Rise Up Media

Bitcoin Wins. Litecoin, Doge, and XRP Don't | Ep 530

Good now revolutionaries— Evan and Alex hold down the show solo (Will is on the train back to Boston) and the timeline is melting. A vibe-coded tool called shillsol.com pops up to gamify Solana staking — 9,700+ members enrolled, complete with a step-by-step Replit-built tutorial. Mert posted just the word 'solana' with the paid-promotion tag for the meme. Then the SpaceX IPO drops below its initial price and the cast breaks it down as 'a meme coin launch on the NASDAQ' — extremely low float (~4.25%), insiders absorb most of the supply, and retail comes in as exit liquidity. Alex walks through zinc.cash — private proof-of-work mining on Solana powered by Arcium's confidential compute. Deposit SOL, pick mining tiles in 30-second rounds, compete for newly issued ZINC tokens. The bonanza-style jackpot mechanic is essentially privacy-preserving on-chain roulette. The white whale has been actively mining all 30 tiles and stakes his ZINC for the 'really nice' rewards, calling it still-early with outsized rewards and a persistent buyback-and-burn engine. Pokemon platform power rankings via David Onchain's deep-dive post: Collector Crypt 8.5/10 (best ecosystem-wide UX, eating everyone's lunch — $66M market cap, $100M annualized revenue), Monster 9/10 (highest rated, on MegaEth with Solana wallet bridge, withdrawal-to-MegaEth-only the main con), Fidgetles, Beezy, and Tilt Rips also covered. The bigger thesis: tokenized Pokemon is the most retail-relatable demonstration of RWA tech we have right now. Hot Wheels, Beanie Babies, sports memorabilia and comic books all next. Evan and Alex stack hits on the classic 'why Bitcoin, not [X]' questions: USDC vs Bitcoin (different tools — dollars are a transport, Bitcoin is a store), Litecoin and Dogecoin as Bitcoin forks that proved faster + cheaper hurts price, and the trust question (it's the opposite of blind — tens of thousands of nodes, every transaction publicly verifiable, no single owner). River.com data: ~300M people own Bitcoin (~4% of the world) as of May 2026. Final segment: a sharp critique of Ben McKenzie's 'Everyone Is Lying to You for Money' tour and Jake Claver — 'right tree, wrong dog.' Plus the Raposa Coffee TikTok Shop push (code RISEUP, free shipping on TikTok), upcoming guests Colin from The Book of Ethereum (Wed) and Josh from Free Water (Thu), and Dan Rodman of Co-Unity on RUAD. RUMS Purple Wallet Want 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 [https://forms.gle/r9fBTRAw79oSmBWaA] · Card Payment [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0oeervCE5Jbawrz6JIE7F06CDqgv2tJVjhum0JpdbB1NFpQ/viewform] Powered by Arculus Wallet — getarculus.com, promo code ARCURUMS10. Powered by Jito — stake your SOL at https://www.jito.network/staking/ [https://www.jito.network/staking/] Support the show [https://community.rumshq.com/checkout/premium-membership] —  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 [https://community.rumshq.com] — ☕ 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. — WANT MORE? 👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com [https://rumshq.com] 👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com 👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.com [https://community.rumshq.com] FOLLOW OUR HOSTS: ☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan [https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan] 🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info [https://alexpopovic.info/] 🐬 Will Watson: https://c... [https://coinguide.vip/]

