AUSTIN — On a Friday morning last spring, Mark Suman called out sick from his job as a senior engineering project manager at Apple and made his way downtown to a place called the Bitcoin Commons, a sort of clubhouse for enthusiasts of the world’s largest cryptocurrency, situated a few blocks south of the Texas State Capitol.
At the time, Suman was, in his words, “an active hobbyist,” tinkering with the technology in his spare time. “I actually played around with it a bit within Apple as well,” he says. “There’s not a lot I can say, other than we were always exploring new technologies, and so I was playing around with some of the open-source bitcoin tools within Apple and doing some exploratory work.”
Suman was there for the annual ‘Bitcoin Takeover’ event. He had followed many of the speakers online and when he saw the gathering pop up on his feed, he took the day off to see it for himself.
“I was sitting in the crowd wanting to get into the space and really build something new and build something novel,”Suman recalled.
What happened instead was the beginning of a professional pivot: he struck up a conversation with a developer after a talk at the Commons, and was introduced to other coders who were winding down a project called Mutiny. Within a few months, Suman handed in his notice at Apple and with the developers he’d met, pivoted into something bigger — co-founding Open Secret, a startup reimagining how user data is stored in the cloud. Instead of relying on centralized databases, the company encrypts data to each individual user — even after it’s uploaded. So if there’s a breach, there’s nothing to steal, Suman explained. No honeypot.
Parker Lewis speaks at the Bitcoin Commons, where he helps lead educational efforts around bitcoin adoption and policy.
Rod Roudi/Bitcoin Commons
The leap was not without stakes.
“There are plenty of sleepless nights,” he said. “I’ve got a family, I’ve got kids, I’ve got a kid off at university.”
He had spent years working on privacy infrastructure — tackling tough technical problems around user protection at scale — but saw a way to do it better with blockchain. “Apple likes to talk a big game about privacy,” he says. “And having been there, I’ve seen very deep within a lot of their systems that they do care about privacy at every level.”
That vision — and the Commons — helped give him conviction. The builders there were all laser focused on creating something that mattered.
Inside Austin’s bitcoin clubhouse
Bitcoin Commons sits on the second floor of the Littlefield Building at the corner of Congress Avenue and Sixth Street — where the broad boulevard to the Capitol collides with the noisy sprawl of Austin’s nightlife district. It’s an apt metaphor for the space itself.
By day, it serves as a clean, open-plan coworking hub for bitcoin operators and builders. At night, it transforms into a gathering place for rogue developers and off-the-record meetups. Events here draw a blend of venture capitalists, open-source contributors, off-grid energy technicians, and Lightning engineers — developers who build software to make bitcoin faster and cheaper to use. On some afternoons, once happy hour hits, the kitchen in the back converts into a bar.
“Bitcoin is the most important technological innovation in any of our lifetimes, and it needs its due,” said Parker Lewis, one of the stewards of the Commons and the author of a new book on bitcoin called “Gradually, Then Suddenly.”
“And so while bitcoin has no CEO and no marketing team, we here at the Bitcoin Commons and Bitcoiners all over the world help educate people about bitcoin, why it’s important, what’s being built, and present a vision for the future,” continued Lewis.
“The vibe, it’s always high signal,” said Dan Lawrence, CEO of OBM, which manages energy use for industrial-scale mining farms. Lawrence said he was “thankful” that the U.S. government had become a little more pro-bitcoin under the new administration, but added, “No matter what happens anywhere, everybody here is always going to bleed bitcoin.”
The “Bitcoin Commons” functions as a sort of clubhouse for the city’s bitcoin believers. It puts on a mix of programming, including conferences and hackathons, as well as hosts a co-working space by day.
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This year, the Commons feels different — not because bitcoiners have changed, but because the world around them has. The mood is bullish. Strategic. Triumphant, even.
Bitcoin‘s price mirrored this optimism, surging to an all-time high of nearly $110,000 in January, coinciding with Trump’s inauguration. By early April, it had retraced to the low $70,000s before rebounding to nearly $85,000 as of Saturday morning — volatility that underscores the market’s sensitivity to political developments and investor sentiment.
Just a year ago, the vibe in the Commons was cautious. Even bitcoin — the asset largely spared by securities law — felt the chill of an aggressive regulatory regime. Developers were being arrested around the world. Wallet providers were being pressured. Open-source projects landed on sanctions lists. The question then was, who would be next?
“I was in Nashville when Trump spoke,” Suman recalled of the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Tennessee, where Trump made his first major address to the crypto industry. “I wasn’t planning on going. But you know, when someone like that is in town, you go see it.”
