TruthRaider - Bitcoin as Institutional Asset

JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I’m your host JohnPaul and this is Digital Gold. Known to many as the Bitcoin Kid, I started my own cryptocurrency out of my parents’ basement back in 2013. The goal of this show is to simplify the crypto world and explore how it changes the way the world thinks about money through conversations with thought leaders [00:00:16] in this space.

[00:00:17] JohnPaul is the founder and CEO of Orm Capital Ventures. All opinions expressed by JP and podcast guests are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Orm Capital Ventures. This podcast is intended for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon foreign investment decisions. [00:00:31] Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial

JohnPaul: [00:00:35] institutions and energy companies. By combining over seven years of mining experience, 24-7 management and directly aligned incentives, Orm’s managed mining program is the simplest way to enter the digital currency mining market. To learn more, please visit ormcapitalventures.com. Today I’m joined by TruthWater who is in charge of Bitcoin social marketing and growth management [00:00:57] from mousebelt.com. He is also the founder of the TruthWater brand. He is a former war veteran and avid member of the cryptocurrency community. TruthWater has been a speaker at numerous Bitcoin conferences, hosted on podcast and has over 80,000 followers on Twitter. Welcome TruthWater to the podcast. How are you doing today?

TruthRaider: [00:01:11] Doing good. I appreciate it, Jay.

JohnPaul: [00:01:13] Yeah, glad to have you on. It’s been a while. We’ve been talking on and off and working

TruthRaider: [00:01:16] on Bitcoin mining stuff, but now to actually have you on a medium like this to discuss the future of Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, it gets me excited. So I’m ready to jump into it. And the first question I have for you, Dave or TruthWater, is how do you spend most of your time and what do you do? [00:01:32] So essentially what I’ve been doing as I live in Istanbul, I’ve seen Zach that works with you guys a few times in Malta, Istanbul. Pre-COVID, I would go to conferences and work with different companies that would be presenting at the live conferences. And that’s obviously taken aback burner because of the whole corona thing. So now I’m working full time for a company

TruthRaider: [00:01:58] called Mousebelt, who puts on a monthly virtual conferences. So spend the majority of my time working with some of the top companies in crypto as far as helping them get exposure online. Basically every crypto company is facing the same problem. They can’t keynote around the world like they used to. So we’ve transitioned to a virtual medium and Mousebelt, that’s kind [00:02:20] of one of the things that we work on is we help people get a presence on the internet essentially. And when you’re working on, as you mentioned with COVID, everyone in the blockchain space, since there is no barriers to entry, there’s no, you have to be in one specific area to invest in a project. How are these companies adapting to their marketing strategies with the lack of

TruthRaider: [00:02:40] conferences in the space which have been so instrumental in the past? So what’s kind of cool about our company, Mousebelt, is everybody that works for us is remote. So we’re spread out all over the world, four corners of the world, and everybody puts their input in. And we’re finding it’s actually kind of a trend. I saw we had Mark Yusko on our last [00:03:02] convention, and he was talking about digital trends and talking about digital millimads and the fact that companies are now starting to leave commercial spaces and are expanding past it and just essentially looking for talent online and not worrying so much about the physical location. So crypto companies are basically poised to do that anyway. It’s kind of embedded in our DNA. It’s a blessing and a

TruthRaider: [00:03:23] curse. And that’s kind of what Mark Yusko is talking about is COVID kind of gave people a reality check that you can find talent anywhere. And with that, you know, with that being able to find talent anywhere, do you, are you seeing any other trends in the crypto space accelerating because of COVID maybe in particular in the social media marketing space? Yeah, I think the biggest part is they’re [00:03:43] trying to use machine learning artificial intelligence. You’re seeing a lot of companies transforming the way that they do marketing. For example, it’s kind of silly, but you know, the ocean spray commercial, right, where the guys like on a skateboard or whatever, he’s drinking these drinking ocean spray, right? It was a TikTok video. And five years ago, you know, you or I

TruthRaider: [00:04:04] would laugh at that and say this is stupid, right? But the guys getting like tens of millions of views for ocean spray juice. So the concept’s kind of the same for crypto. A lot of the stuff that’s that goes viral and that gets put out on social media and the news is getting sent out through social media and not not your average advertising mediums. So I think crypto is kind of crippling [00:04:28] the old school mentality of marketing and advertising because the millennials adopt the information they soak up information different than the last generation. So I think you’re seeing social media as a medium kind of transforming the crypto industry, even without COVID. I think it’s just a cultural thing, you know, in our space. No, I definitely agree with you there. Seeing, you know,

TruthRaider: [00:04:49] being a morning myself, I do see a lot of those Coinbase advertisements, you know, on, you know, on get on Snapchat, you’re there, you get cash app apps on advertisements on Snapchat, you know, you’re seeing, as you mentioned, the ocean spray TikTok trend, how quickly things can go viral, how quickly brands can can jump on and, you know, generate real traction. I think that’s one of [00:05:06] the biggest things that I’ve been able to see and putting time into the TikTok brand over the past the past really month is just the fact that if you can make a video consistently, you’re able to show people things that they don’t have or really it comes down like the five deadly sins in my opinion, where it’s like, if you can show them, you can play off of one of these, you know, deadly

TruthRaider: [00:05:24] sins, the content will go viral, just the nature of the TikTok algorithm being so much better than most of the other social media platforms out there. But we’re seeing that that reach potential is huge, because it’s not only affecting, you know, the TikTok platform itself, but it’s actually taking actions and letting people take actions outside the platform and they’re making real, real decisions, [00:05:42] real purchasing decisions as we saw with ocean spray and, you know, that song going to the top 40 and really doing the best it’s ever done based off of a TikTok 40, 50 years after the music that was in the TikTok came out. And if you think about it too, like for the college age guys, right, there’s nobody in university really right now. So a lot of these people are at home in front of their laptop,

TruthRaider: [00:06:04] they’re on their smartphone, they’re seeing things in real time, whereas back in the day in college, you would see something on a television ad between a football game, you know what I’m saying? So social media puts advertising and marketing faster into people’s eyes. And so you kind of have to keep up. So like with your guys TikTok, you know, with doing the mining piece, it’s something that [00:06:23] nobody’s ever seen before. You know, 99% of people don’t know what Bitcoin is. And then of that, do any of them even know how to do it, you know, how to create a Bitcoin. So I think that’s kind of what crypto is starting to learn is nobody really knows what we are yet as an industry. And so it’s ripe for adoption, you know, because people want to see it, you know, visually see it.

