From radical transparency to privacy solutions: How cryptocurrency's evolution exposes the tension between technological idealism and human needs. Join us as we explore blockchain's dramatic shift from complete openness to privacy-focused development, featuring insights from developers, business owners, and cryptographers. Discover what this transformation reveals about trust, surveillance, and the future of digital finance. A must-listen episode for anyone interested in cryptocurrency, privacy tech, or how revolutionary systems adapt to human nature.

In this episode of Interconnected, we step into the hall of mirrors that is cryptocurrency—where belief outruns utility, and code becomes creed. What began as a clever fix for digital payments now resembles something stranger: a hyperreal economy where the symbol of value overtakes value itself. We trace crypto's evolution across three layers—technical infrastructure, economic function, and the realm of narrative-driven belief—revealing a system as contradictory as it is captivating.

From Bitcoin's quiet birth to El Salvador’s bold experiment, from Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality to the meme-markets of Twitter, we ask: what happens when the map becomes the territory? And in this simulation, who wins, who loses, and who still believes?

Beyond Instagram filters and wanderlust hashtags lies a deeper story: van life as a systemic response to housing unaffordability, digital transformation, and shifting definitions of home. Through composite characters built from hundreds of real stories, we explore how a vehicle-dwelling movement reveals profound truths about America in 2025.