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Rise Up Media

Rise Up Media

By: Rise Up Media
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Rise Up is the most trusted source for live crypto education on the internet--join Evan Mann, Alex Popovic, and William Watson plus their expert guests and friends for helpful news, commentary, and answers to your crypto questions wherever you are, whenever you listen! We'll help you learn what blockchain is, why it matters, & how to start using crypto safely in a community where the only thing missing is you 👉 Get the links/schedule to listen live and much, much more at https://community.rumshq.com

© 2026 Rise Up Media, LLC Hourly Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Is MicroStrategy's STRC a Dangerous Ponzi? Will Explains | Ep 528

    Is MicroStrategy's STRC a Dangerous Ponzi? Will Explains | Ep 528
    Jun 18 2026

    Good now revolutionaries— closing out the week with the biggest single-episode Reposa Coffee feature yet (Will and Violet do a live tasting of the cold brew, caramel latte, and the coffee-tonic-water hybrid Will couldn't get behind — Violet rates the caramel latte 8.5/10). Will mentions RUMS is meeting with Reposa today to formalize a partnership and explore a Boston food-channel cross-pollination.

    The meatiest segment is Will's plain-English breakdown of MicroStrategy's STRC instrument after Bearded asked if it's a dangerous Ponzi. Will frames STRC as a corporate bond with an 11.5% dividend, senior to common equity, and walks through the unwind risk if Bitcoin has consecutive bad years. Companion PSA: Satori Finance is closing — 30-day clock to withdraw.

    Alex levels the most direct rant of the season on the "buying Cardano here could be the move" creator content making the rounds. Cardano's TVL is now BELOW Katana's (~$92M). Cardano's daily chain revenue is $276 — Alex makes more daily revenue from Pokemon cards than Cardano makes as an entire blockchain. The Solana-at-$8 comparison is dishonest and disqualifying — Solana cratered because of FTX/SBF leverage, not a fundamental network failure; nothing fundamental changed, the builders stayed. Cardano's situation is the opposite. "Comparing the two is manipulative, maybe just stupid."

    Macro corner: Will pulls up CME FedWatch — odds of rate hikes (not cuts) by the December 9 Fed meeting sit at ~87%; ~75% by October; ~66% by September. Dollar testing key resistance, looking to flip it to support. Both bad for crypto. Plus a SuperTeam Ireland castle residency for Solana builders (Alex angling hard for a RUMS hosting gig), the Dialogue/Peter Thiel "secret society" attendee list leak (Joseph Gordon-Levitt + Ezra Klein + Tim Ferriss + Ted Cruz + Sam Harris + Scott Bessent + Reid Hoffman, plus panels titled "How to Build Your Own Cult" and "Money Can Buy You Happiness"), and Jito's upcoming JTX heist workshop with The White Whale and select content creators.


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    Support the show

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    Want to hang out with us after the show, get live answers to your questions, or join future giveaways?
    Join our free community where the show lives 24/7:
    community.rumshq.com

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    ☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️
    LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a central
    Helpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.

    🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗
    LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p central
    DYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.

    📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑
    LIVE Mondays @ 7p central
    Technical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.

    ⚖️ TRUST ISSUES 🧐
    LIVE Tuesdays @ 6:30p central
    Breaking down U.S. crypto policy, regulation, and legislation—what they mean for the industry and what comes next.


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    WANT MORE?
    👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com
    👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com
    👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.com

    FOLLOW OUR HOSTS:
    ☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan
    🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info
    🐬 Will Watson: https://c...
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Crypto Castle: Viv Ford on Moving Into SF Crypto Bro House 2015 | Ep 84🍻🌗

    Crypto Castle: Viv Ford on Moving Into SF Crypto Bro House 2015 | Ep 84🍻🌗
    Jun 18 2026
    Good now revolutionaries— Viv Ford joins Rise Up After Dark live from the floor of Newark Airport, mid-layover, on her way to Paris to do comedy shows. Viv is the creator of Crypto Castle (the show and the actual house) — she moved into a literal SF crypto bro house in 2015 when Bitcoin was $250, lived there four years through the 20K peak and crash, then turned the whole experience into an hour-long comedy show that toured the world for a year and is now becoming a TV show with Roman Coppola's Decentralized Pictures.Alex re-demos the interactive AI/chip-company web she built with Claude — investment lines, competition, lawsuits, supply chain, government contracts — now colloquially known as The Tangle. She'll publish it as a live artifact at tangledweb.rumshq.com (or in Circle, depending on where it lands). The walkthrough doubles as a Claude/vibe-coding tutorial: one-sentence prompt to start, iterative fixes ("this part looks broken," Claude fixes it), and the realization that you can build legitimately useful software now if you can speak a language and have a vague idea.Mid-show Viv goes live on a POAP scavenger hunt at EWR — the airport POAP exists, but it's POAP-gated and she doesn't have the prerequisite POAP, so it's a $1 fallback. Patricio Worthalter (Mr. POAP) sighting at the consensus VIP speakers dinner. The team also recaps Octant Demo Day Epoch 12, which Evan and Alex co-hosted earlier today (Griff Green of DAO-hack-and-hack-back fame on stage, Roscoe from revoke.cache, Maggie Love showed up with food poisoning AND the DeFi toddler, full quadratic funding explainer). Plus: Will's continuing butter-futures campaign — long beef, short butter into the full moon. Will's Collector Crypt CARDS token burn-rate PDF for premium members is up 19.5% in the hour since the show started.Capped by the Purple Arculus Wallet prototype reveal again, with the full economics confessed on air (Alex personally backs the entire sprint run if pre-orders don't sell — RUMS doesn't make a dollar on the wallets, just recoups). Plus the Tangem-vs-Arculus question handled with grace after viewer Drew shared a $5M loss story, and a Ripple x Matt Damon $25M-to-clean-water aside. Viv's parting wish, said from the floor: "What a joy that crypto still brings such fun wild creatures together for a solid two-hour hang."RUMS Purple WalletWant the safest way to store your crypto? The Arculus cold storage wallet keeps your assets completely offline, away from exchanges, away from hackers, and fully in your control. Get your exclusive RUMS x Arculus cold storage wallet today!Crypto Payment · Card PaymentPowered by Arculus Wallet — getarculus.com, promo code ARCURUMS10.Powered by Jito — stake your SOL at https://www.jito.network/staking/Support the show— Want to hang out with us after the show, get live answers to your questions, or join future giveaways? Join our free community where the show lives 24/7: community.rumshq.com—☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a centralHelpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗 LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p centralDYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑LIVE Mondays @ 7p centralTechnical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.⚖️ TRUST ISSUES 🧐 LIVE Tuesdays @ 6:30p centralBreaking down U.S. crypto policy, regulation, and legislation—what they mean for the industry and what comes next.—WANT MORE?👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.comFOLLOW OUR HOSTS:☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info🐬 Will Watson: https://c...
    Show More Show Less
    2 hrs and 2 mins
  • Why Alex Sees Layering DeFi Protocols as Too Risky | Ep 527

