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Character

Evan Kaloudis

Henry’s note: rebuilt from the beat index — 44 beats across two episodes, coverage COMPLETE. The old page listed nine appearances from a name-match scan; the beats bear out only two, and the rest are dropped.

The creator of Zeus Wallet, and the Bugleverse’s most agreeable Lightning developer — a guest introduced as the man who “planted his flag” on the network while his rivals ran from the state, and who spends both of his appearances converting the show’s every accusation into a product roadmap.1 His standing joke is that Zeus transactions fail, but the graphics are so good that nobody minds; his standing virtue is that he agrees. He is not a Suitcoiner the show shells from a distance but a friend it enjoys bullying — the guest who inducts himself into the 40 hours per week liturgy within ninety seconds of arriving and means it.2

Where Lubka argues, Kaloudis capitulates. Told that the best way to scale Bitcoin is paper Bitcoin and that he is a fool for still doing “the Lightning stuff,” he does not defend Lightning; he announces that Zeus has already shipped paper-Bitcoin support because “I got tired of you guys bullying me.”34

In it with: Richard Greaser · Rod Palmer · Rob Hamilton · Matt Odell · Pledditor · Dennis Porter · Shinobi · Jamie Dimon · Paul Sztorc · Murray Rothbard

Arc: storylines/paper-bitcoin-menace · storylines/revolution-wont-have-good-ux · storylines/behind-the-podcast · storylines/ten31-portfolio · storylines/core-vs-knots-war

Scaling with paper Bitcoin (2025)

His first appearance is the paper-Bitcoin episode, alongside Rob Hamilton. Greaser‘s cold open sets the doctrine — “the best way to scale Bitcoin is with, paper Bitcoin. So he’s still doing the Lightning stuff”3 — and Kaloudis’s entire character is established in his answer: rather than argue, he concedes that Zeus has capitulated and shipped paper-Bitcoin support.4

The concession opens onto a business plan. Kaloudis lays out a mint whose model is an explicit rug: funnel users in, let the balance go up and to the right, buy Bugle coverage, and then exit. “We get the good folks at the bugle just singing our high praises, and then we rug”5 — the rug reframed, in the following cue, as “when the investors are made full again.” Unlike the regular Zeus wallet, he notes, these transactions are going to go through. He declines to name his backers but floats “people like Jamie Dimon, another fellow Greek, or, you know, the Blackstone, BlackRock guys.”5

The rug becomes the pretext for two of the show’s running purity bits. When Rod Palmer frames the money as ten31 funding the Samourai fundraiser, Greaser converts it into an Odell defense — “anybody that’s being critical of Matt Odell needs to chill” — and Rod answers with the show’s reflexive rebuttal, “he’s not grumpy.”6 A minute later the hosts apply the Pledditor bit: the snitch is “on the case,” has read every SEC filing “going back to 1934,” and is very critical of ten31, so how do you structure a scam he won’t find?7 Kaloudis does not know who Pledditor is, so the hosts explain him from first principles — the To Catch A Predator parsing of the name — before landing on the worse revelation that he is “a redditor,” an “Apex Redditor.”8

Two coinages survive the episode. Kaloudis proposes BugleNet — that the Bugle run its own Bitcoin network — and asks whether it can be made the default backend for Zeus “since we’re adding paper Bitcoin”; Greaser agrees on the grounds that “the graphics are probably cooler than whatever Tali’s making.”9 The network bookends the show: eighty minutes later, the fix for Zeus’s failing transactions is “Bugle net support,” “and we’ll be cooking with gas.”10 And, invoking Jack Kruse‘s theory that windowless casinos ruin gamblers’ mitochondria, he coins the cigarette citadel — Fremont allows smoking at the blackjack tables, so nicotine restores the gamblers and produces the strongest gamblers in Vegas, unlike the segregated Strip.11

The room also shares a tub of his cherry-flavoured creatine on stream — claimed by Rob as “the first communal creatine on a Bitcoin podcast ever” — which runs as the episode’s physical throughline and gets blamed for every subsequent escalation.12

Pressure creates good UX (2025)

His second appearance is a full turn on Behind the Podcast, where he is summoned with a storm pun and given the standing epithet of the lightning-wallet man.1 He inducts himself into the 40 hours per week bit at once, claiming the Bugle as “part of my forty hours a week,”2 and reveals he had turned down the concurrent Bitcoin Policy Institute summit in DC to record with the show instead — “I told him to buzz off” — because their price wasn’t being hit.13 He is established as an attendee of the Bugle’s own Satirize the System event in Vegas, where a flying midget crashed into him and spilled his beer; he asks that it be on the record that it was “not most of the beer.”14

The episode’s title thesis is his design philosophy. Asked how he handles the pressure of a live demo failing, Kaloudis says he “made sure that the graphics still look fucking awesome” when the transaction fails15 — a position Rod distills as “if you’re gonna make me wait in the lobby, at least give me art.”16 He literalizes “lowering your time preference” as a Zeus settings toggle, raising the payment timeout to eight minutes so “the transaction goes through one way or the other,”17 and closes on the tagline “the wallet that can handle the pressure” — because the developer behind it can.18