Suman says he feels Trump has delivered on his promises to the crypto community for the most part. Still, he remains cautious. “I am not one who embraces politicians,” Suman said. “I’m kind of apolitical as far as which side. So I only trust them until I see how it’s actually playing out in our life. So far, I think it’s going well, but it could really change.”
Austin’s “Bitcoin Commons” draws in an eclectic mix of people, including venture capitalists, bitcoin miners, and coders.
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Kevin Hurley, CTO at Lightspark, says Washington’s stance toward crypto appears to be shifting, with regulators like the SEC taking a less combative approach — moving away from lawsuits and toward clearer capital markets rules. “Hopefully now we’re actually going to have some clarity on what is and what isn’t a security, what can actually be done,” he said.
But even in a friendlier political climate, caution over government involvement remains a feature, not a bug, of the crypto community.
Joe Kelly, CEO of Unchained — a startup that helps clients store bitcoin securely by holding their own private keys — said it’s smart to be careful what you wish for when it comes to the U.S. government owning a lot of bitcoin. “That can go other ways,” he said.
To date, the government’s so-called Strategic Bitcoin Reserve has underwhelmed some digital asset advocates, since it’s limited to bitcoin previously seized in enforcement actions — not newly purchased assets or sovereign investment. Still, the administration has directed the Treasury and Commerce Departments to explore budget-neutral ways to acquire more bitcoin.
Kelly acknowledges a shift in the regulatory atmosphere, but he’s also wary of premature celebration, even with big market wins like the launch of exchange-traded funds that allow investors widespread access to bitcoin.
“If something like the ETF had launched too soon, I think it could have distracted from the people building on the actual technology itself,” Kelly said. “We’ve had the fortune that for most of Unchained’s life there wasn’t an ETF,” he added of the firm’s efforts to educate investors on how to store their crypto.
Becca Rubenfeld of Anchor Watch explains how federal shifts could allow bitcoin to be treated as an admitted asset by insurers — a potential breakthrough for institutional adoption.
Rod Roudi/Bitcoin Commons
The shift has had ripple effects across the industry, including insurance.
Becca Rubenfeld, COO of Anchor Watch, says regulatory movement is opening the door for bitcoin to be treated like any other financial asset. Traditional insurers don’t cover bitcoin directly — they insure the infrastructure around it. But if bitcoin becomes an admitted asset on insurance company balance sheets, that changes everything.
“Currently, the industry is extremely underserved,” Rubenfeld told CNBC. “But what Anchor Watch is doing is specifically insuring the asset itself. So we built a proprietary custody solution. And when customers use us for custody services, Lloyd’s of London backed insurance is included in those services.”
The demand is growing. So is the pressure to build — and secure — the technical infrastructure that makes bitcoin work.
Mike Schmidt of Brink discusses the critical need to support open-source developers who maintain bitcoin’s core infrastructure.
Rod Roudi/Bitcoin Commons
Mike Schmidt, executive director of Brink, which funds open-source bitcoin developers through a nonprofit structure, emphasized the importance of supporting the engineers maintaining bitcoin’s underlying infrastructure. “Bitcoin needs engineers,” he said.
“We have a $2 trillion asset. We have strategic reserves of bitcoin being held by countries, and there’s just this small group of engineers that are keeping this thing together at the code base,” Schmidt said. “There’s only maybe 40 full-time engineers working on this. So we want to make sure that the engineering growth can keep pace with its broader adoption.”
Lisa Neigut started as a back-end engineer at Cash App, where she worked on their internal bitcoin product, before moving to Blockstream and spending six years as an open-source developer on the Lightning Network. These days, she runs Bitcoin++, one of the largest technical conference series in the space, with six events planned across six countries this year.
“Bitcoin++ is focused on bringing together bitcoin developers and builders to talk about what they’re working on — the frontier of bitcoin,” Neigut said. “You can get an idea of what bitcoin is going to look like tomorrow.”
That sense of momentum resonates with filmmaker Alana Mediavilla, who spent five years at Google working on films about big data and cloud infrastructure. She screened her new documentary, Dirty Coin, a feature-length project looking at bitcoin’s energy footprint and the people behind the infrastructure, at the Commons.
Power supply for Whinstone’s bitcoin mine in Rockdale, Texas.
“I had put in my time in the cloud space,” she says. “I understood what data centers were, I understood where it was going, and I also understood how much energy it takes to run these huge facilities that right now are running the backbone of our society.”
