How did i get here?

Did you know?

Back in 2020, I got wind of the fact that Bitcoin Lightning was being added to RSS.

In normal English: podcasts were about to have a way of letting listeners support creators directly, globally and peer-to-peer.

No middlemen. No cancellation, No De-monetisation bollcoks. Just listeners and supporters sending value directly to the people making the stuff they liked.

Obviously, I did what any sensible, forward-thinking adult would do. That was being told to stay at home by their disgusting government.

I started a podcast about salons/hair industry with my “hair dad”.

Joe Mehmet — multi-London-salon owner, entrepreneur and man who i have tolerated for many years.

We called it Salonomics.

The plan was simple: talk business, economics and how we had success in our respective hair careers, i’d drop into the conversation whenever i could that salon owners across the UK that a small allocation of Bitcoin could help save their businesses.

A sort of financial Trojan horse.

I genuinely thought they might listen.

They didn’t.

Which, as it turns out, was excellent preparation for the next six years of my life.

The show was recorded during the glorious shitshow that was Covid, and after 64 episodes in one year, we had gradually moved away from trying to educate the hair industry and towards throwing politicians under the bus.

Frankly, it was probably more productive.

But Salonomics was much more important to me than that.

It was my first proper experiment with what this technology could actually do.

Not just Bitcoin.

Not just money.

but p2p V4V on the bitcoin network

I did not take long to realise people were hacking rss (Sir Spencer Joe Martin) building stuff on nostr to evolve a system where artists could also use RSS & Nostr to publish their music, reach listeners globally and receive value directly from the people listening?

Fast forward a few years…

Hello, Valueverse.

Decentralising music.

Without labels, without Spotify & without permission. We are publishing artists, producing shows irl and livestreams with worldwide audiences.

I’ve published over 150 songs from 14 different artists to date. Hosted 8 shows and produced 6 live streams.

Looking back, I was right.

And, annoyingly for everyone around me, I’m still right.

You can still listen to all 64 episodes of Salonomics — including my personal favourite, “At Home with The Bin Ladens” — here:

Listen to Salonomics on Fountain

And if you wanna taste of valueverse music go and check out every act i’ve introduced to v4v here: https://bitcoinessex.co.uk/new-music-nudge-unit/