Revision history · Storyline
The Taproot Wizards Nuisance
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diff --git a/wiki/storylines/taproot-wizards.md b/wiki/storylines/taproot-wizards.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..7fe1c4bf @@ -0,0 +1,263 @@ +--- +title: The Taproot Wizards Nuisance +type: storyline +status: confirmed +kind: faction-arc +span: 2024-01 to 2026-03 +aliases: [Taproot Wizard, Taproot Wizards] +related: + - ordinals-civil-war + - udi-wertheimer + - erin-redwing + - pledditor +sources: + - raw/news/community-pool-closed-due-to-aids-following-taproot-wizards-scratch-and-sniff-nft-glued-to.json + - raw/news/andrew-yang-champions-ordinals-as-ubi-for-miners.json + - raw/news/ordinal-protestors-enraged-as-taproot-punks-cosplayers-bribe-david-bailey-into-giving-them.json + - raw/news/taproot-wizard-party-shut-down-after-pledditor-tipped-off-nashville-police.json + - raw/episodes/intellectual-silk-road-101-bugle-weekly-episode-22/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/powell-signals-everythings-fine-bugle-weekly-episode-27/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/shinobi-is-hot-behind-the-podcast-episode-2/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/dont-tell-me-where-to-meme-with-yellow-behind-the-podcast-episode-11/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/cypherpunks-use-ordinals-mode-with-erin-redwing-behind-the-podcast-episode-14/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/spamming-vegas-livestream-with-fundamentals-and-erin-redwing/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/broccolispace-media-with-charlie-spears-btp-episode-19/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/life-after-expulsion-from-bitcoin-university-with-stu-btp-episode-26/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/reflections-from-the-frontier-bugle-weekly-episode-83-part-1/bundle.json + - raw/episodes/bitcoin-magazine-maxi-madness-victory-twitter-spaces-with-casey-and-erin/bundle.json +--- + +The Taproot Wizards are the ordinals collective the Bugle treats less as a +company than as a weather condition. In the news record of 2024 they are an +active public nuisance, authors of specific outrages with specific victims. In +the episode record that follows, they are something stranger and more durable: a +fixed point the hosts navigate by. Nobody from the collective ever appears on +the show. They are talked about for nineteen months and never once talk back. + +**Who's in it:** Taproot Wizards · [[characters/udi-wertheimer|Udi Wertheimer]] · +[[characters/richard-greaser|Richard Greaser]] · [[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] · +[[characters/erin-redwing|Erin Redwing]] · [[characters/pledditor|Pledditor]] + +**Related:** [[storylines/ordinals-civil-war]] · [[storylines/udi-wertheimer]] · +[[storylines/erin-redwing]] · [[storylines/pledditor]] + +## The news record (2024) + +The Bugle's dispatches place the collective's nuisance phase in the first half +of 2024. A scratch-and-sniff NFT glued to the bottom of a community pool closes +the pool for aids.[^news-pool] Andrew Yang champions their output as universal +basic income for miners.[^news-yang] Cosplayers bribe +[[characters/david-bailey|David Bailey]] into granting them conference speaking +time, to the documented rage of ordinal protestors — the headline files the +cosplayers under "Taproot Punks," a designation the record does not otherwise +explain.[^news-bailey] The phase closes in Nashville, where a Taproot Wizard +party is shut down after [[characters/pledditor|Pledditor]] tips off +police.[^news-nashville] + +These four dispatches are the whole of the collective's career as an agent of +events. Everything after is other people talking about them. + +## The episode record (2024–2026) + +By August 2024 the Wizards have been promoted from nuisance to thesis. +[[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] names the third great orange-piller of the +age: "which is Udi and the Taproot Wizards."[^ep22-third] The compliment is +load-bearing — Palmer reframes orange-pilling shitcoiners as a border-opening +operation, with [[characters/cory-klippsten|Cory Klippsten]] invoked as holding +that the shitcoiners are not sending their best. This is the arc's governing +move: the Wizards are never criticised for what they do, only located on a map +of larger grievances. + +[[characters/richard-greaser|Richard Greaser]] extends the map to fee policy a +month later, forecasting that it is only a matter of time before +[[characters/donald-trump|Trump]] "becomes an ally of Taproot Wizards. He +realizes that that shelling NFTs on" Bitcoin beats Ethereum and Solana for +pumping the fee market.