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Issue #19 / Block Height 960878
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Monday, August 3rd 2026
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The Dispatch
BITCOIN ARTS PARK IS TAKING SHAPE.
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Dear sovereign renaissance,
Seven weeks out. This week we are naming who is coming with us to Columbus, launching a new artist story on the site, publishing a Substack essay on our founder that neither of us expected to write this year, and putting Share Your Bitcoin Journey on every major podcast platform. A lot to share. Let's get to it.
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◆ Bitcoin Arts Park at the Midwest Bitcoin Summit
The lineup.
Two days at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Two lunch-hour shows. Visual art on the walls, a live Bitcoin mining feed on the monitor, and partners on every side of the room. Here is who is confirmed on each day so far.
Wednesday, September 23
Ainsley Costello anchors the Wednesday lunch-hour show, our Nashville-based rock performer and one of the youngest artists building a career on a Bitcoin standard. Sharing the day with her: Short North Stage, Columbus's premier regional theater, performing an excerpt from their upcoming production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, brought to us by their professional cast. It is the first time Broadway-scale musical theater and Bitcoin have shared a stage in Columbus, and quite possibly anywhere.
Thursday, September 24
Andy Burghardt of Ann Arbor takes the Thursday lunch-hour slot with his one-man band show, a live-looping, foot-stomping performance you have to see to understand. Sharing the day: Short North Stage's high school internship program, with student singers and performers, plus our live children's book reading of Bitcoin: A Treasure to HODL by Lindey Magee for Columbus-area homeschool families and their kids.
Across both days
Shipwreck Shawn's original paintings hang in the Bitcoin Arts Park gallery for the duration of the summit, five pieces from his growing Bitcoin-adjacent body of work. And on the monitor at the center of the Park, Proof of Print's mining printer runs live for both days, streaming the mining feed in real time so every attendee can watch Bitcoin's security budget being minted, block by block, from the floor of the show.
More confirmations coming in the weeks ahead. Get your pass and follow the full lineup at midwestbtc.com.
Sponsors, we need you in the final stretch
Bitcoin Arts Park is being built out on a real budget with real production standards, and we are still actively seeking sponsors in these last few weeks. Nine sponsorship tiers from $500 to $25,000, plus a full menu of in-kind asks. Our newest tier, The Storyteller Sponsor at $5,000, funds the entire children's book reading experience. Every child who attends receives an autographed copy of the book, a BFTA welcome kit, and a starter Bitcoin wallet preloaded with sats, given in the sponsor's name. Every sponsor is named, thanked publicly, and recognized in perpetuity. If you or someone in your network can step in for this, please reply and let us know. Full tier menu at bitcoinforthearts.org/midwest. Prefer to contribute in sats? Our Midwest campaign is also live on Geyser Fund.
See the full Midwest plan →
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◆ New on Artist Stories
No Good Kid.
Building culture around Bitcoin and Nostr · Designer of Top 10 Bitcoin F*ck Ups, the Dark Forest zine, and Tamers of Entropy · Gran Canaria
A new long-form artist story is live on the BFTA site. No Good Kid is a masked British designer, art director, and creative producer based in Gran Canaria. Fifteen years in branding and marketing, then a coaching client asked him to help with a manuscript about “something called Bitcoin” in 2020, and everything changed. Today he shapes the covers, packaging, and visual language of some of the most important books and zines in the Bitcoin and Nostr world: Top 10 Bitcoin F*ck Ups with Dušan Matuška and AmityAge, the Dark Forest zine with Peter Horváth and bitpunk.fm, and Tamers of Entropy with juraj & lisa.
His thesis, and the reason we asked him to be featured: “Today I’m most interested in building culture around Bitcoin and Nostr that puts people before technology.”
Read the full story →
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◆ New on the BFTA Substack
Two Weeks Before Capitol College.
On our founder's origin story, a Spanish computer scientist named Victor, and the circle he did not know he was drawing.
In August of 1996, BFTA founder Dion Wilson was two weeks away from starting as a computer science major at Capitol College in Laurel, Maryland. A last-minute audition tip from his Baltimore School for the Arts dance director sent him to SUNY Purchase instead. Thirty years of dance followed, at Philadanco, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Alvin Ailey, and Disney's The Lion King.
This week, a hardcover book arrived at his door. The sender was Victor Manuel Rosano López, the Spanish computer scientist and author of The Last Refuge: Bitcoin Amid Digital Dystopia. Dion is one of two featured voices inside Chapter 14, “Bitcoin Is Hope.” Two people. Opposite ends of the same road. Both met inside one chapter. Every Lightning purchase of Victor's book on Leanpub routes entirely to Bitcoin For The Arts, Bitcoin Transformation Community, and Women of Bitcoin.
Read the essay →
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◆ Share Your Bitcoin Journey
Now a podcast. On every major platform.
Share Your Bitcoin Journey is now available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and via RSS for Podcasting 2.0 apps like Fountain and Podverse. The full video series continues on our YouTube channel. Same conversations, three ways to listen, one for every kind of listener.
We are releasing our full back catalog to the audio feed one legacy episode at a time. Episode 12 with Philip Charter and Episode 11 with Alana Mediavilla are live now. A new legacy episode drops every week. Follow the show once and every future episode appears in your app automatically.
Or watch the full video series on the YouTube playlist.
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◆ BFTA Artist Directory
The next story starts with a signup.
Every featured artist you have read about, on our Stories page or heard on Share Your Bitcoin Journey, began with a single form. The BFTA Artist Directory is our running database of working artists across every discipline who want the organization's resources, opportunities, and story-features routed to them directly. Signup takes about three minutes. It is free.
If you are a working artist, add your name. If you know a working artist who should be in the room, forward this email to them.
Join the Artist Directory →
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The Throughline This Week
A movement is a lineup that shows up.
A year ago, Bitcoin Arts Park was a sentence in a proposal. Today it is a Nashville rock musician sharing a stage with a Broadway-scale regional theater. An Ann Arbor one-man band next to a live Bitcoin mining printer. A children's book reading in the same footprint as five original paintings on the wall. A new artist story on the site, a full podcast catalog rolling out on every major platform.
A movement is not something you announce. It is a lineup that shows up. In seven weeks, this one does.
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Until next time.
Bitcoin for the Arts
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Where to Start
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Patronage is Contagious
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Bitcoin for the Arts · 501(c)(3)
Sound money for timeless creators. Empowering artists with Bitcoin micro-grants & workshops.
bitcoinforthearts.org
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