Why Hyperliquid Is Will's Biggest Conviction Buy | Ep 45📈🤑

Good now revolutionaries— Will runs Market Watch solo from his parents' place in Maine. Bitcoin already rolling over as the show opens — sub $64K, broken below the 12/21/55 EMAs on the 4-hour chart with plenty of room to the downside. Daily chart: short signal triggered going into the full moon. Weekly: rounding-over pattern, $62.4K is the line in the sand (200-week SMA) — break that and $51K–$45K opens up. Three-month chart is the one he's watching — stochastic RSI still not in oversold territory, which is what historically marks the end of every bear market. Probably one more candle to go (~3 more months) before that flips. Bull market base case: end of summer / early fall. Stock picks: Circle (CRCL) at $80, target $65 to fill the IPO-day gap from February — Will is bullish into that buy zone. Bullish on Coinbase too. Both should outperform Bitcoin on percentage gain when sentiment turns. Saylor selling 1,000+ Bitcoin instead of his recent 32 would be the panic catalyst that flushes BTC to $30K or even a $22K wick — Will would buy as much as he could in that scenario. Power law chart eyeballs as a better long-term DCA model than the rainbow chart. Hyperliquid is his highest-conviction bet — would make it his biggest position. Buyback math: ~$2–2.8M/day in bear-market conditions = ~30–50k tokens/day = ~11M–18M tokens/year = ~4% of total supply absorbed annually. Half the supply is already in circulation. He's hoping for HYPE to drop to $40–50 range to load up. Pudgy Penguins / Pengu thesis: if Igloo IPOs, the stock outperforms the meme coin. Aerodrome strong because of the Coinbase-to-Base flywheel. TA roundup on viewer requests: Solana = bear flag, 9th red monthly candle in a row, target $46 (DCA range $46→$25); SUI = no real adoption growth, ugly chart; Polkadot = too late to the interoperability game, well-funded but no users; Aster = OK adoption but ugly chart; Tron = double top, $0.317 critical; Cardano = sad chart, near weekly oversold; WorldCoin = take profits (caller up 79% from $0.34, short signal flashing 8h); Cypher + TerraWolf = profit-taking range, bearish divergence on TW; Wormhole = great solution, terrible coin. Plus a one-week-out preview: macro corner with PCE inflation + Q1 GDP final revision Thursday. RUMS Purple Wallet Want 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 [https://forms.gle/r9fBTRAw79oSmBWaA] · Card Payment [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0oeervCE5Jbawrz6JIE7F06CDqgv2tJVjhum0JpdbB1NFpQ/viewform] Support the show [https://community.rumshq.com/checkout/premium-membership] —  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 [https://community.rumshq.com] — ☕ 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. — WANT MORE? 👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com [https://rumshq.com] 👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com 👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.com [https://community.rumshq.com] FOLLOW OUR HOSTS: ☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan [https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan] 🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info [https://alexpopovic.info/] 🐬 Will Watson: https://c... [https://coinguide.vip/]

