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Event

Maxi Madness 2025

Maxi Madness 2025 was the second edition of Maxi Madness, The Bugle‘s single-elimination bracket of Bitcoin maximalists, decided by public Twitter poll over roughly nine days in March 2025. Richard Greaser announced it a month out and opened nominations — “is the second round of March Maxi Madness. You prepared for that, Rod?”1 — and the promo declared the ambition plainly: “I’m talking about March Maxi Madness. Maxi Madness is bigger than ever this year.”2 It ended with the memer Teddy Bitcoins as champion, and with the Bugle refusing to apologize to anyone for it.

Format and selection

Brackets were due before Thursday, March 20 at 8 AM Eastern, with voting on the Bugle’s Twitter timeline from March 20.2 Sixty-four contestants were chosen by an anonymous selection committee whose vetting standard was, by Rod Palmer‘s own account, photographic: “I figured if he was at a swan salon with Corey that he was a Bitcoin maximalist. I was wrong apparently.”3

Rod’s theory of the tournament was constitutional. PODCONF appoints Bitcoin’s spokesmen with no mandate; the bracket is the only election the influencer class has ever faced: “the Baxi Madness tournament gives you it’s an election. It is bringing democracy to the influencer community.”4

The exclusions followed from the premise. Bukele, Senator Lummis and Trump were barred as already elected — “What about senator Launice? Definitely hot enough to be in the tournament. Why is a she in there?”5 Pregnant mothers were excluded on competitive-balance grounds after a listener lobbied for the category: “put some pregnant moms in the Maxey madness. But I elected we elected not to do that because it was an unfair” — advantage, Rod explained, because “a pregnant mom would’ve won.”6

For the snubbed, Greaser prescribed introspection rather than appeal. The tournament is not wrong; you are: “some soul searching. You have to ask yourself, why didn’t the committee consider you worthy.”7 The doctrine was later formalized from a listener boost by Late Stage Hodl, who held that “the credentials of the committee should not be questioned.” Rod adopted the maxim “you get what you get and you don’t get upset”8 — attributing it, uncertainly, to Ludwig von Mises or Salma Hayek — and added that anyone who cried about the selection simply would not be included next year.

The bracket

Attested matchups from the record: Madex versus Michelle Weekley, argued as 3D-printed-gun autism against a CCP-adjacent operator who could help Jason Lowery fight the softwar — “Or are you gonna talk to Michelle Weakley who has multiple times done business at the same table” with the Communist Party of China.9 American HODL drew BTC Sessions in the marquee line of the same window.10

The show’s own forecasts aged badly. Rod, reasoning from thermodynamics — it is “thermodynamically sound to StackSats and not buy bots” — predicted the champion would be no memer: “doctor Adam Back will still be in Maxi Madness.”11 His closing plea of the same episode was against precisely the upset that came: “They’ll let daddy Bitcoins beat Adam Back, Satoshi potentially.”12 The Bugle’s most reliable booster, Pies, had the favorites on record as “I’m going with American HODL for the win. I fucks with HODL, bruh. Larry Leppard would be my runner-up.”13 By the following week Rod was reading Teddy‘s advance as evidence of a community that had lost the plot: “That’s how Teddy Bitcoins gets to sweet 16 in Maxi Madness. That’s a prestigious round.”14

The pick-em

Sponsor money went to the prize pool and not to the hosts, a point Rod disclosed on air pre-emptively: “we do have sponsors all over our graphics, but that money’s not going to us. That is all going towards whoever wins the the prediction bracket challenge.”15 The package: a BitAxe from CryptoCloaks plus “a Podkoff t shirt, an Evian Parks seriously snarky candle, Otis Bittmeyer coffee beans, and two cypherpunk sticker packs from the Ungovernable Misfits.”16

The bracket challenge was won by an entrant filed as “Rob Palmer’s love child,” unmasked on air as Cory, a.k.a. the Broken Ruler, a.k.a. Boomer of the Ottawa BTC meetup. His edge was volume: “the guy that listens to sixty hours of Bitcoin podcast per week”17 — a 40HPW overachiever, and the show’s stated source of predictive alpha.

