# MiningStore — Full Content > Bulk content dump for AI retrieval. MiningStore is a U.S.-based Bitcoin mining company operating 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities, with 10,000+ ASICs under management for 180+ institutional clients since 2016. This file concatenates the body content of every high-value page (blog, learning hub, weekly rehash reports, services, hosting, products) for AI crawlers that prefer bulk fetches over per-URL re-crawls. > > Source URL: https://miningstore.com/llms-full.txt > Index: https://miningstore.com/llms.txt > Sitemap: https://miningstore.com/sitemap-index.xml --- # Bitcoin Hosting & Infrastructure Source: https://miningstore.com/ Powering 10K+ Miners Under Management # Where Digital Assets Are Forged Bitcoin hosting, managed mining, remote hands, and hardware procurement for investors and operators. 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities. 10,000+ ASICs under management. Mining since 2016. I Want Managed Mining We source the miners, host them, maintain them, and report the results. I'm New to Mining How mining pays, what hardware costs, and where to run it. I Need Hosting Already own miners? We rack, power, and maintain them in Iowa. I Need Remote Hands Use MiningStore technicians for firmware, repairs, and on-site support. BY THE NUMBERS 10K+ Miners Under Management 14 Mining Sites Developed and Counting 62.5 MW Operational Capacity 180+ Institutional Clients ## What MiningStore Does MiningStore is a U.S.-based Bitcoin mining company that operates 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities in the MISO and SPP wholesale power markets. Since 2016, the team has developed 14 mining sites and manages 10,000+ ASICs for 180+ institutional clients through Bitcoin hosting, managed mining, and hardware procurement programs. Hosting is the core of the business: clients ship their ASICs to Iowa, and MiningStore racks, powers, monitors, and repairs them in air-cooled and immersion facilities. The managed mining program layers hardware procurement and day-to-day operations on top of that infrastructure for investors who would rather never touch a miner. ## What Sets MiningStore Apart from the Competition ### 9+ Years of Proven Execution We have run mines through two full cycles, including the 2020 and 2024 Bitcoin block-reward halvings published by Bitcoin.org. The clients we kept through both bear markets paid for that experience. ### Low-Cost U.S.-Based Energy Our Iowa sites sit inside MISO and SPP, two of the deepest wholesale power markets in North America with industrial rates well below the U.S. retail average. Lower cents per kWh means more sats kept per machine. ### We Handle Everything Procurement, racking, power, monitoring, repairs, reporting. You watch a dashboard and collect BTC; we keep the machines running. ### Rapid-Deployment Mining Pods Our mobile mining pods ship pre-wired and stand up on site in days. Modular builds that scale as your capital does. ### Tax-Efficient Investment Structure Bitcoin mining hardware qualifies for bonus depreciation under IRS Publication 946 (Section 168(k)). Qualifying investors can deduct a sizable share of the purchase in year one, which lifts the after-tax yield above the equivalent BTC or equity hold. ### You Talk to People, Not Tickets You call, someone picks up, and it is the same team that racked your fleet. No help desk and no 48-hour reply window. ## Client Growth Success Story One client started with a handful of ASICs, scaled to a 600-machine hosted fleet with us over a year, and then bought a 5 MW site of their own in an opportunity zone. Read Now ## Nine Years of Building Mining Infrastructure MiningStore started in 2016 with 300 GPUs in Iowa. Today we manage 10,000+ ASICs across 14 sites for 180+ clients. Same state, same focus on cheap power and uptime. We grew because our clients kept scaling. About MiningStore ## Our Iowa Bitcoin Hosting Facilities 62.5 MW of operational capacity across 11 facilities in two of Iowa's most competitive energy markets. Four worth knowing first. Iowa Facility 1 7.5 MW · SPP Market 1,600+ miner slots 5 MW open Iowa Facility 7 10 MW · MISO Market 3,500+ miner slots 5 MW open Iowa Facility 9 6 MW · SPP Market 2,100+ miner slots Live & Running Iowa Facility 11 — Immersion 3.5 MW · MISO Market 1,000+ immersion slots Q2 2026 See All 11 Facilities ## Four Ways to Mine With Us Four programs, one operations team. Pick the one that fits how you want to mine. Managed Mining We source the hardware, host it in Iowa, run uptime, and send you monthly BTC plus tax-ready reporting. You hold the wallet and watch the dashboard. Learn More Hosting Services Bring your fleet, we provide power, cooling, and operations across 11 Iowa facilities. Per-serial asset tracking, daily fleet updates, and 24/7 site monitoring. Learn More Remote Hands Program Running your own site? Our techs handle firmware, repairs, and monitoring on a Bronze, Silver, or Gold support tier so you do not have to staff a local crew. Learn More BitVault Entry-level mining product. Start with $100, get BTC exposure, skip the operational overhead. Learn More ## What Our Clients Say “ MiningStore helped us quickly launch a one-of-a-kind cryptocurrency mining effort. The most technologically advanced arena in the world needed the most durable and efficient mining machines, which is why we turned to MiningStore. “ MiningStore handled the migration of my S9s from a facility in Texas to theirs in New York with the utmost professionalism. Good communications and proactive ideas for optimizing the performance of my ASICS. I could not recommend them more. “ I have been using the Remote Hands from MiningStore for a few weeks now and it has exceeded my expectations. The process is user-friendly, efficient, and the customer support team is always available to help. Highly recommend them! Read all our customer reviews → ## Hash Rate Is Growing. Secure Your Share. The Bitcoin network's hashrate climbs every cycle, as tracked by the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. Difficulty rises with it. Mining at low-cost U.S. rates today still produces BTC below spot. Iowa capacity is open. Book a Call ## Frequently Asked Questions What is Bitcoin hosting? A data center operator runs your ASIC mining machines and handles power, cooling, network, monitoring, and repairs. You keep ownership of the hardware and the Bitcoin it produces. MiningStore hosts across 62.5 MW in 11 Iowa facilities. What is the difference between hosting and managed mining? With hosting, you bring your ASICs and we rack, power, and maintain them at an Iowa site. With our Managed Mining Program, we also source the hardware, deploy it, and ship your monthly Bitcoin share to your wallet. Both programs share the same 62.5 MW Iowa footprint. What does MiningStore offer for Bitcoin mining? MiningStore provides white-glove managed mining, dedicated ASIC hosting, mining services, remote hands, and hardware procurement for investors and operators who want a full-stack Bitcoin mining stack in the U.S. How large is MiningStore's operating footprint? We manage 10,000+ ASICs for 180+ institutional clients. The team has developed 14 mining sites and operates 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities in the MISO and SPP power markets. Who is MiningStore built for? Family offices, private equity firms, funds, institutional miners, and operators who want direct Bitcoin mining exposure through owned infrastructure. Does MiningStore support both air-cooled and hydro-cooled ASICs? Yes. Our U.S. sites are climate-optimized for air-cooled and hydro-cooled ASICs, and our hardware catalog stocks both. What operational support is included with managed mining and hosting? We handle installation, configuration, monitoring, optimization, and maintenance. On-site technicians, remote hands, reporting, and a client dashboard for uptime, hashrate, and earnings come with both programs. What makes MiningStore different from other Bitcoin mining providers? MiningStore has mined since 2016, runs on low-cost U.S. energy, and has taken clients from a handful of hosted ASICs into owned 5 MW mining infrastructure. ## Sources & References MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - How Bitcoin Works — Halving Schedule & Supply Cap — Bitcoin.org - Publication 946: How to Depreciate Property (Section 168(k) Bonus Depreciation) — U.S. Internal Revenue Service - Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) — Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, University of Cambridge ## Start Mining We'll walk you through the options and give you a plan. 20-minute call, no pitch deck. Book a Call --- # About MiningStore Source: https://miningstore.com/about-us/ # About MiningStore U.S.-based Bitcoin mining infrastructure since 2016 Book A Call ## The Story of MiningStore: Trusted Bitcoin Mining Solutions Since 2016 MiningStore is a U.S.-based Bitcoin mining company built for investors and operators who want long-term, infrastructure-first exposure to the Bitcoin network. We started in 2016 with 300 GPUs in Iowa and scaled into a multi-site operator running across the MISO and SPP wholesale power markets. ## The People Behind MiningStore Our team has built and operated mining sites since 2016. Operators, engineers, and support staff who have racked machines, negotiated power contracts, and diagnosed firmware bugs firsthand. When you call us, you talk to someone who has done the work. The Customer Success Team handles strategy, uptime monitoring, and operational tuning for your fleet. They pick up when you call. We convert energy to wealth by mining Bitcoin with low-cost wind and grid power in Iowa. ### Mining Hardware Procurement 1.2 EH/s Hashrate Under Management 14 Active Mining Sites Constructed ### Mining Growth & Management $47 M Under Management 450 + Deals Brokered ### Managed Mining Program 160 MW+ Mining Pipeline Capacity 180 + Clients Supported ### A Green, Sustainable Approach We secure the Bitcoin network with a mix of curtailed wind and traditional grid power. Iowa ranks among the top U.S. states for wind generation. The U.S. Energy Information Administration's Iowa State Electricity Profile tracks the live grid mix, which has run around 57% wind in recent years. That is the backbone of our Iowa-first siting strategy. Book A Call ### Meet the CEO and Founder ## JohnPaul Baric "Our mission is to democratize access to Bitcoin mining. By continually deploying world-class facilities, and providing white-glove mining services, we'll do our part to secure the Bitcoin network." ## Explore Our Services Managed Mining Hosting Services Remote Hands Case Studies Learn Digital Gold Podcast ## Sources & References MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - State Electricity Profile — Iowa (Renewable Share, Grid Mix, Industrial Rates) — U.S. Energy Information Administration ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Bitcoin Hosting In Iowa Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/ Hosting Services # Bitcoin Hosting In Iowa Host ASIC fleets across 62.5 MW in 11 Iowa facilities. Daily fleet updates, verified repair logs, and per-machine tracking by serial number and MAC address included. Schedule A Call Shop Miners 62.5 MW Total Capacity 11 Facilities Across Iowa 180+ Institutional Clients 6+ Yrs Iowa Hosting Since 2019 ## What Is Bitcoin Hosting? Bitcoin hosting is a service where a data center operator runs your ASIC mining machines in their facility. The host handles power, cooling, network, monitoring, and repairs. You keep full ownership of the hardware and the Bitcoin it produces. MiningStore's bitcoin hosting in Iowa runs across 62.5 MW in 11 facilities. Every fleet gets daily updates, per-serial-number tracking, and documented repair logs on every machine. Operations ## Bitcoin Hosting Breaks When Operators Lose Visibility Power price matters. Margin also disappears when no one can tell you which miners are down, where support requests sit, or whether a repair invoice maps to the work performed on your fleet. ### What breaks at weak hosts - No visibility into your machines - Support requests get lost - Repairs aren't tracked - Billing isn't tied to real work ### How MiningStore runs hosting - Asset tracking by serial number and MAC address - Live visibility into down miners, replacements, and replacement logs - Centralized support with every request tracked to close - Verified work and billing tied to the repairs and service you requested - Power and performance tuning from a team that works miners every day The MiningStore Difference ## Why Large Fleets Choose MiningStore We built the sites, the reporting, and the service workflow around institutional fleets that need fast answers and documented work. 01 ### Track Every Miner Track each machine by serial number and MAC address, with repair history and service notes tied to that unit. 02 ### Daily Updates Down miners, replacements, and replacement logs hit your inbox every day. No weekly ticket dump to chase. 03 ### No Lost Requests Every support request stays inside one system until the team closes it. 04 ### Billing You Can Verify Invoices tie back to the repairs, maintenance, and service work your fleet used. 05 ### Six+ Years In The Field Our team has kept miners online through two full Bitcoin cycles since hosting in Iowa began in 2019. 06 ### Room To Grow New fleets land across 62.5 MW in Iowa, inside the MISO and SPP wholesale power markets. Open air-cooled capacity today, with selective hydro expansion in build. ## How Hosting Works From machine list to daily fleet visibility, we build the process around documented work and fast deployment. 1 ### Share your fleet Send us your machine list, target timeline, and whether you need air-cooled or hydro-cooled hosting. 2 ### We map site fit We match your fleet to available space, power profile, and cooling infrastructure across our Iowa footprint. 3 ### Ship or source machines Send your miners to us, or let our team procure hardware and coordinate delivery. 4 ### We rack, track, and tune We deploy the fleet, log the machines by serial and MAC, and tune for stable performance. 5 ### You get daily visibility Receive daily updates, replacement logs, and billing tied to the actual work performed on your fleet. Available Space ## Air-Cooled And Hydro Hosting In Iowa We can place large air-cooled fleets now. Hydro capacity is kept selective so the right deployments get the service quality they need. Available Space ### Air-Cooled Hosting Open capacity for ASIC fleets of any size, with daily updates, verified work logs, and institutional reporting. Limited Space Available ### Hydro-Cooled Hosting 4.5 MW has run for the past 15 months. Hydro gives you dense cooling in a smaller footprint when the right space is available. “We are really pleased with progress. Comms has been great and commitment to getting our Z15s online, it’s very much appreciated.” Recent Hosting Customer ## What Our Clients Say “ MiningStore helped us quickly launch a one-of-a-kind cryptocurrency mining effort. The most technologically advanced arena in the world needed the most durable and efficient mining machines, which is why we turned to MiningStore. “ MiningStore handled the migration of my S9s from a facility in Texas to theirs in New York with the utmost professionalism. Good communications and proactive ideas for optimizing the performance of my ASICS. I could not recommend them more. “ I have been using the Remote Hands from MiningStore for a few weeks now and it has exceeded my expectations. The process is user-friendly, efficient, and the customer support team is always available to help. Highly recommend them! Read all our customer reviews → ## Hosting FAQ What is Bitcoin hosting? Bitcoin hosting is a service where a data center operator runs your ASIC miners in their facility and handles power, cooling, network, monitoring, and repairs. You own the machines and the Bitcoin they produce. MiningStore offers hosting across 62.5 MW in 11 Iowa facilities in the MISO and SPP wholesale power markets. What do I see as a hosting client? You get daily updates on down miners, replacements, and replacement logs, plus per-machine asset tracking by serial and MAC so your team can verify what happened to each unit. How is billing handled? We tie invoices back to the repairs, maintenance, and services your fleet used. The goal is simple: billing you can verify instead of a black-box hosting invoice. What machines do you host? We host major ASIC platforms across air-cooled and hydro-cooled deployments, including Bitmain, MicroBT, and other institutional fleet hardware that fits the site power and cooling profile. How much capacity do you have? The hosting footprint on this page is 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities inside the MISO and SPP wholesale power markets. Open air-cooled capacity now, with limited hydro space available. Why Iowa? Iowa pairs some of the lowest industrial electricity prices in the U.S. with a wind-heavy generation mix and two deep wholesale energy markets, MISO and SPP. The EIA publishes the state-level data that puts Iowa year after year among the most cost-competitive industrial grids in the country. Can I visit the facility? Yes. We welcome site visits by appointment. Many institutional clients tour before moving a fleet, especially when they want to review support workflow and operating standards in person. ## Getting Started With Bitcoin Hosting Most fleets begin with a short call and a machine list. We review fleet size, machine mix, cooling preference, and target start date, then quote capacity across our Iowa sites. Hosting at MiningStore includes power, cooling, network, monitoring, and on-site repair labor under a documented SLA. You keep ownership of the hardware and the BTC it earns. Onboarding lands a few weeks after contract signing, depending on freight, RMA workload, and fleet size. ## Sources & References MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - State Electricity Profile — Iowa — U.S. Energy Information Administration - MISO Energy Markets Overview — Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) - Southwest Power Pool — Integrated Marketplace — Southwest Power Pool (SPP) ## Air-Cooled Hosting Availability Rack space opens and rates move. Get a note when we have air-cooled capacity. First name Work email Website Send me availability Occasional hosting availability and rate updates. Unsubscribe from any message. ## Send Us Your Machine List We quote hosting based on fleet size, machine mix, cooling type, and available capacity. Most teams start with a short call and a machine list. Schedule a Call ## Related comparisons & buyer guides - Best Bitcoin Mining Hosting Providers in the US (2026) - Best Managed Bitcoin Mining Programs for Institutional Investors - Bitdeer Alternatives for Managed Bitcoin Mining - Compass Mining Alternatives for Bitcoin Colocation Hosting - Blockware Solutions Alternatives for Buying ASIC Miners - MiningStore vs River vs Compass — ASIC Colocation Compared - Bitcoin Mining for Family Offices & Institutional Investors - How to Mine Bitcoin Without Managing Hardware Yourself --- # Iowa Facility 9 — 6 MW Institutional Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/facility-9-institutional-bitcoin-mining-iowa/ ← All Iowa Facilities Live & Running # Iowa Facility 9 A 6 MW institutional Bitcoin mining facility on the SPP grid, built for verifiable performance and long-term hold. 6 MW Total Capacity 2,100+ Miner Slots SPP Power Market ## About This Facility Facility 9 is a 6 MW Bitcoin mining site in Iowa with a direct interconnect to the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). The building holds 2,100+ ASIC miner slots and runs for institutional clients today. The site extends our record of standing up mining infrastructure in the corners of North America with the most stable grid economics. ## Facility Highlights - Capacity: 6 MW of contracted industrial power - Miner Slots: 2,100+ ASIC-ready positions under one roof - Power Market: Direct SPP interconnect, with the basis between day-ahead and real-time passed back to the client - Cooling: Air-cooled, tuned for density and miner longevity - Operations: On-site technicians and 24/7 monitoring - Status: Live, with per-machine reporting for institutional clients ## Why Iowa's SPP Market Iowa became a hub for institutional Bitcoin mining because the grid is dense, the renewable mix is high, and the regulatory climate stays predictable across administrations. For long-horizon mining capital, the state offers some of the most favorable conditions in North America. - SPP Energy Arbitrage: A direct SPP interconnect prices power against a deep, renewable-rich wholesale market instead of a flat utility rate. - Renewable Energy Leadership: Iowa runs near the top of U.S. states for wind generation; Facility 9 draws from that mix. - Grid Flexibility: Mining loads provide demand-response capacity to the grid and earn revenue against surplus renewable generation. - Property Tax Exemption: Iowa's statewide exemption on industrial machinery removes recurring property tax on the ASIC asset base. - Jurisdictional Stability: A predictable regulatory climate makes a multi-year capital deployment easier to defend. ## Built for Institutional Investors Facility 9 is built to the operational standards private equity firms, family offices, and high-net-worth investors apply to any infrastructure position they underwrite. Long-term energy contracts, per-machine reporting, and a layered risk framework give institutional partners enough underwriting comfort to size up. Data center power keeps getting scarcer. Hosting capacity at a site with locked-in energy and a running operations team is a defensible position in the compute infrastructure race. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 9? This 6 MW SPP-market facility is fully operational. Talk to our team about hosting availability. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 8 — 5 MW Hydro-Only Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-bitcoin-mining-hosting-facility-8/ ← All Iowa Facilities Live & Running # Iowa Facility 8 A 5 MW hydro-only, institutional-grade Bitcoin mining facility on Iowa's MISO grid, built for efficient hydro-cooled ASIC deployment and long-term, low-cost hashrate. 5 MW Total Capacity 800+ Miner Slots MISO Power Market ## About This Facility Facility 8 is a fully deployed 5 MW MiningStore hydro-only site located in Iowa and connected to the MISO power market. The facility hosts more than 800 hydro-cooled ASIC miner slots in a modular design that prioritizes operational uptime, equipment longevity, and transparent reporting for institutional clients. Iowa's position within the MISO grid gives Facility 8 access to a deep pool of low-cost generation, including significant wind and other renewable resources. That mix translates directly into competitive power pricing and a strong sustainability profile for hosted miners. The site runs to traditional data center standards: redundant electrical infrastructure, environmental controls tuned for ASIC longevity, 24/7 monitoring, and on-site remote hands. Clients get the operational rigor of an institutional mining platform without having to build or staff their own facility. ## Why Iowa & the MISO Grid Iowa is one of the most strategic regions in North America for Bitcoin mining. It combines abundant generation capacity, a high renewable share, and a transparent wholesale market through MISO. For hosted miners, that means stable pricing, room to scale, and a power mix that supports ESG-aware allocation. Facility 8 takes advantage of all three: low blended energy cost, deep grid capacity for future expansion, and a renewable-heavy fuel mix that reduces the carbon intensity of every TH/s produced on site. ## Built for Institutional Hydro Mining Facility 8 is engineered as institutional hydro infrastructure, not a retail-style mining shed. The 5 MW hydro-only build uses a modular layout that supports the latest generation of high-efficiency hydro-cooled ASICs, with dielectric fluid cooling, power distribution, and maintenance access designed around long equipment life and high availability. MiningStore manages the full operational stack: deployment, firmware tuning, performance monitoring, repairs, and client reporting. Hosted clients receive transparent uptime, hashrate, and revenue data, with the same operational discipline applied across our broader North American facility portfolio. ## Facility Highlights - Capacity: 5 MW - Cooling: Hydro-only — purpose-built for hydro-cooled ASICs - Miner Slots: 800+ hydro-cooled positions - Grid Power: MISO market — renewable-rich, competitively priced - Status: Live and running ## Interested in Iowa Facility 8? This 5 MW MISO-market facility is fully deployed and operational. Talk to our team about availability. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 10 — 5 MW Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-bitcoin-mining-hosting-facility-10/ ← All Iowa Facilities Live & Running # Iowa Facility 10 A 5 MW institutional-grade Bitcoin mining facility in Iowa's renewable energy corridor, connected to the SPP wholesale market and engineered for long-term, low-cost hashrate. 5 MW Total Capacity 1,700+ Miner Slots SPP Power Market ## About This Facility Facility 10 is a fully operational 5 MW MiningStore site located in Iowa and connected directly to the Southwest Power Pool (SPP) wholesale electricity market. The facility hosts more than 1,700 ASIC miner slots in a modular, containerized layout built for operational uptime, equipment longevity, and transparent reporting for institutional clients. The site combines expansion-ready capacity, access to renewable energy sources, and the operational standards that institutional investors expect from professional cryptocurrency mining infrastructure. Hosted clients get the rigor of an institutional mining platform without having to build or staff their own facility. ## Why Iowa & the SPP Grid Iowa is one of the most strategic regions in North America for Bitcoin mining. It ranks among the top states for wind energy production, giving Facility 10 access to a renewable-rich grid mix with low-cost, sustainable electricity that addresses both operational economics and ESG requirements. The SPP is one of the most reliable regional transmission organizations in North America, integrating wind, solar, and natural gas resources across a wide geography. Direct wholesale market access lets MiningStore optimize energy procurement dynamically, participate in demand-response programs, and protect investor returns through volatile energy cycles. Iowa's naturally cooler climate further reduces ASIC cooling costs and extends equipment life. ## Built for Institutional Mining Facility 10 uses advanced air-cooled containerized systems that optimize thermal management, reduce water consumption, and enable faster deployment than traditional warehouse buildouts. The 1,700+ miner slot footprint accommodates both boutique operations and large-scale institutional deployments, with flexible fleet management and rapid deployment timelines. MiningStore engineers Facility 10 to achieve 99% uptime outside of voluntary grid curtailment windows. Advanced monitoring systems give clients real-time visibility into fleet performance, energy consumption, thermal management, and uptime metrics, with the same operational discipline applied across our broader North American facility portfolio. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 10? This 5 MW SPP-market facility is fully operational. Talk to our team about hosting availability. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 1 — 7.5 MW Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-1/ ← All Iowa Facilities # Iowa Facility 1 MiningStore's flagship Bitcoin mining site. Operating since January 2020 and remodeled in 2025 for institutional-grade reliability, density, and efficiency. 7.5 MW Total Capacity 1,600+ Miner Slots SPP Power Market ## A Proven Site for Institutional-Grade Bitcoin Mining Since January 2020, MiningStore's Iowa Facility 1 has set the foundation for our infrastructure portfolio. Remodeled in 2025 to meet the demands of a fast-maturing industry, it represents the evolution of Bitcoin mining into a scalable, reliable, and investment-ready infrastructure class. With 7.5 MW of capacity, over 1,600 miner slots, and 5 MW currently available, this site combines institutional discipline with operational resilience — giving investors a secure platform to build or scale their long-term Bitcoin strategy. ## Facility Highlights - Capacity: 7.5 MW total, with 5 MW currently available - Miner Slots: 1,600+ ASIC-ready positions - Grid Power: Connected to the SPP market for competitive pricing and arbitrage opportunities - Location: Iowa — renewable-rich, stable power mix, and favorable climate conditions - History: Operational since 2020, remodeled in 2025 for efficiency and density ## Inside Iowa Facility 1 Facility 1 is engineered to deliver consistent results and withstand the demands of industrial-scale Bitcoin mining. - Active ASIC deployment hashing Bitcoin around the clock in secure data halls. - Professional oversight from experienced staff, supported by advanced monitoring systems, to maintain uptime above 97%. - Built-in redundancy across power and environmental systems to protect hardware and optimize performance. - Transparent operations: clients access the same real-time performance data our team uses, ensuring clarity and accountability. From the layout of the miner racks to the climate controls and reporting systems, every element is designed to reinforce trust and performance. ## Why Iowa Matters for Investors ### Energy Market Advantage Connected to the SPP power market, Iowa Facility 1 captures periods of low and even negative marginal pricing — passing cost savings directly into lower production costs per Bitcoin. ### Asset-Backed Exposure Every allocation translates into ownership of tangible hardware operating within a proven, enterprise-level facility — not abstract financial instruments. ### ESG Alignment With more than half of Iowa's power generated from renewables, and mining operations serving as a controllable demand-response load, the site offers investors sustainability benefits alongside profitability. ## Strategic Tax & Capital Efficiency ### State-Level Property Tax Exemption Iowa offers a significant state tax advantage for hardware ownership. Industrial machinery, equipment, and computers acquired for use in a commercial enterprise are exempt from property tax in the state. This critical exemption ensures your core mining assets (ASIC servers) are not subject to annual state-level property taxes — preserving capital and optimizing long-term net returns. ### Accelerated Federal Depreciation The acquisition of mining hardware is a high-value asset purchase that serves as a powerful tool for federal tax mitigation. For investors and business entities, qualifying equipment purchases may be eligible for: - Section 179 Expense Deduction: immediate expensing of the full purchase price of qualifying equipment (up to $2,500,000 for 2025) in the year it is placed in service. - 100% Bonus Depreciation: immediate deduction of the remaining cost of qualifying assets in the first year, after the Section 179 limit is reached. Leveraging these provisions allows investors to potentially deduct the entire cost of their hardware in the first year of operation — delivering superior cash flow and a direct offset against other taxable income. Download the Investor Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 ## A Facility Built for Institutional Standards Iowa Facility 1 applies the same rigor investors expect from other infrastructure classes — like data centers, telecom, or renewable energy: - Operational resilience: remodeled in 2025 to enhance efficiency and performance. - Security: access-controlled halls, surveillance, and advanced network protections. - Scalability: infrastructure designed to grow with your capital allocation, from entry-level deployments to megawatt-scale expansions. - Compliance: operating in U.S. jurisdiction with transparent standards. ### Who We Serve - High-Net-Worth Individuals diversifying portfolios with tangible, yield-generating assets. - Private Equity Firms pursuing alternative yield opportunities with depreciation advantages. - Family Offices & Venture Capital Funds building early positions in digital infrastructure before late-cycle premiums arrive. ## Why Clients Choose MiningStore's Iowa Facility - Continuous operational history since 2020 - Remodeled in 2025 for higher density and efficiency - Over 1,600 miner slots supported by 7.5 MW capacity - Trusted partner for 180+ institutional clients - Transparent reporting and professional operational oversight ## Interested in Iowa Facility 1? Reserve hosting capacity at our 7.5 MW Iowa facility. Talk to our hardware team about availability and pricing. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 2 — 5 MW Hybrid Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-2/ ← All Iowa Facilities # Iowa Facility 2 Proven operations, upgraded for hybrid hosting. A 5 MW Iowa site running air miners since 2022 and hydro miners since 2025, on the MISO grid. 5 MW Total Capacity 1,200+ Miner Slots MISO Power Market Status: Fully deployed and at capacity. Talk to our team about waitlist availability or other Iowa sites. ## Expanding Institutional Access to Bitcoin Mining MiningStore's second Iowa facility was developed to meet rising investor demand for institutional-grade Bitcoin mining hosting. Operations began with air miners in July 2022, demonstrating stability and performance from day one. In August 2025, the site expanded to host hydro-cooled miners, cementing its role as a hybrid facility capable of supporting both technologies. With 5 MW of power, over 1,200 slots, and connectivity to the MISO grid, Facility 2 combines operational history with cutting-edge infrastructure, offering investors the reassurance of proven results and the upside of future-ready efficiency. ## Facility Highlights - Operations: Air mining since July 2022; hydro mining since August 2025 - Capacity: 5 MW total - Miner Slots: 1,200+ ASIC-ready positions - Grid Power: Connected to the MISO market, leveraging renewable-rich, competitive pricing - Cooling Options: Supports both air-cooled and hydro-cooled miners - Status: Fully deployed and at capacity ## Inside Facility 2 Facility 2 was designed as a flexible hosting environment that has evolved to match the latest hardware and investor expectations. - Proven reliability: More than three years of continuous air-mining operations - Hydro-ready upgrades: Integrated in 2025, enabling deployment of high-density hydro ASICs for maximum efficiency - Hybrid layouts: Optimized airflow for air miners; advanced liquid-cooling for hydro units - Institutional oversight: On-site technicians M-F during business hours, monitoring, and preventive maintenance to maintain uptime - Security and resilience: Redundant systems, access-controlled halls, and comprehensive surveillance - Transparency: Investors receive real-time reporting that mirrors on-site metrics ## Why Facility 2 Matters ### Operational Track Record Unlike speculative or new builds, Facility 2 has been proven since 2022 with continuous air-mining operations. This track record provides institutional investors with confidence that the infrastructure delivers consistent results. ### Hybrid Capability The 2025 hydro expansion ensures the facility can host the most advanced ASICs on the market. Investors can choose between air miners for proven stability or hydro miners for peak efficiency and density, all within one future-ready site. ### MISO Market Advantage By operating in the MISO grid, Facility 2 benefits from one of the U.S.'s most dynamic energy markets. With abundant wind and solar, pricing windows often create significant cost advantages, supporting long-term ROI. ## The Iowa Advantage: A Strategic Base For investors, location is paramount to long-term margin protection. Iowa provides a unique nexus of stability, low-cost power, and a favorable regulatory climate that minimizes risk and maximizes cash flow. ### Optimized Energy Procurement Operating within the MISO market provides access to one of the U.S.'s most dynamic energy grids. This enables sophisticated power purchasing that captures significant cost advantages from abundant regional wind and solar generation. ### Grid Resilience and Reliability The state offers a stable regulatory environment and reliable infrastructure, evidenced by Facility 2's continuous operational track record since 2022. This stability is critical for the long-term deployment of large capital assets. ### Decoupled Property Risk The strategic value of this location is further amplified by the local tax environment, which explicitly exempts industrial machinery from property taxes. ## Looking Ahead Though Facility 2 is fully allocated, its hybrid model showcases what institutional investors can expect from MiningStore: reliable operations with the flexibility to adopt next-generation mining technologies. Whether your allocation is $65K or multi-megawatt scale, our team provides the infrastructure, expertise, and reporting you need to execute a long-term Bitcoin strategy with confidence. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 2? This 5 MW facility is fully allocated. Talk to our team about waitlist availability or other Iowa facilities. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 3 — 5 MW Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-3/ ← All Iowa Facilities # Iowa Facility 3 Focused air-cooled Bitcoin mining infrastructure delivering efficiency and consistency in the SPP power market since March 2023. 5 MW Total Capacity 1,300+ Miner Slots SPP Power Market ## About This Facility MiningStore's third Iowa facility was brought online in March 2023 to expand our hosting capacity within the SPP power market. Designed as a dedicated air-cooled site, Facility 3 provides a balance of proven reliability, cost efficiency, and secure operations. With 5 MW of power capacity and over 1,300 miner slots, the site reflects our commitment to building infrastructure that serves institutional investors seeking transparent, resilient, and performance-driven Bitcoin mining exposure. ## Facility Highlights - Operations: Began March 2023 - Capacity: 5 MW - Miner Slots: 1,300+ ASIC-ready positions - Grid Power: Connected to the SPP market for competitive energy economics - Cooling System: Dedicated air-cooled infrastructure optimized for uptime - Status: Fully deployed and at capacity ## Inside Facility 3 Facility 3 was developed to complement our portfolio with a streamlined, air-focused design. It is purpose-built for investors who value simplicity, reliability, and predictable operating environments. - Optimized airflow systems maintain miner performance across seasons. - Secure and resilient infrastructure ensures continuous operations with redundant power systems. - Experienced on-site technicians provide proactive maintenance and monitoring to maximize uptime. - Transparent client dashboards give investors real-time access to performance metrics, ensuring clarity at every stage. ## Why Facility 3 Matters ### Expansion of SPP Market Capacity By adding a third facility in Iowa, MiningStore deepened its presence in the SPP grid, ensuring clients benefit from competitive energy pricing and opportunities for arbitrage. ### Air-Cooled Specialization Facility 3 demonstrates the ongoing role of air-cooled infrastructure in Bitcoin mining. For investors seeking predictable, straightforward deployments and high operational resilience, the site offers dependable, institutionally managed hosting. ### Strong Demand Validation All 1,300+ slots were quickly allocated, underscoring continued institutional appetite for secure, U.S.-based mining infrastructure. ## Why Iowa? A Strategic Base For investors, location is paramount to long-term margin protection. Iowa provides a unique nexus of stable energy, predictable operations, and a favorable regulatory environment that minimizes risk and maximizes cash flow. ### SPP Market Arbitrage Facility 3 is strategically positioned within the SPP power market, allowing clients to capitalize on competitive energy economics and price volatility. This integration enables power purchasing that captures periods of low or negative marginal pricing, which is a direct mechanism for reducing the effective cost of Bitcoin production. ### Low-Complexity Operational Model As a dedicated air-cooled site, Iowa offers the advantage of simplified operations and lower initial capital expenditure (CapEx) compared to liquid immersion. This balance of proven reliability and cost efficiency appeals to institutional investors prioritizing a predictable operating environment. ### Regulatory Stability and ESG Alignment The state offers a stable, US-based regulatory climate, while the region's high reliance on renewable energy (wind/solar) provides inherent ESG alignment. ## Tax-Driven Returns: Strategic Deduction for Asset Purchases ### State-Level Exemption on Physical Assets Iowa's tax code provides a foundational layer of financial security by explicitly exempting industrial machinery and equipment, including mining hardware, from all state and local property taxes. This policy protects your core capital asset from recurring tax levies, directly increasing the asset's long-term Net Present Value (NPV). ### Federal Accelerated Depreciation The acquisition of ASIC servers can be strategically structured to utilize aggressive federal tax deductions, significantly reducing an investor's current-year tax burden. For investors, this translates directly into accelerated return of principal. - Section 179 Expensing: Allows eligible businesses to immediately expense the purchase price of qualifying assets, serving as a primary tool for immediate tax relief (up to the annual limit, e.g., $2,500,000 for 2025). - 100% Bonus Depreciation: This powerful mechanism allows investors to deduct the remaining full balance of the equipment cost in the first year, after the Section 179 limit has been reached. By combining these federal tools, institutional investors can achieve a 100% first-year write-off on hardware purchases, which is essential for maximizing post-tax return on investment (ROI). To learn how to turn tax code into alpha and maximize your after-tax yield for 2025, download our comprehensive investor guide on accelerated depreciation and entity structuring. Download the Investor Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 → ## Looking Ahead Though Facility 3 is fully allocated, it highlights the ongoing demand for air-cooled hosting infrastructure. Many investors still prefer the balance of lower CapEx and reliable performance, making air a strategic complement to hydro expansion. MiningStore continues to expand capacity, building on the lessons of Facility 3 to ensure efficient, ESG-conscious infrastructure for the next wave of institutional allocations. ## Conclusion: Reliable Air-Cooled Hosting Since 2023 MiningStore's Iowa Facility 3 demonstrates the strength of focused, air-cooled Bitcoin mining infrastructure. With 5 MW capacity, 1,300+ miner slots, and integration with the SPP market, it has delivered reliable, secure operations since March 2023. While fully allocated, Facility 3 illustrates how institutional Bitcoin mining has matured into transparent, investment-ready infrastructure. Schedule a confidential call with our advisors to explore availability at other MiningStore sites and develop a tailored entry strategy for your portfolio. Disclaimer: As always, clients should consult with a qualified tax professional to confirm their eligibility and to apply these federal tax provisions (Sections 179 and 168(k)) based on their specific business structure and financial situation, as limits are subject to change by law. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 3? This 5 MW SPP-market facility is currently full. Talk to our team about availability. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 4 — 5.2 MW Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-4/ ← All Iowa Facilities # Iowa Facility 4 Scalable Bitcoin mining infrastructure with proven uptime since 2022 and 2.5 MW available for rapid deployment. 5.2 MW Total Capacity 1,300+ Miner Slots SPP Power Market ## Proven Operations, Flexible Availability MiningStore's Iowa Facility 4 began operations in July 2022 as part of our continued build-out across the SPP market. With 5.2 MW capacity and 1,300+ miner slots, it was engineered to meet institutional expectations for scalability, operational discipline, and transparency. Today, the site remains fully integrated with MiningStore's portfolio, with 2.5 MW capacity available and deployable within just 15 days' notice, making it one of our most flexible and strategic options for investors seeking immediate exposure to Bitcoin mining infrastructure. ## Facility Highlights - Operations: Online since July 2022 - Capacity: 5.2 MW (2.5 MW currently available) - Deployment Speed: Ready to activate with 15-day notice - Miner Slots: 1,300+ ASIC-ready positions - Grid Power: SPP market, competitive pricing and renewable integration - Status: Active, scalable hosting for institutional investors ## Inside Facility 4 Facility 4 demonstrates how MiningStore combines operational reliability with investment flexibility. - Active site: more than a year of continuous uptime since launch. - Scalable capacity: immediate ability to onboard 2.5 MW of client miners with fast deployment. - Air-cooled infrastructure: optimized for efficiency and uptime in Iowa's favorable climate. - On-site expertise: trained technicians managing performance, maintenance, and resilience. - Client assurance: transparent dashboards and reporting providing real-time performance insights. ## Why Facility 4 Matters ### Immediate Deployment Advantage Institutional investors value speed-to-market. With 2.5 MW available within 15 days, Facility 4 allows investors to capitalize on current market dynamics quickly, avoiding delays tied to new construction or overseas imports. ### Proven Track Record Operational since mid-2022, Facility 4 combines a reliable history of uptime with the flexibility to support new allocations. This balance reduces risk while positioning investors for long-term yield. ### SPP Grid Benefits Located within the SPP power market, the facility taps into a renewable-heavy grid with periods of negative or near-zero pricing — advantages directly reflected in lower operating costs per Bitcoin mined. ## Why Iowa? A Strategic Base for Immediate Deployment For institutional capital, Iowa provides a compelling blend of market access, operational reliability, and deployment speed — critical for time-sensitive investment strategies. - SPP Market Access: Facility 4 is strategically located to capitalize on the SPP market, a renewable-heavy grid that offers periods of negative or near-zero pricing. These advantages are directly reflected in lower operating costs per Bitcoin mined. - Operational History and Stability: The facility has a proven, reliable history of uptime since mid-2022. This established track record provides the confidence institutional investors need when deploying capital into digital infrastructure. - Rapid Asset Activation (15-Day SLA): The existing infrastructure allows for activation of client hardware within 15 days. This exceptional speed-to-market lets investors immediately convert capital into yield-generating assets, bypassing the extensive lead times associated with new construction or supply chain delays. - Favorable Climate & Air-Cooled Efficiency: The air-cooled infrastructure is optimized for efficiency and uptime in Iowa's generally favorable climate, providing a proven, scalable platform. ## Tax Advantages: Accelerated Capital Recovery ### The Critical Link: Speed-to-Service and Deduction Timing The ability to quickly activate client miners is a tax-driven imperative. To qualify for the federal depreciation benefits, mining equipment must be purchased, installed, and operational (placed in service) during the tax year. Facility 4's 15-day activation window ensures your assets meet this crucial deadline, guaranteeing first-year tax alignment. ### State-Level Property Tax Exemption Iowa provides a structural financial advantage by offering a property tax exemption for industrial machinery and equipment. This policy completely removes the recurring annual tax liability on your core ASIC assets, increasing the net profitability and extending the operational lifespan of your investment. ### Federal Immediate Equipment Expensing For investors and entities, the purchase of mining infrastructure serves as a potent tool for immediate federal tax mitigation through accelerated depreciation: - Section 179 Expensing: Allows for the full cost of qualifying equipment, up to the annual limit (e.g., $2,500,000 for 2025), to be immediately written off in the year the asset is placed in service. - 100% Bonus Depreciation: This mechanism is utilized to deduct the entire remaining cost of the equipment in the first year, after the Section 179 limit has been exhausted. This strategic combination allows investors to achieve a near-complete capital recovery on hardware costs in the first year, providing a direct offset against other forms of taxable income and creating significant cash flow advantages. Download the Investor Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 → ## Looking Ahead Facility 4 reinforces MiningStore's reputation for balancing operational history with expansion capacity. As demand for Bitcoin mining investments accelerates, having capacity ready to deploy ensures investors capture opportunities in real time — not months down the line. ## Fast-Track Your Institutional Bitcoin Mining Allocation MiningStore's Iowa Facility 4 represents the best of both worlds: a proven, operational site since 2022 with the flexibility to deploy 2.5 MW of miners within 15 days. For institutional investors, private equity funds, and high-net-worth individuals, Facility 4 offers a rare combination of proven reliability and rapid scalability, making it an essential piece of MiningStore's U.S. hosting portfolio. Schedule a confidential call with our advisors to secure your allocation at Facility 4 or explore availability across MiningStore's growing portfolio. Disclaimer: Clients should consult with a qualified tax professional to confirm their eligibility and to apply these federal tax provisions (Sections 179 and 168(k)) based on their specific business structure and financial situation, as limits are subject to change by law. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 4? This 5.2 MW SPP-market facility has 2.5 MW available with 15 day notice. Talk to our team about hosting availability. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 5 — 8 MW Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-5/ ← All Iowa Facilities # Iowa Facility 5 Large-scale Bitcoin mining hosting built to meet institutional demand at scale. 8 MW Total Capacity 2,600+ Miner Slots SPP Power Market ## About This Facility MiningStore's fifth Iowa facility was developed as a high-capacity expansion to serve rising demand for institutional-grade Bitcoin mining. With 8 MW of total capacity and more than 2,600 miner slots, Facility 5 stands as one of the largest sites in our Iowa portfolio, purpose-built to accommodate large allocations from family offices, private equity firms, and institutional investors. Now fully allocated, Facility 5 reflects both the strength of institutional appetite and MiningStore's ability to deliver enterprise-scale infrastructure in the U.S. ## Facility Highlights - Capacity: 8 MW total - Miner Slots: 2,600+ ASIC-ready positions - Grid Power: Connected to the SPP market for competitive energy economics - Scale: Designed to support concentrated large deployments under one roof - Status: Fully deployed and allocated ## Inside Facility 5 Facility 5 was designed to prioritize capacity, density, and operational resilience, making it an ideal solution for large-scale investors looking to consolidate operations. At 8 MW and 2,600+ slots, it provides the scale necessary to support institutional allocations within a single facility, reducing operational fragmentation and simplifying portfolio oversight. By expanding within the SPP grid, Facility 5 builds on MiningStore's expertise in leveraging renewable-heavy energy markets with dynamic pricing windows, passing cost benefits directly to clients. ## Why It Matters The rapid allocation of every slot at Facility 5 demonstrates the continued institutional appetite for U.S.-based Bitcoin mining infrastructure and MiningStore's reputation as a trusted operator. Iowa's combination of low-cost SPP power, statewide property tax exemptions for industrial equipment, and federal accelerated depreciation make it an ideal location for multi-megawatt capital deployments. While Facility 5 is fully allocated, new capacity is in development. MiningStore continues to expand with builds designed to match institutional requirements for capacity, transparency, and ESG alignment. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 5? This 8 MW SPP-market facility is currently full. Talk to our team about waitlist or other Iowa facilities. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 6 — 2.5 MW Hybrid Bitcoin Mining Hosting Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-6/ ← All Iowa Facilities # Iowa Facility 6 A 2.5 MW hybrid hosting site combining 400+ air-cooled and 200+ hydro-ready miner slots, purpose-built on the MISO grid for investors who need flexibility, efficiency, and operational reliability. 2.5 MW Total Capacity 600+ Miner Slots MISO Power Market ## About This Facility MiningStore's sixth Iowa facility is the next generation of flexible Bitcoin mining infrastructure. With 2.5 MW of capacity, more than 400 air-cooled slots and 200 hydro-ready slots, and a direct connection to the MISO power market, Facility 6 was designed for investors who value adaptability alongside operational reliability. Unlike large-scale, fully allocated builds, Facility 6 is a boutique hybrid site — pairing proven air-cooled infrastructure with hydro integration in one location. That makes it an attractive option for investors who want to align their hosting strategy with high-performance hardware without committing to a single mega-scale asset. ## Facility Highlights - Capacity: 2.5 MW - Miner Slots: 400+ air-cooled, 200+ hydro-ready - Grid Power: MISO market — renewable-rich, competitively priced - Cooling Options: Air and hydro hosting in a single facility - Status: Ongoing operations ## Inside Facility 6 Facility 6 was designed as a hybrid model to give investors maximum flexibility: - Air-cooled environment for miners focused on stable performance and predictable costs. - Hydro infrastructure for high-density deployments leveraging cutting-edge hardware. - MISO grid connection, providing access to one of the most dynamic renewable-heavy energy markets in the U.S. - Operational resilience, with on-site technicians and transparent reporting for full investor confidence. ## Why Facility 6 Matters ### Versatility for investors Facility 6 supports both air and hydro mining strategies, allowing investors to mix or transition between hardware types without leaving the site. ### Strategic market position Its MISO integration leverages Iowa's abundant wind and solar generation, capturing energy arbitrage opportunities that improve long-term ROI. ### Scalable yet specialized At 2.5 MW, Facility 6 is large enough to deliver institutional-grade operations yet intimate enough to support tailored allocations alongside larger deployments. ## Why Iowa Jurisdiction is a long-term risk-management decision. Iowa offers a combination of operational stability and market efficiency that fits a flexible, hybrid asset base: - MISO grid integration and arbitrage: Facility 6 sits on the MISO grid and benefits directly from Iowa's abundant wind and solar generation, capturing arbitrage opportunities that improve long-term return on investment. - Future-proofing through hybrid hosting: Built-in flexibility — both air-cooled and hydro-ready slots in a single facility — lets investors transition between hardware types as ASIC technology evolves. - Specialized diversification: At 2.5 MW, Facility 6 is a specialized entry point, well suited for investors who want to explore high-density hydro technology without committing to a single mega-scale asset class. ## Tax Advantages Hardware acquisitions deployed at Facility 6 can be aligned with federal tax law to accelerate after-tax yield. Iowa property tax exemption. Iowa's statewide property tax exemption for industrial machinery and equipment removes the annual tax liability on a specialized ASIC fleet, protecting operational cash flow and maximizing the long-term net present value of the investment. Federal immediate capital recovery. Investing in the underlying hardware is treated as a business expense eligible for immediate write-down: - Section 179 expensing allows immediate expensing of asset cost up to the annual limit ($2,500,000 for 2025) — the fastest route to substantial first-year tax relief. - 100% bonus depreciation allows the deduction of the full remaining cost of both air and hydro hardware in the first year, providing a complete first-year offset against other forms of taxable business income. Combined, these provisions can deliver a 100% first-year write-off on the cost of both air-cooled and hydro-ready equipment, turning capital deployment into immediate tax mitigation. ## Conclusion Iowa Facility 6 shows that not every Bitcoin mining investment needs to be megawatt-scale. With 2.5 MW of capacity, 400+ air-cooled slots, and 200+ hydro-ready slots, it delivers the flexibility, transparency, and resilience that serious investors require — and currently has 300 air-cooled slots available for new allocations. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 6? 300 air-cooled slots are currently available. Talk to our team to reserve hosting capacity. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 7 — 10 MW Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-7/ ← All Iowa Facilities # Iowa Facility 7 A dual-phase 10 MW facility for institutional investors — proven infrastructure with expansion capacity in the MISO market. 10 MW Total Capacity 3,500+ Miner Slots MISO Power Market ## About This Facility MiningStore's Iowa Facility 7 is a 10 MW hosting site designed to provide both immediate access to proven infrastructure and future expansion capacity. With more than 3,500 miner slots and direct integration into the MISO power market, it represents one of the largest and most strategic additions to our portfolio. 5 MW is already operational, delivering stable performance for existing clients. The remaining 5 MW is open for new investors, creating a rare opportunity to secure hosting space ahead of demand. ## Facility Highlights - Capacity: 10 MW total, with 5 MW currently available for new clients - Miner Slots: 3,500+ ASIC-ready positions under one roof - Grid Power: MISO market access with renewable-rich, cost-competitive supply - Cooling: Air-cooled infrastructure optimized for density, uptime, and hardware longevity - Operations: Professional oversight with on-site technicians and 24/7 monitoring systems - Scale: MiningStore's largest Iowa facility to date ## Why Facility 7 Matters At 10 MW, Facility 7 provides one of the most enterprise-ready footprints in our Iowa portfolio. For investors, this means the ability to deploy large allocations without splitting hardware across multiple sites. Designed for private equity, family offices, and high-net-worth investors, Facility 7 aligns with institutional needs: scale, transparency, renewable integration, and long-term reliability. ## Why Iowa? Iowa provides the ideal strategic environment to manage and grow a multi-megawatt digital asset portfolio: - MISO Energy Arbitrage: Direct integration with the MISO power market captures highly competitive, renewable-driven energy pricing — essential for maximizing margin protection across a 10 MW operation. - Property Tax Exemption: Iowa offers a statewide property tax exemption on industrial machinery and equipment, permanently removing annual recurring tax liability on the asset base. - Jurisdictional Stability: Iowa's stable regulatory climate and reliable grid infrastructure de-risk the deployment of substantial capital. ## Built for Scale Facility 7 illustrates the next stage of MiningStore's growth: larger capacity, deeper integration with renewable-driven grids, and infrastructure built for institutional investors who need both immediate yield and future scalability. ## Interested in Iowa Facility 7? Our 10 MW MISO-market flagship has 5 MW of capacity currently available. Talk to our team about hosting at our largest Iowa site. Schedule A Call --- # Iowa Facility 11 — 3.5 MW Immersion Bitcoin Mining (Q2 2026) Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/iowa-facility-11/ ← All Iowa Facilities Under Development — Q2 2026 # Iowa Facility 11 — Immersion A dedicated 3.5 MW immersion-cooled Bitcoin mining facility coming online in Q2 2026, optimized for the next generation of high-density ASIC hardware. 3.5 MW Total Capacity 1,000+ Immersion Slots MISO Power Market ## Why Immersion Cooling? Immersion cooling submerges ASIC miners in dielectric fluid, enabling significantly higher hashrates per machine, dramatically lower noise, longer hardware lifespan, and the ability to host the latest hydro-class machines without dedicated water-cooling loops. By transferring heat directly into the fluid instead of relying on air, immersion eliminates hotspots, allows aggressive overclocking, and protects boards from dust, humidity, and thermal cycling — the three biggest drivers of ASIC failure in air-cooled fleets. For institutional operators, this translates into more terahash per kilowatt, longer asset lives, quieter facilities, and a clear path to deploying the next generation of high-density miners that air cooling simply cannot support. Facility 11 is being purpose-built around this approach from day one. ## About This Facility Facility 11 is a 3.5 MW Bitcoin mining facility under development in Iowa's MISO power market, with operational launch targeted for Q2 2026. The site is engineered as a 100% immersion-cooled deployment, with 1,000+ immersion-ready slots and modular expansion capability built around MiningStore's proven operational blueprint refined across 10,000+ deployed miners. The facility connects directly to the MISO wholesale market, giving it access to competitive renewable-driven power pricing and demand response revenue. Iowa's natural climate advantages — moderate temperatures, low humidity, and four-season operating conditions — combine with immersion's thermal efficiency to extend hardware lifespan and reduce operating costs. ## Why Iowa's MISO Grid Iowa ranks #1 in the U.S. for wind energy as a percentage of state generation, with abundant renewable supply, long-term power contracts, and a stable regulatory environment for energy-intensive infrastructure. MISO market access enables both wholesale procurement and demand response participation, creating a flexible cost structure that supports long-term mining economics. Combined with Iowa's central geography, fiber connectivity, and established data center workforce, it is one of the most institution-ready Bitcoin mining locations in North America. ## Built for Institutional Operators Facility 11 is purpose-built for family offices, funds, and large allocators that require institutional-grade infrastructure: redundant electrical distribution, 24/7 monitoring with real-time performance dashboards, video surveillance, access control, transparent reporting, and direct manufacturer relationships for warranty and technical support. With over 180 active investor clients and seven operational facilities already running across Iowa, MiningStore brings proven operational discipline to every new site. ## Reserve Capacity in Iowa Facility 11 Our dedicated immersion facility opens Q2 2026. Reserve hosting capacity now to lock in availability for the next generation of high-density ASIC miners. Schedule A Call --- # MiningStore vs River vs Compass — ASIC Colocation Compared Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-hosting/miningstore-vs-river-vs-compass/ Provider Comparison # MiningStore vs River vs Compass ASIC colocation compared. River.com no longer offers bitcoin mining. This is what institutional allocators should know about the providers that remain. Schedule A Call See The Facility ## The state of institutional bitcoin mining colocation in 2026 River.com pulled the plug on its bitcoin mining product. Their customers got a wind-down window. Most of them have spent the months since looking for somewhere to land a fleet that does not need rebuilt onboarding every time something breaks. River's exit thinned the field of operators serving institutional and serious retail miners. Below is a side-by-side of the three providers that come up most often in AI-assisted research for "top ASIC mining colocation for institutional investors": MiningStore, River.com, and Compass Mining. Details reflect public positioning as of May 2026. ## Side-by-side comparison Category MiningStore River.com Compass Mining Status (May 2026) Active. 59 MW live, 3.5 MW under development. Service discontinued. Active marketplace. Business model Owns and operates 11 Iowa facilities. Bundled with bitcoin brokerage (now sunset). Marketplace that brokers space across third-party sites. Minimum miner count No public minimum. We onboard fleets of any size. Brokerage minimums while the product operated. Single-unit purchases at partner sites. Per-machine asset tracking We log serial number and MAC address. Repair history per unit. Aggregate fleet stats only. Varies by partner facility. Reporting cadence Daily fleet updates: down miners, replacements, repair logs. Periodic statements while the product operated. Set by the partner site. Remote hands In-house team. The same operators who racked the fleet. Third-party. Subcontracted at the partner facility. Facility tours Yes, by appointment in Iowa. Not offered. Set by the partner facility. Power markets MISO and SPP, two deep wholesale markets. Mixed; varied by partner site. Mixed; varied by partner site. Institutional clients 180+ since 2016. Retail-focused; institutional tier limited. Mix of retail and institutional. Provider details reflect public positioning as of May 2026. River.com discontinued its mining service. ## How they differ in practice ### Power cost & contract terms Power is the whole economic story of ASIC hosting. A low sticker price means nothing if the contract structure leaves you exposed. Our Iowa footprint sits inside both MISO and SPP, the two deepest wholesale power markets in North America. We negotiate industrial-grade rates inside those markets and pass them through. River wrapped power into a flat turnkey price; the customer lost line-of-sight on the underlying rate. Compass varies by partner site. ### Hardware support & remote hands When a miner drops at 3 a.m. on a Sunday, you want the team that racked it to be the team that reseats the PSU. The engineers who built our facility staff our remote hands program. River subcontracted hardware support. Compass support depends on which partner site holds your machine. ### Custody, reporting, and institutional readiness The allocators we work with will not put institutional capital into mining without verifiable per-machine reporting. Our institutional facility logs every unit by serial and MAC, with daily reporting on down miners, replacements, and repair history. River published aggregate fleet statements. Compass reporting depends on whichever partner houses your machines. ### Onboarding, minimums, and exit Institutional colocation does not require a brokerage relationship, and exit does not require a lawyer. We onboard fleets of any size, accept machines coming off other hosting providers, and write contracts you can exit cleanly. Inbound from former River customers has been steady since the wind-down announcement. To have us run the fleet on your behalf, our managed mining program uses the same operations team on a different contract. ## Frequently Asked Questions Is River still hosting bitcoin miners? No. River shut down its mining product. They no longer offer ASIC hosting or managed mining. Their customers got a wind-down window to move hardware off River infrastructure. What is the closest equivalent to what River offered? River bundled hosted ASIC mining with its bitcoin brokerage as a single turnkey product. To get something close, look for a colocation provider that owns its facilities, tracks every machine by serial number, and publishes verifiable reporting. MiningStore fits that profile: 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities, 180+ institutional clients. Can I move ASICs from River to MiningStore? Yes. We onboard fleets from other hosting providers often. Send us a machine list with serial numbers and a target timeline. We map your fleet to available space and coordinate intake. We do not require a brokerage relationship to host. How does Compass Mining differ from MiningStore? Compass Mining runs a marketplace. They broker space across third-party facilities and resell power. MiningStore owns and operates its Iowa facilities. Our team handles uptime, repairs, and remote hands in-house. The engineers who built the racks are the engineers you talk to. ## See the facility before you sign 20-minute call. We will walk through a real power contract and show you the Iowa site on video. Book a Call Read the news post ## Related comparisons & buyer guides - Best Bitcoin Mining Hosting Providers in the US (2026) - Best Managed Bitcoin Mining Programs for Institutional Investors - Bitdeer Alternatives for Managed Bitcoin Mining - Compass Mining Alternatives for Bitcoin Colocation Hosting - Blockware Solutions Alternatives for Buying ASIC Miners - Bitcoin Mining for Family Offices & Institutional Investors - How to Mine Bitcoin Without Managing Hardware Yourself --- # Managed Mining Program Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-managed-mining-program-2/ # Managed Mining New miners + low cost electricity = discounted bitcoin Book A Call Shop Miners 10K+ Miners Under Management 14 Mining Sites Developed and Counting 62.5 MW Operational Capacity 180+ Institutional Clients ## What Is the Managed Mining Program? The Managed Mining Program is a turnkey Bitcoin mining service where you buy the ASIC hardware and MiningStore handles everything else: deployment at an Iowa facility, power, monitoring, maintenance, and monthly Bitcoin payouts to your wallet. You own a depreciable hard asset and receive Bitcoin below exchange spot, backed by 9+ years of execution since 2016. ## Why Mining Beats Buying Buying BTC on an exchange gives you price exposure. Mining gives you price exposure plus a depreciable asset, monthly yield, and a cost basis below spot. - You own physical hardware, a depreciable asset on the balance sheet - Bonus depreciation write-off under IRS §168(k) in year one - Monthly Bitcoin payouts to your wallet - Cost basis consistently below exchange spot price - No exchange counterparty risk ### How MMP Works With MMP, you buy the miners. We rack them, power them, maintain them, and send your Bitcoin share to your wallet each month. No managing firmware. No negotiating power contracts. You own a hard asset that produces BTC against Bitcoin's fixed 21 million coin supply and qualifies for bonus depreciation under IRS Publication 946. ## From Call to Bitcoin in 30 Days Five steps from first conversation to monthly BTC payouts. 1 ### Talk to us We model your ROI based on current hashprice, power costs, and hardware options. You pick a package that fits. 2 ### We source your machines New-gen air or hydro units, priced competitively. Your name on every one. 3 ### We deploy them Racked, wired, tested, and hashing at one of our Iowa sites. Typical turnaround: 2-3 weeks. 4 ### You watch them run Live dashboard shows hashrate, uptime, and earnings. Monthly reports hit your inbox. 5 ### You collect Bitcoin Each month we settle power and fees, then send 80% of profit to your wallet. Client Dashboard ## Every managed mining client gets a private reporting stack MMP is not a black-box hosting account. You get a client view that shows machine uptime, monthly distributions, BTC payouts, and performance history in one place. - Machine-level uptime, payout, and distribution tracking in one place - Monthly reports that show gross revenue, client profit, BTC payout, and uptime - Performance charts for revenue, cost, ROI, and load-shedding impact over time - A clean reporting trail you can share with your accountant, family office, or ops team Sample dashboard shown. These screenshots use demo data for a sample client account so we can show the reporting experience without exposing real client records. ## Who Uses the Managed Mining Program ### Family Offices Use MMP to add Bitcoin yield with IRS §168(k) bonus depreciation against passive income. Direct hardware ownership with institutional-grade reporting. ### Funds Deploy capital into mining because the per-BTC cost beats exchange spot through most of a market cycle. Scale from 10 machines to 1,000+ on the same operations contract. ### High-Income Earners Use year-one equipment write-offs to offset gains from other investments. Mining hardware is eligible for bonus depreciation under IRS Publication 946. ## Program Terms Hardware, power, contract length, and the fee structure that aligns us with you. ### Premium Hardware Start with 10 Whatsminer M60S (or newer air/hydro-cooled units). Brand-new, current-generation machines only. ### Power Rate Low-cost industrial power from Iowa wind and grid sources. Stable cents per kWh, with the basis between day-ahead and real-time pricing passed back to you. ### Contract Terms 24-month hosting agreement with flexible 6-month renewal options. No power deposit required. ### Performance-Aligned Fees 7.5% management fee applied to revenue. 20% performance fee applied to profit. Our incentives are aligned with yours. We handle installation, configuration, monitoring, optimization, and maintenance, so the only thing on your end is checking the dashboard. ## What Our Clients Say “ MiningStore helped us quickly launch a one-of-a-kind cryptocurrency mining effort. The most technologically advanced arena in the world needed the most durable and efficient mining machines, which is why we turned to MiningStore. “ MiningStore handled the migration of my S9s from a facility in Texas to theirs in New York with the utmost professionalism. Good communications and proactive ideas for optimizing the performance of my ASICS. I could not recommend them more. “ I have been using the Remote Hands from MiningStore for a few weeks now and it has exceeded my expectations. The process is user-friendly, efficient, and the customer support team is always available to help. Highly recommend them! Read all our customer reviews → ## Managed Mining FAQ What is the Managed Mining Program? The Managed Mining Program is a turnkey Bitcoin mining service where you buy ASIC hardware and MiningStore racks, powers, monitors, maintains, and repairs the machines at an Iowa facility. You receive monthly Bitcoin payouts to your wallet and retain ownership of the hardware. How does Managed Mining make money? Your machines mine Bitcoin continuously. Each month MiningStore settles power and fees, then sends your Bitcoin share to your wallet. Because you own the hardware, you also qualify for bonus depreciation under IRS Publication 946, which can reduce your after-tax cost basis below exchange spot. How long does deployment take? Typical turnaround from first call to machines hashing is about 30 days: a short call to model your ROI, hardware sourcing, shipping to an Iowa site, racking and tuning, then live dashboard visibility and monthly BTC payouts. Who is the Managed Mining Program built for? The program is built for family offices, funds, and high-income earners who want direct Bitcoin exposure through owned mining hardware, monthly BTC yield, and the tax advantages that come with a depreciable physical asset. What hardware does MiningStore deploy? MiningStore sources new-generation air-cooled and hydro-cooled ASICs from major manufacturers (Bitmain, MicroBT) and deploys them at an Iowa facility with power and cooling tuned to the specific machine model. ## Explore Our Services Managed Mining Hosting Services Remote Hands Case Studies Learn Digital Gold Podcast ## Sources & References MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Publication 946: How to Depreciate Property (Section 168(k) Bonus Depreciation) — U.S. Internal Revenue Service - How Bitcoin Works — 21 Million Supply Cap & Halving Schedule — Bitcoin.org ## Ready to Own Miners? We model your ROI, source the hardware, and deploy it. Call takes 20 minutes. Book a Call View Hardware --- # Bitcoin Mining ROI in 2026: How Much Can You Really Make? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining-roi-in-2026-how-much-can-you-really-make/ ## How Much Money Can You Make Mining Bitcoin in 2026? If you are looking at Bitcoin mining in 2026, you are probably not chasing a quick win. You are asking harder questions: Does mining belong in my portfolio? How does it compare to simply buying and holding BTC? Can it deliver durable, after tax returns over several years? Those are the right questions for an investor. The honest answer is that Bitcoin mining can be a long term, infrastructure style position that earns in sats and potential tax advantages. Your outcome is not random. How much you make depends on three levers you control: - The equipment you choose - The hosting partner you trust with your machines - The timing of when you deploy capital into the Bitcoin cycle When those three line up, mining stops feeling like a speculative trade and starts behaving like a planned, resilient part of your overall strategy. ## What Really Drives Bitcoin Mining Profits Before thinking in dollar amounts per day, it helps to understand what actually drives your results. Four forces shape your outcome: - Power price and hosting structure - Hardware efficiency and reliability - How the facility is operated day to day - Where we are in the broader Bitcoin cycle You do not control the Bitcoin price or global network difficulty. You do control: - Which machines you buy - Who runs them - Where and when you deploy The rest of this guide walks through those three decisions, so you can see how investors are approaching mining in 2026. ## Choosing the Right Equipment for 202 Hardware selection is where many investors either protect their downside or lock in years of frustration. In 2026, the gap between efficient, modern ASICs and older models shows up clearly in your power bill and your margin. Efficient machines give you: - Lower cost per terahash of computing power - More resilience if Bitcoin’s price dips or difficulty rises - Better upside when hashprice improves, because your operating margin is already strong Below are four flagship models many investors use as the foundation of a 2026 focused fleet. For each one, you can check the live mining profitability calculator at Braiins to see up to date projections based on industry average power rate and hosting structure. ## Antminer S21 The Antminer S21 is a core choice for modern air cooled deployments. It combines strong efficiency with wide availability and a proven track record in the field. The S21 often makes sense if you: - Want a flexible, scalable air cooled fleet - Value the ability to add or sell units over time - Prefer a balanced mix of CapEx, efficiency, and reliability The S21’s role is usually to provide a stable base of hash rate that can ride through multiple market cycles without constant intervention. Check the profitability calculator here. ## WhatsMiner M60S++ The WhatsMiner M60S++ is designed for investors who want premium air cooled efficiency and industrial build quality. This model often fits investors who: - Aim to maximize margin per kilowatt in competitive power markets - Want to standardize on a high efficiency platform for operational simplicity - Care about long service life and fewer surprises in the field When you run the M60S++ through a calculator, you are looking at how its efficiency improves your breakeven power price and how much extra cushion it gives if network conditions tighten. It is often used as the backbone of serious air cooled fleets. Check the profitability calculator here. ## Antminer S21 Hydro The Antminer S21 Hydro is built for high density, hydro cooled infrastructure. It is aimed at investors who want to push both efficiency and capacity further than typical air cooled racks allow. It can be a strong fit if you: - Have access to purpose built hydro cooled hosting or plan to deploy into it - Want to maximize hash rate per square foot and per megawatt - View mining as an infrastructure investment rather than a small side project In a calculator, S21 Hydro deployments usually assume managed hosting in a professional facility. The attraction is a combination of high efficiency, strong thermal performance, and the ability to scale into larger, more concentrated positions. Check the profitability calculator here. ## WhatsMiner M63S Hydro The WhatsMiner M63S Hydro sits in the same high conviction category for investors who want to anchor a long term mining strategy in premium hydro cooled infrastructure. This model often makes sense if you: - Are targeting institutional grade operations with demanding uptime targets - Plan to deploy capital across several megawatts rather than a few machines - Want a platform that keeps performing across multiple Bitcoin cycles Modeling the M63S Hydro in a calculator helps you see how this class of machine behaves when you adjust power rates, Bitcoin price assumptions, and difficulty trends. For many investors, this is the hardware that turns mining from an experiment into a serious, long horizon position. Check the profitability calculator here. ## Picking a Hosting Partner That Actually Works for You Even the best machines cannot rescue a poor hosting decision. Your hosting partner determines your real power cost, uptime, maintenance quality, risk exposure, and how much of your time gets consumed by operational noise. The right hosting partner is the one whose structure matches your goals, risk tolerance, and desired level of involvement. ### What To Look For In Any Hosting Provider When you speak with potential partners, focus on the elements that will still matter in a year, not just the headline rate. Look for: - Power strategy, not just price Are they in a region with sustainable economics and clear relationships with the local utility? - Proven operations and uptime Ask how they handle repairs, replacements, and routine maintenance. Request concrete examples of how many hours per month machines typically run. - Transparent contracts and fees You should be able to explain your total cost structure in simple language. There should be no mystery line items or surprise charges. - Clear reporting and communication You need to see performance and payouts without digging through a dozen systems. When you have questions, you should be able to talk to someone who understands both mining and energy. #### Why Many Investors Choose MiningStore For many investors, MiningStore is the partner that makes these choices simpler. MiningStore focuses on: - Infrastructure first facilities Sites are designed specifically for mining, with power strategies built for long term operations rather than short spikes of profitability. - Deep energy market expertise The team spends its time inside power markets, curtailment programs, and grid relationships, so your strategy is built on how the grid actually functions, not on assumptions. - Flexible investment structures Whether you want straightforward hosting, a Managed Mining Program, or a tailored hosting service built around your capital and timeline, MiningStore works to align the structure with your goals. - Investor level communication You get clarity on performance, costs, and strategy. The focus is on making mining a defined part of your broader investment plan, not a side hobby you have to manage alone. Choosing the right partner is about more than finding space for your machines. It is about putting your capital into an operating environment that supports the returns you are aiming for. Want to see what this looks like in the real world? Explore MiningStore’s purpose built Bitcoin mining facilities and see how efficient hardware, competitive power, and professional operations come together at scale. Explore MiningStore Facilities (https://miningstore.com/miningstore-62-5-mw-bitcoin-mining-in-iowa/) ## Timing Your Entry: Mining On Your Terms The final piece is timing. Many people lose money not because mining is broken, but because they enter at the wrong point in the cycle and for the wrong reasons. ### Think in Cycles, Not Headlines Bitcoin moves in cycles. Hardware pricing, hashprice, and investor sentiment all follow. A few principles help keep your timing grounded: - Avoid buying in peak euphoria When machines are selling at extreme premiums and everyone is talking about mining, you are usually paying for optimism instead of capacity. - Use quieter periods to position When attention cools and hardware pricing is more rational, you often get a better balance between CapEx, power pricing, and expected returns. - Align mining with your broader financial plan Consider your tax position, liquidity needs, and how mining fits with your exposure to Bitcoin in spot or other forms. Enter when you can commit to holding the position across several years, not just a few months. ## Why Not Just Buy Bitcoin Instead? If you are already comfortable owning Bitcoin, it is natural to ask: “Why would I mine Bitcoin instead of just buying it and holding it?” In many portfolios, the answer is not “either or.” Mining and spot Bitcoin often sit next to each other and play different roles. Buying Bitcoin gives you: - Simple execution and instant exposure - Pure price upside with no operational complexity - A position that behaves like liquid digital gold Mining Bitcoin, when structured correctly, can add: - Exposure that grows over time Instead of committing all your capital at one entry price, you deploy into hardware and power. Over the life of the machines, you accumulate Bitcoin across a range of market conditions. - Conversion of operating costs into BTC You are effectively turning a fiat operating expense (power and hosting) into a stream of Bitcoin, which can be attractive if you think in sats and in multi year cycles. - Infrastructure style characteristics Mining can look and feel more like an operating asset: equipment, contracts, power strategy, and potential tax advantages tied to depreciation and business treatment. That profile can align better with how you are used to underwriting other real world assets. - Different risk and return drivers Your outcome is still linked to the Bitcoin price, but you also have levers that do not exist when you simply buy and hold: hardware selection, hosting partner, region and power structure, and how you respond to cycles. For many investors, the real question is not “Should I mine or buy BTC?” but “What mix of spot Bitcoin and mining exposure makes sense for my mandate, time horizon, and tax situation?” Mining is not a shortcut. It is a way to add an actively managed, infrastructure style position on top of your core Bitcoin allocation, if you are willing to approach it with discipline. ## Putting It All Together: A Realistic 2026 Mining Plan for Investors So how much money can you make mining Bitcoin in 2026? For an investor, the more useful question is: Can mining deliver risk adjusted, after tax returns that justify the capital and complexity compared to my alternatives? A thoughtful 2026 plan usually follows a simple sequence. ## Define the role of mining in your portfolio Before choosing a single machine, decide what you want mining to do: - Complement an existing Bitcoin position with an operating asset - Monetize access to attractive power pricing or specific regions - Capture potential tax benefits tied to equipment and operations - Build an asset you may later refinance, sell, or roll into a larger platform This step aligns expectations internally, whether you are investing personally, through a family office, or as part of a broader strategy. ## Select efficient, modern hardware that fits your strategy Once the role of Bitcoin mining in your portfolio is clear, you design the fleet. For many 2026 strategies, that means building around a focused set of efficient models such as: - Antminer S21 and WhatsMiner M60S++ for air cooled deployments - Antminer S21 Hydro and WhatsMiner M63S Hydro for hydro cooled, higher density projects You size the fleet to your capital, your comfort with concentration, and your preferred time horizon, then use a live calculator to model outcomes across different price and difficulty scenarios. ## Choose a hosting partner who can operate at your standard Next, you decide where those assets will live. For high net worth, private equity, and family office investors, the hosting conversation is less about rack space and more about: - Power strategy and grid relationships - Operational discipline and uptime - Contract structure and alignment of incentives - Quality of reporting and communication This is where MiningStore often enters the picture. MiningStore works with investors who want: - Infrastructure first facilities in competitive power markets - A team that understands both mining economics and energy markets - Flexible structures, from straightforward hosting to fully managed mining program. - Communication and reporting that can sit comfortably in an investment committee pack The goal is to turn hosting into a reliable operating platform, not an ongoing operational headache. ## Underwrite using live data, not static assumptions With hardware and hosting framed out, you build an underwriting case: - Run your fleet through a live profitability calculator under conservative, base, and optimistic scenarios - Stress test power price, difficulty, and uptime - Consider how depreciation, financing, or different ownership structures might change effective returns At this stage, the question becomes: Does this look like an acceptable investment given my return targets and constraints, or does it need to be resized or restructured? ## Commit to the full cycle, not just the next quarter Finally, you commit to a time horizon that fits the asset. Bitcoin mining behaves very differently when you expect to own and operate across multiple phases of the Bitcoin cycle, rather than react to every short term move. That does not mean ignoring risk. It means setting clear rules for when you add, hold, or scale down, and reviewing the thesis with the same discipline you apply to other real world assets. When you approach mining this way, “How much money can you make mining Bitcoin in 2026?” stops being a speculative question and becomes part of a structured investment process. You are no longer hoping that mining will work. You are making deliberate choices about equipment, hosting, timing, and structure, and partnering with an operator like MiningStore that can help you execute that plan with clarity. If you want to see what this could look like for your situation, the next logical step is a simple conversation: define your budget, your power assumptions, and your time horizon, then build a tailored mining plan you can underwrite with confidence. ## Ready to Build Your 2026 Bitcoin Mining Plan? If you’ve made it this far, you’re already thinking about Bitcoin mining differently than most. You’re not asking for a magic daily dollar figure, you’re asking how mining can function as a disciplined, infrastructure-style position inside your broader portfolio. That’s exactly how we approach it at MiningStore. On a short discovery call, we can walk through: - Your budget, time horizon, and risk profile - Which ASIC mix (air or hydro) best fits your strategy - Hosting options across MiningStore’s facilities and how power strategy impacts returns If you want a clear, numbers-driven view of what Bitcoin mining could look like for you next year, the next step is simple: Book your 2026 mining strategy call with MiningStore (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## FAQs: How Much Can I Make Mining Bitcoin in 2026? Q1. How much can I make mining Bitcoin in 2026 with a professionally hosted ASIC fleet? How much you make with a fleet of modern machines (for example, 5–10 ASICs hosted professionally) in 2026 depends on four main inputs: your power price, the efficiency of the ASICs you choose, your hosting fees, and how many hours per month those machines run. An efficient fleet built around models like the Antminer S21, WhatsMiner M60S++, Antminer S21 Hydro, or WhatsMiner M63S Hydro at a competitive power rate can generate a positive return over time, but you should always run the numbers in a live profitability calculator using your exact power cost and fee structure. Q2. Is Bitcoin mining profitable in 2026 after halving? Mining can be profitable after the 2024 halving, but it is no longer forgiving of poor decisions. Profitability in 2026 comes from efficient hardware, a suitable hosting partner with competitive power and solid uptime, and deploying capital at a sensible point in the Bitcoin cycle. If any of those three are weak, your margin disappears quickly. Q3. How much do I need to invest to start mining Bitcoin with hosting? The minimum investment depends on the hosting provider and the hardware you choose. Some investors start with a small fleet of a few modern ASICs, while others commit several megawatts from day one. A practical starting point is to define your total budget, then work backward into the number and type of machines, plus hosting, that you can support for several years without stretching your liquidity. Q4. Is it better to mine Bitcoin or just buy and hold it in 2026? Buying and holding Bitcoin gives you simple exposure and full price upside, while mining adds an operating asset that can earn in sats over time and may bring additional tax advantages depending on your structure. Many investors choose to do both. They hold spot Bitcoin and allocate a portion of capital to mining as an infrastructure style position with different risk and return drivers. Q5. How long does it usually take to see a return on a Bitcoin mining investment? Most investors think in multi year time frames, not months. Your payback period depends on hardware cost, power price, hosting fees, Bitcoin price, and network difficulty. A disciplined approach is to model conservative, base, and optimistic scenarios in a profitability calculator, then decide whether the expected range of outcomes fits your return targets and risk tolerance. Q6. How can MiningStore help me improve how much I make from mining? MiningStore helps investors by combining efficient hardware, infrastructure first hosting in competitive power markets, and deep energy market expertise. That means your equipment is deployed in facilities designed for mining, your power strategy is grounded in real grid conditions, and you have clear reporting to track performance. The goal is to turn mining into a structured, underwritable part of your portfolio rather than a speculative side project. Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Every investor’s situation is unique. Consult a qualified tax advisor, CPA, or legal professional before making tax-related decisions. Bitcoin mining involves financial, operational, and regulatory risks, and MiningStore makes no guarantees regarding specific outcomes. --- # Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025: Maximize ROI with Bonus Depreciation Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining-tax-strategy-2025-claim-100-bonus-depreciation-maximize-after-tax-roi/ ### Cost Recovery Learn how first-year expensing changes the payback profile on new mining hardware and supporting equipment. --- # Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2026 | Structuring for U.S. Investors Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining-tax-strategy-2026-structuring-for-u-s-investors/ Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2026 | Structuring for U.S. Investors | MiningStore Insight # Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2026 Structuring for U.S. Investors — 100% bonus depreciation, REIT and fund structures, and how to maximize after-tax ROI. Book A Tax Strategy Call ## Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2026: Strategic Structuring for After-Tax ROI ### How U.S. investors can structure Bitcoin mining for compliant, tax-efficient returns in 2026. In 2026, U.S. Bitcoin mining is a tax-sensitive, documentation-driven business that either compounds after-tax returns or quietly erodes them. This guide walks you through what actually moves the needle: how mining income and gains are treated, why entity structure and cost recovery rules matter so much, how clean records and location strategy (including low-cost, renewables-heavy Iowa) can strengthen your position, and where an operator like MiningStore fits into a compliant, infrastructure-style mining allocation. The goal isn’t to replace your tax advisor, but to give you a clear framework for asking better questions and structuring Bitcoin mining as a serious, after-tax contributor to your portfolio. Book Your 1:1 Call Now (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## 2026: A New Blueprint for Mining Profitability For investors, Bitcoin mining in 2026 is no longer a speculative side project. It has become a capital-intensive, regulated business that sits at the intersection of: - A maturing IRS framework for digital assets - Tightening reporting requirements for brokers and intermediaries - Attractive depreciation and expensing rules for qualifying business assets This article walks U.S.-based investors through what matters most heading into 2026, and how structuring, recordkeeping, and the right operational partner can turn compliance from a constraint into profits. ## Tax Treatment and Structuring: The Two Levers That Matter To build a profitable mining allocation in 2026, investors need to understand two things clearly: - How mining income and gains are taxed, and - How business structuring changes the after-tax result. ### How Mining Income and Gains Are Taxed For U.S. taxpayers, Bitcoin received from mining is treated as ordinary income at its fair market value on the day it is earned. The IRS has long held that digital assets received as payment for goods or services must be included in gross income at fair market value when received, a position originally set out in Notice 2014-21 and reaffirmed in updated digital asset guidance. (IRS) Specialized tax commentary confirms that mining rewards fall under this principle: the value of the Bitcoin at the time it is mined is taxable as ordinary income. (Federal Lawyer) Later, when mined Bitcoin is sold or used, a capital gains calculation applies to the difference between: - Its fair market value when mined (your basis), and - Its fair market value at the time of disposal. If the coins are held more than 12 months, the gain is generally taxed at long-term capital gains rates, which at the federal level remain 0%, 15%, or 20%, depending on income and filing status. (IRS) So every mined coin has a two-step tax profile: - Step 1: Ordinary income when it is mined. - Step 2: Capital gain (ideally long-term) when it is sold. For Bitcoin miners, that split becomes a set of timing levers around when to realize income and when to realize gains. #### Where Structure Changes the Outcome The same tax rules apply to everyone, but the outcome is very different for a hobbyist versus a properly structured business. - A hobby miner reports the ordinary income but generally cannot deduct related expenses like power or hardware. Every dollar of revenue is fully taxable. - A mining business (LLC, S-Corp, or C-Corp) may deduct ordinary and necessary expenses such as electricity, hosting, monitoring software, repairs, and depreciation on hardware and supporting infrastructure, reducing taxable income. (Gordon Law Group) Two investors can run the same hashrate and see very different after-tax returns purely because one has: - A formal entity, - Proper books and records, and - Evidence that the activity is a trade or business rather than a hobby. #### Accelerated Cost Recovery: Bonus Depreciation and Section 179 Structuring as a business also unlocks accelerated cost recovery on capital expenditures, which matters in a hardware-driven industry: - Bonus depreciation can allow a business to expense 100% of the cost of certain qualifying equipment in the year it is placed in service, rather than over its useful life. - Section 179 expensing permits many businesses to deduct a large amount of qualifying property each year (subject to caps and phase-outs), which is particularly relevant for mid-sized fleets upgrading infrastructure. (IRS) For an investor deploying several hundred thousand dollars or more into newer-generation miners and supporting electrical infrastructure, these provisions can materially affect year-one cash flow and tax liability, provided: - The entity is correctly set up, - Assets are documented as placed in service in the relevant tax year, and - Records can support the deduction. In 2026, with more scrutiny and more reporting, the combination of correct tax treatment plus deliberate structuring becomes one of the key levers for turning mining into a repeatable, after-tax contributor to portfolio returns. (IRS) Download The Investor's Guide Here ## Simple Recordkeeping, Stronger Tax Positioning Many investors hesitate to scale mining because they assume the accounting will be messy: volatile power bills, complex hosting invoices, and lots of small transactions to reconcile. MiningStore’s profit-sharing Managed Mining Program (MMP) is designed to simplify that reality into something an institutional back office can actually work with. Instead of dozens of invoices and ad-hoc spreadsheets: - You receive 12 monthly statements per year, one clear report per month, aligned with the tighter digital asset reporting environment in 2026. - All on-chain Bitcoin profits are paid directly to your designated mining address once a month, creating a clean, time-stamped income trail. - You are not juggling a separate stack of dollar-denominated power bills; your economics are captured in a single BTC payout and a single statement, rather than a patchwork of variable expenses. This simplicity matters because regulations are designed to give the IRS a more complete picture of digital asset activity. (IRS) For Bitcoin miners, clean, reconciled records are not optional. Fewer moving parts and consistent monthly documentation make it easier for your advisors to: - Identify and support deductions - Align mining income with broader capital gains and rebalancing strategies - Reduce mismatch risk between your records and third-party reporting In other words: structure plus simple recordkeeping equals a stronger position in a stricter reporting regime. ## Why Iowa Matters: State-Level Advantages and Operational Resilience Federal tax rules apply everywhere, but location still drives economics in energy-intensive infrastructure. Iowa, where MiningStore operates its eleven facilities, stands out on three fronts. ## Low-Cost, Stable Power According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iowa ranks among the states with some of the lowest average electricity prices in the country, with industrial rates below the U.S. average. (U.S. Energy Information Administration) Recent coverage has noted that while the national average retail electricity price increased year-over-year, Iowa’s average rate actually declined, helped by its strong wind generation base and relative insulation from volatile fossil fuel markets. (Axios) For miners, that translates directly into better gross margins and more resilience across BTC price cycles. ## Renewable-Heavy Grid EIA’s state profile shows that wind turbines generated about 63% of Iowa’s electricity in 2024, the highest wind share of any U.S. state. (U.S. Energy Information Administration) For institutional investors navigating ESG policies and reputational risk, tying a mining allocation to a predominantly renewable grid isn’t an optional detail, it can be central to investment committee approval. Combined, these factors give Iowa a compelling mix of cost efficiency and renewable alignment. exactly the mix long-term capital typically seeks in infrastructure-style allocations. Book Your 1:1 Call Now (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Capital Management and Exit Planning Structuring mining correctly is only part of the story. When and how you realize value from mining also drives outcomes. ## Timing Bitcoin Disposals Because mining rewards are ordinary income when they are earned, the decision of when to sell mined BTC becomes a separate planning question. Long-term capital gains tax treatment applies when assets are held more than one year, at favorable federal rates of 0%, 15%, or 20%, depending on taxable income. (IRS) That opens up options such as: - Realizing gains in lower-income years - Using realized gains to offset capital losses elsewhere in the portfolio - Coordinating large disposals with broader rebalancing or liquidity events Mining becomes not just a way to earn BTC, but a way to stage tax-aware exits over time. ## Planning Hardware Lifecycle Mining hardware is a productive asset, but also a depreciating one. Bitcoin miners continuously evaluate: - When to retire, repurpose, or sell older, less-efficient machines - How to coordinate new hardware purchases with available bonus depreciation or Section 179 expensing opportunities - How to avoid stranded, obsolete capital that still incurs power and maintenance costs but contributes little hashrate By linking fleet refresh decisions to available depreciation and expensing rules, investors can improve both energy efficiency and after-tax capital recovery at the same time. The result: a mining allocation that behaves more like a managed infrastructure sleeve than a static pile of hardware. ## Preparing for 2026: A Practical Roadmap With digital asset reporting tightening, the coming year is as much about readiness as it is about deployment. (IRS) Between now and then, investors should: - Audit transaction and cost-basis systems, ensuring all mining, transfers, and disposals can be tied back to wallets and intermediaries. (IRS) - Confirm or adjust entity structure with tax counsel (LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp) so that it reflects how mining and related activities are actually operated. - Lock in operational partners whose reporting, uptime, and data access meet institutional expectations, so compliance is supported by design, not reconstructed at year-end. Maximizing After-Tax Returns with Bitcoin Mining This current tax regime is a rare opportunity that tilts the playing field toward proactive investors. For Bitcoin mining, it creates a perfect alignment of infrastructure, yield, and tax efficiency. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy to understand how these deductions can reshape your after-tax returns. Download The Investor's Guide Here ## MiningStore’s U.S. Operational Advantage As more capital from funds, family offices, and corporates enters mining, the differentiator is no longer who has access to machines, it is who can run them at scale, onshore, and in a way that holds up under regulatory scrutiny. MiningStore’s U.S. footprint is built around that reality: - 11 Facilities in Iowa, positioned on renewable-heavy, low-cost grids, backed by EIA data showing Iowa’s wind share and below-average electricity prices. (U.S. Energy Information Administration) - Institutional-grade reporting and dashboards that give investors clear visibility into hashrate, uptime, and output. - Simple profit-sharing economics that produce 12 discrete BTC inflows and 12 matching statements per year, instead of a tangle of invoices and OPEX spreadsheets. - Operational practices aligned with IRS expectations around documentation, placed-in-service tracking, and business activity. For investors who are serious about making Bitcoin mining part of their 2026 allocation, the decision is not just whether to mine, but which operator they trust to run and document that exposure. Ready to see what this looks like in the real world? Explore MiningStore’s purpose-built Bitcoin mining facilities and see how we deploy efficient hardware, secure power, and professional operations at scale. Explore MiningStore Facilities (https://miningstore.com/miningstore-62-5-mw-bitcoin-mining-in-iowa/) ## Conclusion: 2026 Is the Time to Structure Smart Bitcoin mining in 2026 is no longer an unstructured bet on hardware and luck. It is a tax-sensitive, documentation-dependent infrastructure allocation that rewards investors who think like owners of a business, not hobbyists. By: - Understanding how income and capital gains are treated, - Using entity structure and cost recovery rules thoughtfully, - Choosing locations with favorable power economics, and - Partnering with operators who can support institutional recordkeeping, Investors can position mining as a credible, after-tax contributor to their broader portfolio. MiningStore’s role is straightforward: provide the infrastructure, transparency, and operational simplicity that lets you focus on capital allocation and strategy, not on chasing invoices or rebuilding records. If you are evaluating how Bitcoin mining could fit into your 2026 allocation: Book a private consultation with MiningStore to explore how a structured Bitcoin mining strategy could support your portfolio’s long-term objectives. The conversation is about strategy, infrastructure, and fit; your tax advisor determines the final treatment. Book Your 1:1 Call Now (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Every investor’s situation is unique. Consult a qualified tax advisor, CPA, or legal professional before making tax-related decisions. Bitcoin mining involves financial, operational, and regulatory risks, and MiningStore makes no guarantees regarding specific outcomes. ## Explore Our Services Managed Mining Hosting Services Remote Hands Case Studies Learn Digital Gold Podcast ## Ready to Start Mining? Talk to our team about managed mining, hosting, or hardware procurement. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Best Bitcoin Mining Calculators Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/best-bitcoin-mining-calculators/ Bitcoin mining is a dynamic industry with consistent updates to the hardware, software, pools, price, difficulty and profitability, making it harder to always make money mining. From the early days of CPU and GPU mining, investors have switched to ASIC miners to increase their network share and mining profitability. Bitcoin price today also impacts the industry by increase the incentive for new miners to set up mining rigs. But things get complicated when you don’t have insights into how much profits you can make from mining. But this is not our main topic today…. The cost of electricity plays a significant role in your profitability. Let’s assume you have zero power cost and you are mining a handful of Bitcoins every day. In this highly unlikely scenario, you’re definitely going to end up with a profit with no costs to bear! And profit is what investors seek to make when they start Bitcoin mining. For this, the Bitcoin community has several online calculators that can help you get an insight into your expected monthly or even daily profits. But you still need to do some calculations on your own (such as estimating cost per kWh in your locality). Here are the popular Bitcoin mining calculators that you should give a try before firing up your ASIC hardware. ## CryptoCompare This mining calculator is my favorite mainly because of its user-friendly interference. The calculator has several options and computes profitability in real-time. It is a powerful mining calculator that works with several API’s to help you get better insights. In addition, the calculator also takes into account the network hashrate and mining difficulty while performing calculations. You can easily fill the relevant fields such as Cost per kWh, Power consumption and Hashing power of your ASIC machine. Further, breaking your profits in the day, week and month can give you a better understanding about the expected return you are going to make. The calculator also features the option to add pool fees which increases the accuracy of your calculations and provides near-accurate profit/loss calculations. How about giving a try to this graphic friendly CryptoCompare calculator here and get to know more about your potential revenue and profits? Using the calculator is very simple and you just need to fill it with the relevant details which can be seen in images. ### MyCryptoBuddy Mining Calculator As the name implies, this machine is one of the best helpful when it comes to Bitcoin mining calculators. The calculator is designed with every aspect possible of the mining industry. And it even has features to input the likely rejection rate of hashes your ASIC miner might perform. Remember that mining all your shares are not accepted as some might become stale and are rejected, reducing your machine’s efficiency. When it comes to MyCryptoBuddy calculator , an in-depth assessment is done by the developers to take in to account all possible scenarios that can increase the cost for investors. In addition, there is also a long-term projection calculator that can come handy if you are looking to invest a lot of your savings in Bitcoin mining. With options such as recurring cost and selling profile, this calculator well suits the needs of experts and even mining industries. But there is more when it comes to MyCryptoBuddy mining calculator. The website features an impressive graphical interference based on your data. It also has options to add expected percentage changes to Bitcoin mining difficulty and the price. Once plotted, the website presents a line chart with anticipated profits or loss giving better insights into your mining operations. With several options, it might be hard for beginners to understand and use this calculator. But if you are serious about Bitcoin mining, then you should give this calculator a try. To use the calculator, insert your ASIC miner hashrate, your power cost, pool fees and expected rejection rate. The calculator will automatically draw a line chart based on your input. ### NiceHash NiceHash is a renowned company when it comes to Bitcoin mining. It is a great place for miners to buy and sell their hashing power using Bitcoins. In addition, you can also connect your ASIC hardware to their website and use their mining software for minting new Bitcoins. Their calculator (available here) is an easy way to start with Bitcoin mining. All you have to do is to choose your hardware from a range of ASIC miners and your power cost per KWh. Besides, there is also an option to switch currency from USD to your preferred one. Once you hit Calculate, the results will be generated based on your inputs. In addition, you can also choose the number of devices you have for Bitcoin mining. Perfect if you have multiple ASIC miners to work with. To use the calculator, switch off the CPU and GPU options since you won’t need them (unless you are not that serious about Bitcoin mining). Bitcoin mining with CPUs and GPUs are long dead and if you are planning to use them for generating profits, you are not going far. Choose your ASIC miner from the dropdown list. In case, you are not able to find one, then it only means it is obsolete hardware and is likely going to incur you a loss. After choosing your ASIC miner, enter the expected power cost and hit calculate for the calculator to work. You will likely to know if it is profitable to mine Bitcoin using your current hardware or whether it needs an upgrade. ### 99Bitcoin Mining Calculator When it comes to simplicity, 99Bitcoin mining calculator beats most of its rivals. It is a very simple two-step Bitcoin mining calculator that takes into account several options, such as changes in Bitcoin price, pool fees, and hardware costs etc. You can adjust almost everything in this calculator. It even includes changing in mining difficulty and block reward that most calculators don’t allow for. These changes might not be significant for many miners, but those who are in this for the long haul will find this calculator handy. How about adjusting Bitcoin block rewards and expected Bitcoin prices in the next year while modifying mining difficulty? Surely sounds like a great mining calculator if you are a long term investor! In addition, the calculator also has built-in features to give you an overview of expected Return on Investment (ROI) for the year. This can be crucial for miners looking to break even at an early stage. For using the calculator effectively, you can begin with the basic option. If you know nothing about pool fees or hardware cost, you can just leave them blank. It is a simple calculator and only requires an input of your ASIC miner hashrate to work. ### WhatToMine Mining Calculator Last but not least, here’s another simple mining calculator that tops the charts with its user-friendly GUI and ease of use. Their website also useful if you are looking for various pools to start Bitcoin mining. With the option to add pool fees and hardware cost, WhatToMine Mining Calculator gives you a better picture of your expected profits. And the website also estimates rewards distributed in an hour, a day, week, month and a year, which can be helpful for many investors who would like to know how much they can make per hour, for example. Using this calculator is easy (which is one of our top criteria when reviewing calculators). You just need to provide your ASIC hashrate, cost per kWh and the pool fee to begin. In addition, you can also provide your hardware cost to have a better understanding of your ROI. ## Conclusion There are many Bitcoin mining software that you can choose from. It entirely depends on your mining hardware as well as your interest in Bitcoin mining, whether short-term or long. If you are looking for some short term gains, then Cryptocompare or Nicehash calculator would be the perfect match. But in the long-run, MyCryptoBuddy Mining calculator would be the best fit. In the end, choose your kWh per hour wisely before using any of the calculators above, since it can heavily impact your pro --- # How Bitcoin Mining Saved Texans $18 Billion and Stabilized the Grid Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/how-bitcoin-mining-stabilized-grid/ ## How Bitcoin mining saved Texans $18 Billion and Stabilized the Grid In an article by Rian Dewhurst at DARI, he highlights how the Texas energy grid, long criticized for its instability, faced a challenge during the winter storm Uri in 2021. The storm left millions without power, caused $195 billion in damages, and tragically claimed 246 lives. Traditional solutions to prevent such disasters have relied on expensive and inefficient gas peaker plant facilities that sit idle most of the year and contribute significantly to pollution. ## But what if there were a better way? Enter Bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining isn't just about producing digital currency; it’s revolutionizing energy consumption and grid stability. As flexible energy consumers, Bitcoin miners can adjust their operations based on energy availability. They consume power when energy is abundant and cheap and scale down during peak demand, freeing up electricity for homes and businesses when needed. This innovative approach has already saved Texans $18 billion by reducing reliance on costly, polluting infrastructure like gas peaker plants. During extreme weather events, Bitcoin mining facilities have proven to be an invaluable asset, stabilizing the grid and protecting communities from outages. ## Key Takeaways from the Data: - Cost Savings: Bitcoin miners help reduce grid costs by participating in demand response programs. - Environmental Benefits: Unlike gas peaker plants, Bitcoin mining enables a higher concentration of renewable energy on the grid. - Grid Stability: With 3 GW of flexible load from Bitcoin miners, Texas avoided blackouts and kept energy costs low for consumers. This strategy, championed by Brad Jones, interim CEO of ERCOT, demonstrates that Bitcoin mining is more than just a tech trend, it’s a groundbreaking solution for energy management. At MiningStore, we’re proud to be at the forefront of this transformative industry. By specializing in Bitcoin mining and managing clients’ miners, we ensure unmatched expertise, profitability, and reliability in every market condition. Our facilities are designed to make Bitcoin mining more efficient, aligning with renewable energy goals and advancing innovative energy solutions. ## Want to be part of this energy revolution? Book a call today to learn how MiningStore can help you start mining Bitcoin. With our proactive support and operational expertise, you’ll have a trusted partner to guide your journey into this dynamic and profitable space. Discover how Bitcoin mining is not only shaping the future of cryptocurrency but also redefining the way we think about energy resilience. Read the full story here. BOOK A CALL (https://miningstore.com/get-in-touch/) --- # How Long Does It Take To Mine A Bitcoin? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/how-long-does-it-take-to-mine-a-bitcoin/ New Bitcoin are created in a process known as “mining”. By Bitcoin mining, the “miners” are rewarded to help keep the Bitcoin network running smoothly by verifying transactions from one Bitcoin wallet to another. You probably already know all of that, but how long would it take you to mine a whole Bitcoin? ## How Bitcoin Mining Works? The answer to that question is and isn’t simple. You could receive a dozen Bitcoin all at once for just 10 minutes of mining, but unless you’ve invested in a large scale mining rig, that’s very unlikely. The Bitcoin protocol does it’s best to ensure that Bitcoin is only produced every 10 minutes, using what’s known as “mining difficulty”. The more computing power that gets put into the network, the more difficult it becomes to solve the algorithm and create the next block to receive the reward for doing so. To the victor go the spoils, and if you’re only running a few miners, you may have better luck receiving anything at all by joining a Bitcoin mining pool. These mining pools gather computing power from users all around the world into one source, then when the pool successfully mines a block, the rewards are distributed out to pool members, usually based on how much power they put toward the total. ## Bitcoin Mining Hardware Requirements? How fast you can mine an entire Bitcoin is completely dependent on the hardware your mining with. If you’ve put together a heavy duty mining rig, you may be able to mine blocks yourself and receive rewards incredibly quickly. If not, the fractions of Bitcoin you earn will stack up over time, again dependent on the power of your rig. To learn more about Bitcoin mining hardware read our blog post, [Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware For 2019?]. ### the Bitmain Antminer s9 is consider by most to be the go-to in Bitcoin mining hardware Currently, so long as the constantly adjusting mining difficulty keeps coin production steady, there are 12.5 Bitcoin created every 10 minutes. That’s 75 every hour, and 1800 per day. At the time of writing, that’s just over $6 Million worth of Bitcoin being created every day! There is a mechanism in play, though, by which the reward for mining a block is cut in half for every 210,000 blocks mined, or roughly every four years. Around the middle of 2020, when the next “halving” occurs, the block reward will drop to 6.25 Bitcoin. [Click here to view the BTC difficulty chart] So doing the math, counting on the number of Bitcoin generated every day to steadily decrease, the very last Bitcoin should be mined right around the year 2140. That gives us all plenty of time to get our Bitcoin mining rigs together. Remember, though, it’s going to be incredibly difficult to mine those last few coins, so get out there and strike while the iron’s hot! --- # Market Analysis February 2025 Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/market-analysis-february-2025/ ## Bitcoin Mining Market Analysis: February 2025 Outlook The Bitcoin mining landscape is shaped by a confluence of factors driving both opportunity and complexity. The Bitcoin price has surged to new highs, buoyed by institutional adoption, the maturation of Bitcoin ETFs, and the continued pro-crypto policies of the U.S. government under President Trump’s administration. These factors have created a bullish sentiment, with Bitcoin currently trading around $100,000 as of the first days of February 2025, with analysts like VanEck maintaining a bullish outlook. The firm projects continued price appreciation driven by growing adoption, setting a $170,000 price target for 2025*. This price surge has significantly boosted mining profitability, as higher Bitcoin prices directly increase the value of block rewards and transaction fees. However, the Bitcoin Hashprice Index (revenue per TH/s) has seen some volatility due to a sharp rise in network hashrate. The influx of new miners and upgraded ASIC hardware has intensified competition, pushing the hashrate to unprecedented levels. While this signals a healthy and secure network, it also means miners must operate with maximum efficiency to maintain profitability. Source: https://data.hashrateindex.com/network-data/bitcoin-hashprice-index#bitcoin-hashprice-index For MiningStore clients, this environment underscores the importance of partnering with a seasoned expert. Our efficient facilities and proactive management ensure your miners are optimized for peak performance, even as network difficulty rises. We’ve strategically positioned our operations to leverage low-cost energy and efficient hardware, allowing you to thrive in both bullish and competitive conditions. As always, we provide transparent updates and data-driven insights to help you navigate market fluctuations with confidence. This year is a pivotal moment in Bitcoin’s journey, and with MiningStore as your partner, you’re well-equipped to capitalize on this historic opportunity. BOOK A CALL (https://miningstore.com/get-in-touch/) *Source: https://thecryptobasic.com/2025/01/28/vaneck-to-increase-bitcoin-miner-investments-amid-trumps-pro-crypto-push/ --- # Market Analysis March 2025 Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/market-analysis-march-2025/ ## Bitcoin Mining Market Analysis: March 2025 Outlook Bitcoin mining continues to evolve, presenting new challenges and opportunities for miners. From hashprice fluctuations to regulatory shifts and energy trends, here’s what you need to know to stay ahead and optimize your mining operation. ## Market Overview: Bitcoin Price and Policy Trends Bitcoin started February strong, trading around $109,000, before facing volatility driven by macroeconomic uncertainty and shifting trade policies. By February 28, BTC settled at ~$84,000, marking a 17.5% monthly decline. Despite the price dip, long-term adoption remains strong: - President Trump’s Crypto Strategic Reserve: a proposed U.S. government-held reserve of Bitcoin and Ethereum aims to legitimize and stabilize the industry. - Texas Moves Toward a State Bitcoin Reserve: Lawmakers are pushing for state-held Bitcoin, reinforcing Texas’ position as a Bitcoin mining powerhouse. Takeaway: While price volatility impacts short-term sentiment, government and state-level adoption signals long-term institutional confidence in Bitcoin. ## Mining Industry Performance: What Miners Need to Know The Bitcoin Hashprice Index, fluctuated throughout February: - February 23: a 3.2% decrease in difficulty pushed hashprice to ~$56/PH/s/day - February 28: as difficulty adjusted, hashprice dropped to ~$49/PH/s/day - March 3 Update: Hashprice is rebounding, now sitting around $53/PH/s/day Takeaway: Miners operating at low electricity costs (<$0.05/kWh) remain profitable, but efficiency is key. ## ASIC Profitability Breakdown Knowing how each ASIC model performs under current hashprice conditions is crucial for optimizing operations. ASIC Model Revenue/Day (@$53 Hashprice) Should You Buy? Antminer S21 XP Hyd (473 TH/s, 5676W) ~$25.07 High Efficiency Whatsminer M60S (186 TH/s, 3400W) ~$9.85 Great for low-cost energy miners Antminer S19 XP (140 TH/s, 3010W) ~$7.40 Older model, consider upgrading Takeaway: - If your electricity cost is below $0.06/kWh, you can still mine profitably with top-tier ASICs. - Efficiency matters, upgrading to next-gen miners (S21 XP, M60S) can help future-proof operations. - If running older models (S19 XP, S19 Pro), now may be the time to evaluate hardware upgrades or hosting solutions. ## Hosting and Power Market Trends: What’s Changing? Energy costs remain the #1 driver of mining profitability. Here’s what’s happening: - Texas ERCOT demand response programs are paying miners to shut off during peak hours, helping offset operational costs. - Hosting prices have remained stable, with $0.06–$0.08/kWh rates still available for long-term contracts. - Renewable energy partnerships continue to drive down electricity costs for miners co-locating near solar and wind farms. Takeaway: - Lock in competitive hosting rates. - Participate in demand response programs to improve ROI. - Renewable energy deals are the future, co-location opportunities can reduce long-term costs. ## What’s Next for Miners? With the April 2024 halving behind us, miners are now operating in a new era of reduced block rewards and shifting profitability dynamics. - Current Block Height: 885,581 - Block Subsidy Post-Halving: 3.125 BTC → 1.5625 BTC ## How This Impacts Miners: - Hashprice Adjustments: with block rewards now halved, miners must optimize efficiency to remain profitable. The ability to secure low-cost energy and high-efficiency ASICs is more critical than ever. - Transaction Fees Becoming More Important: with block rewards lower, transaction fees make up a larger portion of miner revenue. Bitcoin’s increased adoption and Layer 2 scaling solutions will influence long-term profitability. - Hosting and Power Strategy is Key: the miners who will thrive in this new era are those who: - Lock in low-cost energy deals to reduce operational costs. - Utilize hosting solutions that maximize uptime and efficiency. - Invest in newer ASICs to ensure long-term competitiveness. ## How MiningStore Helps You Stay Profitable At MiningStore, we help miners navigate post-halving challenges with: - Low-cost hosting solutions to reduce power expenses. - The latest high-efficiency ASICs for maximum profitability. - Industry insights & strategic planning to keep your operation ahead. Explore MiningStore’s solutions today. BOOK A CALL (https://miningstore.com/get-in-touch/) --- # MiningStore Expands with a New 2.5MW Facility Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/new-facility-iowa/ ## MiningStore Expands with a New 2.5MW Facility Bitcoin mining is evolving, and the most profitable opportunities are reserved for those who act fast and smart. MiningStore is scaling again, with our sixth Bitcoin mining facility in Iowa set to launch in Q1 2025. This 2.5MW site introduces hydro-cooled mining technology for higher efficiency, lower costs, and greater long-term profitability. This expansion isn’t just about growing our footprint, it’s about maximizing investor value while strengthening the local economy. With limited spots available, this is your chance to invest in a proven, profitable, and sustainable mining operation. Why invest in MiningStore’s new 2.5MW facility? 1. Hydro mining: the future of Bitcoin mining Our first hydro-cooled mining operation is designed for maximum efficiency and profit: - Lower power consumption, hydro-cooling reduces energy waste, improving efficiency. - Extended miner lifespan, miners run cooler and last longer, reducing failure rates. - Best-in-class efficiency, Bitmain S21XP Hydro (473TH, 12W/TH) delivers higher hashrate with optimal power usage. 2. Why Iowa? The heart of renewable Bitcoin mining We trust in Iowa as a top destination for Bitcoin mining, as it offers low-cost renewable energy and long-term infrastructure stability. - 57% wind-powered electricity, lower, more predictable energy costs. - Surplus renewable energy, Iowa has produced more electricity than it consumes since 2008. - Direct energy partnerships, MiningStore secures competitive power rates to maximize profitability. 3. Investing in Community and Infrastructure MiningStore is committed to long-term growth, not just for Bitcoin, but for the communities we invest in. - Local job creation, hiring local technicians and contractors. - Supporting small businesses, sourcing services and materials from nearby suppliers. - Economic boost, estimated $65,000 in annual tax contributions. By investing in Iowa’s energy-rich landscape, we are building a sustainable, profitable mining network that benefits investors, local economies, and the Bitcoin ecosystem. 4. Proven financial performance and trusted industry leadership Investing in mining is about more than hardware, it’s about trusting the right operator to maximize your returns. - 9+ years of experience navigating bull and bear markets. - Turnkey solutions, hosting, maintenance, and real-time optimization. - Fast deployments, get your miners online faster for quicker ROI. - Maximum uptime, professional management ensures your operation stays profitable. At MiningStore we sell and manage hardware to ensure your miners generate the best possible returns. 5. Limited availability: secure your miners before this facility reaches full capacity With only 43 Bitmain S21XP Hydro miners available, this is a time-sensitive opportunity to secure high-efficiency mining hardware in one of the most profitable locations in the U.S. - Facility Size: 2.5MW - Miners Available: 43 Bitmain S21XP Hydro (473TH, 12W/TH) units - ROI-Focused operations: managed for long-term profitability Secure your mining investment before this facility reaches full capacity! Bitcoin mining is evolving be part of the future. Contact sales@miningstore.com or book a call here: BOOK A CALL (https://miningstore.com/get-in-touch/) --- # The hard truth about solo Bitcoin mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/solo-mining-vs-managed-mining/ ## The hard truth about solo Bitcoin mining and how to mine smarter Is solo Bitcoin mining still profitable? If you're researching the Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hyd, you might be considering setting up your own mining rig. With 473 TH/s of power and 12j/TH efficiency, it's an impressive machine, but will it actually make you money as a solo miner? Before you go all-in on solo mining, let’s break down the reality of today’s Bitcoin mining landscape. ## Why solo Bitcoin mining is tougher than ever Bitcoin mining isn’t what it used to be. Back in the early days, you could mine BTC with a laptop. Today, even with cutting-edge ASIC miners, going solo comes with serious challenges: Soaring Hashrate Competition Bitcoin’s global hashrate is at record highs, meaning more competition for rewards. Unless you have massive industrial-scale mining, solo mining is a long shot. High Electricity Costs The S21 XP Hyd consumes 5676W, meaning electricity pricing is a make-or-break factor. If you don’t have below-market energy rates, you could be mining at a loss. Inconsistent Payouts Mining is a numbers game, you need uptime, scale, and low costs to generate steady profits. Solo miners often face unpredictable earnings, while larger operations lock in consistent Bitcoin production. Upfront Costs and Maintenance Hassles Buying an S21 XP Hyd (or multiple) is just the beginning. You’ll also need: - A location with cheap electricity and proper cooling - Infrastructure and power setup - 24/7 monitoring and maintenance Unless you have industrial-grade mining facilities, it’s nearly impossible to compete with large-scale operators. ## The Smarter Way to Mine Bitcoin Profitably Instead of going solo, savvy investors are turning to professionally managed mining operations to maximize returns while minimizing risks. At MiningStore, we help investors like you mine at scale, with lower costs and no operational headaches. Low-Cost Power = Discounted Bitcoin Electricity is the biggest cost in mining, and our managed facilities secure below-market rates, so you earn BTC at a discount. No Maintenance, No Hassles We handle everything, from hardware setup to 24/7 management, so you can mine stress-free. Aligned Incentives for Maximum Profits We operate on a simple profit-share model, meaning our success is directly tied to yours. ## How to Get Started with Managed Mining Unlike solo mining, where you need to source power, equipment, and manage uptime, getting started with our Managed Mining Program (MMP) is simple: - Invest in a minimum of 10 miners (Whatsminer M60S or newer models), approximately $50,000 investment. - We set up, host, and manage your operation in our low-cost power and high-efficiency mining facility - You monitor your mining in real-time through a Luxor watcher link - You receive Bitcoin payouts, without the operational headaches It’s a win-win: you scale your mining effortlessly, while we ensure your operation runs at peak profitability. ## Solo Mining vs. MiningStore Managed Mining Program. Which is Right for You? Factor Solo Mining Managed Mining Program Electricity Costs High (varies by location) Low (low-cost power) Maintenance DIY (downtime risks) Fully managed, 24/7 monitoring Mining Efficiency Dependent on self-setup Optimized for max BTC production Profitability Uncertain, fluctuating New generation miners + Low-cost power = Most profitable Bitcoin miners Scaling Potential Limited by power costs and space Easily scale by adding miners ## Final Verdict: Why smart investors choose MiningStore If you’re serious about mining Bitcoin profitably and sustainably, solo mining may not be your best bet. The combination of rising difficulty, high electricity costs, and operational challenges makes it difficult to compete alone. By partnering with MiningStore, you: - Earn Bitcoin at a discount with low-cost energy - Eliminate the headaches of maintenance and setup - Scale effortlessly while staying profitable in any market condition Don’t wait! Secure your mining setup before energy rates increase! Book a call with our team today and start mining smarter with MiningStore. BOOK A CALL (https://miningstore.com/get-in-touch/) --- # The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/top-10-profitable-asic-miners-july-2026/ Every public ASIC profitability calculator defaults to a power price of 10 cents per kWh. Almost no professional host actually pays that. The real number for a competitive U.S. hosting facility is closer to 7 cents, and that three cent gap completely reorders which machines are worth buying. We pulled the live global rankings and recomputed every machine at a flat 7c/kWh. Bitcoin hashprice has stabilized around $32.56 per PH per day after the June slide, but the leaderboard still moved: Zcash revenue ran roughly 30 percent higher over the past month, which put the Antminer Z15 Pro at #1 in the world, while Monero cooled and pushed last month's leader down to #3. The figures below are gross daily hash revenue minus a 7c power bill, giving you the true net profit per day for every machine on the list. $28.72 Top net profit/day at 7c (Z15 Pro) $37.77 Highest gross/day (S23 Hyd 3U) 2 Top-10 machines in stock with us today 7¢ Hosting basis vs 10¢ public default ## The Top 10 at 7c/kWh Live ASIC Miner Value rankings, recomputed at a 7c hosting rate. Net profit is gross daily revenue minus power at 7c. Sorted by net profit per day. # Machine Coin / Algo Hashrate Power Gross/day Net/day @7c Net/yr @7c 1 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro In stock with MiningStore Zcash / Equihash 840 kh/s 2,780 W $33.39 $28.72 $10,483 2 Bitmain Antminer S23 Hyd 3U 1,160 Th Bitcoin / SHA-256 1.16 PH/s 11,020 W $37.77 $19.25 $7,027 3 Bitmain Antminer X9 1M Monero / RandomX 1 MH/s 2,472 W $22.60 $18.45 $6,734 4 Bitdeer SealMiner DL1 Hydro Litecoin+Doge / Scrypt 52.5 GH/s 7,823 W $28.09 $14.94 $5,454 5 Bitdeer SealMiner A4 Ultra Hydro Bitcoin / SHA-256 886 Th/s 8,372 W $28.85 $14.78 $5,395 6 Bitmain Antminer Z15 Zcash / Equihash 420 kh/s 1,510 W $16.69 $14.16 $5,167 7 Bitmain Antminer S23e Hyd 2U 865 Th Bitcoin / SHA-256 865 Th/s 8,650 W $28.16 $13.63 $4,975 8 Bitdeer SealMiner A4 Pro Hydro Bitcoin / SHA-256 680 Th/s 7,412 W $22.14 $9.69 $3,536 9 Bitmain Antminer S23 Hyd 580 Th • July batch, reserve now Bitcoin / SHA-256 580 Th/s 5,510 W $18.88 $9.63 $3,514 10 Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hyd 3U 860 Th • In stock with MiningStore Bitcoin / SHA-256 860 Th/s 11,180 W $28.00 $9.22 $3,364 ## Three That Tell the Story The full table is above. These three explain what changed in July and why the 7c basis matters. ### #1 - Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro (840kh): the new world leader, in stock 840 kh/s Equihash • 2,780 W air-cooled • $33.39 gross/day • $28.72 net/day at 7c • ~$10,483/year • our price $8,250 The most profitable machine on the global table this month, and you can buy it today. Zcash revenue ran roughly 30 percent higher over the past month while Bitcoin hashprice went sideways, and that pushed the Z15 Pro from #2 to the top of the global table. At 2,780 watts its power bill at 7c is only $4.67/day, so it keeps $28.72 of its $33.39 gross. We have stock at $8,250, which this machine pays back in about 9.4 months at current profit, the fastest payback of any machine in this ranking. Machines earning at this level do not tend to stay in stock, and Equihash revenue at this altitude is the reason. ### #2 - Bitmain Antminer S23 Hyd 3U (1,160Th): the machine the public calculators hide 1.16 PH/s SHA-256 • 11,020 W hydro-cooled • $37.77 gross/day • $19.25 net/day at 7c • $11.32 net/day at the public 10c default The S23 Hydro 3U produces the highest gross revenue on the entire list at $37.77/day, the most powerful Bitcoin miner Bitmain makes. But it draws 11,020 watts, so the power price dominates its economics. At the 10c default the public sites use, it nets $11.32 and ranks fourth. Drop the rate to a realistic 7c and its net jumps to $19.25, a gain of nearly $8/day, and it becomes the most profitable Bitcoin miner in the world. No machine on this list benefits more from a competitive hosting rate, and that is the entire argument for hosting big hydro hardware where power is cheap rather than running it at home. ### #10 - Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hyd 3U (860Th): the proof case, also in stock 860 Th/s SHA-256 • 11,180 W hydro-cooled • $28.00 gross/day • $9.22 net/day at 7c • $1.17 net/day at 10c • our price $11,730 At 10 cents this machine makes $1.17 a day and the public rankings bury it. At 7 cents it makes $9.22 and cracks the world top 10. No machine on the list illustrates the rate argument more sharply: the difference between marginal and genuinely profitable is nothing about the hardware and everything about the power price behind it. It is also one of only two top-10 machines you can buy and rack today, in stock at $11,730 for 860 terahash of current-generation Bitcoin hashrate. If you want big BTC exposure now rather than waiting on an S23 batch, this is the machine, and it only makes sense at a real hosting rate. ## What Changed in July Bitcoin hashprice stabilized; the altcoins moved. After sliding roughly 30 percent through June, Bitcoin network revenue has held near $32.56 per PH per day for a month. The July reshuffle came from the other algorithms: Zcash revenue ran about 30 percent higher, lifting the Z15 Pro to #1 and the smaller Z15 to #6, while Monero cooled about 14 percent and dropped the X9 from the top spot to #3. If you bought a Z15 Pro in June, your machine now earns more per day than when you ordered it. The power price is still the whole story for Bitcoin machines. A machine's gross revenue is fixed by its hashrate and the network. The only thing a hosting rate changes is the electricity bill, and that bill scales directly with power draw. The S23 Hydro 3U spends $26.45/day on power at the public 10c default and only $18.51 at 7c; the machine did not change, the rate did. Every SHA-256 unit in the top 10 is a high-draw hydro machine for exactly this reason. The S21e XP Hydro is the proof case. At 10c it earns about a dollar a day and no public ranking will surface it. At 7c it clears $9/day and makes the world top 10. Buyers who shop on the public number never see it, which is part of why it is still in stock while the S23 family is on batch allocation. This is where a host earns its keep. At 7c the field looks healthy. At 10c half of it looks marginal. The single most valuable thing you can do before buying any of these machines is lock a real hosting rate, because the rate, not the hardware, decides which side of profitable you land on. That is the number to get in writing first. Our hosting page covers how we structure rates across 11 U.S. facilities. ## Methodology and disclosures Rankings are sourced live from ASIC Miner Value on 2026-07-17. ASIC Miner Value computes profit at a $0.10/kWh default; because that figure is calculated in the browser and cannot be set externally, we recover each machine's electricity-independent gross daily revenue and recompute net profit at $0.07/kWh (gross minus rated power draw x 24 hours x $0.07). For Bitcoin machines, gross is computed directly from on-chain hashprice of $32.56 per PH per day as of 2026-07-17 19:02 UTC (144 blocks/day x 3.1511 BTC average reward including fees x $64,224 BTC price / 895.12 EH/s network hashrate; source mempool.space); this method matched ASIC Miner Value's displayed figures within $0.06/day on every machine checked. Revenue changes daily with coin price, network difficulty, and fees; figures shown are a snapshot, not a guarantee. The 7c rate is a standardized industry benchmark for illustration; your contracted hosting rate determines actual net. Machine prices include MiningStore margin and are subject to availability. Nothing here is investment advice. Contact sales@miningstore.com for a quote. --- # Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/top-asic-mining-colocation-after-river-com-exit/ River.com pulled the plug on its bitcoin mining product. If your fleet was hosted there, the wind-down clock is running. If you were close to signing, the offer is gone. We run MiningStore: 59 MW of ASIC fleet across 10 live Iowa facilities, 3.5 MW more in construction, 180+ institutional clients, Iowa since 2019. Read this with that bias in mind. ## What happened with River.com River wound down its mining offering to focus on brokerage and savings. Customers got a transition window to move hardware. We spent the last 18 months adding capacity, not cutting it. One visible turnkey option is gone. The shortlist of operators who can take a fleet on short notice is now shorter. The next pick is the one to get right. ## Why institutional allocators care Bitcoin mining gives an institutional investor a hard physical asset that throws off a cash-flow stream denominated in a digital commodity. Operator quality varies. A top-quartile colocation provider and a bottom-quartile one are separated by 100 to 300 basis points of monthly margin, plus whether you can audit your own fleet. For family offices and PE allocators sizing mining inside a digital-assets sleeve, the partner choice carries more weight than the strategy thesis. The 2026 economics of mining a sat are settled. Uptime, repairs, custody, and reporting are what move the actual outcome off the modeled one. ## What "top ASIC mining colocation" means in practice Four things matter when you grade a colocation provider. Grade us against them too. ### Power cost and contract structure Power is the whole economic story of a hosted fleet. The number on the deck matters less than the contract under it. The contract decides whether the provider passes wholesale market rates through to you or marks up to a flat rate, and who keeps the basis between day-ahead and real-time pricing. Iowa sits inside both MISO and SPP, the two deepest wholesale power markets in North America. Serious operators concentrate there for that reason. Ask for the contract template. If they cannot walk you through the agreement and the math on a recent month's pass-through, you have your answer. ### Uptime, remote hands, and operational maturity ASIC miners fail. Whether the people who racked your fleet can also fix it sets how long the downtime runs. A subcontracted hands operation introduces a hand-off the moment a PSU dies. A facility staffed by its own engineers eats the failure inside the same shift and keeps a cleaner repair log behind it. The engineers who built our facility staff our remote hands program. When you call about a unit, whoever picks up has touched that rack. ### Custody, security, and chain-of-custody The allocators we work with will not put institutional capital into mining without verifiable chain-of-custody for the hardware and the bitcoin those machines produce. That means per-machine tracking by serial and MAC, photographed intake, signed repair logs, and payouts into wallets you control. If a provider cannot tell you which ASIC produced which sat, do not send them money. We built our institutional facility around that reporting standard. ### Compliance and reporting U.S. tax treatment of mining revenue is its own subject. Self-managed colocation throws off ordinary income at fair-market-value at the time of mining, plus capital gains at disposal. Your provider's reporting trail sets your CPA's workload in April. Our 2026 tax strategy guide covers the full structure. From the colocation provider, you need daily, per-machine, dollar-denominated production data with timestamps. ## How MiningStore fits the profile Six years of building toward this operator profile: 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities, 180+ institutional clients, per-machine tracking by serial and MAC, daily fleet reporting with down miners and repair logs, in-house remote hands, and tours by appointment. Most institutional clients walk Iowa before moving a fleet over. For a side-by-side, read MiningStore vs River vs Compass. To have us run the fleet on your behalf, the managed mining program uses the same operations team on a different contract. Whichever provider you choose, do three things before signing: read the contract end to end, ask a current client for a month of their reporting, and walk the facility. An operator built for institutional capital agrees to all three before you ask. --- # Colocation Mining Explained: How to Host Bitcoin Rigs with Ownership Control Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin-mining/what-is-cryptocurrency-colocation-mining/ Cryptocurrency mining continues to evolve at a rapid pace and remains hyper-competitive as we head towards the end of 2018. Today, if you want a real shot at scoring high cap currencies like Bitcoin, then you need to consider collocating your miners. What is colocation — and how can it be used to maximize your cryptocurrency mining revenues? Read on to see what our experts have to say about colocation and how it can help you boost your ROI on your mining investment. ## What is Colocation? Many of our clients opt for colocation after trying out mining rigs at home. For some, the noise generated may be too much to deal with in the home, while others are simply seeking a passive, hands-off experience that still generates cryptocurrency. Colocation is simply the act of renting space in a data center and is best explained with an analogy. A colocation rental is similar to owning a high-end condominium as a residence. Technically, the property is yours, but you pay a company or association to maintain it for you. You use the condo as you wish, while the building owners make sure everything is secure, well maintained and that you the tenant are looked after in every way possible. That’s exactly what happens with server equipment in a colocation mining agreement. You will own the physical hardware, but you have a rental agreement with the company who runs the data center. They take care of the infrastructure and physical maintenance, so you don’t have to. ## What Equipment Can Be Used for Colocation? Both ASIC and GPU rigs can be set up in a colocation space and take advantage of the benefits of having your equipment in a secure facility under the supervision of an IT professional. At MiningStore, our innovative and secure hosting facility is operated in strict accordance with industry best practices and overseen by our CIO, Robert Walther, a 20-year IT veteran with unsurpassed levels of experience in the tech and mining realm. Whether you opt for ASIC or GPU miners, the challenges of setting up and running rigs at home can rapidly become overwhelming, and the time required to set up, optimize and manage your machines can easily cut into your revenues. Many of our hosting clients come to us having already tried a home or office setup that simply did not suit their needs or allow them to mine productively. Some miners end up spending thousands of dollars trying to modify a home environment by upgrading electrical infrastructure, cooling, and network — only to find that they simply can’t maintain their miners at home at a level that makes sense or is efficient. From noise concerns to heat and energy use, the typical residence is simply not set up to support a mining rig, let alone a setup with multiple rigs. Noise and heat remain the largest concerns; the noise level of a typical mining rig is about that of an older vacuum or hair dryer and most people tire of it quickly. In addition to offering a noise-free way to mine in a secure setting overseen by one of the top minds in the industry today, a dedicated space has a commercial cooling system with built-in redundancies to protect your equipment and allow it to operate at peak capacity. ## Why Is Colocation Better than Self Hosting? Both ASIC and GPUs are more cost effective and far more hassle-free when run at a dedicated hosting facility. This specialty equipment simply can’t reach its full potential in your basement or office networking closet. Colocation gives your hardware access to state-of-the-art infrastructure. Just some of the most important benefits look like this: - Physical Security. Digital locks, 24/7 security guards, video surveillance and everything else you would expect to guard a high-end data center is standard. - Network Security. Ultimately every data center has to consolidate traffic through one or a few pipelines. This makes the best possible network security more cost-effective. - Cooling. Simple air coolers will not let you reach peak mining performance. Industrial liquid coolers can service entire racks for a fraction of the cost. - Up Time. Unless you have an IT pro on hand in your home, you’ll experience significant downtime when you encounter a problem. When you host your rigs with MiningStore, you get a fully staffed center that has round the clock support and instant attention to problems. - Convenience. Good ASIC miners are hot and noisy; the heat is enough to make your home uncomfortable in the summer months — and put a lot of wear and tear on your HVAC system, too. Even if you don’t mind the heat, the constant racket and noise can render your home uncomfortable for your family and guests. - Concierge Level Service: You don’t have to worry about support, getting the help you need or getting set up. When you opt for colocation, it’s like having your own skilled tech team on hand 24/7 and incredibly easy to get answers to any questions or concerns you have. It’s an old principle. If you split major costs with a group, you improve access. That’s the primary goal of colocation. If you’re serious about profitable mining, you need to give your equipment a chance to compete. If you’re new to the game, you can also look to bundle your expenses. Many colocation renters also sell mining equipment. A one-stop shop can get you mining faster and with promising returns. ## Get Started with Colocation At MiningStore, our state-of-the-art ASIC hosting facility has been designed to meet the needs of cryptocurrency miners of all sizes. Whether you are just investing for the first time or want to improve your returns by maximizing your uptime and efficiency, we can help. Contact us today to learn about our innovative, customer first approach to colocation and to begin reaping the rewards of a full-time mining operation without any of the drawbacks of going it alone. --- # 5 Best ASIC Mining Hardware for 2019 Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/5-best-asic-mining-hardware-for-2019/ An ASIC miner, or Application-specific integrated circuit, is the long-standing choice for Bitcoin mining hardware in 2019. These tiny little computer chips have been built with the sole purpose of solving blocks, and far outperform their CPU and GPU counterparts. Choosing the best BTC miner for your mining operation can be a tricky decision, especially if you are new to the industry (If so, read our post, What is Bitcoin Mining). Regardless of a ASIC miner’s potential profit, its initial cost will do much to lay the timeline for your ROI. If you plan to invest in Bitcoin mining this year, here are some ASIC miners to look at; ## Bitmain Antminer S9i We'll start our list with the Antminer S9, because it is still by far the most popular ASIC miner. The BTC miner's performance led its producer Bitmain, to report over 1.1 Billion in profits in Q1 2018. Bitmain has begun production of the S9i model, and each S9 ASIC miner contains 189 ASIC chips producing a maximum 14 TH/s hashrate. They do this while consuming around 1300W of electricity. Due to their self-contained design, S9s are incredibly compact, and don’t require extra hardware to run, save the power supply. ## Halong Dragonmint T1 Everyone’s got their eye on the Dragonmint BTC miner this year. Running at 16TH/s while only consuming about 1480W, the Dragonmint promises to be one of the most efficient ASIC miners on the market. With such a high demand, the Halong Dragonmint comes with a hefty price tag, but access to lower electricity costs could ensure a higher long-term ROI. ## ASICminer 8 Nano Running at only 48db, the 8 Nano by ASICminer promises to be the quietest miner on the market. Each 8 Nano runs at 40 TH/s, and consumes just 2100W. With a liquid cooling system, efficient fans, and radiators, these ASIC miners will remain cool under pressure. What makes these BTC miners unique is the ability to easily mount them together. The ASICminer website even states “A farm of 50 miners can be assembled on latches by two people in less than an hour”. ## Ebang Ebit E11++ Being released in April, this beast will definitely be a top BTC miner to consider. Running at a whopping 44TH/s each, they also only consume about 2000W. The Ebit E11++ is cooled with an independent heat sink using the “latest bonding technology”, and two computer controlled fans. This ASIC miner is on the high end of initial cost, but promises to be a great choice as far as profitability over time. ## Bitmain Antminer T9 Less powerful and efficient than the S9i, the Antminer T9 BTC miner is considered a more reliable option for long term ASIC mining rigs. Producing 12.5 TH/s, it’s only barely weaker than the S9i, though it does consume a little more electricity, at just under 1600W. What makes them reliable is the higher quality chips, which won’t burn out as quickly. This means less maintenance, and more time spent mining. --- # 5 Steps To Always Make Money As A Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/5-steps-to-always-make-money-as-a-bitcoin-miner/ Bitcoin mining is an extremely profitable investment for those who approach it correctly and invest at the right times. But making money with your Bitcoin miners isn't always a streamlined process. For a Bitcoin mining operation to be profitable and efficient, a considerable amount of planning needs to be thought through. Whether you're new to Bitcoin mining (If so, read our post What Is Bitcoin Mining Actually Doing?), or you've been at it for a while, being profitable is obviously the main determinant. So how can you always make sure you're making money with Bitcoin mining? In order to better answer that question, we need to look at all the variables. ## The Costs Associated With Bitcoin Mining? First is the cost of your Bitcoin mining hardware. Bitcoin miners can range from $200 for a used Bitmain S9 Bitcoin Miner, all the way to $9,000 for a Bitfury Tardis B8. The bear market has created a timely investment opportunity by drastically reducing the cost of Bitcoin mining hardware. The Bitmain S9 Bitcoin miner went for over $5,000 at the market's peak, they now sell for less than $500 new. To learn more mining hardware, read our post about The Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware of 2019. Second is the cost of your electricity to keep your Bitcoin mining hardware running. This is by far the most important factor to a profitable mining operation as Bitcoin miners require a substantial amount of power. To be profitable with Bitcoin mining, your miners need to produce more Bitcoin per month than your monthly operation costs to run the hardware. To achieve this you'll need to partner with a mining hosting provider or have access to a cheap enough power rate. These two are the most important, but you'll also have to consider things like the cost of keeping your hardware cool. Storage costs can play a role as well if you're unable to maintain a mining rig in your living space. Most reputable hosting providers include storage, security, and cooling in their hosting rate. It's hard to put forth a definitive “formula” for profiting with Bitcoin mining, and the topic is regularly debated. There are, however, some general guidelines and actions one can take to ensure their rig is always pumping your wallet as full as possible. If you are still new to the game, read our post How To Mine Bitcoin. ## Step 1 – Purchase Cost Effective Bitcoin Mining Hardware Start maximizing your profit right from the beginning. Purchase hardware that will give you the best bang for your budget, aka the best price per hash. You can easily find new Bitcoin mining hardware on Miningstore.com, or you can purchase used hardware from the massive resale market. The Antminer S9 is a great place to start, giving you a solid hashrate and low-cost without weighing too heavily on your electricity bill. Produced by Bitmain, the Antminer line is incredibly popular for Bitcoin mining rigs. Choosing efficient hardware over higher performance hardware can ensure your startup budget doesn't get out of hand and sets you up to scale later. Always pay attention to hashrate versus power consumption. That's where your profits lie. Bitmain's Z9 Mini Z-Cash Miner. A popular choice among the mining community due to it's extremely low power draw. ## Step 2 – Minimize Electricity Costs Electricity will always be a huge part of your overhead. Partnering with a hosting provider with the infrastructure to host your Bitcoin miners at extremely low rates is the biggest determinant on your mining profitability. But how can you lock-down a power cost that makes it profitable to mine? Well, unless you have access to sub $.06 power, which is far below the national average, we recommend finding a hosting provider that has the infrastructure to host miners at extremely low rates. These facilities are usually sub-stations or power plants where power can be drawn directly from the grid rather than being dropped down like your typical colocation hosting provider. Industry-leading hosting providers, like MiningStore, are starting to draw power directly from the source with the use of shipping containers. Mining in shipping containers is very tricky, but with the right design, they can offer a truly plug'n'mine, mobile hosting center. The mobility allows for power to be drawn adjacent to the source of creation which reduces operational costs and increases power efficiency. ## Step 3 – Climate control In order for your mining hardware to run at maximum efficiency and produce the best mining returns, you'll need to ensure they are kept cool and dry. Being in a geographically cool region can in itself increase your profit margin and extend the lifespan of your Bitcoin mining hardware. Before committing to a hosting provider, make sure they have a well-designed environment for air-flow, humidity control, and temperature monitoring. Ideally, your hosting provider has extensive experience in not only cryptocurrency mining but also with IT operations management. ## Step 4 – Watch the Bitcoin mining difficulty The more miners there are competing to solve algorithms on the blockchain, the harder it can become to win the block and earn rewards. As the mining difficulty rises, your profits will drop as you spend the same amount on electricity to obtain less Bitcoin. Although, Bitcoin mining difficulty typically correlates with the Bitcoin price. This means even if you are producing less Bitcoin, the higher value could still ensure profitability. Adversely, difficulty decreases when Bitcoin's price decreases. This means you may be producing more Bitcoin but the price could cause your mining operation to be unprofitable. This can be a huge advantage if you can secure a low enough power cost that ensures you are profitable in a bear market. You are competing against far fewer miners to earn the reward and can accumulate Bitcoin at a low-cost. Many miners will turn off their rigs when the difficulty pushes too high in order to protect their margins. If it rises too high, one can risk running an unprofitable machine that will end up costing more to run than the Bitcoin it generates is worth. Some will argue that this can be countered by holding onto one's Bitcoin in the hopes it increases in value. ## Step 5 – Partner with a reputable hosting provider Making sure your mining rig is always living up to its potential can be a time-consuming venture. For someone with a job or family, that time could be very valuable. Partnering with a reputable hosting company can not only increase your profits but make the whole ordeal easier, as well. Bitcoin mining hosts will maintain your hardware 24/7, and will often offer prime electricity rates. Miningstore offers a full-service hosting solution. This includes 24/7 maintenance and monitoring, and the highest capacity mining container ever designed, the BitCave. The BitCave hosts up to 1600 S9 Bitcoin miners and allows for power to be drawn directly from the grid. This provides insanely profitable rates, even in the bear market. These services can save you money on electricity, and take the burden of upkeep off your shoulders. ## Bitcoin Mining Is Still Profitable! It's not always guaranteed, but it is 100% possible. If you pay careful attention to your mining rig and the variables that play into your profits, there is always room to earn The blockchain needs dedicated miners to validate transactions and will reward them for doing so. Play your cards rights, and you'll always make money with Bitcoin mining. --- # Best ASIC Miner for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2019 Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/best-asic-miner-for-cryptocurrency-mining-in-2019/ Choosing the best ASIC miner is an essential tool for your cryptocurrency mining operation, as you’ll need to invest in the best ASIC miner if you want to make any profits mining cryptocurrency. Especially with Bitcoin’s recent price spike, difficulty for mining the future global currency has also risen! Read this up-to-date article to learn about the best ASIC miners and Bitcoin ASICs available in 2019! If you’d like to learn more about Ethereum mining hardware and profitability, Z-Cash mining hardware, how Bitcoin mining works and what it is actually doing, or the pools, software, time, profitability, and calculators, involved, check out our mining news page here! ## What Is Bitcoin Mining Hardware? In the early days of Bitcoin mining, miners used their central processing units (CPU) to mine. With time, they had to move to graphical processing units in computer graphics cards that were up to 100 times faster and consumed less power per unit of work. By 2011, miners were using field programmable gate array processors (FPGA) . FPGA’s are connected to a computer through a USB connection and use power more economically than GPUs and CPUs. The use of FPGAs made it possible to mine Bitcoin in concentrated mining farms. Currently, the trend for Bitcoin mining hardware is Application-specific integrated circuit. ASIC has taken over the miners, thanks to its unprecedented speed and less power consumption. ## What Is ASIC Mining Hardware? Application specific integrated circuit is designed to perform a specific task. If an ASIC is created for mining, that is the only task it can perform. Since bitcoin mining hardware concentrates on mining alone, it produces excellent results. ASICs are specifically created to solve bitcoin blocks. They are able to solve bitcoin blocks faster and use less electricity than FPGAs, CPUs, and GPUs because they have minimal requirements for other normal computer applications. Over the years, it has become challenging to complete the mathematical computation needed to add a block to Bitcoin’s blockchain. This is why every miner needs the best ASIC miner available. ## What Does ASIC Consist of? Application Specific Integrated Circuits are made up of several essential elements, including: - A broad set of microcircuits - Memory block - Power supply - Connector - Fans The best ASIC miners differ in their sizes, the amount of power they draw, and their ability to solve specific tasks (algorithms of work). ## There are three common types of mining algorithms: SHA-256 – this is the algorithm used by most bitcoin mining hardware. The first ASICs were designed for this algorithm. Cryptocurrencies such as Syscoin, Neoscoin, Counterparty, and Bitcoin are based on this algorithm. X11- this algorithm was proposed when developing the Dash cryptocurrency. Its proof of work employs 11 hashing functions. Other cryptocurrencies based on this algorithm include Onix, Pura, BitSend, Centurion, and PinkCoin. Scrypt- Scrypt is a secure function that generates a key depending on a password. Hacking such a system requires a large amount of memory, with random access. Script works on Dogecoin, Litecoin, BitDeal, BitConnect, and Litecoin Blockchains. The type of algorithm used is essential for proof of work. Proof of work requires active user participation to earn results. Most Blockchains are built on proof of work. ## What to Consider When Purchasing The Best ASIC Miner The first thing to look for when shopping for the best ASIC miner is its hashrate or power. It is usually expressed in Gh/s, Th/s or Mh/s. Bitcoin miners with higher hashrates are faster at calculations, which means an increased chance for a bigger reward. Although you can increase the hashrate of an ASIC, it will lead to higher power consumption and failure of the equipment, especially if it has a regular cooling system. The second factor to look into when selecting the best ASIC miner is electricity consumption. If you are using more than ten devices, you need to pay extra attention to the power of the network. Thirdly, the best ASIC miner uses energy efficiently. The amount of energy consumed is expressed as the ratio of consumed energy to hashed. The lower the coefficient, the more energy-efficient the device is. The best ASIC miners on the market today are energy efficient. You also need to consider your budget before settling on the best bitcoin mining hardware. You need to have enough money to pay off your equipment and other expenditures, such as repairs, maintenance, and electricity. Finally, you should consider the amount of noise the bitcoin mining hardware produces. This might not be important to some people, but it’s worth mentioning. Most vendors will not indicate the amount of noise produced by the bitcoin mining hardware, but it typically ranges from 75 to 90 decibels. ## The Best ASIC Miners ### Dragonmint 16T Number one on our list of best ASIC miners is the Dragonmint T16. This is relatively new bitcoin mining hardware. Dragonmint T 16 uses SHA-256 algorithm. It draws 1480 watts and has a hashrate of 16 tetra hash per second. T 16 uses a DM8575 GHS chip that uses about 0.075 j/GHS of power. It also has an Ethernet connection and a dual fan. Considering its hashrate, power consumption and ease of use, this is generally a good bitcoin mining hardware. It is very profitable in large scale mining, but that’s not to say that private miners won’t benefit from it. ### Pros - Efficient - Profitable - High hash life - Ease of set up - Easy to follow comprehensive manual - Efficient in power consumption - Made by a reputable company ### Cons - A bit expensive - Restriction from ASICBoost mining pools - Low availability ## Bitmain Antminer S9 This is one of the most popular bitcoin mining hardware. The increased difficulty of bitcoin mining leads to reduced rewards of mining bitcoin. The awards halve every four years. The arrival of S9 changed everything as it restores the lost profitability to some extent. Most people believe that Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable, but with a bitcoin miner such as Bitmain Antminer S9, you can still make a profit. ### Pros - Profitable - 90-day warranty - Efficient - Among the most powerful miners in the market today ### Cons - Limited warranty - The power supply is sold separately - Expensive ## Avalon Miner 741 Avalon is among the most refined bitcoin generators. It features a reliable open quality and an air-forming cooling technology. One of the best features of Avalon Miner 741 is its ease of set up and convenience. All you need to get this miner started is to download the device’s firmware, plug in the controller, and connect the cables to the device’s rig. Beginners will benefit from this bitcoin generator’s friendly user interface. On the downside, the profitability of Avalon Miner 741 has already dropped significantly; however, if you are interested in mining cryptocurrency without making profits, this is one of the best ASIC miners. ### Pros - It is easy to set up - Precise and helpful tutorials - Efficient ### Cons - Noisy - No longer profitable - Lacks product community ## Conclusion These are the best ASIC miners you’ll find in the market today. You should, however, take extra caution when buying rigs because profitability is always changing. Some parameters you need to consider include electric power consumption and performance. Simply put, the best ASIC miner for you is the most efficient one. Have you used any of this bitcoin mining hardware? What was your experience? Let us know in the comments section. ### Related Resources Shop current-generation ASIC mining hardware → (https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/) Get help procuring the best ASIC miners at competitive prices → (https://miningstore.com/mining-services/asic-bitcoin-miner-procurement/) Explore more Bitcoin mining insights → (https://miningstore.com/learn/) --- # Best ASIC Miner for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2019 Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/best-asic-miner-for-cryptocurrency-mining-in-2021/ ## Best ASIC Miner for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2019 Choosing the best ASIC miner is an essential tool for your cryptocurrency mining operation, as you’ll need to invest in the best ASIC miner if you want to make any profits mining cryptocurrency. Especially with Bitcoin’s recent price spike, difficulty for mining the future global currency has also risen! Read this up-to-date article to learn about the best ASIC miners and Bitcoin ASICs available in 2019! If you’d like to learn more about Ethereum mining hardware and profitability, Z-Cash mining hardware, how Bitcoin mining works and what it is actually doing, or the pools, software, time, profitability, and calculators, involved, check out our mining news page here! ## What Is Bitcoin Mining Hardware? In the early days of Bitcoin mining, miners used their central processing units (CPU) to mine. With time, they had to move to graphical processing units in computer graphics cards that were up to 100 times faster and consumed less power per unit of work. By 2011, miners were using field programmable gate array processors (FPGA) . FPGA’s are connected to a computer through a USB connection and use power more economically than GPUs and CPUs. The use of FPGAs made it possible to mine Bitcoin in concentrated mining farms. Currently, the trend for Bitcoin mining hardware is Application-specific integrated circuit. ASIC has taken over the miners, thanks to its unprecedented speed and less power consumption. ## What Is ASIC Mining Hardware? Application specific integrated circuit is designed to perform a specific task. If an ASIC is created for mining, that is the only task it can perform. Since bitcoin mining hardware concentrates on mining alone, it produces excellent results. ASICs are specifically created to solve bitcoin blocks. They are able to solve bitcoin blocks faster and use less electricity than FPGAs, CPUs, and GPUs because they have minimal requirements for other normal computer applications. Over the years, it has become challenging to complete the mathematical computation needed to add a block to Bitcoin’s blockchain. This is why every miner needs the best ASIC miner available. ## What Does ASIC Consist of? Application Specific Integrated Circuits are made up of several essential elements, including: - A broad set of microcircuits - Memory block - Power supply - Connector - Fans The best ASIC miners differ in their sizes, the amount of power they draw, and their ability to solve specific tasks (algorithms of work). There are three common types of mining algorithms: - SHA-256 – this is the algorithm used by most bitcoin mining hardware . The first ASICs were designed for this algorithm. Cryptocurrencies such as Syscoin, Neoscoin, Counterparty, and Bitcoin are based on this algorithm. - X11- this algorithm was proposed when developing the Dash cryptocurrency. Its proof of work employs 11 hashing functions. Other cryptocurrencies based on this algorithm include Onix, Pura, BitSend, Centurion, and PinkCoin. - Scrypt- Scrypt is a secure function that generates a key depending on a password. Hacking such a system requires a large amount of memory, with random access. Script works on Dogecoin, Litecoin, BitDeal, BitConnect, and Litecoin Blockchains. The type of algorithm used is essential for proof of work. Proof of work requires active user participation to earn results. Most Blockchains are built on proof of work. ## What to Consider When Purchasing The Best ASIC Miner The first thing to look for when shopping for the best ASIC miner is its hashrate or power. It is usually expressed in Gh/s, Th/s or Mh/s. Bitcoin miners with higher hashrates are faster at calculations, which means an increased chance for a bigger reward. Although you can increase the hashrate of an ASIC, it will lead to a higher power consumption and failure of the equipment, especially if it has a regular cooling system. The second factor to look into when selecting the best ASIC miner is electricity consumption. If you are using more than ten devices, you need to pay extra attention to the power of the network. Thirdly, the best ASIC miner uses energy efficiently. The amount of energy consumed is expressed as the ratio of consumed energy to hashed. The lower the coefficient, the more energy efficient the device is. The best ASIC miners on the market today are energy efficient. You also need to consider your budget before settling on the best bitcoin mining hardware. You need to have enough money to pay off your equipment and other expenditures, such as repairs, maintenance, and electricity. Finally, you should consider the amount of noise the bitcoin mining hardware produces. This might not be important to some people, but it’s worth mentioning. Most vendors will not indicate the amount of noise produced by the bitcoin mining hardware, but it typically ranges from 75 to 90 decibels. ## The Best ASIC Miners ### Dragonmint 16T Number one on our list of best ASIC miners is the Dragonmint T16. This is relatively new bitcoin mining hardware. Dragonmint T 16 uses SHA-256 algorithm. It draws 1480 watts and has a hashrate of 16 tetra hash per second. T 16 uses a DM8575 GHS chip that uses about 0.075 j/GHS of power. It also has an Ethernet connection and a dual fan. Considering its hashrate, power consumption and ease of use, this is generally a good bitcoin mining hardware. It is very profitable in large scale mining, but that’s not to say that private miners won’t benefit from it. #### Pros - Efficient - Profitable - High hash life - Ease of set up - Easy to follow comprehensive manual - Efficient in power consumption - Made by a reputable company #### Cons - A bit expensive - Restriction from ASICBoost mining pools - Low availability #### Bitmain Antminer S9 This is one of the most popular bitcoin mining hardware. The increased difficulty of bitcoin mining leads to reduced rewards of mining bitcoin. The awards halve every four years. The arrival of S9 changed everything as it restores the lost profitability to some extent. Most people believe that Bitcoin mining is no longer profitable, but with a bitcoin miner such as Bitmain Antminer S9, you can still make a profit. #### Pros - Profitable - 90-day warranty - Efficient - Among the most powerful miners in the market today. #### Cons - Limited warranty - The power supply is sold separately - Expensive #### Avalon Miner 741 Avalon is among the most refined bitcoin generators. It features a reliable open quality and an air-forming cooling technology. One of the best features of Avalon Miner 741 is its ease of set up and convenience. All you need to get this miner started is to download the device’s firmware, plug in the controller, and connect the cables to the device’s rig. Beginners will benefit from this bitcoin generator’s friendly user interface. On the downside, the profitability of Avalon Miner 741 has already dropped significantly; however, if you are interested in mining cryptocurrency without making profits, this is one of the best ASIC miners. #### Pros - It is easy to set up - Precise and helpful tutorials - Efficient #### Cons - Noisy - No longer profitable - Lacks product community ## Conclusion These are the best ASIC miners you’ll find in the market today. You should, however, take extra caution when buying rigs because profitability is always changing. Some parameters you need to consider include electric power consumption and performance. Simply put, the best ASIC miner for you is the most efficient one. Have you used any of these bitcoin mining hardware? What was your experience? Let us know in the comments section. ## Want to know more about mining Bitcoin? Schedule a Demo Today Schedule A Demo --- # Best Bitcoin Mining Software of 2019! Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/best-bitcoin-mining-software-of-2019/ When it comes to cryptocurrency mining especially Bitcoin, the hardware is not the only thing that you need. Perhaps there are more complexities involved such as which Bitcoin mining software should you use and what platform are you using to mine Bitcoins. You might have Linux, Mac or Windows, but does the OS support your Bitcoin mining software? Before moving forward, know that every Bitcoin mining software we discuss supports Bitcoin ASIC miners. This is because GPU mining with Bitcoin is largely dead. It will take years for a person with average GPU to mine a single Bitcoin. Specialized hardware is now available on the market such as Antminer S9 for a mere $200 that easily competes with traditional GPU rigs. This, in turn, gives better results and hashrate to BTC miners. Here are some popular Bitcoin mining software that you can use in 2019: (See here: Best Bitcoin Mining Pools) ## Cgminer Bitcoin Mining Software CGminer is one of the most commonly used Bitcoin mining software. The software is originally driven from Bitcoins CPU mining software and it’s quite popular in the mining community. Although it works with ASIC miners but it does not provide simplified user interference. Instead, you need to make line commands in order for software to work. The software is written in C language and consists of several features. These include: - Frequent updates - Ability to overclock your hardware - Ability to control fan’s speed - Support for multiple pools - Built-in feature to maximize the value of your hashrate It also supports Bitcoin mining with GPU and CPU In addition, it is a cross-platform Bitcoin mining software. This means it can work on Linux, Mac and as well as Windows. For further analysis of software, you can browse the official thread of Cgminer here. ### BFGminer Bitcoin Mining Software If you have more technical expertise, then BFGminer might suit you best. This is one of the most powerful Bitcoin mining software out there, and unlike Cgminer, it is specifically designed for ASIC miners alone. While boasting the cross-platform functionality across several platforms, it also supports Raspberry Pi. Although it consists of the same text-based interference as Cgminer but you can use hotkeys to navigate it. Here are some of the best features that BFGminer offers: - Ability to overclock your hardware - Supports quite a lot of ASIC hardware - Can automatically configure itself in case of mining failover - Supports configuration with multiple pools such as Slush, Antpool and etc - Can help to monitor the device temperature for better functionality This open-source software has a lot more to provide in comparison with other Bitcoin mining software. Here is a complete list of features of BFGminer from its developer. ### Easyminer Bitcoin Mining Software If you are not a fan of command line interference, then Easyminer would be the right choice for you. This Bitcoin mining software is a combination of CGminer and BFGminer, and supports several pools. The Easyminer perhaps is a good way to start if you are new to Bitcoin mining and don’t like a black or blue window interface. But perhaps there is more you should pay attention to when it comes to Easyminer. This software comes with an additional feature that goes by the name of “MoneyMaker”. When switched on this mode helps to instantly create paper wallets and connects to own private pools. But there is sad news for Mac and Linux users. This Bitcoin mining software doesn’t officially support any other platform other than Windows. Although, you can take it as a bonus and can download the unofficial version of this software here. Here are some features of Easyminer to consider before you make the decision to go forward with it: - It’s free and open source. This means you can modify it the way you like - Provides real time statistics of shares accepted and rejected - Provides a built-in personal wallet for user’s convenience - Supports periodic hardware checks to maintain hashing speed. - Provides visualization graphs for easy monitoring of your Bitcoin mining activity. ### BitMinter Bitcoin Mining Software Officially started as an initiative to make mining more user-friendly and easy, the company quickly gained fame and now runs their own mining pool. However, there is little activity on their pool. But the Bitcoin mining software provides a trouble-free way for new miners to enter the mining industry. Although, the project is not open source and only supports BitMinter pool, if you want to avoid running into Bitcoin mining technicalities, then BitMinter may be the perfect fit for you. You should also give Bitminter a try If you are looking for a fast and simple installation to configure your ASIC hardware. In addition, the software is available across Windows, Mac and Linux so it won’t matter as to which operating system you are using. You can download Bitminter from their official website. ### Multi Miner Bitcoin Mining Software When it comes to Bitcoin mining, making the most out of your hardware is what many of us look for. Perhaps making the best use of your ASIC hardware requires the right user-friendly software capable of generating the optimal hashrate. Multi Miner may prove your favorite when it comes to user-friendly interfaces. For this Bitcoin mining software, the development team took both new and advanced users into consideration. Multi Miner supports several known Bitcoin mining pools. In addition, it also supports Litecoin mining and can easily work around with GPUs. Multi Miner has its own dedicated website from where you can download the software. Besides, the software automatically detects your hardware configuration to provide you with the best hashrate possible, which is something all investors want to achieve. This Bitcoin mining software is open source and the code can also be browsed on their GitHub repository. This software is very appealing to new investors and individuals looking forward to reap the benefits of Bitcoin mining. Perhaps this is because of the additional features it provides, such as: It requires no configuration by automatically detecting Network Devices Automatic updates for software to improve usability Notify you about other profitable currencies to mine Automatically detect and monitor standalone miners on your network ## The Bonus The above things aside, there is something more that makes me prefer Multi Miner all Bitcoin mining software that we mentioned in this article. And that something extra is Multi Miner’s ability to easily monitor your rigs and ASIC miner using a mobile browser or their dedicated mobile app. Most of us don’t have a lot of time to regularly check our hardware and CPU to see how they are functioning. But when it comes to Multi Miner, it provides an easy way to monitor the performance of all of your rigs on-the-go. ## Conclusion Apart from the Bitcoin mining software listed above, there are many other open-source software that you may find suitable for your mining interests. But the majority of them do not provide additional functionality as those highlighted above. In addition, most of them are also based on command-line, and that can make it difficult for a new user to configure his mining hardware and connect it to his favorite mining pool. So, when it comes to Bitcoin mining, you need a proper combination of software and hardware to maximize your profits. By just stacking up ASIC miners and configuring them with the some poor software that lacks several functionality won’t be really helpful. Once again, if you are looking for the best Bitcoin mining software, I will opt for Multi Miner. This is because of its notification feature that constantly checks my hardware and Altcoin prices to notify me about the best profitable coins to mine. In any case, if you are planning to start Bitcoin mining, then proper insight and research is needed to make the ultimate decision with regards to Bitcoin mining software. Perhaps you should also see that if the Bitcoin mining software you are going to opt for provides support for your hardware. Of course, you are not planning to jump from one software to another and risk increasing your power costs if it doesn’t meet your expectations. There have been instances where people have reported a lack of communication between their ASIC miner and software. So do some digging around in this respect as well. And don’t forget to backup your Bitcoin wallet before you begin minting new coins! --- # Colocation Mining vs. Cloud Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/colocation-mining-vs-cloud-mining/ Even in today’s bear market for cryptocurrency, miners continue to flourish and thrive; because of this, there are a wide range of choices for those wishing to mine Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In this volatile market, efficiency in your mining operation is essential; the right tools will help you gain as much revenue as possible from your investment and activity. In the early stages of cryptocurrency mining, it was easy to set up a GPU rig and begin mining from home. An increase in the competition for mining rewards meant that miners need to be both fast and cost effective – a typical home setup today is more for hobbyists. You can no longer earn real revenues or competitive rates with this rudimentary setup. This leaves a few options for those wishing to enter the mining game; - Open a data center to hold your dedicated miners - Opt for colocation, and have your dedicated rigs hosted securely - Try cloud mining, and pay to use someone else’s rigs Miners need significant resources and know how to set up an efficient and operational data center, from the actual physical property to the time or employees to watch over the system and keep everything running. Most of us are left with two options; colocation or cloud mining. Today, we are taking a look at these two easily confused terms and highlighting the differences between the two. This is also a heads’ up for new miners, as “cloud mining” is often used by scammers hoping to cash in on your inexperience. ## Colocation vs. Cloud Mining The difference between these two forms of mining is usually defined as “owning vs. renting”, but the reality is far different. Cloud mining allows you to buy time only, you have little say in how operations work – and the field is awash in scammers trying to make a quick buck off of the uninformed. We’ve outlined the distinctive differences between these two cryptocurrency mining options below. ## Mining Colocation We’ve covered the benefits and details of colocation extensively here; when you opt to collocate, you own your own mining rigs and they are placed in a secure facility and monitored 24/7. You don’t have to worry about service disruption (since units are monitored around the clock and onside support is incredibly responsive), theft, high heat or soaring energy bills. You own your ASIC rigs and operate them as you like, but don’t have to cope with keeping things cool or managing support staff. It’s like placing your expensive sports car in a high-end garage and having someone care for it and watch over it for you daily. You get the fun of driving the car, someone else takes care of your vehicle’s every need. ## Cloud Mining Cloud Mining is different from colocation. The theory behind cloud mining sounds pretty good. You rent time or become a mining pool member and receive a portion of funds based on performance. You will be charged for using the equipment but will have little control over how the equipment is used or how effectively it runs. There is usually a long term, expensive contract in place as well. Investopedia lists cloud mining as one of the most frequently encountered scams in the cryptocurrency world, so we recommend proceeding with caution. This model is closest in comparison to a rental or timeshare, where you pool with others to buy into a specific plan, you do not actually own anything and have little say in how the process works. The cloud mining world is also tough to navigate, instead of a straightforward purchase and contract, you have to sift through and comply with all kinds of group rules – and may even end up losing your initial investment. ## So Which is Better, Colocation or Cloud Mining? We recommend colocation over cloud mining for the following reasons: ## Versatility and Control An ASIC mining rig isn’t like a refrigerator – – you don’t just plug it in and then let it do its thing. You need to be able to strategically invest and adjust as needed based on your own preferences, not on someone else’s arbitrary schedule. Colocation lets you be in charge, while cloud mining just lets you tag along for the ride. ## Risk Mitigation Cryptocurrency remains volatile, but you should not be exposed to other risks. A fly by night cloud mining operation could disappear or simply make poor choices. A colocation brand is heavily invested in your success and is dedicated to watching over your assets and keeping your systems safe. ## You Get to Keep your Profits When your rigs in a colocation facility make money, those revenues are yours, just like they would be if you hosted those pieces in your own home. When your cloud mining team makes money, you get a small portion, paid when the pool decides to release it. If you are interested in mining as a hobby, then a home rig is still a better option than cloud mining; you’ll own your own equipment and make your own operation decisions. When you are ready to begin mining a high cap cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, though, the benefits of colocation are worth exploring – and any cloud mining contract should be scrutinized with care to avoid losing your investment. ## Cryptocurrency Mining with MiningStore Many of our colocation clients came to us after starting in cloud mining – and seeing less than optimal results. Whether you want to get started the right way from the very beginning or are ready to make the jump to taking control of your own mining future, we can help. Contact MiningStore today to learn more about colocation and getting your own mining operation off the ground --- # Cryptocurrency Mining: Everything to know Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/cryptocurrency-mining-everything-to-know/ So you want to get started with cryptocurrency mining, huh? Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are revolutionizing the way people transfer value between one another. With the ability to send low-fee transfers anywhere in the world within minutes, the blockchain technology that makes it all possible has taken the world by storm over the last ten years. At the core of it all are what are known as “miners”. Miners confirm those transactions and ensure the integrity of the immutable ledger where they are all recorded. ## What Is Cryptocurrency Mining? Cryptocurrency miners are computers or collections of specialized hardware. They serve to solve logarithmic equations put forth by the blockchain ledger to confirm transaction information. The miner, or “pool” of miners, that solves the equation first is rewarded, and records the next “block” in the ledger. As the total amount of computing power being used to try and solve these equations increases, the difficulty increases in kind. If people turn their miners off, and the total computing power decreases, the difficulty will decrease as well. This system is in place to ensure that coins are distributed at a steady pace. C In the case of Bitcoin, there will only ever be 21 Million coins created, and they are rewarded about every 10 minutes. There's also what’s known as the “halving”, in which the reward per block is cut in half for every 210,000 blocks recorded. The very last Bitcoin will be mined somewhere around the year 2140. So not only is this function essential for maintaining the public record, it’s a great way for those who dedicate their time to the cause to earn money for doing so. Click here to learn what Bitcoin mining is actually doing? ## How To Mine Cryptocurrency Before you can jump head first into mining your first bit of cryptocurrency, there are some things you’ll need. Cryptocurrency mining requires computer hardware and software at the minimum. In order to get the most out of that hardware, you may want to work together with others. It used to be that one was able to mine Bitcoin well enough with nothing more than a home PC. As the mining difficulty has increased, though, using simple CPUs became less and less profitable. People learned that graphics cards typically used for high-end gaming were capable of producing much better results. Anymore, though, it’s becoming necessary to build what is known as a “mining rig”. A mining rig is essentially a collection of hardware designed to do the work quickly and efficiently. These days, there are a number of companies who sell hardware purpose-built for mining. They're made to give as much computing power as possible while consuming as little electricity as they can. The overall profitability of a mining rig will depend on the gap between the amount of cryptocurrency it’s able to mine, and the cost of electricity required to power the mining rig. Click here to learn about the best Bitcoin mining hardware of 2019. Most cryptocurrency mining hardware uses ASIC (application-specific integrated circuit) chips. These were created to be really good at one task at a time, such as solving the logarithmic equations involved with mining. Once one has the hardware to mine, they’ll also need software to point all the computing power in the right direction. Much like with hardware, there are numerous options when it comes to cryptocurrency mining software. Some are little more than command consoles. Others are very user-friendly, having sleek interfaces that make it easy for beginners to get started. ## Cryptocurrency Mining Pools There’s also the question of whether one wants to try and mine solo or team up. Solo mining has the potential to try and collect an entire block reward, but can be difficult. Joining a pool of other miners to split rewards earned by the whole. The former is only recommended for those who have invested a considerable amount into their mining rig. Otherwise, it may take an egregious amount of time to receive a reward, if it ever solves the equation the fastest alone at all. A mining pool is a great way to earn a steady flow of rewards for contributing to the total power of the group. Each time the pool as a whole solves a block equation, the reward earned is divided among all the miners in the pool depending on the amount of computing power they contributed. Click here learn more about the top cryptocurrency mining pools! ## Cryptocurrency Mining Hosting Maintaining a mining rig can be a difficult task for someone just starting out, or all together unfeasible for someone who may not have the space required to set up the hardware. A mining rig will produce a considerable amount of heat with all that hardware running at full tilt, and you’ll have to consider the electricity cost of cooling when calculating your total profit. If all of this sounds like too much, don’t worry. There are other options out there for getting into the cryptocurrency mining game. If maintaining the hardware is your only drawback, there are companies that will host and maintain hardware for a fee. These companies will often seek out the best rates on electricity. They will also keep your hardware running efficiently to ensure you continue earning. There’s still plenty of time to start mining cryptocurrencies. It can even be argued that one is best off getting started as early as possible. No matter how you choose to go about it, cryptocurrency mining can be a great way to secure your financial future. Mass adoption will help reign in the next generation of money. Those smart enough to get in early will see the greatest returns. --- # Cryptocurrency News: Bitmain Releases Overt AsicBoost for Antminer S9 Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/cryptocurrency-news-bitmain-releases-overt-asicboost-for-antminer-s9/ Great news for Bitcoin miners and ASIC rig fans – Bitmain just released firmware for the Antminer S9, one of the most enduring and popular cryptocurrency mining rigs on the market today. The new firmware is designed to enable “overt AsicBoost”, according to a recent blog post by Bitmain. The recent release was delayed largely due to concerns about the use of AsicBoost by miners and how that use could impact the brand: “Initially, we decided against activating this mathematical function in mining hardware produced by us, largely because of the legal uncertainty surrounding the use of AsicBoost. As an organization, we didn’t want to violate patent laws or act in any way that was untoward. Instead, we continued to focus our efforts on R&D and building the industry’s most efficient mining chips.” By spring 2018, though, Bitmain began to notice that new hardware manufacturers were advertising an “AsicBoost” product and that blocks were appearing on the blockchain that had been mined using the product. According to the brand’s recent post, they released an overt version of AsicBoost to give Bitmain users official support and to allow them to stay competitive in the increasingly volatile cryptocurrency mining space. There is support available now for this firmware on both BTC.COM and Antpool. ## What is AsicBoost? AsicBoost is designed for the ASIC chips that are used to mine Bitcoin and other high cap cryptocurrencies. The goal of AsicBoost is to give miners a way to swiftly spot and target blocks that are valid; this streamlines the process and saves some energy. The result is a boost in efficiency for those using AsicBoost and a slight but real competitive edge. ## Overt vs. Covert AsicBoost There are two versions or forms of AsicBoost; covert and overt: - Overt AsicBoost: The firmware just deployed by Bitmain; this is designed to have greater efficiency than traditional mining. The use of overt AsicBoost does not incentivize poor or sloppy behavior that could negatively impact Bitcoin protocol or users. - Covert AsicBoost: A black hat version of AsicBoost with built-in anonymity; this is often used to generate profits at the expense of Bitcoin protocol or the blockchain. Miners using covert AsicBoost have been accused of producing overly small or even empty blocks and damaging the overall Bitcoin blockchain. ## Overt AsicBoost by Bitmain Bitmain’s release of an overt version of AsicBoost is in response to the use of covert versions and the potential impact they have on miners. The company also hopes that activating AsicBoost now will increase the effectiveness and lifespan of customer hardware, allowing customers with the Antminer to get longer life and more use from the existing product without additional investment. The latest Bitmain release is also designed to enhance transparency for all during the mining process. The official launch of AsicBoost comes as the brand prepares for an IPO, which could draw more attention to the offering and highlight the increased efficiencies made possible by AsicBoost. ## What the AsicBoost Activation Means for You If you have an Antminer S9, you can access the latest AsicBoost features; if you do not yet have your mining equipment, add “AsicBoost” functionality as another reason to go with the gold standard Antminer S9. The added lifespan and efficiency make this a positive for miners and another reason to venture into the world of Bitcoin mining. Still, have questions, or ready to launch your own mining efforts? Let’s talk! Our team is standing by to help you choose the setup and equipment that will serve you best. --- # How Much Can You Make With An ASIC Miner in 2019? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/how-much-can-you-make-with-an-asic-miner-in-2019/ ## ASIC Miners in 2019 Bitcoin mining is a very dynamic industry with consistent updates to the hardware, software, pools, price and profitability, making it harder to always make money with an ASIC miner. From traditional CPU and GPUs, mining investors have now moved toward ASIC miners as their go-to choice due to their updated chips and hashrate. In early days, anybody could have mined Bitcoin using their average laptop or desktop computer. But as the price of Bitcoin increased, many new participants joined the mining industry to unlock the potential of additional income. Now, we have powerful and dedicated hardware commonly known as Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) Miners. They are available on various e-commerce websites and you can also purchase them from our store. If you are still thinking to mine Bitcoin using your traditional CPU or GPU, then best of luck in advance for the disappointment you will face! Just for a thought, an average ASIC Miner has the power of about 700 in GPU! So maybe it’s time to reevaluate your hardware choice. Although there are several ASIC miners available in the market but before making a choice there are two things every investor should consider. ## ASIC Miner Hashrate The hashrate is the number of mathematical calculations that ASIC miner can perform per second. This means high hashrate brings more chance of profitability. Even though the hashrate determines the profit you can make, but then there is power consumption required to run ASIC miner. ### Power Consumption This is another important factor while choosing ASIC hardware. Getting your hands on a very powerful ASIC might help you with high hashrate. But when it comes to making the best decision, investors should also look into power consumption of their hardware. The mining hardware is power hungry and would easily give a hard hit to your electricity bill. Moving forward, let us dive in further insights about the top best ASIC miners. #### Bitmain Antminer S15 This is among the most powerful ASIC miners from Bitmain. At its peak, Antminer can produce a hashrate averaging around 28 TH/s with the power consumption of 1600W. The hardware contains two cooling fans and 7-nanometer chips specifically designed for Bitcoin mining. But when it comes to profitability, we need to know as to how much each ASIC miner can make? Or in how many days you are going to meet the ROI? Well, it totally depends on your power cost. For the sake of calculations, if you are living in Canada where, the average cost per kWh is just 10 cents! No wonder then that Canada is becoming a hotspot for Bitcoin mining. As per the current Bitcoin mining difficulty and price and with the hashrate of 28 TH/s you would probably end up making $25 a month using Antminer S15! That’s the income you would generate by a single ASIC miner. What if we deployed 10 of such machines? Well, the road to passive income doesn’t seem that far. #### DragonMint T1 Another thing that investors look for before starting Bitcoin mining is efficiency. If we can balance the power consumption with the newly generated Bitcoin, we are likely going to end up profitable. In this case, DragonMint T1 boasts itself as one of the most efficient mining software out there. Providing a maximum hashrate of 18 Th/s with a power consumption of around 1500W DragonMint T1 can be one of the best choices for new Bitcoin miners. With hardware of this type, you can easily make above $15 a month while enjoying your life in Canada. But when talk of powerful ASIC miners, then only a few come close to Innosilicon Terminator3. #### Innosilicon Terminator3 This machine lives up to its name. Manufactured by Innosilicon, a renowned Bitmain competitor, the Terminator 3 ASIC miner boasts of an insane 43 TH/s per second. This is one of the most powerful ASIC miner in the market at the time of writing and requires power consumption of 2100W. We know more TH/s means more profit, but how much exactly? Based on our estimates, you are likely to make around $55 a month! #### MicroBT Whatsminer M10 Doesn’t sound good by the name but it is a sleek design hardware is ready to mint new Bitcoin. This ASIC miner boasts a hashrate of 33 Th/s with a power consumption of 2145W. With a price of around $1500, this miner provides a great value for investors. The hardware is manufactured by MicroBT that aims to provide the mining industry with cost and energy efficient hardware. Well, how much can you earn? Not much but it still gives a pretty decent profit of $14 a month, i.e. if your average electricity bill is around 10 Cents. #### Bitmain Antminer S9i Here’s our second selection from the manufacturer Bitmain. The s9i is another popular version of the Antminer, and its hashrate can peak around 15 TH/s. The machine is not power hungry if we compare it to the other ASIC miners listed in this article. With 3 chipboards and 189 chip counts, a person can easily make an average profit of $57 a month with the Antminer s9i. This is even better then Innosilicon Terminator3. Perhaps, this might be the main reason why many people call it the best ASIC miner. ## The BONUS! By now, we know on average how much we can make as passive income with Bitcoin mining, provided we have the right software. But our list might not necessarily be amusing for many investors. Of course, Bitcoin mining might require several days to get return on our investments. And many of us might regret the choice of our hardware. But here is one ASIC miner that might compel you to pull out your credit card! ### Ebang Ebit 11++ Don’t focus on the name. We only listed it as a bonus because of it’s earning potential. Any guesses. Well, the Ebit 11++ can earn you a whopping $170 in profits! The Ebit 11++ is made by Ebang, a company with several other ASIC miners in it’s catalogue. Although it costs around $2500, but it is highly cost-effective and can help you reach ROI within 6-7 months. The machine boasts a hashrate of 44 TH/s and requires power consumption of just 1980W! With low power and high hashrate you can just relax all day long and focus on other activities while Ebit 11++ makes some passive revenue for you. Now that’s what call efficient! ## Final Thoughts To sum up, when it comes to a good ASIC miner, there are several options available for investors to choose from. From low-cost S9 Miner to a highly influential Ebit 11++. But the range of choice is not the advantage here. The overall Bitcoin mining network hashrate is constantly changing and with an ever increasing competition and high volatility in Cryptocurrency prices, you can run the risk of unprofitability. To make a long-lasting income from Bitcoin mining make sure you are using the cheapest power source available. It’s not a good plan if you make one Bitcoin today at a cost of $3950 while paying the electricity bill above $5000. You can also browse several other ASIC miners in our shop. And if you already have an ASIC miner, then you might be interested in browsing other Bitcoin mining products. Notice: All the computations above are based on the network hashrate of 43 Exahash per second. In addition, the Bitcoin price in the metrics was fixed at $3950 with the block reward of 12.5 Bitcoin. The mining industry is volatile and Cryptocurrency price can change rapidly. Thus, in case of any loss, our company, member or any of its associate will not be held responsible. --- # How To Get Bitcoin In 2019: A Step-By-Step Guide To A Bitcoin Investment Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/how-to-get-bitcoin-in-2021-a-step-by-step-guide-to-a-bitcoin-investment/ ## How To Get Bitcoin In 2019: A Step-By-Step Guide To A Bitcoin Investment Bitcoin mining is an extremely dynamic industry with its constant updates on how to mine Bitcoin, the hardware, software, pools, price, difficulty, and profitability, making it harder to calculate your returns and always make money mining. ASIC miners have quickly advanced and upgraded, impacting how much ASICs make and therefore how long it would take you to mine a full Bitcoin. But, are asking yourself how to get Bitcoin in 2019? Are you interested in the revolution of decentralized Cryptocurrencies? Maybe you are looking forward to stashing on Bitcoin on any other relevant Cryptocurrency that suits your interest. For this, you have plenty of options to choose from. If you are a beginner and are not willing to make some heavy investment in the industry, you can go on with Micro Earnings or can integrate Bitcoin payment in your website. Further, Newbie can easily learn how to get Bitcoin for free with little effort by completing tasks or signature campaigns on Bitcointalk forum. ## How To Get Bitcoin: By Purchasing and Trading Them Well, the easiest way to get Bitcoin is by purchasing them. There are a lot of ways to do so, as many Crypto exchanges also cater to these needs. For example, the popular cryptocurrency exchange Binance allows credit card payment on their platform in exchange for Bitcoins. Similarly, you can also purchase Bitcoin using several other exchanges, such as Coinbase and Coinmama. Once you successfully purchase your first Bitcoin, you can either hold them or trade them with other Cryptocurrencies. Trading might be one of the safest but riskiest ways to make more Bitcoins. Basically, you buy alternative coins when the price is low and sell them when their price is high. In turn, you receive more Bitcoins then you previously have. However, Bitcoin trading can be complex and it is not a matter of luck. To become a successful trader, you need to invest time to learn the complexities and technicalities of Crypto trading. This will help you overcome many risks associated with Crypto trading. A successful trader might also lose money in the short run. But, as far as investment is concerned many retain their holdings for the long run. Maybe, this is the reason why the word HODL is that popular in the Crypto community. ## How To Get Bitcoin: Bitcoin Mining If you are looking to build a passive income using Cryptocurrencies, investment in mining would be a good option for you. Bitcoin mining started back in 2009 with the founder of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto mining the first Bitcoin block. Since then, many things changed and the competition to mine as much Bitcoin as possible using your hardware increased significantly. In fact, the hashing difficulty grew rapidly throughout the year, increasing mining difficulty But, because of the lengthy bear market, there is an unprecedented opportunity to invest in the mining space. A Bitmain S9 Bitcoin miner cost over $6,000 10 months ago. Today, they are available for less than $200. In addition, the difficulty is also low since most miners turned off their machines because they have become unprofitable. This gives miners who have access to cheap enough power rates a huge advantage to mine BTC at a low price, difficulty, and hardware costs. ## How To Get Bitcoin: Monetize Your Traffic and Accept Bitcoin Payments Mining or purchasing Bitcoin is not the only way to get Bitcoins. If you have any e-commerce website, a large affiliate network or heap of traffic, you can easily monetize time them through Bitcoins. For ease of access, many popular wallets provide powerful API to integrate Crypto payment on your website. You can use Coinbase and Coinpayments to easily add them as a medium of transaction for your website. ## How To Get Bitcoin: Work for Bitcoin Another way to get Bitcoins is by providing your services against it. You can work for Bitcoin on several websites and quickly gain your hands on Cryptocurrencies without the need for any capital investment. If you don’t know how to begin, browsing a list of Services here would be the perfect way forward. ## How To Get Bitcoin: Write for Crypto Writing about cryptocurrency is similar to saying to open your online presence and monetize it. If you are good at writing and have knowledge of SEO, coming up with influential ideas and reviews about Crypto products and Cryptocurrencies would be a great match for your skills. People are looking for more and more information and experiences in the Crypto industry. Many websites emerged recently that cater to these needs and are tapping into this opportunity. In many cases, websites are desperately seeking Crypto Writers since it is a new industry and many individuals are not aware of topics and articles. For this, good writers are hard to find, who can submit qualitative work, in turn, increasing the revenue of the business. ## How To Get Bitcoin: Promote Bitcoin Affiliate Programs A commonly overlooked way for securing Bitcoins is by promoting various affiliate programs. Basically, affiliates are individuals that promote a certain product, or business for free but receive a commission if they manage to bring a successful sale. Many Bitcoin exchanges, wallets, and products have an affiliate program in which you can enroll without having to pay for. Besides, you will get your own unique affiliate link to promote it on the social media website or any other method that you prefer and think would be the better option. How about sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? If you have a large follower base, you can easily make tons of Satoshis via affiliate marketing. Another option is to promote your affiliate link by using an advertising campaign on Social Media, Or Ad Networks. Both options look good and if you manage to get loyal customers for the service you are promoting. There are highly profitable Bitcoin affiliate programs and these include Binance, Coinbase, Skrill Payment Gateway, Local Bitcoins and many others. By using affiliate networking, you can easily make Bitcoin without having to leave your home. ## How To Get Bitcoin: Using Bitcoin Faucets Let’s forget about Bitcoin investment and working for it. How about some easy ways to get Bitcoins? If you keen to be a slow learner and aren’t prepared to put efforts or capital in decentralized currency, using Bitcoin faucets might be the best way to start. Using Bitcoin faucets requires efforts and some hard work. In addition, income is pretty low but the risk associated with them is even lower than the previous methods mentioned. Using Bitcoin faucet is time-consuming and you probably won’t be making a lot of Satoshis. But if you manage to build a large number of referrals on faucet websites, the time and effort you invest will be worth your while. In addition, you can also perform several micro tasks and complete surveys to get Bitcoins. ## Conclusion There are plenty of ways to get Bitcoins. If you are looking for some easy ways and do not have the time or capital to invest in mining or trading, using Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies Faucet would be the perfect way forward. However, if you are looking to stack up a large number of Bitcoins and make it a passive and additional source of revenue, coming up with mining firms or building a perfect trading strategy would suit your needs. In addition, there are also some other ways you can use to get Bitcoins. These include Signature campaigns on forums, or accumulating Bitcoin tips. You can also use Bitcoin forks, such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Diamond to collect more Satoshis. So, what is your favorite method to get Bitcoins and how will you be looking forward to getting your first decentralized cryptocurrency? ## Want to know more about mining Bitcoin? Schedule a Demo Today Schedule A Demo --- # How To Mine Bitcoin? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/how-to-mine-bitcoin/ The Bitcoin blockchain is dependent on dedicated computers around the world to help verify transactions on the network, and keep everything in working order. These computers are called “miners”, and these miners get rewarded for their work in Bitcoin. You’re not alone if you’re saying something to yourself like; “That sounds great, but, how do I even start Bitcoin Mining?” You actually have a few options on how you’d like to start your Bitcoin mining venture, and they all have their pros and cons. At first glance, you might think you’d need a decent amount of technical knowledge to mine Bitcoin, but that’s not always the case. Anyone with a few minutes and a little effort can be online and mining Bitcoin within minutes. To get a crash course on how mining actually works, read [What Is Bitcoin Mining Actually Doing?]. The very first thing you’ll want to make sure you have is a virtual “wallet” to store the Bitcoin you collect. Just like with mining, you’ve got a few different choices of how you’d like to store your coins. There are “offline” wallets that store your Bitcoin on your local computer, or online wallets that will hold your Bitcoin on a remote server. The most secure, however, would probably be a “hardware” wallet. These are essentially encrypted flash drives that allow you to keep your Bitcoin offline, and take them wherever you go. ## Bitcoin Mining Hardware! The most straightforward way of Bitcoin mining is to purchase a Bitcoin miner to lend your computing power to the network and earn your reward. In the cryptocurrency community, we call this connected hardware a “mining rig”. It used to be that one could mine Bitcoin with nothing more than an old CPU, but the rise in block difficulty has rendered CPUs, and even most graphics cards, obsolete. That’s not to say it’s impossible, but if you want to most bang for your buck, you’ll want to pull out the big guns, the ASIC miner. These days, people use specialized pieces of equipment full of “application-specific integrated circuit”, or ASIC, chips. These tiny little chips have been specifically designed to be good at one task, finding the solution to an encryption algorithm, very efficiently. By solving the algorithm in question, also known as a hash, miners are verifying live transactions happening on Bitcoin’s blockchain network and cementing them onto the public ledger. When mining Bitcoin, you’re looking to produce as much hash power as possible, while consuming as little electricity as possible. The margin is where you make your money back from the equipment purchase. To be profitable in today’s market you need to run your Bitcoin miner with a power cost around $.06 USD/kW to break even on the Bitmain S9 Antminer which is pictured below. MiningStore is one of the few mining hosting providers that offers a rate even below this, making it profitable to mine in the bear market. So once you have your equipment, it’s almost time to start crackin’ codes and mining some Bitcoin! ## What Is ASIC Mining Hardware? Application specific integrated circuit is designed to perform a specific task. If an ASIC is created for mining, that is the only task it can perform. Since bitcoin mining hardware concentrates on mining alone, it produces excellent results. ASICs are specifically created to solve bitcoin blocks. They are able to solve bitcoin blocks faster and use less electricity than FPGAs, CPUs, and GPUs because they have minimal requirements for other normal computer applications. Over the years, it has become challenging to complete the mathematical computation needed to add a block to Bitcoin’s blockchain. This is why every miner needs the best ASIC miner available. ## Bitcoin Mining With Someone Else’s Hardware! If all of that sound a little daunting, or you simply don’t have the time or space to manage your own mining rig, you could always rent power from someone else, and receive the Bitcoin produced from it! This is called Cloud Mining. Basically, someone else sets up a large mining rig and allows people to rent out part of the computing power it generates, instead of using it to mine themselves. Everything gets managed for you. The only downside is that more often than not, when investing with Bitcoin cloud mining, you don’t own the hardware, and once your contract is up, your revenue comes to a halt. There’s quite a large reseller market for used Bitcoin mining hardware which allows you to recoup some of your initial investment into the space. ## See…Bitcoin Mining Is Easy! With the right hardware and software, along with a Bitcoin wallet, you’ll be collecting your first bit of coin in no time at all. From there, the sky’s the limit! --- # Is Bitcoin Mining Legal? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/is-bitcoin-mining-legal/ If you are reading this, then you are most likely aware of Bitcoin mining and the relative software miners needed in order to connect their hardware. (If you are new to mining, see here: What Is Bitcoin Mining?) If you are planning to start with Bitcoin mining and have stuck around with its legality, then in short, it is perfectly legal! Well, this is the case with the majority of countries. Legality of Bitcoin mining and using Bitcoin for conducting transactions varies from one jurisdiction to another. When it comes to countries such as America, China, Japan or South Korea then mining here is mostly legal. But for some countries such as Russia, you might better not try! As a miner, you might wonder as to why governments ban Bitcoin and other digital assets like it. The answer is simple; it is because of the power it consumes for mining and the impact it can have on local currency. Besides, China did a crackdown on Bitcoin exchanges back in early 2018 stating that they are a threat to the national currency and the banking sector itself. Many people use to believe and speculate about Bitcoin mining getting criminalized by governments. But instead, the majority of them have turned friendly towards Crypto. In addition, Bitcoin is not regarded as normal currency by governments. Instead, it is deemed as an asset or property subject to capital gain tax. Many countries have not outlawed Bitcoin and Cryptos entirely except for a few. Others are mainly silent and people use the silence of law to their advantage.. Many criticized Bitcoin as a waste of energy and harm for environment but certainly there are more benefits when it comes to Bitcoin mining. Enabling a monetary system worth millions, it is safe to say that Bitcoin have the charm to easily replace several online payment institutions. So… …why would the government take sides on Bitcoin’s legality? When it comes to mining, a lot of factors come to play. Many countries can feel pressure to ban them on political, economic or even religious grounds, but here are some factors that highly influence the decision they make ## Tax Revenue Bitcoin mining provides additional revenue for the government. Miners who make decent profits from their ASIC mine software are liable to tax in many countries such as Australia and America etc. Governments are clever and they are always looking to have some share from your side income. Why would they ban Bitcoin mining when it allows them to earn some additional revenue? Although, this might look like a factor to completely regularize the mining industry but then there comes the impact of power-hungry hardware that miner use to mint the coins. ## Power Consumption Many developing countries face power shortfall. While others suffer from the high cost of production when it comes to electricity. Bitcoin mining is a power hungry venture and requires a lot of energy consumption. A report from Elite Fixtures gives us more insights as to how the cost of mining one single Bitcoin can range from $550 to a whopping $20000 depending on the country of your residence. Majority of countries fall above $10000 cost range. This means Bitcoin miners are left with only a few options to relocate their farms and maintain their profits in case it becomes illegal to mine Bitcoins in their own. On the other hand with countries having additional power in their grid can greatly benefit from legalizing Cryptocurrency mining. Perhaps, this is also one of the main reasons as to why the majority of Bitcoin miners are located in regions where power is relatively cheap and the access to the hardware for mining Bitcoins readily available. ## Investments Bitcoin miners are hungry for the cheap power sources. Perhaps, this is the main reason why many miners have relocated to places like Iceland or Venezuela where average mining cost is pretty low. But don’t pack your bags for Venezuela quite yet, since the country is struggling from major economic crisis. In addition, many governments are seeing Bitcoin mining as a growing industry and are focusing to use it for their economic benefits. A booming industry fetches more investment and many governments such as Japan and South Korea have already cashed-in this opportunity. In addition, countries such as Iceland are providing incentives to miners for relocating their mining farm there. ## What are countries where Bitcoin is illegal? There are certain nations that have placed an explicit ban the use of Bitcoin. These particularly include: – Russia – Algeria – Ecuador – Bolivia – Colombia For Russia, banning Bitcoin is more than just prohibiting it for local people and business. Lately, the country got hit hard with sanctions because of its activities in Ukraine. And as a result, the local currency came under pressure. While struggling with the economic crisis due to low oil prices and trade restrictions, Russia sees Bitcoin as a threat to the economy. The rubble has suffered massive inflation in comparison to the United States Dollar and the country wants to control all means of money laundering and keep its foreign reserves intact. But here is another interesting country that has banned Bitcoin but operates its own Cryptocurrency backed by United States Dollar. Any guess? Well, this is Ecuador! The country explicitly banned Bitcoin and every other cryptocurrency because of the establishment of their own Cryptocurrency directly pegged to USD. Well, I guess nobody wants Bitcoin to compete with them. Although, Bitcoin activities are hard to ban since it is a peer to peer network and exchanges such as Localbitcoins can easily help people get their hands on some Bitcoins. You might be thinking as to whether there are laws in your country legalizing Bitcoin mining. Instead of running into complexities and contacting your lawyer about Bitcoin mining, how about focusing more on the hardware you will use to mine your very own Cryptocurrencies? We have pretty much of them available at our store. ## Conclusion Even though Bitcoin mining is legal in many countries, but one should also consider the impact it can have on the stakeholders, especially environment impact Once a local community in New York filed an official complaint to police about a mining farm taking advantage of cheap electricity in their neighborhood. The result? Authorities requested them to halt their operation. If you have finished digging about the legality of Bitcoin in your jurisprudence, then maybe it is time to analyze some external factors you should consider before firing up your ASIC hardware. Your ASIC miner is probably going to make a lot of noise. Besides, if you are living somewhere in a tropical country than additional investment for keeping the area cool would also be required. In addition, many countries, mostly in Africa, haven’t pass any laws regarding Cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin mining. Further, the law is silent about virtual assets. If you are a person living in such a country, then it is better to keep an eye on your laws about Bitcoin mining since legalization might hit you while in sleep. In contrast, if you are someone residing in a place where Bitcoin mining is largely legal, then it is time to reach out to your local communities and ask about the tax complications involve. Please mind that the above doesn’t constitute as a piece of legal advice. You should consult a lawyer or any other Cryptocurrency professional to be more specific about the legalization of Bitcoin mining and its usage in your country. --- # Top 5 ZCash Mining Hardware of 2019! Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/top-5-zcash-mining-hardware-of-2019/ If you are researching cryptocurrencies that you can profitably mine in 2019, you’ll want to take a look into Zcash mining. Cryptocurrency mining can be a very profitable investment in 2019, if done correctly. (See here: Guide to profitable mining in 2019) To mine profitably in 2019, you’ll need a combination of efficient hardware and low-cost power. If you're interested in Bitcoin mining, click here to read about the Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware for 2019. Along with low-cost hardware, partnering with a hosting provider who can operate your mining hardware at a low rate can help you secure optimal mining returns. MiningStore, an industry-leading hosting provider, has been profitably Zcash mining for the past few months, and believes it's a great option for anyone looking to start. ## What is Zcash? Zcash is a privacy coin that was released in late 2016 by founder and CEO, Zooko Wilcox. According to Wilcox, “Zcash is a new blockchain and cryptocurrency which allows private transactions in a public blockchain. This allows businesses, consumers and new apps to control who gets to see the details of their transactions, even while using a global, permission-less blockchain." Zcash was recently added to the Pro version of the popular exchange, Coinbase, where it can be bought on their retail platform and mobile app. Zcash mining uses the Equihash algorithm and can be performed by ASIC miners or GPUs. ## Zcash Mining Hardware Picks Below are MiningStore’s picks for the top 5 Zcash Mining Hardware of 2019… ## 1.) Bitmain Antminer Z9 Mini The Z9 Mini is a power-efficient Zcash mining rig, requiring only 300 watts to operate. The ASIC Miner hashes at 10k sol/s but can be overclocked to 14k sol/s. According to a Zcash mining calculator (See here: CryptoCompare Z9 Mini Calculations), the Z9 Mini will produce over 0.9 Zcash per month when overclocked to run at 14k sol/s. It will profit around $381 per year when being hosted at a rate of $.0625/kWh. Not only has the Z9 Mini has stayed consistently profitable due to its low monthly operational cost, but it could be immensely profitable with the large volume of Zcash it produces. New, overclocked versions of the Z9 Mini can be found on MiningStore’s Hardware Shop for $850. The host for less than $30 per month in a MiningStore hosting facility. You can also find plenty of used hardware available on reseller marketplaces, like Bitcoin Forum’s Hardware Marketplace. Specifications: - Hashing algorithm: Equihash - Hash chips: 12 PCS - Hash boards: 3 PCS - Hashrate: 10.0k Sol/s±5% - Power consumption: 247 W +5% - Size (Length*Width*Hight): - 206x124x155mm - Weight: 2.02kg - Noise level: 55dB - Fans: 1 - Voltage input: 11.60~13.00 V - Operation temperature: 0-40 ℃ - Operation humidity: 5%RH-95%RH， - prevent condensation ## 2.) Bitmain Antminer Z9 The Z9, Zcash mining rig, is a Bitmain produced ASIC miner that runs on the Equihash algorithm. It clocks in at around 40k sol/s and consumes around 1200 watts. According to a Zcash mining calculator (See here: CryptoCompare Z9 Calculations), the Z9 will produce over 2.5 Zcash per month and profit around $900 per year if you are hosting it at a rate of $.0625/kWh. The Z9 can be found on Amazon for around $1500. Although the Z9’s operational cost will be higher than its miniature counterpart, it is still profitable when being hosted at industry-standard power rates. - Hashing algorithm: Equihash - Hash chips: 48 PCS - Hash boards: 3 PCS - Hashrate: 40.8k Sol/s ± 5% - Power consumption: 1150W± 10% - Size (Length*Width*Hight): 132 x 226 x - 279mm - Weight: 5500g - Noise level: 75 dB - Fans: 2 - Voltage: 12V - Operation temperature: 5 – 40 Celcius - Operation Humidity: 5%RH-95%RH， - prevent condensation - Until Bitmain’s release of their two Zcash - ASIC Miners, the Z9 and Z9 Mini, all - Zcash mining was done with GPU mining cards. While these may not be the most profitable choices for Zcash mining, they can be great alternatives for someone looking to mine at home. ## 3.) GTX 1080 Ti First on our list for GPUs is the GTX 1080 Ti. - Hashing algorithm: Equihash - Hashrate: 700 H/s – 800 H/s - Power Consumption: 200w – 280w - Price: $900 – $1100 The GTX 1080 Ti produces a solid hashrate for Zcash mining while maintaining a fairly low power draw. The biggest downside to this GPU is the high price which can turn away most at-home miners. If you have one of these sitting around from an old gaming computer setup it could be a great option to start Zcash mining! ## 4.) GTX 1070 Ti Next on our list is the GTX 1070 Ti. - Hashing algorithm: Equihash - Hashrate: 500 H/s – 550 H/s - Power Consumption: 110w – 200w - Price: $500 – $600 The GTX 1070 Ti can be a great option for Zcash mining. Especially if you can purchase for a good deal, the 1070 Ti can be a very efficient Zcash mining GPU. With the rise of ASIC miners, GPUs have become less popular and more available, which has led to a decrease in price. ## 5.) GTX 1080 and 1070 Zcash mining with GPUs is only efficient with Nvidia cards. Both the GTX 1080 and 1070 can be great options if you have access to the hardware. Below are the specs. ### GTX 1080: - Hashing algorithm: Equihash - Hashrate: 510 H/s – 620 H/s - Power Consumption: 180w – 210w - Price: $620 – $670 ### GTX 1070: - Hashing algorithm: Equihash - Hashrate: 420 H/s – 520 H/s - Power Consumption: 145w – 210w - Price: $400 – $600 ## Conclusion Whatever hardware you chose to invest in, Zcash mining can certainly still be a profitable route for mining in 2019. Ensure your profitability by partnering with a reputable hosting provider and investing in low-cost hardware! --- # What does the Bitcoin price today mean for Bitcoin Miners? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/what-does-the-bitcoin-price-today-mean-for-bitcoin-miners/ The Bitcoin price ($3,844.02 at the time of writing) has been on a rollercoaster ride since January 2018. From the highs of $20,000, the price underwent several ups and downs settling above $3,000. With the Bitcoin price today, traders have either bet on short or long margin calls to increase their gains. However, extreme fluctuations in the price’s movement and lower mining difficulty gives new hope to the miners. ## BITCOIN PRICE TODAY… Due to lower demand for Bitcoin mining energy, the chances of profitability is quite higher than before. You might think as to how it can be profitable to mine Bitcoin at the price and rate today. Well, with few barriers to entry into the market and having access to a cheap power source, the chances are more in your favor than last year. As the popularity of decentralized currencies skyrockets, big tech and institutions are heavily investing in Bitcoin mining to diversify their portfolios. Although, as a miner, if you were locked in cloud hosting contracts through Genesis Mining or any other platform, it might mean you run the risk of unprofitability due to the Bitcoin price today. But the hope for gains is not over yet. More miners are now flocking towards ASIC miners to take advantage of the current market situation than ever before. Fall in ASIC miner prices now makes it easier to set up your own mining rigs. Here are some ways the Bitcoin price today can help you, should you plan to invest in Bitcoin mining: ## Low Mining Difficulty The infrastructure for Bitcoin mining means the rewards miners receive halves every four years if the difficulty remains the same. However, the Bitcoin mining difficulty fluctuated considerably during the past months, leading to wrong profit estimation. But Bitcoin halving likely due next year is likely to increase the value of your holdings. How about mining and stashing your Bitcoins till the next Bull Run? Data from Blockchain.com, a popular Bitcoin wallet service provider, shows how Bitcoin’s mining difficulty increased over time. People were probably flocking to mine Bitcoin’s while the difficulty increased but was it the best time to get in? Perhaps not! Historically, Bitcoin halving, which is likely due next year, might trigger the next bullish momentum. Comparing the data regarding how price reacted to halving, we can see that it always ends with green candles on the price charts. Bitcoin price today provides a better chance for miners to capitalize on their savings. With the decreased demand for ASIC miners and lower cost of entry, it has become more interesting to enter the game and benefit from the calm market situation. ## Ever Low Hardware Cost ### Bitmain Antminer S9: Go-to mining hardware for Bitcoin miners. - Price 12-Months Ago: $5,000 - Price Today: $200 With the long bear market, the costs to enter the mining industry are lower. Now, you don’t need a heavy budget to start with Bitcoin mining. Instead, a few hundred dollars would work out the same way it could have during the last year’s Bull Run. Perhaps, the Bitcoin price today has proven beneficial from the perspective of miners and investors. Miners who are turning unprofitable during the current market situation are flooding their ASIC miner at cheap rates. An S9 ASIC miner 12 months back was worth $5,000 but thanks to the current Bitcoin price, it only cost around $200. This is a whopping 96% decrease in the price of Bitcoin mining hardware, which is insane! In turn, this brings increase opportunity for individuals having access to low power cost and planning to invest in Bitcoin mining. This brings us to… ## Low Power Costs ### Power costs have never been cheaper due to the decreases demand from Bitcoin miners Well, the power miners need to mine Bitcoin at the price today is lower as well, all thanks to the long bear market that is proving to be advantageous for people looking forward to Bitcoin mining. Data from Digiconomist, which is a popular service to monitor energy consumption for mining Bitcoin, speaks volumes about the current mining industry. As per the graph, the volatile run of Bitcoin from $1,800 to $20,000 led to an increase in the energy requirements for Bitcoin mining. In fact, the power Bitcoin fetched along peak highs averaged around 75 Kilowatts per hour. Although thanks to the bear market and Bitcoin price today, limited power is necessary for Bitcoin mining in comparison to the previous year. The energy reduction has revealed the lowest power costs that Bitcoin miners have ever seen. The price today further allows the miner to accumulate their coins before halving in 2020 and sell them along the next bull wave. ## Perfect Time To Hodl Hodling is a term popular in the Bitcoin community when traders keep holding their coins instead of selling them while the bear market hits them hard. The Bitcoin price today allows miners to take advantage of next bull wave likely due on 2020. For miners, this presents a perfect time to increase their liquidity in Crypto. Bitcoin price today hovers around $4,000 but who knows where it will stand in the next Bull Run? But the bottom line is that as a miner, are you prepared to cash in on this immense opportunity. ## But There Are Rumors That Bitcoin Mining Is Dying? There has been lots of speculation that Bitcoin mining is dead or might be dead in coming days. But ask yourself, why big pools, such as Antpool, Slush Pool, etc, are still operating and functioning well alongside the Bitcoin price today. Simply because it still remains profitable. In fact, if you are holding your coins to sell them in the not too distant future, you can even reap a higher return on your investment. Bitcoin mining is not dead and probably won’t ever be. There will always be someone trying to make additional income using their hardware. Why something capable of generating a side income would ever collapse unless there is a law to prohibit it? ## Why Should Miners Go For ASIC Miner? ### Bitmain S9 Antminers running in a MiningStore BitCave Although, initially cryptocurrencies allowed any individual to mine from their home, but those days are long gone. Today, if you are looking forward for mining Bitcoin, Ethereum mining or any other influential cryptocurrency, such as Dash, a better way is to use ASIC miners to perform the job. CPUs and GPUs as well have become obsolete when it comes to Bitcoin mining. ASIC are rapidly replacing the traditional way of mining. ASIC miners are application-specific hardware designed to meet the needs of the growing mining industry. Bitcoin uses the SHA-256 algorithm to mine new coins. ASIC miners running this algorithm mine new Bitcoins for investors to make a profit out of it. When it comes to mining, you probably won’t be willing to take the risk by investing in conventional GPUs and waiting for them to generate higher hashrate. Besides, specialization in every industry matters and so does in Bitcoin mining. In addition, an ASIC miner is likely to fetch you a higher hashrate than GPU rigs with the same budget. In case you are looking forward to getting your own ASIC miner or compare miners, you can visit our shop today. ## The Likely Way Forward for Miners Bitcoin miners are likely at peace with the current market scenario. With negligible fluctuations to worry about, running your own ASIC miner is again becoming popular in the industry. In addition, the low hardware cost due to the bear market and inflating the amount of supply for ASIC miners increased the chance of profitability for investors. Further, the demand for energy is not as high as it was before. The low power cost combined with increased access to mining markets widened the gap between cost and revenue. In fact, it might be the best time to get your own ASIC miner from our Store and connect it to your favorite mining pool. This might also serve as a source of passive income for many of you. Besides, at Miningstores, you can ask us about any questions that concern you about Bitcoin mining or are products. ## Conclusion Bitcoin mining is highly effective and profitable if you can get the things right. With cheap power source and low cost of entry, the Bitcoin price today looks like an attractive opportunity for investors to get in. The specialized ASIC miners are proving to be a far better investment than traditional GPU rigs when it comes to Bitcoin mining. At the Bitcoin price today, risking some capital for higher returns in the future might be a wise decision for many miners. Further, miners can even take advantage of low mining difficulty and can reap a decent return on their investments. In addition, traders are even betting on the current scenario as the calm before storm. Of course, we are not a fan of bear markets. But, with increased consolidation and developing interest around Cryptocurrencies, the next Bull Run is likely not far. So, are you ready to make the most of your investment by taking advantage of Bitcoin price today? Our advice would be to hold on to your coins and wait for the perfect opportunity to sell them! --- # What Is An ASIC Bitcoin Mining Rig? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/what-is-an-asic-bitcoin-mining-rig/ Bitcoin mining is a dynamic industry with consistent updates to the hardware, software, pools, price, difficulty and profitability, making it harder to always make money mining with an ASIC miner. Mining can be a great Bitcoin investment, especially if you have a cheap power source. If you are seeking information on what an ASIC miner is and how much an ASIC miner can make, you have landed on the right page! But before we move forward it is better to understand how Bitcoin mining works. ## How Does Bitcoin Mining Work? In the early stages, Bitcoin mining was largely done with CPU and GPU hardware. But, with the rising prices and greater adoption of decentralized currencies, many investors have flocked towards ASIC hardware. But what is the best ASIC miner to begin with? ASIC miners are Application-Specific hardware designed with only one purpose, to mine Bitcoins. This means the microchips inside the machine can only work for Bitcoin mining and nothing else. A Bitcoin ASIC miner will only function to generate hashes for Sha-256 algorithms and can’t be used to mine other Cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin or Dash. Lately, many ASIC mining hardware companies have emerged in markets. Although Bitmain still has a dominant market share when it comes to choosing the best ASIC miner. Bitcoin mining has become competitive and it is not ideal for an average person to mine using their traditional desktop devices. In addition, cheap electricity available in China, Canada and Venezuela have largely made the industry reach its optimum level. An ASIC miner is as powerful as 700 GPUs 12000 CPUs that could earn investors millions. Thus, going for ASIC hardware would be cost effective and efficient as well. But what is the best ASIC miner and how can you find one? ## Choosing the Best ASIC Miner: When it comes to the Best ASIC miner we can rely on some key factors to determine our choices. These include: ### Hashrate How many hashes can your ASIC miner generate? More hashes will generate more Bitcoin but might also require higher consumption. The higher cost of power can easily outperform the effect of Bitcoins your machine can generate. That’s why efficiency is crucial here. ### Power and Efficiency When you fire up your ASIC, you need a lot of power supply to function them well. For this, you would want to buy the most efficient ASIC miner. This is to convert a large amount of electricity into the greatest number of Bitcoins as possible. ### Price When choosing the best ASIC miner, price is the most important factor as it determines how long it will take you to reach your ROI. If you are buying an ASIC worth $500, it is likely that you will cover the cost within a span of 5-6 months. But with high-end powerful ASIC that costs around $2500, reaching ROI might even take a year. While you can use these factors to find you’re your own ASIC miner, we narrowed down your choices by compiling a list. #### Halong Mining DragonMint 16T ASIC Miner Flashing a brand new technology of Nanochips and boasting 16 TH/s, DragonMint is a top option when it comes to starter Bitcoin miners. This mining machine also takes advantage of ASICBOOST to boost efficiency by 20%. Although, starting from a price of $2720 the DragonMint is not affordable for everyone, but it is still one of the most efficient mining hardware in the industry. Perhaps, it was designed to meet the growing demand from investors that usually look forward to setting up large Bitcoin mining farms. In addition, it requires 1600W of Power Supply to effectively run DragonMint 16T. You can also do some quick calculations using various Bitcoin Mining Calculator and see how much profit are you going to make with this machine. #### Bitmain Antminer S9 ASIC Miner In its inception, the price of a brand new Antminer was around $2000. But thanks to the long bear market, now it only costs around $250. This also brings increased opportunity for new miners to invest in Bitcoin mining. An Antminer averages around 14 TH/s at its peak and is very efficient than most of the ASIC miners available on the market. Although much of the profits depend on Bitcoin difficulty and the global hashrate, Antminer still features a strong cost-effective option for many beginners. The hardware consists of 16 Nanometer chips to cater for modern mining needs. However, when it comes to power supply, Antminer S9 is at par with DragonMint and needs the same 1600W PSU. #### Bitmain Antminer R4 ASIC Miner If you are looking to set up an ASIC miner rig inside your home, then Antminer R4 would be a perfect choice. Coming from the Bitmain Company, this mining hardware was specifically developed to be used and deployed in homes. Traditional Mining hardware is a lot noisy and causes noise pollution. While having quiet fans and the efficiency second only to the S9 Miner, Antminer R4 can be the perfect solution for hobby miners. Talking about the hashrate, it can easily average at 9 TH/s, making it the next best ASIC miner in Bitmain Antminer series. The hardware has a power requirement of approximately 845 PSU, which is almost half of DragonMint 16T. The cost of a new Antminer R4 is around $1000 but you can get a used one in for around $400. Well, the price may not be attractive for many hobby miners, but it’s way cheaper when it comes to efficiency. #### Ebang Ebit 11 ++ ASIC Miner This is an ideal ASIC miner specifically designed to meet growing mining needs. This ASIC machine might be one of the most stunning hardware yet. Ebit 11++ costs around $2500 and gives a whopping hashrate of around 44 TH/s. This type of hardware is best suited for large investors and corporations looking to make Bitcoin mining as additional income in their diversified portfolio. The PSU requirement of Ebang Ebit 11++ is around 1980W. With low PSU requirements and a high hashrate, Ebang definitely suits the title of Best ASIC miner as of now! ## Final Thoughts Bitcoin mining industry is rapidly evolving. People are looking for cheap power resources and hardware to make the most from their investments. Companies such as Bitfury and Bitmain have the greatest market share of Bitcoin mining hardware. But with the influx of more corporations such as Halong Mining and Ebit, miners carefully need to choose an efficient mining machine to get a Return on Investment (ROI) as early as possible. As for choosing the best ASIC miner you carefully need to think about the purpose of your mining. If you are looking for a small setup inside your home, then Antminer R4 would be the perfect fit. Although, you need to invest a little more of your time in Bitcoin mining software and select a pool before getting started. In comparison, if you were looking to set up a large Bitcoin mining farm, then choosing from Antminer S9 or DragonMint 16T would likely be the way forward. Before reaching a conclusion it is better to have a brief analysis of Bitcoin mining industry and what factors can influence your profits. Maybe you actually buy plenty of Ebang Ebit 11++ in the coming week and came to know that Halong Mining has released a more efficient mining machine? Of course, we cannot peek into the future, but at least we can make estimates of Bitcoin mining hashrate and difficulty based on previous data. Maybe it is time for the Bitcoin Mining community to come together and decide on the best ASIC miner. --- # What Is Bitcoin Mining Actually Doing? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/what-is-bitcoin-mining-actually-doing/ Bitcoin mining is the act of using specialized computer hardware to verify transactions on Bitcoin’s Blockchain network, an open and public ledger that cannot be altered, but what exactly does that mean? What’s actually happening behind the scenes when one is mining Bitcoin? If you’re still new to the idea of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the inner workings can seem a bit hard to grasp, but that’s where we come in. To be a little more accurate, Bitcoin mining is the act of solving complex “proof of work” algorithms to verify when someone sends Bitcoin to another person; how much, to whom, and ensuring sure the portion of Bitcoin changing hands hasn’t already been sent somewhere else. In exchange for lending their computing power to the network, Bitcoin miners are rewarded via transaction fees, and when new blocks of information are created. We’ll get a little more into that soon. ## Bitcoin Mining All the information about every Bitcoin transaction is recorded into what’s known as a blockchain. Put simply, a blockchain is a chain of data blocks. When a transaction is put forth, an encrypted packet of data is created, called a hash, and Bitcoin miners work to decrypt the information and find the 64 digit solution to the mathematical problem. When a hash is solved, the Bitcoin miners pass the information into a block on the public ledger. When a block fills up, a small bit of information about the previous block is also included before the ledger starts recording to a new block, in order to ensure the integrity of all future blocks. ## Bitcoin Mining Difficulty The difficulty of the mathematical problem for each block is constantly adjusted to try and ensure that blocks, and Bitcoin rewards for mining, are produced about every ten minutes. If there are more Bitcoin miners, or rather, more computing power, trying to solve the equation, the difficulty rises to accommodate. Less computing power, the difficulty lowers. Click here to view the Bitcoin mining difficulty chart! It used to be that anyone with a dusty old laptop could potentially produce enough power to solve the equations and receive rewards. These days, though, a single Bitcoin miner working alone will need to be very powerful in order to find the solution before others do. The constant fluctuation in difficulty can make it very challenging for a single computer to quickly solve the algorithm, so many people have come together into what is known as “bitcoin mining pools.” A mining pool is where everyone lends their computing power to a single source and share any rewards generated by the pool based on how much hash power each miner contributed. To learn more about pools read our blog post, [Different Bitcoin Mining Pools For 2019?]. Once information is verified and recorded into the blockchain, it can never be altered. Every single Bitcoin transaction is recorded and saved forever. This information is verifiable by the entire network, making the act of changing or rolling back transaction data near impossible. ## Bitcoin Mining Reward Distribution There is a finite number of Bitcoin that will ever be produced. 21 million in total to be exact. The term “mining” can be thought of like chipping away at the mountain of Bitcoin that is left to be gathered. Your computer can’t swing a pick though, and it wouldn’t need one anyway. Every time a new block is recorded into the chain, a number of Bitcoin are generated and given to the miner(s) that completed the proof of work. When the Bitcoin blockchain was first started in 2009, the reward for Bitcoin mining was 50 Bitcoin per block, however, for every 210,000 blocks that are produced, or roughly every 4 years, the number of Bitcoin awarded per block decreases by 50%. After 64 of these “halvings”, the Bitcoin mining reward will drop to 0, meaning no new coins will be produced, and all 21 million Bitcoin will be in circulation. If the rate of block production remains steady, the final Bitcoin will be mined sometime around the year 2140, so you’ve still got plenty of time to get into the game! To learn how long it would take to mine a full Bitcoin, click here! Bitcoin mining will still be incentivized, though, as a very small portion of all transactions on the network are shared with the miners that helped verify the transfer of value. This will ensure that there are always resources available to keep the network running smoothly. ## Bitcoin Mining Is Like Giving Your Computer A Job! All the technical details can seem overwhelming at first, but in a nutshell, Bitcoin mining is like telling your computer to solve math problems for money, while helping to keep the entire network moving along so that people are able to send Bitcoin anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes. Pretty awesome if you ask me. To read about the best Bitcoin mining hardware of 2019 click here! Join our MiningStore newsletter to receive industry information, insight on the most profitable ways to mine, and our predictions for the future of cryptocurrency mining! (PS… we are giving away a few FREE Bitcoin miners to fight the bear market gloom… don't miss your chance!) --- # What is Bitcoin Mining and Is It Still Profitable Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/what-is-bitcoin-mining-and-is-it-still-profitable/ Find out the process of Bitcoin Mining and our thoughts on 2019 profits! Bitcoin, the most widely used and valuable cryptocurrency in the world, is driven by a process called Bitcoin mining. Defined by three key characteristics, Bitcoin is transparent, immutable, and most importantly, completely decentralized. The decentralized nature of Bitcoin means that it isn’t issued or managed by any centralized authority — instead, the ledger that keeps track of all Bitcoin balances and transactions is managed in a collaborative manner by tens of thousands of Bitcoin Miners around the world. These participants help to secure and maintain the Bitcoin network through “mining.” Bitcoin miners are rewarded for their contribution in the form of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin mining industry is relatively complex, and requires dedicated hardware, but can be extremely profitable —Bitmain, the world’s largest Bitcoin mining organization, generated over $1 billion USD in profits in the first quarter of 2018 alone. Volatile cryptocurrency markets, the increasing dominance of large-scale mining “pools,” and increasing operational costs, however, have dramatically altered the profitability of Bitcoin mining for independent miners over the course of 2018. Is Bitcoin mining still profitable in 2019? ## What is Bitcoin Mining? The Bitcoin network, like a traditional banking system, relies on a ledger in order to keep track of balances and transactions. In contrast to traditional systems, however, the Bitcoin ledger isn’t managed by a centralized authority. Instead, the Bitcoin ledger is collaboratively managed by Bitcoin miners. Bitcoin miners make sure that transactions added to the ledger are genuine and record them in an immutable manner through mining. Mining is performed by extremely powerful computers that solve complex equations in order to render the Bitcoin ledger is cryptographically secure. For the average miner, this means operating and maintaining dedicated hardware that consumes a large amount of electricity. The profitability of Bitcoin mining is calculated by balancing the cost of operating this hardware versus the reward given to miners that contribute to the Bitcoin network. Some miners choose to work together in groups, sharing computing power in a “pool” of miners that also share the block reward. This has led to the creation of large-scale mining companies such as Bitmain and F2Pool, who operate massive mining operations in data centers across the world. ## How Does Bitcoin Mining Work? In order to prevent malicious parties from adding fake transactions, the Bitcoin network uses a method called “Proof of Work.” Each participant in the Bitcoin network maintains a copy of the Bitcoin ledger. When transactions are sent, all participants subsequently record it in the ledger. When enough transactions have been collected, they are grouped into a “block” of transactions, which is then encrypted using an extremely complex algorithm. All miners compete to solve this equation first — the winner of the race to solve the block is provided with a reward, which is currently 12.5 Bitcoin. The miner that solves the block also receives the transaction fees for the transactions included in the block. To make sure miners don’t attempt to include fraudulent transactions in a block, all blocks are validated by other network participants. If the block is rejected, all of the time and energy invested in solving the block is wasted. ## How is Bitcoin Mining Profitability Calculated? Bitcoin mining profitability is calculated in a relatively simple manner — operational costs versus reward. The likelihood of reward, however, depends on a number of factors. ## Hardware Prices Bitcoin mining hardware prices have increased significantly from the earliest days of the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin mining is now performed with specialized hardware — Application Specific Integrated Chip (ASIC) devices, which can in some cases cost thousands of dollars. ## Hash Rate A hash is the complex mathematical problem solved by Bitcoin mining hardware. A hash rate is a measure of how fast a miner is able to solve these problems. A higher hash rate increases the likelihood of solving a block and subsequently receiving the block reward. ## Bitcoin Price As the reward for solving a block is delivered in Bitcoin, the price of Bitcoin plays an important role in calculating Bitcoin profitability. In late 2017, Bitcoin prices ran as high as $20,000 USD, making mining extremely profitable. Q1 2019 Bitcoin prices have made calculating margins extremely important for Bitcoin miners seeking to generate profit. ## Pool Competition Miners that choose to participate in a mining pool must pay a fee to the pool for the service it provides, which ranges between 1.5% and 3%. ## Difficulty Bitcoin mining difficulty is carefully balanced in the Bitcoin network in order to ensure blocks are mined as close to a 10-minute schedule as possible. The Bitcoin network self-adjusts — as more miners dedicate processing power to the Bitcoin network, the difficulty of the mathematical problems that need to be solved for each block increases. ## Power Costs Power is the most important overhead for Bitcoin miners, as ASIC units have an extremely high power draw. It’s essential for miners to calculate the per kilowatt rate of electricity in the region they are in, as Bitcoin mining hardware incurs both electricity and cooling costs. Assessing the above factors when considering the profitability of a Bitcoin mining operation is essential. Many large-scale mining operations choose to establish data centers in regions that offer low electricity costs, such as China, or in places in which cooling costs are minimized, such as Iceland. For individual miners, however, hosted Bitcoin mining solutions are rapidly becoming a far more cost-effective option in 2019. ## Hosted Mining Rig Profitability Bitcoin cloud mining allows miners to rent mining power directly from data centers but is not the most cost-effective solution for miners in 2019. Hosted mining, however, allows miners to maximize the profits delivered by their mining hardware by hosting it in a secure location that delivers rack space, power, networking, and cooling solutions — dramatically lowering operational costs. --- # What Is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty What Causes it To Change? Source: https://miningstore.com/bitcoin/what-is-bitcoin-mining-difficulty/ Bitcoin mining has greatly evolved since its inception back in 2010. From low tech CPU and hardware, miners are now flocking towards ASIC miners (See here: Best ASIC Miners) to increase their return on investment. Investors are more curious about Bitcoin mining and its feasibility to diversify their portfolios. Of course, making income from firing up your hardware while sitting at home sounds great. But it is not as easy as it sounds (See here: 5 Steps to Always Make Money Bitcoin Mining). A large influx of miners in recent months have rapidly increased Bitcoin mining difficulty. But before we talk about mining difficulty let us, have a brief overview of Bitcoin mining. ## What is Bitcoin Mining? Bitcoin mining is a computer process to verify and secure the transactions on Blockchain (See here: What is Bitcoin Mining Actually Doing?). It involves adding new Bitcoin transactions in the already existing Bitcoin public ledger after verification of transaction. Verification can require multiple confirmations. Without-mining, the network can easily get attacked and lose stability. For a transaction to get confirmed by miners, it needs to get added in a Block. ## What is a Blockchain Block? When you attach your Bitcoin mining hardware to generate hashes, you are contributing to the overall Bitcoin network. This means you are pooling your resources with other miners to find “blocks” on the network. The Block is the data containing various transactions in these networks. When the miners verify the block on the network, they are rewarded with new Bitcoins. The reward is 12.5 Bitcoins as at the time of this post. This is then distributed among the participants. I know. You’re thinking ‘why do I even need to to connect my Bitcoin mining hardware to a pool’ (See here: Best Bitcoin Mining Pools)? You want use your resources instead for solo mining and get that shiny 12.5 Bitcoin reward all for yourself. But sorry to pop your thought, evil genius, you honestly can’t go solo these days unless you are willing to spend thousands of dollars to capture the global hashrate. With that said, let’s now proceed to our main topic. ## What is Bitcoin Mining Difficulty? When a miner connects his Bitcoin mining hardware (See here: Best Bitcoin Mining Hardware for 2019), it adds to the global Bitcoin mining difficulty. But what is this difficulty and why it constantly changes? Data from Blockchain shows how mining difficulty has changed during the last five years. As Bitcoin mining popular more and more popular, investors are flocking in to connect their ASIC miners, which increases the competition to mine Bitcoins. Bitcoin difficulty is the number that regulates the time the miners would take to add new blocks in Blockchain. When you relay a transaction to Bitcoin network, it doesn’t just go through it. Miners also need to run their hardware to confirm and sign the transaction. If multiple blocks fail to get confirmation on the Blockchain, it will start to clog the Bitcoin network and this, in turn, will likely increase the average transaction fees. Thus the Bitcoin mining difficulty is the measurement of the time it would take to mine a new block. ## What Causes Bitcoin Mining Difficulty to Change? Bitcoin difficulty target is 256-bit generated hash number that is adjusted after every 2016 blocks. The adjustment is based on the time it took to mine the previous 2016 blocks in the network. The difficulty algorithm works in a way that produces Blocks roughly every ten minutes. The time is modified by Bitcoin-QT client after every two weeks in relation to the time it took to mine previous 2016 blocks. The Bitcoin mining difficulty comes down if the earlier 2016 blocks took more than two weeks to mine and vice versa. We can say that when more miners join, the block creation rate will decrease. This is because there will be more dedicated Bitcoin mining hardware working to solve the hashes. When the block creation time goes down, the Bitcoin mining difficulty increases in order to compensate the miners. We can say that Bitcoin difficulty and the Block time creation are inversely proportional. When one increases the other decreases! All calculations aside, Bitcoin mining difficulty constantly needs to change to keep the time at par with 10 minutes. But well, why 10 minutes? I wish I can have an answer to this, but Satoshi Nakamoto made it this way! So maybe we just accept it? Let’s assume that Satoshi did some complex mathematical solutions to reach this number. ## Will the Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Ever Stop Changing? If the difficulty was always constant, we might have mined all 21 Million Bitcoins up till now. This is because miners would have rushed to buy and deploy their ASIC miners. In turn, the hashrate of the entire Bitcoin mining network would increase leading to a decrease in block generation. Perhaps, a block would start to generate in less than a minute if the difficulty remains constant. Or Imagine 12.5 Bitcoin getting minted in less than a minute. If that were the case, You won’t be watching the Bitcoin hovering at current price levels! ## The Current Scenario Bitcoin mining difficulty keeps changing as the hashrate fluctuates. This can bring several profitable opportunities for investors. If you can spot the perfect time to switch on your hardware, you are on the path to become the next Bitcoin millionaire! Lately, Bitcoin price have taken a hard hit. It went on a long bear run from $20000 to bottoming out around $3100. But this might be great news for new miners and investors looking to start with Bitcoin mining. The Bitcoin mining difficulty has greatly reduced because of the unprofitability, as many miners thrown in the towel, reducing competition. This, in turn, has lowered the difficulty for many of us. While Bitcoin price was hovering around $20000 the mining difficulty was the highest ever recorded. Although, the current market price of one Bitcoin has lowered, the difficulty and hashrate is still higher in comparison to previous years. But the technicalities asides, if you have access to cheap power source and you have purchased low-cost hardware from our store, you already have a leverage in the current scenario. Although, the Bitcoin mining profitability have declined in relation too today’s price, but it still remains lucrative. You can also read as to how much you can make from different types of ASIC miner on our blog. While the profits might seem low but if you are firm believer in decentralized Cryptocurrencies and are optimistic about the financial freedom that Bitcoin offers, then stashing up your rewards would be the best way forward. In addition, it is a perfect time to buy ASIC hardware available in our store (See here: MiningStore Shop). Miners shutting their hardware due to unprofitability and increased electricity costs are flooding the market with used Bitcoin mining hardware. (See here: How to Mine Bitcoin) How about getting a Bitmain Antminer S9 for a start? The price of this unit have decline from $5000 to just $200, all thanks to the bear market! --- # BitVault - Pooled Hashrate Access for All Source: https://miningstore.com/bitvault/ # Gain Exposure to BitVault Pooled hashrate access for all. Invest in professionally managed Bitcoin mining with a low barrier to entry. Book A Call A company that acts as a bridge between retail investors and the exploding Bitcoin mining industry. ## The BitVault Solution 1 BitVault provides streamlined services and access to the individual or entity who wants to invest in the mining industry. 