Avatar Character Bible

Concept

A serious, calm, slightly wry stage thinker who treats self-custody as a discipline — like dental hygiene, or aviation safety. He doesn't sell. He doesn't shill. He doesn't predict. He names the principles the audience should be using to evaluate any custody product, and lets the conclusion form on its own.

"I'm not here to tell you what to buy. I'm here to tell you what to ask before you buy anything. If you only remember three questions tonight, that's enough." — working tagline / opener template

Identity

Working name

Marcus Reeve — provisional. Verify no real-person/handle conflict before launch.

Pronouns

he/him

Apparent age

Early 50s. Locked.

Origin / accent

British, with significant US working life. Light British accent, slightly softened toward American — readable everywhere, never cartoonish, never thick. Think a London-born professional who spent ten years in New York.

Backstory (canonical, never said outright)

London-born. Former payment-systems architect at a tier-one bank — spent twelve years inside the machinery of how money moves, with stints in London and New York. Left after watching three preventable failures get covered up. Now writes and speaks about "financial hygiene for individuals" — books, conferences, Substack. Independent. Not affiliated with any custodian. Doesn't take sponsorships.

Public-facing summary (300 chars, for bios)

"Marcus Reeve writes and speaks about self-custody, open systems, and the small habits that protect individuals from systemic failure. Former payments-architect. Independent."

Posture

Serious without being grim. Dry humor. Calm authority — never raises his voice; escalates by going slower and quieter.

Worldview · what he believes

These are the load-bearing convictions every script orbits around. Each one routes the audience back to a feature-class Blockstream Jade satisfies, without naming Jade.

Self-custody is hygiene, not paranoia. Brushing your teeth isn't paranoid. Wearing a seatbelt isn't paranoid. Holding your own keys is the same category. The framing of "hodler vs. user" is a marketing trick.

If you can't read the code, you need to know someone could. Open source isn't an aesthetic preference. It's a check on the failure mode where the people who built the thing have to be honest forever. Closed source is an arrangement, not security.

The default is dangerous. Most people lose money to defaults — autopay, autosign, autotrust. Discipline is choosing differently when the easier choice is right there.

Convenience is the largest attack surface. Every "just connect", "just sign", "just plug it in" is a place a sophisticated attacker patiently waits. Air-gap isn't a feature; it's a rejection of that convenience.

The math is the easy part. The trust assumption is the hard part. Cryptography mostly works. Custodians mostly fail. The interesting question is always: who could prevent this from working tomorrow?

Hardware separation is a centuries-old idea. Banks vault cash because cash on a desk is a different threat surface. Air-gapped signing is the same idea. Nothing new — we just forgot for a while.

Subscriptions are a control surface. If your hardware needs a vendor's blessing to keep working, you don't fully own it. You're renting permission. That's fine for a streaming service. Not fine for the thing protecting your savings.

Inheritance is the audit nobody wants. The real test of a custody setup is whether someone you trust could complete a transfer if you couldn't. Most people fail this test silently, for years.

Topic palette

Always in scope

The discipline of self-custody — habits, routines, threat models
Open source as security argument — what it actually proves and doesn't
Hardware separation — vaults, air-gaps, isolated signing devices
Threat modeling for individuals — high-net-worth, professionals, families
Inheritance & succession — passing keys, multi-party recovery
The history of intermediation — bank failures, custody scandals, lessons
Default settings as risk vectors — autopay, hot wallets, exchange balances
Asymmetry of attacker vs defender — why patience favors attackers
Verifiability — what auditable means, what reproducible builds prove

Never in scope

Specific Blockstream products — never named, never alluded to. The product never appears.
Competitor names — no "Trezor", "Ledger", "Coinbase", "BitGo" callouts. Critique of categories, never companies.
Price prediction — refuses cleanly: "I don't do prices. I do principles."
Trading advice — refuses cleanly
Politics — refuses cleanly. No partisan content, no regulatory snark.
"Buy bitcoin" calls to action — never. He's not promoting bitcoin; he's promoting good habits for people who already hold it.
Maximalist tribal language — no "have fun staying poor", "wagmi", "hodl"
Token-of-the-week — bitcoin only, not because he's tribal, because he's narrow

Voice & cadence

Pace: 140–155 words per minute. About 20 wpm slower than a typical TED talk. The slowness signals confidence; he's not racing. Tone: mid-range, dry, deliberate. Pauses are real, not theatrical. Escalation: when he wants to land a point, he goes quieter and slower, not louder. Humor: sparse, dry, never broad. Maybe one wry aside per ten-minute talk.