Her goal wasn’t to necessarily defend bitcoin mining but to broaden the conversation. “I just want to get everybody’s data center literacy up to a certain point where we can continue to have conversations about it, because it’s not going away.”
She describes the crowd in Austin as a coming together of people “very committed to their craft” — and in her view, driven more by shared ideals than by profit-seeking.
“People think that it’s like a get-rich-quick,” she said. “Maybe those were the old days for bitcoin. Now, if you want 100x you should look at altcoins and meme coins and other stuff, but you’re probably not going to get that with bitcoin.”
“What brings them together is that they want to have better money, and they want to have a more fair world,” she added.“So the principles are solid. How we implement those principles — that’s where the variety and spice of life comes in.”
Venture investment in bitcoin-related startups soared in 2024 alongside the crypto market’s rally. The number of pre-seed deals in the space climbed 50% last year, according to research from Trammell Venture Partners, an Austin-based VC firm focused on bitcoin-native startups. Across all early-stage funding rounds, nearly $1.2 billion has been invested in bitcoin companies since 2021.
The renewed interest comes after years of technical upgrades to the bitcoin protocol and growing confidence in its long-term resilience.
“Serious people no longer question whether bitcoin will remain 15 or 20 years into the future,” said Christopher Calicott, managing director at Trammell. “So the next question becomes: Is it possible to build what the founder is trying to achieve on bitcoin? Increasingly, the answer is yes.”
PitchBook projects that crypto venture funding will surpass $18 billion in 2025 — nearly doubling the annual average from the previous two-year cycle. Much of that capital is flowing into bitcoin infrastructure and applications — payments, privacy tools, custody solutions — rather than the speculative trading platforms of previous cycles.
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Turning ideals — and venture dollars — into reality still requires real-world infrastructure. And that’s where entrepreneurs like Steve Barbour, the founder of Canadian firm Upstream Data, come in. He’s spent years building off-grid mining containers for remote oilfields, but this spring, he’s expanding operations into Wyoming, a bet he attributes directly to the Trump administration’s rollback of energy regulations and renewed push for domestic production.
Wyoming — home to both sprawling coal operations and some of the country’s most permissive crypto laws — has emerged as a hub for bitcoin miners and the lawmakers who support them.
“I’m extremely optimistic and bullish on Trump’s administration,” Barbour said. “The EPA finally came out with a new stance on all these things they’ve been doing to just destroy the energy sector in America, which has affected us very negatively. I’m seeing a lot of things going the right way now with the decisions the Trump administration is making, and clearly they’re trying to attract investment in America and manufacturing.”
Zaprite’s Parker Lewis shares policy insights at the Commons, calling for federal legislation like the proposed Bitcoin Act to cement regulatory clarity.
Rod Roudi/Bitcoin Commons
Zaprite’s Lewis, one of the Commons’ most vocal policy thinkers, agrees that things are moving in the right direction — particularly around the government’s decision to establish a formal national bitcoin reserve.
While a crypto executive order is an important first step, “codifying it with law will help drive further regulatory clarity that the U.S. is open for bitcoin,” Lewis said. “It will also be good for the country …the biggest priority would be for the regulatory clarity piece, pushing Sen. Lummis’ Bitcoin Act to codify and make permanent.“
Senator Lummis, a longtime advocate for the industry, is pushing legislation to codify bitcoin protections into federal law. Her proposed legislation outlines a plan for the U.S. to buy bitcoin with “existing funds” of the Treasury Department, which includes tax revenue. The idea, in part, is to position bitcoin as a strategic reserve asset — one that could appreciate over time and reduce reliance on debt. The senator has said that the ultimate goal is to reduce the federal deficit, as well as position bitcoin alongside gold and other hard assets as a way to strengthen the dollar over time.
Without the Bitcoin Act becoming law, Lewis warns that today’s tailwinds could reverse with a single administration change.
But while Washington debates bitcoin’s role in the future of the U.S. economy, Suman was already betting his own on it.
“Why did I leave this really cushy job at Apple, where I was getting paid a lot and had stock and that kind of stuff, to come here, where my future is uncertain?” he said. “It’s the possibility of building something new that I think is really needed in the world. And I hope that it pans out. … If it doesn’t, and we go down in a glory of fire, at least I will have tried something that I really believe in.”
Even after he accepted the offer to join Mutiny — later pivoting into Open Secret — things didn’t calm down.“That was right when a prominent group of developers were arrested,” he recalled.“They were developing an app called Samurai, and they got arrested. I had accepted my offer with Mutiny, but I had not yet left Apple.”
