
The Bitcoin OGs Are Back. Bitcoin Maximalists vs Crypto Maximalists, JPEGs and the Haircut Indicator
Kevin and Yana had one job this week - to make an agenda. We failed miserably Kevin admitted there’s a to do list somewhere, but he doesn’t know where it is. Yana bravely volunteered to be the organized one for the day, which in practice meant having a few random thoughts. So we did what any responsible podcast would do. We hit record and trusted the chaos. This is what came out of Episode 4 of Eavesdrop. The Bitcoin soft fork that wanted to ban monkey JPEGs Yana just got back from the Plan B conference in Lugano. Everyone there was still talking about the failed Bitcoin soft fork (BIP 110), which tried to limit how much data can go into a block. In plain words, some developers wanted memes and NFTs off the Bitcoin blockchain. We argued about whether it was a bad idea or just a badly sold one. Yana heard from plenty of people in Lugano who said they might have voted for it if someone had explained it properly. Kevin thinks the problem went deeper. We both agree that calling something spam because of its file size is about as scientific as judging a book by its page count. A market indicator BlackRock doesn’t know about Kevin shared something no analyst will tell you. For years, you could tell whether Bitcoin was up or down by looking at Tone Vays’ haircut. The bowl cut marked peak bear market. Tone is bald now. The oracle is gone. We’re all trading blind. Bitcoin maximalists vs crypto maximalists Stablecoins, the GENIUS Act, and TradFi moving into crypto. Crypto maximalists see a bigger market. Bitcoin maximalists see dollar depository receipts wearing a hoodie. Kevin calls it dancing with the devil to get the capital you need so you never have to dance with the devil again. Yana brought a question back from the conference. If everyone knows your wallet holds 100 bitcoin, is that really so different from owning SpaceX shares? Does Bitcoin lose value when it loses privacy? Kevin’s answer includes the time he was the villain of the day on a stage in Amsterdam full of hardcore maximalists. It also includes one of our favorite lines of the episode: Theory is really easy when you have a lot of money. Is something about to break? Yana lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union, so she has trust issues with any institution that calls itself permanent. Kevin sees the US dollar as a case of mutually assured destruction. On air, we accidentally renamed it “mutually enjoyed destruction.” We’re keeping that. Substack, Instagram, and lost brain cells Why Substack is growing so fast? Meanwhile, Kevin recently opened Instagram for the first time. The algorithm showed him, in this order, 3 butts and a man kicking a dog. He scrolled for 4 seconds and felt dumber. There’s also a man at the airport who disappeared into TikTok and never came back, and a WALL-E reference that Yana completely missed because she grew up behind the Iron Curtain. AI made us faster. So why are we more anxious? Yana confesses she recently asked Claude to put her restorative habits in her calendar. Deep breath. Face massage. Ask someone for help. Kevin explains why AI productivity can feel like a treadmill that keeps speeding up, and admits he yells at his AI: “I said ONLY change this.” The parking lot rule Yana once worked at ArcelorMittal, and she still thinks about something Lakshmi Mittal said: you decide to buy a factory in 15 minutes, then spend 6 months arguing about the parking lot. Kevin has his own version: the 7-hour meeting about whether the water cooler goes on the 4th floor or the eighth. And the Netflix version, where you fall asleep holding the remote. We finish with luxury beliefs, theory vs reality, and why you still need idealists in the room, even if someone has to poke holes in their ideas afterwards. 🎧 Listen to the full episode above. Then tell us in the comments: what’s the biggest decision you made in 15 minutes, and what’s the smallest thing you’ve argued about for months? If you like conversations that run longer than a hook, subscribe. We promise to make an agenda next time. (We won’t.) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eavesdroplive.substack.com











