happened behind-the-scenes at the Bitcoin Conference
• Why corporate treasury strategies dominated this year’s Bitcoin conference
• What it means when Bitcoin miners start acting like MicroStrategy
• Why some fear the next crash will be triggered by the new wave of public BTC holders
• How Pubkey’s Oslo Freedom Forum after-parties helped activists decompress
• Why Vegas felt like Bitcoin’s Madison Square Garden moment… and whether that’s a good thing

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Thomas Pacchia and Mike Germano sit down for a livestreamed chat with ⁠Ian Rogers⁠, who went from managing the Beastie Boys’ digital presence to running Beats Music, building luxury tech at LVMH, and now pushing self-custody mainstream as Chief Experience Officer at Ledger. They discuss:

• What the Beastie Boys taught Ian about decentralization LONG before Bitcoin

• How iTunes reshaped digital commerce (and what it got wrong)

• Why Louis Vuitton made him rethink scarcity, status, and what it means to “own” something

• How Ledger is designing hardware wallets for the next 100 million users

• Why streetwear, skating, and Bitcoin all thrive on earned identity, not marketing

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Thomas Pacchia sits down for a livestreamed chat with Alex Gladstein, Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation. They discuss:

• How HRF became an early Bitcoin-native organization (yes, even before Strategy)

• The hidden power of activist-developer collisions at the Oslo Freedom Forum

• Why authoritarian regimes (like North Korea) embracing Bitcoin might actually accelerate their collapse

• The plan to bring open-source AI tools to human rights defenders and keep them out of OpenAI and Worldcoin's hands

• ... and what scaling really means for Bitcoin’s next 100 million users

  
  

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Berta Valle, a Nicaraguan journalist and vocal critic of the Daniel Ortega regime, joins Arsh Molu (Financial Freedom at the Human Rights Foundation) and Thomas Pacchia for a live-streamed chat in the PubKey Parlor, where they dive deep into:

• How Berta’s husband Félix Maradiaga went from professor to political prisoner

• The moment her family lost access to all their savings overnight

• How Nicaraguan police used banking data to hunt journalists and dissidents

• How exiled Nicaraguans are using freedom tech like to stay connected and fed

• The terrifying legal trap of being declared stateless (and what it means for families)

• A daughter's letter that helped free her father from solitary confinement

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Evan Mawarire, a Zimbabwean pastor-turned activist who led a peaceful uprising against dictator Robert Mugabe, joins Ayelen Osorio of the Human Rights Foundation, Femi Longe, and Thomas Pacchia for a live-streamed chat in the PubKey Parlor, where they dive deep into:

• The chilling story of Zimbabwe’s $100 trillion banknote—and what it felt like to hold worthless money

• How Evan’s citizen movement started with a four-minute video and grew into a national protest

• What it’s like to watch your parents’ $80,000 life savings disappear overnight

• How Zimbabweans survive when their government zeros out their bank accounts without warning

• The underground networks and WhatsApp groups people use to find fuel, food, and basic necessities

• Why Bitcoin and freedom tech matter in countries where the financial system is weaponized against the people

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Recorded on April 3rd, 2025 at PubKey NYC.

Frank Corva (political correspondent at Bitcoin Magazine) and John Dennehy (founder of My First Bitcoin) join The Daniel for a live-streamed chat in the PubKey Parlor, where they dive deep into:

• The insane story of how John was detained by British police—and how he got out of it

• How My First Bitcoin went from one classroom to 25 countries without VC money or corporate sponsorship

• Why Bitcoin education is still stuck in “step zero” (and what it 'll take to move beyond it)

• The tension between Bitcoin adoption as a top-down state project versus a bottom-up liberation tool

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Recorded on March 31st, 2025 at PubKey NYC.