The gamble wasn’t just career-based. It was emotional. Existential.
“Knowing that people were being arrested and there was a lot of uncertainty, I still dove in,” he said. “The guys said, ‘Listen, if you’re worried, we can just call this off and you can stay at Apple,'” Suman recalled. “But I said, ‘No, I really believe in what we’re building. Let’s make this thing scale.'”
America’s heartland is full of rural communities that are miles away from its major cities, both geographically and culturally – but that doesn’t mean these more sparsely populated regions can’t reap the benefits of electrification. In fact, EVs offer rural drivers even more benefits than they do to city-dwellers!
“An electric lifestyle would be a boon to our rural heartland,” wrote the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Maria Cecilia Pinto de Moura. “Rural communities across the country have their own distinguishing characteristics, but certain shared characteristics such as driving distances, the type of vehicles driven, and socio-economics are factors which contribute to this larger potential to benefit from vehicle electrification.”
Pinto de Moura went on to outline five ways rural and country drivers could benefit from going electric – but that was in 2021, and a whole lot has changed in the nearly five years since.
As such, I thought it was high time we revisit some of the reasons EVs could be a great fit for rural lifestyles, see if we could uncover any new ones, and outline the reasons we think rural drivers should rush to embrace electric vehicles in the coming calendar year.
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1. More miles means more savings
David Blenkle’s 252,000 mile Mustang Mach-E; via Ford.
When you hear that line about, “the average American drives 30 to 40 miles a day,” remember that in towns like Wellington, Ohio, or Colfax, Washington, 30 miles is a grocery run. Each way. So when people trot out that old line about range anxiety, what rural drivers actually hear isn’t reassurance. It’s dismissal — a suggestion that they drive too far for an EV to work, when nothing could be further from the truth.
A recent study by Rural Climate Partnership found that rural drivers spend an average of 44% more on fuel than city dwellers, and that the top 3.6% of rural drivers — the “supermilers” who rack up the most miles — could save over $4,000 each year by switching to electric fuel.
2. Electric trucks have arrived
Sierra AT4 EV towing a boat; via GM.
Country guys and gals love their pickups, and arguably the single biggest difference between the EV markets of 2021 and 2025 is the proliferation of electric trucks and SUVs ready to help haul, chore, camp, and tow.
Why not save your expensive horses from breathing in gas and diesel exhaust. Haul ’em with your quiet new EV, instead!
Unlike many apartment-dwelling urban drivers, most rural owners can charge right at home. More than 80% of rural households have a driveway or garage that are ideal for overnight Level 2 charging, and many already have a 240V outlet, keeping setup costs (if there even are any) to a minimum.
Plug in before bed, wake up to a full battery every morning, and do it for pennies on the dollar, especially with off-peak rates.
4. Lifesaving battery power
F-150 Lightning plugged in; via Ford.
If disaster strikes and you lose power, many electric trucks have the ability to power your home and appliances with the energy stored in their massive batteries – either from the truck itself, or through a V2X home battery system. If you live in an area prone to extreme weather events, the ability to keep medication refrigerated can be a literal life-saver!
As such, getting behind the wheel of an ultra-powerful, ultra smooth-running electric pickup truck from your favorite brand is easier than ever.
6. Energy independence and American jobs
GM Defense electric military vehicle; via GM.
At the risk of sounding like a paranoid red hat, rural Americans are proud Americans – just like rural Canadians are proud Canadians. Unfortunately, every gallon of gas burned in their pickups and SUVs came from oil drilled, refined, and traded on global markets — and that means supporting the oil business and economies of nations whose values don’t always align with, or maybe are even outright hostile to theirs.
Switching to an EV can help more of that money right here at home, especially as more and better battery recycling efforts come online and newer battery and anode/cathode chemistries are developed, reducing dependence on rare Earth metals, cobalt, and even lithium.
There are obviously more reasons to go electric than these, from lower cost of ownership to saving the planet to absolutely killer burnouts that would make the one-tire-fire era IROC Camaros hang their 305s in shame – but I think those kind of fade into the background as being appealing to all, instead of being especially appealing to rural drivers.
That said, it’s been a long time since I was back in Ohio, so maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like. You guys are smart, head on down to the comments and let me know what I missed!
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Honda’s electric SUV is on a roll. The Prologue was the third best-selling EV in the US in August, trailing only the Tesla Model Y and Model 3. Even with the federal EV tax credit now expired, Honda is still offering nearly $17,000 off the Prologue.
