kurt-ivey-signal

# S01E15 · Kurt Ivey — Founder of Signal <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY_v1InC1kI" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><img class="uv-poster" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/HY_v1InC1kI/maxresdefault.jpg" alt="Kurt Ivey on The Useful Podcast Episode 15" loading="lazy" /></a> Kurt Ivey has been the storyteller behind ShopX, Alter, ACES, and Crypto PR Labs — the person founders hand forty slides of technical detail to, who turns it into something a human can care about. That job gave him a view of the industry most people do not get, and his read is blunt: the ideas were almost never the problem, it was execution, and people not coming through on what they promised. His thesis is middlemen — insurance, credit card companies, Amazon, brokers — value coagulating in one place because someone stands between the two parties who actually want to transact. He wants to stop letting being a middleman be a job. He is building Signal now, a Solana trading platform that sits somewhere between an automated trading system and a game, where paper traders influence the algorithm weighted by how good their track record is. Before crypto he wrote novels, ran a coffee company, and shipped a game he built in Unreal Engine. He also wants to live a thousand years, and he is not joking. ## Listen <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li>Watch<a class="uv-ico uv-yt" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY_v1InC1kI" target="_blank" rel="noopener">YouTube</a></li> <li>Show<a class="uv-ico uv-sp" href="https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Useful Podcast on Spotify</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/theusefulpod" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@theusefulpod on X</a></li> </ul> <a class="uv-btn" href="https://useful.ventures/podcast/kurt-ivey-signal/transcript">Read the full transcript</a> ## Key facts <ul class="uv-facts"> <li>EpisodeThe Useful Podcast, Season 1, Episode 15</li> <li>GuestKurt Ivey, crypto storyteller and founder of Signal</li> <li>HostGokul Bala, co-founder of Useful Ventures</li> <li>CompanySignal, a gamified automated trading platform for Solana tokens</li> <li>TopicsDecentralization and middlemen, gamified trading, what killed ACES, vibe coding a trading system, tokenizing businesses</li> <li>LengthAbout 52 minutes · Published August 2026</li> </ul> ## Guest <ul class="uv-linkrow"> <li>Host<a class="uv-ico uv-x" href="https://x.com/GokulsVision" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Gokul Bala on X (@GokulsVision)</a> · <a class="uv-ico uv-ig" href="https://www.instagram.com/gokuls.vision/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Instagram (@gokuls.vision)</a></li> </ul> ## Key insights **The thesis is middlemen, not blockchain.** Kurt's read on decentralization isn't ideological — it's an argument about where value pools. Insurance companies, credit card networks, Amazon, brokers: every one of them sits between two parties who actually want to transact, and the value coagulates in their pocket instead of flowing to either side. "We need to stop letting being a middleman be a job," he says. ShopX, his first crypto project, was an attempt at a decentralized marketplace built on exactly that idea. **A writer's ear for translation built his career.** Kurt wrote two and a half unpublished novels and built an iPhone runner game in Unreal Engine before he ever touched crypto. When he started working with Web3 founders — first on ShopX, later on Alter, ACES, and through his agency Crypto PR Labs — his edge wasn't technical depth, it was being able to take forty slides of jargon and hand a client back one or two sentences that actually landed. That translation skill, paired with genuinely understanding the tech, is what built his reputation in the space. **ACES didn't die from a bad idea — it died from a hack and a platform pivot.** ACES tokenized high-value collectibles — sneakers, watches, Pokémon cards — so token holders could earn a cut when the underlying item sold, turning evangelism into an incentive. It was gaining traction until it got hacked and, separately, Base (Coinbase's chain) abandoned the social features ACES was banking on in favor of straight tokenization. Kurt's broader verdict on crypto after years inside it: the ideas were almost never the problem. It was execution, and people not coming through on what they promised. **Signal turns the hardest part of trading into a game, and lets the crowd train the algorithm.** Kurt's token-detection system already solves entries — spotting a Solana token right before it moves. The unsolved problem was exits, so he handed that decision to players: an algorithm surfaces the trade, a thirty-minute session gives the player a chart and a sell button, and losing three times ends the session so people come back tomorrow with money left. A paper-trading mode lets people practice on live tokens for free — and every practice "sell" feeds into the machine-learning model's own confidence score, weighted by how good that player's track record is, so the crowd is quite literally training the automated trading system in real time. **He's explicit that Signal is trying to move people away from gambling, not toward it.