TruthRaider: [00:06:44] You’re exactly right. And I think that that short medium is great for people to just be able to dive in. And if you say, when it just pops up on your feet and how many hours we’re spending due to the work from home and being on everyone’s on their phone on social media, it’s definitely accelerating that trend. And we’re seeing that that’s picking up dramatically over [00:07:01] the space for us, especially in these mediums, you know, like TikTok, as you mentioned. But regarding, you know, the right now the price of Bitcoin’s at $17,800. And when we were peaking back in 2017 and the price point, you know, everyone in the US and the world was talking about this. Today, you know, those conversations aren’t happening in the same type of intensity or,

JohnPaul: [00:07:20] you know, media coverage that was happening back then. What are your thoughts on that? And why do

TruthRaider: [00:07:24] you think it’s, you know, we’re hitting the same type of price point, new almost all-time high for Bitcoin relative to, you know, market cap all-time high? And why is that the case, Dave, in your opinion? So yeah, so like when you look at Google Trends for 2017, when it peaked out and then you look at now, Google Trends isn’t even a blimp for Bitcoin right now. It doesn’t even spike [00:07:43] really. I mean, it’s negligible the amount of search traffic that’s going for Bitcoin. And I think it’s easily explained. I mean, you’re a Bitcoin producer, essentially, you know, that’s kind of what you guys do, right? So you got companies out there that just one grayscale is gobbling up the amount of Bitcoin that’s being mined on any given day. So that’s one company. So I think

TruthRaider: [00:08:04] what you’re seeing is, you know, people like me who I’m just a retail buyer, you know, I just buy it for myself and whatnot. So we’re still doing what we were doing in 2017. But you got institutions coming in like microstrategy or grayscale or square and all these guys, they’re buying larger buy orders than everybody else we used to. So the price is spiking, but you’re not seeing the buzz [00:08:28] from 2017. And for me, I think it’s, I think corporations, governments, emerging markets, there’s a lot of different people that are making plays right now, but they don’t really need to talk about it because they just know that’s what I think. I agree with you. I mean, I think you’re like, you said the amount of people buying this crypto

TruthRaider: [00:08:45] is coming to very few buyers, but they’re buying large amounts of it. You know, with grayscale hitting 2.6% of all the bitcoins owned now in that trust at 500,000 coins, that’s, you know, that’s a huge step in the direction of institutional adoption in my eyes. And you got to look too, like the other thing in 2017, right? In 2017, it was a get rich game, [00:09:05] everybody, everybody wanted to buy Bitcoin because they thought it was going to go from like $2,000 to $200,000, $300,000, right? So you had all these people coming in wanting to flip it. You know, companies like grayscale and micro strategy and square and all these guys, they’re buying Bitcoin to sit on. So the intent behind the Bitcoin that’s being purchased,

TruthRaider: [00:09:28] I think is a lot different as well than the Bitcoin that was being purchased in 2017. So I think that’s like another key distinction in the type of buying that’s happening. And so I would agree with you on that completely. So that’s buying behavior is changing dramatically from a retail push, you know, it was hype and people were trying [00:09:44] to make money and, you know, it was almost like a casino to where we are now today, where it’s really a hedge against inflation long term buying by massive institutions that have large portfolios and are beginning to, you know, put pick ones on the balance sheet to capture that, you know, the asymmetric upside that we, you know, we talk about so often the community,

JohnPaul: [00:10:02] how do you see this playing out over the next five or 10 years as, you know, we go through

TruthRaider: [00:10:06] continuing having cycles as Bitcoin becomes more accessible and as more vehicles are developed for institutions to capture upside in particularly the Bitcoin space or even the mining space. Yeah. So like when I was talking two years ago, I was pushing pretty heavily on stable coins as being like this big trend. And I was kind of wrong, I think. So I was right, but I was wrong. [00:10:29] I think it’s not stable coins. It’s a different name. It’s called CBDCs central bank digital currencies. That’s like what I was saying two years ago, which was stable coins, right? Two years ago, I was saying that every nation, most corporations, you know, fortune 500 companies, S&P 500, NASDAQ, they’re all going to tokenize. And there’s all of these stable coins that are going to pop up,

TruthRaider: [00:10:51] right? So I think I was a little bit wrong. And now I think the trend is you’re going to have central bank digital currencies and you’re going to have national currencies that are going to pop up around the world. And not only are they going to have these type of currencies, but they’re also going to hedge inflation. And there’s only a couple options you have to hedge inflation. So [00:11:12] they need to fix their fiat currency, which is going to be with CBDCs. And then they’re going to use Bitcoin as well, kind of like a store of value just by watching other companies. So I was kind of right, but it’s being renamed, reflagged. And I could be wrong too. It could be all free. It could be stable coins, CBDCs, and a Bitcoin edge. But I think that’s kind of the trend line that we’re

TruthRaider: [00:11:36] pushing into based on what I’m saying. And I would agree with you on that, you know, as we see central bank digital currencies come into this space. It makes sense that the federal reserves of, you know, the United States and of the central banks of the world are going to want to provide stimulus at a individual level without having to go through a bank or an institution. So I see that [00:11:58] definitely accelerating and being a trend in this space. Do you see anything on the institution sides when it comes to vehicles, on how maybe their vehicles will pop up or different types of vehicles to get the traditional institutional investor into this space or, you know, your asset managers, your hedge funds, because right now most of those companies we talk to. And I just,

TruthRaider: [00:12:18] you know, when you’re talking about a Bitcoin mining investment, it’s not in their random to invest now. They can’t they can’t invest. It doesn’t fit their prospectus. And they don’t have the ability to invest in crypto or take crypto exposure. Now that is changing very quickly. But that’s what we’ve seen in the past has been an issue. So kind of just recapping Dave, [00:12:35] what are you what are you seeing on the forefront of these potential vehicles to similar to great skills, trust on letting institutional buyers come into the space? I think they’re the mentality is not there yet. Like, so Ray Dalio, you know, one of the top investors of all time, he came out today and he was kind of like, it was basically saying, I mean, I completely

TruthRaider: [00:12:55] understand this Bitcoin thing. I’m paraphrasing, but he basically came out and said something like that today. Everybody that’s got money wants a Bitcoin exposure. And I think the problem is, right now, anybody that knows anything about Bitcoin at the upper levels is just saying, you know, put 3% or 2 to 3% of your portfolio or whatever into it and just hold that, you know, [00:13:17] it’s all a play for just hedging their overall portfolio. So as far as financial instruments, that’s kind of you to bring up a good point. You have grayscale, but aside from grayscale at the moment, Switzerland is working on some stuff. They’re trying to do what you’re talking about, but it’s not it’s very small. Like right now, unless you’re seeing it, I haven’t seen a lot