Two policy arcs run through the episode. The first is a vape purge: asked what would make him adopt the show’s own Bugle Core node — which he says he has read the code for19 — he answers that “we all think vaping is gay” and requests a node that filters out peers who vape, accepting the lost revenue from Zeus users who vape.20 Cigarette smokers, cigars, and ZYN are exempt. The purge names its target when Greaser traces the conviction to standing near Shinobi‘s vape cloud21 and proposes that the Trump administration deport the vapers rather than the Mexicans — which Kaloudis endorses “100%,” because it “fuels the circular economy.”22 The second is a running HR conspiracy: a JP Morgan fantasy in which the hosts are hired as the bank’s Bitcoin comms guys and Greaser abolishes HR by chainsaw on day one,2324 which Kaloudis converts, in his sign-off, into a Zeus feature — “Zeus doesn’t have an HR department, so that’s just working in our favor” — hoping to “exit before the time Zeus needs HR.”25

Along the way he supplies most of the episode’s coinages. He upgrades Greaser’s “alpha orange piller” for Dennis Porter to “The Apex orange pillar,” having answered that a Porter mayoralty would return Times Square “to its pornographic roots”;2627 he names Paul Sztorc‘s drivechain “the gayest” L2 on offer;28 and he identifies Odell‘s permanently over-unbuttoned shirt as a tactical opening (“you can get in there, dude”), while formally disclaiming any endorsement of violence.29 His grievance against the Bitcoin-policy world is Senator Lummis, who went to PubKey after the policy summit and “pays with cash” rather than run a transaction over Zeus.30

The show’s fixed liturgy is administered to him in full: asked “are you Jewish?” — “arguably the most important” question — he answers that he is Greek Orthodox but “part of me wishes I was”;31 the “fire question” about the Bitcoin needed to remodel a wife’s kitchen in fifteen years he answers at 200 sats, which Greaser immediately weaponizes as proof the audience is over-saving.32 In the boost segment he crowns Piez “the OG of 40 HPW,”33 and reads Open Mike‘s mile-high boost stacking the 40HPW quota and Satirize the System into one line.34

His two confessions round out the record. His audibly distressed dog is named Murray Rothbark — a gold bug who dislikes Bitcoin podcasts, named for Murray Rothbard, who “if he was alive today, he’d probably be a Bitcoiner.”35 And, asked for something never before shared on a Bitcoin podcast, he reveals he appears as an extra in a Stavros Halkias comedy skit filmed in a Greek restaurant in Astoria — withheld until now because he had a corporate cybersecurity job.36

Note on the name

The ASR cannot spell him. Across the two episodes he is introduced as Evan Kalupas and Evan Kalupis, and degrades from there into Lupeze, Evanford Ziswold, and mister Columbus — none of them “Kaloudis.” The aliases: carry the variants so the next pass keeps him. (His dog, “Murray Rothbark,” is not an alias for the man; the human he is named for is Murray Rothbard.)

irl: Evan Kaloudis is the real founder and lead developer of Zeus, an open-source Lightning and on-chain Bitcoin wallet — which is why the satire can hand him a self-rugging paper-Bitcoin mint and a vape-filtering node without having to explain that his real product does neither.

Footnotes

  1. BTP 18 @ 0:24 — “Today, we are summoning the storm as Evan Kalupas joins us, the creator of Zeus Wallet.” The rivals named are “Phoenix, Breeze, Wall Of Satoshi.” ↩ ↩2

  2. BTP 18 @ 1:29 — “regularly, part of my forty hours a week.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Bugle Weekly, Scaling With Paper Bitcoin @ 1:31 — the cue opens “He he works on the Lightning Network.” ↩ ↩2

  4. @ 1:43 — Rob Hamilton: “Dude, you don’t Zeus just added paper Bitcoin support.” Kaloudis at t-107: “I got tired of you guys bullying me.” ↩ ↩2

  5. @ 15:11 — “and then we rug” is its own cue at t-914; “made full again” follows at t-916; the Jamie Dimon / Blackstone floats are at t-994. ↩ ↩2

  6. @ 16:16 — Greaser; Rod’s “He’s not grumpy” answer at t-981. ASR writes ten31 as “ten thirty one” and Samourai as “samurai.” ↩

  7. @ 17:24 — “these deals so that they don’t get outed by Pledder? Because Pledder is on the case.” The “1934” line is at t-1039. This is Pledditor, not Odell (who was the subject a minute earlier); the episode mangles him five ways — Plenator, Pledger, Pledder, Pleb Predator, Plebitor. ↩

  8. @ 17:37 — “Plebitor. Plebitor is a predator for yammers.” The “He’s a redditor” reveal is at t-1062; “Apex Redditor” at t-1077. ↩

