The Block Runner Podcast

MoonKing joins The Block Runner to recount entering SHIB within its first few days, watching its community form during DeFi Summer, and navigating the extreme volatility that followed. He explains how conviction, narrative, liquidity, and community participation shaped his decisions as SHIB grew. The conversation examines how meme coin culture has changed since 2020. MoonKing contrasts the longer holding periods of earlier crypto cycles with today’s rapid trading environment, where launch platforms, copycat tokens, and fragmented liquidity can make sustained community growth more difficult. The discussion then turns to NAT and its thesis surrounding Bitcoin’s long-term security budget. MoonKing explains why the underlying argument captured his attention, while the hosts discuss miner adoption, TAP Protocol, BIP-110, OP_RETURN, and how NAT could continue operating as Bitcoin evolves. MoonKing also shares his approach to crypto marketing: lead with a clear, provocative claim, invite disagreement, and support the message with an understandable argument. The group considers whether a more controversial framing could bring wider attention to NAT and force a substantive debate among Bitcoin supporters and critics. MoonKing holds NAT and operates paid educational subscriptions and ProudProfits.com; the hosts are active NAT advocates and have interests connected to the project and its ecosystem. Nothing in this episode is financial advice. Watch the full conversation and subscribe to The Block Runner for future episodes.

Episode 321 begins with William and T.J. reacting to the ongoing soccer tournament, disputed officiating, ticket prices, broadcasting rights, and the scale of the business surrounding the sport. The conversation then returns to Digital Matter Theory and the origins of NAT. The hosts explain how Bitcoin block data, Ordinals, Bitmap, and recurring on-chain patterns inspired a framework for creating digital assets whose properties and supplies are derived from Bitcoin rather than selected arbitrarily. They revisit NAT’s distribution, early minting process, growing holder base, and proposed role as a second subsidy for Bitcoin miners. The discussion examines the long-term decline of Bitcoin’s block subsidy and why directing value toward miners could contribute to network security without changing Bitcoin’s monetary policy. William and T.J. also explore how NAT.fun brings DMT concepts into a lower-friction Solana environment. They review early Vibeathon submissions, including digital art, AI-assisted projects, data-driven collections, and tools that use Bitcoin block information as part of their underlying structure. Disclosure: The hosts are creators and contributors within the DMT, NAT, and NAT.fun ecosystems and hold related interests. Nothing in this episode is financial advice. Watch the full discussion, subscribe to The Block Runner, and follow future episodes for continued coverage.

In Episode 320 of The Block Runner Podcast, hosts William, Iman, and TJ are joined by SuperFan and Dr. Mien of BigNoodle, the AI native art platform behind the Heroes collection that launched on the block pad. The guys trace BigNoodle's path from a Bitcoin Amsterdam hackathon and DMT inspired generative art to its next chapter: a decentralized AI compute network. The core thesis: Bitcoin turns energy into value, and Big Noodle wants to turn that same energy into intelligence. They dig into decentralized physical AI infrastructure, GPU and CPU boxes that aim to cut the cost of inference by as much as ninety percent, and compute as a brand new asset class in a world of data center power shortages and GPU scarcity. They also cover whether you can plug a frontier scale model into a distributed network, the mining style reward mechanism behind it, and their yield product called Bullion, where epoch based profit share lets you contribute a unit to a compute pool the way you would add to a DeFi pool. Plus why censorship resistant AI matters as the frontier labs start drawing political lines, and the sci fi units they minted for the NAT.fun hackathon. Disclosure: The hosts are founders of NAT.fun and hold positions in assets discussed. Nothing in this episode is financial advice. Watch the full episode on YouTube and subscribe to the newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.

In Episode 319 of The Block Runner Podcast, hosts William and I-man are joined for a third time by Benny the Dev of Tap and Track. Benny walks through the TAP protocol's largest upgrade since 2023: native time locks, delegations, and HTLC-based cross-chain swaps that work without bridges, all done natively through meta protocols rather than soft L2s. They dig into Tapscope, the new cross-chain DEX, and Benny's take on perpetuals he calls superpositions, isolated collateral arenas that avoid cascading liquidations. He also teases phase two (the full cross-chain trading matrix) and a phase three AI integration. Then a retrospective on routing NAT emissions to Bitcoin miners, now over sixty percent of hashrate with four of the top five pools engaged, why the declining Bitcoin subsidy and security budget is a real long-term problem, and why NAT, built on the bitsfield with a minimal, non-invasive footprint, may be the perfect engineering answer to it. Plus: building ahead of the narrative, the OpenSea lesson, NAT.fun's dual-rail Solana and Bitcoin approach, Tim Sweeney's Team Open and the NFT/gaming revival, and where AI genuinely helps in development versus where human instinct still wins. Disclosure: The hosts are founders of NAT.fun and hold positions in assets discussed. Nothing in this episode is financial advice. Watch the full episode on YouTube and subscribe to the newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.