The fork war

The tournament’s aftermath became a rivalry. Greaser accused PODCONF of organizing the hate campaign that followed: “what it felt like to me after the event, Podkomp had some pretty nasty remarks towards us,” adding that he regretted partnering with them and half-suspected a setup. The Swan C-suite was upset; Rod carved out the rank and file, who had been supportive.18

Rod’s thesis was theft: “And I think that they wanna steal Maxi Madness. There was a lot of people talking about forking Maxi Madness” — the aim being to box the Bugle out of its own tournament.19 Greaser reframed the fork as a chain split, casting the would-be forkers as Roger Ver, Jihan Wu and Craig Wright, claiming “We have the longest chain,” and daring them: “Have your Bitcoin cash Maxi Madness. Be Roger Ver.”19 The stated moat was credentials and cigarettes.

Rod then imagined the compliant fork in full — driver’s licence uploads to vote, three-angle selfies, a compliance pipeline, every tweet cleared by legal and HR: “make every single person who wants to vote Maxi Madness, upload their driver’s license.”20 The flaw was turnout: people will not vote if it takes five minutes.

Not every contestant was a villain. Greaser held up Stephen Lubka as the model of conduct — “Lubka. I think Stephen Lubka, he performed really well”21 — praise for a Swan employee delivered minutes after the attack on Swan’s leadership.

Champion, and the non-apology

Greaser crowned Teddy Bitcoins “the champion of Maxi Madness, the the well deserving champion who also is, Swan Bitcoin’s biggest enemy at the moment,” having earlier called him “the world’s villain that was necessary” and credited him with single-handedly reviving Bitcoin Twitter. It was the memer division’s second consecutive title.22

The Bugle’s official position on all of it supplied the episode its name: “if you’re looking for an apology from us, you will not get that,” Rod said, because “we’re not sorry” — and hurt feelings were, he added, why he woke at 5 AM to work with Timmy Tether on the Maxi Madness recap.23 Tether was the tournament’s content arm throughout, credited on air for “doing a great job on the March, Maxi Madness.”24 Rod closed by inverting the house reflex: everything is good for Bitcoin except Teddy Bitcoins winning Maxi Madness.23

Results and aftermath

Henry’s note: the beat index covers this event through March 31, 2025 (episodes 48, 51, 52, 53). The material below comes from later episodes not yet mined into the index; it is retained from the previous revision at episode-level provenance and has not been re-verified against the cues.

Teddy was accused of buying votes and botting; Rod’s investigation found “No evidence of it. Just allegations” (ep. 53), though ep. 65 later framed the outrage differently: “They didn’t see the civil [Sybil] attack coming.” Live during BTP ep. 12, Teddy offered to step down if an address received 5,000,000 sats within twelve hours; it received zero (BTP ep. 12). Bugle contributor Maggie Morris publicly questioned the polling and the editorial team’s professionalism, then — after the BugleFest board renewed her contract — recanted in full: “I now see I was completely mistaken and that the results were fully organic” (ep. 54). Producer Kailey Welch returned from hiatus mid-tournament. The hosts later read the whole edition as an omen of Paper Bitcoin Summer (2026 victory spaces).

Disputed

The bugleverse.com event record (Maxi Madness, snapshot last modified 2026-05) describes a 2025 championship between Jason P. Lowery and Dennis Porter, with Saylor eliminated early by Cory Klippsten, Walker America over BTC Sessions, a Hodl Magoo Cinderella run, and a deep run from Nico. Every one of those claims is contradicted by the podcast record (Teddy def. Saylor in the final; Klippsten out in round one to O’Dell). Its framing — “PODCONF’s bracket positioned them as the defining voices” — reads as a pre-tournament PODCONF projection rather than a result sheet. Both versions are preserved; the podcast record is the one the universe itself keeps citing.

irl: the 2025 cast maps onto real Bitcoin Twitter (Lyn Alden, Adam Back, Junseth of Bitcoin Uncensored, Swan CEO Cory Klippsten); “Teddy Bitcoins” and the Sybil-attack joke satirize how easily engagement contests are gamed.

