Re:Building Together EP 323 — Live From Disneyland

Host: CEELOS (@CEELOSFIGG) · Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2026 · Duration: 1:06:45 · Speakers: 5

TL;DR

• CEELOS opened the daily space from the line for Soarin' Over California, celebrating his 44th birthday with his wife at the parks, then handed the room over — SLICK RIC (co-hosting from behind the wheel on the way back from Oregon) and ValerieKates (in Iowa with family) carried it.
• The bulk of the hour turned into an unhurried macro conversation: Valerie's case that a real correction is still overdue, and SLICK RIC's counter-thesis that government involvement has put the market in genuinely uncharted territory where old cycle charts don't map cleanly.
• Valerie's practical takeaway for newcomers: now is still a fine entry, buy on the way down and the way up, and above all don't panic-sell into regulatory headlines.
• Bored Osaka delivered the room's emotional-discipline sermon — trade from a non-emotional place, find a mentor, never risk what you can't lose — plus a three-chain "roadmap" framing of Solana → Ethereum → Bitcoin as the on-ramp from web2.
• Donny Ðoge offered the honest counterweight: conviction plays only, no degening, Ethereum still owns NFTs, and he's down about $45k on them anyway and here for the growth rather than the exit.
• Closing remarks landed on community over charts: hold down your people, start everyone at 100, and — per Bored Osaka — maybe inscribe your Social Security number on Bitcoin instead of leaving it on that flimsy paper.

Highlights

[2:28] A birthday PFP and a birthday park day. CEELOS opened from California Adventure with a new profile picture gifted by Jed, and quickly established the day's odd novelty: his first-ever amusement park visit without kids. "A part of me is like wait, where's my kids?" he said at [7:58], while watching other parents handle everything that entails — and not him, not today.

[9:28] In memoriam: Tower of Terror. CEELOS made peace with Guardians of the Galaxy taking over his favorite ride — "this generation doesn't know what the hell Twilight Zone is" — which spun into Black Mirror as the modern heir, Tales from the Crypt, Unsolved Mysteries, and an unpaid endorsement of Tubi at [10:29], where signing up saves your spot and everything is free.

[11:00]–[12:28] SLICK RIC arrives, slightly worse for wear. Six days at a fair in Oregon, an hour and a half from home, and a trailer tire that blew out coming down the mountain — "I'm dual axle, so I'm good." Valerie and Slick then compared notes on hotel pillows, with Slick firmly on team bring-your-own: "I'm trying to snuggle, cuddle up to somebody's hair? No."

[16:20] The correction debate opens, politely. Valerie planted the flag: "There hasn't been a true correction since 2022. So it's gonna come." Slick countered with the Coinbase CEO's comments on the Clarity Act being at the finish line and roughly $30 billion unlocking for crypto — "if there is a correction, it's gonna be after that thirty billion hit" [17:36].

[18:06] "We're in uncharted territory." Slick's core thesis, and the line he kept returning to: every chart comparison to 2021–2023 is missing the one variable that never existed before. "We've been praying for years for the government just to say the word crypto." He also framed this as the last wild-west bull run before regulation closes off the meme-launch free-for-all.

[20:47] Valerie's actual advice, minus the doom. She's watched multiple cycles from the sidelines and still thinks now is a good entry — the risk isn't the dip, it's the panic. "Buy all the way down, buy all the way up, and just let it ride." At [22:21] she mapped the support levels (a big one at 60k, another at 80k) and at [22:49] brought in her anthropology background: markets are human behavior, and "people repeat themselves constantly."

[24:07] Bored Osaka on trading without feelings. He read the Wall Street Journal in high school while his family wondered why he wasn't reading the Boston Globe, and his advice to new traders is the Wall Street/Switzerland discipline: operate from a non-emotional place, find a mentor who can teach you that skill, never risk more than you can lose. He extends it to friendship loans — given with no expectation of return, to keep money and emotion separate. On Bitcoin over gold: you can't cross a border with a bag of bullion [25:31].

[36:47] The 20 billion Pepe coins. Valerie's uncle asked, over dinner, how long she'd been in crypto. "Are you seriously asking me how many times I've fumbled generational wealth over the last 15 years?" She then did the math out loud on a group buy — ten people, 20 billion Pepe, decisions made over $20 and $30 and $50 — and landed on the lesson: by your third cycle you've usually got the pattern recognition, and now she just leaves things alone.