TruthRaider: [00:13:39] outside of just the strategic reserves that sailor always talks about. I think that’s the current trend. Financial instruments, I don’t know if we’re there yet. And I would say I don’t think we are there yet. I think you’re hitting around the head in the next four years, we’ll see more strategic reserves be allocated to Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, but [00:13:56] we don’t see the yield, I guess the yield generation that Bitcoin mining and other type of DeFi or different types of currencies can provide, you know, on these on top of these assets, like Bitcoin for using them as collateral. And in my eyes, I think over the next four to five years, you’ll be able to lock up your Bitcoin in almost like a CD type of format where for the next two or

TruthRaider: [00:14:16] three years, you’re going to start earning interest on that through through mining and you’re not going to leverage 100% of your Bitcoin, but you might leverage, you know, 20% of those Bitcoin or 30% of those Bitcoins to actually purchase some mining equipment and to have those miners generate interest for you on a day to day basis. So I see vehicles like that that can actually [00:14:34] enhance the alpha generate on the Bitcoins or enhance the yield generated on the Bitcoins in custody for these companies that begin to build up this massive portfolio or massive hedge, you know, financial hedge to protect themselves, as you mentioned, but protect really their assets overall. Now, I’m more bullish on so financial estimates, not so much strategic reserves,

TruthRaider: [00:14:54] I think short term it’s going to be it’s going to explode over the next couple of years. Now, what I am bullish on potentially happening in the next two to three years is once all of these big energy companies realize how much money they’re losing, I think they’re just going to throw equipment and time and energy at mining Bitcoin because they just have so much infrastructure that [00:15:13] it will make sense. But I think for them to do that, the Bitcoin’s price is going to have to be just moving so fast that they feel like they’re missing out. And I don’t think they’re there yet, you know, but I see in the next two to three years, a couple of major energy companies, and it may not be US, it could be an international energy company that just says we’re missing the

TruthRaider: [00:15:33] Russia’s probably the first one to do it. No, we are, I mean, we are seeing that kind of a conversation start, but you’re right, most of these, it comes back to the fundraising of these energy companies or the ability to buy the miners. And so most of these companies can’t deploy capital into the actual mining equipment because they, you know, they prospect us as in say they can or [00:15:49] because the board won’t let them, you know, and that’s kind of where you get that Bitcoin exposure. I think in the meantime, between now and then we’ll see, we already are seeing energy companies looking to offsell loads of power, you know, hundreds and megawatts of power to Bitcoin miners. To be able to buy extremely low prices, but they don’t necessarily understand how hard it is to

TruthRaider: [00:16:07] deploy 200 megawatts of infrastructure. And the fact that this space is, you know, just getting financing today. So kind of on that note, is mining sustainable for the long term Bitcoin mining and, you know, what hiccups or what new players do you see coming into this space on the same, you know, five to seven year timeline? My personal opinion is I think that Bitcoin mining and energy production [00:16:27] is going to be a city and a state play. So like, I think what you’re going to see, looking from our eyes, like, you know, I are both American, right? So we come from a somewhat stable place. But imagine you’re in a country that’s not stable, your fiat currency is not very stable. And you have on got billions of dollars worth of infrastructure, energy infrastructure that

TruthRaider: [00:16:47] you don’t know what to do with, you know, if I’m a country or a city or whatever, and I’m sitting on this problem, and I’m watching Bitcoin hit 20, 30, $40,000, and I understand the profit margins. It’s a different conversation, you know, like my currency is devaluing. I’m looking at any way I can to get out of that problem. So from a US perspective, it may be slow, but I honestly think [00:17:12] that we’ll see, like I said, places like for Russia, it makes sense. If you look at the world’s worst performing currencies, you know, the list of them and look at the amount of energy they’re able to produce. I think that the whole financial side of it starts to make more sense, long term. No, I agree with you on all those points, considering, you know, that’s what we’ve been trying to

TruthRaider: [00:17:31] crack for the past three years, and we continue to work on it, you know, every day is, is understanding that these companies have billions of dollars of infrastructure, and they’re able to sell their power, you know, consistently to not consistently go on and off to consumers and to the grid. But it doesn’t really make sense. One of the things you did hit on was the depreciation [00:17:49] of currencies. And I wanted to talk a little bit farther on your experience with COVID and I guess the its symbol, the currency that Turkey uses and how I’ve heard in the news, you know, that has dropped dramatically in value. Maybe how that’s affecting not necessarily your day to day life, but kind of the conversation around Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, and then, you know, what type of

TruthRaider: [00:18:10] problems you’re seeing in just because of, you know, the massive devaluation of a currency in today’s modern life. Yeah, so right now, not really seeing it much, the one positive aspect for and it’s not just here, it’s like all emerging markets, right? So as the US dollar, as the central banks and the Federal Reserve print money, what it does is it squeezes foreign countries, fiat [00:18:32] currencies, it’s essentially what it does. And they feel that a lot faster than the US fills it. So basically, what it does is it’s like a giant billboard across the world at all the emerging markets saying, hey, there’s alternatives out there. And so people are, they’re looking for sources of wealth preservation from real estate to gold to Bitcoin. And it’s accelerating the conversation.

TruthRaider: [00:18:55] And that’s kind of where I was talking about before. If you look around the world and you just did research on every country that’s looking at making a digital backed currency for their country, all of them are struggling with their fiat. And so they’re all looking for an escape route. So it’s just the same here as it is any other emerging market. And I think that trend is not going to [00:19:13] stop going in the direction it is. So it’s good for Bitcoin. And it’s good for the crypto industry as a whole, to be honest. And I agree with you on that. I think it’s for crypto, it does accelerate the conversation. It’s hard to see this happen across the world. But it’s just because, as you mentioned, it’s a big billboard and the US has the biggest billboard when we export most dollars

TruthRaider: [00:19:34] out to everywhere, which helps keep our currency strong. But we’ll squeeze these massive energy countries that are so much energy, they don’t know what to do with it. So it’s going to be exciting to see this worldwide trend to capture the spread on Bitcoin mining from these larger nation states and energy players. I’m super excited for that over the next couple of years. [00:19:57] One thing that I want to follow up on, Dave, and this is just a question that’s out there and doesn’t really have a right answer or wrong answer. But what does success look like for you for Bitcoin understanding that central bank digital currencies are also going to be playing a role in the future? For me, success is replacement. And I don’t think we’ll achieve it. I’m 50-50 on

TruthRaider: [00:20:15] if we’ll actually achieve what I personally want. My personal goal is decentralized finance, but not the version that’s being spilled out across the internet, mostly from the Ethereum community. The ability for an individual to manage their own bank, but in a safe way, like Bitcoin is very complicated, right? Like you actually have to have a baseline understanding [00:20:34] of how to secure your Bitcoin, keep it from being hacked, not losing your private keys, yada, yada, yada. My goal and my hope is that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, that everybody has access to their own finances without a bank being able to turn off their account, block a card, block to access the funds. You can’t transfer internationally. Like all of that basic decentralized