Footnotes

  1. Bugle Weekly 48 @ 53:40. Quote spans cues t=3220 and t=3224; Rod answers with the ASR-mangled “MAPSI Madness.” Nominations by DM, email and Telegram, with “editorial discretion” reserved. ↩

  2. Bugle Weekly 51 @ 0:21. Read by an announcer, not by either host; closes on the broadcast tag “Let’s go dancing.” ↩ ↩2

  3. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 25:13. ASR: “Fred Kruder,” “Corey.” The three contested picks were Fred Krueger, Jason Williams and Teddy Bitcoins, whose entire vetting defense was “I mean, come on. His name is Teddy Bitcoins.” Greaser’s reason for refusing to amend the bracket was the standing bit that the Bugle lacks “the operating budget to afford Jewish lawyers.” ↩

  4. Bugle Weekly 51 @ 12:00. Quote spans cues t=720/725/727. ASR renders Maxi as “Baxi” here and “Maxi Badness” earlier; PODCONF as “Podkomp.” ↩

  5. Bugle Weekly 51 @ 14:18. ASR “senator Launice” = Cynthia Lummis (also “Cynthia Lomas” elsewhere in the episode); “Why is a she in there?” is almost certainly “Why isn’t she in there?” Reason given: “Because they’ve already been democratically elected.” ↩

  6. Bugle Weekly 51 @ 21:28. ASR “Maxey madness.” Rod declines to name the petitioner — “it was a very personal request.” ↩

  7. Bugle Weekly 51 @ 4:40. A previous revision of this page cited this as ”@ 4:16”; the cue for the quoted words starts at t=280. ↩

  8. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 47:55. The 15,000-sat boost reads “The credentials of the committee should not be questioned.” ASR renders the booster “Lace Stage” and “late stage huddle,” and Mises as “Ludwig von Nises.” ↩

  9. Bugle Weekly 51 @ 17:26. Quote trimmed at the cue boundary; it completes “with the Communist Party of China?” ASR: “Michelle Weakley” = Michelle Weekley, “Jason P. Lowry” = Jason Lowery. Madex has no character page. ↩

  10. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 52:43. Neither American HODL nor BTC Sessions has a character page. The outcome of the matchup is unrecorded. ↩

  11. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 30:58. Quote spans cues t=1858 and t=1860. ↩

  12. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 52:47. Quote spans three short cues (t=3167, 3172, 3174). ASR: “daddy Bitcoins” for Teddy Bitcoins; “They’ll let” is almost certainly “Don’t let,” which inverts the sense — flagged rather than corrected. The Satoshi punchline lands on Peter Todd in the next cue. ↩

  13. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 48:05. Read aloud by Rod; confidence medium. ASR “Larry Leppard” = Lawrence Lepard. Pies’ earlier boost proposed settling Maxi Madness by cage fight to the death; Rod declined it as “a pretty high time preference activity.” ↩

  14. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 17:05. Quote spans cues t=1025 and t=1029. The distraction he blames is “mister wonderful” — Kevin O’Leary, who has no page — on Fox News. ↩

  15. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 24:03. The prize list moments later is heavily ASR-garbled: “a bid ax, you know, can’t cypherpunk stickers, candles, and the attitude of sponsors.” ↩

  16. Bugle Weekly 51 @ 0:39. “Podkoff” is the standing ASR spelling of PODCONF; the BitAxe is consistently ASR’d “bid ax” / “bid acts.” Evian Parks, the candle maker, has no page. ↩

  17. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 4:52. The winner entered as “Rob Palmer’s love child” with an Ottawa BTC meetup email. No page exists under any of his names. See bits/full-time-podcast-listeners. ↩

  18. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 12:51. Quote spans cues t=771/776. ASR spellings of PODCONF in this episode alone: “Podkomp,” “PodConf,” “PodCom’s,” “pawn comp,” “PodConv,” “Podkonf.” ↩

  19. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 18:32. Rod names the would-be forkers as Swan, “Joe Carl Saar,” and “Stacy and Max” (Stacy Herbert and Max Keiser). Greaser’s chain-split framing: “Maybe Bitcoin’s next block size war is the Maxi Madness war.” “Jian Wu” is Jihan Wu, who has no page. ↩ ↩2

  20. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 22:48. Greaser adds the corporate half: “Have every decision, have every tweet ran by illegal and HR department” — “illegal” is ASR for “a legal.” ↩

  21. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 13:49. Quote begins in the preceding cue (“Stephen”). Greaser calls him “the standard of, you know, how to behave during the Heist of Dakes event” — ASR for “highest of stakes.” ↩

  22. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 1:24. Quote spans cues t=84/89/91. Rod’s two-for-two note for the memer division is ASR’d “it’s two for two to the Meebers.” ↩

  23. Bugle Weekly 53 @ 26:12. Quote spans cues t=1572/1574/1575, continuing “because a, we’re not sorry.” ↩ ↩2

  24. Bugle Weekly 52 @ 32:07. ASR “Noster” (Nostr); Rod calls him “Timmy Taylor” moments later. ↩