[44:38] Donny Ðoge takes the other side on Solana. With a disclaimer that he doesn't do much research and nobody should take his word for anything, he said Ethereum stays the NFT chain — easier to play with, more layers, and Solana's NFT market isn't showing him otherwise. He's never been able to degen, buys only with conviction, and at [47:19] noted the only NFTs he's ever sold were ones where the project turned shady. At [48:37]: he's not in it for money, he's in it to watch the thing grow.

[55:57] Minecraft, then Bitcoin. Bored Osaka's origin story: his six-year-old and his friends were running around the schoolyard announcing they'd be Bitcoin miners, because mining sounded like Minecraft. He let his son spec out a mining rig, and fourteen years later the kid — now living between Japan and Denmark — told him at Bitcoin Tokyo how strange and wonderful it was to hear his dad talk tech instead of brick-and-mortar and photography. "It's your fault you got me involved in this whole world."

[52:23] Why the community part matters more than the charts. Slick's longest stretch of the hour: how am I supposed to have love for you if I don't know you? He credited Jed for putting his IRL business on the line and making these communities tangible — dinners, hugs, actual people — and argued that's exactly what makes scheming harder. Bored Osaka answered at [54:29] with his own rule: everybody starts at 100, and eventually they'll show you or tell you who they are.

[1:02:31] Closing remarks. Bored Osaka: know your chains, know why you're using them, and consider that your Social Security number — one of the most valuable numbers in your life — arrives on "the flimsiest piece of paper," so inscribe it on Bitcoin instead. Donny kept it short after asking why Bored has to be so sophisticated all the time: enough steps backwards, let's step forward.

[1:04:38] CEELOS returns from the park to say thanks. He thanked Slick for driving and hosting simultaneously, Valerie for holding it down from out of town, and Bored and Donny for grabbing mics — noting that anybody can open a space, but doing it daily and consistently takes a village. Valerie's only ask, at [1:06:28], was a souvenir. Also noted: Bakes' birthday is tomorrow.

Topic timeline

Notable quotes

• "We've been praying for years for the government just to say the word crypto. Just to say crypto, just to say it." — SLICK RIC [18:06]
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  0:38
• "Buy all the way down, buy all the way up, and just let it ride." — ValerieKates [20:47]
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  0:38
• "Humans repeat themselves. You know that thing, like history repeats itself. No, people repeat themselves constantly." — ValerieKates [22:49]
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• "I would rather have Bitcoin than gold because I can't go across the border with a bag full of gold." — Bored Osaka [25:31]
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• "If you're going to degen, learn how to degen without emotions. I tried degening and I found out that no, that's not for me." — Bored Osaka [34:17]
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• "I'm not in it to make money. I'm in it to help this shit grow. I want to be a part of watching this thing take off. That's why I'm here." — Donny Ðoge [48:37]
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  0:38

Who said what

• CEELOS (@CEELOSFIGG) — host, opening and closing the episode from Disneyland on his 44th birthday; set the tone, then trusted the room to run itself and came back at the end to thank everyone.
• SLICK RIC (@richj530) — co-host from the driver's seat on the way home from an Oregon fair; made the case that government involvement means no prior cycle data applies, big on Solana (Alpenglow, RWAs, tokenization), and closed on holding down your community by any means necessary.
• ValerieKates (@valeriekates_) — the room's markets-and-methodology voice, joining from a string of Iowa consignment stores; argued a correction is still coming while insisting now's a good entry, brought support levels and an anthropologist's read on human behavior, and shared the Pepe math that still stings.
• Bored Osaka (@BoredOsaka1) — the philosophical center: emotional discipline, mentorship, BTC as portable stored value, the Solana → Ethereum → Bitcoin adoption roadmap, and the best origin story of the hour.
• Donny Ðoge (@DogeDonny2013) — the grounded skeptic from Jersey; Ethereum for NFTs, conviction over degening, honest about being down on NFTs, and only exits when a project goes shady.

Worth a full listen

• [17:36]–[24:02] — The heart of the macro exchange. Slick's uncharted-territory thesis and Valerie's correction case build on each other rather than collide, and her pivot into reading markets as human behavior (via an eighth-grade stock-picking contest) is better heard than summarized.
• [36:18]–[39:10] — Valerie's fumbled-generational-wealth monologue, from the uncle's innocent dinner question to doing the 20-billion-Pepe math out loud. The delivery is the point.
• [54:29]–[57:27] — Bored Osaka's "everybody starts at 100" philosophy flowing straight into the Minecraft-to-Bitcoin-miner story and the reunion with his son at Bitcoin Tokyo. Warm, specific, and the kind of thing a bullet point flattens.