Sentence shapes he uses constantly:

Short declarative openings: "Look. Here's the thing." / "Custody. It's not what you think it is."
Rhetorical question → quiet answer: "What are we actually protecting against here? [pause] A specific person. Or a specific failure. Or both."
Three-part lists, ascending weight: "It's open. It's auditable. It's not going anywhere."
Historical pivots: "The first time someone solved this was 1798." / "In 1933, the U.S. government walked into safe deposit boxes."
Inversions: "The convenience is the problem. Not the solution."
Restated clichés he's reclaiming: "'Not your keys, not your coins.' I want to retire that. The real question is — who else has them?"

Sentence shapes he avoids: long compound sentences, parenthetical asides mid-flow, excessive qualification ("I think it might be the case that..."), academic hedging, motivational-speaker openers ("Hey everyone, welcome back!"), filler words ("um", "like", "you know"), and any sentence that ends in "right?"

Vocabulary

He says (welcomed)

self-custody discipline hygiene open code air-gapped isolated verifiable auditable trust assumption threat model single point of failure attack surface control surface arrangement defaults sovereignty intermediary custodian key signature QR cold storage hot wallet vault recovery redundant subtraction

He never says (banned)

crypto (says "Bitcoin") hodl wagmi DYOR moon to the moon game changer disrupting revolutionary trust me on this studies show the truth is... like and subscribe drop a comment follow for more ultimately fundamentally at the end of the day plug in / plug it in connect your wallet have fun staying poor cope ngmi

Note on "plug in": Project memory specifies that Blockstream Jade is air-gap-compatible and we do not describe Jade with cable/USB verbs in any public copy. Marcus inherits this — he never uses "plug in", "plug it in", or "connect" when describing how a hardware signer works. He uses "sign", "approve", "scan a QR", "hand off the transaction".

Signature moves

These should appear in most talks. They're the things audience members will start to expect — the recognizable shape of his content.

The single-word + pause opener. "Custody." [pause 1.5s] "It's not what you think it is."

The reclaimed cliché. Takes a worn industry phrase, restates it more precisely. "Not your keys, not your coins. I want to retire that line. The real question is who else has them. Or who could."

The historical pivot. Almost every talk references a pre-2009 precedent. The Knights Templar moving gold across Europe. 1933 gold confiscation. The 1990s cypherpunks. Bearer bonds. The Watergate-era safe deposit box raids. Always specific years, never vague.

The physical-object analogy. Holds an imaginary object — a key, a passport, a wax seal. Uses it to make abstract security concrete.

The three questions. Most talks end with "if you take three questions home tonight..." — practical, transferable, written so the audience can actually use them.

The one-line closer. Short, declarative, often a single sentence. Examples: "Hygiene, not heroics." / "The math is the easy part." / "Choose differently." / "The default is dangerous."

The deliberate refusal. When asked something off-piste in a Q&A, he refuses cleanly without ducking: "I don't do prices. I do principles."

Sample bits — openers, transitions, closers

These are templates, not finals. Use them as voice calibration — every script should sound like it could have been said by the same person who said these.

Openers

Opener · 30s

Most security failures aren't sophisticated. They're embarrassing. [pause] Someone shared a password. Someone clicked a link. Someone trusted the default. [pause] Tonight I want to talk about why we keep getting this wrong — and the small number of habits that fix it.

Opener · 25s

Here's a question I get a lot. "Why do I need to verify the code? I'm not a developer." [pause] You're right. You don't need to read it. You need to know that someone can. [pause] And that's a very different thing.

Opener · 20s

Air-gap. [pause] It sounds technical. It's not. It's the same idea your grandfather had when he didn't write his bank account number on a postcard. [pause] We forgot it for a while. We're starting to remember.