TruthRaider: [00:20:56] nature of Bitcoin, but on a global or at least the national scale in the States. And that’s why I say CBDCs are a competitor to that idea. People think in the Bitcoin community, think that CBDCs are a positive. They’re a positive for Bitcoin price, but they’re not a positive for Bitcoin philosophy. It completely goes against them, against it. That’s kind of how I see it. I feel [00:21:20] like we’re going in the right direction, but there’s a counterforce that wants to correct it. And they may win because they own the finances of the planet through central banking. You’re exactly right. And I think that you hit it around the head. Bitcoin is, you know, CBDCs are going to help bring exposure to the space. But I think they’re going to try to

TruthRaider: [00:21:38] push Bitcoin and be like, oh, no, you don’t want to learn about that. And it’s hopefully something that as the information circulates, people do understand the difference because it’s going to look, I think they’re going to try to make it look very similar. Yes, I agree. So I guess that goes to my one of my next question, which is, can fiat and Bitcoin coexist? Or is this all going [00:21:56] to change where now it’s just you have your digital CBDC, you have your Bitcoin, and you have your USDT and all these other digital assets, I guess, that represent different things. But do you think there is the ability to really coexist in the long run here? Do you think it’s going to go one way or the other? I guess when I’m thinking about that question, it’s like, of course, they’re going to

TruthRaider: [00:22:17] coexist because Bitcoin’s not going anywhere. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, that’s from a philosophical standpoint. Here’s the other thing, right, man, like the majority of people that are in Bitcoin today don’t give a shit about the philosophy behind Bitcoin. Like they literally just want to get rich off of it because somebody says the charts can, it’s going to go up. That’s the average [00:22:37] person that’s buying in 2020. You know, like even looking, you look at some of the guys that just bought, you know, bought half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin a few months ago. The whole purpose was because in reality, is because it’s a hedge against inflation. And you believe that the value will go up because there’s a limited supply and all that other stuff. So will most countries capitulate

TruthRaider: [00:22:57] to central banks? Yes. Most countries will capitulate when CBDCs are introduced and stablecoins, national stablecoins are introduced. Most countries will say, yes, sign me up because my fiat is worthless. And I want to have a chance of survival. That’s, that’s what’s going to happen. Now, the question is, is there going to be a place for people that still have a philosophical belief [00:23:23] that money should be decentralized and should be free and open to trade and transfer? Will that still be allowed? And, and I don’t know, let’s, I don’t know, that’s, that’s maybe, yeah, it’s hard to hear that if they take, they take away the idea, the concept, you know, with Bitcoin is based on, as you mentioned, you know, for most people, they’re just buying because of the price and the

TruthRaider: [00:23:42] ability to go up. And that’s almost like the Bitcoin Ponzi, where at the end of the day, it’s for people like me who truly believe that, you know, this currency has the ability to revolutionize how we transfer value across communities in your household here in, in the US, to communities across the world that you participated online. You know, I think that the blockchain technology in Bitcoin [00:24:00] has the opportunity to change that value, transfer, give value back to the individual or back to the consumer. But I think what you’re hitting on here is that CBDCs and all these other type of protocols or type of development that’s going to come into space are going to almost taint the picture of what it really means to be on a blockchain or what it really means to participate

TruthRaider: [00:24:18] in blockchain. So there might be a lot of people that think they’re actually using blockchain tech, maybe even using Bitcoin, but then we already have no exposure to that underlying asset. Yeah, exactly. And so a good example is this, right? Like, so you got into Bitcoin super early. I got in in 2017. And in 2017, it was very hard to buy Bitcoin because you either had to use Coinbase, [00:24:40] which is a terrible, if it’s not the best gateway, or you had to go find an ATM somewhere or use local Bitcoins, right? So local Bitcoins, for example, nobody, nobody knew how to use that except for people that have been using it. But Bitcoin ATM, most people never heard of it. So all you have is Coinbase. So what’s going to happen eventually is as all of the nations start tokenizing and,

TruthRaider: [00:25:03] you know, creating stable coins and as CBDCs come out, roll out, what’s going to happen is they’re going to control the ability for people to have a gateway to Bitcoin outside of the people like us who will always find a way to get Bitcoin, you know, like you’re a miner, you can always trade for Bitcoin. But the average person is going to have to do what they do in 2020, which is have a fiat [00:25:25] gateway. The only difference is 10 years from now, in my opinion, that fiat gateway for the average person is going to be something that is controlled, centralized, and is not what Bitcoin was intended to be. So I think the fringe will always be here, but the trend is going in a different direction, in my opinion. I mean, I would agree with you on that, that the trend will always be here. And I

TruthRaider: [00:25:47] hope the user experience gets better, but to the point where they’re not actually removing the access to Bitcoin. And like I mentioned, that they’ll be using this as a way of just more control of populations, you know, by these central banks and governments, because of the nature of blockchain and Bitcoin being nature of blockchain technology, more appropriately, [00:26:07] being able to monitor every transaction, being able to understand the web of those transactions, being able to understand who’s paying who, how often they get paid, where their money is coming in.

JohnPaul: [00:26:16] I mean, that’s a lot of power for essential bank digital currency. Can you talk a little bit more

TruthRaider: [00:26:21] on maybe power being abused by and how you maybe see CBDCs, if you want to bring people? I think it’s just the same as the Federal Reserve is now, you know, but what here’s, okay, so you asked me earlier, you said, what do I want to see in the future? You know, what, so okay, let me, here’s what I would like to see, like the utopian dream, right, is this, [00:26:40] in five years, anybody in the planet can use Bitcoin or Ethereum or some other crypto to be paid a salary. So whatever your job is, you can get paid in crypto for doing a service, for doing your job, you can go buy a car using crypto, you can buy a house, you can take out, you know, collateral for some, whatever. So to me, that’s the success that I think we kind of hoped would happen in five

TruthRaider: [00:27:05] or 10 years, is to be able to use crypto as an alternative to fiat without the interference of centralized services. You know, that was, that’s the dream of Bitcoin and crypto. Now, we want that to happen. We want to be able to go purchase a Starbucks coffee with some form of crypto. We don’t want to have a central bank or a national bank be able to control access to funds, [00:27:33] restrict your ability to purchase certain things because of things like social credits, because you’re not acting nice or something. So they restrict your account. So there’s a, I think that’s kind of the balance, you know, and people like you and I, we kind of want to just be able to use our crypto to live our life without interference. It’s just how do we get the other side to realize

