# Freedom Tech Friday #41 — Locked & Loaded with Fenix Ammunition

**Date:** 2026-05-24
**Podcast:** Ungovernable Misfits (Freedom Tech Friday)
**Episode:** FTF41
**Host:** Q (Foundation), Max (Ungovernable Empire), Seth (Cake Wallet)
**Guest:** Justin (Fenix Ammunition, founder)
**Topics:** #privacy-tech #bitcoin-freedom-tech #open-source #firearms

## Raw Notes

### Fenix Ammunition Company
- Michigan-based ammunition manufacturer, founded 2016
- Brothers: Justin (admin/marketing) + brother (production)
- US-only manufacturing, every component sourced in USA
- No overseas powder, no overseas primers
- 100% consumer market, ZERO government/police contracts
- Will sell to individual officers, not departments
- Possibly the only firearms company operating this way
- ITAR prevents foreign suppliers anyway
- Quality: foreign primers during COVID had 5% failure rate on 200K units
- Family-owned business

### Bitcoin Integration Journey
- **2018–2019:** Started with Shopify's built-in Coinbase Commerce integration
- Initial framing: "let's be the only gun company that accepts Bitcoin" (marketing)
- Initial volume: 1–2 BTC transactions per month
- **COVID moment:** BTC dropped, customers used it heavily, year-end holdings appreciated ~4x
- Justin realized BTC is a serious treasury asset, not just a curiosity
- **2022:** Attended Guns and Bitcoin conference, met Seth
- Pivoted to: own Bitcoin node + self-hosted BTCPay Server + away from KYC custodians
- Current: 4–5 BTC transactions per week, ~2–4% of all transactions
- Foundation's Zach Herbert is heavy user

### BTCPay + Shopify
- Self-hosted BTCPay on own hardware
- Setup wasn't hard (amateur engineer, technical family — father had VAX computer)
- Shopify integration is "janky" — checkout locked down, occasional QR code failures
- Manual invoice fallback works fine
- Seth + Zach working on new Shopify-BTCPay plugin
- Open source is harder for normies but better than 2022

### Financial Surveillance
- Credit card companies want item-level purchase data (marketing)
- Can be weaponized by government to restrict ammo purchases per month
- Biden-era pressure pushed networks toward tracking
- Networks publicly backed off after backlash, but Justin doesn't trust them
- Parallel to Bitcoin: don't KYC on exchanges, use Whirlpool, P2P
- "Lost my guns in a boating accident" is boomer cringe

### "List-Maxing" Strategy
- Openly defiant stance: "Fuck yeah I got guns, what are you going to do about it?"
- Long-term: hiding is not a strategy
- Better to openly say "we have a money system you can't fuck with"
- Normalize open resistance

### Gun-Show Bitcoin Reception
- Generational: gun-show crowd is boomer, gold-and-cash mindset
- Common objection: "What if electricity goes out?"
- Counter: gold is equally useless in SHTF
- Technically competent people entering via 3D printing + CAD = Bitcoin osmosis

### Freedom Tech Stack
- Bitcoiners forget physical realm (how defend your Bitcoin?)
- Gun owners forget financial realm
- Need: guns + Bitcoin + 3D printing + privacy tools together
- Pareto 80/20: cross-pollinate with other restricted industries (OnlyFans, marijuana)

### Q&A
- **Why US-only manufacturing?** Ethical (anti-offshoring) + quality control + ITAR
- **Monero?** Likely future addition via BTCPay, but Ethereum taught him to wait and see

### Boost
- "Late stage Huddl" — 6,006 sats, comment: "AI breakdown of all products suggested"

## References
- Fenix Ammunition: phoenixammo.com / phoenixammunition.com
- Twitter: @PhoenixAmmo (only social media)
- Q = Foundation, customer experience lead
- Seth = Cake Wallet COO
- Max = Ungovernable Empire
- Conf: Guns and Bitcoin 2022