In Episode 318 of The Block Runner Podcast, hosts William and I-man dig into the booming collectibles wave: Collector Crypt's exploding revenue, twenty five hundred dollar Pokemon packs, and a new SDK that lets anyone build a storefront on top of real-world graded card inventory. They ask why gambling on cardboard might be crypto's next consumer onramp, and where it goes after Pokemon. Then they unpack Bitcoin's power law: a new analysis that fit only the first six years of price data yet nailed the next decade. What do those assumptions hide, and why is the Coinbase CEO shrugging off quantum risk and the long-term security budget? As the guys put it, when no OG Bitcoiner is concerned, that's concerning. Finally, they cover BigNoodle graduating on NAT.fun. The AI DePIN project revealed its art, the market reacted instantly, and it previews how Vibe Studio turns market data into a creative compass. Disclosure: The hosts are founders of NAT.fun and hold positions in assets discussed. Nothing in this episode is financial advice. Watch the full episode on YouTube and subscribe to the newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.

In Episode 317 of The Block Runner Podcast, hosts William and I-man unpack why this Bitcoin cycle felt like a failed rocket launch, how unrealistic expectations soured market sentiment, and what Bitcoin's diminishing returns mean for miners and the long-term security budget. They then dive into the real world asset wave sweeping crypto: graded sports cards and Pokemon moving on-chain, Meteora and OpenSea entering the RWA arena, and what past collectible bubbles, from tulips to trading cards, teach us about speculative media. Finally, they share NAT.fun updates: the second rocket launch, a move toward systemic periodic launches, fame-score based caps, and ten thousand dollars up for grabs for creators. Disclosure: The hosts are founders of NAT.fun and hold positions in assets discussed. Nothing in this episode is financial advice. Watch the full episode on YouTube and subscribe to the newsletter at TheBlockRunner.com.

In Episode 316 of The Block Runner Podcast, hosts William and I-man give an honest post-mortem on the first NAT.fun launch, break down why gold and AI equities are outrunning Bitcoin in this bear-market stretch, and walk through the plan for a second launch with healthier token distribution. Disclosure: William and I-man are founders of NAT.fun and hold NAT tokens. All analysis in this episode reflects their perspective as participants in the ecosystem. Key topics: Bear-market sentiment, round three: gold outrunning Bitcoin, Mark Cuban turning bearish, and David Hoffman exiting ETH, plus why the feeling of a market top keeps getting worse even as prices stay historically high The AI and equities bubble: Anthropic's revenue versus its trillion-dollar valuation, Jensen Huang's argument for growing GDP with AI and robots, and Mag 7 stocks versus Bitcoin in a market where attention, not fundamentals, sets the price Attention markets everywhere: gambling apps, Pokemon cards, and conspiracy and alien mania as symptoms of where speculative dopamine has migrated away from crypto The NAT.fun launch post-mortem: the first token's broken distribution (ten holders, one wallet holding around 80 percent, graduation in roughly ten minutes), why that makes a credible Vibathon impossible, and the second rocket plan with a higher graduation threshold for better NFT distribution Product direction: a tour of the Vibe Studio and the tarot-card creator example, integrating vibe creation into the launch flow, the Breaking Bad themed launch video breakdown, and an open letter to Foundry on Bitcoin's declining security budget and NAT Please like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting app! Sign up for a free newsletter: www.theblockrunner.com Follow us on: Youtube: https://bit.ly/TBlkRnnrYouTube Twitter: bit.ly/TBR-Twitter Telegram: bit.ly/TBR-Telegram Discord: bit.ly/TBR-Discord $NAT Telegram: https://t.me/dmt_nat