TruthRaider: [00:27:52] that our side is a better alternative? You know, that’s how you do that. So because it’s all about control. No, I mean, it makes complete sense. And I think kind of on the our sides of better

JohnPaul: [00:28:02] alternative, you know, how do you see investors? We mentioned energy companies getting into Bitcoin

TruthRaider: [00:28:07] mining, but you know, the day to day investors do you still think there’s chance or products that will come out to serve that type of community of those individual, those individual Bitcoin miners or even smaller Bitcoin miners? Like, yeah, me and Zach talked about this a lot in detail and we’re just dealing with figuring out how to tokenize or not even just tokenize, but figure [00:28:28] out how to give value, create value for hashrate. Because if you look at, you know, you have different mediums of measurement for Bitcoin, you know, you’ve got the Satoshi, you know, which is the unit of measurement, you’ve got the hashrate, which is the generating power of the miners and the whole network and everything. How do you create a system within Bitcoin for a retail investor to

TruthRaider: [00:28:51] invest in hashrate production to where they can somehow receive a return on their investment, just like using a service like Celsius or crypto.com where, you know, where you’re investing in the infrastructure of the underlying company, but you don’t give a shit about the miner, you know, the mining system, the rig, like figuring out how to do that to where it makes sense to a retail [00:29:15] investor, where they feel like they’re participating in the Bitcoin experience. I think that’s the trick and that’s the code and whoever can crack that code will be very profitable at mining because all of that money they raise from retail investors will just help increase the infrastructure and the size and scale of the mining operation. And I have no clue how to do it, but to me that figuring

TruthRaider: [00:29:37] that out is probably the smartest way to stay profitable for a long time. Well, I agree with you completely. I think that’s something that, you know, we’re working on here. Mining stories is how do you ensure that’s a seamless experience, you know, through an app, through text messaging, through TikTok as a marketing channel, where how do we educate and provide a seamless experience [00:29:59] that allows consumers to get that mining machine, get that exposure, but actually, you know, own the physical asset because we can’t sell a hashrate here in the United States, you know, it’s a security. So you have to make sure that they’re buying the physical products and you’re working through that and so giving them that Bitcoin mining like experience, I think you’re right

TruthRaider: [00:30:16] around the head that has that’s a huge market that no one’s talking about, something because, you know, the ability to buy and sell hashrate and the Bitcoin miners that are generating that hashrate provides a lot of opportunity for people to actually speculate on the Bitcoin price, but then also generate a consistent yield through the mining process, [00:30:35] which can be very profitable, you know, as at scale with the lower power rate as you’re mentioning. Yeah, and I think it’ll happen, man. I think that’s it just kind of makes sense because right now Bitcoin mining is such an industrial thing. I mean, I’ve only known you guys for a couple of years, but watching you guys from then until now, the scale that you’re growing at,

TruthRaider: [00:30:56] like it’s not a guy in his basement right now that’s doing this, you know, it’s like, it’s a totally different in 2020. It’s a totally different experience. It’s all industrialized. You’re right. And it’s not no longer the basement miners and just you can’t scale your pete unless you are in like, you know, if you’re unless you’re working on these massive [00:31:15] facilities and own infrastructure in those bigger facilities with the lower rate, just the nature of the industry and the power arbitrage we’re trying to capture on a day to day basis. So kind of switching out of the Bitcoin mining conversation, I want to just talk a little bit farther on your time in the military, maybe just one life skill that you would attribute

TruthRaider: [00:31:37] to your time in the military that everyone should learn or that you would want to talk about on the show. I mean, definitely discipline. That’s probably the number one thing, just discipline and patience. That’s obviously needed in crypto with a long four year periods we have before price rises. Yeah, I mean, like, yeah, they’re 2017 washed out a lot of people. And like I said, I’ve only been [00:32:04] in it since mid 2017. And it washed out a lot of people. So I have a feeling the next bear market will do the same thing because people, they want short term goals. And a lot of people don’t think long term and the military doesn’t teach you to just think up close to teach you to plan ahead. And really plan for the future. I think one of what I’ve seen a lot of my friends is their

TruthRaider: [00:32:29] relationship with money and just because they don’t own a real estate, they’re all coming out of school looking for jobs. It’s a very tainted relationship and usually not a good way in the fact that it’s holding them back because they don’t have that patient mindset. But then more probably they don’t have systems that work for them. They’re working in systems that are meant to are basically built [00:32:51] against them. One of the things that I heard on another podcast was that when the Federal Reserve does the stimulus and cuts the interest rate for housing in the United States, from 3.4 to 3.5% down to where it is at 2.8%. They’re effectively buying 1.3, 1.2 somewhere in that range, trillion dollars worth of mortgage back securities. And that’s going to basically have these people go out and

TruthRaider: [00:33:15] work on houses for the next five to 10 years that might have not really need to be built. And so you’re really seeing the shift of people that own real estate are capturing all this value, whereas most people that are coming out of school are renting and they’re renting from these real estate owners in that vicious cycle. I think it’s going to be very hard for the middle [00:33:34] class to break out of or even the lower middle class to be able to capture value there. Do you have any thoughts on that cycle and the overall discipline patients and the overall crypto helping out with those type of people or those type of individuals? Yeah, so one of the things I like, we have vanilla figured out, but I think we need an education renaissance. And I think so,

TruthRaider: [00:33:56] countries like Germany, they teach their students when they’re in high school. And it’s kind of like going in the military or whatever. But when you’re 15, 16, you’re starting to think about a trade craft or a job or a career or what you want to do when you graduate high school. We don’t really have that mentality. We don’t have a trade craft mentality. We don’t have a workman mentality. [00:34:16] And so I think we kind of have like an opportunity, if we don’t blow it with crypto, to start people, and that’s kind of a mouse book does, we work with universities and different companies and try to train younger people on the industry. So if you start bringing people in in high school and college into the crypto space and start educating them and work on things like

TruthRaider: [00:34:38] apprenticeships, teaching people out of code, all kinds of different stuff like this. Crypto has the potential to kind of break in to the mainstream. And if it does do that, then you’re going to see a lot, you’re going to see opportunity. So your average guy that goes to college for four years graduates, what opportunity does your average college student have in 2020? [00:34:57] For example, when I went to university, I only did an internship for six months out of my entire time before. So my high school, I didn’t do any internships. I worked pitifully jobs, college, I never, I did one internship. But if we can break the cycle and say, hey, these 14, 15 year old kids are really smart at computers, they really get it. And we can start them younger