    Why Alex Sees Layering DeFi Protocols as Too Risky | Ep 527
    Jun 17 2026
    Good evening— Alex and Emily are back from a one-week break with one of the densest Trust Issues episodes to date. The centerpiece: Alex had Claude build him an interactive diagram mapping every relationship between the major AI and chip companies — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Meta, Apple, NVIDIA, AMD, Broadcom, TSMC, SoftBank, and the US government. Investment lines, competition lines, feud lines, lawsuit lines, supply chain lines. The picture that emerges is a closed-loop money-laundering ouroboros where the same dollars cycle between the same five companies as investments, payments, and equity, while each one's paper valuation climbs.Highlight news beats: SpaceX bought Cursor today (Cursor valued at $60B against ~$4B annualized revenue, fresh off SpaceX's $2T-on-paper IPO). Anthropic's Fable 5 model was banned by the US government within 72 hours of release after Amazon engineers reportedly jailbroke it — and Pete Hegseth called Anthropic "woke" because they wouldn't sign off on autonomous kill bots. The DoD contract went to OpenAI instead. David Sachs is overseeing all this as the White House AI/crypto czar despite still having undisclosed VC exposure across most of these companies. Emily walks through the historical context for the Fort Knox gold audit chatter, why re-pricing the reserves would amount to Bank-of-China-style currency manipulation, and what that does to a country running 112% debt to GDP.The Bitcoin debate flares up again: Emily argues the 21M hard cap is functionally broken via ETFs, wrapped versions, MicroStrategy treasury manipulation, and PolyMarket-style synthetic exposure — the decentralization narrative is marketing fluff at this point. Alex pushes back, eventually conceding the hard cap is being structurally diluted even if not technically changed. Both end up agreeing that Ethereum is structurally more important than Bitcoin going forward — it's the universal backer for stablecoins, the substrate for tokenized everything, and the only EVM environment compatible with serious AI-agent activity.Plus: Saylor's manufactured dead-cat bounce, TSMC + ASML's chip-manufacturing chokepoint (silicon photonics + EUV lithography), why tariffs are just an extra consumer tax, the difference between "security by obscurity" and "security through transparency," Solana DEX meme-coin volume actually being only ~5% (not the majority everyone claims), Ethereum gas fees crashing to under 25 cents for even the most expensive transaction type, and Alex's final wish: to be first in line to sit on Lincoln Memorial Santa's lap. Book club next week: The Unbanking of America by Lisa Servon.RUMS Purple WalletWant the safest way to store your crypto? The Arculus cold storage wallet keeps your assets completely offline, away from exchanges, away from hackers, and fully in your control. Get your exclusive RUMS x Arculus cold storage wallet today!Crypto Payment · Card PaymentPowered by Arculus Wallet — getarculus.com, promo code ARCURUMS10.Powered by Jito — stake your SOL at https://www.jito.network/staking/Support the show— Want to hang out with us after the show, get live answers to your questions, or join future giveaways? Join our free community where the show lives 24/7: community.rumshq.com—☕ THE RISE UP MORNING SHOW☀️LIVE Monday - Thursday @ 7a centralHelpful web3 news, commentary, & answers to your crypto questions.🍻RISE UP AFTER DARK🌗 LIVE Wednesdays @ 7p centralDYOR and BYOB for casual Q&A, fun with expert guests, and altcoin research.📈RISE UP MARKET WATCH🤑LIVE Mondays @ 7p centralTechnical analysis, real macro insight, and practical takeaways to help you invest smarter in every market.⚖️ TRUST ISSUES 🧐 LIVE Tuesdays @ 6:30p centralBreaking down U.S. crypto policy, regulation, and legislation—what they mean for the industry and what comes next.—WANT MORE?👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.comFOLLOW OUR HOSTS:☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info🐬 Will Watson: https://c...
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    1 hr and 33 mins
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