** Session limits, capped trade sizes, and a "hearts" system that ends your run after three losses are all guardrails, not friction for its own sake. Optional items — shoes that let you add or remove more of a position, a jacket that lowers the confidence threshold needed to trade — give players who want more risk a way to opt into it, while the base game is tuned to give the average player the best odds it can. **His politics run through the product.** Kurt drove to Arizona and New Mexico to campaign for Bernie Sanders around 2012–2013, got disillusioned when systems didn't bend to persuasion, and concluded that change comes from building systems people plug into, not from changing minds one at a time — the same logic now driving his interest in tokenizing ordinary businesses the way Web3 projects already tokenize themselves through a coin. ## About Signal Signal is a gamified, automated trading platform for Solana tokens, built solo by Kurt Ivey. A machine-learning system continuously scans Pump.fun and Solana token activity to time entries — the hardest part of memecoin trading — and calls them out to a Telegram group, which Kurt says has held around a 40% hit rate (tokens doubling in price from the time of the call). Inside Signal's game layer, players get a thirty-minute session, a live chart, and a single decision: when to sell. Wins and losses are capped by session rules and a "hearts" system, and a paper-trading mode lets newer players practice on live tokens without risking money — while their sell decisions, weighted by their track record, feed back into and help train the underlying trading algorithm. Kurt built Signal himself starting in December, using AI coding tools throughout development. ## FAQ <div class="uv-faq"> ### Who is Kurt Ivey? Kurt Ivey is a crypto storyteller, marketer, and builder who has worked on ShopX, Alter, ACES, and Crypto PR Labs. He studied philosophy, was a competitive college wrestler, worked as a personal trainer, ran a coffee company, and built and shipped an iPhone game in Unreal Engine before getting into crypto in 2020. He is now the solo founder of Signal, a gamified automated trading platform for Solana tokens. ### What is Signal? Signal is a trading platform for Solana tokens that Kurt Ivey describes as sitting between an automated trading system and a game. An algorithm identifies token entries and surfaces them to players, who then decide when to sell within a thirty-minute session. A paper-trading mode lets users practice with no money at risk, and those practice trades — weighted by the trader's track record — help train the live automated trading algorithm's own sell decisions. ### How does Signal's algorithm work, and how do paper traders influence it? Signal's machine-learning system scans Solana token activity, including Pump.fun, to detect tokens before they move and calls them to a Telegram group. Inside the game, when enough paper traders press "sell" on a given token near the same moment, that collective signal increases the confidence weighting behind the automated trading algorithm's own decision to sell — so better-performing paper traders have more influence over the live system's behavior than newer ones. ### What happened to ACES, Kurt Ivey's collectibles marketplace? ACES tokenized high-value collectibles like sneakers, watches, and trading cards so token holders would earn a cut when the underlying item sold. It gained early traction but was hurt by two events: a hack, and Coinbase's Base network abandoning the social features ACES had been building around in favor of straight tokenization. Kurt says the project is now sunset. ### Why does Kurt Ivey think middlemen, not blockchains, are the real problem decentralization solves? Kurt argues that entities like insurance companies, credit card networks, Amazon, and brokers accumulate outsized value simply by sitting between two parties who want to transact, without adding proportional value themselves. His interest in decentralization — from ShopX's marketplace model to his stated plan to eventually tokenize regular businesses — is about routing that value back to the parties actually doing the transacting. ### What is The Useful Podcast? The Useful Podcast is a series of founder-to-founder conversations from Useful Ventures, hosted by Gokul Bala. Each episode digs past the highlight reel into the actual work of building a company. This is Season 1, Episode 15. </div> ## Related * [[podcast]] is the full Useful Podcast index. * [[manifesto]] is how we see the world and how we work. * [[notes]] is where we write about the world we see coming. * [The Useful Podcast on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/033DRed1adLXd1bg8honOl) · [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@TheUsefulPodcast) · [@theusefulpod on X](https://x.com/theusefulpod) Back to [[podcast]].