In Episode 315 of The Block Runner Podcast, hosts William, I-man, and TJ record on the eve of the NAT.fun launch, break down the top 25 revenue-generating protocols in Web3, and make bold predictions for how DMT and NAT.fun will perform once the button is finally pushed. Disclosure: William and I-man are founders of NAT.fun and hold NAT tokens. All analysis in this episode reflects their perspective as participants in the ecosystem. Key topics: NAT.fun launch: the pre-launch nerves, the complexity of building a platform this ambitious, and what it feels like to finally push the button after a year of development AI-accelerated development: how AI tools enabled a more polished product than would have been possible otherwise, and the security audit gauntlet that caused the final delays Top 25 Web3 protocols by monthly revenue: Tether and Circle dominating at $476M and $191M, Hyperliquid flipping Solana in FDV, and what real product-market fit looks like in crypto Pump.fun's breakthrough: solving the liquidity bootstrapping problem, consumer crypto's uncomfortable truth about speculation, and the macro forces driving casino behavior DMT and NAT predictions: what happens if the thesis proves correct, how the market will respond, and the team's expectations for the platform Please like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting app! Sign up for a free newsletter: www.theblockrunner.com Follow us on: Youtube: https://bit.ly/TBlkRnnrYouTube Twitter: bit.ly/TBR-Twitter Telegram: bit.ly/TBR-Telegram Discord: bit.ly/TBR-Discord $NAT Telegram: https://t.me/dmt_nat

In Episode 314 of The Block Runner Podcast, hosts William, I-man, and TJ process eerie 2020 déjà vu as hantavirus headlines multiply, dissect the BIT token's suspicious on-chain distribution and its ultimatum to the TAP ecosystem, and share a candid update on why the NAT.fun launch is taking longer than expected — and why that's the right call. Disclosure: William and I-man are founders of NAT.fun and hold NAT tokens. All analysis in this episode reflects their perspective as participants in the ecosystem. Key topics: Hantavirus outbreak from a cruise ship birdwatching excursion — roughly 40 exposed passengers now scattered across multiple continents with limited contact tracing 2020 rhyming: the hosts recall their December 2019 episode when they first noticed anomalies from the east, and why the pattern of early dismissal followed by rapid escalation feels uncomfortably familiar Black swan market impact — revisiting the March 2020 crash where Bitcoin dropped 40–50% in a single day, what that felt like in real time, and what a repeat scenario would mean for miners and MicroStrategy's leveraged position MicroStrategy's exit strategy: Saylor's estimated two-year runway before forced selling becomes necessary, and why a prolonged bear market triggered by a pandemic could test the thesis in ways the market hasn't priced in BIT token forensic breakdown: suspicious distribution patterns, an ultimatum issued to TAP protocol, and why the on-chain data tells a clear story about intent NAT vs. BIT — why open ecosystems attract forks and copycats, how to distinguish real innovation from opportunistic wave-riding, and why anonymous actors demanding ecosystem changes deserve extra scrutiny NAT.fun security audit progress — why launching a complex platform responsibly requires more time than the community wants, and the lessons learned from watching competitors rush to market and fail Please like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting app! Sign up for a free newsletter: www.theblockrunner.com Follow us on: Youtube: https://bit.ly/TBlkRnnrYouTube Twitter: bit.ly/TBR-Twitter Telegram: bit.ly/TBR-Telegram Discord: bit.ly/TBR-Discord $NAT Telegram: https://t.me/dmt_nat

In Episode 313 of The Block Runner Podcast, William and I-man break down the latest stress test for crypto launch platforms: Believe’s rapid rise, the Printer token ICO backlash, the $2M refund, and what the failed attempts to disrupt Pump.Fun reveal about launching in a permissionless market. The conversation centers on how quickly community momentum can reverse when a platform moves too fast into tokenization, why founders face extreme psychological pressure once market attention arrives, and why examples like Believe, Heaven, Bonk-adjacent launch efforts, and Printer matter directly to the NAT.fun launch thesis. Key topics: Believe’s position in the launch ecosystem and how quickly market attention can concentrate around a new platform The Printer ICO, Coinbase/Sonar rails, and why selling a token too early can reverse community sentiment The mental-health pressure founders face when crypto Twitter turns from attention into personal attack The $2M refund and what it says about trust, timing, and execution in token launches Why attempts to disrupt Pump.Fun keep failing, from Believe to Heaven to Printer How these failures become direct lessons for NAT.fun as it prepares to enter the launch-platform arena Please like and subscribe on your favorite podcasting app! Sign up for a free newsletter: www.theblockrunner.com Follow us on: Youtube: https://bit.ly/TBlkRnnrYouTube Twitter: bit.ly/TBR-Twitter Telegram: bit.ly/TBR-Telegram Discord: bit.ly/TBR-Discord $NAT Telegram: https://t.me/dmt_nat