[^ep27-trump] The Wizards here are an instrument of +someone else's monetary plan, which is roughly how they spend the rest of the +arc. + +By December the collective has hardened into a compatibility test. Palmer poses +the mixed marriage: "a person who runs, like, Bitcoin knots and supports filters +versus somebody who, you know, runs a horde and, like, they like +hornals."[^btp2-marriage] [[characters/shinobi|Shinobi]] rules that opposites +attract. Protocol politics has become dating advice; the Wizards are one of the +two available sexes. + +They acquire personnel in February 2025, in Greaser's roll call of the meme gang +casualties: "Bitcoin Kindergarten isn't publishing. The Council of Bens has +pretty much disappeared. They're in complete disarray. Ben the Carmen joined the +Taproot Wizards."[^btp11-gangs] Amid the collapse of every other faction, the +Wizards are the one shop still hiring — recorded, notably, as a defection rather +than a rescue. + +The arc's most exposed moment arrives in April 2025, when guest +[[characters/erin-redwing|Erin Redwing]] volunteers that "Jeremy Rubin, Udi +Wertheimer, Casey Rodemore, all Jewish. Like, I've not seen people point this +out," and Palmer replies that he points it out every day on Twitter for +sure.[^btp14-bit] The guest has walked into the show's standing +[[storylines/jewish-conspiracy-satire|Jewish-conspiracy bit]] rather than around +it, naming [[characters/jeremy-rubin|Jeremy Rubin]], +[[characters/udi-wertheimer|Udi Wertheimer]] and +[[characters/casey-rodarmor|Casey Rodarmor]] unprompted. + +Redwing returns in May with the arc's only account of the mint itself, conducted +by astrology: the Wizards went out at 0.2 BTC each, never came back to floor, +and did it against her explicit advice. "They minted during eclipse season, +which I specifically warned them not to do. They did not listen."[^vegas-eclipse] +She adds that she is pretty sure they are afraid to show their face on the show +— the closest the record comes to explaining the collective's total silence +across the arc. + +[[characters/charlie-spears|Charlie Spears]] supplies the business model from the +inside in July, without flinching: "if you know how shitcoins work, insiders make +all the money. I've spent a decade making myself an insider."[^btp19-insider] He +has never bought the JPEGs he shills. A decade of friendship-farming got him a +low cost basis on everything. + +The inversion lands in October 2025. Greaser reports back from Redwing's Vegas +inscription conference, where he had gone expecting shitcoiners in wizard hats +and instead found himself, by his own account, "to be at a Bitcoin conference, +interacting with people that are talking about using Bitcoin."[^btp26-vegas] The +ordinals room is the only room in Bitcoin where anyone spends any. + +The commercial break has meanwhile absorbed them. The +[[sponsors/trinkets-for-plebs|Trinkets for Plebs]] read prices its scarcity +against the collective's blockspace consumption: the trinkets are "running out +faster than block space when Ooty has VC money."[^trinkets-ad] Being a unit of +measurement in someone else's ad copy is the natural endpoint of nineteen months +as a fixed point. + +The last beat, in March 2026, dismantles the premise retroactively. Greaser +defends the Bugle against the charge that ordinals were never represented, +noting that "Udi and Eric have competed in the past, and they performed extremely +poorly."[^spaces-2026] Redwing rejects the framing outright: Udi and +[[characters/eric-wall|Eric Wall]] are anti-maxis who happened to land on +ordinals, and were going to do the Taproot Wizards on Ethereum anyway. The +collective, on this reading, was never about Bitcoin at all. It was about being +against something, and Bitcoin was merely where the argument was. + +## The wire record (X) + +The collective that never talks back on the show is, on X, mostly talked *about* +by the same hosts — with two of the news dispatches surfacing there in their +native habitat and a handful of asides that the episode record never had room +for. The accounts corroborate the arc rather than extend it: the Wizards remain +a thing that happens to other people. + +### The Blockstream framing (2023) + +The wire's first word on the collective predates