TruthRaider: [00:35:19] and spend five, six, seven years teaching them skills for when they graduate. Then, like I said, the crypto space, we have a lot of potential to break into education, in my opinion. I agree with you completely on there. I think what, as people become more computer literate and understand how to work with coding and kind of even connecting services online, one service [00:35:42] from here, one service to there, I think the opportunity with DeFi investing or any type of yield generation is going to be huge. And so yield generation comes from putting collateral up and then being able to get the rewards from staking that collateral in a decentralized finance model, or even Bitcoin mining, the yield generation comes through the process of arbitrage and that

TruthRaider: [00:36:02] energy. And so I truly believe with you that with the Bitcoin and blockchain coming in here to democratize yield and allow any of us to allow anyone who’s participating in these networks to trust the network and pay and have that security of those coins and tokens that you’ll see this huge opportunity over the next five or 10 years, which allows people to basically almost like a [00:36:23] Shopify store but for yield from their house. Yeah, and you don’t need to work out of a commercial building with fluorescent light shining in your face. You can actually control like how you live your life, you know, because you’ve been given a life skill. So that’s the other thing, you know, like college kids are your taught for four years what a professor wants you to learn

TruthRaider: [00:36:45] and you don’t learn life skills. So I think crypto gives an opportunity just like being an engineer or a doctor or something. If you teach people life skills, then it’ll change the quality of life. And I think that these are going to be real life skills that are going to be scalable, which is huge because that financing, you know, now with that breaking down, it doesn’t matter [00:37:05] where you are in the world, you’ll be able to access, you know, these new financing mechanisms. And it’s really going to come down to that education barrier that you mentioned. So for us, you know, we’re focusing on TikTok and educating there because of just how well the algorithm does and putting out content that does well, you know, and rewarding that content with views and time,

JohnPaul: [00:37:23] watch time for from the viewers. Where are you guys focused on your time and where do you see

TruthRaider: [00:37:28] the most traction when it comes to that educating these user bases? Is it courses that people have to pay for and sign up for? Is it YouTube, Instagram, TikTok or podcasts? Where are you guys spending your time? Yeah, so it’s all the different social mediums as well as universities, dozens of universities are in the network trying to get exposure. And the best medium is so once a month, we do a live [00:37:49] stream for 72 hours. We basically every month try to pull the best speakers we can find in the industry and we share the information out across all the social platforms. And then also the other thing that we’re doing that’s a little bit innovative is we’re working with companies that you wouldn’t think would have anything to do with crypto like Rolls Royce and Heiser Bush, you know, like

TruthRaider: [00:38:11] mainstream companies who want to get exposure on the education side, they may not want to make a major investment, but yeah, they’ll throw money or resources at educating people on blockchain technology. So that whole industry has not even been tapped. The education side of crypto, it’s it’s really, really, really young. And so and also media, we’re also trying to work on creating a [00:38:35] media platform that can be used for different networks outside of socials. But the main, the main thing is educating people on on what’s out there. Because like I said, nobody knows about Bitcoin, man, you look at Google trends, it’s like flat, you know, I mean, it’s it’s all of the same people talking to each other. So the goal for all of us, it should be to break outside of our community.

TruthRaider: [00:38:58] Yeah, break out of the community that we’re, you know, even preaching to for years and work on really onboarding, educating, it’s such a it’s such a long process. And it doesn’t have to be a long process, but it is just because of the amount of information, I guess that you have to wrap your head around and the kind of taking yourself from your current understanding of what money is supposed [00:39:20] to be. I guess in bringing yourself to an understanding of what money can be with blockchain or what money is with based on a blockchain, that I think, you know, it does take a lot of time because it does touch these, like I mentioned, these core concepts that people just don’t have healthy relationships and they’re so they dig into their lives and they that these concepts are really,

TruthRaider: [00:39:40] they can be controlling, you know, for a majority of people that are going and working a nine to five, you know, their number one concern is, am I going to build a pay my rent? You know, am I going to be able to pay my bills? And that’s where, you know, their time and energy is focused on a daily basis. And the other thing is not not as healthy as, you know, having your time focused [00:39:57] on building value. And I think, you know, hopefully, we’re able to educate people to explain the awesome opportunities of this network where you then you don’t have to rely on a company, but you can rely on a network of operators or a system to actually provide you that that standard of living or that value that you’re looking to get based on the value you’re contributing to that network

TruthRaider: [00:40:15] and that system. Definitely. I guess kind of on that note, talking about network and systems, are there any token projects that you’re, you’re focused on, Dave, that you’re excited for? And these could be decentralized finance projects. These could be companies that are working on tokens or really just anyone that’s bringing together a new incentive structure or new incentive model. [00:40:34] I’d love to hear about further. For, yeah, so what else do I like? I mean, besides Bitcoin, I really like chain link a lot. I feel like they’re getting after the layer underneath the top layer, right? So like, they’re everyone’s so focused on being like the fastest crypto and the most scalable and all that other stuff. But I feel like chain link is actually trying to build a

TruthRaider: [00:40:56] product that can be used outside of crypto and it can bridge between mainstream companies and mainstream finance with the crypto industry. So like chain link is one that I really, really like, just because I feel like, you know, that’s, that’s kind of the other thing. I bother as me sometimes it feels like crypto companies are catering to ourselves, just like we are [00:41:17] catering to ourselves. It’s like this vicious cycle and chain link is doing really good stuff. I think outside of the industry. Another company that I really like that’s doing the same thing is called doc.com. They’re working with artificial intelligence and using blockchain technology. And what’s cool about it? So like, you know, as like a veteran, right? So you’ve got a lot of

TruthRaider: [00:41:36] these people, not just veterans, but people that have medical problems, mental health issues, all kinds of issues, right? And Corona is kind of showcased telehealth and telemedicine, because imagine you’re in your house, you can’t leave and you’re 50 years old and you have health problems and you want to talk to a doctor, you know, it takes you three weeks to go see the doctor, [00:41:59] but like this company, doc.com, you pick up your smartphone, you press a button on the app, and you’re talking to your doctor about what problems you have. And they work with cell phone providers, and they have psychology services, they have health services. Eventually, they’re going to get into the prescription side too, where you can prescribe medicine. To me, like companies

TruthRaider: [00:42:19] like that, like chain link, which is a real world thing, doc.com, which if they’re successful, the cool thing about it is third world countries, if I’m living in Guatemala, and I don’t have any very much money, this company can be registered there. You can speak Spanish, pick up the phone, or you don’t have to have a phone. You can ask your friend’s phone, hop on the app, and start [00:42:41] talking to a doctor in Spanish and get diagnosed with whatever you got going on, or at least have a first screening. So companies like that excite me, because they actually are trying to do something that helps the world and not just we’re the best crypto company. You know what I mean? I agree with you. I think when we saw in 2017, there were so many of that

