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The Peter McCormack Show: Accelerating Bitcoin with Car González - WBD689thepetermccormackshow.libsyn.com/accelerating-bitcoin-with-car-gonzlez-wbd689
698 sats \ 10 comments \ @siggy47 11h bitcoin
I re-watched this interview with @Car this weekend. I have gone down a little rabbit hole learning about the early days of the Austin Bitcoin Club and pleblab. It really is an inspiring story. I guess the time was right, the universe was aligned, and lots of talented people flocked to Austin.
I doubt whether that magic could happen again in another time and place, but I was intrigued hearing Peter talk about his vision for a bitcoin community in Bedford, England, and @Car talking about the communities in Houston and other parts of Texas.
I liked the comparison of building small hubs where none existed before to the nodes on-chain or on lightning. I think we should all use Austin as a lesson to build in our part of the world.
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140 sats \ 4 replies \ @Scoresby 9h
Austin is pretty awesome. But there's so many great centers getting formed: Presidio in the Bay area, ATL Bitlab, Bitcoin House Bali, Bitcoin Park in Nashville...it's one of the most positive things I see in Bitcoin: there are hundreds of these small communities spinning up all over the world. It's really cool!
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123 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 OP 9h
Yes it is.
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246 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 7h
There was a time where we use to brag about it now we just help others build up their communities from the ground up. That’s why we do things in Mexico City and Yucatán. PlebLab has a big enough global brand now to assist with helping these smaller communities not only believing in themselves but each other and driving attention to them. The coolest thing about it all it’s entirely a Pleb movement.
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169 sats \ 1 reply \ @0xbitcoiner 9h
Is it too much to say Austin’s the Bitcoin capital these days? cc/@Car
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178 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 7h
Ya we’re in the Empower stage of community.
Wrote about this here need to properly write about it. We had to all learn a lot growing up in the 90’s were just built from a different era, see things a little different also being from central Texas makes us unique as well.
It just means further pockets spin off the already existing community, creating more individual leaders further creating a bigger and bigger community. Which gets us back to the word Grassroots, once you reach the Empower stage ideally each of these individual leaders further spin off more individually leaders further creating a bigger and bigger community. At that point you won. It's why it's so important to teach and train the next person in your community everything you know it only helps you grow and sustain long term. It's why I think it's called Grassroots, it literally planting and watering these individual leaders and helping them grow for the long term in your community.
Austin officially has 3 Bitcoin Hackerspaces, 1 of them is an Accelerator PlebLab, another is Nifty’s Bitcoin++ basecamp, and another is a new one spawned up on the far east side.
We also have a Bitcoin coworking space, Bitcoin Commons now renamed to Bitcoin Park. We also have a ton of meetups in North Austin, South Austin, Bitcoin Park, Capital Factory/PlebLab, and even more AI crossover ones now.
That’s only the stuff I know about, I am not nearly as active on the community side as I use to be. I give about 7-10hrs of community service a month to Bitcoin through Bitcoin Builders Club and @PlebLab workshops, on Hackerspace Tuesdays and any meetup days people usually come in to talk to me about there startup/project so in a way I offer free mentorship on those days. But outside of that not much else, new people like Jack Lesser have stepped up and become the new guys in the community leading now, it’s beautiful to see.
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136 sats \ 1 reply \ @Wumbo 10h
The Man, The Myth, The Legend. Car!!!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 6h
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72 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 9h
Fun fact: When I rode in to record this in 2023. Parker was just finishing up onboarding Peter to Zaprite, he also was just on the show. Me and Danny were just catching up, as I knew both of them through Marty since 2021. Peter would jokingly always say me and Danny were rival producers to his kids haha.
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36 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 10h
Hmm, I don't think I was on SN at that time. I'll have to have a listen too.
Thanks for sharing!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @RamPl 1h
Totally agree the Austin Bitcoin Club story really feels like one of those rare convergence moments where the right people, mindset, and timing all clicked. What struck me most was the organic, grassroots energy of it all no corporate sponsorships or top-down structure, just plebs building something meaningful together. The analogy of local hubs acting like Lightning nodes is spot on: decentralized, resilient, and driven by community. Bedford, Houston, wherever we don’t need to replicate Austin exactly, but we can recreate that spirit by starting small, being consistent, and showing up for our local scenes. The Bitcoin network is global, but its strength grows from local action.
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