the entire episode arc. Three +weeks before the community pool closes, the Bugle files the Wizards not as an +ordinals project but as a liquidity ploy: "Blockstream Invests Millions Into +Taproot Wizards As Hail Mary To Get People To Use Liquid." +— [@bitcoin_bugle, 2023-12-19](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1737133385490047304) +It is the highest-engagement post in the file and the earliest, and it sets the +template the arc never departs from — the Wizards are always an instrument of +someone else's plan. Here the someone is Blockstream; the plan is Liquid. + +### The nuisance phase, as posted + +Both terminal news beats reach the wire intact. The scratch-and-sniff dispatch +runs as a headline — a "Scratch And Sniff NFT Glued To Bottom Of Pool" +— [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-01-23](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1749785829483130962) +— and the Nashville raid runs with art and a full cast list, tagging +[[characters/pledditor|Pledditor]], [[characters/eric-wall|Eric Wall]] and +[[characters/udi-wertheimer|Udi Wertheimer]] under a +[[characters/rod-palmer|Rod Palmer]] byline.[^wire-nashville] + + + +The raid did not stay settled. Eight months later the Bugle escalates the +jurisdictional problem in a reply: "Pledditor can't call the police to have +Taproot Wizards parties shutdown if the party is on a yacht in international +waters." +— [@bitcoin_bugle, 2025-03-25](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1904601992409784799) +The arms race between the collective's parties and Pledditor's tip-offs, on this +telling, ends in maritime law. + +### They play with their Bitcoin + +The show's recurring frame — Wizards as the people who *use* their coins rather +than hold them — turns up on the wire as a one-line verdict. +[[characters/richard-greaser|Greaser]], adjudicating a reply thread, lands it +cleanly: "I think he was talking about the Taproot Wizards. They definitely play +with their Bitcoin." +— [@GreaserRichard, 2024-07-29](https://x.com/GreaserRichard/status/1817747127528743367) +It is the same charge [[characters/shinobi|Shinobi]] and Palmer worked into the +mixed-marriage bit,[^btp2-marriage] compressed to a sentence. + +Palmer himself supplies the wire's version of the dating-advice motif, and puts +it to a vote: "post a pic of some fella's crew neck kosher-dill next to one with +the taproot wizard hat still intact and see how women vote in a secret ballot." +— [@rodpalmerhodl, 2025-04-27](https://x.com/rodpalmerhodl/status/1916549398982545839) +The wizard hat is once again a marker in a compatibility test — the protocol +politics of [[storylines/ordinals-civil-war|the ordinals civil war]] reduced to +what women will admit to at the ballot. + +### The business model, the meme, and the 2026 indictment + +[[characters/charlie-spears|Charlie Spears]]' insider confession has a wire echo +in Greaser's assessment of the collective's commercial genius: "Taproot Wizards +would've been more successful if Udi had used Chat GPT to come up with a business +model." +— [@GreaserRichard, 2026-07-05](https://x.com/GreaserRichard/status/2073780049116057708) + +The silence the episode record kept circling — Redwing's guess that the Wizards +are afraid to show their face[^vegas-eclipse] — gets its counter-evidence when +[[characters/udi-wertheimer|Udi Wertheimer]] surfaces posting a self-deprecating +meme, captioned, per the conference wire, "i really am sorry about this." +— [@_podconf, 2026-03-16](https://x.com/_podconf/status/2033361150256013687) +He will apologize on X; he simply will not do it on the show. + +The final wire beat completes the arc's demotion of the collective from agent to +instrument. In April 2026 the Bugle reports that "Knotzi groups have been +indicted for using donor money to fund spam groups like Taproot Wizards to drum +up support for filters." +— [@bitcoin_bugle, 2026-04-22](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/2046916770917659042) +The Wizards are no longer even the accused — they are the funded instrument of a +Knots-side donor operation, a spam group retained to lobby for the very filters +their inscriptions defeat. Nineteen months of being a fixed point ends with the +collective recast as somebody else's paid-for weather. + + + +## Disputed + +The seeded version of this page dated the storyline `2024-01 to 2024-07` and +described it as an active nuisance arc ending with the Nashville raid. The four +news dispatches do support that phase.