It was spaghetti night at Cook's Corner, a historic biker bar in Trabuco Canyon, California. A band was playing.
The date was August 23, 2023, and the shooting started around 7 p.m. Deputies later estimated that 30 to 40 people were inside.
A 59-year-old man walked in armed with two handguns. He shot and wounded his estranged wife, then began shooting other patrons.
He kept firing as he moved outside. Then he went to his truck in the parking lot and came back with a shotgun.
People were fleeing and calling 911. One patron shut himself in the kitchen with a cook who had been shot in the arm.
Deputies were driving up the canyon roads toward the bar.
$8B is moving in... are you?
So here's a number that got my attention.
Venture capital investment in U.S. crypto companies hit $7.9 billion last year.
Up 44% from the year before.
These are the smartest, most ruthless investors on earth.
And they're betting nearly $8 billion on blockchain.
This isn't some meme coin or flash in the pan crypto trend.
This is infrastructure.
Payment rails, settlement systems.
The digital plumbing that moves our money faster, cheaper, and safer.
The exact same thing that President Trump plans to force $382 trillion worth of financial assets onto by April of 2027.
And there's a single digital asset sitting at the center of everyone of these transactions.
It's the one token that every institution must hold to operate on this new system
That's why BlackRock, JPMorgan, Fidelity are already accumulating this fuel now (while it's on sale).
But I don't suggest waiting until the rest of Wallstreet catches on.
By then the big gains are out the window and you could be left fighting for scraps with everyone else.
Glen Sprowl Jr. had been sitting outside, at the front of the bar. He was 53, a shop manager from Stanton.
Surveillance video shows him going into the bar just after the gunman came out. Then he came back outside.
He moved around the side of the building, toward the parking lot. That was where the gunman had gone.
He passed other people on the way. Witnesses said he tried to rally them to go after the shooter.
He was carrying a pocketknife. The man in the parking lot had a shotgun.
Sprowl kept going. He reached the bottom of a ramp that led up to the lot.
The gunman fired the shotgun at him. Sprowl was hit four times in the upper body and fell.
The gunman shot two more people. Then deputies arrived, and in the exchange of gunfire that followed, they killed him.
Nine people had been shot, and three of them died. Glen Sprowl Jr. died at the scene.
The gunman's estranged wife was wounded but survived.
The record does not show that Sprowl's walk toward the lot stopped anything. It shows that a man with a pocketknife went toward a shotgun while others were looking for cover.
In 2026, Sprowl was awarded the Carnegie Medal after his death. It is given to civilians in the United States and Canada who enter extreme danger to save or try to save the lives of others.
The commission that awards it described his act as an attempt to stop an armed man and save the patrons of a crowded bar. He was one of five people honored posthumously in that announcement.
Dozens of people were at Cook's Corner that night. One of them went around the side of the building.
If the shooting had already passed you and was still going on in the parking lot, would you have walked toward it with what you had in your pocket?