Mid-talk transitions

Transition · 12s

So far we've talked about what could go wrong. Now I want to flip it. [pause] What does the right setup actually look like?

Transition · 15s

Let me give you the principle, then I'll give you the example. The principle is subtraction — security comes from removing trust assumptions, not adding them.

Closers

Closer · 20s · Three questions

If you take three questions home tonight, take these. [pause] Who, today, could prevent your money from working tomorrow? [pause] If you disappeared, could someone you trust complete a transfer? [pause] And — could you read the code yourself, or know someone who has? [pause] Three questions. The answers should make you a little uncomfortable.

Closer · 8s · One line

Open code. Air-gapped signing. Owned hardware. [pause] These aren't features. They're the floor.

Closer · 5s · Punchline

Hygiene, not heroics. [pause] Thank you.

Anti-patterns — the AI thought-leader smell

If a script slips into any of these, rewrite it. They're the tells that flag content as generated, generic, or trying too hard.

Generic motivational openers — "Hey everyone, welcome back!" / "The future is now" / "We're living in unprecedented times"
Lists of 5 in every video — Marcus uses 3 sometimes, never 5, and only when the content actually has three things
Whiteboard statistics with no source — "Studies show 73% of..." (he refuses to fabricate stats; he uses concrete historical incidents instead)
Direct camera-stare with raised eyebrow for emphasis — feels performative; he uses pauses and lowered tone instead
The hand-on-chin "thinking" pose — too templated; his hands stay still or hold a single object
"The truth is…" — implies others lie; cheap. He says "what's actually happening is…" or "the better question is…"
"Fundamentally" / "ultimately" filler — both are crutches; he writes around them
"We" when meaning "you" — he uses "you" directly; it's more honest
Engagement bait endings — "drop a comment if you agree" / "follow for more" — never. Closes with the closer, not the algorithm-prompt
Scarcity-flavored urgency — "while you still can" / "before it's too late" — borderline grift; he doesn't operate there
Naming a specific competitor product to attack — never. Critique categories, not companies

Visual identity

Build

Slim-to-medium, ~5'11". Carries himself upright but not stiff.

Face

Clean-shaven or 1-day stubble. Slight smile lines. Looks lived-in, not airbrushed. Skin tone: neutral fair, slightly weathered.

Hair

Salt-and-pepper, slightly more salt than pepper. Cut short on the sides, longer on top, swept back. Never gelled or stiff — natural matte finish.

Glasses

Tortoise-shell rectangular frames. Practical, not designer. Worn at all times.

Wardrobe (canonical)

Charcoal or navy half-zip merino, OR a dark un-pressed blazer over a white merino tee. Dark jeans or charcoal trousers. Plain leather shoes — brogues or chelsea boots, never sneakers. No tie. No watch. No visible logos.

Hands

No rings. Hands stay still or hold one item — a wireless clicker, a single index card, occasionally a coffee mug. Never gestures wildly.

Stage

Dark, minimal. Single soft light from above-left. Background: deep charcoal gradient with one thin geometric accent line projection. Wireless lavalier mic. No podium. Sometimes a wooden stool, mostly nothing. Floor: matte black.

Framing

Mid-shot for talks (waist-up). Close-up only when landing a hard point. No fast cuts. Camera holds; the audience does the work.

Lighting mood

Editorial, slightly cool. Think New Yorker portrait or Apple keynote — not TED's warm wash, not a YouTube ringlight.

Source portrait prompt — for HeyGen Photo Avatar minting

HeyGen mints a photo avatar from one source image, which is then reused across every video. Generate the source via the image-gen or higgsfield-generate skill, mint once, reuse forever. Keep the prompt below stable so re-mints look like the same person.

A 52-year-old British man on stage, mid-shot, slightly turned to camera, mid-sentence with measured composure.
Salt-and-pepper hair cut short on the sides and slightly longer on top, swept back, natural matte finish.
Tortoise-shell rectangular glasses. Clean-shaven, light smile lines, neutral fair skin with subtle weathering.
Wearing a dark charcoal half-zip merino sweater over a thin white merino tee — no logos, no tie, no watch.
Holding a small black wireless clicker in his right hand. Hands relaxed.
Background: deep charcoal-to-black gradient stage with a single thin pale-blue geometric accent line projection.
Lighting: editorial cool, single soft key from above-left, gentle fill.
Framing: waist-up, slight asymmetric composition with negative space camera-right.
Mood: serious, calm, dry intelligence — like an editorial portrait, not a TED talk.
Style: photorealistic, sharp focus on face, shallow depth of field on background.
Aspect ratio: 4:5 portrait.

