It was a glorious day for climbing hills and waterfalls in Wales today.

On point 3 yes, totally, more V4V shows are needed for sure. With all your experience of putting them on so far, do you find they are working better being attached to bitcoin conferences or as a standalone thing? Is it better for them to have their own identity and be live-streamed etc away from a conference? Is there a diminishing return in getting the same artists to repeat largely the same set at the same venue to largely the same audience, just like when a small band is trying to break through but needs a bigger audience? Should we try to work together to create a set of venues with V4V gigs that artists could move round in a sort of self organised tour? Or should people work together and book more flagship music venues and get artists to travel and hope the venue name excites a bigger livestream audience?

I wish I understood that too. The older and more cynical I get I wonder if most scenes were really kind of over by the time they went more mainstream and the public jumped on? Maybe the first sign of death was the suits moving in and ramping it up for mainstream exploitation? But I hope that is just my seeing the shit show some of the big suits and egos in bitcoin have happily made of things🤷‍♂️

My own head scratching at this has led me to think that most musicians or artists are maybe just happy in their fiat life style and mindset, however unsafe that is. The majority are also quite unoriginal and followers of fashion, and until they see someone else get famous or breakthrough from a V4V route, couldn’t be bothered to try it. Declaring themselves to be anti-fiat would likely ruin their chances of traditional success, their rebellion is superficial. So we tend to get the older people with more experience who have already given up on a traditional music career anyway. Maybe young musicians, despite everything, actually still want to sign a contract and have success on a plate and hard work and personal ownership is antithetical to that? I thought our best bet in growing this scene was with trying to create a sort of punk mindset again, but there isn’t much of an audience here yet either truth be told, most bitcoiners are not interested and there’s just a small group of very committed people seemingly holding the whole thing together.

I’m very glad you’ve made it here properly, Iain. I always enjoy your writing and podcast interviews. And your understanding that decentralised tech is a real part of a possible solution to some of our troubles is heartening. So many others in the alternative media just can’t or won’t see it or, I suspect, are put there to make sure others won’t understand it either.