Transcriptions:

Matt, how you doing, buddy? What's up, Rod? It's good to see your face, man. We had a great last week and I'm really excited.

to talk about some of the stuff that we've been building. Yeah, the feeling's mutual. Yeah, man. Well, so should we just get right into it and not

BS around 100% cool. I don't like the bullshit. There you go. Well for those folks that are listening My name is Rod. I go by the handle bit kite, and I'm one

of the co-founders of Bitcoin Park, along with Matt. Bitcoin Park is a campus that we've launched in Nashville.

Dedicated to Bitcoin and supporting the local community. We have two buildings right next to each other that are

Set up in a way that really helps with working collaborating meeting new people. We have an event space. We have multiple podcast studios included

where we're broadcasting from today. We have a little coffee shop that accepts Bitcoin. It's a really special experience and we hope you all will make it

down here at some point. Yeah, absolutely. Here in Nashville, Tennessee. So one way to stay up to date with us, whether you're a local or from far away, is joining our

meetup page. So meetup.com forward slash Bitcoin Park and what? You can just go to Bitcoin Park dot co. OK. And we'll go there.

So cut that portion out. No, leave it in. No, leave it in. Cut it out, Tom. We gotta leave everything in, Tom.

So you go to Bitcoinpark.co. Matt, I like that he goes with one shot, one roll. That's it. No edits.

So the other way, by the way, are you enjoying the Discord by the way? Yeah, so we have a Discord. Well, you got to answer my question first before going in.

into the whole details. I don't, I mean, look, I think, I think I love our community that we're building here and any platform that makes it easier to facilitate

discussion and coordination among our community is a win in my book, and it seems there's a lot of excitement around Discord. I'm a little bit of an open-source maximalist myself, so I

I hope that one day we will move to an open source alternative such as Matrix. But in the meantime, I'm very excited about our Discord.

our meetup page. Hopefully we move away from meetup at some point in the future as well. 100%. And now we have this podcast feed. So why do we have this podcast feed? We have this podcast feed

because we will be hosting many events at the park and but we believe in the privacy and security of our attendees and we want discussion to be fluid

And unrestricted and people to feel comfortable having these conversations conversations that we don't think will happen anywhere else. So what do we do to facilitate that we have a strict no.

photo policy and we do not video record our talks we do not video record our guests we do not even announce certain guests are going to be in town

before events happen that happens after the event. But we want a middle ground because we do have a lot of good content and conversations that is getting generated at the park. So our middle ground is

is

to

And that most of our panels at these events do include Q&A. That Q&A is not a part of this podcast feed. You can only see that if you're in person.

So certain panels, sometimes the best panels we have will not be included in this podcast feed because every guest has a choice whether or not.

it gets published to the rest of the world. Totally. I think when you and I started the ideating on what Bitcoin Park could be and what's the type of

the content, the type of workshops, the type of pop-up events and so on. We were really thinking hard about locally produced and then figuring out ways to integrate.

way to globally distribute this great content. And this may be a good segue into the event that we held last week, which was an event called Grassroots Bitcoin.

where a number of meetup organizers just through word of mouth as well as just DMs through recommendations were invited to

to join us here in Nashville, Tennessee at Bitcoin Park, where we held two days of great panel discussions, just presentations, workshops.

and more importantly getting to know each other. I mean meetup organizers, especially Bitcoin meetup organizers, are some of the, at least I've found over the number of years,

some of the coolest people to interact with. I don't know if you want to share any other thoughts about. Yeah, I mean, so grassroots Bitcoin, this was our

first year running it. We plan to run it annually. It already holds a very dear place in my heart. Ultimately, people

I do think of Bitcoin as a tech project. They think of it as code that runs on computers. It is that. But ultimately what it comes down to is Bitcoin is a movie.

It's a movement of individuals and those individuals need to push forward the mission of Bitcoin, which is a money that is not controlled by any corporate system.

corporation or any government and that is is usable by anyone in the world if they need it and I think I think Bitcoin and and and the ethos that a

lot of Bitcoiners have, we'll have a very strong actionable change on the positive side to our local communities. And it's part of the reason we started Bitcoin Park.

