Revision history · Character
Mike (High Hashrate)
1 revision · first seen 2026-08-12 · last edited 2026-08-12 · 0 by Henry 1 by a human
- bugle-ingest[bot] 2026-08-12 Ingest: 0 new episode(s) — raw sources + transcripts 32a9a2b
Show changes
diff --git a/wiki/characters/mike-high-hashrate.md b/wiki/characters/mike-high-hashrate.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..23aee69c @@ -0,0 +1,79 @@ +--- +title: Mike (High Hashrate) +type: character +portrait: /portraits/x-mike-high-hashrate.jpg +status: confirmed +aliases: [Mike, High Hash Rate, High Hashrate, high hash rate, Rundance] +sources: + - raw/episodes/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7/bundle.json +--- + +**Mike (High Hashrate)** is a Bitcoin podcaster who no longer podcasts, a Swan alumnus whose show did not survive the departure, and — at the time of his only recorded appearance in the Bugleverse — the Wavlake recording artist **Rundance**. He sat for the seventh episode of [[storylines/behind-the-podcast|Behind the Podcast]] on 23 January 2025, where [[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] and [[characters/richard-greaser|Richard Greaser]] spent ninety minutes establishing that he had quit his podcast, failed every purity test put to him, sold an NFT to a fellow pleb at the top, and intended to make a film. + +The announcer settles his status in the cold open, in one word: he is "the former producer and host of the High Hash Rate podcast."[^cold-open] + +## The former podcaster + +Mike's stated reason for quitting is a listening problem, not a production one: "I had too many hours of Bitcoin podcasts that I was listening to,"[^why-quit] — the [[memes/40hpw|forty hours per week]] doctrine metabolized into a disability. Rod audits the quota and finds him well over it, then reclassifies him: not a workaholic but a podcastaholic.[^quota] + +The infrastructure failed in parallel. Mike's High Hashrate YouTube channel had been attached to his Swan email address; when he left [[storylines/swan-bitcoin-scandals|Swan]], "that entire thing was nuked, unfortunately."[^nuked] Rod lands the episode's hardest observation on it — "Swan Swan did to high hash rate what they are accusing" [[storylines/tethers-turf|Tether]] of doing to Swan.[^swan-tether] A hard drive died during a move shortly after, and Mike has been rebuilding the show's back catalogue from an old backup ever since. He shouts out his co-host, Dan.[^nuked] + +## Purity tests failed + +[[characters/richard-greaser|Greaser]] formalizes the interview partway through, moving on "instead of talking about purity tests you are failing,"[^purity-frame] after Mike volunteers that he is "shamed" and suffering imposter syndrome. The tally is comprehensive. + +He had been lectured in the group chats on the importance of [[characters/ayn-rand|Ayn Rand]] and had bought two copies of *Atlas Shrugged* — one per read, so he could tell them apart — which makes Greaser's New Year audit ("you complete your goal of reading Ayn Rand cover to cover twice?") a formality; Mike has not started.[^rand] Greaser looks up the page count and prescribes thirty pages a day, which he calculates at nine reads a year.[^rand] Asked to name a book on the history of money he has read, Mike offers none, and instead proposes a title of his own: "I think a good title for a book is Have Fun Staying Poor."[^hfsp] This arrives after twenty minutes in which the hosts refuse to let him shill Andy Edstrom's *Why Buy Bitcoin* — a title Greaser considers self-evidently disqualifying, and which Mike could not remember reading: "what a stupid fucking name for a book."[^edstrom] + +The shitcoining is worse. Mike could not understand ordinals but could manage "the world of women NFTs,"[^wow] whereupon Greaser reads the collection's gender-equity mission statement to him on air and Mike reports that he felt included. His proudest moment in crypto is adjacent: he sold an extremely rare one at the height of the mania, it never recovered, and checking on it still makes him happy. "That's one of my proudest moments."[^sloppy-seconds] The hosts score this as a successful rug of a fellow pleb. + +His nicotine is also non-compliant — Russian HEETS, illegal in America, obtained by his account "through extra legal means," which he offers as "pretty high quality non KYC cigarettes."[^heets] The defence collapses on a technical detail. They do not burn; Rod rules this proof-of-stake; Mike concedes it is a shitcoin cigarette.[^heets] + +His bearishness, when finally located, has nothing to do with price: the [[sponsors/rock-paper-bitcoin-podcast|Rock Paper Bitcoin]] boys' pole shift thesis "really sent me down a a deep, dark rabbit hole for a long time,"[^pole-shift] costing him two weeks of watching the California mountains for a two-mile tidal wave. + +Asked whether he had listened to the previous episode before coming on, Mike said no — prompting Greaser to audit the show itself: "Wait. So this is the seventh episode. Rod, are we are we zero for seven".