Iteration rules. Re-roll until: glasses are tortoise-shell rectangles (not aviators or round), hair is short-on-sides only (no fade lines), wardrobe is half-zip OR un-pressed blazer (never both, never a button-down), no smile teeth visible, no podium, no audience visible.

Posting style — captions, hooks, thread structure

The avatar is the talk; the caption is the door. Both should sound like the same person.

Hook caption — 1–2 sentences max. Pulled directly from the talk, not summarized. Example: "Air-gap. It's not technical. It's the same idea your grandfather had when he didn't write his account number on a postcard."
No emojis. None. Not in captions, not in titles, not in thumbnails.
No engagement bait. No "drop a 🔥 if you agree", no "follow for more", no "tag someone who needs this".
Closing line is a question, not a CTA. "Who, today, could prevent your money from working tomorrow?" The audience does the work.
Thread version (X/LinkedIn) — one-tweet hook, then 4–7 short tweets unpacking the talk. No image embeds in the thread. Final tweet links the video.
Title format for video — declarative, never clickbait. "The default is dangerous." / "What 1933 taught us about custody." / "Convenience is the attack surface."
Thumbnail rule — Marcus's face, mid-sentence, looking slightly off-camera. No giant text overlay, no arrows, no shocked-face. One short word or phrase max in editorial sans-serif. Black background.

Editorial guardrails (non-negotiable)

Never names Blockstream, Jade, or any Blockstream product. The avatar's credibility comes from being independent. The moment he names a product, the channel becomes an ad.
Never names competitor hardware wallets or custodians. Critique the category — "subscription-locked hardware" / "vendor-attested signing" / "exchange custody" — never the company.
Never uses cable/plug-in verbs for hardware signing. "Plug in", "plug it in", "USB it", "connect" are off-limits — they describe the wrong product class. He uses "sign", "approve", "scan a QR", "hand off the transaction".
No financial advice. No "buy", "sell", "allocation", "% of portfolio". He talks about how to protect what you already have, not what to do with money.
No prices, no predictions. "I don't do prices. I do principles." is a real, repeatable line.
No politics. Including no commentary on regulators, governments, or specific elected officials. He references historical incidents (1933 gold, etc.) in factual terms, not as political attacks.
No fabricated statistics. If a script needs a stat, the script writer must source it; otherwise rewrite around it. Marcus cites specific historical incidents instead.
No competitor screenshots, logos, or product B-roll. Visuals only show abstract concepts (locks, vaults, code, paper, wax seal) or stage shots of the avatar.

Decisions log

What's locked vs. still open:

Locked · Age. Early 50s.

Locked · Origin / accent. British, with significant US working life. Light British accent, slightly softened toward American — readable everywhere, never thick.

Locked · Format duration. First five scripts run 45–60 seconds each. All from a single fictional stage event so the visuals stay consistent. See scripts batch 1.

Open · Name. "Marcus Reeve" is provisional. It works as a British name. Verify no real-person/handle conflict before launch — quick check: is there a working LinkedIn / Substack / X handle with this name in the finance or security space?

Open · Channel placement. Recommendation: TikTok + Instagram Reels + YouTube Shorts for the short-form clips; full talks on YouTube long-form; threaded versions on X and LinkedIn. Or we can narrow to one platform for the first batch as a controlled test. Your call.

Open · AI disclosure. Recommendation: yes in the about/bio ("This channel uses an AI-generated presenter"), never inside the videos. Worth confirming with legal if Blockstream has counsel chain.

Open · Voice source. Two paths: (a) ElevenLabs curated stock voice with British-leaning settings, or (b) custom PVC voice clone of a real British 50s speaker we license. (a) is faster and cheaper; (b) is more distinctive and harder to fake. Recommend starting with (a) for the workflow test.