TruthRaider: [00:43:03] who was like circle jerk, ICO, you know, plump and dump of during these events where it’s like, you’re all talking to the same people. And if you, you know, you being active in the conference circuit, understand that, you know, you’re going to these conferences like, wow, this is about the same people, you know, that are speaking up these conferences are all kind of pushing their one [00:43:21] or two products. And it’s almost like we’re all saying the same thing versus like, let’s go out and interact with other communities. And really, I think provide value, which is, I think Chainlink is focused on, which is how do we make this experience easier and better for new people coming into this space so that they can understand, you know, what this product is and what they’re what they’re

TruthRaider: [00:43:38] looking to buy and where they’re putting their hardware and capital. Yeah, so that’s probably my outside of Bitcoin. I mean, those are the two that kind of, they’re really exciting, just because they, I feel like there’s something that there’s actually something there. There’s just so many that I can’t, you know, you look at the top 100 tokens and coins, there’s some other good ones out there, [00:43:57] but it’s just, like I said, it’s like if you can appeal to a regular corporate CEO of a non-crypto company, if you can’t speak to him in his language and your application, your software doesn’t appease their corporation, you know, like the way they do business, it’s almost like, it’s almost futile, you know what I mean? So like, if you’re creating a token and you’re trying to pitch it to these

TruthRaider: [00:44:21] people, there’s not a lot of cryptos that I feel that there’s something there out of the thousands that we have. I agree with you. I think there’s very few that actually are going to generate value, and that’s one of the hardest things is, you know, understanding what’s a project that’s going to do well, what’s a project that would continue to grow, no matter if the hype is gone from it, [00:44:40] versus what’s a project that’s just here to buy more Bitcoin, you know, really at the end of the day. So like DeFi, for example, right? DeFi is an Ethereum game right now, you know, and other cryptos are trying to do it, but here’s the thing, I hope that Ethereum is successful. My hope that smart contracts can resolve some of their problems and actually work efficiently. And I hope Ethereum

TruthRaider: [00:45:02] ends up being successful, right? So that’s another one that I’m hopeful, but I feel like right now at the moment, DeFi needs, DeFi needs like a product or a service that makes sense outside of our industry in order for it to get adoption. Do you know what I mean? Like there, it just feels feels very ICO-y to me. No, I agree with you completely. I think we’ve seen the yield chasing [00:45:24] years. It’s not, it’s not very healthy. And I think if you hit it on it right on its head, it’s like where this is going to come into play is making it accessible, in my opinion, and being able to get consistent yield through processes that actually generate value, you know, such as mining, cryptocurrencies, and even lending, you know, that’s a whole nother game of, we have

TruthRaider: [00:45:43] propagation of loans, but really like, how do you generate real value with the block? So Malta was, I’ve been to lots of conferences, right? But Malta is hands down the best place to go for real world conversations, right? So one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard was an Ethereum-based token for real estate on the blockchain. So all across the planet, every piece of property is [00:46:04] antiquated in this old computer system or some filing cabinet somewhere that says, John Roberts owns this plot of land, right? So it makes sense that you would have, let’s just say, the country of Malta, you would have an Ethereum token that keeps track of every piece of land in Malta, or at least has a second copy of every piece of land in Malta. And as people buy and

TruthRaider: [00:46:29] sell the property, a smart contract is generated and a transfer occurs from one individual to the next showing a transfer property. That’s what Ethereum and smart contracts and all this crap should be doing, something like that, you know what I mean? That’s a real thing. That’s after all. And so in Malta, there was all kinds of ideas like that. But to me, that one, like, [00:46:52] even Texas, let’s say Texas, right? The Texas land registry. Let’s say they decided to do that. They wanted to have a, they’ve got their hard copy of all the land everybody owns in Texas. And then they have the blockchain, Ethereum-based tokenized just to show title transfers. To me, that would be a great way, a great company. It’s a title transfer blockchain company.

TruthRaider: [00:47:11] I agree with you completely. And I think we’re seeing there’s, you know, there’s land transfer that blockchain has a lot of value there. There’s the ability to do social status and well on the blockchain, I think that’ll come in the near future. I think the decentralized land, we’re seeing with NFT and arts, I don’t know how far that’s going to grow. [00:47:28] Obviously, I think it’ll be around just like ICOs and will continue to grow. But, you know, does that really provide real value there? We see this concept of scarcity and where do we have scarcity in our day-to-day lives, real estate being one of the most obvious ones there. But then it’s how do you democratize that space and how do you actually enable people to get more out

TruthRaider: [00:47:47] of their land in their local area with a blockchain? I think it comes down to the key question is, how do I provide a real incentive and a real value to utilize this new technology versus just maybe like making it easier for people? So like a fractional land ownership or like, you know, land being able to get access to different parts of a space. You know, with like Hilton, [00:48:07] we already do that. There are different areas. Hilton hotels, we already do that. You know, but being basically being able to get access based on these different parts of land across the world based on the club you’re in almost, it would be interesting to see how we can integrate this in the real world and really provide value more than just what I would say

TruthRaider: [00:48:25] where it’s just hype. Yeah, exactly. And I think the companies and that the companies that figure that out are going to be successful because it’s very difficult to preach to a non-Bitcoin or crypto company on how to use any of this stuff. You know, for example, how is it that like Twitter or Facebook or Amazon or all of these other companies, how have they not adopted blockchain technology? [00:48:48] How is Amazon.com not adopted it into their everyday service? You know, there’s a reason and it’s because they don’t need it yet. And so I think that’s Amazon’s probably the most obvious company to look at is how do you make it to where a company like them needs you? And I’m not sure that they figured it out yet. No, I would agree with you. I don’t think Amazon has figured it out.

TruthRaider: [00:49:11] I don’t think any of these even IBM, you know, they’re working on blockchain related things and how do we work on the data transfer and financial services and they’re seeing a lot of opportunity there. I’m seeing a lot of opportunity in the insurance sector, but it’s not these incumbents aren’t going to go and disrupt their value chain and give away their data or even give [00:49:31] the data back to the people. I just don’t see that happening until, you know, there’s real powers I play. You brought up a good point though. One way, one thing that could actually be blockchain related that’s good is the aspect of data. So for example, the company I was talking about, dark.com, their main profit model is going to be data, right? So just like Google and Facebook

TruthRaider: [00:49:54] and all these other companies, I think that’s one area that blockchain can really do well is recording data on chain and being able to transfer records anonymously without having to worry about who the person is. So you could utilize, like I said, they use Ethereum and let’s say there’s a phone call where you’re talking about diabetes and you’re getting information about diabetes, [00:50:17] you know, blah, blah, blah, and you’re giving it to researchers and researchers or using that to your diseases and all that. So I think data, that’s probably the biggest area that blockchain could be successful in the short term, in my opinion. I agree with you. It’s unbundling these services we use on a day-to-day basis. If that’s electricity,