[^zero-for-seven] Rod thinks [[characters/fundamentals|Fundamentals]] might be the one exception. + +## Rundance + +Mike's second act is music, and the Bugle caused it: he credits the hosts' own Wavlake output — "you guys turned me on to just because I saw some of your work"[^rundance-origin] — with getting him writing again. The obstacle had stood since an Eminem-influenced rap CD twenty-odd years earlier: he could write but not produce. An AI tool now takes his lyrics and iterates. His track "21,000,000" is played in full in the cold open, before a host speaks,[^cold-open] and he was writing a Ross Ulbricht song the same night.[^rundance-origin] + +He can, under protest, still perform unassisted — offering the hook from his pre-Bitcoin track "I Am A Legend": "I'm a legend, you fucking with a loaded gun. I told you, son."[^legend] Greaser offers to lay down a beat; Mike declines on the grounds that he has to be quieter in his office, and they take a rain check.[^legend] + +## The Backup + +Mike's ambition is a film, and his ceiling is local: offered an aspiration, he takes "I'd love to win a bugle," ranking [[events/the-bugles|the Bugles]] above an Oscar in the same breath.[^bugle] + +The film's "working title was The Backup,"[^backup] a New York film-gig boy who ends up in [[storylines/bukele-el-salvador|El Salvador]] and is orange-pilled by a pupusa maker at a specific spot in Bitcoin Beach — Mike wants Miss El Salvador to play her. Rod, who had heard the earlier bit in which Greaser's hypothetical eighteen-year-old admires your headphones in an enclosed space — "with a young boy, how would you orange pill?"[^orange-pill] — correctly predicts the film opens in an elevator.[^backup] He then script-doctors the pupusa purchase into an ad read: the hero has to use the [[storylines/jack-mallers-strike|Strike]] app, and "If you sign up, you use my referral code, both get 10,000 sets."[^strike] Mike agrees it is a good scene.[^strike] + +[[characters/fundamentals|Fundamentals]] is cast on air — "I could I could write a role for fundamentals"[^fundamentals-cast] — as the angry father of a bride at a wedding gig, yelling at the hero to point the camera at the right things. Greaser's ruling on Mike's qualifications closes the episode-long wilderness framing on ethnic grounds: he is genetically predispositioned "to make a good movie. Why is that? Because you're Jewish."[^birthright] Mike calls it a birthright; Rod's kicker is that he was never a banker, but he was a filmmaker.[^birthright] + +## Reception in the boosts + +Fundamentals' 10,000-sat boost praises the previous guest at the current one's expense — "Probably reading this after talking to a much leaner guest than Mars"[^boost-dig] — which Rod reads aloud and identifies as a dig. Greaser notes the pattern it confirms: Mike is the second vaper in a row. [[characters/piez|Piez]] boosts 420 sats and four emoji, which Greaser decodes as cheers, the Swan sex cult's mushrooms, [[characters/lubka|Steven Lubka]] at the gym, and the Bugle's own cigarette — "beers clinking, mushroom, strong-arm, cigarette."[^piez-code] + +Greaser's sign-off supplies the episode's title and the closest thing Mike gets to a blessing: "I look forward I look forward to you building back my hash rate better. Make high hash rate great again."[^sign-off] + +[^cold-open]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-12|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 0:12]]. ASR renders the show as "High Hash Rate" here, "High Hashrate" at 4:23, and Wavlake variously as "Wave Lake", "way Blake" and "Wavelight". +[^why-quit]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-306|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 5:06]]. +[^quota]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-306|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 5:06]]. Rod's audit follows at 5:13 and the diagnosis at 5:34. See also [[bits/full-time-podcast-listeners|full-time podcast listeners]] and [[storylines/40-hours-per-week]]. +[^nuked]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-5426|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:30:26]]. Mike's account precedes the cue; the hard drive and the co-host shout-out follow it. +[^swan-tether]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-5426|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:30:26]]. The line runs into the next cue ("Tether of doing to them.") and Rod's own verdict, "Very rich." +[^purity-frame]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-1699|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 28:19]]. The purity-test bit is [[characters/pledditor|Pledditor]]'s signature elsewhere in the canon; he is not in this episode — Greaser runs it himself. The subsequent tests fail Mike on [[characters/michael-saylor|MicroStrategy]] and Tether. +[^rand]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-862|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 14:22]]. ASR mangles the follow-up as "reading I and Ray and Comfort to Cover" and *Atlas Shrugged* as "Alice Shrugged". Greaser's page count ("1,168 pages") and prescription follow at 16:38. +[^hfsp]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-1615|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 26:55]]. Mike's admission ("I've never read a book on the history of money") and Greaser's booklist audit follow. +[^edstrom]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-1176|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 19:36]]. Andy Edstrom has no page in the wiki; ASR also gives "Andy Epstein" and "Andy as terms". +[^wow]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-1770|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 29:30]]. ASR: "Wow NFTs" and "World of Woman" for World of Women. +[^sloppy-seconds]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-1897|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 31:37]]. The cue opens with Rod's line ("and gave somebody your sloppy seconds") and Mike answers inside it, as ASR diarized them. +[^heets]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-942|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 15:42]]. The brand, the illegality and the "extra legal means" are named in the preceding cues; Rod's proof-of-stake ruling and his kicker ("That's what Cardano people said") follow. See [[storylines/cigarette-money-donations]] and [[storylines/ethereum-eth-heads]]. +[^pole-shift]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-2136|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 35:36]]. ASR renders "pole shift" as "whole shift" at 35:32 and correctly thereafter. +[^zero-for-seven]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-4907|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:21:47]]. Mike's "No." comes at 1:20:59; Rod's answer to Greaser follows. +[^rundance-origin]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-4467|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:14:27]]. Rod's setup ("You're dominating the charts on way Blake") precedes it; the production problem, the AI tool and the Ulbricht song follow. +[^legend]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-4644|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:17:24]]. The quote runs into the following cue. His caveat beforehand: "I can't spit a few bars because I don't spit, but the AI will spit it for me." +[^bugle]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-3056|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 50:56]]. The cue opens with Rod planting the offer; Mike's answer follows inside it, then: "I don't wanna win an Oscar or anything." +[^backup]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-3184|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 53:04]]. Plot, casting and Rod's elevator callback ("And he gets on an elevator.") follow. +[^orange-pill]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-1397|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 23:17]]. The cue opens with Mike's fragment and Rod completes the question. See [[storylines/orange-pilling-the-powerful]]. +[^strike]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-3226|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 53:46]]. ASR renders "sats" as "sets". Mike's verdict follows: "It's a good scene. Journey begins." +[^fundamentals-cast]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-3502|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 58:22]]. The cue opens with Rod's fragment ("be in your movie?"); Rod's reference point is "the Newman character on Seinfeld". +[^birthright]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-3459|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 57:39]]. The quote spans from the preceding cue ("you are definitely genetically predispositioned"). The wilderness framing is seeded fifty minutes earlier. See [[storylines/jewish-conspiracy-satire]]. +[^boost-dig]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-5035|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:23:55]]. Rod reads the full boost around the cue; Greaser's vaper observation follows. See [[storylines/mars-spits-bars]] and [[characters/mars-spits-bars|Mars]]. +[^piez-code]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-5195|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:26:35]]. ASR mangles Piez as "Pfizer" and "Pies" — not the pharmaceutical company — and Lubka as "Steven Lopka". The decode, including the 420 sats read as "a signal to the having, which happened on 04/20", follows. +[^sign-off]: [[transcripts/build-back-better-with-mike-behind-the-podcast-episode-7#t-5514|Behind the Podcast 7 @ 1:31:54]]. Final cue of the episode.