How Bitcoin & Nostr Fix Life & Death Problems Derek just got back from Nashville, where he attended an AI hackathon at Bitcoin Park sponsored by HRF. His team of four built an app called Zuka for a human rights activist whose family survived the Rwandan genocide. The catalyst: a Rwandan YouTuber with 60,000 followers was jailed and died in custody for speaking out against the government. They wanted a tool that keeps speaking even when the human behind it is silenced. The solution is an AI influencer that lives on Nostr. Operators build a persona with a name, voice, and backstory, feed it research through a wizard, and publish videos to legacy social media and Nostr in one click. Everything is encrypted. Wallets are tied to personas so the AI influencer funds itself through Bitcoin zaps. Derek and Heather then covered a DDoS attack a pro-Iran hacking group launched on Spotify on May 12, alongside attacks on Goodreads and eBay. Heather used it to talk about value for value music and the independent ecosystem on Nostr, Wavlake, and Fountain as an ethical alternative to algorithm-driven streaming, including what yoga teachers deal with around PROs and music licensing. They closed with GM laying off 600 legacy IT workers to hire AI native engineers, and whether prompt engineering still matters on frontier models. Derek says it does not. Turner the dog closed the show. Chapters: 00:00 Intro and Nashville recap 00:31 How Agora was born 01:27 A Rwandan journalist killed for his YouTube channel 03:25 Building Zuka: an AI influencer that cannot be jailed 05:23 Encryption, Bitcoin wallets, and activist security 10:52 Second place and other standout hackathon projects 14:39 The shoe sale protest app 16:34 Lillian Lopez and the Museum of Venezuela 18:05 Tech privilege and explaining the ecosystem to normies 33:02 Iranian regime DDoS attacks Spotify 36:05 Value for value music vs the streaming model 44:33 Bitcoin musicians coming out of the woodwork 48:00 GM fires legacy IT and hires AI native engineers 51:00 Prompt engineering is dead on frontier models 54:32 Is Nostr more reliable than centralized platforms