Where the panel landed
Thomas Hunt and Dan Eve were broadly aligned that Bitcoin looked healthier than it had during the FTX collapse, though Dan still wanted a pullback and treated the rally with more caution. They split less on direction than on emphasis: Thomas leaned into dollar-cost averaging, holding, and long-term conviction, while Dan kept noting the halving cycle, the difficulty of timing bottoms, and the possibility of a bull trap. On Ordinals and Nostr, both saw the tradeoffs, with Dan more careful about censorship language and long-term fee consequences, while Thomas treated the mess itself as historically familiar Bitcoin territory.
What they were watching
The directional consensus was that Bitcoin had recovered from the immediate FTX panic and was again behaving like an asset difficult to time from the outside. The organic levels were $24,000 as the current discussion point, $12,000 as Dan's wished-for fire-sale level, and $500,000 as the long-range Cathie Wood-style horizon Thomas used to frame the short-term noise. They did not settle the bottom question, but they treated holding and dollar-cost averaging as the only strategies that reliably put a person in the market when the sharp move arrives.
Bitcoin Recovers From the FTX Trough
The episode opened with Bitcoin around $24,000 and the panel asking whether the January move was a real recovery or another trap. Dan admitted he had waited for $12,000 and missed the move, while Thomas used the moment to defend dollar-cost averaging and holding through despair. Both treated the post-FTX period as a major psychological test rather than a clean chart signal.
Cathie Wood, Coinbase, and Risk Appetite
Thomas brought up Cathie Wood's continued Bitcoin and crypto-equity conviction, including her long-range $500,000 Bitcoin frame and buying of Coinbase and Tesla near lows. Dan connected this to Coinbase's legal news and the market's reaction, while also distinguishing Coinbase Earn from Gemini Earn and the Genesis/FTX damage. The panel treated the Coinbase news as one more sign that the industry was not simply frozen after 2022.
The Halving Comes Back Into View
Dan emphasized that the next Bitcoin halving was roughly 13 months away, making the bear-market clock feel shorter than it looked. He argued that very few people can call a bottom, but that the period before a halving has historically rewarded buying when Bitcoin feels lower than it should. Thomas framed the same point emotionally: the moment of despair is often the moment holding becomes visible as a strategy.
Ordinals and the Return of Collectible Bitcoin
The Ordinals discussion centered on whether storing JPEGs directly in Bitcoin blocks was an attack on Bitcoin's financial mission or a legitimate use of paid block space. Thomas connected Ordinals to colored coins, collectible satoshis, Curio-style trading cards, and old arguments about numbering coins. Dan acknowledged the hornet's nest but emphasized that a fee market means miners will include the transactions that pay.
NFTs as Fee Market, Not Just Decoration
Dan laid out the argument that non-financial demand for block space could support miner incentives as block subsidies decline. Thomas jokingly sharpened that into the idea that NFTs could save Bitcoin, then took the premise seriously enough to explore it. The landing was that Ordinals may bring attention and fees in the short term, while high costs may eventually limit them to only the most expensive inscriptions.
Damus, Nostr, and the Twitter Replacement Rush
Thomas introduced Damus as an easy iPhone client for Nostr, newly pulled from Apple's App Store in China after becoming visible there. Dan saw China's response as predictable and argued that Nostr's long-term strength would depend on decentralization and many interfaces rather than one app. Thomas contrasted Nostr with Spoutible, Spill, and Twitter, treating the moment as a broader search for post-Twitter social defaults.
Censorship, Filtering, and Deepfakes
The Nostr discussion became a larger argument about whether paid filtering is censorship, editing, or simple housekeeping. Dan warned about slippery slopes and echo chambers, while Thomas argued that AI-generated fakes may make some kind of filtering necessary for ordinary users. They did not resolve the contradiction, but they identified the future problem: a network can be censorship-resistant and still socially unusable without filters.
Craig Wright Returns to Court
The Craig Wright UK case against Bitcoin developers became the legal danger segment, with Dan calling the premise insane and Thomas framing it as out of character with Satoshi's apparent values. Dan focused on the claim that developers should alter protocol behavior to restore access to alleged lost coins, while Thomas argued that Satoshi would not use courts to fix private-key failure. Both saw the case less as a technical dispute than as a rich litigant's attempt to drag developers through expensive process.
ChatGPT and the Description Economy
Thomas closed with ChatGPT as his story of the week, describing a shift from writing every sentence to specifying what the machine should produce. Dan agreed, comparing it to Google as a tool that accelerates work rather than simply replacing thought, and described using it to learn MongoDB. The panel's AI optimism was tempered by the same concern raised earlier: once text, images, voices, and avatars merge, reality itself becomes easier to counterfeit.
Bitcoin never does what you want it to.— Thomas Hunt
Yes, definitely. The ball has spoken positivity rules the land— Thomas Hunt
It's definitely kicked a hornet's nest, right?— Dan Eve
If people want to pay for the block space, the miners can pay for it.— Dan Eve
Satoshi wouldn't sue.— Thomas Hunt
AI is here. It's amazing.— Thomas Hunt
Story of the Week
Ordinals Reopen Bitcoin's Old Block-Space Argument
The dominant story was the arrival of Ordinals and JPEGs directly on Bitcoin, because it folded several old Bitcoin arguments into one new artifact. It revived the big-block/small-block dispute, the colored-coins lineage, the fee-market question, and the question of whether Bitcoin is only money or also a settlement layer for other claims. Thomas saw the collectible impulse as recurring history, while Dan saw the market logic: if people pay for block space, miners will take the fee. The conclusion was not clean approval, but a familiar Bitcoin compromise: good now, possibly troublesome later, and probably impossible to stop without creating a bigger fight.
It's like tribbles. They're cute at first, but they get out of hand.— Thomas Hunt