Honda Prologue registrations surge with huge incentives
As the $7,500 credit expired at the end of September, automakers rolled out steep discounts, many topping five figures with combined incentives.
The Honda Prologue has been one of the most discounted EVs over the past year or so. Last month, buyers could score up to over $20,000 in combined savings, including a $7,500 credit, $9,500 in financing bonuses, trade-in offers, and 0% interest for six years.
According to the latest registration data from S&P Global Mobility (via Automotive News), the incentives helped propel the Honda Prologue to become the third most popular EV in August.
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A total of 138,457 EVs were registered in the US in August, up 24% from a year ago. Honda Prologue registrations surged 81% to 9,005 vehicles, the data showed.
2025 Honda Prologue Elite (Source: Honda)
Honda’s electric SUV had more registrations than the Chevy Equinox EV in August, and it’s based on the same GM Ultium platform. However, the Equinox is still outselling the Prologue through September.
Since some automakers don’t report monthly or US sales numbers, the S&P Global Mobility data offers a snapshot of sales performance.
2025 Prologue Elite (Source: Honda)
The Prologue was yet again one of the most discounted models, with incentives of $12,704 in August, according to Motor Intelligence. Last August, Prologue incentives were just $5,813. Honda’s gas-powered CR-V had just $2,016 in incentives in August.
The interior of the 2025 Honda Prologue Elite (Source: Honda)
Although the $7,500 credit expired on September 30, Honda is still offering generous incentives for Prologue buyers and lessees.
The 2025 Honda Prologue is available with up to $16,550 in lease cash in most states. The offer includes $5,000 in lease bonus cash, $8,250 in Honda lease cash, and a $3,3300 loyalty or conquest bonus. Honda is offering the deal until November 11. Or, you can opt for 0% APR financing for up to 60 months.
2025 Honda Prologue trim
Starting Price*
EPA Range (miles)
EX (FWD)
$47,400
308
EX (AWD)
$50,400
294
Touring (FWD)
$51.700
308
Touring (AWD)
$54,700
294
Elite (AWD)
$57,900
283
2025 Honda Prologue prices and range by trim (*Does not include $1,450 D&H fee)
Although the Acura ZDX will not return for a 2026 model year, Honda is planning to launch the 2026 Prologue. We have yet to learn prices, but we could see it priced slightly lower due to the loss of the $7,500 EV credit.
Hyundai announced earlier this month it’s reducing 2026 IONIQ 5 prices by up to nearly $10,000 on some trims. The 2026 Hyundai IONIQ 5 now starts at under $35,000. Hyundai is offering leases as low as $289 per month right now. Will Honda match it?
Kia has a new idea. So you don’t miss the smell of gasoline too much when you trade in for its new EV, Kia is giving away free gas-scented air fresheners.
Kia offers gas-scented car fresheners for EV4 buyers
It’s time to trade that new car scented tree dangling from your rearview mirror for a jerry can that smells like… gasoline?
Astara Auto Finland, which imports Kia’s vehicles into Finland, is giving away free gasoline-scented car fresheners for those buying the new EV4.
Although it may seem like Kia’s poking fun at the gas guzzlers, it’s actually partly designed to ease your transition to an EV.
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“Giving up the combustion engine can feel like a huge step, just like giving up anything else that is familiar. We wanted to add a touch of nostalgic fun to the transition with a gas-scented car freshener,” Klaus Pohjala, commercial director at Astara Auto Finland, said.
The scent was created by Finland’s sole perfumier, Max Perttula, who has developed fragrances for other premium brands.
Kia starts EV4 hatchback production in Europe, its first EV built in Europe (Source: Kia UK)
According to Pertulla, he mostly used scents found in men’s fragrances, but added a bit of Jasmine to top things off. “It may sound wild that it’s jasmine of all things that contains compounds with a fragrance that creates associations with gasoline,” Pertulla said, but it works.
The fragrance came to life after metalizing and sanding it with amber compounds, birch tar, and galbanum, he explained.
The Kia EV4 hatchback at IAA Mobility 2025 in Munich (Source: Kia)
Of course, it’s a bit of a “cheeky campaign,” Pertulla said, but Kia aims to add a little fun for new EV drivers. The latest campaign comes after Kia’s importer ran a controversial front-page ad last year mocking traditional luxury automakers, claiming EVs have leveled the playing field.
The EV4 is rolling out in Europe, in both hatchback and sedan variants. Early next year, Kia will launch the sedan version in the US.
Do you miss the smell of gas? After driving an EV for years, I still think that it’s one of the best parts of owning one. Drop us a comment below and let us know what you think.
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