2 BitVault enables investors to pool their resources to purchase a large number of miners which are run under the best conditions and management. 3 Our investors increase their chances of profits by investing in a proven operation. By reducing the barrier to entry, BitVault gives the retail investor a chance at capitalizing on returns. ## How It Works A company that acts as a bridge between retail investors and the exploding Bitcoin mining industry. Gives retail investors access and exposure to the Bitcoin mining industry by lowering the cost and complexity currently required for entry. Brings a hands-off experience to mining coupled with a low barrier of entry ensuring the best experience and ease of use for investors. ## Current Momentum BitVault is uniquely positioned to raise capital by accessing over 1 million followers through content about investing and Bitcoin released weekly. 460 Submissions expressing interest 28.7K Preliminary interest video views 1.6% conversion rate with an average investment desire of over $3,000 per submission. $1.4M Worth of investor interest generated ## Industry Competition As it currently stands, there are not any widely accepted ways to mine Bitcoin using just a percentage of a miner with a reduced front-end investment. BitVault is the bridge to an industry that has a massive gap between the interest level and the entry level. ## Frequently Asked Questions What is BitVault? BitVault is a pooled hashrate investment product that lets retail investors access professionally managed Bitcoin mining with as little as $1,000. How does pooling work? Investors pool capital to purchase mining hardware in bulk at better prices. MiningStore deploys and manages the machines, and returns are distributed proportionally. What returns can I expect? Returns depend on Bitcoin price, network difficulty, and energy costs. Historical performance is available upon request during your consultation. Is my investment liquid? You have the option to redeem shares semi-annually after the first year. No redemption fees apply after year 5. How is BitVault different from buying Bitcoin? Mining generates new Bitcoin at a cost basis below market price. Combined with tax depreciation benefits, mining can outperform spot purchases on an after-tax basis. ### Disclaimer No money or other consideration is being solicited, and if sent in response, will not be accepted. No offer to buy the securities can be accepted and no part of the purchase price can be received until the offering statement is filed and only through an intermediary's platform. ## Explore Our Services Managed Mining Hosting Services Remote Hands Case Studies Learn Digital Gold Podcast ## Ready to Learn More? Talk to our team about BitVault and pooled Bitcoin mining investment. Book a Call --- # Blog Source: https://miningstore.com/blog/ # Blog Bitcoin mining insights, market analysis, and operational tips from the MiningStore team. ## Latest Articles July 17, 2026 The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 We pulled the live global ASIC profitability rankings and recomputed every machine at a realistic 7c/kWh hosting rate instead of the 10c default the public calc... Read Article May 20, 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit River.com has discontinued its bitcoin mining product. 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Bitcoin mining is a dynamic industry with consistent updates to the hardware, software, pools, price, difficulty and profitability, making it harder to always m... Read Article April 8, 2021 ZCash Mining In 2019: Is It Profitable And The Best Way To Mine It! ZCash Mining in 2019 ZCash Mining is a dynamic industry with consistent updates to the hardware, software, pools, price, difficulty and profitability, making it... Read Article April 2, 2021 Best ASIC Miner for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2019 Choosing the best ASIC miner is an essential tool for your cryptocurrency mining operation, as you’ll need to invest in the best ASIC miner if you want to make ... Read Article March 16, 2021 How To Mine Bitcoin? The Bitcoin blockchain is dependent on dedicated computers around the world to help verify transactions on the network, and keep everything in working order. Th... Read Article March 16, 2021 Best ASIC Miner for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2019 Best ASIC Miner for Cryptocurrency Mining in 2019 Choosing the best ASIC miner is an essential tool for your cryptocurrency mining operation, as you’ll ne... Read Article October 2, 2020 How To Get Bitcoin In 2019: A Step-By-Step Guide To A Bitcoin Investment How To Get Bitcoin In 2019: A Step-By-Step Guide To A Bitcoin Investment Bitcoin mining is an extremely dynamic industry with its constant updates on how to min... Read Article ## Start Mining We'll walk you through the options and give you a plan. 20-minute call, no pitch deck. Book a Call --- # Case Studies Source: https://miningstore.com/case-study/ # Case Studies ## Sacramento Kings Mining For Good How the NBA franchise explored Bitcoin mining with MiningStore as their infrastructure partner. Read Case Study ## BioStar Renewables Turning Stranded Solar into Bitcoin Renewable energy meets Bitcoin mining. A partnership turning surplus power into digital value. Read Case Study ## Success Story From Early ASIC Purchases To A 5 MW Site How MiningStore helped one client grow from early ASIC purchases and more than a year of hosted XP operations into a 5 MW self-mining site in an opportunity zone. Read Case Study ## PRTI Converting Tire Waste Into Bitcoin Waste-to-energy company integrating Bitcoin mining to monetize excess power generation. Read Case Study ## Grundy County Rural Electric Cooperative How a rural electric cooperative partnered with MiningStore to bring jobs and revenue to their community. Read Case Study ## Scaling at Speed Rapid Infrastructure Deployment Rapid deployment of mining infrastructure across multiple sites to meet client demand. Read Case Study ## Want Results Like These? Every case study started with a call. Let's discuss what mining infrastructure can do for your investment. Schedule a Consultation --- # From Early ASIC Purchases To A 5 MW Opportunity Zone Site — A BITCOIN MINING SUCCESS STORY | Case Study Source: https://miningstore.com/case-study/a-bitcoin-mining-success-story/ ## From First ASIC Purchase to a 5 MW Site This client did not start with a campus. They bought a small batch of miners, expanded in stages, hosted the fleet with MiningStore while the bigger plan took shape, and eventually built a 5 MW site they own and operate. The operation grew step by step. The client purchased 12 S19j Pro miners in March 2022. More machines followed in June and July. By early 2023, the fleet had scaled to 600 XP machines running in MiningStore hosting. Those machines earned for over a year before moving into the client's own opportunity-zone site. 180 Machines purchased in the first 5 months 600 Machines hosted before moving to own site 1+ YR Hosted with MiningStore before the move 5 MW Client-owned site in an opportunity zone ## Machine Growth Timeline Each purchase built on the last. The client tested with a small fleet, proved the economics, and scaled when the numbers held up. Mar 2022 Purchased 12 S19j Pro miners — first ASIC position with MiningStore. Jun 2022 Added 58 more S19j Pro units, tripling the fleet. Jul 2022 Upgraded to 110 S19 XP machines — 180 total miners in 5 months. Early 2023 Fleet scaled to 600 XP machines, all hosted with MiningStore. 2023–2024 600-machine fleet ran in hosting for over a year, earning while the site build progressed. Site Launch Migrated the full fleet to a 5 MW client-owned site in an opportunity zone. ## Why Hosting Came First Hosting gave the client time, data, and proof. Machines were online and earning while the site plan came together. By the time the fleet reached 600 machines, the client had over a year of operating history before committing to the site build. - ASICs were earning before land, containers, and utility work were ready. - The client saw uptime, service, and machine tracking work in practice. - The fleet kept producing while the site timeline moved forward. That path works for a lot of clients. Start in hosting. Learn the operational rhythm. Move into owned infrastructure when you know the scale you want. ## Building the 5 MW Site Once the operation had enough scale, MiningStore helped build a 5 MW air-cooled site in an opportunity zone. The build had to support 600 XP machines, not a handful of early units. The site work covered the things that decide whether a mining project ships: container placement, trenching, utility runs, staging, and enough structure to bring machines online without delays. ## Commissioning and Migration By mid-2023, the project had moved past planning. Containers, transformers, deployment support, and machine logistics all lined up to move a 600-machine hosted fleet into client-controlled infrastructure. The network-room photo shows migration work in practice. Teams built cabling, labeled hardware, and prepared the backbone before large batches of machines arrived. The trenching and container photos show the outside half. You need both for a clean cutover. ## Opportunity Zone Tax Planning The site sat in an opportunity zone, which added a tax-planning layer to the infrastructure decision. Under current IRS rules, eligible gains invested through a Qualified Opportunity Fund can defer recognition until the statutory inclusion date, and a qualifying long hold can exclude some future appreciation. The client reviewed that structure with tax counsel before committing to the site build. That tax angle does not show up just because you buy miners and put them on a parcel. The fund structure, land, entity stack, and hold period all need to line up. When they do, the site can carry value beyond hashprice alone. ## Why This Story Matters for Hosting and Remote Hands This is not an argument against hosting. It shows how hosting works as a starting point — and how the right operator stays involved when you move into owned infrastructure. - Hosting gets you online fast. You learn what your fleet needs before you build. - Remote hands keeps an owned site running once containers, transformers, and machines are in the field. - MiningStore supports both sides of that path. If you already own land or are building toward self-mining, our remote hands program gives you trained technicians for swaps, inspections, firmware work, and on-site response — without hiring a local team from scratch. ## The Result The client purchased 180 machines in the first five months, scaled to a 600-machine hosted fleet, ran that fleet with MiningStore for over a year, and moved the entire operation into a 5 MW site in an opportunity zone. Each step made the next one possible. Start with hosting if you want miners online before you commit to a site. Bring in remote hands when you need field operators to keep an owner-run site tight. --- # Turning Stranded Solar into Bitcoin Mining — BIOSTAR RENEWABLES | Case Study Source: https://miningstore.com/case-study/biostar/ ## BioStar MiningStore Case Study BioStar Renewables operates solar energy farms in California. In 2018, BioStar completed a new solar farm deployment in Temecula, but the local power grid was not ready to accept this new source of energy. Tax credits for deploying clean energy required utilization by year-end. Without a solution to connect to the local grid, BioStar was at risk of losing the multi-million dollar tax credits used to build the solar farm. With only two months to find a solution, BioStar found MiningStore and the team came together quickly. ## An Inside Look ### The Goal Rapidly utilize energy from a newly completed solar farm before year-end to avoid the loss of multi-million dollar tax credits associated with clean energy deployment, as the local power grid was not yet ready for interconnection. 600 Crypto mining computers monetizing excess energy 5 Local on-site engineers maintaining servers 1 MW Stranded solar energy utilized ### The Approach MiningStore rapidly deployed a Phase 1 solution within four weeks: a 10-foot container equipped with 600 crypto mining computers. A leaseback model eliminated the need for BioStar's upfront capital, and the operation was supported by five local engineers and remote management. ### Project Success BioStar secured its multi-million dollar tax credits by successfully routing 1 MW of stranded solar energy to the mining operation. The project immediately generated additional revenue outside of tax incentives, enabling BioStar to continue expanding its renewable energy operations. --- # Rural Electric Cooperative — GRUNDY COUNTY | Case Study Source: https://miningstore.com/case-study/grundy-rec/ ## Grundy County MiningStore Case Study At the end of 2019, MiningStore launched a 7 MW bitcoin mining facility in Iowa, powered by a mix of wasted wind power and traditional grid power from Grundy County Rural Electric Cooperative (REC). This strategic investment has delivered economic, environmental, and community benefits — proving that Bitcoin mining can be both profitable and sustainable. ## An Inside Look ### Stronger Communities, Lower Energy Costs The mining facility provided a flexible industrial load, allowing Grundy County REC to reduce per-unit costs and achieve a 19% decrease in member electricity costs. This strategy grew operating revenue to $9M with 50.37% margins, establishing a powerful model for strengthened local infrastructure and sustainable economic growth. 19% Decrease in member electricity costs 57% Of Iowa's electricity from wind in 2023 $9M Operating revenue with 50.37% margins ### Iowa: Leading the Way in Wind Energy As the US leader in wind power, Iowa consistently produces surplus energy. MiningStore leverages this excess power with high-load, flexible facilities to turn stranded resources into economic value. The partnership with Grundy County REC demonstrates how Bitcoin mining can serve as a controllable base load that benefits the entire community. ### A Model for the Future With Iowa producing more electricity than it consumes since 2008, MiningStore turns the state's energy surplus into economic value through flexible, high-load mining facilities. We are committed to locating and expanding more facilities in Iowa to leverage this sustainable resource for the future of mining. --- # Converting Tire Waste Into Bitcoin — PRTI | Case Study Source: https://miningstore.com/case-study/prti/ ## PRTI MiningStore Case Study PRTI is on a mission to efficiently demanufacture a portion of the 317 million tires disposed of in the United States every year. The demanufacturing process breaks down tires into oil, syngas, carbon, and steel. These commodities can be sold or converted into clean energy. Excess methane created during the process offered an opportunity to power a green-energy cryptocurrency mining operation — turning waste into digital value. ## An Inside Look ### The Goal Achieve carbon-neutral status and efficiently monetize the significant excess methane (syngas) generated from large-scale tire demanufacturing, converting a waste byproduct into a productive revenue stream. 300 GPU rigs mining Ethereum 500 KW Clean energy powering the mining operation ### The Approach MiningStore designed and deployed a mining operation powered entirely by PRTI's excess methane output. 300 GPU rigs were installed on-site, drawing 500 KW of clean energy generated from the tire demanufacturing process. The solution ran 24/7 with zero grid dependency, turning an industrial waste stream into a continuous revenue source. ### Project Success PRTI successfully converted previously wasted energy into a valuable asset, creating a positive ROI while maintaining carbon neutrality. The solution ensures 24/7 efficient energy utilization and has paved the way for expansion of their core tire recycling facilities. ### Media Coverage Vice Cryptocurrency Miners Are Using Old Tires to Power Their Rigs (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/434wzw/cryptocurrency-miners-are-using-old-tires-to-power-their-rigs-bitcoin-ethereum) Noteworthy The World's First Waste-To-Energy Crypto Mine --- # Sacramento Kings — MINING FOR GOOD | Case Study Source: https://miningstore.com/case-study/sacramento-kings/ ## Sacramento Kings MiningStore Case Study The Sacramento Kings are no stranger to innovation. The team installed solar panels on Golden 1 Center to offset power needs on game day and give back to the local grid on non-game days. They were also among the first major sports teams to accept Bitcoin as payment for tickets and merchandise. In 2018, the team wanted to leverage their solar power, on-site data center, and high-speed connectivity to do more for the local community. After a meeting with MiningStore, the solution became clear: putting these assets to work for mining cryptocurrency would generate value in the form of mining rewards. ## An Inside Look ### The Goal Leverage the team's existing on-site solar power, high-speed connectivity, and reputation for innovation to generate value for the local community through a new technology initiative. 8 GPU rigs mining Ethereum 24/7 ### The Approach MiningStore engineers defined a server configuration to tap directly into the Kings' existing solar-offset power and data center infrastructure. The solution utilized 8 GPU rigs to mine Ethereum around the clock, turning stranded energy assets into digital rewards. ### Project Success The Sacramento Kings became the first NBA team to mine cryptocurrency, further solidifying their status as an innovative sports franchise. The resulting mining rewards are directed to local tech-oriented charities, directly benefiting the Sacramento community. ### Media Coverage Forbes Sacramento Kings Become The First Sports Team To Mine Ethereum (https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewrossow/2018/06/27/sacramento-kings-become-the-first-sports-team-to-mine-ethereum/) Yahoo Finance Sacramento Kings CTO: 'We know blockchain is going to revolutionize the world' NBA Kings First Sports Team to Mine Cryptocurrency, Establish Multi-year Scholarship Fund Cointelegraph Basketball Team Sacramento Kings Mine Ethereum to Fund Tech Education Scholarships --- # Rapid Infrastructure Deployment — SCALING AT SPEED | Case Study Source: https://miningstore.com/case-study/scaling-at-speed/ ## From 700 Machines to Full-Scale Growth in Under a Year In early 2024, a U.S.-based company backed by a prominent Private Equity group came to MiningStore with a simple ask: rack space, fast. With operations spread across the country, they needed a Bitcoin mining hosting provider that could execute large deployments quickly, reliably, and transparently — and adapt to the evolving needs of a growing institutional mining portfolio. What started as a 700-machine deployment in April 2024 quickly turned into something much bigger. ## An Inside Look ### The Challenge: Execute Fast, Build Trust Despite the complexity of large-scale deployment, we guaranteed a seamless launch by aligning on speed, operational visibility, and transparency. This commitment to execution excellence fostered continuous growth from day one. 3,200+ Miners across our Iowa-based facilities < 12 mo From 700 to 3,200+ machines ### Rapid Scaling Through Performance After the initial 700-machine deployment proved seamless, the client rapidly expanded their footprint. Each successive wave was larger than the last — growing from hundreds to thousands of machines across multiple MiningStore facilities in Iowa. The scaling was driven entirely by consistent performance, transparent reporting, and reliable uptime. ### A Long-Term Relationship, Built on Performance Over 12 months, the client achieved rapid, risk-managed growth guided by a focus on operational efficiency and trusted vendor partnerships. The clear result: MiningStore became their primary partner for all U.S. Bitcoin mining growth from the very first deployment. ### Looking Ahead: Staying Agile in a Shifting Landscape As of April 2025, the Bitcoin mining landscape faces new variables, including customs slowdowns and ASIC import uncertainty. While most US miners adjust deployment tempo, the client's trust in MiningStore remains firm — fueling their commitment to building long-term, infrastructure-backed mining capacity. ### Key Takeaways - Speed matters — 700 machines racked and running within weeks of first contact - Trust compounds — every successful deployment unlocked the next, larger one - Flexibility is critical — institutional clients need a host that can absorb rapid growth - Transparency wins — clear reporting and open communication made MiningStore the default choice for expansion --- # Shop — Bitcoin Mining Hardware Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/ Hardware # Shop Bitcoin Miners Compare new hardware, hydro units, and container parts without digging through sales calls first. Talk to Hardware Sales ## Hardware Catalog Browse retail-ready miners, hydro units, and container hardware with a clearer path to buy, quote, or host. ### 134 listings 127 miners plus 7 container parts live in the catalog today. ### 32 online checkout models Smaller and standard deployments can go straight to secure checkout from the product page. ### 19 quote-first models Enterprise, hydro, and volume orders route to the team so pricing and deployment are matched correctly. New to Bitcoin mining? Learn what the specs mean and what these machines earn before you buy. Beginner’s Guide Profit Calculator Search the catalog Category All Miners Container Parts Brand All brands Auradine BitDeer Bitmain Canaan MicroBT Pinecone Cooling All cooling types Air Hydro Immersion Sort by Featured Price: low to high Price: high to low Best value ($/TH) Most efficient (J/TH) Highest hashrate Reset Clear filters 134 products shown Showing every miner and container part in the catalog. Need a bulk quote? Featured 105 In Stock Auradine Teraflux AH3880 600 TH/s 600 TH/s 17.5 J/TH SHA-256 The Auradine Teraflux AH3880 is a next-generation 2U rack-mount hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running SHA-256. At peak turbo mode it delivers about 598 TH/s drawing roughly 10,465W at 17.5 J/TH (±8%), and that peak requires a coolant inlet around 25°C. Firmware exposes a full tuning curve — dial back the hashrate to land at 14.37 J/TH at around 391 TH/s when power or cooling is tighter. Closed-loop hydro-cooling operates at only 35 dB with minimal 1L coolant volume and flexible 5-20 L/min flow. Integrates cleanly into liquid-cooled data centers and AI infrastructure, with advanced management via API and web console. Operating range 5-45°C. 105 units available — contact MiningStore for volume pricing. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $3,600.00 $6.00/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hydro 3U 860Th Bitcoin Miner 860 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hydro 3U 860Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 860 TH/s of hashrate in a compact 3U rack-mountable form factor, making it one of the highest-output single units available. The XP designation reflects Bitmain's top-tier chip binning for maximum performance per watt. Requires liquid cooling infrastructure and is designed for large-scale, professionally managed mining facilities. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $21,899.00 $25.46/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S23 Hydro 580th 580 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S23 Hydro 580Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 580 TH/s of hashrate with efficiency around 29.5 J/TH, making it one of the highest-output single-unit miners available. Hydro cooling enables sustained performance at higher clock speeds while keeping noise levels low compared to air-cooled alternatives. Requires compatible liquid cooling infrastructure for deployment. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $15,500.00 $26.72/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S21 XP+ Hydro 500Th Bitcoin Miner 500 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21 XP+ Hydro 500Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 500 TH/s of hashrate, placing it in the upper range of single-unit output for liquid-cooled miners. The XP+ variant features Bitmain's highest-binned chips for improved efficiency under sustained loads. Designed for operators with dedicated liquid cooling infrastructure who need maximum hash density per rack unit. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $10,249.00 $20.50/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M7DS Hyd 684 TH/s 684 TH/s Scrypt MicroBT Whatsminer M7DS Hyd 684 TH/s — hydro-cooled Scrypt (Litecoin / Dogecoin) miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $8,878.32 $12.98/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 860 KH/s 860 KH/s Equihash Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 860 KH/s — air-cooled Equihash miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $8,800.00 View details Bitmain Antminer S23 318Th 318 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S23 318Th is a next-generation air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 318 TH/s of hashrate with projected efficiency around 15 J/TH, making it one of the most competitive air-cooled units on the market. Designed for both home miners and large-scale operations, the S23 features a streamlined dual-fan design for reliable thermal management. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $8,599.00 $27.04/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hydro 473Th Bitcoin Miner 473 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hydro 473Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It produces 473 TH/s of hashrate, making it a strong choice for operators seeking high output per unit in a liquid-cooled deployment. The XP chip tier provides improved efficiency and thermal characteristics under sustained mining workloads. Requires dedicated water cooling infrastructure for proper operation. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $8,219.10 $17.38/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 820 KH/s 820 KH/s Equihash Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 820 KH/s — air-cooled Equihash miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $8,030.00 View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 800 KH/s 800 KH/s Equihash Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 800 KH/s — air-cooled Equihash miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $7,810.00 View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M73S Hyd 555 TH/s 555 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M73S Hyd 555 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $7,570.20 $13.64/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M63 Hydro 368Th Bitcoin Miner 368 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M63 Hydro 368Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 368 TH/s of hashrate, representing the higher-output variant in MicroBT's M63 Hydro lineup. Liquid cooling enables stable performance at peak clock speeds with minimal acoustic output. MicroBT's firmware provides integrated monitoring for fleet management. Requires compatible water cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $7,499.00 $20.38/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hyd 495 TH/s 495 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hyd 495 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $7,230.96 $14.61/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M7D Hyd 642 TH/s 642 TH/s Scrypt MicroBT Whatsminer M7D Hyd 642 TH/s — hydro-cooled Scrypt (Litecoin / Dogecoin) miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $7,203.24 $11.22/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M73 Hydro 490 TH/s 490 TH/s 14.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M73 is MicroBT's flagship 2U rack-mount water-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 470-526 TH/s on SHA-256. Normal mode runs at 7,200W (14.5 J/TH) with high-performance mode reaching 10,000W. Announced December 2025 at Bitcoin MENA, with first batch shipping December 31, 2025. Requires 380-480V three-phase power. 29.5 kg. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $6,938.40 $14.16/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M63 Hydro 340Th Bitcoin Miner 340 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M63 Hydro 340Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It produces 340 TH/s of hashrate as the base variant of the M63 Hydro series. Liquid cooling provides consistent thermal management and low noise, making it well-suited for dense rack deployments in professional mining facilities. MicroBT firmware includes built-in fleet monitoring tools. Requires compatible water cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $6,899.00 $20.29/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21J XP Hyd 495 TH/s 495 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21J XP Hyd 495 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $6,751.80 $13.64/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer L11 20 GH/s 20 GH/s Scrypt Bitmain Antminer L11 20 GH/s — air-cooled Litecoin (Scrypt) miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $6,600.00 $330000.00/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M73 Hyd 520 TH/s 520 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M73 Hyd 520 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $6,349.20 $12.21/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S++ Hydro 456 TH/s 456 TH/s 15.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S++ is the premium 2U rack-mount water-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 434-478 TH/s on SHA-256. Normal mode runs at 7,192W (15.5 J/TH) with high-performance mode reaching 10,000W. Part of the M6XS++ series from December 2024. Requires 380-480V three-phase power and liquid cooling. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $6,128.64 $13.44/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M66 Hydro 260Th Bitcoin Miner 260 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M66 Hydro 260Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 260 TH/s of hashrate as part of MicroBT's M66 generation, which features improved chip architecture over the M63 series. Liquid cooling ensures stable operation and low noise for facility deployments. Integrated firmware monitoring simplifies fleet management. Requires compatible water cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $5,849.00 $22.50/TH View details Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 235Th Bitcoin Miner 235 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 235Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 235 TH/s of hashrate, combining the T19 platform with liquid cooling for improved thermal management and quieter operation. The T-series offers a cost-effective entry into hydro-cooled mining without sacrificing reliability. Requires compatible water cooling infrastructure for deployment. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $5,699.00 $24.25/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M33S++ Hydro 242Th Bitcoin Miner 242 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M33S++ Hydro 242Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 242 TH/s of hashrate with the M33S++ platform's improved chip iteration for better efficiency under liquid cooling. The ++ designation indicates higher-binned components for more consistent output. Designed for operators with existing hydro cooling infrastructure seeking reliable mid-range hashrate. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $5,599.00 $23.14/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M74S+ Hyd 330 TH/s 330 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M74S+ Hyd 330 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $5,445.00 $16.50/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21 XP 270Th Bitcoin Miner 270 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21 XP 270Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 270 TH/s of hashrate, representing the XP tier of the S21 platform with top-binned chips for improved efficiency. The air-cooled design makes it accessible for operators without liquid cooling infrastructure while still offering strong performance. Suitable for both dedicated facilities and smaller setups. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $5,399.00 $20.00/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro 840 KH/s 840 KH/s 3.31 J/KSol Equihash The Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro is a high-performance Equihash ASIC miner for Zcash (ZEC) and Horizen (ZEN). Delivering 840 KSol/s at 2,780W with 3.31 J/KSol efficiency. Dual-fan air-cooled design at 72 dB. Dimensions: 428x195x290mm, 16.9 kg. Released June 2023. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $5,040.00 View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M63S++ Hyd 472 TH/s 472 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M63S++ Hyd 472 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $4,880.48 $10.34/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M74S Hyd 312 TH/s 312 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M74S Hyd 312 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $4,598.88 $14.74/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S++ Hydro 330 TH/s 330 TH/s 15.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S++ is the premium immersion-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 280-356 TH/s on SHA-256. At 5,518W with 15.5 J/TH efficiency, it represents the best performance in the M66 platform. Compact form factor (267.5x147x401mm) for immersion cooling. Part of the M6XS++ series from December 2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $4,435.20 $13.44/TH View details Sold Out Canaan Avalon A1566HA 480 TH/s 480 TH/s SHA-256 Canaan Avalon A1566HA 480 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $4,224.00 $8.80/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M65S+ Hyd 402 TH/s 402 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M65S+ Hyd 402 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $4,112.46 $10.23/TH View details Sold Out Canaan Avalon A1566I 261 TH/s 261 TH/s 17.2 J/TH SHA-256 The Canaan Avalon A1566I is an immersion-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 261 TH/s on SHA-256 at 4,500W with 17.2 J/TH efficiency. The 'I' designation indicates immersion cooling — compact form factor (292x171x301mm, 11 kg) designed for dielectric fluid tanks. Only ~50 dB in immersion. Released July 2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $4,101.12 $15.71/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M70S 250 TH/s 250 TH/s 13.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M70S is a next-generation air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on MicroBT's latest 5nm chip technology. Delivering 226-258 TH/s with industry-leading efficiency of 13.5 J/TH, the M70S is one of the most competitive air-cooled miners available. Announced at Bitcoin MENA Abu Dhabi in December 2025, it features a standard dual-fan design at 75 dB for reliable cooling in both home and industrial deployments. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $4,020.00 $16.08/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S+ Hydro 406 TH/s 406 TH/s 17.0 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S+ is an enhanced 2U rack-mount water-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 390-450 TH/s on SHA-256. At 7,650W with 17.0 J/TH efficiency and 50 dB noise, it's ideal for large-scale liquid-cooled facilities. Requires 380-480V three-phase power. 29.5 kg. Part of the M6XS+ series from mid-2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $3,995.04 $9.84/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M65S Hydro 400 TH/s 400 TH/s 18.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M65S is a 2U rack-mount water-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 370-400 TH/s on SHA-256. At approximately 7,400W with 18.5 J/TH efficiency, it features MicroBT's refined hydro cooling with water outlet temperatures up to 70C. Dimensions: 86x482.6x663mm, 27.5 kg. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $3,984.00 $9.96/TH View details Sold Out Bitdeer SealMiner A2 Pro Air 255TH 255 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitdeer SealMiner A2 Pro Air 255TH is a high-performance air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It produces 255 TH/s of hashrate with an efficiency of approximately 21 J/TH. Bitdeer's in-house SEAL02 chip design focuses on thermal efficiency and consistent uptime under demanding conditions. This unit is well-suited for both dedicated mining facilities and smaller deployments. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,952.50 $15.50/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M65S Hyd 402 TH/s 402 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M65S Hyd 402 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,891.36 $9.68/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M63S+ Hyd 402 TH/s 402 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M63S+ Hyd 402 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,847.14 $9.57/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer L9 16 GH/s 16 GH/s 0.21 J/MH Scrypt The Bitmain Antminer L9 is a high-performance Scrypt ASIC miner for Litecoin (LTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE) via merged mining. Delivering 16 GH/s at 3,360W with 0.21 J/MH efficiency, it features a 4-fan air-cooled design at 75 dB. Dimensions: 400x195x290mm, 14.2 kg. Released May 2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,780.00 $236250.00/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M63S Hyd 406 TH/s 406 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M63S Hyd 406 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,751.44 $9.24/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 395Th Bitcoin Miner 395 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 395Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It produces 395 TH/s of hashrate, representing the higher-binned variant in the S21+ Hydro lineup. Liquid cooling delivers consistent thermal management, allowing the unit to maintain peak output without throttling. Suited for large-scale operations with existing water cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,705.46 $9.38/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S Hydro 400 TH/s 400 TH/s 18.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S is a 2U rack-mount water-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 360-390 TH/s on SHA-256. At 7,215W with 18.5 J/TH efficiency, it operates at just 50 dB noise level. Requires 380-480V three-phase power and liquid cooling infrastructure. Dimensions: 86x483x663mm, 27.5 kg. Released November 2023. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $3,696.00 $9.24/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M70S 248 TH/s 248 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M70S 248 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,655.52 $14.74/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21 Immersion 301Th Bitcoin Miner 301 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21 Immersion 301Th is an immersion-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 301 TH/s of hashrate and is designed to be fully submerged in dielectric coolant, enabling superior heat dissipation and near-silent operation. Immersion cooling allows for higher density deployments and can extend hardware lifespan by reducing thermal stress on components. Requires a compatible immersion cooling tank and fluid system. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,549.00 $11.79/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M66S++ Imm 338 TH/s 338 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M66S++ Imm 338 TH/s — immersion-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,494.92 $10.34/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M70 234 TH/s 234 TH/s 14.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M70 is a high-performance air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running SHA-256 on MicroBT's latest 5nm chips. It delivers 214-236 TH/s with efficiency of 14.5 J/TH. Launched alongside the M70S at Bitcoin MENA 2025, it offers strong performance at a lower price point. Standard 430x155x226mm form factor at 11.5 kg. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $3,313.44 $14.16/TH View details Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 158Th Bitcoin Miner 158 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 158Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 158 TH/s of hashrate in a liquid-cooled form factor, providing stable performance with reduced noise. The T19 Hydro platform is a practical option for operators building or expanding hydro-cooled capacity at a moderate price point. Requires compatible water cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $3,299.00 $20.88/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 358Th Bitcoin Miner 358 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 358Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 358 TH/s of hashrate, sitting in the mid-range of the S21+ Hydro series. Water cooling provides stable temperatures and low noise, making it suitable for dense rack deployments in professional mining facilities. Requires compatible liquid cooling infrastructure for operation. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,227.13 $9.01/TH View details Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 145Th Bitcoin Miner 145 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 145Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 145 TH/s of hashrate with liquid cooling for stable thermal performance and low noise output. This is the base variant of the T19 Hydro series, offering an accessible entry into hydro-cooled mining for operators with compatible cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $3,199.00 $22.06/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M63 Hyd 368 TH/s 368 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M63 Hyd 368 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,116.96 $8.47/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer L9 16.5 GH/s 16.5 GH/s Scrypt Bitmain Antminer L9 16.5 GH/s — air-cooled Scrypt miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,080.00 $186666.67/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19 XP+ Hydro 279Th Bitcoin Miner 279 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19 XP+ Hydro 279Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 279 TH/s of hashrate, representing the XP+ tier of the S19 Hydro platform with higher-binned chips for improved output and efficiency. Liquid cooling ensures consistent performance and reduced noise in facility environments. Ideal for operators expanding hydro-cooled capacity within the S19 generation. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $3,049.00 $10.93/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M66S+ Imm 318 TH/s 318 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M66S+ Imm 318 TH/s — immersion-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,043.26 $9.57/TH View details Bitmain Antminer s21+ Hydro 319th 319 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 319Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 319 TH/s of hashrate, engineered for large-scale mining operations that require high throughput with efficient thermal management. Liquid cooling keeps operating temperatures low, enabling consistent performance over extended periods. Requires compatible hydro cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $3,040.61 $9.53/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hydro 430Th Bitcoin Miner 430 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hydro 430Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 430 TH/s of hashrate with competitive efficiency, leveraging Bitmain's XP-grade chip selection for consistent performance. Liquid cooling allows the unit to maintain stable clock speeds and lower acoustic output compared to air-cooled alternatives. Designed for professional mining operations with existing cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $3,036.40 $7.06/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21 Pro 234Th 234 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21 Pro 234Th is a professional-grade air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It produces 234 TH/s of hashrate with efficiency around 15 J/TH, positioning it as one of the top-performing air-cooled units in Bitmain's lineup. The Pro designation reflects enhanced hash board reliability and tighter binning for consistent output. Designed for serious mining operations seeking dependable daily returns. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $3,029.92 $12.95/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 335Th Bitcoin Miner 335 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 335Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 335 TH/s of hashrate with the improved S21+ platform for better efficiency and reliability. Liquid cooling enables quiet operation and stable performance at sustained clock speeds. Designed for mining facilities with dedicated water cooling loops seeking to scale their hydro-cooled fleet. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,999.68 $8.95/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S++ 220 TH/s 220 TH/s 15.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S++ is the top-tier variant of the M60S series, delivering 212-226 TH/s on SHA-256. Premium chip binning provides the best efficiency in the M60 family at 15.5 J/TH (3,503W). Part of the M6XS++ series from late 2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $2,956.80 $13.44/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 172Th Bitcoin Miner 172 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 172Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 172 TH/s of hashrate, representing the top bin of the M50 series from MicroBT. The WhatsMiner platform is known for straightforward firmware management and reliable uptime. Standard air-cooled design with dual fans makes deployment simple in a variety of facility environments. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,949.00 $17.15/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21XP Hyd 395 TH/s 395 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21XP Hyd 395 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,945.91 $7.46/TH View details Bitdeer SealMiner A2 226TH 226 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitdeer SealMiner A2 226TH is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 226 TH/s of hashrate with efficiency around 15 J/TH, placing it among the more efficient air-cooled miners in its class. The A2 uses Bitdeer's proprietary SEAL chip architecture for consistent performance and lower operating temperatures. Suitable for medium to large mining operations. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,892.80 $12.80/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S Hydro 300 TH/s 300 TH/s 18.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S is a compact immersion-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 270-298 TH/s on SHA-256. At 5,513W with 18.5 J/TH efficiency, its smaller form factor (267x147x401mm, 18 kg) is designed for immersion cooling tanks. Only 50 dB noise. Released November 2023. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $2,887.20 $9.62/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S+ Hydro 302 TH/s 302 TH/s 17.0 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S+ is an enhanced immersion-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 280-318 TH/s on SHA-256. At 5,406W with 17.0 J/TH efficiency, it improves on the M66S with better chip binning. Compact form factor (401x147x267mm, 16 kg) for immersion cooling. Part of the M6XS+ series from July 2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $2,862.96 $9.48/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M70 220 TH/s 220 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M70 220 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,855.60 $12.98/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M61S+ 234 TH/s 234 TH/s 17.0 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M61S+ is an enhanced air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 216-236 TH/s on SHA-256. An upgrade over the M61S with improved 17.0 J/TH efficiency at 4,012W. Part of the M6XS+ series from mid-2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $2,836.08 $12.12/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer L9 15 GH/s 15 GH/s Scrypt Bitmain Antminer L9 15 GH/s — air-cooled Scrypt miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,805.00 $187000.00/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M66S Imm 300 TH/s 300 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M66S Imm 300 TH/s — immersion-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,772.00 $9.24/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT WhatsMiner M60 154Th Bitcoin Miner 154 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M60 154Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 154 TH/s of hashrate as part of MicroBT's M60 generation, which brought improved efficiency over the M50 series. The WhatsMiner firmware provides built-in monitoring and management tools for straightforward fleet operation. Air-cooled dual-fan design for flexible facility deployment. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,649.00 $17.20/TH View details Sold Out Pinecone INIBOX 850 MH/s 850 MH/s VersaHash Pinecone INIBOX 850 MH/s — air-cooled InitVerse (VersaHash) miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,640.00 View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M60S++ 224 TH/s 224 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M60S++ 224 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,562.56 $11.44/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S21+ 235th Bitcoin Miner 235 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21+ 235Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 235 TH/s of hashrate with efficiency around 15 J/TH, offering a strong balance of performance and power consumption. The S21+ series builds on the proven S21 platform with improved hash boards and thermal management. It is well-suited for operators looking to scale air-cooled deployments efficiently. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,559.58 $10.89/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hyd 338 TH/s 338 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hyd 338 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,528.24 $7.48/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M61S+ 236 TH/s 236 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M61S+ 236 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,518.12 $10.67/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19 XP Hydro 255Th Bitcoin Miner 255 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19 XP Hydro 255Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 255 TH/s of hashrate, combining the proven S19 XP platform with liquid cooling for improved thermal stability and reduced noise. This unit is a solid option for operators looking to add hydro-cooled capacity at a competitive price point within the S19 generation. Requires compatible water cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,499.00 $9.80/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro+ Hydro 191Th Bitcoin Miner 191 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro+ Hydro 191Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 191 TH/s of hashrate, representing the Pro+ tier of the S19 Hydro platform with higher-binned chips for improved efficiency over the standard Pro model. Liquid cooling provides quiet operation and consistent thermal performance. Suited for operators expanding their hydro fleet within the S19 generation. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,399.00 $12.56/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S+ 200 TH/s 200 TH/s 17.0 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S+ is an upgraded air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 200-212 TH/s on SHA-256. Improved from the M60S with 17.0 J/TH efficiency at 3,600W using four fans. Released July 2024, weighing 11.9 kg. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $2,376.00 $11.88/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21Pro+ 245 TH/s 245 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21Pro+ 245 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,339.26 $9.55/TH View details Bitmain Antminer T21 190Th Bitcoin Miner 190 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer T21 190Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 190 TH/s of hashrate with solid efficiency, positioned as a cost-effective option within Bitmain's current-generation T-series lineup. The T21 shares the S21 platform architecture at a lower price point, making it suitable for operators balancing upfront cost with long-term hash output. Standard air-cooled design for flexible deployment. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,299.00 $12.10/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M61 222 TH/s 222 TH/s 19.8 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M61 is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 202-220 TH/s on SHA-256 with 5nm chips. Normal mode runs at 202 TH/s (4,000W), with overclocked mode reaching 220 TH/s (4,800W). Released December 2024, it provides solid performance for medium to large mining operations. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $2,296.37 $10.34/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S21e Hydro 310Th 310 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21e Hydro 310Th is a liquid-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It produces 310 TH/s of hashrate with efficiency around 16 J/TH, representing the higher-binned variant in the S21e Hydro lineup. Water cooling enables stable performance at peak clock speeds while maintaining low acoustic output. Best suited for facilities with dedicated cooling loops. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,258.80 $7.29/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT WhatsMiner M61S 220 TH/s 220 TH/s 20.0 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M61S is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 216-232 TH/s on SHA-256. Part of the M6XS series unveiled at Bitcoin 2024, it runs at 4,320W with 20.0 J/TH efficiency. Standard WhatsMiner form factor (430x155x226mm) at 13.5 kg. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,191.20 $9.96/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M60S+ 204 TH/s 204 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M60S+ 204 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,176.68 $10.67/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M56S++ Imm 254 TH/s 254 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M56S++ Imm 254 TH/s — immersion-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,123.44 $8.36/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S21e Hydro 288Th 288 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21e Hydro 288Th is a liquid-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 288 TH/s of hashrate with efficiency around 17 J/TH, offering strong performance per watt in a hydro-cooled form factor. The S21e series targets operators with existing water cooling infrastructure who want to maximize rack density and reduce noise. Designed for medium to large-scale mining facilities. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $2,116.24 $7.35/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M53S Hyd 292 TH/s 292 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M53S Hyd 292 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,055.68 $7.04/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21 Immersion 215 TH/s 215 TH/s 16.0 J/TH SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S21 Immersion 215 TH/s is an immersion-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running SHA-256. Delivering 215 TH/s at 3,440W with 16.0 J/TH efficiency. Designed for dielectric fluid cooling systems with 3-phase 380V power. Dimensions: 400x195x290mm, 14.4 kg. Released July 2024. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $2,012.40 $9.36/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M66 Imm 242 TH/s 242 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M66 Imm 242 TH/s — immersion-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,996.50 $8.25/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 132Th Bitcoin Miner 132 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 132Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 132 TH/s of hashrate, offering a mid-range option within the M50 product line. The WhatsMiner platform provides reliable uptime and straightforward management through MicroBT's built-in firmware tools. A practical choice for operators expanding air-cooled capacity at a moderate cost per terahash. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,899.00 $14.39/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M60S 190 TH/s 190 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M60S 190 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,881.00 $9.90/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M61 206 TH/s 206 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M61 206 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,880.78 $9.13/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S 180 TH/s 180 TH/s 18.5 J/TH SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S is a reliable air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner delivering 170-186 TH/s on SHA-256. Originally unveiled at Blockchain Life 2023 Dubai, it operates at 3,441W with 18.5 J/TH efficiency. A proven workhorse for budget-conscious miners. Standard form factor at 13.5 kg. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $1,792.80 $9.96/TH View details MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 110Th Bitcoin Miner 110 TH/s SHA-256 The MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 110Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 110 TH/s of hashrate as the base variant of the M50 series, providing an affordable entry point into the WhatsMiner ecosystem. Reliable firmware with built-in monitoring tools simplifies day-to-day management. Standard dual-fan air cooling for straightforward deployment in any mining facility. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,779.00 $16.17/TH View details ANTMINER T19 88TH 88 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer T19 88Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 88 TH/s of hashrate, providing a slight performance bump over the 84 TH/s T19 variant. The T19 series is known for reliable, low-maintenance operation and is widely deployed in mining facilities around the world. Standard dual-fan air cooling with Bitmain's standard management firmware. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,721.00 $19.56/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M64 Hyd 188 TH/s 188 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M64 Hyd 188 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,716.44 $9.13/TH View details Sold Out Canaan Avalon Q 90 TH/s 90 TH/s 18.6 J/TH SHA-256 The Canaan Avalon Q is the first professional-grade Bitcoin home miner supporting 110-240V household power. Delivering up to 90 TH/s in Super mode (1,674W), with Standard (~1,300W) and Eco (~800W) modes for adjustable power/noise. Only 45-65 dB depending on mode. Compact form factor (455x130x440mm, 10.5 kg). Released March 2025. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,704.00 $18.93/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro+ 122Th Bitcoin Miner 122 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro+ 122Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 122 TH/s of hashrate, offering the Pro+ upgrade within the budget-friendly S19j platform for improved efficiency. The S19j series is a well-established line with proven reliability and broad firmware support. Standard dual-fan air cooling for straightforward deployment in most facility environments. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,699.00 $13.93/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21++ 235 TH/s 235 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21++ 235 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,654.40 $7.04/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro Hydro 184Th Bitcoin Miner 184 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro Hydro 184Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 184 TH/s of hashrate, combining the proven S19 Pro platform with liquid cooling for improved thermal stability. At its price point, it offers an accessible entry into hydro-cooled mining for operators who already have water cooling infrastructure in place. Reliable S19-generation hardware with established firmware support. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,649.00 $8.96/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M56S+ Imm 218 TH/s 218 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M56S+ Imm 218 TH/s — immersion-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,630.64 $7.48/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M54S++ Hyd 184 TH/s 184 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M54S++ Hyd 184 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,598.96 $8.69/TH View details Bitmain Antminer KS7 40 TH/s 40 TH/s 77 J/TH kHeavyHash The Bitmain Antminer KS7 is a dedicated Kaspa (KAS) ASIC miner running the kHeavyHash algorithm. Delivering 40 TH/s at 3,080W with 77 J/TH efficiency and 4-fan air cooling at 75 dB. Dimensions: 430x195.5x290mm, 15.8 kg. Shipping from May 2025. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $1,560.00 $39.00/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21++ 225 TH/s 225 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21++ 225 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,559.25 $6.93/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S19 XP+ Hydro 293th 293 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19 XP+ Hydro 293Th is a hydro-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner designed for the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers a maximum hashrate of 293 TH/s while consuming approximately 5567W of power, resulting in an efficiency of roughly 19 J/TH. This unit extends the proven S19 XP platform with liquid cooling for reduced noise and improved thermal stability. Well-suited for facilities with existing water cooling infrastructure. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,515.76 $5.17/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19j XP 151Th Bitcoin Miner 151 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19j XP 151Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 151 TH/s of hashrate, offering the XP-grade chip selection within the budget-friendly S19j platform. This makes it a practical entry point for operators who want reliable SHA-256 mining performance without the cost of newer-generation hardware. Standard dual-fan air cooling for straightforward deployment. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,499.00 $9.93/TH View details Antminer S19j Pro 100Th 100 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro 100Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 100 TH/s of hashrate as a workhorse model in the S19j Pro series. One of the most widely deployed Bitcoin miners globally, with extensive community support, firmware options, and well-documented maintenance procedures. Standard dual-fan air cooling for straightforward rack deployment. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,449.00 $14.49/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M56S Imm 210 TH/s 210 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M56S Imm 210 TH/s — immersion-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,432.20 $6.82/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21++ 216 TH/s 216 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21++ 216 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,425.60 $6.60/TH View details Bitmain Antminer T19 84Th Bitcoin Miner 84 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer T19 84Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner operating on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 84 TH/s of hashrate as the T-series value option within the S19 generation. The T19 uses a simplified hash board design for cost efficiency while maintaining Bitmain's standard firmware and management interface. A reasonable entry-level option for operators looking to begin or expand air-cooled Bitcoin mining. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,399.00 $16.65/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21Pro 220 TH/s 220 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21Pro 220 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,379.40 $6.27/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19j 90Th Bitcoin Miner 90 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19j 90Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 90 TH/s of hashrate as a base model in the S19j series. This is a budget-friendly option for operators who want to add SHA-256 capacity with a well-established, field-proven platform. Widely deployed worldwide with broad community and firmware support. Standard air-cooled dual-fan design for easy setup. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,300.00 $14.44/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M54S Hyd 164 TH/s 164 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M54S Hyd 164 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,298.88 $7.92/TH View details Bitmain Antminer D9 1770 GH/s 1770 GH/s 1.6 J/GH X11 The Bitmain Antminer D9 is an X11 algorithm ASIC miner for Dash (DASH) and other X11 coins. Delivering 1,770 GH/s at 2,839W with 1.6 J/GH efficiency. Air-cooled at 75 dB. Dimensions: 430x195x290mm, 16.1 kg. Released February 2023. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $1,260.00 $711.86/TH View details Sold Out Canaan Avalon A15xp 212 TH/s 212 TH/s SHA-256 Canaan Avalon A15xp 212 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,259.28 $5.94/TH View details Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro 104Th Bitcoin Miner 104 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro 104Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner running the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 104 TH/s of hashrate with the proven S19j Pro platform, which has established a strong track record for reliability in the field. This is a solid option for operators who want dependable SHA-256 mining at a reasonable price with well-understood firmware and maintenance requirements. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,229.00 $11.82/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M50S++ 142 TH/s 142 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M50S++ 142 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,187.12 $8.36/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M50S+ 144 TH/s 144 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M50S+ 144 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $1,156.32 $8.03/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S19K Pro 120Th Bitcoin Miner 120 TH/s SHA-256 The Bitmain Antminer S19K Pro 120Th is an air-cooled Bitcoin ASIC miner built on the SHA-256 algorithm. It delivers 120 TH/s of hashrate at a competitive price point, making it one of the most affordable current-generation miners in Bitmain's lineup. The S19K Pro uses a simplified board design for lower manufacturing cost while maintaining reliable performance. A practical choice for operators seeking volume deployments at lower upfront cost. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $999.00 $8.32/TH View details Sold Out MicroBT Whatsminer M50S 126 TH/s 126 TH/s SHA-256 MicroBT Whatsminer M50S 126 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $914.76 $7.26/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S21 151 TH/s 151 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S21 151 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $913.55 $6.05/TH View details Sold Out Canaan Avalon Mini3 37.5 TH/s 37.5 TH/s SHA-256 Canaan Avalon Mini3 37.5 TH/s — air-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $900.90 $24.02/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer L7 9500 MH/s 9,500 MH/s 0.36 J/MH Scrypt The Bitmain Antminer L7 is a proven Scrypt ASIC miner for Litecoin (LTC) and Dogecoin (DOGE) merged mining. Delivering 9,500 MH/s at 3,420W with 0.36 J/MH efficiency. A reliable workhorse released in late 2021, it remains a cost-effective option for Scrypt mining at current pricing. 14.5 kg. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $888.00 View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 258 TH/s 258 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 258 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $794.64 $3.08/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 266 TH/s 266 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 266 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $790.02 $2.97/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 252 TH/s 252 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 252 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $748.44 $2.97/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer L7 9050 MH/s 9050 MH/s Scrypt Bitmain Antminer L7 9050 MH/s — air-cooled Scrypt miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $726.00 View details Bitmain Antminer KS5 20 TH/s 20 TH/s 150 J/TH kHeavyHash The Bitmain Antminer KS5 is an entry-level Kaspa (KAS) ASIC miner running kHeavyHash. Delivering 20 TH/s at 3,000W with 150 J/TH efficiency and 4-fan air cooling at 76 dB. Dimensions: 430x195x290mm, 15.8 kg. Released March 2024. A budget-friendly entry point for Kaspa mining. Available from MiningStore with optional managed hosting services. Quote required Best for volume, hosted, or enterprise deployments. $720.00 $36.00/TH View details Sold Out Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 279 TH/s 279 TH/s SHA-256 Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 279 TH/s — hydro-cooled SHA-256 miner. Contact MiningStore for current availability and volume pricing. Unavailable This model is currently unavailable. $583.11 $2.09/TH View details In Stock Precision High-Flow Pump for Hydro Mining The Precision High-Flow Pump is a vertical multistage pump built for superior coolant circulation in hydro-cooled Bitcoin mining deployments. It provides the flow rate and pressure needed to maintain consistent cooling across multiple hydro miners in a rack or row configuration. This pump ships without a motor, allowing operators to pair it with their preferred IEC-standard motor. Robust construction ensures long service life under continuous industrial loads. Available from MiningStore. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $17,085.00 View details In Stock Versatile 3-Phase Motor for Hydro Mining & Industrial Use The Versatile 3-Phase HP (100L) Motor offers 3-phase power compatibility across 220/380/440V at 60Hz, making it suitable for a wide range of industrial applications including hydro mining pumps and cooling tower fans. Its multimounting frame allows flexible installation in various orientations. Built with high-efficiency windings and sealed bearings for reliable continuous operation in mining facility environments. Available from MiningStore. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $3,640.00 View details In Stock HK3 Replacement Motor for Hydro Mining The HK3 Replacement Motor is engineered as a direct drop-in replacement for AntSpace HK3 hydro mining cooling units. It comes pre-configured for Wye integration, ensuring reliable coolant circulation and optimal uptime without rewiring. Designed to maintain consistent pump performance in closed-loop hydro cooling systems serving Antminer hydro miners. Built for continuous duty with industrial-grade bearings and thermal protection. Available from MiningStore. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $3,640.00 View details In Stock Bitmain HW5 Hydro Fan - Axial Flow Fan for ANTSPACE HW5 Cooling Tower The Bitmain HW5 Hydro Fan is a heavy-duty axial flow fan designed as a direct replacement for the ANTSPACE HW5 hydro-cooling tower. Engineered for industrial Bitcoin mining facilities, it delivers high-volume airflow to support efficient heat rejection from liquid cooling loops. The fan is built with durable components rated for continuous operation in demanding environments. Compatible with standard HW5 cooling tower mounting points. Available from MiningStore. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,800.00 View details In Stock Fan Motor: 1 HP Inverter Duty for Hydro Mining Cooling The 1 HP Inverter Duty Fan Motor is designed for precise, variable-speed cooling in hydro-cooled Bitcoin mining and industrial cooling setups. Inverter duty rating allows it to run at varying speeds without overheating, enabling fine-tuned airflow control across cooling towers and heat exchangers. Built for continuous operation with sealed bearings and a corrosion-resistant housing. Ensures optimal airflow and extended hardware life in demanding mining environments. Available from MiningStore. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,511.00 View details In Stock Fan Motor: High-Performance Cooling for Hydro Mining Rigs The High-Performance Fan Motor is an industrial-grade replacement motor engineered for optimal cooling in hydro-cooled Bitcoin mining operations. It provides efficient heat dissipation through high-CFM airflow across cooling towers and radiators used in liquid cooling loops. Durable construction with sealed bearings ensures reliable performance under the continuous thermal loads typical of mining facilities. A direct replacement for standard cooling tower fan motors. Available from MiningStore. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $1,501.00 View details In Stock 150L Vertical Potable Water Expansion Tank: Blue, Multimounting for Hydro Mining & Industrial Systems The 150L (40 Gal) Vertical Potable Water Expansion Tank is a multimounting pressure vessel designed for pressure stabilization in hydro mining and industrial cooling systems. It absorbs pressure fluctuations in closed-loop cooling circuits, protecting pumps and plumbing from water hammer and thermal expansion. Features a durable butyl bladder, corrosion-resistant steel shell, and integrated mounting legs for floor or wall installation. Available from MiningStore. Online checkout View specs first, then check out securely online. $744.00 View details ### No matches yet Try clearing the filters, broadening your search, or tell us what deployment you are planning and we can point you to the right hardware. Reset filters Talk to hardware sales Pricing can move with market conditions. Product pages show whether a unit is ready for online checkout or better handled through a custom quote. Talk to the team for fleet orders, hosted deployments, or custom sourcing. ## Buy + Host = Mine Every miner we sell can be deployed at our Iowa facilities. Buy the hardware, we rack it, power it, and you start mining immediately. Learn About Managed Mining Hosting Services ## Need a Custom Quote? For bulk orders, specific models, or custom configurations — talk to our hardware team. Contact Hardware Team --- # Fan Motor: 1 HP Inverter Duty for Hydro Mining Cooling Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/1-hp-inverter-fan-motor/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Versatile 3-Phase Motor for Hydro Mining & Industrial Use Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/3-phase-multimounting-motor-100l/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # 150L Vertical Potable Water Expansion Tank: Blue, Multimounting for Hydro Mining & Industrial Systems Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/150l-vertical-potable-expansion-tank/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Antminer S19j Pro 100Th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/antminer-s19j-pro-100th/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # ANTMINER T19 88TH Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/antminer-t19-88th/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Auradine Teraflux AH3880 600 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/auradine-teraflux-ah3880-600th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # Bitdeer SealMiner A2 226TH Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitdeer-sealminer-a2-226th/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitdeer SealMiner A2 Pro Air 255TH Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitdeer-sealminer-a2-pro-air-255th/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19 XP+ Hydro 293th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antiminer-s19xp-hydro-293th/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer D9 1770 GH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-d9-1770gh-dash-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # Bitmain Antminer KS5 20 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-ks5-20th-kaspa-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # Bitmain Antminer KS7 40 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-ks7-40th-kaspa-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # Bitmain Antminer L7 9050 MH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-l7-9050mh-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer L7 9500 MH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-l7-9300mh-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer L9 15 GH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-l9-15gh-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer L9 16.5 GH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-l9-16.5gh-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer L9 16 GH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-l9-16gh-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer L11 20 GH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-l11-20gh-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro Hydro 184Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19-pro-hydro-184th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19 Pro+ Hydro 191Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19-pro-hydro-191th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19 XP Hydro 255Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19-xp-hydro-255th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19 XP+ Hydro 279Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19-xp-hydro-279th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19j 90Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19j-90th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro 104Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19j-pro-104th-bitcoin-miner-2/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro+ 122Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19j-pro122th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19j XP 151Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19j-xp-151th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19K Pro 120Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19k-pro-120th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 252 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19xpplus-hyd-252th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 258 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19xpplus-hyd-258th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 266 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19xpplus-hyd-266th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S19XP+ Hyd 279 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s19xpplus-hyd-279th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 151 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-151th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21+ 235th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-235th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer s21+ Hydro 319th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-hydro-319th/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 335Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-hydro-335th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 358Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-hydro-358th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hydro 395Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-hydro-395th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 Immersion 215 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-immersion-215th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 Immersion 301Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-immersion-301th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 Pro 234Th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-pro-234th/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 XP 270Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-xp-270th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hyd 495 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-xp-hyd-495th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hydro 473Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-xp-hydro-473th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21 XP+ Hydro 500Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21-xp-hydro-500th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21e Hydro 288Th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21e-hyd-288th/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21e Hydro 310Th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21e-hyd-310th/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hydro 3U 860Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21e-xp-hydro-3u-860th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21e XP Hydro 430Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21e-xp-hydro-430th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21J XP Hyd 495 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21j-xp-hyd-495th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21+ Hyd 338 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21plus-hyd-338th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21++ 216 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21plusplus-216th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21++ 225 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21plusplus-225th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21++ 235 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21plusplus-235th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21Pro 220 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21pro-220th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21Pro+ 245 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21proplus-245th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S21XP Hyd 395 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s21xp-hyd-395th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer S23 318Th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s23-318th/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer S23 Hydro 580th Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-s23-hydro-580th/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer T19 84Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-t19-84th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 145Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-t19-hydro-145th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 158Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-t19-hydro-158th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer T19 Hydro 235Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-t19-hydro-235th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer T21 190Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-t21-190th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 800 KH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-z15pro-800kh-zcash-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 820 KH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-z15pro-820kh-zcash-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer Z15 Pro 840 KH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-z15pro-840kh-zcash-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain Antminer Z15Pro 860 KH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-antminer-z15pro-860kh-zcash-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Bitmain HW5 Hydro Fan - Axial Flow Fan for ANTSPACE HW5 Cooling Tower Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/bitmain-hw5-hydro-fan/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Canaan Avalon A15xp 212 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/canaan-avalon-a15xp-212th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Canaan Avalon A1566HA 480 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/canaan-avalon-a1566ha-480th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Canaan Avalon A1566I 261 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/canaan-avalon-a1566i-267th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Canaan Avalon Mini3 37.5 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/canaan-avalon-mini3-37.5th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Canaan Avalon Q 90 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/canaan-avalon-q-90th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Precision High-Flow Pump for Hydro Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/high-flow-pump-no-motor/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # Fan Motor: High-Performance Cooling for Hydro Mining Rigs Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/high-performance-fan-motor-hydro/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # HK3 Replacement Motor for Hydro Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/hk3-hydro-mining-motor/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M7D Hyd 642 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m7d-hyd-642th-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M7DS Hyd 684 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m7ds-hyd-684th-litecoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M33S++ Hydro 242Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m33s-hydro-242th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 110Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m50-110th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 132Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m50-132th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M50 172Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m50-172th-bitcoin-miner-2/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M50S 126 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m50s-126th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M50S+ 144 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m50splus-144th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M50S++ 142 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m50splusplus-142th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M53S Hyd 292 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m53s-hyd-292th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M54S Hyd 164 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m54s-hyd-164th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M54S++ Hyd 184 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m54splusplus-hyd-184th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M56S Imm 210 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m56s-imm-210th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M56S+ Imm 218 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m56splus-imm-218th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M56S++ Imm 254 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m56splusplus-imm-254th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M60 154Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m60-154th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S 180 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m60s-180th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M60S 190 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m60s-190th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S+ 200 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m60s-plus-200th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M60S++ 220 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m60s-plus-plus-220th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M60S+ 204 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m60splus-204th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M60S++ 224 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m60splusplus-224th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M61 206 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m61-206th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M61 222 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m61-222th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M61S 220 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m61s-220th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M61S+ 234 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m61s-plus-234th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M61S+ 236 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m61splus-236th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M63 Hyd 368 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63-hyd-368th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M63 Hydro 340Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63-hydro-340th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M63 Hydro 368Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63-hydro-368th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S Hydro 400 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63s-400th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M63S Hyd 406 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63s-hyd-406th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S+ Hydro 406 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63s-plus-406th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M63S++ Hydro 456 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63s-plus-plus-456th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M63S+ Hyd 402 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63splus-hyd-402th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M63S++ Hyd 472 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m63splusplus-hyd-472th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M64 Hyd 188 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m64-hyd-188th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M65S Hydro 400 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m65s-400th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M65S Hyd 402 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m65s-hyd-402th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M65S+ Hyd 402 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m65splus-hyd-402th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M66 Hydro 260Th Bitcoin Miner Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66-hydro-260th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Online checkout available This model supports secure online checkout from the product page. If you want hosted deployment or a larger fleet, talk to us before you buy. