About this episode

Bethany and Adam discuss the future of social media and cryptocurrency with guest Paul Keating, focusing on user control and the implications of Bitcoin.

In this episode, Bethany and Adam sit down with Paul Keating to talk about the broken state of social media and what a better future could look like. They get into how platforms like Instagram and Facebook profit off your attention through ads and addictive algorithms, why censorship on legacy platforms is a real problem (including what happened to Dr. Saladino during COVID), and how Primal - a social media app built on the open-source Nostr protocol - is trying to fix all of that by giving users full control over their feeds, no advertising model, and the ability to send real Bitcoin (called Zaps) directly to creators. The conversation naturally flows into Bitcoin itself - why it matters, how it differs from crypto, what sound money means, the debasement of the dollar, Bitcoin's humanitarian potential for the unbanked, and why Paul lives entirely on a Bitcoin standard in Costa Rica. They wrap up by recommending the book Thank God for Bitcoin and teasing a future deep-dive Bitcoin episode. Guest Bio: Paul Keating is a builder at Primal, a social media app built on the decentralized Nostr protocol that lets users control their own feeds, own their data, and send Bitcoin directly…

People in this episode

Host: Bethany Hamilton

Guest: Paul Keating

Topics covered

• decentralized social media
• cryptocurrency
• censorship
• Bitcoin
• social media platforms
• user control
• financial independence

Keywords

• decentralized social media
• Bitcoin
• Primal app
• censorship
• financial independence
• Nostr protocol
• Dr. Saladino
• Thank God for Bitcoin

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Primal, Instagram, Facebook, Nostr

Books & works: Thank God for Bitcoin, Hummingbird: The Bitcoin Jungle Story

Places: Costa Rica

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