It's one of the focuses that I've dedicated a large portion of my time to over the years and plan to continue pushing forward.

Bitcoin, this particular event is really, you know, it is the heart of Bitcoin Park and it's part of the global Bitcoin movement. And this year we were fortunate

to have with very little planning, no publicity, you know, maybe 35, 40 different US states were present here, organizers from

those states. I'm hoping next year we increase that number and I hope next year that we actually get a lot of international people because what we witness

over the last two years, basically global social lockdowns, telling people not to meet in person. And at the same exact time, Bitcoin meetups around the world just

blossomed. They blossomed. They're everywhere. If you don't have a Bitcoin meetup in your town, consider starting one. If you haven't looked, look to see if there is one.

already and consider going to it. It is truly a special experience meeting Bitcoiners from all walks of life and I think together we can do really big things.

it a better myself, my man. So speaking of, you know, you mentioning that this is going to be a recurring annual event for sure. And that's our hope as well is to have.

Some more Bitcoin specific topical events and as Matt alluded to we do have a campus We have a couple buildings, but we do still have a finite amount of space so

Which means we can only have a finite amount of people here at Bitcoin Park. That's why we want to do events whether they're on lightning or a

open source events or what like actually in January we're hosting a mining specific event called the Nashville Energy and Mining Summit. So it's our hope

as you're following along on Bitcoinpark.co or our discord to find different ways to come in and visit us here in Nashville.

of

it helpful. So we, you know, Rod touched on this, but basically like Bitcoin is growing up, Bitcoin is growing up. There are countless large

events sometimes in the 20,000 person range and and we see a unique value in small high signal focused events.

And that's what we will be focused on at the park. And that includes these relatively larger more coordinated quarterly events.

such as grassroots Bitcoin, such as the National Energy and Mining Summit, but it also includes monthly smaller meetups, workshops, education.

presentations and just straight up collaboration like we have a whole co-working space at Bitcoin Park that people can work in. We have private

The whole park initiative is set up a community project at its core. It's a community project and it's supported by our members.

So we have 100 local members in state members and then we have 100 out of state members. And once we hit both of those thresholds, then it will be a

So we're going to go to a waiting list. That's it. We're not going bigger than that. Yeah. And I think it comes down to time and energy and where we want to spend it. And I think spending it on

on getting these right events and kind of the right experience because these would just be just vessels with nothing if it wasn't for the community support.

here, especially Nashville and abroad. And just to be absolutely clear, I mean, I love our members. Our members come in often. It's great that we get to have this great community.

That's in person and that we see them all the time. We spend a lot of time with with each other. But but these events aren't member specific. Some events will be members.

members specific some events will be open to the public some events will be paid some events will there be no entrance fee we're gonna be

around and being very flexible with how we coordinate these things and we're open to your feedback on how we can improve going forward. You know, Bitcoin Park is a relatively new project.

And we plan to iterate on it over time. Yes. I think that's well said. I don't want to tease anything that we've got planned in the future. I think we could wait maybe for the next trailer.

And just follow this, follow this feed, join our discord, join our meetup group at Bitcoinpark.co and stay tuned for more updates.

And we just hope you appreciate this all. Totally. So I think like go forward. We may you and I Matt will do this like five ten minute trailer on like each of these different events.

and kind of tee up the type of topics and what they can expect in the feed. But for this one, we've recorded a number of panels from grassroots Bitcoin. So you can expect that.

now in the feed coming up. These are the only ones that have been approved to be published. And I hope you guys enjoy them. I will say this was our first time recording it. A big thank

to Tom who recorded it but also our producer Tom Maxwell but also Tom gave us some great feedback on the type of equipment we should

should have for the next go-round.

you can expect substantially better quality going forward as we iterate. Awesome. Well, you know where to follow Matt at Odell. You can follow me at Bitkite on Twitter.

And as Matt said, please subscribe on your favorite podcasting app to our new feed and hope you guys enjoy. Love you all. Cheers. Cheers.