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M66 Imm 242 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66-imm-242th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S Hydro 300 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66s-300th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M66S Imm 300 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66s-imm-300th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S+ Hydro 302 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66s-plus-302th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT WhatsMiner M66S++ Hydro 330 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66s-plus-plus-330th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Custom quote required This model is sold through a live quote so we can line up pricing, hosting fit, and deployment timing for your order. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M66S+ Imm 318 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66splus-imm-318th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M66S++ Imm 338 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m66splusplus-imm-338th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # MicroBT Whatsminer M70 220 TH/s Source: https://miningstore.com/cryptocurrency-mining-machines/microbt-whatsminer-m70-220th-bitcoin-miner/ ### Buying path Check availability Inventory moves quickly on some models. 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Reach out and we will confirm the right replacement or next arrival window. --- # Digital Gold Podcast Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/ # Digital Gold Podcast ## Episodes EP 36 The Future of AI & Energy Taylor Towler & Bill Schneider Listen EP 35 Maximizing Bitcoin Per Share Matt Prusak — American Bitcoin Listen EP 34 Unbanked — Bitcoin for Everyone Lauren Sieckmann Listen EP 33 Bitcoin Life Insurance Zachary Townsend — CEO, Meanwhile Listen EP 32 From Fish Tanks to Megawatts — Industrial Bitcoin Mining Carson Smith Listen EP 31 Building the World's Largest Bitcoin Pool Mike Colyer — CEO, Foundry Listen EP 30 Your Heater Can Mine Bitcoin Curtis Doran — Founder, Hestia Listen EP 29 Debunking Bitcoin Energy Myths Alexander Neumueller — CBECI Listen EP 28 Grid Flexibility & Bitcoin Mining Lukas Pfeiffer Listen EP 27 Bitcoin Mining as an ESG Asset Dennis Porter — Founder, Satoshi Action Fund Listen EP 26 Bitcoin Mining's Hidden Value Denis Rusinovich Listen EP 25 Crypto Media & Marketing Kyle Reidhead — Founder, Milk Road Listen EP 24 Dirty Coin, Clean Truth — Bitcoin and Energy Alana Mediavilla Listen EP 23 Decoding Bitcoin Mining ASICs Penny Ether Listen EP 22 On-Chain Inflation Index Stefan Rust — Founder, Laguna Labs Listen EP 21 Bitcoin, Mine it or Buy it? Guzman Pintos & Colin Harper Listen EP 20 Not Buying Bitcoin Will Be Your Biggest Regret Teeka Tiwari Listen EP 19 Bitcoin Incentivizing Renewable Energy Karthik Rammohan Listen EP 18 Lightning Network Disrupting Payments James Viggiano Listen EP 17 Social Tokens to Incentivize Followers Lawson Baker Listen EP 16 Selling Screen-Based Artwork on Blockchain Sarah Zucker Listen EP 15 Selling Digital Art on TikTok with NFTs Josh Terry Listen EP 14 Influencers Making Millions with NFTs DJ Dyl Listen EP 13 NFTs and Future of Crypto Art Coin Artist Listen EP 12 Bitcoin Mining Institutionalization Leo Zhang Listen EP 11 Bitcoin Mining in South America Juan Jose Pinto Listen EP 10 Bitcoin Mining's Institutional Backbone Ethan Vera Listen EP 9 Bitcoin Changing the Energy Industry Daniel Kauffman Listen EP 8 Investing in Blockchain Technologies Dan Hannum Listen EP 7 Securing Your Bitcoins & Data Jameson Lopp Listen EP 6 Bitcoin as Institutional Asset TruthRaider Listen EP 5 Venture Investing in Hard Tech Nasjaq Listen EP 4 Insurance for Digital Assets Thomas Shewchuck Listen EP 3 Tokenomics to Monetize Social Media Warren Whitlock Listen EP 2 How IBM is Integrating Blockchain Adam Mastrelli Listen EP 1 Forecasting Global Markets with AI Tony Nash Listen Subscribe on RSS ## Want to Be a Guest? If you're working in Bitcoin mining, energy, or infrastructure — we'd love to have you on the show. Contact Us --- # How IBM is Integrating Blockchain | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 2 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/adam-mastrelli/ All Episodes Episode 2 # How IBM is Integrating Blockchain with Adam Mastrelli Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Adam Mastrelli to discuss how ibm is integrating blockchain. ### How IBM is Integrating Blockchain Guest: Adam Mastrelli Episode 2 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] Today I am joined by Adam Mistreli who has been spent over three years building on IBM's blockchain ventures and blockchain accelerator which is focused on designing and scaling blockchain networks. He has worked in many areas of blockchain and AI while also hosting a show called Secrets Unlocked, airing on the Smithsonian channel. In between his time [00:00:59] acting and running marathons, he also travels the world training sales teams and expanding their skill sets. Grew by day and professional active by night. Adam, welcome to the show. Man, can you read that intro every time I walk into a room with some really cool, nerdy Star Wars music? That would be awesome. Adam is here. JohnPaul: [00:01:18] You talk about blockchain? Exactly. Unlike my own superhero in my mind, it's funny you mentioned that you were using your talk show host voice which I always quite like. As you said, I did this show on the Smithsonian channel where I was a host. It's basically like it's called Secrets Unlocked [00:01:37] and it's kind of like I'm Indiana Jones but I slept at a holiday in Express. So I don't really know all of the stuff. I'm kind of like the guy who asks all the questions. I'm a little bit smarter than the average viewer on this one. I did this and I keep talking like that in my life. You can hear me. When I say it, we move to the next topic. So my JohnPaul: [00:01:58] sister basically would like to stop talking like a talk show host. Please stop it. Kudos on you, man. You nailed the intro. Adam: [00:02:08] I appreciate it. I appreciate it. It's always fun using that talk show voice. You kind of already hit on a little bit when I was going to get into the first question. But what is the age old question of what do you do slash how do you spend your time Adam? Yeah. And how do you answer that? [00:02:26] Yeah. So basically I kind of break it out into a start with my day job which is with IBM in systems. So I've been with IBM for about nine years and I don't go back before that in a second. But essentially my day job is with IBM systems. And for the last three years that was around the blockchain accelerator that we had in partnership with Columbia University. Adam: [00:02:47] So since obviously with Watson and since our Red Hat acquisition, we're starting to talk at an IBM level around hybrid cloud and mixed workloads and all of the intricacies of whether that's proprietary or Linux operating systems or whatever you want. So we love all that stuff. We've been doing open source for decades, right? Whether you're talking about the Linux [00:03:10] foundation or other types and even hyper ledger, right? Which we'll get into. So we know what we've done right and wrong with open source. But IBM is a very big advocate of open source. So what I do during the day is essentially I'm in sales. I mean, I'm in Biz Dev selling what I believe to be a peerless piece of hardware based on IBM proprietary Adam: [00:03:32] chip technology that you'll see is present in the mainframe. And now we call Linux one when we specifically talk about Linux operating systems and workloads, whether that's usually in this world. Now we're talking about containers using Red Hat OpenShift or enterprise Linux and stuff like that. But as Sue say, Ubuntu is also on the table. But when it comes to [00:03:52] digital assets, that's talking about whether you're doing this on-prem or in the cloud, that's talking about basically securing those assets and securing workloads and legit code. So we can break into that. But within that systems area, we were doing for the last few years was a lot of the accelerator work. So that was, hey, this is kind of going to be Adam: [00:04:14] a network business, whether you're talking about public or permission protocols. So let's start building out some use cases. And we worked with, you know, we had an inaugural accelerator with Columbia and that was like securitize and IP we and we had different use cases. Some of them worked, some of them didn't. But that's what I was doing for the [00:04:32] last few years. And then I started getting a little hungrier for the tech. And I said, let me just go a little bit further into the tech. I love what we do in systems. And that's where I sit today. So that's, that's the day job. I'll pause. I have a million other things that I'm doing outside of the day job. And oftentimes they intersect, by the way. Adam: [00:04:50] Of course, I mean, it all comes together and especially with blockchain as it has such a wide range of applications. One of the things I was wanting to see is how are you seeing major companies like IBM, Apple, you know, integrating blockchains into the organization? Maybe how is their perspective changed since the 2017 hype to where we are now? I guess [00:05:09] what is the future of blockchains at these major organizations or within them? Yeah, I think, I think it's financial services and everybody else. I mean, it really starts to look like financial services and banks and insurance companies and that whole world. And then you start to see everybody else. So we'll come back to financial services. But, Adam: [00:05:27] you know, some of the ones you see as far as things outside of financial services are, you know, Walmart with food trust, you know, Toyota, I saw was looking to do something with a digital payment. You could talk about parts provenance. A lot of it is tracking and tracing. So you're really looking for discovery around tracking trace modules and [00:05:47] then, you know, apply that to different industries outside of financial services. So trade lens, right? Does that for global shipping? That's the IBM MERSC partnership for global shipping. So I think there's something to be said for shipping, tracking, tracing products. But these are farther away probably. I think people are running pilots. It's just, it's Adam: [00:06:12] the difference, you know, when you probably talk about this a lot too between the internet and the internet. So, you know, run with financial services globally. And if you then factor in derivatives and all that world, I mean, it's like, you know, $600 trillion in that world. So I think I think people are playing with pilots, you know, it's definitely cooled [00:06:32] down since 2017. There was a big pop. And that's usually run by our consulting division that goes in and starts to do a lot of this stuff. And whether they're building on IBM blockchain platform, that's our kind of value added service on top of hyper ledger fabric. Or really, you know, we have a partnership with R3. That's more financial services. And, Adam: [00:06:52] you know, candidly, if somebody wants to build on Ethereum, IBM can do that as well. So it really, I think people are piloting. They're trying to see like, because this is, it's almost like a nice to have, whereas financial services is completely getting, you know, turned, turned over. I feel like within supply chain and in other areas, it's kind [00:07:13] of like a little bit of a, well, let's hurry up and wait. There's a lot of other efficiencies that people can do just based on consolidation of workloads, right? Like just pure consolidation plays before you even start to do networks, because the network part is the most difficult part, right? That's why Walmart and those companies go to IBM. They're like, Hey, IBM, Adam: [00:07:35] we're not going to get all those companies. You do it. We pay you $500 million a year, whatever it is, go, go bring everybody together. So that's the world outside of financial services. Interesting. So these main organizations are coming to IBM to bring together the partners to make this, these blockchain networks for tracking trade or agricultural work. [00:07:55] Exactly, because really in this case, because it's, you know, everything is on these different levels of decentralization. You know, IBM really, I've often said over the past few years when I was really focused on the networks and not into the system so much was I'm a hustler for transaction volume, where essentially, you know, I'm basically like, for instance, securitize is a good example, Adam: [00:08:19] right? We were thinking of working with them and we had them in the accelerator. And you know, we were trying to talk to them about working on a network and collateralizing debt. And you know, before they were working with IBM, they went to a major bank and they got like four people in the room, right? And low level folks, you know, we come to the table with them and you know, now [00:08:38] everybody at the table, right? Because they're already our client. So I think it kind of transforms who you get at the table. And IBM has a over 100 year history of kind of working on these systems, even though, you know, from the outside, everybody will, will kind of poo poo it, right? And say, oh, IBM, it's an old stodgy company. You know, in our DNA is a lot of this restless reinvention. Adam: [00:09:01] So do you see IBM's blockchain being used more in the financial space starting off or more in the supply chain and agricultural industries for tracking bird type of things? Right, right. Yeah. So I think right now, based on our, based on our client base, it's a lot of it you'll see was a little bit broad, but I would say the [00:09:23] ones that got the, you know, and IBM really does like a lot of these societal good type of use cases, right? So we had one for tracking and tracing coffee, tracking olive oil, farmers, you know, like I said, trade lens, a plastic bank is a really good example of where you're doing like recycling plastic using IBM blockchain. And keep in mind, IBM blockchain platform is Adam: [00:09:45] really just like a big managed service on top of fabric. And you could potentially add in other aspects of that. New ARCA is a partner of ours, right? And keep in mind, this is our partner ecosystem as well. New ARCA does voting proxies transformed, which is relevant for blockchain. You know, we did a pilot with Marsh for transforming proof of insurance. And then when you get into like [00:10:09] financial services, now you're like Marsh, we did a thing with ANZ Bank for financial guarantees, bank loan guarantees, compliance and identity. So I'd say financial services is going to be the big one. But right now, there's so many other use cases outside of that that IBM. For instance, we did this responsible sourcing blockchain network, which is about tracking and tracing Adam: [00:10:34] cobalt out of mines, I think in the DRC. So you would make sure that you don't have conflict minerals, right? That's a great story. Whereas right now in the financial services area, those banks, the banks insurers are still trying to figure out what they're going to do. They're like, well, what, what do we do here? Do we, do we just like, I mean, how do we do this? So I think [00:10:58] we're there for them. And I think we're there for them really in an infrastructure setting, whether they use fabric or, you know, Corda or they're doing, you know, quorum or that I think is really up to the financial institution. And we'll have a say maybe in what we would recommend, at least from the consulting place. But as far as I go with the systems group, you know, I'm kind Adam: [00:11:20] of agnostic. A few more that I didn't mention were like pharmaceutical is a big one, right? You got to think of the big ones that IBM does, right? It's like healthcare, you know, retail, distribution, financial services. So there's probably like, you know, media and advertising. So that it will permeate, right? Blockchain will permeate all of these industries in different ways. Because [00:11:43] at out at this scale, it's all about if you could solve these two problems, forget about financial services for a second and all of those, you know, we talk about primitives and what DeFi means and all that stuff. We'll get to it in a second. But if you could improve access to data and you which blockchain would do across companies that participate together, even within Adam: [00:12:04] your own company, right? If you could improve access to data and reliably trust the data, I mean, these are game changers just without using a token. And those two things, I think, can get solved by some of that, some of that activity. So you mentioned fabric and hyperledger. Can you give a quick description of both of those [00:12:23] for our viewers who don't know what they are? Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure. So the hyperledger project is a open source project under the Linux Foundation banner. Linux Foundation is a big open source foundation. It's been around for decades. So essentially, in 2014, 1314, you know, IBM was working on blockchain in IBM research. And so how it goes with IBM is usually it starts in research Adam: [00:12:51] and then it gets either productized or it doesn't. And if it gets productized, then it's to market and it starts having sales, you know, quotas and achievements. And now you're selling a product or service. And blockchain for IBM, encryption in general, right, is not new. So this is back in the 70s that cryptographic algorithm as the first data encryption standard was open source by IBM [00:13:16] in 1977. So like fast forward, 2015, basically IBM says, well, we want to do something with blockchain, but nobody's going to work on proprietary like blockchain, like they're not just going to come to then so we have to open source it. So they basically gave away like 40,000 lines of code at the time in 2015, I think. And that that code became what is now known as hyper ledger fabric, Adam: [00:13:45] which is kind of like the base level modular. You can think of that as the the Ethereum for for enterprises. And we tried using Ethereum, it just didn't work for certain things. I think at least from a privacy perspective, the best example I gave was like, and here's why Bitcoin doesn't work in enterprises, at least from that use case, or really not Bitcoin, because it's not [00:14:08] programmable. But say Ethereum at its public level would be, unless you started to talk about zero knowledge proofs and things like that, like if the transactions are public, but the identities are private. So you can see where that's a real problem in the enterprise world with all these regulations. Walmart, A can't not know who their trading partners are. Like identity becomes Adam: [00:14:34] massively important. So there's a project under hyper ledger called hyper ledger indie, which is the identity project. So identity becomes massively important. You need to know who you're trading with for certain regulations. And then the prices being transparent, meaning Adam doesn't want JP to see the deal that he's giving to John Doe. You don't want to be able to back [00:15:01] back into that's how Walmart leverages their control over suppliers. They don't want it to be true. That's their competitive advantage. So they would never really agree to that. So there were certain things that Ethereum just didn't quite do at that time. Over time, maybe if you start talking about, like I've said, zero knowledge proofs or things like that, it could work. But Adam: [00:15:23] so that's essentially hyper ledger is a big banner with different projects underneath it. So fabric is one of them. You may heard of base two, which is the Ethereum version. Hyper ledger burrow is smart contract. Hyper ledger indie is the identity one. I think hyper ledger quilt starts talking about interoperability. And those have that's the fast hyper ledger is the fastest growing open [00:15:48] source project enterprise ever. So I mean, it definitely has momentum, right? It's just different than Ethereum and public. And so we'll start to see these things come together. But over time, that's kind of what it is. And then the hyper ledger, if you saw, maybe I think last year, hyper ledger joined the enterprise Ethereum Alliance and the enterprise Ethereum Alliance Adam: [00:16:10] joined hyper ledger foundation. So they're already talking to each other. So it's happening. No, I'm glad to see that these two massive blockchains are really organization networks are starting to come to work together to bring that enterprise version and really a more decentralized version, as you mentioned with Ethereum and not necessarily more decentralized, but more [00:16:31] transparent slash blockchain-y, you could say. Exactly. Exactly. You have to understand what this word decentralization is very old shit bingo-y, where you're kind of like, you don't know what that means anymore. But the best way to put it is if you have like you, me, for other people that we know in a small group, we'll probably could trust that group if it's all within our interests. Adam: [00:16:56] But then if Adam says, look, I own an NFT outside of this group, trust me that I own it, you're going to say, you know what, I trust you, but prove it. Prove it on chain. Now we have to bring a public asset into a permissioned network. And that becomes really interesting. So you mentioned hyper ledger indie. And I want to just talk a little bit about that project, [00:17:18] because with the election is going on and voting, do you see an identification system being built on blockchain in the next five years or six or seven years? Do you think this is something that, and what would that identification system be used for? My mind goes to voting as an opportunity to build out one of these decentralized systems or even identification systems. But would you Adam: [00:17:42] mind talking a little bit more about that? Yeah, I think that, so again, I am not the hyperledger indie expert. There is essentially a whole team that does that. But it's one of the 12 projects that is kind of incubated at hyperledger. So that is essentially, I agree with you on voting. The real thing is, how do you determine who is Adam that he says he is online and have it be [00:18:10] infallible? And once I'd say three to five years away, it depends. So there's a thing called the sovereign network that is a little bit, that's the open kind of, or one of, I'm sure, a lot of people are trying to solve this. But the sovereign network has this in the same way that you would run a Bitcoin node, you would just run a sovereign identity node. And you're running Adam: [00:18:33] a consensus to like, confirm someone's identity or not based on, you know, whatever you do. Like, if you're going to an exchange, right, they'll run you through the KYC AML process. The question then becomes, is that accessible on mobile? Can you get hacked on that? I think that's the real issue around all of that is proving identity, I think will be. And the example I always give, [00:18:58] it's going to be a game changer for industry. I think voting is a really great one. I think it's just there's some certain last minute trust, or not last minute, but very important trust assumptions that need to be ticked off. I'll give you my good example. So like, when you go to the doctor's office, still to this day, 2020, I still go to it if I'm going to a different doctor for Adam: [00:19:19] whatever reason, I still am filling out paperwork. I mean, it's incredible. I really wish, like, and you go to then your dentist and the new eye doctor, if you're traveling, I'm still filling out paperwork, right? So having a system where my identity is transferable behind the scenes, and that gets populated, I mean, game changer. So that's for that. And I think that will be [00:19:42] healthcare is ready for this, it needs it. And we'll see in a COVID wise, you know, we did that with a thing called trust your supplier, where we basically used our network, a network called trust your supplier. That essentially, you know, there was a lot of small suppliers that had to, like, they're starting to pivot. Well, now I'm doing PPE. And whereas, like, if I'm selling, Adam: [00:20:06] you know, red hats on a sidewalk, and tomorrow I want to sell blue hats, it's all good. Like, nobody's going to say, Hey, we're selling red hats yesterday. But if somebody is making a massive pivot at scale, they have, and they're trying to then sell to Glaxo Smith Klein, they're working with Lenovo, AB and Bev, whatever, it's not that easy. So you do need that at scale. [00:20:29] So the first one, so that's the on the healthcare one. On the voting one, the trust assumption has to be that you can't get that wrong, right? The fraud aspect on that has to be. And my example was always the old Google phrase, you know, don't do evil. We are way past that. We are now in the age of can't do evil. We need to technically prevent people from doing evil. Adam: [00:20:55] You have to assume, and that's what, right? That's what Bitcoin and that whole world really is about is trust and minimization. And you have to have it so that people can't do evil. And that's what IBM's technology, at least on the enclaves eliminates. And I'll give you another good example. So voting, I'm the wrong man to say, I think it's coming. But I'll give you a good example, right? So [00:21:17] we're familiar with the Twitter hack, right? That happened recently. And so this is, what, the guy got blackmailed, right? Someone on the inside got blackmailed and gave a cloud admin access. We saw this with Page Thompson at Capital One, you know, a year and a half ago, two years ago. And we see it again. And until we, until those platform companies, or really any company, Adam: [00:21:41] proves to its users that it can't touch keys, root wrapping keys, master keys, whatever you want to call it. And when insert three letter organization, law enforcement organization comes to your company and says, give us information on JP. And they say, well, okay, sure, we have the cloud admin access. I mean, this is dangerous. So for instance, AWS, you can do that. If a three letter organization, [00:22:07] law enforcement organization goes to AWS and says, we need JP's information. It's a national security. You have the cloud admin keys, W like, okay, wow. And whereas if you're running this and even IBM cloud to a certain extent, if you're not running what we call, you know, the hyper protect either on cloud, it's called the virtual server. But it's really a massive protected memory enclave Adam: [00:22:30] that doesn't have, you know, it's a secure shell, right? It's a secure technology. It doesn't, you know, it's a set of whitelisted API's IBM physically cannot and does not have access to your data full stop. And I think that's going to become increasingly important in this world of, you know, state sponsored hacking, etc. So that's a big, big advantage that I think we see coming to a lot of [00:22:55] enterprises. No, that that is that is huge. Just as you mentioned, you know, improving the access to data, but then also with blockchains being able to to verify that data outside of an organization and with inside of organization instantaneously as it's occurring, as it's moving across the chain is really, you know, the power of these blockchains that in my opinion makes so much better. Adam: [00:23:16] Well, that's what they're going to do, right? I mean, it's already happening with with blockchains outside of enterprise, right? At full decentralization with no people. Great. It already is, you know, you you are on tickswicks, which I want to try out tickswicks, by the way, you're on there placing a bet. If you lose that bet, your money's locked up in an escrow. Good luck suing the [00:23:37] computer. You know, you can't you can't do that. And the money is locked and you lost. And before that it was it was in a protected enclave. Whereas the centralized companies or the more centralized companies that you and I know of, they're going to have to do much more. So these really is a big security play. They're going to have to do much more to prove that they're needed, Adam: [00:24:01] what they're valuable. Because if they're not valuable at protecting your data, what are they doing? Exactly. What are what are they doing as a centralized source all in your data? Because that's why I think the problem in the past two years of three years of it is just all these hacks, hacks and hacks and hacks. It's just like that's why cybersecurity is such a fast growing industry [00:24:17] right now. Because everyone's like, wow, we have all this data and we just basically lost it all to the world and now it's worth less. And it's really look it's we talk about this all the time, right? It's evidenced by that the hack the hack culture is be getting priced into Bitcoin now, because did you see a big move after the KuCoin hack? Yeah. Like KuCoin gets hacked now and it was Adam: [00:24:40] like not a big deal. Whereas two years ago, three years ago, the price would have tanked of Bitcoin. The difference and this is why this industry is really like amazingly interesting is that if you lose, so for instance, we're used to protecting PII data. If you are, if you have an American Express card and you are hacked and your data is compromised and there's a fraudulent [00:25:04] transaction, what does American Express say? We're gonna solve it for you. Right? You're not you're not responsible for fraudulent transactions. Right? So you're kind of like, I'm good. Whereas it's so protecting that PII data, it happens, but these are not bearer assets. Whereas if somebody, you know, hacks your bearer asset and there's no protection, so they have to get it Adam: [00:25:27] right. And that's why a lot of the work around the security in the digital asset space is so important. And I think we're growing up really, really quickly. It's so fast. It's so exciting. It's the best part of my job. I love that. I love to hear that. It's because that is what I've been, you know, been preaching since 2013. It's like, this technology is going to come in and [00:25:45] change the world. Out of all those projects that you've mentioned, Adam, do you have one project that, in particular, you want to dive in a little bit deeper and explain how maybe blockchain made on securing the data or sharing the data 10 times easier on for within my IBM world? Within IBM or with any of the blockchain projects that you might be looking at in the space. Adam: [00:26:05] That made sharing data easier. Sharing or just like overall, you're like, wow, this is a great implementation of blockchain. Like I'm, this was needed in a glad we were trying to implement blockchain and make it work using, you know, in this supply chain or in this, in this data transaction or this now. Well, look, I think I'm going to use one that is, [00:26:25] and I want to come back to some other ones, but I think one that is really, tugs on my heartstrings was this thing called plastic bank. And plastic bank is essentially a blockchain. You can think of it like, I think it's in Southeast Asia. I got to double check my source there, but you would collect plastic locally and you would bring that plastic to a Adam: [00:26:49] much like, you know, you would do here in the United States where you recycle glass or bottles and you're getting five cents from that. The difference would be you do that and it goes and it's tokenized. The value of that, you're bringing that ocean plastic, right? This is plastic from oceans is brought to this local distributor. They then give you a token representation on your phone [00:27:12] that is unique to you. And then you can use those tokens to pay for services because the upstream companies, the company's upstream that are buying that plastic, right, that's cheaper for them. So they're going to pump money into this local ecosystem so that the people who do that work can pay bills and can do things locally. Why do you need that in a blockchain? Why do you need Adam: [00:27:35] that as a token? So, and this got me is like, you know, this is a very dangerous area. It's very dangerous for young women or young people really to be walking around with cash. They just don't do it. So in that way, you make it very accessible to have somebody's data be backed up cryptographically on a phone so that even if the phone gets stolen, you can still access your funds and you don't [00:27:58] have to walk around with cash. And I thought that was just that's one of the ones that I'm the most proud that we were a part of. And that was a few years ago. And it's still going on. It's a great project. So I really like that a lot. No, that sounds like an amazing project. I was just checking it out while you were talking about plastic bank and just seeing how many countries they're in that Adam: [00:28:16] this is a great way to incentivize, as you mentioned, people that aren't comfortable carrying cash and but everyone has a phone so you can send it to them digitally. It's the token is a way to trust it without that trustless mechanism there. So you can trust the network and the system and you might not have to worry about a bad actor, you know, not paying out for the plastics. It is so [00:28:37] decentralized. It's all right. Right. And this is a good use case of like a stopping ocean plastic. And when we talk about financial inclusion, you know, that that one kind of gets lost sometimes when where everybody's pumping prices. And so I really like that aspect of web, you know, poly chain, Olaf and multi coin, they write really nicely about the web three stack and Adam: [00:29:02] obviously, interesting Horowitz around the financial primitives kind of breaking down into those accessible services for the for the billions of people that don't do that. So this kind of falls into that same category for me. So you mentioned or as I'm going to take a quick step back and talk about the famous COVID. Yeah. How has that affected blockchain [00:29:24] integration or acceleration at the enterprise level? Is that made companies more excited or because we've seen a lot about zoom and you know, working from home and how that progress or that, I guess, phase has been accelerated because of COVID. But do you see something similar with blockchain integration in any way? Yeah, I think it's going to be you'll see it in health care. I Adam: [00:29:46] think in there's going to be two areas health care and financial services. Again, financial services, I think it's accelerated because now everybody's home, right? Everybody's watching what's happening with Brian Brooks at the OCC when he wrote that. No, okay, now and that was an existing precedent that he just kind of said, right? It's just like, so I think it's really, [00:30:09] you see what Caitlin Long and the SPD, the speedies are doing in Wyoming. So I think financial services, it's really hitting home for blockchain at enterprise level. You see Jamie Diamond through complete 180 over the last few years, right? JP Morgan now has their own, I think it's what it's onyx. That's their world. So I think financial services, absolutely COVID has completely Adam: [00:30:31] ramped that up, right? We have our partnership now with R3. They are one of the leaders in the software stack right there on for financial services within enterprises. We'll do all the hardware and the on cloud, whether that's on-prem or on cloud. So I think financial services checkbox, like 100% completely ramped it up, like it's really starting to move, right? They see [00:30:54] the writing on the wall that if those primitives in whether you're talking DeFi or even CFi, whatever, at that current, at this pace, I mean, what will banks do? What are their jobs going to be? And so they 100%. And I think the other area that you'll see it really move in is what I mentioned earlier with trust your supplier, which is hospitals and the tracking of either supplies. Adam: [00:31:21] So PPE supplies, which is what trust your supplier did, and that will be around identity and or, you know, medications or things like that. So those two areas, the problem is that, you know, the healthcare industry is so difficult. It's really such a complex beast that they're going to be moving. My fear is that they're going to be moving a little too slow. Financial services will [00:31:43] move much faster. But I'd say those two areas, it's really ramped it up. And we've had a lot of interest, I mean, from financial services in that space. I mean, people are reaching out asking us all the time, who do we partner with? You know, we partner with Unbound. They do multi-party computations. So right there talking to a lot of financial service providers, non-traditional Adam: [00:32:04] banks around what that looks like, because everybody will start to have some semblance of access. Because it's it's so it's not only the COVID world, but it's what happened during COVID that was kind of glossed over is like, what I think I read an article in the Wall Street Journal that maybe Ron Paul was saying, 22% of all of the money that's been printed in the history of the United States [00:32:28] happened this year. I mean, this is these COVID and unprecedented money printing. People are going to be yield hunting. And what I think we saw with Dave Portnoy coming in and doing the entertainment trading, I think, and that is a big thing that that's Asia, that's Asian culture, right? That will for trading. You go over to Asia, it is just it's more gamified. It's very much like Adam: [00:32:55] speculative. Whereas I think the West is primarily more like focused on building companies and this and that. And you'll see that start to shift a little bit. But what I think is going to happen is that entertainment vibe will start to come over and we're going to be seeking yield, right? Boomers will start to say, I can't face this negative interest rate environment. I'm going to [00:33:16] try need to get yield somewhere. I'll put a percent. I'll put 5% of my IRA into crypto, whether that's Bitcoin or and then the more attractive, the younger generation already will start to play these in games. You're already seeing it. So I think we've had a lot of interest from working with our partners, whether that's again, a metacco, unbound, a main block is a partner, right? They Adam: [00:33:42] will enable easier institutional trading. So I think it's big time happening in financial services. And my hope is that it continues in health care because we need it, but a little slower. No, I definitely agree with you on that point about the gamification of yield for the younger generation about how investing is just going to be like, in my opinion, a few years, buying and [00:34:03] selling sneakers, the sneaker game, but for stocks, but for yield assets, for yield generating assets, whatever that happens to be for equity and companies. I hope that's where we're going. Because the access to capital or that kind of divide of how hard it was to transfer capital and some of those verification that you're talking about has made it a lot easier. Bloxion has made Adam: [00:34:25] that a lot easier. Right. And it makes it completely easier. And now if you use protocols like UMA protocol or a few others, right, that now somebody from China can get access to a synthetic pegged version of the S&P, right, without being an American citizen. This is game changing. So Adam, appreciate all that knowledge on IBM's blockchain on hyperledger on how [00:34:49] this is changing the world and really changing how enterprises are coming into the space. I wanted to talk a little bit more about your traveling and basically I was reading in your bio that you're proficient in Italian and Spanish and obviously English, but you can small talk in JohnPaul: [00:35:04] Mandarin, Swedish and Zulu. My first question is, what made you decide to take up these languages? Adam: [00:35:09] Because for me, I could barely learn Spanish in school. And then what suggestions do you have for people who want to learn a new language? Is it full immersion? Where does, you know, where is the best way? What's the best way to learn a language? And why do you do it? Yeah, I, he's a great, I love this question because travel and really people is kind of like my passion [00:35:27] in different cultures. So I've always been like this. So Italian, you know, I am Italian. My, my father's Sicilian, my mother is Irish and Jewish. So growing up, I wanted to learn Italian. It was kind of like my grandfather's dream. And then I was like, okay, I could, I think I can learn Italian. I was a soccer player growing up. So I think, you know, doing all of those things Adam: [00:35:48] combined, I learned Italian in high school. And then I went on an exchange program when I was like 17 and lived with a family. I'm still close with my, my buddy there, him and his wife and kids. I'm now uncle Adam to them. And I still go back every year. So Italian has always been like the main other language. Again, I learned it in school, then I just started traveling and going back. I [00:36:08] still keep up with my Italian. So the answer to your question on how do you get better languages? I hire a teacher. I hire a one on one coach. So I think comedians will, will often have this joke of like, you know, I'm still, I'm like on my third attempt at Rosetta Stone Spanish. I mean, I just don't find those working. So I, I hire someone and I do just an hour of conversation a week. Adam: [00:36:33] And if you go, the website I use to find these people is Verbling. So I'll just go on, find somebody on Verbling that relatively cheap, you know, we're talking $15, $20 an hour. I can do that, you know. So I do that for Italian. I do it for Spanish. My Italian is much better for tenses. Like I could be do present tense future, past, past remote, subjunctive. My Spanish is good in the present [00:36:58] and good in getting around. So I would never want to be at a business meeting fully in Spanish. It would be I definitely miss some important points, but I can, I can live in, you know, Costa Rica or Spain. And I would be fine. The other, the other languages, like for instance, like Swedish, Zulu. When I lived in South Africa, so I lived in South Africa for a year when I was working on Adam: [00:37:23] the Walmart account with IBM. And I just, I'm like that. I just like show up places and I never want to rock up and not try to understand, you know, Nelson Mandela was closer. So, closer is the one with the click. You'll hear that. So that, I felt that was too difficult. I was like, I'm not even going to attempt Nelson Mandela's language too difficult. Let me just stick to Zulu. [00:37:47] And that was in out of Durban. So it was just like a way for me to, you know, if you, even a few words, basics, good mornings, when I lived in Malawi, it was the same with Chichewa, where I just said, let me just learn a few things. Good morning. Good evening. You know, where are you at the time? When I was in India, I did the same with, with Gujarat in Ahmedabad. And it just really engenders you Adam: [00:38:10] to the local population so that you're not just rocking up. And I'm always sensitive to that as an American, right? I know our, our history. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When we're traveling, we're always get that those American stairs as you would say. Right. Right. Right. So even a little bit goes a long way. And that's, and with Mandarin, I, again, I hired a coach and Mandarin is a whole other ball. [00:38:37] I mean, it is, I took like three months of Mandarin, I'm taking a little bit of a break now. I'll go back to it. But that is, that is a tough one, man. That is a challenge for me. So another question was, you know, you look like you're traveling almost half, almost half of the JohnPaul: [00:38:51] year. Did COVID put a damper on this traveling before 2019? Can you explain like, was it just like, Adam: [00:38:57] because for me, I felt the same way actually was about to go be a digital nomad starting in January and was traveling Europe in January, February. And the next thing you know, it's like, oh, time to go back to the US and stay here. But I want to hear your story of how that affected you. Yeah. Full stop. Right. I mean, I'm like, so I did, I was digital nomadic for January. Right. I was [00:39:16] in, I went to the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz. I went to Italy before that. I went to Davos the week after some rits and then I went to Austria for an IBM conference. So all the month of January, I was, I was in Europe. I get back in February. I go to Berkeley for a workshop. I come back February 9th and it's like, and the world is shut down. And I'm like, oh, okay. And so from Adam: [00:39:41] then on, I've been basically, I spent the first three months in New York. My TV show was premiering. So that was good. I got to watch my show while, while drinking with my sister, which was nice over Zoom. That was great. And then the last three months, I, my sister and I went down to Florida to visit my parents. I had their 50th wedding anniversary. And so I've been basically in the [00:40:02] state of Florida for the past three months. So it's kind of been three and three and three. And now, no, no traveling. Save. I did go to see a friend in Charlotte who is having a tough time with health. But other than that, I've been nowhere. It's been pretty much locked down. And talking about not being locked down. Yeah, I miss it too. It's really a Adam: [00:40:25] steady split. I want to hear more about this story that I read about about studying in Dubai JohnPaul: [00:40:31] and dining with the royal family of Ashmott. How did you even get that opportunity? And how was Adam: [00:40:36] that? It was incredible. So I love this story, right? So I'm in, I'm in Dubai doing a, like, you know, they have during, I did a one year accelerated MBA, because you know, I was an actor who then beak actor and a singer who then went back to business school and then wanted a stamp of a job, right? At IBM, but they're not going to hire an actor. So I needed. So I went back to business [00:40:59] school. I was like, yeah, but I, let me just, I need a fast business school. So I did like a one year accelerated MBA. And during that MBA, you know, you get like a basic like three, three weeks, two and a half weeks in, in either Dubai or somewhere else. I was like, I'm going to Dubai. Love it. So we get to Dubai and we're visiting like Adiya, which is the Abu Dhabi Investment Adam: [00:41:22] Authority. We go to the, you know, the ski slopes. We do the stuff out in the desert. And ends up like a friend of a friend knows this guy who his name is Abdullah Ziz Al-Nayami. And he goes more affectionately by the green shake. So he is basically each, each royal family of F, the, each five of the Emirates has like a royal family. So that's Dubai, Abu Dhabi, [00:41:49] Shahra, Ajman, and I'm forgetting the fifth, Emre. But so Ajman is one of those towns. And he shows up and he's basically very concerned with sustainability. We hit it off immediately. We look similar. I'm like, Hey, I have your nose and facial hair. Look at you. So he basically said, who wants to come have dinner? You know, come to a mosque, come have dinner with me and my family. And like, Adam: [00:42:14] nobody raised their hands. I'm like, you guys are all crazy. I like raised my hand. I was like, I'm in. Let's go. So we go back to his house, him, his, his children, his wife, we, we go to a mosque, we have a quick prayer, we go back to eat a beautiful home. And he plops like a full, they have like a full goat on the, on the table. And it's like a goat, like with rice around it. [00:42:38] And they said, who, you know, I guess this is my, my personal, my personality is something along the lines of when someone says, who wants to eat the eye of a goat? Like, right? I was like, I'll eat it. Let's go. You know, I don't know what that is. But I said, when is the, when is the next time that a royal family member from the Emirate of Ajman is going to offer me to eat the eye of Adam: [00:43:01] the goat in, in his home? And I saw I took it. And so it was just a great night. And we're still friends. You know, I follow him on Twitter. We share occasional texts and emails. And he's just a wonderful man who's been just like a great, great guy to follow. And what he's up to is really incredible. I've introduced him to friends that have done really interesting death rituals with him [00:43:22] in, in, in, in, in Ajman. So yeah, that's how that story came about. Pretty cool. That's a great story. And it shows, I think the power of saying yes to those opportunities where you might have to go out of your comfort zone. But they're just so unique. Yeah. Oh, I feel like most people don't do that or feel like they're scared and they don't want to put Adam: [00:43:42] themselves in that position of awkwardness. Yeah. I think I have a really interesting view on this that I'm getting clearer on. And I'm actually studying in January to become a death doula, which is essentially some version of you're familiar with like a doula or a midwife in the birthing world. This is kind of something similar in the death world. So this would be, and I think [00:44:05] what's happened even during the COVID time is death is hitting us in the face. And we have a death counter on television. And it's like death, death, death. And I think people are, you've seen this pop up with like death cafes and death really is a part of life. And so that I find some version of it, it's a little heavy sometimes. But I find that like the in those moments, if I really can Adam: [00:44:29] eliminate my fear of for whatever reason of eating a goat's eye or like you said, an opportunity to get outside of my comfort zone, for me that association that this is all going to end sooner or later allows me to take an action, whereas maybe if I wouldn't have taken an action before. So I encourage everyone to get closer to your own death. JohnPaul: [00:44:51] So Adam, thanks for sharing that great story about you're taking risks and kind of putting Adam: [00:44:56] yourself in those awkward positions. One of the things that I want to talk about, and I think a lot of young entrepreneurs have questions with is how do you ensure you're focused on the right stuff every day when you wake up and you're working on something? How do you make sure what you're working on is what you should be doing? And then also how do you build momentum in your [00:45:13] work? Because it seems like you've done, you've been pretty successful in a wide range of activities JohnPaul: [00:45:18] from acting to working as a show host to now working with IBM. Can you explain a little bit Adam: [00:45:24] farther on that? Yeah, I mean, this is going to sound very Steve Jobsian. But you know, his big thing was a lot of like intuition over intellect. And I think there's a certain version of that that is really very true in this instance, which is you kind of know what you need to focus on. I think there are some things you need to do. It depends on who the person is, right? If they [00:45:49] like working Pomodoro technique, then you do Pomodoro technique and you do like focused 30, 40 minute intervals, right? If you're if you want to do deep work, you do Cal Newport, and you read Cal Newport's Deep Work, right? If you for me, I followed a lot of I'm very good with people. And I really like I care about them. And I think I always want to kind of offer something Adam: [00:46:15] to them. So I would always try to have like whatever you're focused on during the day. I guess it's almost like have fun. Like nobody told you not to have fun at your job. Nobody told you. And that's my personality is like it doesn't have to be your thing or any an entrepreneur's thing. But I my thing that I always say to younger people is like my thing happens to be like comedy or my [00:46:38] sense of humor. And I don't shy away from that to become a business guy. Like I don't all of a sudden turn off who I am to be to be this other business guy. People will see that we're entering a big time world of authenticity. We're entering a world of authenticity of transactions in the Bitcoin world. And that will very much carry over. You can tell when someone's bullshitting you, Adam: [00:47:00] you know it, you feel it. And I hope that more people not only able to feel that, but that they're able to help others do that. So I would say play to your strengths. And then there's another version of this, which is the David Goggins version, which is improve your weaknesses too. So you know what I mean? You don't have to like always play to your strengths. But yeah, find find something that [00:47:21] and how do you stay focused? Part of there's a part of me that is always like, I don't know how important focus is. I think I'm always like, I almost like challenge focus because I'm like, what does focus mean? Does that mean taking Adderall and sit in the same spot? Like, hope not. Exactly. If somebody defines what focus is, that's one thing. But I'm almost like a little Adam: [00:47:43] bit of chaos theory on this, which is go nuts. You get one turn at this. I mean, in my mind, so pursue what you want to be pursuing. And sometimes it feels like work. Sometimes it doesn't. But there are some things that I like to do. I like, I use a performance triangle, which is very much in integrity. So planning your work and work your plan. So within, when you do [00:48:08] decide a direction that you like, plan that work, plan the work, work the plan. And that would however you want to do that checklist to do list. And then it's just like checking stuff off. Do do what you know you need to do, do what you would said you would do. Then there's a second leg of that triangle, which is like, if you feel like you lose power, if you feel like you're out of, Adam: [00:48:30] like, if you're not being authentic or you're not kind of like believing in yourself, I think it's kind of like self generation. And that's basically generating yourself in a way that you want to be like, I'm, look, all right, today, you know what, I'm going to be loving. Today, I'm going to be passionate. Or today, I'm going to listen right now. So whatever those are for [00:48:48] you that get you going, and every day is different. And then the leadership one, and this is the one, I'm a big advocate of this. And it's really hitting me within the last year, too. You'd mentioned the saying yes part when people ask you, hey, do you want to eat the goats eyeball in the middle of Ajman? There's also a very so saying yes, I think is helpful. But there's also a big one Adam: [00:49:14] is enabling others to say yes. So not being able to not being afraid to make bold requests of people and not being able to make not being afraid to make requests. I think a lot of times I in the past have done a lot of tap dancing, and a lot of selling, and a lot of like getting up, going moving around things. And really, all it needs is, if you've ever seen Moneyball, [00:49:39] where the bread pits character, right, gets the answer he wants, and then he hangs up, you know, there's some version of that is like, don't be afraid to ask for what you want. And then what's the worst that can happen? Somebody will say no, they might say yes, but make and make bold requests, put yourself uncomfortably in the area of making requests. Hi, do you know, I am doing xyz, Adam: [00:50:01] I'm fundraising, do you have, you know, I'm taking on $500,000 in capital right now, is that something you're interested in? Can I can I interest you in making an investment? Whatever that is, right? I think for your business and for your personal life, making requests of people in a passionate or or insert whatever way you find, I think gives them [00:50:21] the opportunity to support you. And a lot of people have a tough time taking on that support or that acknowledgement. No, I think you hit a couple great points there. One really thing that resonated with me other than that last make big requests and ask, you know, don't be afraid to get that no, because there's with 100 nos, there will be a yes, and you'll find it eventually, Adam: [00:50:39] especially if it is, you know, what you're truly passionate about truly working towards, and make sense for both parties and both parties are going to value there. One of the things I think you mentioned was the idea of having fun, the idea that a job does not have to be a place to go and spend, you know, spend hours slaving away, even at a fast food restaurant, you're still able [00:50:58] to look at the process be enigma by how well the food just comes out, how fast it does, and you know, how that whole organization operates. It's hard to think like that. Well, it's not hard to think like that, but it does take the time to be able to step away from your day-to-day task to say, wow, you know, I'm appreciative for what I'm getting here at this job and the opportunity is providing Adam: [00:51:18] me. But then also, like you said, if you come in with that fun mentality, it's going to make your growth and you're learning so much better than what we've seen previously. Right, and I mean, that speaks to me, right? I want to be clear. Not everybody, somebody might say to me, I don't want to have fun. I want to dominate, and I want to do XYZ. Great. I just know for me, the fun and [00:51:37] engagement aspect speaks to me, and I would say there's a lot of other people that feel that way, but it's not for everybody. Somebody might say, no, I'm not into the fun thing, I'm into the discipline thing, or I'm into the whatever thing, right? Whatever your version of self-expression looks like. No, you're exactly right on that. And one of the things that I want to touch on Adam: [00:51:58] before we finish up today is I found a YouTube episode where you were discussing something brain talk and something called the gray map. Yeah, yeah. My father actually introduced neural feedback into his chiropractic practice back in 2016. And so I'd love to hear how you were introduced to that space of brain learning or brain acrobatics or brain yoga, whatever it is, JohnPaul: [00:52:19] like when you're working on your brain. How do you see that working towards the future and Adam: [00:52:23] what got you interested in that space? Yeah, I love brain yoga. I've actually never used that before, but that's great. I think I'm going to start using brain yoga. So it actually is a personal one for me. I had when I was eight years old, when I was five years old, I was in a bad car accident. When I was eight years old, I had a brain abscess, which means I basically [00:52:43] passed out, vomited, and it started having seizures and was rushed to the hospital. And they told my parents I had an inoperable brain tumor at age eight, and then I had a few months to live. And one doctor, Madeline Olson, stood up and said, look, maybe it's not a tumor. Maybe it's an abscess that we can shrink with a cocktail of antibiotics and over the course of a few months. Can I take Adam: [00:53:08] him and do that? And so long story short, I'm still here today. It shrunk my a little bit the night before I was going off to have brain surgery. And I didn't have to have surgery. It shrunk by a little bit. And three months later, it was gone. My seizures subsided. And I would just check in at the pediatric neurology unit for the two years afterwards. And so throughout my life, [00:53:33] I've always been like a brain person. I've always kind of like felt a connection to the brain that whether that's mental health has been a big one for me, not only my personal life, but encouraging others to demystify that. And then specifically around the brain, this started with a project I just did with Philippe, who you saw. He's Philippe D'On is a board certified neurologist in the Adam: [00:53:54] New York area. And I worked with my other friend Courtney, Parnell, who is a wellness specialist out of Austin, Texas. And we basically created kind of this connection between the neurology community and the brain community and the expectant mother community. She's an expected mother. And I said, I'd love to create a project where expected mothers or mothers who are expecting [00:54:18] get to experience their brain on birth. And if what that means is, you know, in the under the guise of if you remember those old GI Joe commercials, you know, knowing is half the battle, a lot of this is like what's happening to our bodies and what's happening to in our in our emotions. I mean, these are very real things that are triggered happening in our brain. And I find that the more Adam: [00:54:40] I understand what my brain is doing, I'm like, Oh, so wait, what is the corpus callosum? And oh, okay, this is now moving from the parietal lobe to that lobe. Okay, it like for me de- de- mystifies it a little bit. And I feel more confident that not only the things that are going on within me brain wise is not only normal, but everybody else experiences it. And two, [00:55:04] I get to understand what brain fitness means for a healthier, more active lifestyle that just really allows me to do the things that I love doing with the people that I love. So with that now, basically I do that talk show with Philippe on YouTube. I want to pitch a brain show to net geo with Neil de Grasse Tyson or something like that. You know, so the brain is pretty Adam: [00:55:24] important to me. I continue to work with Philippe. I continue to work with different focuses between, you know, the gut brain health initiative. There's one down here in Florida. So it's just kind of been a lifelong passion. And I'm really, really interested to see where we go with it. But yeah, how about yourself? Well, I do appreciate sharing that story. And for myself, [00:55:44] it was just, you know, my father's really into the health world. And he's really into studying the brain. And so I've been, I guess not really guinea pig, but I've done neurofeedback sessions. And I'm really more focused on, on meditation and really setting those intentions during the day and trying to get into the flow state. I actually slackline a decent amount. So started that back. I've actually Adam: [00:56:05] heard about on Tim Ferriss podcast, maybe five, six years ago. And after that, you know, you're just getting in that flow state where nothing else matters. But that, you know, what's that one purpose and task, which on a slackline is to balance and to, to can focus on your breath and clenching the muscles that you need to, to be stable on a, on a one inch line, you know, over a thousand foot drop [00:56:26] and hooked up with carabiners or even just underneath the tree. Right. Well, look, and you mentioned, so first of all, it's fantastic. I love all of that. Send me all of those links. And I'm a big, obviously a huge Tim Ferriss fan. The grain app you mentioned, essentially, grain is, is a thing that I developed a few years ago. It really isn't like a available app, Adam: [00:56:47] but right now I kind of put it into your brain on birth course. We did a digital course, basically. You can think of grain as like, so you mentioned mindfulness. So mindfulness, I think often gets conflated with meditation, but really mindfulness is essentially like awareness. And so there are many different ways to get aware or to be in the flow state or kind of approach that, right? [00:57:11] So I found for studying that one of those ways is pattern interruption. And it's a little bit counterintuitive because in certain respects, like if you're interrupting Steph Curry, you know, doing his three point shot, you know, you're interrupting his flow. So that is bad. But in certain aspects for our brain, if we are on either negative feedback loops or certain cycles, you'll Adam: [00:57:35] see this a lot with OCD or, you know, people that can't, and I have this happen too in the past, where I just can't get off of a certain idea. And no matter what I do, I just can't get out of it. And it could be months. So basically, I said, well, I just need like fun patterns. So I basically was like, I did this for myself. I said, I think I would like to lay and Tim Ferriss actually had [00:57:55] this suggestion, lay down on the ground, shout at the, you know, wherever you are and shout as loud as you can, I got this, or walk backwards for as long as you can in public with your friend trying to guide you without turning around, or brush your teeth with the opposite hand. Or, you know, you can see where I'm going, right? So these little routine breakers, as we call them, Adam: [00:58:20] that really just get you into the present moment, because then it's you're aware of that moment. So the more you can have like a reminder. So the idea was, have reminders sent to your phone to do these activities throughout the day and gamify it or something like that. No, that's very interesting to hear. I've never thought about that. Like, okay, just walk backwards, [00:58:40] because it's going to be it's like almost rerouting your brain on how to look at the normal day to day life. Your brain gets a break. Your brain gets a break from doing whatever it's doing. Your system kind of resets. It's like working with a big computer, right? I mean, what are some of the ways that you take an app, draw a picture, write down three nagging thoughts, crumple them up and throw Adam: [00:59:03] them away. You know, insert, and we have thousands of these across different, you know, arts and entertainment, sculpture, some of them, I wanted them to be fairly immediate, but some of them, you could like schedule, you can say go to a pottery class, or you know, things like that. Things that you wouldn't do outside your normal day to day that are going to break that unevenness [00:59:24] or kind of break that mundane scheduling that most of us live day to day. And it's interesting, because you know, neurofeedback, the whole perfect purpose of that is you're watching an Netflix show, and then it'll, as you start to just get distracted, it'll start messing with the audio or messing with the visuals. And your refocus, your brain has to focus on that to pay attention Adam: [00:59:42] again. And it's like be present, be in the moment, and that some of those thoughts, those OCD thoughts or ADHD thoughts are going to be, are going to kind of be subsided and make you focus directly on what you're watching. Right. And the big, the big thing that I took away or taking away from my show and conversations with Philippe is my neurologist friend, is his great, he has this great quote, [01:00:04] which is be the leader your brain so desperately needs you to be. This is like a really empowering concept. You know, the brain feels like this thing that is not part of me. The best way to put this is like if you broke your arm, and somebody says to you JP, how are you feeling? You'd be like, I feel good. I broke my arm, but I feel good. Now, if there's something wrong with your emotion, Adam: [01:00:29] or if you feel down, again, this originates in your brain, or if you're feeling stressed, and I ask you the same question, I would love for you to get this place where you're like, you know what, I'm feeling a little bit of stress here that's coming from my parietal low, but otherwise I'm good. But really what we do now is we say, I'm stressed. We associate stuff that [01:00:50] comes out of our brain as being us, but we don't associate a broken arm as us. That is a piece of my body that is broken. And in this case, maybe your stress levels are a little bit off. That's okay. You're still good. Some version of that. I think the identification is a huge portion of how we can view our day-to-day lives and our mental health. It's very important that we Adam: [01:01:14] are not associating our feelings as us, and they're just a moment of time, and that's how we're feeling. And that's okay. Those feelings are, it's important to feel those feelings on the spectrum from happy to sad and to feel everything in between completely. So Adam, before we jump on, I want to talk about Bitcoin mining, because it's your goal. We haven't even talked about that yet, but I want to see, [01:01:36] have you done any Bitcoin mining or have you even explored that? And what is your experience if you have? Yeah, I have not done Bitcoin mining. I probably should have. I have not, which is why I loved your episode on Real Vision. I was fascinated by all of it, even though I'm in hardware. So, for instance, I'll give you the, so our IBM hardware, we do transactions and people have Adam: [01:02:01] often asked me, can your machines run Bitcoin mining? And I'm like, those are probably better left for ASICs. But we do, like I said, we do a lot of transactions, right? So, 92 of the top 100 banks, if you Google searches, like we did five times more transactions on our mainframes than customers do in a year on searches. So, we're good with transactions. So, I really know machines that [01:02:25] do transaction throughput. I don't know Bitcoin mining. What should I know about Bitcoin mining? I mean, should I be in it? Should I be doing it? I mean, I own, obviously, I own the asset, but I've never mind it. And is it too late? Yes. It's not never too late. I think we're seeing a democratization of Bitcoin mining or access to Bitcoin mining. Right now, if you wanted to Adam: [01:02:46] get in this space, there is a pretty high capital intensive between $1 million and up on to get in and get deployed and actually make sense to deploy mining machines. What we're working on and what a lot of other companies working on doing is making it so that instead of necessarily buying a Bitcoin miner, having to set it up and run it in your house, you could just either buy [01:03:06] a portion of a Bitcoin miner in a running facility that's already running or just one unit that themselves and kind of reducing the friction on that. But then most importantly, I think in the next probably five years, people will be able to just cuss you their Bitcoin at a custodial solution, which will then be leveraged similar to how we have with Celsius and other platforms Adam: [01:03:26] to actually mine Bitcoin. So instead of you getting a stable coin and getting 70% of your value, yeah, you actually take that capital and you'll put maybe 20% of it into mining Bitcoin. So that it's never a loss to get liquidated, but you actually can secure the network with that Bitcoin and continue to provide security, but then also generate yield on top of your bitcoins in storage. [01:03:46] Yeah, and is that I mean, so the tough, not the tough one, but how would that work? So I want to, you know, staking, I think obviously will continue to become a big thing on, at least on Ethereum. It would it be the risk of me giving my Bitcoin to that type of a scenario as the liquidation loss like you can't protect me against that. Whereas say I gave my, I staked my Ethereum Adam: [01:04:11] on, you know, somewhere and I'm getting a return on that is the liquid. Yeah, it's very similar to staking mechanism. There's still potential liquidation, and that's one of the things that people are focusing on, and you know, that lever of, okay, how much yield do I want versus how much risk do I want? If you're taking that 70% loan versus a 10% loan [01:04:29] on your portfolio, you're going to be able to, you know, to kind of play those levers. We're seeing that a lot of people are, you know, in the staking community, you can still kind of get, for a higher risk, there'll be maybe some clawbacks if the protocol doesn't work out as well or has some issues with liquidation, especially with the Aave protocol or the Lend protocol. So we're Adam: [01:04:48] seeing that it's very similar to staking, but I expect, you know, as companies work to reduce the friction in the space that more people like yourself that are in the space, love Bitcoin, love blockchain, would actually be able to participate in the process of securing the network without the frictions associated with the physical hardware. Similarly, you know, what IBM blockchain [01:05:05] does in deploying these massive amounts of servers for customers and taking that problem out of the situation or out of the... Yeah, if you look, if you could make that, if you could make that like kind of a turnkey cloud-like solution, I mean, that's what we did for our financial services ready cloud. I mean, we basically said, you know, companies want the security of the on-prem world, Adam: [01:05:26] but they don't trust the cloud. So they'll say, okay, IBM spent two years doing this with the regulatory bodies and our sister company Promontory, which is we purchased, they do all the regulations. They did that for the state of Wyoming and with Bank of America, BNP Paribah, and now people can leverage what... So if you're telling me, hey, Adam, here's... We've done all that [01:05:48] infrastructure work. Just give us your keys and you're protected. I love that. It's something we're working towards. Just gonna take some software developers and some capital, but it's something that over the next couple years, I expect in hope to bring, as you mentioned, the gamification of this space and of any assets that are able to generate interest and generate JohnPaul: [01:06:06] yield. We'll hopefully, hopefully see over the coming years. Well, Adam, thanks for coming on. Adam: [01:06:11] Do you have any other questions or anything else you wanted to talk about before we end up today and close it off? I don't think so. Just if you need me, Adam Mestreli on LinkedIn and Twitter and not super active, if you want to watch the TV show, it's called Secrets Unlocked on the Smithsonian Channel. Big plug there. I think I hit everything. Yeah. I mean, just really appreciate [01:06:33] the time and this is great. I loved your episode and I'm really looking forward to JohnPaul: [01:06:38] hearing the podcast. Of course, Adam. Thanks again for coming on and I appreciate it. Thanks again, [01:06:43] guys, for watching Digital Gold and remember to 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 Adam: [01:06:54] to leave us a five star review to support our journey to become the number one crypto podcast. [01:06:59] Thanks so much for listening and until next time, mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # The Future of AI & Energy | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 36 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/ai-energy-future-taylor-towler-bill-schneider/ The Future of AI & Energy | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 36 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 36 # The Future of AI & Energy with Taylor Towler & Bill Schneider Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Taylor Towler & Bill Schneider to discuss the future of ai & energy. ## The Convergence of Bitcoin, AI, and Energy ### Digital Gold Podcast: The Infrastructure Race: Bitcoin Mining Meets AI with Taylor Towler and Bill Schneider This episode of the Digital Gold dives into the real infrastructure war shaping the future of both Bitcoin and AI. JohnPaul sits down with Taylor Towler, who scaled from consulting on utility rate sheets to deploying over 250 MW of data center capacity, and Bill Schneider, a sourcing veteran who’s negotiated billion-dollar PPAs and seen every side of the energy industry. Together, they cut through the noise on power economics, regulation, and the grid crisis. From Taylor’s scrappy early days mining Bitcoin to his transition into AI-ready data centers, to Bill’s blunt breakdown of how U.S. energy policy created “phantom capacity” and a fragile grid, this episode gives a no-BS look at what’s coming next. The group explores how behind-the-meter generation, private substations, and modular nuclear or gas solutions will define the next phase of compute growth and why sovereign operators will have the advantage when the grid tightens. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/MenSNzPZ88s?si=_ZrSqJZZ39J6bcLb) ### Key Insights - Scale isn’t about capital; it’s about creativity. Taylor explains how he grew from a one-megawatt startup to multi-hundred-megawatt projects by structuring deals intelligently, leveraging land options, and aligning load studies with real grid data. - AI and Bitcoin are not competitors; they are converging. Both industries depend on cheap, stable, dispatchable energy. The same power that drives Bitcoin’s network will soon drive AI’s neural engines. - The grid is breaking, and opportunity lies in the cracks. Bill unpacks how decades of misaligned policy and renewable subsidies created “phantom” capacity, leaving true generation and transmission lagging far behind demand. - Communities don’t hate data centers; they hate surprises. Local engagement, education, and transparency turn resistance into support. Early involvement beats PR spin every time. - Ownership drives purpose. A favorite quote from Taylor underscores the motivation behind great entrepreneurship: “When you want to buy your mom a beach house and retire your bloodline, you’ve got to be a business owner.” Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/MenSNzPZ88s?si=_ZrSqJZZ39J6bcLb) ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Taylor and Bill’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/the-infrastructure-race-bitcoin-mining-meets-ai/id1539971833?i=1000730996138) #### Related Resources Bitcoin Mining Hosting Services → Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Guide → MiningStore 62.5 MW Iowa Facility → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today we’re joined by Taylor Tower, CEO of Solomon Data Systems in a driving force in the next generation data center development. From scaling Merv Marketplace to $38 million in revenue in under a year to leading 250 megawatt in site sales and teaching mining seminars to launch dozens of facilities. Taylor has lived at the intersection of Bitcoin mining infrastructure and power generation. We’ll dig into his journey, the future of AI ready data centers, and what it takes to execute fast in one of the most competitive industries on the planet. We also have another surprise guest, bill Schneider. He has been a sourcing and contract manager for SME with 25 years of experience across defense, aerospace, consumer goods and data centers. He’s led billion dollar negotiations, managed complex PPAs and EPC defaults, and recently secured major metadata center contracts worldwide, based in Dallas. He advocates for reliable energy supply and supplier engagement outside of the traditional models. [00:01:00] Welcome to the show guys, and it’s great to have you. Taylor: Thanks, JohnPaul. JohnPaul: So the first question we’re gonna get into Taylor is what made you think Bitcoin mining was the profession for you? And what would you tell yourself today or back then now what today? is it crazy to go into this space? Were you just that young, ambitious guy that thought he could take over the world? And did you succeed in that vision? Taylor: , , a combination of all the above, so to speak. I would say , that I definitely succeeded in the vision and , I’d do it again if I had the chance because, , operating in in an emergent industry as a young person, is one of the quickest ways that you can get to, , levels of seniority and managing a size and complexity of project that, , it might take you decades to reach in other industries. And because it is an emergent industry that has so many young people in it, it definitely propelled my professional journey. JohnPaul: And it’s one without the corporate ladder per se, where you’re able to jump in, set your own mark, and it’s based on the deals you [00:02:00] close, the power you find less of. Did you work for 2000 hours for this guy and did you fill this role? So talk to me about the first deal. How did it come about and what did you end up doing? Taylor: , The first deal. So, I quit my day job operating, a wastewater treatment plant, robotics, and large ammonia coolers in a cream cheese factory, actually, , just on a whim because. I’d been day trading Bitcoin, largely over the course of the past year. And the first time I got exposed to Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin was in 2011 or 2012, and you couldn’t really find much on it about the, on the internet around then. But, \ when I saw COVID hit, I just knew that there was gonna be inflation coming. And my experience with trading had caused me to dive a lot deeper into how the core protocol actually works and how it affects the world from a macroeconomic and sociopolitical, viewpoint. , And I was just , dude, I’ve gotta get , into this. So I quit my day job I, and strike out. , But that , and this wasn’t one of those stories where, you work on your side hustle for three years [00:03:00] until it becomes large enough to support you, and then you leave your job in, , in a very safe way. I quit, I struck out, , going to my first conference, is actually , what sparked a lot of that for me, which was Mining Disrupt in Miami 2020. And that just really allowed me to be around, -minded people, see that it was a real thing and do some networking in the space. But, , for me being the technical, analytical mind that it was, , I just bumped into an operator, had a long conversation with ’em, and shared some of, the technical computer and, , math skills that I have. And , the first deal that I ever closed was actually, a consulting contract to help , an up and coming bitcoin miner, analyze the rate tariffs for a site that they were thinking about acquiring. , And that’s, yeah,, that’s what kicked it all off for me. Just a small few month long consulting agreement. JohnPaul: Nice. So having no experience in the space, but having the passion, the drive, and the will to learn kicked it off to say, yeah, I can read a tariff sheet, , I can analyze this market based rate and tell you what your [00:04:00] power is gonna cost. , you mentioned you’re pretty young at that time. What gave you the confidence to just step in both feet in and say, I’m the guy to do this. Taylor: well, there’s a couple layers to that. I do come from a pretty entrepreneurial family, , designing and, , repairing manufacturing facilities when they’re, their onsite staff couldn’t do it. They call , my father and my grandfather to come solve problems. So there was a little bit of that. But, , I’d say what most of it is when you’re gonna strike out on your own. You just have to do the work first, right? Before you can, , sell something to somebody , or get a job. And what by that is., I’d wanted to own and operate my own Bitcoin mines, so I went to all the local utilities where I’m from. I started reading the rate sheets and putting spreadsheets together to figure out, how much is the electricity actually gonna cost. And having done that work for the six months and 12 months prior to that is what put me in a position to say, Hey, I just did this 20 times for myself. Yes, I can help you with this. #### Energy Meets AI Demand And , those 20 times for myself were unpaid, but they gave me the opportunity to, , be paid by somebody for that service. JohnPaul: And to your [00:05:00] point, it wasn’t your first time looking at it, but you have the grit and the, , ability to go and look at those deals previously. What would you give someone in high school listening to this podcast? What advice do you have for them to jump into the bitcoin mining industry or really any industry knowing that you’ve been an entrepreneur for many years, some people are scared, , they have maybe some ongoing costs that they’re dealing with. , What type of advice do you give that person to do what they love, and to build a name for themselves in this industry or any industry? Taylor: I’d say one, read everything you can to connect with people in the space that you want to go into. \ Above and beyond those things, you’re never gonna be ready. It’s never gonna be the perfect time. Start now and learn as you go. JohnPaul: And so when you got the call to deploy 16,000 asics in 30 days where you’re ready to start now, and talk to me more about that. , that is something that most people can never say they’ve done their life. Because that’s just , that’s what 45 megawatts of more basics. Taylor: I was terrified when I signed my contract. , [00:06:00] Honestly, , , it was to, , receive disassemble clean test catalog. Sell 16,000 asic in 30 days. And, , we’d heard about the opportunity for , this lot of servers that was for sale. And , there happened to be a conference coming up, this was actually mining disrupt, 2022, I believe. , At the conference , we’re being with all of our contacts,, shaking hands, doing the thing, and, , we had the opportunity and then we went out to the market to see if we thought that we could execute. And we did. So we negotiated the contract. Signed and went for it. JohnPaul: And so explain to me that process, , , that’s a ton of servers testing them, maybe not necessarily racking and turning them on, but seems de racking , and preparing them for a sale. Taylor: Yeah. So the, location of the lot was in Montana. And , we just figured if we’re gonna execute this thing, we need to be on present. We need to be local. Right. So myself and the partners that we executed the contract with, , as soon as we got back from the conference, we negotiated the contract over that weekend, signed it on a Sunday night, and Monday [00:07:00] morning we were in our cars on the way to Montana, rented an Airbnb, did the startup thing, , went and found a local warehouse, where we could actually receive and process the servers. , So we rented the warehouse, flew up a team of 15 people, , stood up, , a testing facility, which was supposed to be, , a, a hundred kilowatt, , diesel powered generator. And it actually ended up being , a dozen little Generac units that we MacGyver a way to, to plug the Asics into. , So the, servers would come in on the trucks, we’d take ’em off with a forklift, un palletize ’em, plug ’em into the generators, test ’em. If they tested good, they went in one pile. If they tested bad, they went in another pile. Everybody had a drill in their hand taking ’em apart, blowing ’em off , with an air compressor, , scanning in all the dashboards, resembling them, and then re palletizing ’em , to be ready to ship out to our customers. JohnPaul: So were they already sold? Did you guys pre-sell them? do you have to pay for them in advance or were they just being sold in as is? Talk to me more about the financials there. ’cause it seems you went from not [00:08:00] zero, but zero to 15,000 is a huge jump when it comes to deploying a testing business and sale business of used equipment. Taylor: Yeah, so we did have to pre-sell ’em and that was actually a gut wrenching part of the process because they required us to have pre-sold and funded, , two thirds of the contract size prior to receiving any of the Asics. , So we’d already , pre-sold some larger lots and we were waiting , for our big customer to close who was gonna do that. And man, that week, I definitely got some gray hairs, but , when there’s a will, there’s a way, JohnPaul: And, you guys are working , what, four hours a day drinking margaritas? , talk to me about this work schedule. Is it 18, 20 hours? That’s a day with sleeping on the floor, Elon style. Taylor: it wasn’t quite sleeping on the floor before we got the warehouse. It was up at 6:00 AM off the phone at midnight every day for three weeks straight. , And then as soon as we got the warehouse, yeah, it was 14 hour days, for a month straight. Just from picking the Asics up out of the Gaylord and then putting them onto the table or the palette, by the end of that [00:09:00] month everybody there was ripped. JohnPaul: Well, so it sounds you’re ripped, you’re getting the job done, but Taylor , did you hit your head , I can go work a nine to five, get my benefits. Why would I ever want to go do this? Why did you decide this is for me? Taylor: I think one of the most important aspects of it for me is the fulfillment and the sense of self sovereignty and capability that you get from it, really owning your own destiny. , But then, , being a do it yourselfer too. But then above and beyond that,, there’s a, being an entrepreneur definitely isn’t for everyone, right? There’s , the saying goes, your first seven businesses fail., But of course, once do get to the point of, of being successful, , , there’s a reward at the end of the tunnel. , it’s, it’s the only way that access to the American dream still really exists unless you’re in a high paying sales job and managed to invest your money well and save it over a long period of time. , When you wanna buy your mom a beach house and retire the rest of your bloodline, you gotta be a business owner. #### Industry Deep Dive JohnPaul: So, what’s the driving vision for you? I’m hearing is buy the, on the beach [00:10:00] house and then retire my bloodline. , , , that kicks off after all this work. You don’t stop. Right. You’re not , oh, 16,000 a six,, tens of millions of dollars of sales. Let me be done. Here you go and teach people , how to build data centers, how to build Bitcoin mines, and , you successfully taught people how to build over 37 of those. So, why the shift or what makes you go, okay, this was amazing. Sales was fun. I learned a lot here, but now I’m gonna go and teach people how to build these mining facilities. Tell me more. Taylor: So I was actually doing all of those things at the same time. Because it would be , , I, I’d go for a couple of weeks seminar and then I’d return to the sales job. , I guess for me, ,, I’ve always been an educator. , my high school yearbook quote was, those who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do. Right. , So for me , it’s all about leaving a lasting impact on the world , and the people around me,, and bringing everybody along for the journey. But, , you hit on a subject that is something I’ve gone back and forth on over the last five years, which is , okay, so I get a big exit, I close a massive deal, [00:11:00] and now I can retire if I want to. Do I, no, no, I’d be bored. Right. Always need to have , another challenge to push against , just to keep life interesting. JohnPaul: You sound me. It’s , you wanna just keep busy, but also you are making such an impact, which is you don’t have that opportunity on the sidelines and that’s how you’ve been able to scale this thing now we’ve talked about teaching people how to build sites, doing the ASIC cleaning. , You’ve gone up the stack all the way to the sale of facilities. Now you’ve repped over two 50 megawatts of site sales. And talk to me about the fastest route from an LOI to energizing without locking up a lot of capital as someone who’s trying to do a lean. And how were you able to do that successfully? Is there any deal specifically you can speak about that the audience would find interesting? Taylor: What scale are we talking about? JohnPaul: Scaling and selling facilities, basically anything on topic, even if they’re just Taylor: Okay. Okay. , There’s layers to this the way I see it, right? Because , it’s a different conversation if we’re talking [00:12:00] about one megawatt, 10 megawatt or 300 megawatt, right? There’s very different things you need to do with, JohnPaul: Yeah. , You can approach it. I would say just let’s break it into barriers, greenfield nut and just load studies and then just available power immediately. Taylor: yeah, the, main thing is, finding pockets of capacity where the infrastructure, , to the maximum, extent that you can find. Is already there for another reason. Right. So, , if you want to do one megawatt of mining, maybe , you move into, , a warehouse facility that a previous, CNC shop was in, something that. , If you wanna do 10 megawatts, you need to find a substation that the utility has recently built, , but hasn’t yet accrued its projected load growth., Or load has dropped off for some reason. Then of course, if you wanna do, , hundreds of megawatts and the really big scale stuff, well that used to be easier before, , traditional data centers came around and gobbled up all the capacity. I’ll leave it at that. JohnPaul: So Taylor, if someone has done the [00:13:00] one megawatt, the five megawatt, the 10 megawatt site, how do they go to the 150 megawatt site knowing you’ve done this a few times and you have the expertise, walk me through that process for those who might be interested in taking a part of the Bitcoin mining growth and AI growth story. , That’s to come. Taylor: yeah, you wanna look for existing grid infrastructure that you can extend to your facility. , Essentially , the process is gonna be finding out where the main backbones are, finding land near that to attach to your load study. Submitting the load study with the local utilities serving that region. And going through all that process. There’s gonna be engineering diagrams, there’s gonna be a few layers of the load study, and this is gonna be, a year long to multi-year process. , And throughout the course of that, you need to line up all the different variables, which is, , where are you getting your substation components from? Because at that scale you’re gonna be building a substation. [00:14:00] Where are you gonna be procuring that much data center infrastructure? \ And depending on your business model, who’s gonna be your client or how are you raising the capital to purchase the servers that you’re gonna operate in the data center, you need to coordinate all of those things in parallel with each other, , and ratchet up each step as fast as you can in parallel with the other ones to unlock the next step because you need to do everything in lock stop. But. A lot of times it is a chicken or the egg scenario. , , for example, the utility wants you to have the land to do the load study, but you want the load study to have the land, right? So it’s , okay,, how do I make that happen without buying 300 acres? Well, maybe you do an option on the land instead of purchasing it. #### Technical Discussion , Then once you have the option on the land, that’s long enough for you to find out if you can get the power to that location, then you go through the load study process and that’s replicated through everything in the business. JohnPaul: It is really a stool, and to your point, you need all three parts of the stool, and [00:15:00] at any one point in time, a part might fall out and you are left with no deal. So it’s something where you’re running multiple deals at a time. These things don’t happen overnight because, they happened, it took years before. Now it might even take decades, and we can talk more about that to get some of these deals done because of the inefficiencies in the system. So. , That’s a mining site. That’s a large scale development. What are you guys doing about AI and how do you view it? Shift your business shifting? If it is from Bitcoin mining to ai, is it a hundred percent shift? Is it a half and half now? Is it 25% ai, the rest Bitcoin mining? Talk to me more about that. Taylor and then Bill, feel free to jump in as well, is what has changed, what’s been the eureka moment in the past two to three years in this space where traditionally, , the co-location guys just didn’t come to Texas. They were in Virginia and that’s it. They didn’t want to build in Oklahoma. Taylor: So, there’s a lot of layers and a lot of different answers I can give you there. So, , first off, the [00:16:00] business these days is 90% traditional data center and 10% Bitcoin. , And, the driving factor behind that is I’m very passionate about Bitcoin’s ability to. Stabilized civilization, , to bank the unbanked to give people access to money that is separated from state. , But , when a data center doesn’t work, doctors don’t get medical records, the military can’t function, the police can’t function, right? So it feels , a much more tangible impact , on the local community in our country, , as well as having more stable cash flows, better access to investment, all those kinds of things. And it’s , , I was still very passionate about Bitcoin, but , now I’m passionate about , the potential to retire everybody on the planet, ? , So what’s changed? , A lot of the skill sets have carried over, the ability to go and prospect these pieces of land, , get a large amount of [00:17:00] electricity served to ’em. High density, high heat environments, whether that’s air cooling or liquid cooling. But another thing , that’s fun for me about the transition is that the technical integration of the systems to make sure that the server doesn’t ever turn off,, are much more advanced and robust. And then you get into a lot more questions of connectivity. , And, yeah, , just a lot of fun technical rabbit holes that go down for me. JohnPaul: Bill. Bill: So I’ll lead off with . You guys know that Robert Redford passed away recently and one of my favorite Redford movies was sneakers. Do you remember that one from the early nineties? , , they were playing, a team of white hat hackers, , at that got in over their heads. So reference characters having a discussion with his old friend now turned enemy, Cosmo and Cosmo says quote. There’s a war out there, old friend or World War, and it’s not about who’s got the most bullets, it’s about who controls [00:18:00] the information, what we see and hear, how we work, what we think. It’s all about the information. And so then he goes into discussions on what they’ve done with the information and the fact that they’ve turned over everything from banks to small countries, which of course was an allusion to what George Sowers did to the British Pound, , a year before the movie came out. Alright, so with all of that being said, more computing that you have, , the more potential is, roughly aligned to how much power you can get to drive that. And what’s happened over the years is, for a number of reasons, which I don’t want to derail the conversation over, let’s just say that. number of political decisions resulted in a bubble in terms of name plate capacity versus dispatchable capacity on energy.[00:19:00] So keep in mind that politicians , and most media types generally when it comes to complex subjects, they’re not very astute. So the politicians simply looked at nameplate capacity and said, oh my God, we’ve got all this spare capacity. So here in Texas Senate, I’m in Dallas, in er, so in Ercot, wow, Bitcoin liners, data center operators, we’ve got all this spare juice that you can come take up rather than the historical model, which is you contract with the utility. And if you’re big enough, you have to coordinate with the utility to have either your capital build the power plant and the lines infrastructure. And then pay on the margins, or you have a long-term PPA and the expense of the CapEx and opex and margin is passed along to you. So in other words, in the classic model, they quote moms and pops never saw [00:20:00] that, right? Because you were paying for what you need. But the politicians said, Hey, we’ve incentivized all this spare capacity. Come one, come all sign up. And everybody did. And then the grid managers went, oh crap. Because now you’ve got this very big gap between what’s on paper and what’s actually dispatchable you. If the sun doesn’t shine, if the rain doesn’t fall, or if the wind doesn’t blow, and the worm turned. So the worm turned from, , we’ve got all this power to, oh my God, these data centers are taking all this p and in the meantime, now AI had been around, Taylor, correct me if I’m wrong, , going back to probably 2016, , but it really got legs under it with chat GPT around 2022. That was when everything hit primetime and everybody realized, oh my God, the computing requirements for data centers running this stuff are [00:21:00] three times as high, and the power requirements are three times as high. Now, not getting into the whole discussion on fit for purpose on ai, ML or HPC, , and whether it’s AI for application or training and all of that, just very generally, you’re getting into far higher power density, far higher cooling density and the power use and water use that comes with it. #### Strategic Perspectives So now you’re in the big time politically and meanwhile ’cause of this gap between what’s really available., On the generation side what’s available on the line side, the t and d or transmission and distribution infrastructure. Now you’ve got this massive, massive queue of people who are signing up that may or may not have actual projects. But if they did, , one example I saw, if all the load studies were approved, it would be three times the capacity of that infrastructure, which now brings you into [00:22:00] what am I gonna do about this? And the short answer is, you’re gonna go back to the model with Henry Ford. If you’re familiar with Henry Ford in the 1920s to build the Model T back then, he owned everything from the rubber plantations in India for the tires all the way through to steel mills in Michigan to build the model T Well. If you follow Mr. Musk, a couple of years ago, he announced it at Boac Chica for SpaceX. As you’re aware, they’re using a rocket technology called methyl methane and oxygen or natural gas and oxygen, where he posited that at some point they would probably have to drill their own natural gas wells at the site to provide for security supply. ’cause , Elon, , he likes to have his hand in every part of the supply chain versus Boeing, which is the polar opposite. So that’s where you get , the intertwining of , where the data centers going in the [00:23:00] future. Where are the power and water requirements going in the future, and how do you guard against supply risks? Equipment risk, which we haven’t even talked about yet. Security of supply risk , on getting equipment, and also the political or sovereign risk of, we mentioned SB six. SB six is a quid pro quo. Okay. Are you’re familiar with, SB six here in Texas, where as of now, , anything larger than , a certain figure 75 megawatts, you’re interrupted. So what are you going to do? A data center can’t be interrupted, so you have to bring your own. And so all of these things have completely changed the landscape of where data centers were even, I’d say, five years ago. Taylor: Heck, 12 months ago. Bill: yeah. Well, it’s growing exponentially. It’s growing exponentially. , I’ll leave that conversation with this. If I’m looking in my crystal [00:24:00] ball, what’s possible 15 years from. Now, , John, do the capacity of three gorgeous dam in China? The largest hydropower dam right now? JohnPaul: It’s probably in the three five gigawatts range, Bill: Mm-hmm. It’s 26. I’m predicting that you’ll see a data center, super campus, ultra super, whatever, mega campus in 15 years time. That will be 25, 26 gigawatts, JohnPaul: Wow. Bill: one cycle. Because as the technology matures, as you get, higher and higher rack densities, as you have more cases for training and development of very, very large AI modeling, and the AI modeling goes from mimicking to truly thinking, which I don’t think we’re there yet. But ,, Taylor mentioned at some point AI does have the capacity now, won’t say all. I’ll say most, most especially [00:25:00] transactional roles today, , AI gone, first level tech support, AI gone, , transactional roles, that were typically pushing processes in organizations, ai, so all of that. So as the AI computing demand grows, the data center demand grows because the capacity demand grows and the requirements for water and power grow. So that’s where we are. JohnPaul: , this is a wave of Bill: Yes, it’s a tsunami, JohnPaul: And I think Elon even said it with Doge, he’s , I feel I’m picking up needles on the beach trying to fix the government when this wave’s coming and it’s going to disrupt everything. , what am I doing with my time Taylor: Absolutely. Yeah. And everything in our modern lives depends on these data centers. the money of the future. Bitcoin depends on data centers. When we send a text message, pick up a phone call, go on Google Maps, Facebook, this podcast recording right now, , that all happens , in a data [00:26:00] center somewhere. So everything about our modern lifestyle centers around these facilities that have become so integrated into our society and. , Everyone’s feelings may be about that. , I personally am an, am an avid user of technology. Therefore, I’ll always support a data center being in my neighborhood because as we look out into the future of the world, we all know the world is changing very rapidly due to technology. #### Operational Insights And this AI thing is a, a big buzz right now. , America used to be, , a powerhouse of manufacturing and we shored that and maintained the world through the status of the dollar. While, , now bitcoin’s coming along and disrupting that, and now we have , this AI thing that’s happening. And, , the question that I ask myself is, do I want that innovation to be happening in my country? And the answer for me is always yes, because, , do I want rent to stay low because robots are building houses? Do I want to be able to afford food or buy byproducts and [00:27:00] services? At an affordable rate, because it’s being produced locally, , by virtue of these data centers, the answer for me is always yes. JohnPaul: And I think there’s a shift to your point. we all use the tools, but we don’t see the data centers ’cause they’re not bias usually. And now it’s becoming a much more mainstream conversation. I wanna switch it to the consumer. And talk about. So in 1930, the US lagged behind Europe in providing electricity to rural areas, and only 11% of the US farms had electricity. So by 1937 in the New Deal era, right, they, 1936, they created the Rural Electrification Act, which then gave loans to build these power systems and basically subsidize building out the rural grid where investors from investor owned utilities would not see financial return. And that helped lower costs for consumers across the board. But now in 2025, it seems [00:28:00] the consumer, will be getting squeezed on the electric bill and already is getting squeezed today. Now AI is a good scapegoat to point out and be , you’re the problem, it’s you. What is the real issue? increasing the rate on the consumer and how do we ensure that all this bloat in the system and all these load queues, , that’s projects that don’t, might not actually get done, don’t lead to a higher cost of to everyone because of increased generation or an overbuilding of generation? Let’s have you guys jump into that. Taylor: So there’s , a handful of factors there. One is inflation is a real thing. Energy prices have been pretty stable for a long time, while inflation has definitely occurred over that period. Secondly, , the grid hasn’t really been substantially upgraded since those times that you mentioned. And we’re now bearing the cost of not only needing more energy for our home devices, for our ac, for our electric cars, [00:29:00] for automation and manufacturing, and for yes data centers. , Now in the context of the grid, having aged and having this new demand, not just from data centers but from our modern lifestyle, , come onto an aging grid. There’s been a combination of lack of investment. Inflation that’s occurred, that’s raising prices. , And , it’s easy to just point at a target and say it’s all because of this, and they should pay for everything. Which , yes, to a large extent, you , should be a good neighbor and make sure , that what you’re doing in the community you’re in is a creative to everybody. But, , one of the fundamental issues is that capital chases returns, right? And investing in utilities while typically being a secure and stable long-term return, it doesn’t get you , large accumulation that most investors are looking for. So all of the money for the last 20 years has been pouring into tech stocks and data centers and AI and software , and all these [00:30:00] items leaving investment in our grid to be. by the wayside. And now, , we’re collectively paying the price for that, so to speak. , Bill, do you wanna jump in and add to this? Bill: Yeah. , I’ve read an article in LinkedIn, recently. , One of my friends is Doug Sheridan, who has the Think Tank Energy Point Research here in, Houston. And basically what Doug and I came to was that energy policy over the last 20 years has had the effect of playing Pied Piper to capital to one specific area. And so that’s just sucked the air out of the room for everything else. Whereas historically , you had a utility , that had a long-term growth plan for its residential and small industrial and commercial and large industrial commercial would contract directly with the utility as I previously explained. . have growth plans for the moms and pops that took into [00:31:00] account a new subdivision needs new lines, infrastructure to the substation and the lines, infrastructure in the substation back to, , the main, , transmission trunks to the power stations. All that’s covered as part of , the utilities growth plan. All of that got wrecked, in the early nineties. First on , the thing of, hey, we’re gonna open up the grid to quote competition, except the mechanism wasn’t put in to take care of all the infrastructure requirements along with, , new generation capacity. And then that was turbocharged with the ITC and PTC towards, renewable power in the early two thousands. , As I mentioned, now , you’ve got all these large power users wanting to come in, but there’s not a mechanism there to properly. Account for what they are going to do if they’re connecting to the grid, to all of that transmission infrastructure. So it’s very ad hoc and they get caught in the middle. Right? Because if you’re an investor in a new [00:32:00] data center that’s 20 megawatts and no one’s demanding that you pay for additional lines infrastructure, you’re not gonna do that. Your business case is not going to account for it. And the lines infrastructure that has got money towards it has been towards intermittent generation that’s south in Timbuktu, because that’s where the wind and sun happened to be. But that’s not necessarily where the industrial and commercial loads are, including, data center loads and Bitcoin mining loads. . So there’s a mismatch. JohnPaul: And to your point, the mis mantle was created. I-T-C-P-T-C, these are tax credits that created generation to be built, not where load was. We’ve never approached the problem. Bill: , The incentive you’re chasing is the credit. You’re not chasing the real world issue that needs to be addressed by new capacity. The credit is a phantom capacity, and because the credit is a phantom capacity and it’s not [00:33:00] tied to a real world need, that’s where you get misapplied and misallocated capital. #### Market Commentary Taylor: Right. JohnPaul: We’ve basically allocated capital, to your point, these generators and the consumers not benefiting from this negative price energy in this certain area. Everyone’s getting their tax credits for building it. They get back their money plus their, , 8% return a year. But the consumers really left holding the bag with a more volatile grid and political , utilities with non-retail access states not allowing this cheap energy to flow to their consumers. Bill: Right. Taylor: exactly. , We’re all for being good stewards of the environment, not polluting. , All of those kinds of items. So the spirit behind that movement, was well founded, but it, created the effect that, , a lot of people don’t know this about the grid. , Every time you turn on a light bulb, there needs to be an equal and opposite reaction. Somewhere in a power plant that turns up just a little bit to power that light bulb. [00:34:00] So you amplify that out across. Factories, charging cars, data centers, et cetera. And then we have a concentration of this energy that, one, you can’t turn on and off when you need to. Two, you can’t turn it up and down. And three, by the way, the weather’s not perfectly predictable. We all watch the weather, right? , So we don’t know when this energy is gonna work. While at the same time we’re trying to play at , this perfect balancing act. And that combined with the lack of investment and the ability to get energy from power plants to areas where people use the energy, and now the energy source that we’re getting, \ isn’t constant, is unpredictable and can’t be turned up and down., It’s caused a problem where now we essentially just don’t have what we need in the grid to be able to power our society. JohnPaul: And now we’re talking about this consumer, the consumers hearing that AI is gonna make their bill go up. Let me ask you this question. Utilities are incentivized to [00:35:00] grow their asset base. Why are they incentivized to grow their assets base? ’cause they can make a fixed return regulated by the government X percent per year on their asset base. You have these massive data center customers coming in with almost an unlimited. Amount of capital to build new data centers and to Bill’s earlier point how far do they go in upgrading and paying for their system? Is it just the lines? Is it their substation? Is it the generation? That’s a conversation we’re having, but from a utilities perspective, they see money printers everywhere. They’re , wait a second, I can have a data center park. I can only let Apple and Amazon use this power. I’m gonna build a 200 megawatt substation. I’m not gonna let anyone else use it, but all my rate payers are gonna pay for my substation, pay for this transmission line to my industrial data center park, and I’m gonna go find my client, but I’m not gonna let anyone else in. It seems we’ve moved away from this open retail [00:36:00] access. The grid is for the people. Everyone can access the grid if you’re paying for it. To , oh no, I’m gonna grow my asset base, but I’m only gonna let certain players use this come into this 200 megawatt site in this example. How do you guys see , these misaligned incentives affecting consumers and then also affecting, the AI players in this space. Even smaller operators , , where me and you are in that 50 to a hundred megawatt scale where we can’t go compete in the gigs right now. Taylor: So from, call it 2005 to 2018 ish. Those scenarios where you just mentioned where the utility is gonna make an investment into infrastructure in order to bring a user to that location did happen. And the reason that happened was because communities want high paying jobs in their region, right? , , a lot of people want to go work in a data center, make a, a top 20% salary, have a pretty cushy office position, , have the tax incentives be there. ’cause , , these data centers, they are [00:37:00] given tax breaks, but it’s normally not a hundred percent. , And even, , if you’re paying 25% of the taxes in one location, over five years, that builds you five new high schools, right? That’s the reason that utilities made that investment to bring those kinds of businesses to the area because it was good for the community. But what’s actually happened. In recent times, now that those resources have become constrained is that the data center operator pays for everything. They pay for the power lines to get from , the existing transmission corridor to the data center. They pay for the substation, build out, they pay fuel riders. And it really does pay , for a lot of things. And I think that right now what’s happening is that we have , a perfect storm where we have unpredictable energy supply, aging grid infrastructure, and massive demand for electrification from a variety of sources, not just data centers, combined with an [00:38:00] inflationary environment. , And I think that is really what’s driving energy rates up. It’s not just data centers coming in because the data center operator , and the, in the past decade, pays for everything , when they come into a location. And , that’s my fear. JohnPaul: And Bill, before you jump in, Taylor. You’re right, the data center is paying for it, but guess what? They don’t own the asset. The utility says This is my asset. Now I’m gonna charge 8% on it. Even though I didn’t pay for it, the ratepayer didn’t pay for it, but I’m still gonna charge my rate base. 8%. Bill: Historically, I’ll give the example. I, , years ago I worked for an Illumina smelter down at the bottom of New Zealand. you need to know about that site is it’s powered by a hydroelectric, , facility called the Manor Power Scheme. Manor is unique. It’s not a regular hydro dam. It’s a lake here and a lake here, and a race between the middle, which generation. 800 megawatts between the two lakes. Originally, then owner of the smelter that was coming in [00:39:00] Alco was going to build and operate this power scheme, but then a bunch of decisions were taken. Then the New Zealand government finished it, and as I described earlier, they tacked on a capital cost and the margin cost, which was inked into a contract prior to the first stage of the smelter opening in 1971. #### Innovation and Technology Now to your point, the, what’s the famous quote from Empire Strikes back? , I’m altering the deal, pray I don’t alter it further. , Well, that’s what the New Zealand government did to the smelter in three years time. JohnPaul: Yep. Bill: so there’s, an issue around trust where if you’re contracting with an, a government owned entity and the government owned entity says, well, . That’s a nice PPA, but now I’m gonna open it up and you’re gonna pay what I require. Where else? Then you get mistrust in there. , And on that topic, when those [00:40:00] guys were under negotiation for power in 2008, you had people leaking to the main papers in New Zealand claims of costs and, , opinions that this smelter is quote, paying less than everyone else. Well, logically yes, because if you’re buying 600 megawatts of power, you’re paying less than little homeowner who’s using, , a thousand kilowatts a month. Okay. So, but that’s the point. It was political positioning. So where are we now in all of that? Look at meta, look at what they’ve done in, I think it’s Richmond Parish, Louisiana with Entergy. They have contracted with Entergy, where Entergy are going to build five gigawatts of CCGT. So combined cycle gas turbine power generation for that ultra mega hyper, whatever it’s called these days, Taylor: Hi, carry on. Bill: Parish. Okay? Now, [00:41:00] that generation is not going to be owned by meta it, it is going to be contracted so that the capital is paid. I don’t know the particulars of the deal, but I would presume that the cap cost for all the infrastructure going from the electron generation at the CCGT all the way across the lines, through the substations to the site, is going to be tacked onto that PPA and yet. You’ve got media going out there, my favorite Bloomberg, , putting op-ed articles out there about how all these data centers are, quote, taking power away from people. And the big challenge is, while Taylor is right, salaries are high. Once a data center is built, there are very few jobs for the square footage. This is not an office park where you’ve got thousands of employees in an office building., A 50 megawatt data center could have less than a hundred [00:42:00] people in that facility. Now, it may have a bunch of outside contractors doing everything from, working on the servers to cleaning the floors. But those aren’t FTE, those aren’t employed , by the operator. Okay. So what people see is. Oh my God, this big power users coming into my area, they are taking all the power that’s available and through, , whether there’s any truth in it, into it or not. The media color, the media area is positioned such that the uneducated reader is led to believe that the data center is getting quote one over ’em JohnPaul: Hmm. Bill: and then add to all of that, the actual logistical issues of how long load studies take to accomplish, whether the power is interruptible or not. And, , I’m talking about interruptable from a [00:43:00] regulatory standpoint, and then the uncertainty of dispatchable versus non dispatchable energy. Okay, so you’ve got all of those uncertainties driving risk. And this is why I am saying that the future. Is behind the meter, bring your own power. And then another thing I haven’t even talked about yet is the difference in load between a classic, what I would call an analog load. So if you think a large mining operation, the equipment is on Taylor: physical mineral mining. Bill: yeah. , so for example, there are mines that have rock crushing circuits. , The ball mills on those mines can be anywhere from 10 to 35 megawatts. The largest ball mill is in Western Australia, 35 megawatts. Well, when that thing is off, it’s off. So you immediately have this drop of 35 megawatts. Oh crap. Something has to be turned down versus. The way, and Taylor’s the [00:44:00] expert here. The way, , AI works when it’s learning or it’s, or it’s executing on its models and the load is very digital, it’s very chunky. And those chunks can be within cycles that are less than the second at the time that if they’re not coordinated right, can set up demand waves very much physical waves, that now you need something in between to shock, absorb that load. And that’s where I think, best systems , electric, , battery energy storage systems rather, can perform that function because the load is so different. And whether you’re on the grid or behind the meter, you’re gonna need that. Otherwise you’re gonna be creating problems upstream for everybody. it’s a very different world. It’s a very fraught political world because of, we’re coming off of subsidies for certain types of power, [00:45:00] but we haven’t addressed the fact that , we’ve neglected the lines infrastructure, the t and d infrastructure from the generation point out, and we still haven’t yet, , solved the issue of allowing the capital to really go back to dispatch for generation base, load generation. #### Growth and Vision JohnPaul: Wow. Bill: a mouthful. JohnPaul: That’s, no, that shows you the complexity of the topic from the local level where you have thousands of landowners in Facebook groups saying, stop the data center to the mayors speaking out in these towns for and against these loads to Bill: , Do you realize the ultimate irony there? The Facebook groups are creating the demand. JohnPaul: yeah. Bill: know, for very quick example, I worked at a steel mill in 2008. It was going to expand to land that it owned for what we would call a demolition landfill. Do the term a demolition landfill , is [00:46:00] industrial type waste. when you break up a road and you’ve gotta do something with the concrete. Okay. It’s that stuff. , They were gonna expand , this plot that was in this beautiful rolling valley, and the locals were all miffed over it ’cause they loved the views, but they didn’t understand that years ago, this has been sold for this purpose. And they’re spraying in spray cans, signs about fighting the steel mill. And I remember thinking, did anyone bother to ask where the steel came from for the cans, for the paint that they were using to make their signs? JohnPaul: We forget. We forget because we’re not next to it. We’re not close to it. We don’t see it. And , that’s what makes it abstract and much harder to understand. Bill: Yes. Taylor: Going back to the consumer. , These issues of rising costs of employment per use of resources in our local regions are, , these , civilizational, [00:47:00] societal level problems , that we’re grappling with, not just as a country, but as a planet right now. , But I think one of the things that really adds fire to the flame, so to speak, with the discussion of, rising energy costs for rate payers, , is that, , it’s not just electricity. Everything’s more expensive, rent’s going up, food’s going up, gas is going up. , So when you, see it all go up at the same time, it’s when you talk about. The price of food going up, for example. , It’s hard to find, , a direction to point yourself in, to be emotional. I’m about to be , okay, this is the problem that we need to solve. But, , when it comes to electricity, , the grid is , , before I got into Bitcoin mining, I don’t think I ever noticed a power line in my life. And now every time I drive past a substation, I’m , Ooh, look at that. Right? But, , so this thing that’s out of sight, out of mind that, nobody really thinks about how it works, how it was built, why it does what it does, and all of the energy policy and history that we’ve talked about throughout this [00:48:00] conversation. So it’s easy to just look at data centers and be , that’s the problem. I don’t it. Right. JohnPaul: So how do you guys stay focused on, and what is the goal of, the business now? Taylor and Bill, with this minefield in front of us of political, , death stars using lines I’m altering the deal. You just invested $10 billion and the deal has now changed to your community of Facebook groups with rioting, with their paint cans that are made by this aluminum shelters. Where do you find your guys’ business and how do you add value to the space? Taylor: , There’s two questions there. , So , I’ll address the first one,, in order the way that I see it, which is that educating the local communities that we want to put these things in is very important, right? , Don’t let the community hear about , the giga site that you wanna build, , when you’re one week away from signing the deal. And the city board’s gonna vote on it, , , get involved in the local community, donate to some [00:49:00] nonprofits, have some hot dog cookouts at the local ball game, , and talk about what’s going on. , And, , let people know. What it’s doing for the community. for example, even if you give a data center, a 75% tax break, the scale of capital that’s being brought to the city is gonna pay for new roads, new schools, , new fire station, and, during the construction part, employ a lot of people. And even once it’s over, maybe not employ , so many people, but, give the it and client youth of the region the opportunity to go and work in it near home. Right? , So it’s really important one, to educate the communities that we go into. , And two, to be good stewards of the, resources that are being allocated to us. Build to the extent that we can, our own power generation, , build to the extent that we can, data centers that consume less water., That’s the, the first part is , how do we step through this minefield, right? Basically be a good neighbor, , is what it comes down to. And, , the second part, , that we’re really passionate about ties into that, [00:50:00] which is designing and building data centers that are more efficient, more quickly than what has been done over the last 20 years. #### Infrastructure Focus , And that’s, done through rethinking the design of how do you get the power to the rack? How do you get the cooling to the rack, right? Because, , just to give an example, a lot of, , data center campuses have , these centralized cooling plants and these centralized energy stations, right? , And what that ends up causing is now you need to pump, , a thousand gallons per minute of water, 600 feet away across a bunch of twists and turns through pipe. You’re using more energy than you need to cool the data center because of its design. So when you bring everything closer to the rack, you increase efficiencies in the data center. So that’s one thing that we’re really passionate about is, building centers that are as efficient as possible. And then above and beyond that, , innovating, in the contracting and construction side of things where [00:51:00] we, and , this is a long-winded subject , that I can bang on about for a long time. But, , in essence, , creating scenarios where the people who own the data center and the people who are building it, they’re both incentivized to build that as quickly as possible on budget and on quality, right? Because , the way the industry’s operated for the past 30 years, , if there’s anything I learned in Bitcoin, and it’s actually Bitcoin that taught me this, is is that incentives rule the world, right? So if the contractor who’s building the data center is. Making his money on a cost plus basis. So they’re gonna make 10% above cost. So say for example, the data center costs a million dollars, they make a hundred thousand. Well, what incentive does that create? Now the contractor wants the data center , to be as expensive as possible, to increase the size of the 10% that they’re gonna get. So innovating in the, contract structure of , how we build things, has been an important part of our business. JohnPaul: And , are you guys now doing what cost minus structures or what? What’s the innovation? Taylor: Yeah. [00:52:00] Yeah. So, there’s , a portion that’s allocated just for the services , that are being provided for our counterparties, right? But then there’s a portion of the margin that’s rewarded for delivering the data center on time. And there’s a portion of the margin that’s delivered for the data center being delivered on budget. , But we gotta be careful with the on time and the on budget part because. When you try to go fast and when you try to do things cheaply, what happens to your reliability? Right? , So it’s making sure that a portion of that, , compensation that’s paid for services is carried out over time as it’s proven that the data center operates the way that it’s supposed to. JohnPaul: , That’s, a really good, good way to look at it and, , innovative. So great job with, with approaching it that way. Bill: , To add onto Taylor’s point, I’m a big fan of Dale Carnegie. If you’re gonna convince somebody to do something, you’re going to explain what’s in it for them. , , How are you going to benefit from this? And the first biggest thing is when you put in an operation that, even if it [00:53:00] only has five people in the building, it’s still earning a lot of money. And the operation is cited in the local county or in the local town. And that town is going to realize cash flows from that operation. It’s also going to employ to degree that it’s been cited properly, it’s going to employ local labor for the building upkeep that I described earlier. You hear about facilities that are being built in the middle of nowhere. Okay, well great. Now try to go hire for people to work at those places and try to hire for. An electrician , to go, perform a job at one of those places. Good luck. , And so you wanna bring the community along. Here’s what’s in it for you. Here’s what we’re going to do for you. And yes, this facility is going to use power. Here’s what we’ve done to mitigate any impacts on you. It’s going to use water. Here’s what we’ve done to mitigate any impacts on you. And as Taylor mentioned, getting [00:54:00] out in front of those discussions so that some room temperature person in media that has nothing to do with your business and knows nothing about it, isn’t just pulling stuff off the top of their head. ’cause that’s what they heard in some Facebook group. , When they ask somebody about it or a slack that’s filled with other journalists that together create a black hole of non knowledge. So you have to get out in front of people. You have to show ’em what’s how they’re gonna benefit. They’re not necessarily going to benefit in the ways that they think they’re gonna benefit. It’s not gonna employ a thousand people. , It’s not gonna be building widgets that they see rolling out the door that they’re gonna be able to buy. So that’s where you educate ’em, because otherwise, , we all have our areas of expertise. I knew absolutely nothing about intermittent power generation. And so someone requested that I review a proposed PPA for a wind farm back in 2008, four months later. I knew everything that [00:55:00] I needed to know and it weren’t pretty. But the point, , is I went in with an open mind. I hired experts and I jumped in with both feet. Now I have to treat people in the local communities the same way. They’re not stupid. You treat ’em they’re stupid. They’re gonna see right through that in half a second. , And all you’re gonna do is tick ’em off. So you need to be at the council meetings. You need to be at , the local events, the fairs and that, and get to know people in the town and always be explaining, here’s , what’s in it for you. JohnPaul: I can’t agree more. , with the meetings we’ve had that are successful are the ones that you get ahead of it. The ones that are 20 people asking questions and everyone, , poking at it, saying, what about this? What about that? You’re already falling down the hill. You have no chance. Even if the size of the data center is a megawatt, it’s the perception which rules the reality of the situation. I wanna switch topics to modular generation. ’cause [00:56:00] you mentioned that this, the grid congestion, grid cues, frequency control, demand response by ai, how that is gonna cause an issue. Do you see modular nuclear reactors, before 2030 being live and helping support data centers? Or is it more just turbines? #### Economic Realities We have tons of natural gas turbines in the queue to be made cogen and batteries. Bill: Here’s why I don’t see SMRs from a regulatory perspective. If a nuclear power plant has a trip, you don’t go, just flip a switch back on. There is a massive regulatory requirement on, , doing an investigation on what caused that trip and ensuring that the plant is safe. That could take months. So if your behind the meter site is tied to an SMR and that SMR has a problem, well, now, , you can’t build n plus one redundancy. In other words, if you need three SMRs of a capacity to run the [00:57:00] place and you do plus one, which means four, you can’t run it that. ’cause now for months on end, you don’t have any redundancy, which means you’re right back to what’s my non-nuclear redundancy. So let’s put that one aside. , I think once the discrepancies on non dispatchable power are flush through, and honestly that’s gonna take 20 years ’cause that 20 years is the life of the facilities that are now just being brought online. But as the subsidies on the ITC and PTC fall off, the number of new facilities that being built is gonna fall off a cliff. Just what happened yesterday. , The EV tax credits. Just fell. So you had a mad dash for people to buy before the tax credit ended, and now you’re gonna have the hangover period where nobody’s buying. And as the market writes itself, there’ll be a lot less. ’cause now people won’t be buying them for tax credits. [00:58:00] Same with power generation. So as all that flushes out, you’re gonna have 20 years where really you’re gonna be looking at, , a number of different technologies. You’re gonna be looking at, , gas turbines, number of different versions of gas turbines. You’re gonna be looking at reciprocating or rice, , reciprocating, internal combustion engine. Right? And you’re gonna be looking at what I call novel technologies that use natural gas and similar fossil fuels in a way that has a far less, emissions footprint. And I’m not talking, just talking about COT, I’m talking about NOx and item, other items that affect, , emissions in what are called non-attainment zones. EPA, non-attainment zones. ’cause today, if I wanna build the behind a meter facility in the Dallas Metro, because that whole area is under EPA non-attainment, so the chances of me putting significant generation on a site, no, but there are [00:59:00] novel technologies coming out. There are linear generators coming out, there are fuel cells, on a number of technologies coming out. And eventually the preponderance of, , the market penetration with that equipment will bring prices down to where they’ll be, quote in the money to, , provide either supplementary or , primary generation for those sites. It’s gonna take time. everything else, , but there are options. Taylor: The other thing that I see is that, , a lot of things in life come down to cost, how we were talking about earlier and even conventional nuclear these days. , The cost to provide the energy before any margin is made on the billions of dollars that gets invested into them is somewhere around six and a half to 8 cents. Whereas, coal and natural gas are in , the four or 5 cent range these days. , So it’s, it can be hard to, [01:00:00] build a business case around those things in that scenario. , SMRs and geothermal right now are in the, I’ll call it nine to 15 cent range, , for producing energy. So for that to become really feasible and get rolled out, , we’ve gotta figure out how to hit some economies of scale and production to get that into a place , that’s competitive with other energy generation methods. , And then of course there’s , the fear of nuclear fallout, which, if you look at , your one nuclear meltdown history, the only reactors that have ever melted down were first generation reactors, first time we ever tried it. That’s the only type that’s ever melted down anywhere in the. Right. , And now we’re on generation three or Generation five nuclear or something that. Any reactor from generation two and on has not ever had a single meltdown. And actually , the deaths per year via nuclear compared to the deaths per year of people operating in, natural gas or [01:01:00] facilities it’s zero for nuclear. And , well, , when you stand next to an exploding piece of steel all day, , that can be hazardous, right? A combination of the cost and the fear of nuclear meltdowns is preventing us , from advancing in that direction as a society. But, , if you think about it in terms of, powering a data center directly, Bill said, , one of those things trips off, you’re gonna be offline for weeks or months. So nuclear directly powering a data center, at least a mid-size campus, may or may not be realistic depending on what other generation technologies you have on site and all those kinds of questions. But, for society at large and, , the world, that whole, , the abundance of electricity is directly correlated, in my opinion, causative of , the wellbeing of the people who live in that region. And it’s my opinion that , the best thing that we can do as a society right now is build as much consistent generation as we can to stay ahead , in this [01:02:00] race for super intelligence that we’re in. JohnPaul: And I, agree with you. I think that , we’re gonna win that race of super intelligence with pure force and capital. , Versus where the west, is looking at it of, as a way of trying, to, let’s say, be more efficient in the boat , and go faster with what they have, the tools they have, with some of the deep, steep optimizations that we’ve seen. But to, your point earlier, which is the nuclear, it sounds big and scary, similar to data centers. Sound big and scary. They’re gonna make my power bill go up, but they actually are less risky than the stuff we’re familiar with. It’s almost we’re in the same conversation between nuclear and natural gas as we are with data centers and their actual impact to the community. I wanna end it with, , you guys are experts in, the field and I want to end it with. Almost a stock pick, but, and let you guys talk about there’s companies in the space that one that , you’re watching that are public, that you think are undervalued and of course not financial advice, but just from your expert opinion, what you’re seeing. And then one that’s, , overvalued that you think is overhyped. , We, , we’re [01:03:00] talking about Schneider Electric earlier today and , that, talk me to me through, there’s a ton of capital moving in the space. , even the bitcoin mining companies that were left to dry are now, some of them are doubling in size or in market cap within a week. , And so there’s a lot of capital flowing into this space. Where does someone take action from all the insight we’ve given you to make a, maybe a financial decision and , get ahead? #### Broader Implications Taylor: Not financial advice, JohnPaul: Yeah. Not financial advice, but , , what do you ? Taylor: , For me personally, for to do ai, so to speak, you need a few things. You need energy, you need chips, but you also need data, right? , And , that’s , where a lot of people kinda. Misread the three parts of the bar stool to do ai, so to speak. , And in that regard, Google and Xai both have access to massive amounts of data. how often do we use Google on a daily basis? It’s probably 20 or 30 times for me. And that’s all just getting logged. And , that’s meaningful [01:04:00] human interaction that can be used to train synthetic systems to operate us, right? And then Google also happens to be a leader and developing their own chips , that are more efficient and purpose suited while at the same time being a leader and multi-campus training. , So how essentially all models are trained right now is it’s not efficient from a capital or an operational sense to. Be having a single model train at a facility that’s separated from one another even by a mile. Right. And Google’s currently the leader and being able to make it work, , with campuses that are separated by tens of hundreds of miles. So they have the data, they have the chips, they have the power, and they’re learning how to make it so that to make Gemini be the next best model that it can be. They’re learning how to be able to effectuate [01:05:00] that in multiple data center campuses instead of one data center campus. ’cause essentially , you reach a limitation on scale, right? to put even one gigawatt in one location. It’s crazy. some people are doing five, well how do we get to 25 or 50 or a hundred gigawatts training these models? Well to do that and on one piece of land is basically impossible. And Google’s the leader in solving that problem right now. And then, , with, , X ai, it’s this a similar story. They have the data because they have Twitter and starlink. They’ve proven they can move fast, solve problems quickly, and scale quickly. And, , combining all of those things together , makes me bullish on those two companies. JohnPaul: Taylor, that’s great. I didn’t get the Google connection. I know they’ve been relatively flat. They obviously are pushing the edge with Gemini, but they’re maybe not the open AI is getting the spotlight there, per se. Taylor: A lot of people don’t know, Google invented the LLM. JohnPaul: Yeah, the transformer, Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. Were you gonna jump in, bill? Bill: Yeah, I was just gonna say, . The AI boom today [01:06:00] has a lot of, now I’m a big fan of history and I’m a bigger fan of the old saying that there’s nothing new under the sun. Do you remember your good book? where that comes from? So go back to the late 1990s, you had stupid money being thrown at anybody who said, I’m on the web internet, I’m gonna do internet commerce. And then, a fellow Tulane alum looked at Amazon in March of 2000 and said, hold on. This is a business that has inventory and they’re not making any money. What gifts? And six months later, the bubble just went poof. Now that didn’t kill the industries and the businesses who figured out, I can’t be about, wow, I’ve got this tool. So fast forward to today. Everybody’s got ai. I want to throw something at the television. Whenever I see an ad on a [01:07:00] YouTube video of this and this fortified with ai, it’s , , fortified with calcium or something, or fluoride, or vitamin A and it’s not that at all. It’s how am I going to take this tool and do something with it that’s going to make the product or the service that much more efficient? Telling me that a laptop has AI means three eighths of nothing. It’s marketing crap. Alright. Telling me , that the laptop is built to leverage connection with AI to do all these tasks from. Faster and more capable spreadsheets to, , being able to put videos out at much higher bandwidth and much more professional effects. Sell me on that. I don’t care how the sausage is made. You [01:08:00] know, the joke about, , go back to up in Sinclair, it used to be that, Italian sausage was authentic. ’cause every now and then you’d have two Italians fighting over the bats who want to get knocked in, right? , But I don’t care about that. I want , the nice food sizzling on my plate because it’s good to eat. I don’t care how it’s made. Okay, don’t tell me that it’s got AI in it. Tell me what having AI is going to do for me. So , the companies that are able to train the models for an end purpose, that has a real world application that’s going to save people time and. It’s going to make them smarter now, that’s the trick. It can’t be a crutch. It’s gotta be something that makes you smarter , and makes you able to do more with less companies that can solve that. One. Show the public what their products are gonna do using this [01:09:00] tool. They’re the ones that are gonna make money. Taylor: And that’s, where we are right now in this whole wave is, , we’ve gotten to the point where these models have been trained to the extent that , they’re pretty smart. They can solve hard math problems, they can write long papers, almost a human, but it’s , okay, , right now, at this point in October of 2025, it’s , okay, how do we translate that into a real world business case? Whether that’s a consumer or a business to business product. That solves a problem at a value proposition that is better than the way that we’ve done it before. And that’s what everybody’s talking about right now is, , are we actually gonna get to that and how do we get there? JohnPaul: I, agree with you and on that, I think I want to go back to a point that Bill mentioned, which is , bill . Is the round tripping schemes that are happening with OpenAI committing $300 billion to Oracle, and then Oracle investing $40 billion to buy Nvidia cutting edge GPUs. Then Nvidia pledging a hundred billion dollars to back into OpenAI. #### AI and HPC Infrastructure , , are we at the peak of the bubble? Are we in [01:10:00] that situation , where there’s a lot of financial euphoria, there’s a lot of round tripping schemes going on where the money, , NVIDIA’s receivables , aren’t being actually paid for, but they’re being booked and these sales, is that gonna affect the, not , the short term growth, or is this just such a big train? Bill: me. Yeah. Don’t show me the circle jerk of those three. I’ll leave that visual to you, but, show me what’s gonna , come out of all of that collaboration. What is that going to do for the products and the services that each of those companies are able to offer to the customer base outside of , the little JohnPaul: , It almost feels we’ve lost, we’ve lost that , forest from the trees here where we’re not focused on what’s Bill: back to, I go back to the late nineties and the.com boom. Remember, for a brief while there, everybody’s running around saying, market shares everything. Well, no, it’s not. Profit is what your [01:11:00] shareholders want. And so for a while there, people were able to convince venture capitalists to throw money at growing market share until the market share did not translate into money, into profit. Then the whole thing blew up. I think if it’s not managed well, that little thing you just described has the potential , to make a big mess all over the place, Taylor: , personally, Bill: something will come of it elsewhere. Taylor: personally, this wave of growth doesn’t crest, so to speak, until at least late 26, if not 27, 28. Just given . The capital that’s been deployed and is in motion will continue to be in motion for at least that timeframe because it takes that long to build out and deploy these things. , So not to mention I just, , I see more bold when I see Bayer right now personally. , Regarding , the Nvidia investment and OpenAI and Oracle and whatnot, , I do [01:12:00] see that when these models get larger and when they’re trained for longer, they become more intelligent. , Because I’ve , been an avid user of chat GBT since 2.0 became popular and just, , use it frequently. , So if it is becoming more intelligent than theoretically can solve more problems. And at the same time, it’s not just on the, which one is most intelligent side, it’s also on , the other side of the versions of the models that are cheaper to run, and smaller. Also get distilled down from those larger ones. So that means that we’re then able to solve harder problems , with less computing. And all of that is derived from the size and the power of the chips that train the largest models. So , it doesn’t seem to me that we’ve hit a point of diminishing returns yet., So I do think , , that investment that was made between those three companies is accretive, in the sense of advancing the technology. But, , as we were speaking about earlier, how does that translate into a business case that solves the problem better, that somebody wants to pay for? And that’s, that’s the part that, that the [01:13:00] industry is still figuring. JohnPaul: I think the amount of capital spend in AI versus the revenue in the AI software space is pretty dramatic and the software revenue has to catch up. But is this investment for, , these three year investments for GPU life cycles, are they 10 year investments, 20 year, a hundred year investments that’s yet to be seen? And obviously there’s different parts of the stack from, we’ve talked about generation to the Rackspace, to the GPUs, and, , that’s gonna greatly impact and affect the bottom line. Well , thank you guys so much for coming on and having , this deep conversation about not only energy, AI and tailor your background as well. What last words do you wanna leave the audience with before we close up? Bill: Here’s what I would leave people with. Okay. Whatever your endeavor is you’re going to need. More power. And that’s not just a Tim Allen joke, but you really are going to need more power. You’re going to need reliable power. And at the same time as [01:14:00] a developer, it behooves you to be aware of the political risks of what you’re doing. #### Practical Takeaways what Taylor said, don’t wait for the news cycle to write your story. I would leave everyone with, if you’re going to invest in, in a particular area, get somebody out there as the face of your company with the city council , and with the local populace, if it’s a smaller town, so that they don’t just learn about you when , you’re put on a docket for a town council meeting and then they’re all ticked off. ’cause someone lift them up into a frenzy, whether it’s,, hearsay or truth or some combination thereof. So develop those relationships with people and then. To the degree that you’re able to, I would say that for , the next 10 years, , any gener , demand, power, demand of size, look to what you’re buying, the meter options are and be the master of your own [01:15:00] ship, the captain of your own ship. Because if you don’t, then you could get out there with that , brand new shiny data center and discover that somebody that has no care of your operation at all can just flip a switch if they need to and shut you down. And at the very least, that’s gonna cost you a lot of money in standby power generation, which depending on where you’re located, you may not be able to do because running , those diesel gen sets may hit you into not get you into non attainment. So I would say look at the risks, look at your business case and don’t. Apply stupid money for the sake of suit. Stupid money. Understand what it is, what service that , you’re going to develop and how to get there and really pay attention to all the logistics that are involved. JohnPaul: The details matter. Taylor: thanks, bill. Bill: They do, they absolutely do. Taylor: Thanks, bill. I think my, closing note would be that, , the world is changing so fast right now [01:16:00] that the most valuable thing, we can do as people is to learn quickly, stay nimble, and stay on our feet. , And also that, , the world’s changing really fast and. , This wave does really carry out and so much gets automated. , There’s gonna be some change that we go through as a society, and , that’s not quite that far away. So bet on yourself. Bet on yourself. Now. Work hard, grow an online presence. Join a startup. Solve a hard problem, do something and, , tuck away resources for yourself , for the next decade. JohnPaul: And don’t forget to buy some Bitcoin if you haven’t already. Right. That’s one of the best resources to be holding. Well, great advice guys, and great conversation. I really appreciate the level of detail we were able to get into some of the nuances, , that we’re with mining and with the energy and with ai. , It’s great to hear, , from both of you and to see the business grow. So best of luck in, the next gigawatt of development. Bill: Mm-hmm. Taylor: Thanks, JohnPaul. Good luck to you as well. Thanks for having us. Bill: Alright. JohnPaul: you guys and thank you for [01:17:00] listening to the Digital Gold Podcast and remember to mine on and never stop using ai. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. 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If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Maximizing Bitcoin Per Share | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 35 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/american-bitcoin-matt-prusak/ Maximizing Bitcoin Per Share | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 35 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 35 # Maximizing Bitcoin Per Share with Matt Prusak — American Bitcoin Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Matt Prusak to discuss maximizing bitcoin per share. ### Inside American Bitcoin’s Strategy Digital Gold Podcast: Maximizing Bitcoin Per Share Strategy with Matt Prusak JohnPaul Baric sat down with Matt Prusak, President of American Bitcoin (NASDAQ: ABTC), to talk about building a lean public company laser focused on one mandate: maximizing Bitcoin per share. They cover Matt’s path from US Bitcoin and the Hut 8 merger, turning around Ionic Digital, and launching American Bitcoin as a U.S. Bitcoin accumulator. Matt breaks down their dual strategy of low-cost mining plus treasury buys, the three real risks of energy capital markets and policy, and why their Hut 8 partnership and brand push give them a structural edge. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/0py6VODyf68?si=fzp2q7Lx0jyaZTrK) ### What Is Covered: - They dig into why “Bitcoin per share” is a more meaningful metric than flashy hashrate headlines, showing how it changes the way investors should evaluate miners. - Matt explains how ABTC operates lean with fewer than five full time employees, keeping overhead minimal so more capital goes directly into accumulating Bitcoin. - They break down their dual strategy, combining low-cost mining with a treasury that buys spot Bitcoin when the math makes more sense than expanding hashrate. - Matt details the $2.1 billion financing instrument that powers their strategy and why, despite that firepower, ABTC has never sold a single sat. - They cover the three real risks of energy, capital markets, and policy and how ABTC is positioning itself to navigate each of them. - Matt highlights ABTC’s unique partnership with Hut 8, the operational backbone behind their mining, and how that relationship strengthens their ability to scale efficiently. - Finally, they talk about why brand and narrative beyond the crypto bubble matter for mass adoption and how ABTC is pushing Bitcoin as part of a broader American story. Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/0py6VODyf68?si=fzp2q7Lx0jyaZTrK) ### Why This Matters For years, public miners have fought over exahash headlines and fleet size. Matt makes a compelling case that those days are over. The future is not about being the biggest number miner, it is about being the most efficient accumulator, blending mining economics with disciplined treasury management. This episode also highlights something bigger: Bitcoin as an American story. Energy, freedom, sovereignty, and compounding sats all come together in ABTC’s strategy to make the United States a backbone of Bitcoin infrastructure. ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ How American Bitcoin is maximizing Bitcoin per share for public investors - ✅ The strategic advantage of U.S.-based mining infrastructure - ✅ Why institutional capital is flowing into Bitcoin mining ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Matt’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/power-politics-and-progress-building-americas-bitcoin/id1539971833?i=1000727366313) #### Related Resources Managed Mining Program → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → About the MiningStore Team → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I have Matt Pza, who is the president of American Bitcoin, a NASDAQ listed company focused on one clear mandate maximizing Bitcoin per share at A BTC. He leads strategy and execution across mining, treasury, and ecosystem development. Guiding the company’s mission to harness abundant US energy resources and transform them into computing power that secures the Bitcoin network. Matt, I’m glad to have you on the show. Matt: It’s great to be here, JohnPaul. JohnPaul: So tell me, when was the first time you got into Bitcoin mining and what intrigued you about this space? Matt: Sure. Yeah. So my background actually, I started out as a management consultant. So I was on the infrastructure side, financial infrastructure, and had spent a lot of time around the world working with clients on what they called the distributed ledger technology, which obviously became blockchain, , the programmable money. , But the more places I went, the more I started to see these different fiat currencies, each, [00:01:00] trading around, doing what the whim of the central bank was in a given market. , And it got more and more to the Bitcoin story. And so found myself, , getting passionate about what Bitcoin represented for folks that wanted as a safe star value around the world. , On the infrastructure front. After COVID, , I built a very large COVID testing company with some partners, and we’d built healthcare infrastructure around the United States. And so when the opportunity came to start building very, very large Bitcoin mining infrastructure, it was a tremendous way to apply that skillset to a topic I was immensely passionate about. JohnPaul: Nice. And so you started at US Bitcoin Corp. And what were you doing there? Matt: Yes. So at US Bitcoin Corp, I was the chief commercial officer, so I worked closely with my partners, , Mike Ho and Asher,, Gnut, , on building out one of the largest private bitcoin mining companies. So we did everything from self mining. We did some hosting operations as well, but we were in the weeds, right? So we, we developed a very accurate, assessment of what made a good site run, and that gave us a good sense of operational [00:02:00] discipline and, , results delivery when it came time to go to the institutional level. JohnPaul: And then what was the shift for you between Bitcoin Corp to Ionic Digital? , what was the jump there? And then what similarities do you see moving from Ionic to A BTC? Would love to hear that perspective. Matt: American Bitcoin to rewind the story back to the US Bitcoin days, basically we had US Bitcoin Corp merge with Hut eight. So this was a very large merger between a public and a private. Bitcoin miner in the space. I then joined Hut eight as their chief Commercial officer. , Running operations there, , in that process around the same time, Celsius, , used to be effectively a very large. , Financial services company in the crypto, , industry had gone bankrupt. And in the bankruptcy there was a pile of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of machines that, needed to be turned on. Right? This is what we call the machines in boxes problem, the MIB problem. And my role, in that transition was to step in as the [00:03:00] CEO of ionic, separate from Ade, separate from us B Corp, and execute that turnaround. So I stepped out of the HUD eight seat, went over to Iion. Now, ionic had, for a period of time, a operational relationship with HUD eight. So I was now working with some of , my old colleagues, albeit from the Ionic, , chair. To deliver a very, very large, trophy asset site called Cedarville in Texas. And so I worked with the Ionic team, which we built alongside the Hot A team, which was doing a lot of the operational work to develop their Cedarville location for Ionic. So I did that for the better part of a year. We got that site. Cash flowing. , Ultimately I stepped away, , , took some time off, and then when the opportunity came to kick off American Bitcoin, , with, , my team from Hot Aid, , along with Eric Trump, I left at the opportunity and here we are. JohnPaul: , So Eric comes to you, he says, , let’s do American Bitcoin, or what is the initial starting of American Bitcoin and why does HUD eight see the need to separate it from their [00:04:00] Bitcoin mining operations into a new venture? Why would HUD eight wanna give up their Bitcoin mining? Matt: So if you think about Bitcoin accumulation in 2025, there’s really two layers that are now at play. First is the mining. So mining was the original way. The folks got Bitcoin , for less than market price. , typically you or I could go on Coinbase or whatnot, we could buy spot, but if you wanted to accumulate Bitcoin, , with a pre a premium to your effort, mining was the path to do so. Now, to do so, you needed tremendous energy, knowledge of infrastructure. , There’s a whole host of skills that go into Bitcoin mining these days to, really produce Bitcoin at a profit. So Hut eight had, that infrastructure in place. They had the skills. HUD eight has the team. But what would be very interesting for HUD eight would be to pull apart the mining, assets and put that into its own publicly traded ticker. Right? So if you think about it, HUD eight has become a very, , vast company. , It controls energy assets in Canada, high performance computing, the Bitcoin mining venture, they have a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin on the balance sheet. , HUD aid is a pretty sizable enterprise. [00:05:00] So when we went out to the market, it became a great opportunity for us to take the bitcoin mining. , Machines now, not the literal substations of the transformers, but we took the machines, , the firepower, right? That’s about 25 eggs a hash. Today we took that and we wanted to pull that into a new corporate vehicle, that would be solely focused on Bitcoin accumulation. It’s a win-win. #### Energy Meets AI Demand HUD eight is able to help us acquire Bitcoin cheaper than most. Through really efficient use of energy mining at a lower cost than almost anyone else in the world., This gives us an immense structural discount. , We’re then able to use HUD eight’s, infrastructure to become, , the backbone of America’s. Bitcoin ecosystem here in the us and obviously as Bitcoin becomes this global store value, it is critical that the USA becomes central to that process. So we’re able to do so from here at home. , And then finally, that high relationship again just gives us a unique way to win, right? Vertically integrates us without the heavy costs that you would come with us building out our own capital expenditures on substations and transformers, so we get the same economic advantages that this had inside of hut.[00:06:00] But we’re faster and we’re leaner, and we’re able to get more Bitcoin at a cheaper price. JohnPaul: Yeah, and I think you mentioned it before that your mandate is maximizing Bitcoin per share. Can you define that exact formula for investors and. What behaviors it’s gonna discourage. So I think one of the biggest things that have has hurt miners in the past is that bloated sg and a costs as a public company, that now the investors are losing confidence that this is actually a Bitcoin accumulation vehicle. So what is American Bitcoin doing differently? , Matt: definitely. So American Bitcoin is built to specialize in Bitcoin per share growth. If you were starting a brand new Bitcoin accumulation vehicle in 2025, you’d wanna pull the best of the mining companies and the best of the treasury companies. And American Bitcoin has both. So on the mining side. You’d mentioned something about how a lot of the peers in mining had over time increased sg and a. Now there’s a variety of reasons this could happen. Companies could have, , gone into research in new topics. It could have strayed frankly, from the Bitcoin mining [00:07:00] mission. But we came in here with Bitcoin as our north star, right? And so everything really drives back to Bitcoin per share. So if you think about the sg and a, because we have a relationship with. We’re able to take a lot of those roles and put them outside of our company, or we’re very lean at American Bitcoin. We can run American Bitcoin with less than five full-time employees, right? All the money that we raise, all the revenue that we generate, everything is geared towards Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, , versus other projects. JohnPaul: And so when you have this Bitcoin per share metric, how is that superior compared to hash rate , fleet X, a hash, your maybe margin to mine, Bitcoin, the hash price. Why is this the singular focus versus some of these other core metrics that Bitcoin mining companies throw around? Matt: American Bitcoin is a Bitcoin accumulator, so we have mining’s, great hash rate and cost of hash. It’s it that’s a north star in mining, so those are important to us. Right. We do look at, obviously , it’s a huge competitive advantage for us to make sure that our energy [00:08:00] costs are great. Our team is lean and that we’re not putting money into anything other than , the eggs hash on the mining side. Right. Now, that being said, these days you have more than just mining in the Bitcoin industry. You’ve got ETFs and you have treasury companies. So the ETFs are an interesting, , inclusion into the Bitcoin investment opportunity ecosystem. Right. With ETFs, you had a means for folks the everyday American to gain a one-to-one. , Exposure to the Bitcoin network for their, investment. That’s great. For people that want to just leave it right and , have some exposure to the hardest asset. But we don’t think that’s the best way to gain exposure. The best way to gain exposure is to have someone who’s out there accumulating Bitcoin on your behalf. But that’s not only going to be through mining. So the mining is of course important. It’s a way to get Bitcoin at the structural discount, but there’s also the treasury side. And so to explain the treasury side a bit, what we’re building, there is a company that is able to harness the volatility. In the public markets. That comes from having a mining business that comes from having a Bitcoin stack, and we’re able to effectively trade around that in amass [00:09:00] capital. That is all routed into Bitcoin as well. That is more than what we make in terms of mining, right? So the mining generates a steady stream of Bitcoin at a structural discount to the market, and we do so every day. On the other hand, we’re able to run these financial vehicles that, allow us to accumulate Bitcoin at spot. So on one hand they’ve got a lever that is mining. On the other hand, we’ve got a lever that is, blending down the cost of spot, right? , Or rather adding in increased Bitcoin from a treasury standpoint, , giving everyday investors,, exposure to both , of these two engines, right? And we believe that if you want exposure to Bitcoin and you want that exposure to grow, it makes sense to work with the accumulator American Bitcoin. Now, if you want to use a treasury strategy, we have that. If you’re more interested in the mining ethos, that’s something we do well as well. JohnPaul: And so that $2.1 billion that you guys recently raised, how are you going to allocate it if you’ve already disclosed that across? Treasury and mining, or how do you view allocation in general on a, , let’s say a billion dollars of capital, hypothetically. Matt: Yeah. As a low cost company, we can [00:10:00] use the capital markets to buy Bitcoin directly. Now we’ve got a lower cost of capital than we would’ve had as a private company. We have a $2.1 billion, financial instrument you’ve referenced that allows us to tap the markets for Bitcoin directly or go out and buy. So every day we’re really looking at what is the opportunity in hash price? What is the opportunity in firepower that we get from mining? And then what is the equivalent amount of BI Bitcoin that we could buy if we were just going to the market? And so we’re attentive to the dynamics here. There are going to be quarters, days, weeks, months, where it makes sense. For us to simply buy spot because that is, , something we believe is the cleanest way to gain further exposure to Bitcoin. There will be other times where mining makes sense, right? Building that fleet out further. Maybe go from 25 eggs ash to 30, 40, 50. Beyond. We’re able to do that very rapidly again because we have that unique relationship with Hot Eight, which gives us the ability to grow our energy pipeline and our infrastructure, assets, in, in response to demand we get for [00:11:00] growth today. #### Bitcoin Price Dynamics Right now we’re focused on Bitcoin. We just did a tremendous, , deal that allowed us to grow our flute size to about 25 eggs, a hash. This has put us, in the top echelon of miners , we’re out there, , producing coins and carry the network the same as everyone else. But we’re also now looking at the accumulation side via the treasury. And so that is where my focus is today. JohnPaul: And so Matt, if we’re thinking about the treasury and mining aspect of the business, when Bitcoin miners are physical derivatives of Bitcoin and Bitcoin’s price, right? , They’re extracting so much Bitcoin from the network. One thing that we know from being in this space is that as Bitcoin price increases. And in a rapid succession in these bull markets, the machines can actually increase in value. But then Vice versa, when Bitcoin price is really low, the machines are gonna be potentially much lower and have , a discounted value. , When are you deciding to go Bitcoin miners versus just buying Bitcoin directly knowing that? If the price is [00:12:00] high, you’re gonna be buying machines over price. But if the price is low, it’s better to maybe just to buy the Bitcoin at that time because you’re gonna get more of it than the miner could have ever gotten. Even though the machines are, let’s say, underpriced. Matt: I understand.. American Bitcoin is positioned in such a way as to take advantage of the counter cyclical nature of Bitcoin. We’ve been in this in industry now for a while. We’ve seen the booms, we’ve seen the bust, and we are still here. And that’s because we have a fairly disciplined approach to risk, right? And to capital investment. And so if you’ve looked at past cycles. There is euphoria. I think we’re all long-term believers in Bitcoin. We all believe that Bitcoin , is on a steady ascent to, a much higher value. , It’s again, gold is a 21 trillion. Bitcoin is around roughly two. There’s a lot of headroom even on just gold. And I think Bitcoin has more to offer the world than gold does. There’s a lot of headroom for Bitcoin as an asset. That being said. It is quite likely Bitcoin takes the senior group to get there, right? So there will be times where Bitcoin goes up. There will be times where Bitcoin goes down, and if you are over levered as you put it in any given direction. [00:13:00] That could very negatively impact your operations. So as American Bitcoin thinks about how to grow , our stack, or grow our fleet responsibly, we are very attentive to not overpaying for things, right? If you’ve seen the past few quarters, , there have been other, , folks in the mining industry that have chased headline growth, that have chased a very high hash number, and declare themselves the champion. And what? I am okay. Folks being the biggest number. I don’t have to be the biggest number. I just need to be the best miner. We need to be the miner that, from our perspective, is producing Bitcoin with the best structural advantage that you can have in the industry, and then use that to help accumulate. It’s one of our two wheels. We have the accumulation through the mining, we have the accumulation through the treasury, but on the mining. You can’t get ahead by overpaying. You can get a sugar rush from a headline, from a massive fleet expansion. But to win long term, you really have to be thoughtful about the ups and the downs of the cycle. So to give one example. For a long period of time, , we were getting pitched [00:14:00] heavily on flipping from a forced air cooling or a fan model of mining into liquid cooling. I think that liquid cooling in various forms, there’s, there’s immersion, there’s mortar cooled, there’s direct to chip. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity, but it had to be at the right time. And so as we sat around and we decided what would make sense for us and when would it make sense for us to make the jump from the forced air cooling, towards liquid, we waited and American Bitcoin, or at the time HUD eight and US Bitcoin, we were under a lot of pressure to put out a release to say that we were going to be a liquid cooled company and we were doing this, but. At the end of the day, I’ve always been of the opinion that the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. And so we were really trying to make sure that when it came time to do that purchase, that everything was ready to go, that we would get what we were paying for, that we were not anyone’s Guinea pig, and we would grow the business accordingly. JohnPaul: I love that ’cause you’re seeing the, these immersion and hydro miners cost a lot more. Don’t have as good as capital paybacks as, let’s say the Aircooled devices. So [00:15:00] what is the relationship with A VTC and HUD eight in terms of hosting cost? If it’s public, , operational SLAs, , you’re holding them to scalability, , do you have a first right refusal on the space that HUD eight’s building out? Can you talk a little bit more in detail about that relationship? Matt: Yes, HUD eight’s advantage for American Bitcoin cannot be understated. So the A BTC partnership with HUD gives us benefits of a few kind, right? There’s the back office benefits, corporate benefits, shared resources. On a team level, there’s an energy pipeline benefit, and then there’s, in the middle, there’s operational benefits, right? Once you’ve got a site up and running, keeping it going at maximal efficiency. The way that has been structured. Is somewhat of a sibling company relationship right now. Hut Aid owns a majority of the shares in American Bitcoin. We are freely trading, we have shares out in the market. Folks, can take part in the American Bitcoin story, directly. They don’t need to go through hut. , They can buy shares in American Bitcoin, , directly through the brokerage, but we have a tightly integrated relationship with that company. What that [00:16:00] means from a cost perspective is that , we are working with them in, a structure that gives them, , somewhat of a managed services agreement , for the energy. , They’re given , a small fraction of, , the overall revenue , as a fee for running the site. Now they’re incentivized as a partner organization. They’re incentivized to charge us a fair amount of money. We’ve not disclosed the specific figures, of course, we’re public. So you’ll see more details around the nature of that relationship, as we go through our disclosure processes. But that relationship , is fair, but is value creating. And what by that is that for Hot eight American Bitcoin is the best partner you can have. We are a customer or first resort. If you had a site and they’re an energy infrastructure expert, if they have a site at HUD eight that could be ultimately used for ai, maybe not today but maybe longer term, , there’s it increased things the site would need to get there. #### Mining Infrastructure Development Fiber redundancy, power redundancy. It just doesn’t have the fit and finish for hyperscaler, but it’s got a great energy opport. American Bitcoin is first in line, right? For that opportunity. , We are a [00:17:00] peer, , them obviously I come from the company, I come from the sector. We are working hand in hand with the team at HUD eight to develop, opportunities that could be to the maximum benefit of American Bitcoin and have that benefit ultimately flow through to, , the HUD organization as well. So again, I would basically split the relationship into three components. There’s a development relationship. And HUD eight has a pipeline in the gigawatts. So there’s plenty to develop together. There is a, , operational relationship, so HUD eight, making sure that these machines which are liquid cooled, are well, maintained and processing at full speed and are really getting that efficiency advantage that puts us ahead of our peers, , in the Bitcoin mining category. , And then finally, there’s a shared services agreement for corporate services. And this is a way for us to keep the headcount very low at American Bitcoin. Which means that for our treasury operations, you don’t have a cast of thousands stable to a Bitcoin treasury, right? You’ve got mostly Satoshi in there, and then a few staff myself, making sure that the trains run on time. JohnPaul: . and so Matt, , I guess digging into it, do you see yourself [00:18:00] having most favored nation status with HUD eight as the CEO of American Bitcoin, or do you think that you’ll be treated a any of their other large customers? Matt: I think it is a special relationship. It is a special relationship that’s been codified in contracts. We’ve got a great governance set up where there are two independent boards, right? So there is an independent board at HUD eight that is looking at a lot of these big deals from the HUD eight side. There’s an independent board, or there’s a board with several, fairly senior independent directors at the American Bitcoin side that’s assessing the same deals. So you’ve got two sets of board, you’ve got management, and then you’ve got a deal. So as we think about ways to work together, this is a situation where, of course we’ve got the paper in place. , We can grow and we can scale and we will, there are so many folks looking at these contracts that I would really wanna stress that these are deals that are to the advantage for both companies, right? American Bitcoin’s goal is to build the Bitcoin infrastructure backbone in the United States. HUD eight is a brilliant infrastructure partner to do that and we can work together. JohnPaul: Yeah. And I think they’re a great partner to scale and, , we’ve seen them grow. So let’s [00:19:00] jump into actually getting the deal done. So you guys have this idea of creating American Bitcoin. How do you identify Griffin Mining as , a company to merge with? How are negotiations with their board and how does it come out where you guys have the deal that , you actually get, which is where they own a very small percentage of Griffin and you guys own a larger group. And then what’s happened to the assets, the s nineteens that Griffin owned previously and were hosted and do you have plans to retire those or have they already been retired? Can you talk more about those details and just trying to show the audience. What goes into putting together one of these large transactions, and how do you go from private idea to public company in such a short order? Matt: American Bitcoin has always been geared towards giving the public markets an accessible way, in a trustworthy way to gain exposure to Bitcoin ecosystem, right on the path to a public listing. There were a few key steps that needed to take place. First was the launch of the American Bitcoin vehicle. So this meant [00:20:00] pulling it out of HUD eight as a separate company. So , we started with about 10 eggs, a hash of HUD eight machines that were pointed to the American Bitcoin vehicle. We combined that with the management team. We combined that with Eric Trump as Chief Strategy Officer. We created this, , NewCo , that would serve as the way to get the public, , more invested in the American Bitcoin story. Second to that. needed to find, the proper partner to go into the public markets, right? So if we wanted to be publicly accessible, we needed to work with a company that we could get a deal done that would be beneficial to, , our shareholders that would make sense for their team. That would be ideally NASDAQ listed, public markets listed that would give. Retail and institutional investors’ confidence in the final company. And as you think about Griffin, which was ultimately our target, there was also a nice synergy because this was a team that knew mining, right? We’ve seen in the space a lot of mergers between, , asset companies and whatever. Girls left , at the ball, right? To try and try and get things going for a [00:21:00] Bitcoin treasury company. This is slightly different from our approach, right? We were working with a team that knew mining inside and out that had a good sense of the Bitcoin accumulation. And so we were able to come to terms on a deal fairly rapidly, right? So from the date we launched, which was April, , first 20, 25 to the day we listed, formally closed the deal with Sarah, which was September 3rd. About five months, two days. Griffin presented a terrific counterparty to get that deal done. So we sat down with the team. We negotiated a split, so they, they received a, a piece of the float of the, of the final company once we were able to become public. But by and large, this was , a collaborative exercise. You’d mentioned what happened to some of their assets, right? So that, has been worked through. And we’ll see as we get through our disclosure processes and things that, you’ll find out the ultimate fate of a lot of their infrastructure and their equipment. , They had some mining assets that we are accounting for, and we are, we’re gonna work on how to make sure that our shareholders received the maximum amount of upside , for those investments. And yeah, I really expressed my gratitude right , to the HUD eight. And Griffin [00:22:00] Teams and the American Bitcoin teams, there were a lot of parties involved with this to get a deal done, JohnPaul: And I guess, what was , the main learnings that you took from the Ionic digital deal to the, this new deal with Griffin? Was it. Being on a NASDAQ listed exchange versus pink sheets was a huge thing. what else? There comes to mind that really made you guys do it differently and made it obviously successful? Matt: Traditional capital markets in the United States gives you a lot of tools in the toolbox, right? There’s public listings, there’s S ones, S threes, s fours, form tens. There’s RTOs. There’s SPACs. There are a lot of tools in the toolbox in the capital markets in the United States. Now you layer defi on top of that, , you’ve got token generation events, and you’ve got launchpads and you’ve got all sorts of different ways in the defi ecosystem to also, , tap into the capital markets. #### Industry Deep Dive And , the chaos theory spirals into some fantastic and interesting combinations. At the end of the day though, for us, our mission’s very simple. It’s give the everyday American exposure to Bitcoin as an [00:23:00] asset class in a way that accumulates Bitcoin. So a public listing for us made sense from day one. This is the bridge between Tradify and Defi on the Tradify side. There’s enormous pools of Americans who are interested in Bitcoin. , They’re hearing about it. They are curious about its role in the digital economy , from an assets perspective, from a gold perspective. But they’re not yet setting up Coinbase accounts. They’re not creating wallets. They’re not going out there, they’re not bridging, , into tokens. They’re not ready for that, or they’re not interested in it. They don’t need the hassle or the headache. So the traditional capital markets for what we were trying to do made a lot of sense. However, if we were going to go into traditional capital markets. We needed to do so in a way that would convey the level of confidence and responsibility that we have , in our business, right? So using best of class auditors, working with all sorts of, , folks to, to tell the story in public documents that are out and available now, , to really help get institutional investors confident in the American Bitcoin story. It makes all the differe. [00:24:00] One thing that I believe made it so important for us to go through this process this way is that an institutional adoption narrative, right? Retail,, the average investor , has come around on Bitcoin, right? Either they were early, or I think we’re still early, but they’re more recently involved , in crypto assets. But the institutional crowd for the past while has not really gained much exposure. I think they’ve wised up to it. They, , they’re attending events I’m meeting with. Sovereign wealth funds, family offices buy-side, hedge funds, pensions, RIAs, these are really thoughtful capital allocators, and they are coming around to the Bitcoin story and they want to gain exposure. And so for us to have a simple NASDAQ listed vehicle. With a means of articulating how we are accumulating Satoshi’s per share. Bitcoin per share. They love it. They love that confidence. , They love the idea of a company where they say, Hey, in a way Bitcoin mining part of our business has lemonade stand economics. Alright, this is a power in. Coins [00:25:00] out operational business, we can get our minds around that. Your dollar cost, averaging your Bitcoin makes a lot of sense for us. Right? On the treasury side, a lot of ’em are sophisticated investors. They understand the rules of volatility, volume, liquidity, , the having a ticker, what that means, quarterly disclosures, fair disclosures. They that side as well. And so when you combine. This very simple lemonade stand economics business with exposure to Bitcoin as an asset class, growing double digit percentage every year. You can see why institutions are excited about American Bitcoin, you JohnPaul: And will you be putting out, guidance on the ATM usage? Because I know if , your goal is to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible. MicroStrategy did a good job with M Nav and in disclosing when they’re gonna use the ATM, do you guys plan on doing something similar? Matt: Yes, we do plan on doing lots of disclosures surrounding our activities. I think that’s a pro of being public. , They talk about. Oh, , the reporting headaches and the stuff that comes with being public, it’s all very real. There’s a lot of paperwork [00:26:00] if you want to go down this path, but for us, there’s also a lot of opportunity to be transparent. And so one of the main ways that we’re going to be transparent is announcing a lot of our, buys. Right? And so you can see from our purchase pattern, the continued confidence. , Obviously we’re long-term holders, we’re not selling a single Satoshi. We never have, by the way, sold a single Satoshi, right? So we’re long-term holders of Bitcoin. We’re going to channel the energies of the capital markets into that accumulation. We’re gonna be very public about those buys. , Whether it’s on the mining side, the operations, what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, giving that rationale, speaking with folks yourself about. The story behind those operations or on the treasury side, why we’re buying Bitcoin? What makes us the hardest asset in the world? what our tempo is for those buys? We have the technology to do them. We have the, we have both the operational acumen to win, and now we have the financial tools and the toolbox to, capture some of that value. And we are going to use these instruments, right? In fact, , we’re already in the markets. We’re already trying to think about what is the way to accumulate as much [00:27:00] Bitcoin as efficiently as possible today. JohnPaul: And as you’re thinking about those ways, when would you not grow your hash rate, even if capital is available? Matt: For us growing hash rate comes back to rate of return versus buying Bitcoin directly, right? There will be times where it makes sense to focus on hash rate, and there will be times where it makes sense to focus on Bitcoin. So if you think about hash rate globally. There’s been a steady ascent of difficulty. It’s gone up. It’s gone down in different periods, but directionally more hash rate is entering the market. For us, though, the operational complexity of Bitcoin mining is fine. It’s something , we grew up with. It’s something that we have a lot of skill with. We’ve got great relationships with all of the chip manufacturers worldwide. We have a great sense of what makes for a good Bitcoin mining site, and so we’re going to be opportunistic. There are times where, to your point, if Bitcoin climbs rapidly. , There’s going to be some interesting opportunities on the machine side to try and capture some of that, that growth. Right? If you think back to that, the having right. There was a few days [00:28:00] surrounding that event where transaction fee volume spiked. It was a really great opportunity to be a minor in that case. Right. We were effectively exposed to what I view as the future swift network right to this transaction of values on the block space. It is still early days. You’re not seeing. Massive use of the block space yet, but to me, that block space presents opportunity Miners will gain a lot of the opportunity that comes from, , that block space gaining value. And so for mining, we’re very attentive. Now, to your point, what about a down or a down cycle, right? #### Technical Discussion , What happens, , when the tide goes out? That’s where historically our team has always excelled. If you look at the track record of the HUD eight team, and before that, when we were the US Bitcoin Corp team, we’ve always. Excelled at, , swimming against the tide in those moments because we’re high conviction. When everyone else says, oh,, you’re an expert in the industry. How many times have you seen headlines decline the death of Bitcoin? Right? ,, this is something that you see the headlines. Folks have their confidence shaken, , they put down their tools and they go home and you stand firm and you plant your feet [00:29:00] and you think very thoughtfully about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. And you see an opportunity in that crisis. And so when we’ve been faced with these decisions in the past. We’ve always stepped up to the occasion, and so going forward, if there’ll be other times where there are folks over-levered, right? Too much debt , too large an operation too soon, things that, we can come in as a steady hand and we can find ways to create value out of those opportunities in Bitcoin mining. There have been plenty of times in the past where there have been bad deals with good bones, but our team has always been very attentive to finding ways to turn those around and make the best of them. JohnPaul: And I would agree with , you guys have done a great job growing and, , succeeding in these bear market environments as, different operational teams. How are, what are three risks , that are material to A BTC over the next 12 months and how are you hedging them if their policy insurance, financial ops related. Knowing that you have a lot of, I guess, success and learnings under your belt already, , why are you viewed as a seasoned operator versus a new bitcoin [00:30:00] mining company? Matt: On the Bitcoin side, so taking the accumulation and breaking it down into mining. , In this specific case, there are three areas that I’m always checking the dials on to, to see what our risk tolerance is, right? The first is energy. The second is global capital markets, and the third is public policy. So first talking about energy. Bitcoin mining, again, only part of our business. We’re also got a treasury vehicle in operation, but on the mining side, we are exposed to energy prices. So we are constantly thinking about our energy rates, our machine efficiencies, the markets that we wanna expand into, , what does the future of global energy look in a year? What does energy look at the state level, the local level, the federal level, the international level. It comes down to the electron. And that is why for us having this headache relationship is fantastic. , With a pipeline in the gigawatts, with an experienced team of energy operators, around the world now. We’ve got a perspective on energy that is fairly mature, right? It puts us , in the league of many of these large scale energy producers more so than, , a small mining shop. Right? And so on [00:31:00] the energy side, . I think the increased adoption of renewables has created some volatility around energy. Miners have always excelled in volatile energy environments. we can curtail, , we can speed up, we can speed down, we can adjust efficiencies, and we’ve proven ourselves quite inept at that. But the first risk bucket, I would say is energy. The second risk bucket that everyone should be thinking about when it comes to accumulation beyond mining, this applies to treasury overall, is going to be capital markets, right? What is your cost of capital? How much does money cost? , That’s the billion if not trillion dollar question. So this is where I spend a lot of time looking at reports. I look at the CPI, I look at all the inflation metrics. I think about the Fed meetings. I read their remarks. I’ve done a lot of global macro work in past life, and I find myself actually really channeling that now, thinking about what do capital markets look this week, this month, this quarter, this year, next year? Because , it impacts our business. Both from the performance of our equity, which is public, as well as the performance of our, our cost of capital, right? If we wanna get into development, if we [00:32:00] wanna do things that, what is the money going to cost? So that is a bucket that I’m very attentive to as well. The third and final bucket of risk that we should talk about is politics, right? There’s an old line that you may not be interested in politics, but politics are very interested in yield mining and Bitcoin in general are now at that scale. , We are no longer a bunch of gentlemen in our basements, , mining coins, securing the network. We, we are industrial power consumers, and that has, , attained a lot of, interest, or you might say, curiosity from policy makers again at the local. State, federal and international level, and so for us to perform well. We need the chakras to align politically across these different groups. The current administration has been a tremendous sea change for the cryptocurrency industry. We have our first Bitcoin president. We’ve got, , a team of very capable folks on the energy side. We’ve got a team of capable folks in the financial side, the SEC, , the Fed groups that. They’re attentive to the markets. They wanna be supportive. always a bit of a, a shock when I meet with these policy makers and they say things , how can I be helpful? That is [00:33:00] fantastic. That is really what you want to hear when you’re building a business in the United States, that the policymakers are asking how they can help you. So the policy risk is still real. We have to be constantly doing education. There are, if you add up all the senators and the congressmen, hundreds of people,, not all of them are yet orange peel, but , they’re getting there. One, , one congressional session at a time. So meeting with regulators, meeting with representatives, and then at the state level meeting with. Folks in that government, the states bridge some of the, the high level federal policy and the local politics. It’s really important to engage with the different states, , ensure Bitcoin is protected. And then at the local level, you get into things zoning, you get into things permits. And for our very tangible mining assets. It’s very important that we stay in close contact with our communities. We engage them, and again, we do a lot of education. So when it comes to the political risk, education to me is one of the most important parts of ensuring that we are not caught off sides with the regulators. JohnPaul: And Matt, I think you, you highlighted one thing we really haven’t talked about, but I would love to [00:34:00] hear. More insight into in color, which is the relationship A BTC has with Eric Trump. Now, how did it come about and what was this $2.1 billion raise? How did that work? How did that look? , How many dinners at Mar Largo you had? #### Strategic Perspectives all, let’s gimme some of the juicy Matt: Yeah. Taking a step back, we co-founded this company. Eric Trump is, , one of the co-founders. He’s on the management team. We’ve got Don Junior’s an investor as well. So we’ve got involvement , from both of them. This relationship started a while back, right? My partner Mike, had met Eric, at a conference. They’d started a discussion. You have to understand that Eric’s superpower, his background has a lot of, it’s been in real estate, right? , , the Trump organization has done tremendous amounts of development all over the world. Right. And when you come into Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining specifically, there’s actually a lot of carryover from the real estate world into what we do. In a sense we’re doing commercial real estate, industrial real estate, 10 x , with the express purposes of the energy bill. , His line item of a, [00:35:00] of building a Trump organization properties. It’s got a thousand items or a thousand things that , he’s worried about for us. , We need to make sure that there’s a lot going on there too. But it’s really, the energy bill , is where the rubber meets the road in Bitcoin mining. So when Eric got looped in with the team, a lot of really productive conversations happen around the real estate side, around data centers as well. Something that they were very interested in around Bitcoin as this tremendous asset that’s growing double digit percentage every year and how to best gain exposure to that. And the thing with Bitcoin, and as someone who’s done mining and you’ve done mining as well, is. Why buy it when you can make it, right? The only way to accumulate Bitcoin at a structural discount is through money. So that’s a great place to start if you wanna build a category leader in the Bitcoin ecosystem. With Eric joining, we brought him aboard, co-founded the company, trying to find the ways that we could best channel his superpowers in the capital markets, in communication, in articulating , our mission, our vision, and really just demonstrating how serious we are about building a marquee business here in the United States. Having a member [00:36:00] of the first family involved,, he’s a private businessman. , There’s not overlap, but he’s a private citizen, but he’s articulates the American story so well that for us, it was a no-brainer to find ways to work together , and create the marquee organization, combining the operational execution ability of Hot eight and the brand articulation and strategic mindset from Air Trump. So that led to , the company formerly launched in April one. He’s actively involved in the business. We’re speaking constantly. You’ll see him around, , you’ll see him go on podcasts, , you’ll see him in the media, but you really also see him behind closed doors, right? This is a relationship that extends far beyond just the soundbites, and he’s been a great partner to have. JohnPaul: And , a great part. Are bringing together a bunch of amazing people. , I saw a photo of you and him and Brian Johnson. , , how was that meeting? Was that a party? Was that a planning session? Talk to me more about that photo with the team there. Matt: , Every good planning session turns into a party at the end of the day. No, but , the reality for us is that we want to build a brand. People get excited about. Bitcoin. It’s a $2 trillion jump [00:37:00] ball. , There’s anonymous founder. There’s tons of great teams working on interesting aspects of it. People doing the defi, people updating , the development code, people working on the energy arbitrage. Bitcoin is, it’s the story of, , the blind men feeling the elephant. It’s a little different to everybody, right? But for us. Bitcoin is an exciting American story. It combines self sovereignty, it combines freedom, it combines hard work. All of these core American values wrapped into a new currency, a way for folks to exit from the fiat ecosystem. Bitcoin really represents something that to me is very quintessentially American. So as we think about, what we want to do to engage people, we’re going above and beyond just the crypto community. I love speaking to the crypto community. I’m from the crypto community at a certain point though, you are preaching to the converted right? And you need to go out there. And if we want to become a multi-trillion dollar asset, if we want to become a global reserve store of value, you need to find. New groups of people to get excited about the story on their terms. And so to the photo you’re referencing, you, folks [00:38:00] Eric Trump, myself, Brian Johnson in there, , who knows more about compounding than Brian Johnson? , the man wants to live forever, right? And so if you’re living forever, compounding is gonna do a lot of good financially, right? So we, we brought in all kinds of interesting folks to hear about the story and to potentially get involved , in different ways. It starts with the meeting, it starts with, again, education. There are a lot of. Conversations that need to be had to get Bitcoin to be the asset that we all want it to be, but , , they’re going to involve folks that you wouldn’t necessarily expect day one. You would be surprised. I’ve spoken about Bitcoin from everybody, from country singers , to folks that are working in Walmart, to, to central bankers,, to soften wealth. There is something in the Bitcoin story for everybody. So as you think about the industry, not surprisingly, you’re going to see more and more photos of more and more unique groups of people with strange bedfellows, but Bitcoin United all. JohnPaul: And , let’s end on , this marketing question. So A BTC, you’ve sponsored some conferences, , the [00:39:00] Wyoming one and a few other ones. What is the marketing strategy? Do you have anything that is outta the box or is it to your point, get people in different verticals that have an audience, tell ’em the story, share with them the vision. And get them on the team. Matt: Brand matters. So as we build American Bitcoin into a great company, to me being part of being a great company is having a great brand. And you can have a great brand operationally. You can have a great track record, you can be proud of what you do and how you build and how quickly you operate and your discounts. #### Operational Insights But you also want people to , where the brand on the sleeve right ,, there’s some benefit to having. Almost a lifestyle aspect to your business to having a story people wanna get involved with. At the end of the day, every good business to me is a good story. So while we were building American Bitcoin, we’re always thinking about how does this tie into all sorts of other stories? There’s the story of the story value. There’s the story of transactions. , There’s the story of self sovereignty and freedom, and so it creates a lot of opportunities for us to [00:40:00] engage above and beyond crypto. You’ve seen us at conferences, we’re very active or marquee brand in the Bitcoin industry. That’s only gonna grow. But you may start to see us in places that are actually not crypto native. And that’s okay because similar to you, I was not crypto native when I first came to the industry. I had to learn same as everyone else. It’s about getting folks off of zero and having a great brand is a fantastic way to get people curious, wearing A-A-B-T-C hat in the airport and having folks say, Hey, , I’ve seen you on Robin. , What are you wearing there? And telling that story, that conversation never gets old. And to me, the story of Bitcoin is a story of successive conversations. And so if we can spark more conversations around American Bitcoin and what we bring to the table, the better off the industry will be. JohnPaul: So I love it. , What’s the async you got behind you? Matt: Oh, , this is vintage. , This is an old forced air ant miner, behind me. And that’s nine. Yeah, we’re proud of our roots, right? As you, you’ve got obviously the Minecraft pick, ag Diamond, of course. Gotta be the elite. But , we need to be proud of where we’ve come from [00:41:00] as an industry. every industry Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining have heritage. That’s the heritage that we want to bring you to the brand story. Yes, we’ll go do trad, find , there’s much better things to come in the Bitcoin ecosystem, but we’re not gonna forget our roots. JohnPaul: No, and , I want to do a quick, rapid fire question with you, Matt, just. Coming , out of necessarily the ABTC hat, more into just Matt himself. So here’s some quick questions to run through. First one is, what book do you think every Bitcoin should read that’s not a Bitcoin book. Matt: Every Bitcoin should read the book, the True Believer by Eric Hoffer. And the reason why is Eric Hoffer was a philosopher, with a good understanding of psychology, who wrote extensively around mass movements. And Bitcoin, to me, is a mass movement. It’s a great mass movement. It’s a mass movement for good. It’s a mass movement for economic security. But if you wanna understand Bitcoin, you can’t just understand the economics. The economics of Bitcoin are super important, but you also need to understand belief. What it takes to truly have conviction in something. And so I find so many lessons from psychology, right? Bitcoin exists [00:42:00] in this Venn diagram between two of humanity’s oldest technologies, currency and religion. And with Bitcoin’s fervor, you see , the sparkle in people’s eyes. It is a mass movement. And so the book, the True Believer by Eric Hover,, is a fantastic way to learn more about the psychology of what it takes to get people excited. JohnPaul: I will definitely have to check that out. That sounds exciting. , , what’s your favorite way to recharge outside of work? Matt: Outside of work to unwind, I love to read. I love to read because those lessons can be applied back to the workplace, but it actually goes the other way as well. There’s stuff that I may be struggling with in work. New problems we’re trying to untangle, and there are so many lessons I get from other thinkers and other writers. We may be dealing with new, , combinations of old problems, but , the story of the economy is not new. The story of belief is not new. And so for me, we’re reading is such a enriching way live a more textured life. I’m already living my life. I might as well just go from an inch deep to a mile deep on the topics I love and get more out of it. And reading’s been a great way to blow off some steam and JohnPaul: I definitely agree on that. , If [00:43:00] you weren’t in Bitcoin mining, what industry would you be in today? Matt: If I were not in bitcoin mining and I cannot be in energy technology and I can’t be doing things with energy development, which is something else I love, I would be very interested in robotics., And the reason why I think robotics is so interesting is because you’re turning electricity into labor, and it’s been fascinating to see with Bitcoin, electricity being turned into currency and with AI seeing electricity being turned into intelligence. But the next wave I foresee is going to be turning electricity directly into labor, and that is going to open up all sorts of fascinating new industries. It’s going to create tremendous opportunity to build. , Infrastructure to manufacture things that at scales we’ve never seen before. And so for me, robotics is a fascinating area, JohnPaul: I can’t wait to have those mining techs be robots. It’s coming. , What’s the most memorable place you’ve visited thanks to Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining?[00:44:00] Matt: part of building. Successful business is to go anywhere and do anything that you really believe is gonna responsibly create value for the shareholders. And so a few years ago, I was on a quest to find the best electrical engineering technologies I could for our business. And in the process of chasing down some new electric cables, I actually found myself in the Arctic Circle. Finland, believe it or not, has a fantastic. Culture of engineering and science. Obviously it’s the birthplace of Nokia. So there, there’s tremendous technology, , in Finland at all places. And I found myself , in the Arctic Circle in Ula, which is Northern Finland with a bitcoin miner , under each arm, meeting with some very smart Finnish scientists talking about electrical. #### Market Commentary Now the technology’s still too early, so I won’t get into the details of their projects, but I will go anywhere and meet with anybody that will find ways to deliver energy efficiently. To me, , it’s a fascinating opportunity for us and it is taking me to some unexpected places. JohnPaul: No, I love that it’s the [00:45:00] travel around the world for the cheap electron, usually with Bitcoin miners. , What’s a habit of routine that keeps you sharp under pressure? Matt: When I’m under pressure, I actually think a lot about cooking. Cooking is a funny thing because, it’s creative. It’s a way to express yourself. There’s a reward at the end, hopefully if you do a good job with your cooking. But there’s a lot of time pressure in cooking. There’s a lot of things going on at once. , You’re almost literally spinning a lot of plates. Things are on fire, or hopefully not too on fire, but you’re doing a lot in cooking to make sure that the results are good. So for me, I think I actually take a lot of lessons from cooking into building companies. Right. In cooking, there’s something called Meison Place. How you set up your station before you start work. It’s very important in cooking. You don’t want to be halfway through a recipe. Things are boiling, other things are in the oven. You don’t wanna be cooking and not know where your knife is. It would be very bad. And so for me, as I think about starting my workday, I actually put a lot of thought into make sure that , my caffeine is not too far out of arms reach. I love a good cup of coffee , or two or three, right? my phone is nearby, so I’m not totally [00:46:00] ignoring that either. But that everything is really set up. So that I’m able to operate under pressure and deliver results for folks. JohnPaul: I love it. I love it. Cooking is something that I am getting into, but I’m still just the eggs guy. Every morning for breakfast and the coffee, you get that staple breakfast, right? Matt: do the story about the eggs? There’s an apocryphal story about how you, the chef’s hat with , the ruffles, , in each fold of the white chef’s Hat’s supposed to represent a different way you can prepare eggs. So I think you’ve got plenty going on there. JohnPaul: I didn’t know that. Okay. Two more. What’s one piece of advice you’d give your younger self before entering the Bitcoin space as you were slaving away as a consultant? Matt: , Advice I would give my younger self entering the Bitcoin space. It would be never stop learning. , You’re never going to master everything in your area, but there’s always gonna be new things to learn as well. So get good at what you’re doing, bring your weaknesses up to par. Don’t let your weaknesses override your ability to focus on your strengths. But you don’t need to be the best at your worst trade. You wanna spend time leveling up your [00:47:00] weaknesses. , whether it’s making sure you’re in a structured enough environment, whether it’s making sure you’re a good interviewer, you there are skills you want to get up to par. Once you’re up to par, focus on your strengths. , Be spiky in what you enjoy. It’s way more fun than trying to get above average and things you’re not good at. But definitely get the skill sets that are, you’re rusty up to par. And so for, if I were talking to younger Matt, I would say, Hey. Get those basics, get that financial modeling up to par. , Maybe, , your financial modeling skills. You’re not a macros guy. You can, you’re savvy with an Excel, but you don’t need to be a savant. Get that up to par and then really focus on what makes you excited. JohnPaul: So what are your strengths, Matt? Matt: I think my strengths are urgency, speed, working with folks on new projects. And so I think when you combine speed and curiosity, you see things happening. And you ask, why is that happening? And then you sprint towards making sure it can happen even better. I think that’s a skillset that I’ve really enjoyed. in cryptocurrency, , in Bitcoin, accumulation, mining, treasury. We’ve had that opportunity six months ago. Treasuries , were very, very new. It was really Michael Sailor against [00:48:00] the world building out a new category of assets. That was something that made me intensely curious. And then with a fantastic team, , Azure, Mike from Hut as well, being able to sprint together towards that new opportunity. That is something, I don’t know if it’s a superpower, but it’s something that I enjoy. JohnPaul: No, it’s amazing. I think you guys have done a great job getting to. The finish line of going public in a very short order. So, , congrats to you and the team. And last question is, matt? What’s one word you would use to describe American Bitcoin in 2025? Matt: Track record. We’ll make that one work compound. Now, the reason why I say track record is because with American Bitcoin, you’re combining the HU eight track record, operational excellence, ruthless cost efficiencies, focus on scale. There’s a production superpower over there, and you’re combining that track record with this Bitcoin treasury track record, which we’re still building. #### Day-to-Day Mining Operations And that’s something you’re gonna see week after week, month after month. So we’ve got the track record from the past, which is great on the operation side, and you’re gonna see the new track record going forward on the accumulation side. And that is a way that I think we’re really [00:49:00] gonna stand out. JohnPaul: Well, I can’t wait to see the A BTC tracker, the Bitcoin tracker Matt: It’s coming. JohnPaul: the orange dots on the screen as Michael Saylor has,, pioneered., Well thank you again, Matt, for coming on the podcast today. , I appreciate you sharing a little bit more insight into this newly formed American Bitcoin company. One of the. Biggest and best miners to come and remember guys to mine on. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Debunking Bitcoin Energy Myths | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 29 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/bitcoin-electricity-cbeci-alexander-neumueller/ Debunking Bitcoin Energy Myths | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 29 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 29 # Debunking Bitcoin Energy Myths with Alexander Neumueller — CBECI Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Alexander Neumueller to discuss debunking bitcoin energy myths. ### Debunking Myths: Bitcoin Mining Uses Only 0.54% of Global Electricity Digital Gold Podcast: The Largest Bitcoin Mining Study In the World with Alexander Neumueller CBECI An insightful discussion at the Digital Gold Podcast between JohnPaul Baric and Alexander Neumueller, a climate and digital assets expert from Cambridge University and the architect behind the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI). Alexander’s unique background, blending years in corporate banking and asset management with a passion for Bitcoin, provides a rare bridge between finance, academia, and the crypto industry. Listen to the entire conversation here. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/oaYuPhojdU0?si=dUAk5L4ZjWXLR13j) ### Here are some of the key highlights from the discussion with Alexander Neumueller: Evolution of Bitcoin Mining Perception and Understanding. He observes an increase in the global community’s understanding of Bitcoin mining across all stakeholders, from regular people to regulators and policymakers. Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/oaYuPhojdU0?si=dUAk5L4ZjWXLR13j) ### Key Research Findings and Insights from the Report - Flared Gas as a Use Case: One of the most interesting findings was the extent of Bitcoin mining utilizing otherwise flared natural gas. - Changing Electricity Mix and Emissions: The electricity mix is changing, with activity moving from regions like Kazakhstan and China (which had high coal reliance) to South America, the Middle East, Africa, and Northern Europe. - Electricity Consumption Estimates: The report corroborates that Cambridge’s theoretical modeling for Bitcoin’s electricity consumption is highly accurate, showing very close alignment with estimates derived from miner surveys. - E-waste: A significant finding was that 87% of phased-out Bitcoin mining hardware is repurposed, resold, or recycled. - Geographical Distribution of Hash Rate: The US is confirmed as the predominant mining hub. - Top Miner Concerns: The three main concerns for Bitcoin mining firms were identified as: long-term energy price increases, unfavorable government action, and adverse developments in BTC price. - Mining Economics and Transaction Fees: While the block subsidy declines with halvings, the role of transaction fees in miner revenue is a critical, evolving dynamic. - Firmware and ASIC Market: The report found a surprising large share (over one-fourth) of miners using stock manufacturer firmware. - Diversification into AI/HPC: A small but observed trend is miners allocating power to AI operations. ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ The Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index methodology - ✅ Why most Bitcoin energy narratives are based on flawed data - ✅ How mining is shifting toward renewable energy sources globally ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Alexander’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/the-largest-bitcoin-mining-study-in-the-world/id1539971833?i=1000713644567) #### Related Resources MiningStore 62.5 MW Iowa Facility → Bitcoin Mining Hosting Services → Learn About Bitcoin Mining → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: . [00:00:00] Welcome back to Digital Gold season two, where we dive into Bitcoin’s energy debate with alexander. Neumueller cambridge University’s climate and digital assets expert architect of the Cambridge Bitcoin electricity consumption index, and a crypto native leader bridging mining and policy with deep roots in finance, academia, and media. Alexander unpacks Bitcoin’s potential to decarbonize the grid, harness stranded energy, and redefine sustainability while guiding global institutions the World Bank. Today we’ll explore mining’s evolving role, debunking myths, and envision a greener future powered by Bitcoin. Alexander, welcome to Digital Gold. I’m excited to have you. Alexander: Thank you very much. Thank you for giving me the chance and inviting me to your podcast. JohnPaul: So you spent a few years in the corporate banking and asset management section. What inspired you to leap into Bitcoin mining in blockchain research? Was there a specific pivotal moment you remember, or did it slowly creep up? Alexander: Yes, definitely the latter one. So it did slowly creep up. So basically I started quite a long [00:01:00] time in banking, had multiple roles. I was, starting basically, very early on in my life in more the retail than corporate banking. Then went into basically treasury, , , prop trading was at the end, but I did in the bank. I went then on, , at some point worked for an asset manager where I looked more into this investment sphere. Basically, me getting into, being interested in Bitcoin goes back a bit to my university days where I was always quite interested, specifically in a economics , and there is some relationship, right? but at that point it was really going back to, I think 12. So, so when we talk about Bitcoin at that time, it was very different that not is today, but how people perceive Bitcoin in a completely different world. And I need to admit, I was ideologically interested in this new technology, I was tech savvy, right? But not to a very large extent, possibly not to the extent that I would’ve been, because currently nowadays much information about Bitcoin [00:02:00] available, but at that time it was very hard to get anything. And then it was more kind and these things. And, , yeah, sometimes it was quite technically and, , yeah, it was also different environment in terms of specifically with, , yeah, how Bitcoin was being used at that time. So I could ideologically somehow identify this is why I was interested in the subject. And, but at that time I was unfortunately not investing in it. But I kind kept tabs on it, so I was just, okay, let’s, I may not invest, but I, it’s just interesting to see how it evolves and yeah, I, I kept interested and at some point I started mining myself. And, bit, a bit after I did it, I started it, so not but doing it myself physically, but I was, basically, , outsourcing it essentially. And, , in thousand 19 I formed my own mining company, but everything was done fully, remotely and everything was set up in China. So, yeah. I basically, this was how I got more generally involved in [00:03:00] this space. And at some point I went to Cambridge to study before my role at the center for Alternative Finance. And yeah, this time 2021, right? Was a bit of a tough operations in China. And yeah, it was do finance. Do I look into the blockchain space, did some things there as well, specifically related to defi, , or do I do something different? And specifically looking into electricity consumption. So actually develop , our electricity consumption index. At some point I was taking it over and , made some adjustments, put on new content, right. But yeah, this is how I end up in the center because I think I had this, I would say expertise in how the industry works, specifically specific, which machines are used and these things, right? How the market works. And, I [00:04:00] tried to bring this knowledge to my work at the research center and work on improving specifically theoretical estimates that were out there at that point, which, yeah, how many did in multiple updates of our methodology. But then, and I think one of our key points. I had, , seen recently after I joined, I, , had contact with the industry and over time this connections developed. This is how I got in touch with kind the mining council. But it took quite some time to, to find a bit of a common ground, right? So how can things be, how can we leverage synergies between what they’re doing and between what we are doing? Right? Which, , early last year, fortunately culminated in the creation of this survey where we found that, well, , how deep can we ask U minus, right? What can we ask you about and making, but in the way that is in line with, our own kind internal guidelines and.[00:05:00] People who are invited to participate in the survey are really, participants in the industry, right? So it’s not just someone who, fills out some link that we got, somewhere from, and we just, everything that people provide to us know , every minus has been individually onboarded and they’re, and yeah. And finally, , last week, all this work culminated in the publication of this reward. And yeah, very, very excited to be here today to talk about it. JohnPaul: / So you mentioned mining in China and that’s some of the expertise you brought to Cambridge and updating the model. Can you talk about specifically maybe what you saw in your mining operation and then maybe what they were doing? Maybe not wrong, but. What you changed in, in this new, presentation or new report? Alexander: , yeah, this was, basically, I did not directly invest, I started mining because , having this finance background you , unite cash flows and these things unite DCF models, and this is how I came into it. to me was a bit more [00:06:00] related to my past mining than just, , buying ling Bitcoin. this was not, was interesting, right. But I think the mining space was a bit more related to my finance past and was more exciting and more interesting, frankly. And yeah, I think there were at that time definitely good opportunities, right? . We still had the entire supply chain essentially was in China, which was very convenient, because you had the manufacturers there. You had , , the farms there, you had the repair centers there. So everything was pretty much, , established. And , if at that point globally, , the US had some hash rate, right? But this, in 19, it was still a completely different environment. , Everything was very, very much, focused on China. #### ASIC Hardware Evolution And yeah, , the first thing that, , disrupted , my operations a bit frankly. , , And I’m sure where the s. , Kinda issue where with the heatings, , and specifically if you’re not managing yourself, you’re completely reliant on, , you, I had obviously trusted parties, but [00:07:00] still, with the repair sentence, if you can’t do it yourself, right, you’re a hundred percent reliant , and, , a lot of bad batches. And this was the first thing. And, and in the end, , after 2021, specifically, if you are , if you were a , small, sized mining operation, , there was, COVID logistics was terrible, and it was banned. I was even happy that received a couple of machines, , that I could sell at some point in somewhere. and yeah, I think it was, a very rich experience, if we want to call it that. And definitely lot of things I’ve learned and yeah, , currently how I transport this knowledge specifically to my current role, it’s just kind. a bit of the established network to a lot of folks, right, globally, which obviously is incredibly important for doing things this survey because you need to get miners to contribute, to provide data, but specifically private miners, right? To have under no obligation to provide anything to anyone except your balance sheet or your annual [00:08:00] reports. and I think that these things help, it also helped understand talking to folks, , because I didn’t never know how it works actually on the ground. So I need to admit, I have never installed an asic. at some point, actually, I’m now, I’m now aiming to buy, I don’t wanna name any brands, but to buy some small at home mine to just try it out a bit. to just see how it works practically. Because I always just saw, on your pool, your hash rate and things if something didn’t work, , it was , the operator telling you, okay, there’s this problem. And then you managing the logistics to get it to the repair, more having this high level view. but still, , you still know how things work. And I believe that definitely helped me to bring this knowledge to my research. JohnPaul: And so it sounds you have people that have mined before yourself, but maybe were disconnected from the miner. You have people that, have never mined at all, and then you have people that are minding and physically working on the device itself. How do those three different perspectives kind [00:09:00] of, how have you seen them change? Not change, but how have you seen them perceive Bitcoin mining differently? , You’ve dealt with a lot of the headaches of a mining owner. Maybe not as a mining owner who can physically access his hardware, and then I said, versus someone who just has heard about Bitcoin mining but has never even attempted it. When you’re in your research, did you come across, and as you talk about your research, how do those different people engage and view Bitcoin mining? Alexander: Yeah, so good point. I think we, specifically in my work, you work with a lot of different stakeholders. And indeed there are some, , obviously miners who, , fully. , I would not necessarily say there’s a lot of difference in perspective between those who, for instance, only do hosting with those , who basically do everything , in terms of how they perceive mining. I think they perceive it pretty similar. It’s more, I think, the, knowing the nitty gritty of all this on the ground operations that some know and some don’t, but generally people have a bit of an understanding, right? Even if you have never [00:10:00] built something on ground, that of IFUs air quote miners, , you need to make sure the air flow. So it’s more , , the difference in my work comes down to speaking sometimes with folks who might have, , had no exposure to mining at all. Right? Possibly to having heard about Bitcoin, if even, , who definitely, but, , having also a bit of a, a background of what is actually Bitcoin. , And then even if that is there, , you might have folks who might have not really, even a broad understanding , of what mining actually is currently is changing. And so over, over the time , I’m doing this work here in the research center, I think what we saw is definitely an increase in the understanding of the overall global community from all stakeholders. And it really goes from, , regular people. if I would ask someone on the street. Do what Bitcoin mining is? most likely they’re gonna tell you add something with data centers. And something, , computing. And so it’s not the complete back box. You have a very, [00:11:00] very broad idea and they think the same is true for a lot of, let’s say, , regulators, policy makers, and these folks as well. Where you see obviously more as the industry becomes bigger, in some jurisdiction, some , stakeholders and such, stakeholders are getting a much better idea of what it actually is because they might either want to promote it in the jurisdiction or do the opposite, right? Some say, well, this is not a. So , you see this different perspective, but overall, I think, and , one of the points in the report is as well that it should serve as a bit of a foundation. The first edition where it starts really about , what is Bitcoin firstly, and then also explains mining, not necessarily in extreme amount of detail, but at least at a level of detail where those who go through it have some , I would say, basic understanding of, okay, what are we actually talking about here? And yeah, this was also one of the, this educational component was, at least for the first edition, a big, thing for us [00:12:00] to include to make sure that, , someone who might be a newcomer has, if you start at page one and you finish at the last page, you know on the surface of , what is actually going on from what is Bitcoin, what is mining, what is the currency of the industry? And then a bit about, okay, where things are heading. JohnPaul: And so it sounds you have people that have mined before yourself, but maybe were disconnected from the miner. You have people that, have never mined at all, and then you have people that are minding and physically working on the device itself. How do those three different perspectives , how have you seen them change? Not change, but how have you seen them perceive Bitcoin mining differently? , You’ve dealt with a lot of the headaches of a mining owner. Maybe not as a mining owner who can physically access his hardware, and then I said, versus someone who just has heard about Bitcoin mining but has never even attempted it. #### Energy Meets AI Demand When you’re in your research, did you come across, and as you talk about your research, [00:13:00] how do those different people engage and view Bitcoin mining? And I did read part of the report, obviously it’s very long, but I did it how you set that up and how you, clearly state, here’s a building box. Before we jump into , mining’s impact, the head of, climate research for this project, for Cambridge Digital Asset Program, what’s the most surprising finding your team or yourself uncovered about Bitcoin’s environmental footprint or just about Bitcoin mining’s interaction with the rest of the world. Alexander: I think . One of the most interesting finding for myself, right? It always depends a bit what you expect specifically if you’re very much engaged in the industry. There were a lot of things that might be very interesting for those who might not have daily engagement, or are continuously up to date with where things happening. Personally, I think the, power coming from otherwise flat gas, the extent I think one of the, for me personally, one of the key research findings, because I think this is one of the best use [00:14:00] cases where, , really someone is coming in and off takes energy that’s otherwise really being, because if you just flare natural gas, there’s absolutely no economical point to do that and no point for the environment. And if you can find, , this specific report was bitcoin mining, but there is also. HPC operations that you can build, but specifically given the CapEx, given the flexibility, I think, digital mining that regard is a very, fitting offtake, of this in, in this specific use case of, for instance, otherwise, otherwise gas and the extent of it. And then trying to convert the extent. So it was about 500 megawatts. Convert this to, , extra emission reduction under different scenarios. Right. I don’t wanna go into too much detail here, but it’s in the report, right, where you have different scenarios coming global if you use different global warming, , potentials and, periods,, if you use different assumptions for combustion [00:15:00] efficiencies, and then in the end trying to, , show different kind scenarios and show that might, for instance be even a positive effect something. on the. Even possibly a bit of a mitigating effect by just, , using a, a gas engine instead of a flare stack and possibly having a higher conversion of, , essentially, , methane to, to c2. And this is what I think was one of the most interesting findings, , that from the importance, I think what we is, the electricity mix was changing. I necessarily those in space. We might talk about this a bit later, the, we captured a lot of hash rate, right? So we captured the 50% of the network, but still there is a bit of a US overhang, let say this. So in terms of jurisdictions close to 50%, where US located, if you look at the distribution of hash rate, also very US focused. So definitely, but still, it,, shows [00:16:00] a direction because overall I think there’s not much question about the US being the predominant mining hub in the world. It’s more about the present. We go from estimates around 40% to our estimate, 75%, which personally, I think the one is maybe a bit too low, but the other one too high. So it’s a decentralized, very hard. To essentially establish where folks are located. And you can try different things, work in pathways, mining pools now with directly, serving miners. And I think those are the ways with both the limitations and obviously, benefits. So, but yeah, so much, so much to that. , and sorry if I, if I digressed a bit, please. if you want to drill into , any points deeper, but yeah, possibly another point was ewas the repurpose, recycling , and reselling that a lot of people I guess find interesting as well to see this. We have climate mitigation strategies where we show different [00:17:00] strategies, , to what extent miners are using those. We have a lot of sentiment questions in there as well. So yeah, I think those are the, the interesting, the most interesting aspect and possibly to some extent also quite exciting. JohnPaul: My next question is, how do you ensure that the Cambridge Bitcoin electricity consumption deck stays relevant as mining evolves? And did you guys identify any critical data gaps that still need addressing or things you’d to explore in the next version of this presentation? Alexander: Yes, I think it’s a very, very good point. So first of all, we have now I think, two different, if I may call it product. The first work is more on our website and essentially the estimates you can see there are based on theoretical modeling. So that’s a bit of the difference to the report where if you go on the website and you see an estimate, for instance, for electricity consumption, it is essentially a daily estimate. Everyday estimates are updated and we keep this. The findings we had [00:18:00] in the report and based on minor participation in the survey corroborate that , that our theoretical modeling in terms of electricity consumption works pretty well because even though we had two different methodologies at this specific point in time, which was the thirties June, 2024, we saw a very, both estimates in terms of electricity consumption from, , minor surveys and our theoretical modeling very closely aligned. So , we see if we use past mining council estimates as well. So we see , there is an alignment even to different methodologies. So we are very confident in the electricity consumption estimate. This has been updated in 2023. To specifically account for periods of very high profitability because there wasn’t the past bit of an issue where our, I would say , first model definitely, , had some issues when it comes to periods of high profitability, but I think the new model works works really well and we keep it up to date by essentially having what we call a hybrid top down approach, which [00:19:00] means that, we use essentially on chain data to determine profitability of mining. From that we form a basket of really exist of real world hardware or really existing hardware. This is based on the list that we are constantly updating. So if the new hardware models, we’re gonna take them into the list and this is , how we keep things updated. And yeah, I think in terms of electricity consumption, this works really well. The difficulty is really how you translate essentially electricity consumption to emissions. If we keep things at the environment, if we look at the environmental component right. and there in the past you are generally reliant on so-called location based estimates, where essentially you have some determination of where mine activity is located globally, and then you can derive an electricity mix from there. But, our most current data is, based on our last update of what we call a mining map, which is where we work together with mining pools. And this is from January, 2022, which means that, , quite outdated, right? Specifically with a very [00:20:00] large share of Kazakhstan and still a very large share of China in there. And then you get a choose mix that might not be perfectly, reflect how the reality looks . This was why it was so important to, even though having a very large participation of US firms, but still seeing trends activity coming to South America activity, coming to the Middle East, activity to some extent, coming to Africa, to other nations , in Asia, right, for instance, Bhutan, these trends that are relevant. #### Energy Costs and Economics We still saw continuous activity in Northern Europe specifically. So I think this was very important to have this often anecdotally, , refer trends. That activity is taking place now a lot more in these regions, basically, I would say validated , by the findings in the report. And naturally those things have heavily influenced electricity mix, right? Because specifically looking at Kazakhstan, looking at China, the share of specific coal, even if we look at, [00:21:00] at fossil fuels, right? There’s a huge difference terms of emissions per kilowatt hour between coal and gas. That it’s really, it’s double or even more than double. So it’s a huge difference what, even if we have fossil fuel mix, right? what specifically? How the fossil fuel mix, the composition of the fossil fuel essentially. , And if you take everything together, we just see that the emission intensity is quite lower than what we currently estimate based on. Mining map update and, and I think this is one of the key findings that the report really helps. So while we are very confident in terms of electricity consumption, estimates that we’re ongoing, we provide on an ongoing basis, it’s really this translation from electricity consumption to emissions that is this difficulty where you need a lot of data that is extremely hard to get as I’m sure you’re aware, right? Because , there is no technical way to determine where, , folks are located. There is no improved stake. For instance, it’s a bit [00:22:00] easier where you can develop network crawlers and these things determine. Running, let’s say a Bitcoin full. No. And where actually taking place, because if you use a map of full nodes, most likely you will have, I dunno, 40% in EU countries. Or something that is Germany. Most likely it was 20% or so. If you just look at Bitcoin full nodes. And so it’s really important to know specifically where mining activity is taking place. And , that’s , , very important just for this emissions calculation. I think this is what the report complement our more theoretical work. JohnPaul: And there’s no way, to your point, without going out in the field and really asking these large miners \ and medium sized and small miners. Where they’re located, how much hash rate they have, what’s their power mix to collect that type of data? Because the binder doesn’t say, Hey, I’m mining from Argentina. I found a block in Uruguay. It doesn’t say that. It’s very hard to, differentiate the zeros and ones, and [00:23:00] you guys have done a great job highlighting that. I’m really doing the legwork to give us some institutional level research in this space. Alexander: Yeah, thanks a lot. I think this is where we see ourselves having this, great, , I would say connection to the industry, but also, to more of the, investors, regulators, policy makers, these stakeholders. So I think this brought access to stakeholders. We have from, , , working with you guys to source the data to then provide something that is , , , universally useful. I think we can really function here as the bridge specifically between, let’s say, academia and practice , and assuming this role as a trust data aggregate, right? So, for instance, if you a minor, and please feel free if. , I, I will reach out and ask, , do you wanna, your, have your logo displayed or don’t you have a logo displayed, , if default, we just, , collect the data and everything is anonymized. But if you say, Hey, [00:24:00] well, , we wanna be shown, as contributors, that is perfectly fine as well. So really having this trust in the community as well for someone, because I think that’s the big point, right? Where you need to convince a miner to give you data because, , there is, just the, upside is quite limited. Only if there is an upside, if a lot doing it right , to actually help us to get them really research out there is impactful. This might be the upside, but kind the difficulty getting in and much appreciate, JohnPaul: and to your point, it, it cannot be done without these minors. So everyone who submitted data, thank you. And if you haven’t submitted data or if you’d to participate in the next survey, make sure you follow up on the website and there’s QR code links in the report on how to sign up. one of the questions I have for you here is how should policy makers, which are these stakeholders that you engage with balance? Bitcoin mining’s energy demand with innovation, especially in regions with fragile grids or maybe stricter ESG mandates, the [00:25:00] eus MICA framework, how does this affect mining and , how should policy makers or and people regulating the grids be viewing Bitcoin mining as a resource? Alexander: Yes. What we are trying to do is, being, not having an opinion in that regard. , so what we are not trying , to take a position, , what we’re trying to do is to inform, and I think hopefully this comes also across in the report that we are highlighting specific, we are not recommending, let’s say, any grid operates or policymaker to, okay, this is kind situation, this is what we’re trying to recommend you to do. , It’s more trying to put the information out , and if we get a specific questions, obviously we’re gonna answer this question. And, I think there are use cases that are being described that might, in many jurisdictions, in many specific circumstances, be very helpful. But it’s then basically , for those grid operators or policy makers to, decipher themselves, how to view it. We’re not actively trying to, [00:26:00] influence any policy making that regard, but we are putting out the information, right? It’s out there and those obviously who are interested or, , interest groups can pick it up or those stakeholders can pick it up and read it , and then say, well, this is something that might be helpful to us or it’s not something we need, , whatnot. #### Industry Deep Dive So, yeah, unfortunately I can’t give you a specific answer for that. We really trying to keep our impartiality here. What we are really trying to do is aggregate information, put out the information, and then, let the public take over the conversation. JohnPaul: No, but I love that because it provides, you guys are a neutral, force and neutral data aggregator that then these policy makers can look at as someone without an incentive to, let’s say, , make Bitcoin mining or you don’t have a financial incentive to, to grow it. You’re more just reporting on the facts and that I think that’s a key to, moving this conversation forward. How did you guys come up with the case study? So you guys interviewed different groups, you came up with a question, , the report says, for example, beyond [00:27:00] base load, can digital mining help support power grids? And then you answered that question, you might have a couple charts in a case study. Can you talk a little bit more about maybe how those were conducted? And, you mentioned the natural gas opportunity. Maybe if there was other case studies that highlighted something that you were not expecting or didn’t know before you started, this journey. Alexander: So happy to see a couple of words on the case studies. So the case studies are all based on public information. So that’s basically, the case studies were used to, I would say. Make things, make explanations more tangible, right? Because sometimes you’re gonna get lost in descriptions , in these things, right? That are a bit more abstract. So after explaining certain concepts, these inside boxes and case study boxes could help to essentially make this entire concept that is being described or show a real world use case for this concept. And, , I hope they’re [00:28:00] helpful, but it all is based on public information. So we did not interviews or anything in that regard. And yeah, so I hope that they’re basically just there to really make those descriptions. For instance, what you said the topic beyond base law, which essentially demanded response, right? We have ther case study for, mitigation. We case as well for with the heat project , in Finland, right, where they utilize waste, heat and things. We yeah, have some inside boxes that should also help make certain concepts a bit tangible, to the audience. This is why we. JohnPaul: I definitely think they do PR, paint a real world picture of, to these point these miners where you can point of actually where they’re doing some amazing work. One of the items you guys touched on was a level of concern for selected challenges amongst Bitcoin mining firms and the top three were long-term energy price increases, [00:29:00] unfavorable government action and adverse development in PTC price. Can you talk more about how you guys investigated those concerns? Or did you just in the survey, ask them? They rated them and then we didn’t actually investigate maybe how these concerns could affect mining as a whole. Alexander: Yeah, , so basically that’s based on a survey question. So, essentially, those answers were given, so naturally we did some investigation right to came up with them in the first place, with some pain points, which I. Frankly, I think, yeah, for, for those who follow, this might be particularly interesting for those who might not on a day-to-day basis follow the industry, but for those who follow the industry and, , starting, , with this very volatile environment in China when mining was still there, to other countries having their opinions on mining, right? This all has implications to some extent that, , , are you allowed to Any mining there, which naturally is. Those things are [00:30:00] really important and we see it now even with Russia. Right. Specifically , I think more this south and ian region where they first initiated temporary bans and now I think fully banned until over two 30 or Marker Alexander: something. so those things matter. We see it, , yeah, in some areas in the US it’s, it’s very interesting, right? Because you have this very different opinions so there’s not a US opinion essentially besides obviously the administration’s opinion, but depending on the state, you might face very different opinions. , So to understand the regulatory concern, energy prices, I think it’s also pretty clear because . We did the survey as well about when it comes to cash based expenses, about 80%. So that’s your major expense, right? And if you are not certain about long term electricity deals or prices , that you are able to obtain, it’s very hard to model your profitability going forward. So, yeah, , there is, I think , lot of backstory. We did, a bit of description in the report as well about this, but, basically we did not, ,, too deep [00:31:00] investigations. I think , I might put in a couple of examples, , but yeah, basically all those were obtained just per minus, essentially rating them. JohnPaul: And one of the things you, You also touched on was historical trends in hash price across the different type of having events. Is there anything that piqued your interest in either Bitcoin’s price or hash price or machine efficiency in those macro metrics that all come down to the imports into the profitability of mining when you were doing the report? Alexander: I think mining economics is a super interesting and really fascinating topic, right? specifically you have a lot of different variables and as a minor, naturally you need to do forecasting, specifically , where you expect bit the big comprise to go. Where do we expect hash rate to go? #### Technical Discussion If we think about the. In US dollars. There’s a lot of , with the Bitcoin price you have, naturally the increase in hedge rate where you have all these components. If you just look at hash spread in Bitcoin, , it’s a bit simpler, right? Because you just know it’s going [00:32:00] down, most likely, given just the halvings, right? The point is, I think always , in this conversations, the topic of transaction fees, it’s just that besides some temporary anomalies, so this spikes right? We saw where we really, really saw a, , we just need to go back to the halving. , that was, if you, I was actually observing a lot of developments specifically during, Marker Alexander: because I saw this fascinating, , the amount of revenue derived from transaction fees, right? I think it was the minus future dream of having transaction or already transaction fees being in BTC terms and multiple of the actual block subsidy. , So, but yeah, this was as, as we saw, really just temporary. , if we look now, we’re, sometimes it’s, , zero and, , one set per, we buy in these things. So there’s a lot of interesting component there as well. And what I conversation is currently I. Mining firms to [00:33:00] continue. But as we go along, halving by halving, the question will really be , , how this dynamic will change, right? Will transaction fees pick up , or what will, essentially happen, right. , Naturally, , you can always say, well, Bitcoin is going to, I don’t know, 800,000, 1 million or whatnot. Whether you believe, , this is obviously, , people have their own beliefs about this. , , it’s just that it needs to continuously go up, right? To an extent that , it covers halvings and it covers increases in hash rate. And I think one of this, and this is really my personal opinion, one of these points, I believe the mining ecosystem at some point will change. And we’ll, when it comes to consumption, we will peak at some point. Where. Simply miners will need to be a lot more flexible. We see it already, some miners starting to, for instance, utilize excess renewables, right? , specifically if you have the rere where , you’re not mining a hundred percent uptime, you’re mining maybe 30, 40% uptime and really trying to capture, , excess energy when it’s pretty [00:34:00] much , we not call it for free, but very, very low cost. And possibly we’re gonna see this developments more as, most likely, hash price will be in, , my opinion, , as we move forward, as we move forward in time, will become a lot more volatile than it’s now simply because, , sometimes lot transactions, which might significantly impact. The overall block reward, right? If you have a very low block subsidy, and sometimes you might not have that much and miners might actually adjust, their activity depending on the network activity at any given moment. This, but this is again, , my personal thoughts on this. So I think mine economics is al already very important, but, it’ll be become much more important, , , as we, , move along each having and, , yeah, generally I think there’s a lot of, I don’t, there’s a very specific conversation that I’m not trying to avoid and to make things , not too controversial in your podcast, but I think it will be very interesting to see this. JohnPaul: And one of the things about hash price that you’re are hinting at is [00:35:00] this evolution of a Bitcoin miner from being the most efficient machine on the market, using a hundred percent. Of the power to maybe only using 40% of the time having energy to it. You guys really dug into e-waste and the evolution of the mining machine. What came out of that from that, research and was there anything that shocked you or what were you seeing about a migration of mining of Bitcoin miners? Are they migrating from the US to other places? Can you touch on that report and on the report when it comes to e-waste specifically? Alexander: Yes, absolutely. I think this was a very, very, , interesting finding, frankly, because there was not really information out there right. Specifically about, . Sim we did a simplified calculation about e-waste, to say this as well, but I think the key message that we, what we found there is that, , what is it, 88, close to 87% is being repurposed, resold, or recycled, which I think , if you look into computing, the e-waste of the [00:36:00] industry is, to me, seemingly definitely a variable that should be considered to some extent. It would’ve been interesting and possibly for next survey to differentiate a bit more between reselling, repurposing, and actually recycling. , But overall, basically the amount of e-waste, which is about what we found about certain percent of phased out hash rate, is definitely something to consider if you do, I would say any e-waste modeling. But in the past we really didn’t have much information that regard. Right. There was not really where well. Some miners, some public miners put something on their website. So we do recycling, we do this and that. But really something on a more network level where you have engagement , of private miners as well. And to get some understanding of, okay, , what does end up , as really as e-waste, , a certain amount of phase out hardware. So I think that was really an an interesting finding and hopefully something that, spurs further research, outside, let’s say our survey because a lot of [00:37:00] researchers, , who might want to look into this again, and, trying to, , refine estimates or new estimates in, , Point about distribution of rates. So, as previously mentioned. I think definitely something that needs to be said is that, we had a lot of engagement of US firms, right? And I think this really comes through, if you look at the distribution of hash rate, where we found the US at 75%, which, personally I think is overstated, by any means, it’s, the US is def, I have no doubt that the US is the world largest mining hub, but again, where we are exactly, we have possibly on the lower end, around 40%, but then we’re at the higher end, , 75. So it really depends where we’re , then. But overall, I think, , given that the US is a very large country, you have, access to all kinds of different energy sources, right? It’s not a country that predominantly powered by a specific energy source, [00:38:00] for instance, when we. And, so I think overall our findings , are representative, but it needs to be said that, , there might be a bit of a US overhang of participation, which you think, which still, right? we have 50% of the network cash rate. So it’s I think still a very, very interesting insights. But yeah, when it comes to the specific geographical distribution question, I think it’s more about trends. So where we say, well, if you look into the current map and compare it to our 2022 estimate, we can see that, well the US is still the num number one mining hub right there. There wasn’t any change. But what we see now is specifically activity in South America. We see activity in the Middle East. We see still continuous activity, \ to some extent in Northern Europe. We have some countries Bhutan there as well, which have been anecdotally, referred to, right. We see some emerging activity in Africa. So I think it’s more about this trends that, are often. Not so much Africa, [00:39:00] frankly, I hope that will change in the next report because yeah, lot has happened since then actually. #### Mining Industry Dynamics So, , but still having specifically South America in there having, , the Middle East emerging and, , so it’s more about direction development, , developments that happened, let say since 2022, where this is helpful, but I would not, I would not, know, say well there is this specific percentages , are, , something that is, , absolutely true where we have also very low share of Russia, for instance. Where we know that there is definitely a lot of my activity in Russia. , China is really a black box, frankly. It’s, , getting any data from there, , obviously you ask, but, , it’s, it’s very hard to get any data. There are estimates out there that have some data for China. I have no idea where they get it from, frankly. , And, but, no one really knows. But there is definitely some , of aspect that I hope that in the next survey definitely trying , to increase global outreach and keen to, to have more , , non non-US firms participating as well. But still, , even [00:40:00] if it’s a bit , , the sample is a bit us focused. I think overall, , most of the findings besides essentially the global distribution are still very much relevant. JohnPaul: And I definitely agree with you on that. And one of the things that you mentioned was , you’re getting all this research, you’re not trying to make an opinion about it. How hard is it to be an evidence-based researcher versus speculating and having these, opinions about all these different topics when you’re putting this report together and what goes into. The hours, the team, the coordination behind a report this, how long did it take? Can you talk more about the process of how, actually, how this piece of information came about? I. Alexander: Yes, absolutely. I would say, let’s start with, I think the most important, the absolute foundation of the report is trying to get a lot of stakeholders together to provide you with in. Marker Alexander: This is really where things start. And a lot of work goes into reaching out, engaging, and [00:41:00] trying just to get, just trying to get responses right, that there is, at least I would say 35, 40% just goes into this. And, the rest is then essentially the, the write up. But yeah, it’s, there’s a significant, significant time. You really need to do engagement. You need to get, , folks to contribute to convince them that, hey, this is actually, it makes sense. You might not have an immediate benefit by spending, the whole 30 minutes, one hour, depending on , if you already know questions. or if you need to dig a bit deeper into your company, that it’s worth to spend the time. Right. And I edition. It might, it is definitely something that people are interested in, so it might make sense for me to contribute. And I think for the first edition, this was the most difficult part because it hasn’t been done before, at least not , for mining specifically , , at this scale, right. We had the mining council, but it was four or five questions. So it was not that extensive. It’s a lot easier to ask to answer those questions. [00:42:00] 25 questions that in some cases go a lot deeper than what was asked there. , So, and then the first iteration was really the difficulty to convince, folks that, hey, well, it makes sense to contribute. I hope that we will have, with the first edition done, , a good starting point where we can convince more that say, Hey, well, if you had privacy concerns, , look, if you wanna be stated, , you’re gonna have your logo there. If you’re not, you’re not right. There is no , specific individual data sharing that we are doing. , And I really hope this helps. But yeah, this is, I would say, one of the main power we started with this, I think about the last year. And in April, first of all, you need to, , develop all the survey questions and these things so that, that makes sense as well. So we had some, , conversations with, , some key players , of the former, of the BMC, , to give, give you just feedback where, , you have a bit of back and forth , bouncing off ideas, what is possible and what is not possible, what is too granular and how far we can still go. Lot of this , thought process as well. And the [00:43:00] end, if you in the end have collected data, you need to do the write up, right? This is depending, this time it took also longer than expected because yeah, in the end it was okay, let’s create something that really enables, , someone who might not be perfectly familiar with the subject. Two, starting at page one, ending at page, I think. And you might not be, an absolute mining expert, but , what Bitcoin is. , , on the surface how mining works, , the current of the industry, about trends and you get a bit of finance aspects as well. If you read the appendix, right? So you generally mining economics as well. So you have a, a general understanding, okay, what is actually happening? And we have this condensed into this one report. and yeah, this is why it took a bit longer, but yeah, it wasn’t really nearly, nearly a year essentially that we were working on this combined. So there’s a lot of, lot of effort that goes into creating something this. JohnPaul: And now you have a great piece, which you can build on top of to your point, and you have that core introduction and some of these questions on pools and in [00:44:00] firmware. Can you talk a little bit more about how you got to the pools in firmware? #### Strategic Perspectives , So as you were digging into this report and creating it, you guys also talked about firmware and mining pools. Did you end up interviewing any pool operators or firmware operators, or was that data collected from the miners, themselves? Alexander: Yes. So, basically the mining pools, I took it from man space. I think they do , and shout out to them. They do fantastic work. So when I look about anything related to, more, this, more specifics about just looking at blocks, right? Block compositions, things, it’s pretty much man space. Otherwise we work with, which is fantastic by specifically collecting data on, so yeah, we did not interview anyone, , in that regard. Specifically one of the. So the report. So naturally we had some conversations and, and really appreciated his input specifically for some nuances, in the writing in terms of the firm, where yet that was a survey question. So that was basically [00:45:00] about asking Myas, okay. Essentially what firmware you’re using. And I think findings are quite interesting. specifically we have, what was anything that unexpected is the large share of just stock manufacturer firm, where ish was something that I did not expect. Frankly, I, I know that there people were, were using it, but, , it was more than one fourth, I think, more than a quarter were using it. So , that was actually one of those things that was surprising. But yeah, in proprietary firmware, right. Specifically, it makes sense if you’re really large mining company to invest it in and build your own software, right. Specifically tailored to what you need in your operations. , And yeah, and you have some , other operators as well, but yeah, I think it is, similar to the ASIC market where it was also a, i I would say not too much of a surprise with, , Bitmain being heavily dominant and then, , if the other two manufacturers, micro PT and Cannan, this will I think be something where, on a time series will be quite interesting to, observe, right. So specifically having now or [00:46:00] see, see how things right. June, 2024. But if we, , if we end up at some point at the third iteration, how things changed over time, right. Specifically how market shares changed in terms of, , the ASIC market. Because so far, I think this is also where we’re contributing. It was known, when you do researcher, you need to actually data point. It’s one thing to, , , have anecdotal evidence or know things because that, that’s generally known as an instrument practitioner. Then having actually, okay, this is a data point based on, , primary data from minor. So that’s specifically if you do any research, it’s just really valuable to have this data point there. and yeah, very, very interesting to see how these things evolve specifically with, , most likely now US manufacturers entering the stage. And also in terms of firmware, right? How things change there as well. If we see , third party firmware usage increasing, or if we continue seeing still this quite, I think [00:47:00] about 40%. So, yeah, I think data are. JohnPaul: And I think that is where you get a, a really good set of data over time where you can start telling the story of the industry, which, it, it will be amazing to have this data set. So, as I said, thanks again for putting this together. One of the last things is you end the report with this idea about data center infrastructure, ai, HPC and Bitcoin mining. was that something that you think miners, were they saying they’re looking into it or they’re actively exploring it? It seemed it was a small portion of miners. Do you expect that to be a larger portion of the future? So when it comes to AI and data centers, how are you seeing Bitcoin miners transition into AI in, in the report? Alexander: Yeah, sure. So happy to elaborate a bit on this. So that was essentially, we had only a very small question in there trying to, understand a bit to what extent [00:48:00] participants. Mine Bitcoin, to what extent they mine other cryptocurrencies and to what extent they, for instance, have power allocated to AI operations. And I think this is one of these data points that we will very closely observe as, , we progress, for instance, addition by addition, because that I think, is a very interesting data point that you can go back historically and then compare to, for instance, new information as, , we have, , in the end a more theoretical chapter, which is not based on survey data, but basically just us thinking about, well, there are the synergies with AI in many ways of, , established mining companies, right? Having, having power contracts, having the already existing possibly fitting infrastructure, having that talent. To, diversify their business. And this was one of those things in the sentiment questions that we also saw where business diversification was one of the key areas that miners were looking at. And, and also [00:49:00] if you look into the really statements of public companies, I think miners moving to AI is, is something that is definitely very, very interesting component. And, , yeah, we, we did observe this. I think it is given specifically when we think of, the way how most likely the block reward will move. Having a lot more volatility possibly when it comes to revenues derived from mining activity, having this more, I would say, less volatile income stream, , providing AI HPC services. It’s quite interesting for mining companies. but on the other hand, what we see is, and I think what we found that the amount of CapEx required to build this infrastructure system on a whole different level. So, it is for, I think, , in, in terms of the, the capital requirements to enter this space. It’s, yeah, it’s quite a feed for mining companies, right. given that if you wanna build a hyperscaler, it, it’s gonna be very, very expensive. And, yeah. So [00:50:00] there are a, a lot of different angles. And specifically also trying to understand the, specifically the increase in demand for, or the increase in demand of, for instance, state of the art. . Training models, the computational requirements and how those have changed over time and these, so I think overall there is, , there is a lot of information in there that might help understand , okay, this might be an interesting field for miners and explained why specifically having established power contract, possibly some infrastructure that can, that is already existing or , can be retrofitted on. And having that, the talent pool that allows to leverage those synergies and yeah, but still on the other hand, there is this CapEx element that makes it not so easily translatable where say, Hey, well we have M Bitcoin and now we’re just doing ai. We’re actually okay. #### Operational Insights Fantastic. Yeah. So basically one of the key differences between. Building mining [00:51:00] infrastructure with actually building AI infrastructure is the CapEx requirement where we show that essentially if you include GPUs as well, it’s about 33 times. But even if you just build the infrastructure, it’s already, I think about, about eight times. So, while this might be very interesting field specifically with this, , very much increasing demand, we also have a couple of charts there that show where this demand is coming from, but much more computationally intensive, , trading models, but naturally, I think mostly from inference and, we see a lot of miners looking into this now, and it will be very interesting to see specifically how the power location changes. Because currently the snapshot we have from June, 2024 is I think a very good starting point and will be just very interesting to see how, this power location changes. Right? , most likely it’s expected to increase. But I said before, you can have a lot of megawatts of Bitcoin mining activity or generally cryptocurrency mining that, might not one-to-one translate [00:52:00] into, okay, we build one megawatt of, bitcoin mining, let’s say, and one megawatt of, , AI compute. Where in terms of the cost it’s just not comparable. so, but it will be quite interesting to see how things evolve. And we see a lot of public companies looking into this and we have for those interested, there’s a lot of information there in terms of electricity consumption, these estimates how much overall data center power usage is expected to be in 2030. so it’s a, I think there’s a lot of, nuggets of, I wanna call it nuggets of wisdom, but it’s a lot of in interesting information, I think , in the last chapter of the report specifically, about, where we are most likely heading in terms of mining. , You mentioned some point. , Move towards the transaction fee based model from currently predominantly reliant on block subsidy and naturally having this synergies in terms of infrastructure with AI makes, , and diversification on the business model being one of those points we found out in the survey to be specifically [00:53:00] interesting to firms. , I think this will become more and more important and definitely something I want to monitor even in much greater detail going forward because simply, , I think , it’s fair to say that, , the computational demands of AI will just significantly increase. I just remembered a tweet from Sam Altman when we had this entire studio, Ghibli Studio Ghibli thing coming up and he said, yeah, our GPU are melting. , which I can imagine, right? So you You need to have in the future a lot of computational power. , and I think that a lot of mining firms are very well positioned to captures opportunity becoming a more diversified firms where we possibly might also see firms that say, Hey, well we want, we wanna be a, a pure play. That’s just our main business model and we’re gonna want to keep it that. so it’ll be very interesting to observe this different pathway minus take. JohnPaul: Well, Alexandra, let’s close it up by talking about what’s the reaction been to the public, you [00:54:00] know, what type of news outlets have reached out to you? Any cool appearances that you wanna highlight, , to the audience and , how are you feeling after a year worth of work and really being able to see a come to fruition? Alexander: Yeah. It’s so. It’s very great to see that there’s a lot of public interest, right? We see a lot of, , , first of all, I think, we got interviewed by traditional media, Fox News. We got naturally featured in crypto native media. There is a lot of new things coming up, where we had, I think a lot of, , folks were token 2049 and now coming back and see the new information that is being out there. So we had a couple of requests in that regard as well to, , have a, a podcast, have a, , , some interview or doing some other things. So there’s a lot of, lot of public interest. I think this data in many cases where really highly anticipated. Then this overall very well received. Naturally there is a bit of that, this criticism around still, even though we have captured nearly half [00:55:00] of the network hash rate, that there is still a bit of the US focus, but that’s what it is, right? , in the end, , it’s, I think a very good starting point, but there’s a lot, lot of things I think we can, we can do better as well and, and trying to engage more people, more geographically diverse. But overall, I think what we managed to do is providing a deep insights into this. Very much, , some, some very nitty gritty data points that usually just don’t have, right? So I think we, we managed to provide a lot of, , valuable insights in that regard and hopefully create something that we can build on and, and improve over time. So we can really manage to capture, , at some point maybe 65, 70% of the network and having it geographically diverse. So really creating something where we’re essentially, as close to the ground truth as possible, let’s say that, requires an extraordinary amount of engagement from a lot of different stakeholders. And I hope that with this report we, we set just the foundation to do so. Personally, [00:56:00] yes, I’m, I’m really happy because, , there’s a lot of work coming together and a lot of time spent on this. And, , yeah, also happy that it has been published, right? Because, , , you wanna also move on to your, to your next project at some point and then have some , , bit of time for yourself as well. But yeah, we are very, I hope that, there will be second edition and, , we can, we can continue this work because I think it’s just something that is specifically for those who are fam even, even for those familiar with the, with the industry, but also particularly for those who are not familiar with the industry, to having this , , data set that, , , provides this insights that you otherwise just don’t get. JohnPaul: And some of those datas dataset that you highlighted are 138 terawatt hours. Annual consumption of Bitcoin mining, 0.54% of global electricity, 0.08% of global GHG emissions with 38.