TruthRaider: [00:50:39] if that’s cellular infrastructure and internet, if that is a value transfer between small businesses and local communities, it’s using a blockchain to distribute that trust and to basically take down these massive, massive companies that have built up these technological walls of, I guess, more like regulatory walls most of the time that’s preventing innovation in this space and that’s, [00:51:02] basically, providing these services that should be free for everyone, especially in the internet connectivity world, or at least available for everyone to be paid on a per share or per minute basis based on usage. I think we’ll see more and more decoupling of these networks over the next 10 years with blockchain tech. Yeah, I agree for sure. So Dave, on that note, I think we touched on

TruthRaider: [00:51:23] Bitcoin mining, we’ve touched on social media a little bit, we talked about in the future of blockchains and how we see these currencies interacting with digital native users. One thing I do want to talk on before we close up is social media influencers are going to play, in my opinion, a huge role in educating and pushing these different products to people [00:51:48] all across the world. I think we saw that influencer was posting on TikTok about Dogecoin and Dogecoin pumping a couple of months ago. Do you have any comments on that Dogecoin pump or maybe other examples you’re seeing of real world applications like the ocean spray thing but in the crypto world? Yeah, my personal opinion is that, again, like I was saying earlier, marketing is a completely

TruthRaider: [00:52:10] different game now with the millennials and whatever they call the kids now, the young, even younger kids. They’re going to get into investing and the difference between, when I started investing, it was with like silver and gold, going to a gold shop, right? Like a 20 year old college kid now, he’s logging into his iPhone on an app and finding out about Bitcoin or Doge or whatever else. So, [00:52:34] I think it goes back to that same thing is if you’re a crypto company, you got to understand your audience. The institutional players are going to buy Bitcoin because it’s on CNBC and some billionaires talking about it. But your retail guy is going to buy crypto because he saw it on TikTok like you mentioned earlier. So, I think that trend is not going anywhere.

TruthRaider: [00:52:56] And I think it’s only going to accelerate through the meetings of exchange, especially as the price rises and we see, okay, wait, Bitcoin isn’t dead. I hope that people can educate themselves. I think hopefully COVID has at least pushed the conversation with the stimulus being given to everyone that. Where is the real value of money and how much value does my dollar really hold? I think that’s [00:53:16] one of the most misplaced beliefs is that the dollar is going to maintain value and has maintained its value over the past five years. For people who maybe aren’t as hyper aware of it as you and I, with the value of the US dollar and actual purchasing power of that and other fiat-based currencies. For sure, man. So, Dave, is there any other questions that you wanted to ask me or to talk about

TruthRaider: [00:53:36] regarding Bitcoin mining or Bitcoin in general before we jump off today?

JohnPaul: [00:53:40] Yeah, just I guess the biggest question I have is how do you see, what I wonder is how do you see the US our role or if we’re going to take a definitive role

TruthRaider: [00:53:52] over the next 10 years in Bitcoin mining or do you think we’re going to get outpaced based on current trends? I would say it’s going to come down to the most important thing I think we’ll come down to is if the financing and energy players in the US are going to, after this next bull run, when Bitcoin’s at $200,000, are they going to start deploying infrastructure and take this [00:54:12] space seriously, the mining space in particular? Are they going to start allocating capital to this and our financing groups are going to start underwriting Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin infrastructure to play? I mean, we don’t have the chip fabrication and that takes years to build out. I don’t see that coming in any time to any time in the near future. But what we do have is the

TruthRaider: [00:54:29] subsidized energy and we do subsidize our energy at scale here in the United States with solar and wind subsidies across the board and even subsidies for natural gas plants. And with Biden looking like he’s going to be president of the US for the next four years, we expect that the wind and solar subsidies to continue to continue to be subsidized in that cost of energy, [00:54:49] which is an overall creates pockets of energy where the price just isn’t, it’s not what the normal market would bear. It’s sometimes in the negative amounts of negative dollars per megawatt hour, which means that that wind from developer isn’t actually making any money from running that energy. They’re only making money from the tax credits that they’re getting, which

TruthRaider: [00:55:09] it can range anywhere between 20, I think $25 per megawatt hour for a wind farm. So one winter by might be making you $75 to $50 an hour from the government for every hour that’s running. So those are, that’s kind of how these these items are financed now. So I think because we do have such a resilient energy space, we do have such a resilient financing sector and everyone’s looking [00:55:31] for yield that we’re seeing these energy companies start popping up. As I mentioned, they’re not really looking at getting the Bitcoin money exposure. And hopefully that’ll change. They’re really looking at how do I sell my power. But I think they’re with COVID realizing that they’re, they were they’re working in a system that maybe isn’t as flexible or as secure as they thought

TruthRaider: [00:55:47] with the type of yields, especially when we see power drop usage, power usage dropped dramatically with COVID and oil prices crashing. So I think that really did make a wake up call for most of these larger energy companies. Now it’s time for them to figure out what path they want to take and whichever ones take the Bitcoin mining path or in my opinion, you’re not going to be substantially [00:56:06] ahead of the rest of the pack. Sounds good. Yeah, that’s kind of been my biggest question. When you look at think it’s Cambridge, I want to say, puts out like a hash rate chart in shows per country where the hash rates coming out of. So I was kind of curious, kind of your take on on how you see us, you know, competing from a hash rate generation side. Maybe China’s always going to be the big dog

TruthRaider: [00:56:28] because they had the early lead. It’s kind of curious to see how much we catch up on hash rate generation in the States. I agree with you as completely and we’re excited to help build that, you know, us hash rate here and we have this in public companies as well that are, you know, looking to do the exact same thing in the United States. So over the next five or 10 years,

JohnPaul: [00:56:46] I’m excited to see, you know, how we can grow the North American hash rate and hope that hope that we play a massive part and I’m excited to continue to build in the industry to continue to build not only with the team, but also, you know, with you Dave as well. And thanks again,

TruthRaider: [00:57:00] you know, for coming on the podcast and for talking farther about this,

JohnPaul: [00:57:03] where can people connect with you Dave for after the show? Sure. So you can find my socials on Twitter,

TruthRaider: [00:57:09] tooth raider HQ. You can also find me mouse belt.com or on LinkedIn as well. Awesome. So guys, feel free to check out Dave on LinkedIn on Twitter to connect with him. And if you guys have any other questions for Dave, hit them up there. Thanks, Dave for getting on

[00:57:24] the show. I appreciate it. Thanks, Shaping. Remember guys, mine on. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode of digital gold. Be sure to subscribe so you’re notified when the new episode drops. Don’t forget to leave us a five star review to support our journey to become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, mine on.