Episode notes
"We need Bitcoiners to fight for Bitcoin. If no one fights for Bitcoin, Bitcoin will very soon be dead."
Hodlonaut is a Bitcoin citizen journalist, the founder of the Citadel21 zine, the man behind the 2019 Lightning Torch, and the person who told the simple truth about Craig Wright and then stood in the fire for five years over it. Most recently he is the author of the Capture series, a deep investigation into how informal power over Bitcoin Core was assembled, exercised, and defended.
We recorded this on August 2, 2026, in the middle of the ColdCard fallout, and the grief of that moment runs underneath the whole conversation. From there we go all the way back: how he found Bitcoin in 2013, the Pirate Bay ethos, Citadel21, and the birth of Hodlonaut and the Space Cat. We get into the Lightning Torch as a three-month experiment in trust, the Craig Wright war and how stoicism carried him through it, and then the heart of it: the Capture series, the "priesthood" narrative around Core, the OP_RETURN uncap, the DEI and "extractive" playbook used to shut down criticism, why every line of code must serve monetary sovereignty, and his return to fully supporting BIP-110. This is a conversation about the human layer of Bitcoin, and why we have to fight for it.
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️ GUEST
Hodlonaut — Bitcoin citizen journalist. Founder and editor of the Citadel21 zine. Originator of the Lightning Torch. Author of the Capture series (Articles 1-3 out, Article 4 forthcoming). Based in Norway.
Hodlonaut on X → x.com/hodlonaut
Citadel21 → https://www.citadel21.com/The
Capture series → https://www.citadel21.com/the-network
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