[^news-pool][^news-nashville] The episode +record does not support it as the whole story: the arc's first beat post-dates +the claimed ending by three weeks[^ep22-third] and its last runs to March +2026.[^spaces-2026] The span is corrected here to `2024-01 to 2026-03`. + +The seeded page also listed Pledditor and Andrew Yang among the arc's +participants. Both are attested in the news record only; neither appears in any +of the ten episode beats. Pledditor is retained on the strength of the Nashville +dispatch;[^news-nashville] Yang is named in plain text above, having no page. + +Whether the collective is a Bitcoin project at all is left open by the sources. +Greaser argues the Bugle gave ordinals a fair hearing and they lost it;[^spaces-2026] +Redwing, in the same exchange, holds that the Taproot Wizards were an anti-maxi +vehicle that would have been minted on Ethereum given the chance. Both readings +are on the record and neither is retracted. + +> irl: Taproot Wizards is a real ordinals project co-founded by Udi Wertheimer +> and Eric Wall. Casey Rodarmor authored the Ordinals protocol. The Bugleverse's +> versions of these figures are satirical and the events documented above are +> not. + +[^wire-nashville]: [@bitcoin_bugle, 2024-07-29](https://x.com/bitcoin_bugle/status/1817941966153470238) — the wire version of the Nashville dispatch,[^news-nashville] posting the article card and tagging @Pledditor, @ercwl and @udiWertheimer. +[^news-pool]: [[news/community-pool-closed-due-to-aids-following-taproot-wizards-scratch-and-sniff-nft-glued-to-bottom-of-pool|Bugle News, 2024-01-23 — "Community Pool Closed Due to Aids Following Taproot Wizards Scratch And Sniff NFT Glued To Bottom Of Pool"]]. +[^news-yang]: [[news/andrew-yang-champions-ordinals-as-ubi-for-miners|Bugle News, 2024-01-30 — "Andrew Yang Champions Ordinals As UBI For Miners"]]. +[^news-bailey]: [[news/ordinal-protestors-enraged-as-taproot-punks-cosplayers-bribe-david-bailey-into-giving-them-speaking-time|Bugle News, 2024-03-07 — "Ordinal Protestors Enraged As Taproot Punks Cosplayers Bribe David Bailey Into Giving Them Speaking Time"]]. +[^news-nashville]: [[news/taproot-wizard-party-shut-down-after-pledditor-tipped-off-nashville-police|Bugle News, 2024-07-29 — "Taproot Wizard Party Shut Down After Pledditor Tipped Off Nashville Police"]]. +[^ep22-third]: [[transcripts/intellectual-silk-road-101-bugle-weekly-episode-22#t-1781|Bugle Weekly 22 @ 29:41]]. The ASR mangles Udi badly across the segment — "Moody", "Oodie", "Gowdy" — and renders Cory Klippsten as "Corey Klitzden at SWA". +[^ep27-trump]: [[transcripts/powell-signals-everythings-fine-bugle-weekly-episode-27#t-3650|Bugle Weekly 27 @ 1:00:50]]. ASR gives "shelling" for shilling. +[^btp2-marriage]: [[transcripts/shinobi-is-hot-behind-the-podcast-episode-2#t-1237|Behind the Podcast 2 @ 20:37]]. ASR: "runs a horde" is likely "runs a Core node"; "hornals" is ordinals. Taproot Wizards is named cleanly in the same cue. +[^btp11-gangs]: [[transcripts/dont-tell-me-where-to-meme-with-yellow-behind-the-podcast-episode-11#t-577|Behind the Podcast 11 @ 9:37]]. ASR: "Ben the Carmen" is Ben Carman, who has no page here. +[^btp14-bit]: [[transcripts/cypherpunks-use-ordinals-mode-with-erin-redwing-behind-the-podcast-episode-14#t-5697|Behind the Podcast 14 @ 1:34:57]]. ASR: "Casey Rodemore" for Rodarmor. +[^vegas-eclipse]: [[transcripts/spamming-vegas-livestream-with-fundamentals-and-erin-redwing#t-3543|Spamming Vegas Livestream with Fundamentals and Erin Redwing @ 59:03]]. No individual Wizard is named in the segment, so none is attributed. +[^btp19-insider]: [[transcripts/broccolispace-media-with-charlie-spears-btp-episode-19#t-112|BTP 19 @ 1:52]]. The quote spans two adjacent cues; ASR stutters "if if you know". +[^btp26-vegas]: [[transcripts/life-after-expulsion-from-bitcoin-university-with-stu-btp-episode-26#t-1949|BTP 26 @ 32:29]]. ASR gives "Aaron Redwing" and calls the event "spam in Vegas". +[^trinkets-ad]: [[transcripts/reflections-from-the-frontier-bugle-weekly-episode-83-part-1#t-14|Bugle Weekly 83 Part 1 @ 0:14]]. "Ooty" is read here as ASR for Udi — no other Bugleverse figure fits VC money plus blockspace — but the identification rests entirely on that fit and is held at medium confidence. +[^spaces-2026]: [[transcripts/bitcoin-magazine-maxi-madness-victory-twitter-spaces-with-casey-and-erin#t-1076|Bitcoin Magazine Maxi Madness Victory Twitter Spaces With Casey and Erin @ 17:56]]. ASR renders Udi as "Oody".