Why Collector Crypt's Pokemon Card Insured Prices Don't Match eBay | Ep 529

Good now revolutionaries— opening the week with the funniest Saylor admission yet: a CoinDesk clip surfaces of Michael Saylor saying he literally designed STRC by going back and forth with ChatGPT for a few hours. 'I couldn't have done it myself.' Meanwhile STRC has bled from its $100 par down to $85, MicroStrategy has stopped issuing new STRC, and they had to sell a tiny slice of Bitcoin last week to cover the dividend payment. Will walks through the variable-rate mechanic — as STRC drops, the yield ratchets up to attract new buyers, which means fewer holders eventually each owed more, but the unwind risk grows. Big news for Drift Protocol users: the DFX Recovery Token and Insurance Fund claim checker is live. If you were affected by the ~$300M Drift exploit, each DFX token represents $1 of verified loss. Watch for scam tokens and scam accounts targeting affected users — Drift's official account is @DriftProtocol. PSA also: keep your distance from anything claiming to be the official launch. Alex spends the back half of the show in the Pokemon / Collector Crypt rabbit hole. After two weeks deep in the platform, she's calling out a major structural problem: the on-platform insured-value pricing has almost no correlation with real eBay sales data. A Gengar she wanted to buy was insured at $200+ above the highest recent eBay sale in the last year — meaning sellers won't accept offers below the inflated insured price. The fix she's proposing: pull real-time market sales feeds into the platform and price accordingly. Plus debates with Will on whether the gotcha machines should go seasonal vs always-on (Will's idea), and what utility could actually link the CARDS token to the platform. Macro corner: Will pulls up the Bitcoin monthly chart — $59.8K (3-month 21 EMA) and $63.8K (1-month 55 EMA) are the levels to watch. Monthly candle closes in eight days. If we end below $63.8K, $51K–$45K targets open up. Dollar continues testing resistance. Thursday is PCE inflation data + Q1 GDP final revision — expect heavy volatility second half of the week. Plus: Alex breaks down the SBI / XRP-in-Japan story (SBI's CEO clarified they don't actually own XRP — only ~9% private equity stake in Ripple Labs, ~$4.5B paper value, which is why he's the loudest XRP cheerleader on Twitter), and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker signed a 0.2% tax on every crypto transaction including wallet-to-wallet transfers and DeFi interactions. Clarity Act before July 4? Per Eleanor Terrett: logistically impossible. Prediction markets give August passage ~22%. RUMS Purple Wallet Want 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 [https://forms.gle/r9fBTRAw79oSmBWaA] · Card Payment [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0oeervCE5Jbawrz6JIE7F06CDqgv2tJVjhum0JpdbB1NFpQ/viewform] Powered by Arculus Wallet — getarculus.com, promo code ARCURUMS10. Powered by Jito — stake your SOL at https://www.jito.network/staking/ [https://www.jito.network/staking/]. Support the show [https://community.rumshq.com/checkout/premium-membership] —  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 [https://community.rumshq.com] — ☕ 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. — WANT MORE? 👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com [https://rumshq.com] 👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com 👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.com [https://community.rumshq.com] FOLLOW OUR HOSTS: ☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan [https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan] 🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info [https://alexpopovic.info/] 🐬 Will Watson: https://c... [https://coinguide.vip/]

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

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. RUMS Purple Wallet Want 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 [https://forms.gle/r9fBTRAw79oSmBWaA] · Card Payment [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0oeervCE5Jbawrz6JIE7F06CDqgv2tJVjhum0JpdbB1NFpQ/viewform] Powered by Arculus Wallet — getarculus.com, promo code ARCURUMS10. Powered by Jito — stake your SOL at https://www.jito.network/staking/ [https://www.jito.network/staking/] Support the show [https://community.rumshq.com/checkout/premium-membership] —  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 [https://community.rumshq.com] — ☕ 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. — WANT MORE? 👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com [https://rumshq.com] 👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com 👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.com [https://community.rumshq.com] FOLLOW OUR HOSTS: ☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan [https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan] 🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info [https://alexpopovic.info/] 🐬 Will Watson: https://c... [https://coinguide.vip/]

Crypto Castle: Viv Ford on Moving Into SF Crypto Bro House 2015 | Ep 84🍻🌗

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 Wallet Want 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 [https://forms.gle/r9fBTRAw79oSmBWaA] · Card Payment [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe0oeervCE5Jbawrz6JIE7F06CDqgv2tJVjhum0JpdbB1NFpQ/viewform] Powered by Arculus Wallet — getarculus.com, promo code ARCURUMS10. Powered by Jito — stake your SOL at https://www.jito.network/staking/ [https://www.jito.network/staking/] Support the show [https://community.rumshq.com/checkout/premium-membership] —  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 [https://community.rumshq.com] — ☕ 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. — WANT MORE? 👉Connect w/us on your favorite social: https://rumshq.com [https://rumshq.com] 👉Become a guest or sponsor: riseup@rumshq.com 👉Join our free community: https://community.rumshq.com [https://community.rumshq.com] FOLLOW OUR HOSTS: ☮️ Evan Mann: https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan [https://beacons.ai/conversationswithevan] 🤬 Alex Popovic: https://alexpopovic.info [https://alexpopovic.info/] 🐬 Will Watson: https://c... [https://coinguide.vip/]