Character

Max Shaft

Arc history

Shaft’s earliest documented bylines establish his beat as The Bugle’s correspondent for the adult end of the Bitcoin economy — a specialization his byline arguably predicted. He debuted in February 2023 with launch coverage of CryptoCloaks’ Hashlight, filed in prose indistinguishable from the press release (Crypto Cloaks Launches New Sex Toy Called Hashlight). A week into March he broke the opening of Lyn Alden‘s Miami strip club UTXHoes, securing quotes from the owner, two featured dancers, and Michael Saylor (New Bitcoin Themed Strip Club To Open In Miami).

The first week of March 2023 was the most productive of his early career and broadened the beat from merchandise to the people who buy it. In a single three-day span he filed the Fyre Wallet launch — Luke Dash-JR‘s “hot-ish-cold” storage venture with Billy McFarland, complete with the beta tester who had “only lost 11%” (Luke Dash-JR to Launch Bitcoin Storage Solution); the human-interest piece that opened the romance arc, on an anonymous Bitcoiner paralyzed by the acquisition of a girlfriend (Bitcoiner Gets Girlfriend, Doesn’t Know What to Do Next); and his first White House-adjacent assignment, covering President Joe Biden‘s inner city Mempool speech in Baltimore (Joe Biden Brings Peace to Inner City Mempool).

Mid-March 2023 broadened the portfolio abruptly upward, from the bedroom to the situation room. On a single day he broke the State Department’s Softwar partnership with Compass Mining — his first federal exclusive, opening the Softwar rollout (State Department Announces Partnership with Compass Mining) — and The Bugle’s first dispatch from the banking crisis, on European bankers whose calls for help no American could understand (European Bankers Desperately Calling America for Assistance). A week later he was back on brand with celebrity romance, breaking the Gisele Bundchen–Vitalik Buterin courtship, 5-ETH hug and all (Recently Divorced FTX Spokeswoman Spotted with Vitalik Buterin).

Where Richard Greaser covers the coverage, Shaft covers the merchandise — and, increasingly, the loneliness that moves it.

Mention counts are mechanical (name matches in transcripts); Henry verifies and annotates them.