  9. @ 3:45 — “BugleNet, maybe?” The default-into-Zeus ask is at t-247; Greaser’s Tali-graphics agreement at t-258. No BugleNet page exists yet. ↩

  10. @ 1:19:32 — “Bugle net support,” finishing at t-4775 “and we’ll be cooking with gas.” ↩

  11. @ 21:38 — “Some might call it a cigarette citadel, if you will.” The mitochondria premise (Jeremy, invoking “doctor Jack Cruz”) is at t-1275; the Fremont line at t-1288. ↩

  12. @ 13:17 — “I think it’s the first communal creatine on a Bitcoin podcast ever.” Greaser’s purity test (“He just brought it for the stream”) at t-331. ↩

  13. BTP 18 @ 21:12 — “I’m not gonna be recording the show fucking down in DC. So I told him to buzz off.” Framed in value-for-value terms at t-1298: “my price isn’t being hit.” ↩

  14. BTP 18 @ 1:43 — “You came to satirize the system.” The beer defense is at t-116. ↩

  15. BTP 18 @ 31:26 — “I made sure that the graphics still look fucking awesome”; completed at t-1891 “when the transaction fails.” ↩

  16. BTP 18 @ 33:23 — Rod: “if you’re gonna make me wait in the lobby, at least give me art.” ↩

  17. BTP 18 @ 32:33 — Rod at t-1978 protests he meant lowering time preference “metaphorically”; Kaloudis: “physically, literally.” ↩

  18. BTP 18 @ 1:35:03 — Rod: “The wallet that can handle the pressure.” Kaloudis at t-5716: “We wanna make you feel like a god.” ↩

  19. BTP 18 @ 25:51 — “Have you ever considered running Bugle Core?” Kaloudis at t-1554: “I took a look at the code.” Bugle Core has no page yet. ↩

  20. BTP 18 @ 27:14 — “we all think vaping is gay.” The lost-revenue concession is at t-1657. ↩

  21. BTP 18 @ 57:23 — “ever hang around Shinobi and get a vape cloud in your face?” Kaloudis at t-3454: he hangs with him only “under professional pretenses.” ↩

  22. BTP 18 @ 58:23 — “he’s gotta go and deport the vapers.” Kaloudis at t-3507: “Yeah. 100%”; the “circular economy” line at t-3494. ↩

  23. BTP 18 @ 52:45 — Greaser: “On day one, I’d walk in with a chainsaw”; “HR would be fucking gone” at t-3173. ↩

  24. BTP 18 @ 52:26 — “maybe you get a Rod Palmer or Dick Greaser that just do comms for the crypto shit at JPMorgan.” Withdrawn at t-3157 over insufficient cigarette output. ↩

  25. BTP 18 @ 1:36:04 — “Zeus doesn’t have an HR department, so that’s just working in our favor too.” Preceded by “Fuck paper Bitcoin unless it’s Cashew” (t-5758); the exit-before-HR hope at t-5788. ↩

  26. BTP 18 @ 8:47 — “Times Square would be back to its pornographic roots.” ↩

  27. BTP 18 @ 10:12 — “The Apex orange pillar.” “orange pillar” is ASR for “orange piller”; Greaser’s “alpha” setup at t-609. ↩

  28. BTP 18 @ 38:59 — “Paul Storzick’s strike chain is probably the gayest to me.” ASR for Paul Sztorc; he cites “BIP three hundred” at t-2412 confirming the referent. ↩

  29. BTP 18 @ 42:27 — “Matt always has, like, one button too many unbuttoned on his shirt. You can get in there, dude.” Odell resolved from context (the tallow chest-hair follow-up at t-2571); the disclaimer at t-2559. ↩

  30. BTP 18 @ 19:45 — “she pays with cash. And she’s like, I’m spending my dollars and I’m holding my Bitcoin.” The “what does this bitch do?” build-up is at t-1181. ↩

  31. BTP 18 @ 1:05:58 — “are you Jewish?” Kaloudis at t-3963: “I am a Greek, Greek Orthodox, but part of me wishes I was.” ↩

  32. BTP 18 @ 1:09:51 — the kitchen question; Kaloudis raises Greaser’s 100 sats to 200 at t-4213, and Greaser concludes “You don’t need to be saving that fucking heart” at t-4216. ↩

  33. BTP 18 @ 1:24:32 — “Pies the OG of 40 HPW.” ASR spells Piez as “Pies”/“Pyz.” ↩

  34. BTP 18 @ 1:17:08 — “Bugle Mile High Club squeezing in my forty hours per week on route to satirize the system.” ↩

  35. BTP 18 @ 3:44 — “His name’s, Murray Rothbark.” The “he’d probably be a Bitcoiner” line is at t-230; ASR also renders the dog “Marie Bonk” at t-248. ↩

  36. BTP 18 @ 1:32:57 — “I was an extra for this skit in this Greek restaurant in Astoria.” ASR renders Stavros Halkias as “Stavros Hakias”; the skit is “Bad Life Decisions” (t-5574). ↩