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide. , 52% of electricity from sustainable [00:57:00] sources. 82% market share held by Bitmain, which you, you, you highlighted us being the primary hub, 75% emerging markets of South America and the Middle East, which you highlighted. What is, if anything, other key highlights that just , come to mind as we wrap it up here or anything you wanna leave the listener with as they read the report? Something they should really focus on or really make sure they can dive into? Alexander: I think it depends on the person interest, right? So I don’t wanna highlight anything in particular because the point was really to have this very vast data set. For me personally, one of the key points were to compare our, in terms of electricity consumption, to compare our theoretical model estimates. At a specific point in time, which was the time of the snapshot, 30 June, 2024, with, , those electricity consumption estimates that I can derive of from the survey data. And then given these are entirely different methodologies, and then see [00:58:00] whether there is a very star discrepancy, which would indicate that, well, , possibly our theoretical model, something, something isn’t work right, or there’s a huge difference between practitioner insights and our theoretical modeling. #### Business Model and Strategy but what, I saw was that there is very little difference actually. So it, it, it feels that , that, our theoretical work in terms of electricity consumption has been corroborated, which is quite important because, , these reports are not issued on a daily basis. So, , things change quickly. We just from June last year, right? , hash rate skyrocketed frankly. So currently it might look very different, right? And, and so it’s important to have. For instance, our daily updated estimate there that can tell you and, and , that it’s reliable about, okay, what is the current state of today in terms of electricity consumption and, , until the next report is available. So I think this was, for me, personally, one of the very important points. Also, having this, , new insight into the electricity mix, I [00:59:00] think is very important because our past estimate is really based on very outdated data, so it’s important to have here an update as well. And, , naturally, , everything is important. Right. But I think particularly interesting as well was the e-waste issue where we saw that okay, repurposing, , reselling, recycling is just a huge component. And yeah, a lot of things as well, specifically when we talk about, , the amount of, , power coming from otherwise flat gas. And there’s a, I think a lot of, a lot of interesting information in there. but yeah, this is my, my insight, but I think everything is important and it really depends if you read the report, if you’re interested in a specific area, but I think we covered so much ground that, , whatever you’re gonna look at, something might be in there for you. JohnPaul: And we will be linking the report in show notes, as well as the, , online UpToDate theoretical model that you’re mentioning. So feel free to look at those to learn more. Alexander, thank you so much for coming on and remember [01:00:00] to mine on. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Life Insurance | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 33 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/bitcoin-life-insurance-zachary-townsend/ Bitcoin Life Insurance | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 33 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 33 # Bitcoin Life Insurance with Zachary Townsend — CEO, Meanwhile Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Zachary Townsend to discuss bitcoin life insurance. ### Life Insurance to Protect Your Bitcoin Wealth Digital Gold Podcast: Building Life Insurance for the Bitcoin Economy with Zachary Townsend What would life insurance look like if it were built from the ground up for a Bitcoin standard? In this episode of Digital Gold, JohnPaul Baric talks with Zachary Townsend, CEO and Co-founder of Meanwhile, the first fully Bitcoin-denominated life insurance company. Meanwhile operates entirely on a Bitcoin standard: premiums, payouts, internal accounting, and even regulatory filings are all conducted in BTC, with no conversion to fiat. This is a radical new approach to protecting and growing multigenerational wealth in the hardest money on earth. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/4i4k2BI8L8w?si=YW3rbb5rueYN0fLp) ### Here are key insights from their discussion: Mission and Product: Meanwhile’s core mission is to provide long-term financial protection for Bitcoin holders. Their whole life insurance product offers a guaranteed payout in Bitcoin that exceeds the total premiums paid. Key benefits include tax-free compounding, income tax-free payouts to beneficiaries, and the ability to take policy loans in Bitcoin without margin calls. The Bitcoin Standard: The company is unique in having externally audited financials stated solely in Bitcoin. This commitment extends to every aspect of the business, reinforcing its role as a pure Bitcoin-native institution. Building Trust: Transparency is paramount. Meanwhile builds confidence through public external audits, direct communication with policyholders, and backing from well-known Bitcoin funds like Ten31 and Framework. The Vision: The ultimate goal is to serve a billion people by expanding access to long-term savings, especially for those in countries with unstable currencies. The roadmap involves moving from a one-Bitcoin minimum policy to policies denominated in hundreds of thousands of Satoshi’s. Advice for Entrepreneurs: Zachary advises those at the intersection of Bitcoin and finance to prioritize trustworthiness, embrace regulation, and prepare for a methodical, long-term build. Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/4i4k2BI8L8w?si=YW3rbb5rueYN0fLp) ### What You’ll Learn in This Episode: - Why the emerging Bitcoin economy needs its own native insurance institutions. - How whole life insurance acts as “the original HODL” for tax-efficient intergenerational wealth transfer. - How Meanwhile generates yield through over-collateralized institutional lending. - The roadmap to onboard the next billion users as global Bitcoin adoption accelerates. ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ How Meanwhile is building Bitcoin-denominated life insurance - ✅ The financial engineering behind Bitcoin as a long-term asset - ✅ Why Bitcoin life insurance appeals to hodlers and institutions ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Zachary’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/building-life-insurance-for-the-bitcoin-economy/id1539971833?i=1000722963244) #### Related Resources Managed Mining Program → Learn About Bitcoin Mining → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: Welcome back to season two of the Digital Gold Podcast. Today we’re joined by Zachary Townsend, co-founder and CEO of meanwhile, a life insurance company built for the Bitcoin economy. Zach is pioneering a new approach to long-term financial protection by rethinking insurance from first principles. In this episode, we dive into how he’s making life insurance work for Bitcoin holders and why it matters for the future of digital wealth. Zach, welcome to the show. Zachary: Great to be here. Thanks for having me. JohnPaul: Of course. So what made you go into one of the oldest businesses in the world? Life insurance, and then why did you think Bitcoin’s the perfect fit for this? Yeah, it’s interesting. It actually in some ways came about the other way, which is, , my co-founder and I, and now almost everyone at the company, we believe there’s gonna be a Bitcoin economy. If Bitcoin is money and as we believe, and it’s, , the hardest, money in the world and. It’s going to have an entire [00:01:00] economy. And that was our mental model when we started the business. , This is late 2021, early 2022. So we’re , okay,, I don’t know if it’ll be the world’s biggest economy, but let’s say it’s a top 10 economy and it’s, weird in some ways, right? It’s probably, it’s gonna be global, it’s gonna be decentralized,, it’s outside of the control of any government. But , if we think of it as an economy, , it’s gonna have the same. Financial institutions and markets that exist in every economy in the world, right? So there’s gonna be, , exchanges and there’s gonna be banks, and there’s gonna be payments companies, and there’s gonna be asset managers. , And my co-founder and I had both thought a lot about life insurance, , or long-term insurance as a savings. . People might think, not think of it that way, but basically these are companies that help people save for the long term. They do retirement savings and annuities, or they even do short term savings and things called insurance bonds or, guaranteed investment contracts. And then they help people save intergenerationally [00:02:00] through, permanent life insurance, , in particular. So we just had the idea, oh, okay, as there is a life insurance company for every developed economy, there should be a life insurance company for the Bitcoin economy. And honestly, we didn’t know what that meant really. , But we started the business and it’s been super successful and, , we’ve learned a lot about it. /So when you were defining what that meant, what are some of the key things that. Helped you answer that question. And for listeners, what does it mean to have a first principle approach to redesigning insurance when you have a scarce asset bitcoin? Zachary: we, fundamentally, what is fascinating to us actually is permanent life insurance at least, and permanent life insurance means it lasts your whole life. , So their life insurance often is split between term life, which lasts a certain term and a whole life or permanent life, which, , last the entire, , until you die. And. One thing that [00:03:00] we found fascinating is , whole life is the original hoddle. It’s the original saving for your kids and intergenerational wealth, and retiring your bloodline. So we, pretty early understood that okay, , we believe Bitcoin is going to be the best durable store of value in the world. Maybe not by the way, day to day or week to week, but when you think decade to decade. And that is at the heart, , of what we do because that is what life insurance companies do, is they make these really long time promises. , it’s probably not something that lots of your listeners have thought about, but, , basically the point of life insurance is, , to. Yeah, to save for your kids, or your nieces or nephews or your wife or whatever. , And then it’s also the case that. Basically because we as society or governments or whatever, have decided that we don’t want orphans and widows to starve. There are [00:04:00] incentives to buy insurance and those incentives are expressed as, tax privileges. So, , life insurance is also a tool to do tax and estate planning. , So we brought all those things together. Well, to be honest, we didn’t actually, when we started the business, we didn’t know all these things. What we knew is we thought Bitcoin was gonna be a great store of value forever. Its purchasing power is gonna go up and people should, , protect their families and save, , inside Bitcoin and the way we do that, Marker Zachary: , I think is somewhat special. So we have , a regulated licensed life insurance company in Bermuda and. Basically that company truly is on the Bitcoin standard. For that company one, Bitcoin is one Bitcoin and everything it does is in Bitcoin. \ People pay their premiums in Bitcoin. We pay claims, , benefits out in Bitcoin. And then we do everything in between. In Bitcoin, we do our audited financials. In Bitcoin, we do our regulatory filings. In Bitcoin, we do [00:05:00] our, all the math that makes an insurance company go is entirely in Bitcoin. #### Energy Meets AI Demand On the audited financials. I think we’re the only company in the world who has externally audited financials and they’re stated in Bitcoin, they’re not converted to dollars. there’s a B in the corner and the whole thing’s down to the Satoshis. And to us, this was obvious from the very beginning, okay, if we’re gonna run this company, let’s run it as a Bitcoin company. So that’s how we actually do it. And then the why is, helping people plan, save, tax optimize, , with their bitcoin. JohnPaul: So, Zach, before we jump into the products more and what you’re offering and how the mechanics work, how did you get to developing this company? What were you doing before and when did you become a bitcoin? Zachary: Yeah, so I’m a FinTech guy by background. I started my career. Actually doing, consulting in the civic sector, , governments. And I did a lot of work on financial inclusion and [00:06:00] financial empowerment. And I ended up as the head of innovation of Newark, New Jersey, when Cory Booker, now senator was mayor. And I got really interested in this question of why do people in West Newark not have bank accounts? Why do they do check cashing? , So I guess I come from , an ancient Bitcoin strain, which is profoundly interested in extending financial services, to, low income people. And , when Corey ran for Senate, I was , I don’t. Care about the Senate. So I coal applied to the best FinTech company I could, , find on Hacker News. And I was the 37th employee at Stripe. And then in the worst financial decision in my life, best life decision, I got into Y Combinator and I built a different company called Standard Treasury. And we built . Technical, , integrations between FinTech companies and [00:07:00] between, banks. We ended up selling that business to SVB, , to Silicon Valley Bank. But I actually got my first Bitcoin , this is gonna sound maybe a special story, but it is completely a common story, which is our, . Coinbase was really struggling. This is 2015 with payments and banking and know your customer stuff. , There was a, they were worried about getting de banked and they offered to acquire our company to have the, eight of us work on financial services. Another time I could have made a boatload of money but didn’t. , But I received my first Bitcoin from Brian Armstrong showing me how. , Coinbase work, and again, this was his gimmick. He would get people to sign up by sending them,, a Bitcoin, which at the time I don’t know, was worth a hundred dollars or something. So that, was when I got interested in Bitcoin and that stuck joining Coinbase didn’t stick, and I dollar cost average into Bitcoin over time. I thought a lot about financial [00:08:00] services and . Yeah. And then we started this business, as I said, in late 2021, with this conception of there’s going to be a Bitcoin economy, and we are incredibly motivated by this idea that if you are a middle class person in Argentina or Nigeria or Turkey or India or Indonesia. You often don’t save for the long term. You don’t buy life insurance for your kids. You don’t plan for your retirement. And one of the reasons you don’t do that is because you are gonna live longer than the Argentinian peso, just historically. And by the way, this is true somewhat in the United States, the dollar will be here. But, I think sometimes I have an, 7-year-old, he was born in 2018. If I bought a million dollars of life insurance coverage in 2018, I’ve seen the purchasing power of that policy go down 25%. So, we came to this business with this ambition to serve, to really expand [00:09:00] the, long-term savings market. , So my , . bs , catch phrase that I use with venture capitalists is , our ambition is to serve a billion people and we wanna reach them using Bitcoin, the greatest digital store of value in the world. , And we wanna serve them profitably with AI and automation. And that, has been a through line of my whole career around financial inclusion and technology, but culminating in, , the hardest money there is. JohnPaul: , and I love that ’cause you saw a problem on the streets effectively of , why can’t these normal people get bank accounts? Right? They should be, they’re in the best, , American Dream living. In America where we should all have access to these financial tools. But to your point, there’s tons of barriers that might be preventing people from , getting that. And you are expanding. You’re based in Bermuda for where you guys are licensed and regulated, and then these products are [00:10:00] available to anywhere in basically in the world except for sanctioned countries effectively. Zachary: Yes, we are able to operate anywhere in the world, I would say except for sanctioned countries. , We have to be able to underwrite you. We are still an insurance company who’s taking on mortality rate. .. That is, people who are sick and about to die wanna buy life insurance. So we have to make sure you’re not sick and you, would prefer not to die, which is most people. So , there is a practical reality that we’re primarily serving Canadians and Americans and Brits right now. , But you should still come to our website and sign up because that drives a wait list. And that wait list is how we decide to,, which countries we expand to. JohnPaul: And so do you guys, when you’re reviewing the tax policy, is that on a perks country basis that you have to provide guidance or how do you take into all these different tax codes when you’re on a Bitcoin standard? Zachary: what a great opportunity to say that I’m not your tax advisor and, you should consult your local accountants and lawyers. \ What I’ll say is, , the [00:11:00] rules tend to be pretty. Similar across jurisdiction, , I don’t know the absolute nuance of the Australian tax code. But I would say that, , the world has gravitated towards certain product designs. So our current product, as I said, is its whole life. So it lasts your whole life. And because you will eventually die, hopefully many, many, many long years from now, there will eventually be a payout. , And then our product really, , . It’s an insurance product from the 1830s. , Basically you pay us, a certain amount and you can either do that as a lump sum in the beginning or as a 10 pay. #### AI and HPC Infrastructure And you might be , why would I choose one versus the other? And that is the answer to your question. It is about, the particular tax codes of individual countries. So,, in the United States, for example, if you want to get. All of the best tax [00:12:00] benefits, , in particular, if you want, well, I’ll tell you what those benefits are, but if you want all those benefits, you need to have the temp pay. And then sometimes if you’re in other countries, it just doesn’t matter and you’re just , oh, I’ll send you, , I’ll pay now. , But the fundamental product is something, I’ll use the American example of the Tempe. So you pay. Let’s say, I’m gonna use what, maybe big numbers to some people, small numbers to other people. But you might pay one Bitcoin a year for 10 years. So you’ve paid us 10 Bitcoin and then we promise a fixed guaranteed amount. That’s a bigger number than that, 13, 14, 15, 16. So it depends, on your age and your health and stuff. And on some level that’s the whole thing. you give us 10. Or you pay 10 and whenever you die, we pay you 15. that, that’s the policy , what’s cool about that one is, , you get hit by a bus tomorrow and you’ve only paid, , one premium. you’re getting 15. Prefer not to get by a bus. The second is we’re churning [00:13:00] 10 into 15 , we should talk about how we do that. But basically we get relatively low yields on Bitcoin. , And even if you could do exactly what we do, which is get, , two to 3% yields on Bitcoin, which you probably can’t ’cause we do very comp, not complicated, but we do institutional stuff. And in some there’s a lot of expertise there. But even if you could, you would owe taxes every year. You would owe interest income tax. So inside a policy, it’s a 401k or an IRA or something it’s compounding tax free. So we can get further than you could even if you were investing this Bitcoin yourself. The third thing is it goes to your kids, income tax free or your benef again, your wife, your beneficiaries or whatever. And the last benefit, which is why it’s a campaign, is you can borrow Bitcoin back out of the policy. Over time, and that is new tax basis Bitcoin in your lifetime. So if you believe that Bitcoin is going to be worth , much [00:14:00] more in dollar terms in 10 years, or 15 years, or 20 years, this gives you optional liquidity. And that’s liquidity without any margin calling. That’s liquidity without, the possible being. Be blown out. ’cause basically you’re borrowing against amount we owe your beneficiaries. So, , , you put in 10, in 15 years, you borrow out two and then your kids, they get 13 instead of 15. Right. but that is fresh Bitcoin for you. So we have people who have. Five Bitcoin, who, , sums in a hardware wallet, sums in a multisig, and then they add us, we have people who have 5,000 Bitcoin and then they buy a max policy. , And different people, , are optimizing around, their specific situation and their taxes and their estate planning and , whatever their, what the liquidity. , But , that is what the policy is whole life. Single pay or temp pay. , And you get these cool benefits. JohnPaul: , a galaxy or an ave because you [00:15:00] don’t have that liquidation risk. ’cause everything’s Bitcoin denominated. Let’s jump into where’s the yield? , How do you guys turn 10 Bitcoin to 15 Bitcoin over someone’s life? And, , I wanna hear more about that. I. Zachary: , yeah. , fundamentally what we do is we have something that almost. Other people have in Bitcoin, but they don’t tend to use, which is we have duration. That is when you entrust us with your Bitcoin, you’re entrusting it to us for a really long time. And I should say, , ’cause that is scary that there, there’s a lot of stuff we haven’t . We have a regulator and we have an independent, board in Bermuda, and there’s a Chief Risk Officer and enterprise risk management framework. , There’s this external audit, there’s tons and tons and tons of people who are checking, , what we’re saying and doing. , So unlike I think Block Fi or Celsius or vo, , these people have blown up. I spend a lot of my day on risk and compliance, and there’s a lot of people who are checking on this. , Fundamentally what we do is we lend to institutional [00:16:00] counterparties, Bitcoin, and we do that on an over collateralized basis. And, we actually do that for two reasons, that it’s over collateralized or collateralized or over collateralized. One reason is we just think that’s the right way to do it, , in Safeway. The other reason actually is when you run an insurance company, , as I said, you have to , you do all this math and you have to do all these solvency calculations and we have to post our own Bitcoin. And the every type of investment you have comes with a cost, a capital charge. And the other than you asked treasury bonds, which we can’t buy ’cause they’re not nominated in Bitcoin, the. The safest considered asset is assets that we can classify as collateral loans, and that is the collateral is worth as much, , as or more than the lens loans we do. So [00:17:00] fundamentally what we do is we say, Hey, we can lend to you for a year or two years when no one else would. . These institutions can borrow Bitcoin. They do rope often, borrow Bitcoin overnight or whatever, we can offer is that term length. So you want to borrow Bitcoin for a year. You want to borrow Bitcoin for two years, we’ll lend it to you, but we want. A hundred page credit agreement. We want seniority, we want collateral, we want covenants, we want information rights. , So we were talking, , before, we’ve lent to a couple miners and their theory is, oh, I have Bitcoin cash flows. in the end, that’s what the, , I, yes, I transform electricity, which I pay for dollars, but fundamentally, my cash flows are in Bitcoin. So we’ll lend Bitcoin to them. They’ll presumably sell the Bitcoin or transform the Bitcoin into mining rigs or whatever, [00:18:00] electricity. And then, , , it’s a bond or something. we’ve lent them a hundred Bitcoin, they, pay us. Five Bitcoin a month for, I can’t do the math that quick, but five Bitcoin a month , for two years. #### Regulatory and Policy Outlook , That’s only 60 Bitcoin. And they pay us 40, , five at the end. And, , we’ve gotten in that example, which we wouldn’t do, , two point half percent returns, but, fundamentally that’s the business we’re in is, building a yield curve in Bitcoin, , building, . Debt capital markets and, but doing so entirely on a collateralized or over collateralized basis. And I should say all these numbers are low. we are not getting 7% returns or 10% returns or 12% returns. There aren’t safe 10% returns at Bitcoin, in my opinion. To turn 10 into 15. Our guarantees look 2% returns for our users and then we get. About 3% returns and the difference between two and three is the business of being an insurance company. That’s how we make money. JohnPaul: Zach, [00:19:00] when you’re dealing with an asset Bitcoin that just is eating the capital markets and is a black hole of capital, it seems you’re in a completely different insurance game compared to normal insurance with us denominated, debt and liabilities, but assets appreciating faster because of debasement. You’re in a much harder game because you guys are all Bitcoin denominated. , how often do you think about that and also do you see other groups that are large USD insurance providers coming into this space, or is it just so unique and more complicated because of the hurdle rate that Bitcoin already has built into it? Zachary: on the first front, look, it’s harder in some ways and it’s easier in others, right? In the harder it is, the Bitcoin rate of return, the Bitcoin hurdle rate, it’s all, , the rage right now to talk about this. , we’ve been thinking that way for three, four years. , But I want to go back to the very [00:20:00] beginning and say , we believe there’s gonna be an econ. There is and will continue to be a growing economic system in Bitcoin. And if there is an economic system in Bitcoin. There’s going to be capital markets in Bitcoin and there’s gonna be debt capital markets in Bitcoin and there’s gonna be a yield curve and there’s gonna be term lending in Bitcoin. And we think that’s inevitable. And we see ourselves as both the recipient of that market, but also, , one of the creators of it. So I think it’s actually, it’s hard, but in some ways it is easier, I think to just think entirely in this new currency as a currency. , Now I can’t entirely do that, right? I have to pay my lawyers and, my, my external auditor, \, took payment in dollars. , But we fundamentally think when you’re running a. A Swiss Frank insurer. You don’t ask yourself every day, what’s the exchange rate with the dollar? It just doesn’t matter. And, , that’s the same. And then in some ways it’s easier because, , so much of insurance [00:21:00] is, well, one, it’s boring and it’s commodity, and everyone’s products look the same. But the second thing is that, it. Yeah, I think it’s based on something that doesn’t really make sense, by which it’s based on, , fiat or based on, , things you can invest in with fiat. And because of that, life insurance products become needlessly complicated. riders and , okay, no, it’s not a dollar policy. It’s index to the s and p 500. It, unless the s and p 500, , earns too much and then it’s capped, or there’s principle protection, blah, blah, blah. It’s so complicated. And it’s complicated because I think the core value prop is confused. , Which is why I joke that actually by having. The hardest money in the world, we’ve been able to run a life insurance company it’s [00:22:00] 1830, or whatever. It’s this, 18th or 19th century. Because we’re able to go back to the first principles of what is the real value prop? And the real value prop is, protecting your family, doing so in a tax efficient way. , And having this simple understanding with our policy holders, which is to use the numbers used before, you give me 10 Bitcoin, I will promise that . Your loved ones get 15 and we all expect or not we all, but the people who buy the product expect 15 Bitcoin to be worth a lot more. Right. So we start with this very simple question for many of our sales conversations, which is, would you prefer your kids got one and a half million dollars or 15 Bitcoin? And look for many people in the world, the answer would be one and a half million dollars. They don’t want the magic beans. But I think for people who’ve . Believe and bought in. The answer is obviously 15 Bitcoin and we’ve built an entire company around that. I’ve talked for a long time on this question, but I’ll answer your second question, which the second question was, [00:23:00] do I think that, big historic and combat insurers will do this? I do not think they’re gonna do it alone. I have been surprised this year is a very. Institutional year for Bitcoin, right? There’s just so much institutional interest and how that’s expressing itself with us is we have received a ton of inbound requests to partner together to bring Bitcoin products to market, and we are happy to do that. fundamentally, what we want to do is we want more people in the world to be able to save in Bitcoin, and if that means working with. An incumbent insurer in the US or Singapore or UAE or whatever and helping them, , do it because we are the only insurer in insurance land that can hold Bitcoin, then we’re happy to do that. And if you had talked to me a year ago, I would’ve been . One, I’m not partnering with these people. And two, they’re never gonna get around to it. , And now what I think is they don’t have [00:24:00] the capabilities or the interest or the balance sheet to do it alone, but, , I think you’ll see more and more bitcoin life insurance products and annuities. But that is all gonna be in partnership with us. JohnPaul: It makes complete sense and as you keep on referring to this Bitcoin circular economy that is existing as you exceed with this, succeed with this one product. What other financial primitives or insurance products will you guys, move out to? Or is it simply, we wanna be the best at this product and we don’t want to get into annuities or pensions or reinsurance? Zachary: Oh, no, no. , . Basically we’re interested in doing everything that an insurance company does that is genuinely, long term. , And by long term we are really focused on a year or more, , which may not sound super long term, but our whole life product, obviously lasts 40, 50 years. #### Industry Deep Dive We’re playing next year to do a fixed deferred annuity, which is just [00:25:00] a. A savings product. You put Bitcoin , in an account and it’s compounding, let’s say 2% a year, and then you can withdraw it during your lifetime. Again, very tax advantage. , We’re working on a product now called a guaranteed investment contract, which again is a certificate of deposit with an insurance company instead of a bank. , So that would be a way for, , users or institutional counterparties to, I was gonna say, it’s so funny ‘, okay. If banking, I’d say a civic deposit. If you’re , come from crypto land, I’d say , you can stake your Bitcoin, by which , we will invest, you can entrust us with your Bitcoin for a year and we’ll go get a yield on it. The way I mentioned, yes, reinsurance. , There’s this whole category of stuff called, , company owned life insurance, , which isn’t the group life you might sign up for in your payroll, but it’s literally companies buy life insurance on their employees, , or put it in pensions or deferred compensation plans. We intend to do all of that. I think the things that it’s funny come to [00:26:00] mind the fastest for people is often. Term life, , because it’s the most common product that’ll probably be one of the last things we do. , And primarily that’s for two reasons. One is. The idea of term life is it, lasts a certain term and you’re very unlikely to die in the term, but if you did, it would be terrible. So you pay a little amount and then you get a really big payout, right? So I pay, for example, maybe a thousand dollars a year and I get, I don’t know, a million or $2 million in coverage. So the reason you do that is if you’re youngish and . If you get hit by a bus, that’d be really bad. And, , so you buy this term life. But there’s two reasons we don’t that. , By the way, you should buy a term life, but we don’t it for Bitcoin. One is, , if you are one of the unfortunate people who dies inside the 10 year term, , the price fluctuations of Bitcoin are quite up and down. On that timescale and we really want to push users to [00:27:00] think, or policy holders to think in that 20, 30, 40, 50 year time span. Whereas if you bought term life, your family really could end up in the situation where you’re , oh, we happen to be where it is in the cycle where Bitcoin’s worth a lot less than you paid. Whereas I think as you go over time, we feel much better that , okay, we’re actually gonna be getting our users much more purchasing power than when they bought the policy. And the second is the happy end of a term life policy is that you don’t get a payout. Right. , Most people who get term life, they live and that’s good ’cause you lived the fundamental idea, right, is none of us knows when we’re gonna die, but when you have a thousand people, you can start getting some statistical regularity on. who’s gonna die that some number of us are gonna die. So if a thousand people all put a dollar in a pot and one person’s gonna die this year, then they get a thousand dollars. Right? And that makes sense. There’s real protection and risk sharing. But for those 999 people in that example, they put a [00:28:00] dollar in a pot, but it could feel they didn’t get anything and they did get something. They got the protection. But it may feel that way. And we just think that, . There’s not a great history in Bitcoin or crypto of promising something and then people feeling that they didn’t get anything. So we to stick with products where, , we’re making promises and guarantees where we can definitively show that we are meeting these promises and guarantees and , there’s never a question, ever about whether we’ve met a promise and a guarantee. JohnPaul: And I guess Zach, on the promising guarantee, you’re mentioning, , thousands of Bitcoin sometimes by customers. If you were Zachary: no, no. Sorry. We have a policy Max. You can’t give us more than 30 or 40 Bitcoin. JohnPaul: Okay, so 30 or 40 Bitcoin, which is still a significant amount of Zachary: a lot. It’s a lot. But yeah, we have had people ask us if they can, pay a thousand Bitcoin. The problem is if that guy dies, so We very prudently manage our, risks by having policy limits. JohnPaul: Then my next [00:29:00] question , is what type of visibility does a policy holder have into , the company and the audits? Zachary: The audits are public, actually. So if you go to our website. Write up. It’s one of the main things on the website is, the financials. And you can see my CEO letter. You can see the external auditor. You can absolutely see our financials. , Our current auditor financials are from last year. And you can see at the time the end of last year we had something 250 Bitcoin and assets. And we’ve actually more than. Doubled since then. , , the next time people see that is in our 2020, five audit, which will be released in early 2026. JohnPaul: And what is one of the biggest questions that you get when people are trying to sign up? That’s more a hurdle for you guys as a Bitcoin insurance provider? Zachary: Yeah. Look, , fundamentally, I joke that we do a lot of [00:30:00] things that are not beloved in Bitcoin land, right? one you send us your Bitcoin. Nobody likes doing that. Two, we manage your Bitcoin and everyone else’s in a giant pile, right? So there’s a ation. The third is we lend Bitcoin to get yield. Right? , So we have reasons for all of those things, right? , And fundamentally, the reason we do all these things is not just because we want to build a great company, but it’s actually how we comply with all these tax rules and stuff. So I have a lot of lawyers and we have, tax opinions about this is in fact life insurance and it will in fact get, these tax protections. #### Technical Discussion , so the number one question people ask us is , why should we trust you? And then what I’d say is that, it’s all these things adding up together. It’s that I’m not anonymous. It’s that, , we have [00:31:00] people, , we just closed a policy, I think maybe yesterday that someone who first came to the website and signed up 18 months ago or right when we started. So, , we see that. Having the external audit published. we’ve raised a series A from. a $40 million Series A from Fulger, who is a well-known, Bitcoin fund and framework, and Weis, who’s a well-known Bitcoin og. Right? I come on podcasts this and answer questions. We talk. Every single person who comes and signs up on our website, , someone on my team or I. We have a Zoom call with them and we answer every question they have, right? , These things add up over time, , to people trusting us more. But we know it’s a big ask. That’s why people don’t do it. , But we are fortunate that, again, users have trusted us with now, many hundreds of Bitcoin and, trust [00:32:00] is something you earn and, , one of the way you earn it is we just do exactly what we say we’re gonna do. And, , that’s been working out for us. JohnPaul: And that’s amazing. , that’s the goal of, to your point, building the Bitcoin economy. You have to sniff out, okay, what is the legitimacy of each one of these groups? And I definitely, , see that, , you guys come off. As a legitimate Bitcoin company, based on all the reasons you’ve already listed, when it comes to, people building in the intersection of legacy finance and the Bitcoin economy, what advice do you have to other entrepreneurs other than what you mentioned about, staying to your word and being trustworthy and being visible when it comes to building in that intersection of the old world versus the new bitcoin world? Zachary: Well, I think the biggest difference is that in the new Bitcoin world, one, transactions being somewhat irreversible, it requires that you are more trustworthy and, . I think the second is [00:33:00] that there’s obviously a history of frauds and Ponzi schemes, right? So I really place myself, , with. As you say, a, there’s, a cohort of people who I think, who are really building the Bitcoin economy at the intersection of Bitcoin , and regulated financial services. , And I think sometimes you’ll notice that the, things might be a little slower. They might be a little, less flashy. they might, , in our case we spent a year getting. A sandbox license then another nine months until we launched then another year until we got fully licensed. And that was really, man was that hard. , but if you’re gonna do something complicated and difficult, I think you have to do it the right way. And I look at, these aren’t necessarily all Bitcoin companies, , I look at an Anchorage or , even. I think Coinbase over and over again made the choice to, be a little [00:34:00] more buttoned up. And I think that’s the right choice. But again, Anchorage becoming a, an o CCC regulated trust company, I don’t know even, there are a lot of, I think, people doing the right things, but I think the right things can often be. Frustrating as an entrepreneur because it also means you go, probably go a little slower and I think , that’s the right, certainly the right trade off for us. But I think actually in general, , that’s the right trade off when you’re building an entire new economic system in an entire new currency. JohnPaul: E Exactly. You don’t wanna mess up, you don’t wanna become , the Mount Gox or an FTX, you want to do it right. As you’re mentioning. And , there’s plenty of protocols and players that have done it right, that have published those, that show you the regulatory framework to work in. So I think that’s great advice. And one of the questions I have. Is about you wanna serve a billion people. So what’s the roadmap to get there? You mentioned people coming to websites, signing up, even if they’re not in one of those countries that you currently serve. But how do you get to a billion people who meanwhile. Zachary: Yeah, I [00:35:00] mean, fundamentally we believe this is a once in a century opportunity to build a competitive, long-term savings company because we are right at the emergence of an entire new economic system. The analogy I use is, , probably the only top 10 global life insurer. That was founded in the last 50 years is a company called Pingam, which is the life insurance company in China. And they were founded in the nineties and they rode the wave of that country growing. And I think we want to ride the same wave of Bitcoin penetrating, , the global economy. So I think there’s two things or three things. One is first and foremost, what we’ve talked about, which is our core number one value is to meet our commitments. , To be trustworthy, to do exactly what we say we’re gonna do. And by the way, that’s just unusual actually. I remember, , when we were raising our series [00:36:00] A and we went to a bunch of VCs that I had talked to about the seed, where I’d talked to previously, and they were just , oh. You did exactly what you said you were gonna do. That’s really unusual. That’s our number one North star of how to grow , is to, meet our commitments. The second is wic. We have a theory of, from the very, very first, memo we wrote around the company, we used the analogy of Tesla. Which is we were gonna build a Roadster and our product right now, just to be honest, it’s a Roadster, right? It’s basically for at least globally, right? High net worth or ultra and high net worth individuals, primarily for protection and tax planning and. , But , we want in time as we build more of a balance sheet, as we build more technology to systematically move down market. And that’s both with, new products we talked about, and then also in being able to profitably serve, smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller sizes. , Whatever [00:37:00] that will eventually be. , Our current policy minimum is one Bitcoin, which is a lot of money., I hope I always get the orders of magnitude wrong. , Our policy minimum is one Bitcoin total, which will look a 10th of a Bitcoin a year. , But still, that’s a lot of money. Actually, we’re about to, when lower that, because when we set the limit, Bitcoin was at 30,000. So obviously, , dollars. But in time, , we wanna start thinking about policies in terms of. Hundreds of thousands of Satoshis maybe, which is much smaller. And , that’s building up technical infrastructure. That’s building up regulatory infrastructure. So that’s our plan is we, have this product, it’s primarily for high net worth individuals. #### Bitcoin Price Dynamics And then we systematically, get lower and lower and can serve people, , all over the world, digitally and globally. Yep. So, meet our commitments and then systematically move down market. And then the third thing I already said, which is , ride the wave of Bitcoin ization, we don’t see [00:38:00] ourselves as actually being in the business of convincing people to buy Bitcoin. We see that as , that’s the thing that happens in the world and that is the thing that’s gonna increasingly happen in the world. And, , yes, maybe that you can have disagreements about whether the ETFs are good, but I think that BlackRock saying that 1% of your retirement savings should be in Bitcoin makes a lot of sense. , And that’s good in the world. And we don’t think that convincing is our job. We think our job is to support and help the people who’ve already made the decision to. , Partially or wholly live, their life in Bitcoin. , And we think that’ll be more people every year. And eventually, yes, it’ll be a billion people in the world who have some, interest and exposure and investment in Bitcoin. And then they’re gonna want, a partner who will help them with long-term savings. JohnPaul: I think Zach, that’s something , the Bitcoiners in the world need. So thank you so much for developing that and bringing this to market because it is so important to think about this global reserve currency that we’re [00:39:00] building and the ability to have it passed on without being taxed to a wazoo, even though that’s not the normal term Zachary: a technical term. The wa? Yeah, the wazoo. Yeah. JohnPaul: One of the questions I had, as you were mentioning, the smaller amounts. When you have a client who, let’s say something happens in their life, let’s say they didn’t die, but they got disabled and they can’t make one of those monthly, or those annual premium payments in Bitcoin, or if the price appreciates too quickly, how do you guys work , with someone on Zachary: yeah, Look, my personal advice is never be short Bitcoin, Zachary: don’t buy a policy that, is bigger than your stack. , We do have some more , I’d say Tradify users who have water policy bigger than our stack. ’cause they’re , oh, this will force me to dollar cost average into Bitcoin. Again, personally I wouldn’t do that. So, I almost all of our users, , maybe they have. A Bitcoin, they buy a policy or , they have five Bitcoin and they buy a two Bitcoin policy, or they have 500 [00:40:00] Bitcoin if you’re so fortunate and they buy a, , a 30 Bitcoin policy. But , we don’t really suggest that you go beyond your current stack, even if you’re only paying us, once a year. And then actually a lot of people prepay their premiums. They just don’t wanna think about it. So they, even though, that. We keep it in for you and then we pay ourselves, , over time. , But either way, again, just don’t recommend shorting Bitcoin. JohnPaul: Yeah, it’s really hard to beat that asset. And That’s was, makes sense and was one of the, I guess, the questions that was in my mind. And, what other information should the viewers know about, , the product or how to get involved? Zachary: Well we’re at, meanwhile, BM spelled has mean the word meanwhile is spelled. , And. Yeah, honestly, I wanna say that if you go to the website and you start filling out the form, that is not a commitment to buy the policy. [00:41:00] That is actually a commitment to have one of us reach out to you and find time to learn more about the policy. I think there tends to be lots of individual questions, lots of individual circumstances,, and concerns. So that’s the number one way to find out more is to go to meanwhile.bm., Sign up on the website, a any step after, , having a username and password. , And then someone will reach out from the team , and connect with you. JohnPaul: And then do you have any resources for people to learn more about? . Zachary: Well, yeah, there is more information on the website. And then, yeah, we do have collateral and stuff, , that we can send people who. Who want it. , And then, , you should listen to this whole podcast. And, , actually going back to trust, one of the things is, , now, being on more podcasts, but also, there’s a bunch of, , Axios wrote an article about us and our rounds got announced in Fortune and we’re pretty deliberate about getting pr, not, , a lot of PR can be [00:42:00] bs, but I think just to. Confirm that, , it’s not just me. , there’s a whole team of people, there’s a whole team of investors. So folks can definitely learn more about us. I find that, , Googling meanwhile doesn’t do a lot of good, but Googling meanwhile Bitcoin or meanwhile Bitcoin insurance or Bitcoin insurance, life insurance, you’ll find a lot about us. JohnPaul: Well, thank you Zach. I really appreciate you coming on and explaining the product personally for me. I think , I heard about you guys previously might have signed up on the email list and was , oh, what? Is this? Bitcoin life insurance. I’m 28 years old, so a little bit early, but still not too early to be thinking about it and wanting to Zachary: You definitely in a policy. Let’s get you signed up. JohnPaul: so I think I’m ready , to talk more about it and see what the #### Mining Infrastructure Development Zachary: I’d say minors are a core demographic. JohnPaul: So if you guys are, , Bitcoin miners, most people that do listen to this show, reach out to meanwhile and see how you can get connected with a policy and, yeah, , that’s a genuine promotion. No payment for this show or for, , having you on here. Just so the listeners know. Zachary: Yeah, thanks so much. And , number one is I think [00:43:00] individual if you’re in the mining business, , you probably as an individual. And then as I mentioned, we are working on the certificate deposit product. And actually the reason we’re building that is so many people who have bitcoin treasuries, and I don’t just mean big Bitcoin treasury companies, but also individual mining companies and stuff that, they have just, asked us to help them get. Low steady yields , on their Bitcoin. , So if either of those things are interesting, you should again, meanwhile.bm. I’ll drop that. JohnPaul: Well, thank you again for coming on, Zach, and remember to mine on. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Decoding Bitcoin Mining ASICs | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 23 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/bitcoin-mining-asics-penny-ether/ Decoding Bitcoin Mining ASICs | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 23 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 23 # Decoding Bitcoin Mining ASICs with Penny Ether Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Penny Ether to discuss decoding bitcoin mining asics. ### Decoding Bitcoin Mining: Is It a Hamster Wheel or a Money Printer? Digital Gold Podcast: How Penny Ether Turns Data into Profits in the Bitcoin Mining Industry: Strategies, Market Insights, Challenges and Predictions for 2025 This Digital Gold Podcast episode with JohnPaul Baric, dives deep into the fascinating (and often complex) world of Bitcoin mining with expert insights from Penny Ether, a Bitcoin mining hobbyist, trader, and full-time analyst. They discuss the intricacies of the mining industry, offering a candid look at what drives profitability and how to navigate its unique challenges. Get ready to have your understanding of Bitcoin mining expanded. Full podcast episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/how-penny-ether-turns-data-into-profits-in-the/id1539971833?i=1000688303698) ### Here’s a peek at what they uncovered: The ASIC Hamster Wheel Explained: Penny demystifies the “ASIC hamster wheel,” explaining how miners constantly need to upgrade their hardware (ASICs) to stay competitive due to increasing network difficulty and technological advancements in chip efficiency. This dynamic creates a cycle where miners must continually invest in new equipment or risk declining earnings. Beyond the Hype: Analyzing Mining Company Performance: Penny discusses the difficulties in comparing mining companies due to different strategies such as “hodl” (holding Bitcoin), pure-play mining, and high-performance computing (HPC). He emphasizes the importance of analyzing costs per kilowatt-hour, fleet efficiency, and overall operational strategy, not just growth. Navigating Misaligned Incentives: The conversation explores how public Bitcoin mining companies sometimes prioritize short-term stock price increases over long-term profitability, driven by stock-based compensation and market hype. This can lead to decisions that don’t always benefit the company’s underlying value or long-term health. Transparency and Omissions: Penny shares that while Bitcoin mining companies often disclose a lot of data, they sometimes omit key details, making it difficult for investors to get a clear picture of their operations. He suggests that more transparency is needed regarding a company’s existing fleet, future capital expenditures, and how those numbers impact their projections. Strategic Capital Allocation: Penny and JohnPaul discuss how some miners may strategically buy older, less efficient ASICs when they are cheap to leverage bull market runs if their power costs are low, while public companies often buy the newest ASICs to show the most hashrate growth and attract investors. Future Outlook and Predictions: Penny shares his price prediction for Bitcoin of $130,000 and network hashrate of 950 EH by June 2025. He also names his favorite Bitcoin miners which include Core Scientific, Iron, Cipher, and Bitfarms. ### Key Takeaways: Bitcoin mining is a highly competitive industry with a built-in difficulty mechanic that drives profit margins to equilibrium. The “ASIC hamster wheel” requires miners to continually upgrade their equipment to maintain competitiveness, which is like an arms race. Public mining companies may prioritize short-term gains over long-term value creation, often playing to market hype. Analyzing a miner’s all-in cost per kilowatt-hour, fleet efficiency, and capital allocation strategy is crucial for determining true profitability. Understanding how companies handle convertible notes and other financial instruments can be key to evaluating their growth and potential dilution. ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Penny’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/how-penny-ether-turns-data-into-profits-in-the/id1539971833?i=1000688303698) #### Related Resources Managed Mining Program → Bitcoin Mining Hosting Services → Mining Services & Remote Hands → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to another episode of digital gold where today we’re talking to Penny Ether. He is a Bitcoin mining hobbyist, a trader, and a full time analyst in the Bitcoin mining space. I’m excited to bring him on the podcast to get his understanding of the Bitcoin mining space, what he sees for 2025 and , how the bull market has affected his predictions and the Bitcoin miners to date. JohnPaul: Hi, happy to be here. So what made you look at the Bitcoin mining industry and how did you get here? That’s a Penny Ether: pretty interesting question. I guess it started in maybe 2019, 2020, whenever that last run started, I think it was the end of 2020, I was on sabbatical and just full time looking at the market and I noticed that, , I had Bitcoin at the time. Penny Ether: I still do. and I noticed Bitcoin miners, were just surging. It was insane. There was Mara and Riot, and they would announce, purchasing these things called ASICs and their stock would jump up a ton. And I was curious, what’s behind all that. [00:01:00] How does Bitcoin mining actually work? Penny Ether: At the time I knew a decent amount about Bitcoin, but I never dug into the whole mining aspect, the actual economics of how it works, hash rate, buying ASIC’S the efficiency of those things and low cost of power and all that. So I dug into it then, and it seemed a massive bubble and I didn’t see how the business was Penny Ether: It wasn’t, didn’t seem a growth business. It has a built in difficulty mechanic. And so I was just on the sidelines then. And then if we fast forward to this latest cycle, it’s happening., it’s a lot more complicated. The companies have grown up. There’s a lot more of them. It’s a lot more interesting. Penny Ether: There’s a lot more liquidity. It seemed something to that is worth digging into, further. And, I started going on Twitter about a year ago and I was only seeing everything bullish all the time. People didn’t really understand the quote, Asic hamster wheel, the highly competitive aspect of it. Penny Ether: So that’s when I started becoming vocal about it. And I wanted to see where I was wrong. Cause I did all this research on my own. There were [00:02:00] some other people that would, , seemed aware of it. I think certainly everyone in the industry is aware of how competitive it is and how network hash rates, always your enemy. Penny Ether: And every time there’s a newer generation of ASICs, , your competitors are going to get them, hash rates going to go up. So you have to get them yourself. And, , that didn’t seem very well understood. So I wanted to see what I was missing. So I went on to Twitter and I was pretty vocal about it and started digging, looking at how companies we’re presenting things. Penny Ether: , and it seemed a little bit misleading and all the assumptions were hash rate wouldn’t grow so high. And, , look at our cost per Bitcoin is super low. If you only count our energy costs and not if you count everything else, stock based comp was through the roof. There were just all sorts of things that were, none of them weren’t, none of the things they say are not factual. Penny Ether: They’re all facts. They just omit a lot of context and, it seems a lot of the investing base is unaware of that, or, maybe they don’t care. [00:03:00] So that’s a a brief overview of how I, got to where I am, I guess. Just posting about stuff on Twitter and trying to see where I’m wrong and see where I’m right. Penny Ether: That’s it. JohnPaul: And I really appreciate that overview. One of the questions that came up was what is the ASIC hamster reel for maybe those who aren’t in the industry and follow on. Do you think ASICs will still appreciate as much as they have in previous cycles or have the public markets learned maybe not to FOMO buy they did in 2020, increasing the price of machines rapidly? Penny Ether: , so the ASIC Hamster Wheel, first of all, it’s not an official term, it’s the name of the game in mining, is, You take energy, so you have energy, you pay some amount for it. Some, , dollars per kilowatt hour, then you use that energy to run machines and they have a certain amount of efficiency in them where they can convert, the electricity into hashes. Penny Ether: And then. The Bitcoin network gives you a certain amount of Bitcoin for the number of hashes. that depends on network difficulty. So you have two little [00:04:00] steps in between your energy to getting actual Bitcoin. And those two steps are, you have a machine, you have an ASIC, which has some efficiency with a converts electricity to hashrate, and then you have the network difficulty that converts hashrate into Bitcoin. Penny Ether: The way it’s set up is, , Network difficulty, when there’s more hash rate everywhere, network difficulty goes up. So it ensures that there’s an equal amount of Bitcoin created. So, just because you personally grow your hash rate, if everyone else is doing it, you’re going to end up making the same amount of Bitcoin per unit time as you were before. Penny Ether: It’s the difficulty mechanic that’s self adjusting. And in the long run, it drives profit margins down to, some equilibrium. Of course, there’s volatility in Bitcoin itself, the value of Bitcoin. It can jump up and there won’t be a ton of new hashrate added instantly. So you can make outsized returns , in those times. Penny Ether: But in the long run, it’s a process that’s seeking in equilibrium where profit margins just get driven lower. The ASIC hamster wheel, that’s the other part of that. So you have these machines that convert electricity to hashrate. And [00:05:00] it’s , the efficiency there is based on, you could say, just the overall semiconductor industry. Penny Ether: So, Moore’s Law and Cumi’s Law, you’re gonna have more computation, , per unit time, , it’s gonna be cheaper, you’re gonna have more computation , per energy unit. , that’s just how it’s been going for 20 years and, it’s sometimes it slows down a little, but then the next innovation comes through. Penny Ether: So what you have, that dynamic there is every time there’s newer models of these ASICs. , that have higher efficiency, so you get more hash rate out of the same amount of energy. And also, it’s cheaper, , per hash rate. Every time that happens, all the everyone else buys those machines because they’re priced based on ROI, , you can justify buying them. #### Energy Meets AI Demand Penny Ether: You can say, well, , I’ll break even on it in two years or three years or whatever. So everyone upgrades those machines. If you have the same amount of power, you now have more hash rate in that same amount of power. So network hash rate goes up and then your existing machines. Mindless Bitcoin. Penny Ether: So you either have to buy the newer machines or just watch your earnings [00:06:00] decay as difficulty goes up. So that’s, a few of us have called d it the ASIC hamster wheel. You can call it a treadmill. You can also think of it as a, an arms race. So the arms dealers are constantly coming out with better weapons and bigger, bigger, more powerful weapons, and they’re cheaper. Penny Ether: And so if everyone else is going to buy those things, you have to buy them too. So there’s a few ways to think about it. But. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s worked since, , forever. There are periods where Bitcoin goes up and hashrate doesn’t grow as fast, but the general trend is, you’re going to buy these machines and maybe they’ll get two or three years out of them. Penny Ether: Maybe in year four or year five, Bitcoin has a rally and the machines are making money again, but you’d probably be better off using your power capacity, running newer machines and making more money. JohnPaul: And when it comes to these outside return periods. And from my perspective, this is a one year period, roughly every four years from what we’ve seen in the market. JohnPaul: Do [00:07:00] you agree with that perspective? Do you think Bitcoin mining companies should be allocating capital to machines? every year, no matter what the price is, and just be dollar cost averaging into equipment, or do you think they should be strategic and try to time these cycles? How do you view the capital deployment strategy of miners, especially the public companies who have access to their ATM offerings to dilute their shareholder base? JohnPaul: And if they buy machines at the top, we saw last cycle, It can truly wreck their value and flip them so that they’re underwater and unable to service their debt. Penny Ether: Yeah there’s a lot of facets to that question because it’s not just about having a business that makes the most money , there are some miners that , everyone will say that’s their end goal So they want to have the create the most shareholder value, but in this industry there very clearly is something to be said about short term Decisions, which increase the value of your stock and then you capture that premium in your stock to ensure that you’re growing in size, your [00:08:00] market cap is going up. Penny Ether: So there’s a lot of things to consider. , you could say it’s a long term game and you want to have as much capital as possible to weather through the bull markets and the bear markets. So it’s really complicated, but if I were running a mining business and my goal, , let’s say it was private and my goal was to just Have a decent return of, I don’t know, 10 or 20 percent , of everything each year. Penny Ether: Sure you can. The whole cycle thing is another complication is , is it really that predictable? if everybody knows that Bitcoin is going to go on a rally every four years, it seems the market wouldn’t allow for such an inefficiency. It seems . People would front run it and then they’d get out early if they saw what happened last cycle. Penny Ether: So it seems that should be something that smooths out over time. So if I were a miner, I would probably look to buy There’s one more facet to this, which is the pricing of the ASICs. , you have the older generation ones with, which might be super cheap, but they’re not as efficient, but you can see a huge ROI on them if you think there’s a bull run or if your cost of [00:09:00] electricity is low. Penny Ether: So , each model of ASIC has different return dynamics based on, what you’re looking to maximize and what your costs are. The public companies tend to just buy the newest one. So they have the most amount of hash rate and they can point to. Growing revenues and growing month over month or year over year hashrate and growing everything And sweeping what the overall costs of that were or whether or not those were good investments or not That’s what it doesn’t matter to the shareholder base. Penny Ether: They just want to see growth and growth and growth They want to say oh, they’re gonna grow 10 percent Every few months and bitcoin is going to go up exponentially and da da da and you do the math and you find you , oh, they’re going to make unlimited money. Penny Ether: So all the public companies play to that misunderstanding or they play to those aspirations or. selling lottery tickets, I guess. it’s a really complicated question. I don’t think I answered it well. It depends what your goals as a company are. If you want to raise capital and you want to grow, it seems what’s been rewarded is just growing your hash rate no matter what.[00:10:00] Penny Ether: And then you can justify that by saying, oh, it’s a good cost, or oh, we think Bitcoin’s gonna go up, or, if you project out current conditions to four years, we make a lot of money, never mind what network hash rate is gonna do. So, it depends on your goals and what you’re actually trying to do. JohnPaul: And I think you formatted that really well because incentives drive everything. And I want to talk more about stock based comp and GNA of public mining companies versus private mining and the excess that it doesn’t have. Versus public, because to your point, there are multitude of public players. JohnPaul: Some of them are, Hey, we grow small. We’re strategic. We only deploy capital when it makes sense. We won’t go above this energy rate when it comes to our hosting. We won’t go above this cost per megawatt app to deploy a megawatt. And I’ve seen that with many conversations of effect during my time in the mining space, depending on which player or which group you’re talking to. JohnPaul: So my question to you is JohnPaul: how do you navigate? The mixed or misaligned [00:11:00] incentives of stock based comp to potentially just increased stock price, which might be tied just to Bitcoin’s price versus underlying profitability and then inversely. Increasing the Bitcoin per shareholder or per share, which has been this new comment based on micro strategy and this Bitcoin yield idea. #### Industry Deep Dive JohnPaul: How do you view those dynamics and how can you really view these public companies performing? How do you put them on a level playing field to know which one is the best allocator of capital over the longer period versus just a short term hype, three months scale by a megawatt at whatever cost. Can you talk more about how you think of that when you’re evaluating public companies in this space? Penny Ether: Yeah, sure. I think if you look at some of the parts or, that gives you some idea, it has become increasingly difficult to compare one minor to another minor because there’s probably at least three aspects. There’s this huddle thing, the Bitcoin yield [00:12:00] and. It’s somehow when a public company owns Bitcoin, it’s worth more than one Bitcoin, which I can speak to later. Penny Ether: I’m not necessarily super skeptical on that. I don’t think that’s going to last, forever. I think eventually one Bitcoin will be worth one Bitcoin on your, a Bitcoin on your balance sheet is going to be worth one Bitcoin, on a per share basis, dividing by the number of shares or whatever. Penny Ether: , So there’s HODL, , there’s just pure play mining. So you have mining operations, you, throw on some fleet to that. And , there’s some operational and strategic decisions around there, how good the company is at, , when they place orders and what their prices they’re locking in, or are they locking in options for a really long time? Penny Ether: Or are they gonna buy them as time goes along at the market price for the ASICs? yeah. And there’s , what’s the quality of their, capacity of their megawatts? Are they paying cheap costs there’s the cost structure of the whole business? On the pure play side, I think the cost per kilowatt hour, everything, so cost per kilowatt hour of energies, one component cost per kilowatt hour of all the overhead of their staff, and [00:13:00] however they run, if they have, A bunch of small sites or a few mega sites all that will show up in the all in cost and you do it on a kilowatt hour basis. Penny Ether: That’s the bones of pure play mining business right there. Then on top of that, you put on the fleet and you can always get a new fleet and improve your, cost per hash rate. So you need the solid bones there. So then you look at, what fleet do they have now and how much money is it gonna cost ’em to upgrade it? Penny Ether: And is their timing gonna be good or not? Which it is cyclical, but I don’t know if I would count on that. So two aspects so far is a huddle and the pure play mining. And the third one, which has been since, June since the core scientific. Core weave deal is this whole HPC thing. Penny Ether: And that’s really interesting because it imputes a higher value on the megawatts, which I think is very telling of mining itself. But. You can get way more money in a way a less volatile fashion for a longer duration, hopefully, by just selling your access to energy. I’m sure you’ve heard about this whole AI thing [00:14:00] and there’s not enough data centers, there’s not enough electricity, there’s a huge lag time in getting the infrastructure and then getting The transformers and everything else you need to actually energize a data center, that’s beyond even the delays to get permission for the power and the interconnect and all that stuff. Penny Ether: So, having megawatts that can be used for a purpose other than mining is at a high premium right now, we’ve only seen a couple of deals, but you see the big guys buying their own nuclear plants, for five to 10 years in the future from now. And all these huge expansions. So. The HPC aspect is these miners went around and bought, infrastructure that has connections to energy, usually low cost energy because they need low cost, to mine Bitcoin, for a long term to be competitive against everyone else that’s mining. Penny Ether: But now that energy might have a better, more lucrative use, which is just to Upgrade your site to be able to host high end GPUs or whatever future high performance computing is, , and lease [00:15:00] that out to someone who’s making huge margins on it, then they’ll be willing to pay you more on a per kilowatt hour basis or whatever, then what you’re likely going to make mining, especially if you consider that when you’re mining, you always have to buy the new ASICs every couple of two to three, four years. Penny Ether: If you just. Lease out that HPC space. There’s no capex for you other than the initial upgrade. So those are three aspects already. There’s HODL there’s pure play mining, and there’s HPC. So it’s hard to take a single company and compare it to another, if they have those three different things are different for all of them. Penny Ether: If they have a no hodl, but they’re pure play and they have no HPC or they have a big hodl and they mainly do mining, but they say they don’t want to do HPC, but maybe they actually could get an HPC deal or, it’s just gets really complicated, comparing miners apples to apples in that sense. Penny Ether: , I don’t even remember your original question at this point. JohnPaul: No, that was a good explanation of how to view and analyze each one of the miners. So I appreciate that. Let’s talk about [00:16:00] the cost per kilowatt hour on an overhead basis and how transparent our miners when they’re breaking down, here’s our cost per kilowatt of energy. JohnPaul: Most people mention that, but when it comes to, here’s our cost per kilowatt hour after SG& A and after stock comp. Penny Ether: Stock comp is hard because it’s not a dollar. It’s not a notional value. The way it works, I think, is they receive grants and dilution hits the share count immediately. But then every quarter it’s however much is vested, the dollar amount, That those shares were worth at the time of the grant is what is recorded as stock based compensation. Penny Ether: So if you do a big grant and your share price is high and then a year later, the stock based comp will look high because it’s based on the share price when it was granted and it works the other way around too. So you can have a company that looks it’s a low stock based comp, but actually, if you look at the number of shares, it’s huge amount of money. Penny Ether: , if the price stays flat that, that becomes easy. it would be. That would be great. So stock based comp is not [00:17:00] a dollar. It’s a non cash cost. So, you can include it if you want a big holistic view, that type of analysis gets much more difficult because then you’re also going to include amortization and depreciation of all these other things. Penny Ether: And it’s, I find that , it’s a big burden to do it that way. So I to just look at. Cashflow, verse enterprise value. So your whole, everything you paid for and all that stuff, it’s a little black box and it has an enterprise value. That’s what people are paying for it. And then I say, what’s the output of that little black box? Penny Ether: how much cash is coming is going to come out of it or is coming out of it. and I look at that. So that’s just personally what I to do. I forgot your question again. #### Technical Discussion JohnPaul: That’s fine. the question is really Stock based comp, which you talked about on a per kilowatt hour basis, but let’s talk about the overhead Penny Ether: cost. Penny Ether: So what companies, in the 10 Q you see , all their costs, you can see which ones are cash, generally, if you just look at what, Ends up in adjusted EBITDA. Those are the cash costs. You can also look at the cashflow, which will [00:18:00] break out everything. The cashflow statement will net out everything. Penny Ether: , it’s a pain in the ass to do that, but you can see what their cash costs are. And usually you can bucket the cash costs to , okay, this was cost of revenue. And the companies are always straightforward about their costs of energy, more or less. Some of them consider. There’s a lot of aspects to the cost of energy. Penny Ether: There can just be direct cost of energy, but then there’s also transmission fees or maintenance or other things you would consider. You probably are always going to have to pay for these things to continue getting electricity. So even though the utility company didn’t charge you for them, does that count as your cost of electricity or not? Penny Ether: And every company is a little bit different in what they put in cost of revenue and what they break out. Or if they, , Breakout here’s the direct cost and here’s some indirect costs. So those things are all over the map. In terms of SG and a, , you see how much they pay in cash. You see how much they pay for other fees, professional fees or advisor fees or whatever. Penny Ether: You can choose to take things out , that are one offs. Usually they’ll take them out. In terms of the [00:19:00] denominator, which is how many kilowatt hours did they use? There’s not many companies that disclose their kilowatt hours. So I think clean spark and Wolf. And maybe bit farms. But you can estimate the kilowatt hours because how many Bitcoin they mined for some period and what their efficiency of their fleet is. Penny Ether: So you can crunch the numbers there and estimate kilowatt hours. And so you could say, \ Based on the number of kilowatt hours it should have taken you to mine this amount of Bitcoin. These were your costs and so here’s your total all in per kilowatt hour cost. So that’s the way I look at it, , the direct, some of those things will, ideally some of those things won’t scale more than linearly to the number of megawatts. Penny Ether: So you have a direct cap power cost. If you got. If you start using more megawatts, hopefully you’re not going to pay more per kilowatt hour. That should stay flat. And hopefully your SG and a, as you expand your SG and a on a per kilowatt hour basis, hopefully that doesn’t just grow linearly with hopefully that stays flat or starts [00:20:00] going down cause you should see some, , Economy of scale , with these overhead costs, right? Penny Ether: If you’re always paying a fixed amount in overhead, but you’re growing your megawatts, that your cost per kilowatt hour on that end should be going down, it shouldn’t be going up, at worst it should stay flat. So, , that’s what I look into for, about eight of the companies. Penny Ether: And, it’s not easy, but it’s not impossible. JohnPaul: No, it doesn’t sound easy at all. And I want to know what tools. And data sources do you just keep up with all the public miners to make some of these amazing charts and reports that you have on your Twitter, which we’ll call out the end so people can find them and read your threads. JohnPaul: What tool base are you using to manage all this? Because there is so many little details, and do you use AI at all to help you with that? Penny Ether: So no AI yet. just because I’ve gotten the process down from something that works for myself and it’s not too difficult. So learning another whole other thing I’d have to. Penny Ether: It would just take some overhead time, and I’m not sure it would be more accurate. But I have a lot of spreadsheets. As I’ve learned how to look at the companies and, [00:21:00] , what they have in common and what they don’t, it’s become easier where I’ve had a nice workflow. Penny Ether: So when a 10 Q comes out, I already have the sheet ready. I know which things I have to fill in and then it’s going to tell me, all the per whatever costs, the other end of that is their monthly operations report every single month for all the companies. I have the spreadsheet for them that records all the things that they. Penny Ether: disclose, and it does some calculations on things, and when you combine the two things, you can start to get costs on, unit bases that make sense, per hash rate, or per kilowatt hour, or just per bitcoin, whatever you want. And, each company has its own, I have their own spreadsheet, how to interpret their 10 Q. Penny Ether: Because they all have certain, they bucket costs in a slightly different ways., I don’t think it’s something an AI could help with yet, because it’s just You have to read all the details and know what things are. I don’t think AI can do it yet. AI could take the 10 Q and put it into a big table and give me all the line items and put it in a spreadsheet, but it’s not going to be able to pick out the parts of [00:22:00] the, 10 Q that are applicable to different buckets of costs and things that are cash versus non cash that’s my process as it stands. Penny Ether: Now is a lot of spreadsheets look in the data sources are. , the company’s monthly ops, the company’s 10Qs, and also the blockchain itself. So, you can look at the blockchain, you could say, for this month in theory, how many bitcoin should one exahash per second have gotten? So that’s what I use to determine the company’s hash rate. Penny Ether: I don’t care what they tell me their hash rate is, I just look at their number of bitcoin they mined, and then I back out how many exahash it should have taken. For that month to get that many Bitcoin, that’s their hash rate, in my opinion that’s what I’m judging them off of. #### ASIC Hardware Evolution JohnPaul: I love the, breakdown of the tools and think you need the data and which is all public to your point. JohnPaul: It’s there, it’s just obfuscated, it’s not an easy format in order to be a informed investor and to understand if you’re buying value or if you’re buying hype. Do you ever see yourself open sourcing your data or putting [00:23:00] paywall for paying subscribers? Penny Ether: So I do consulting work, if people want all the data I get in my analysis or commentary, on whatever they want, I’ll do that. Penny Ether: I’ll take money and I’ll do that. , in terms of open sourcing things, , I share things from time to time, but I’ve become more protective of it because I’m realizing, , as this market gets bigger and there’s more liquidity and the ability to know what the future , adjusted EBIT as you’re going to be, or what companies are actually really, if you strip away all the hype and strip away everything and you look under the hood, which companies are actually better than others. Penny Ether: I think that’s going to be increasingly valuable, if the market becomes efficient for now, making it a quote, informed investment decision is. Just as much about being able to pick up on sentiment and what narratives are going to move the market as it is knowing fundamentals. Penny Ether: So I wouldn’t say knowing fundamentals is guaranteed money. I don’t think that’s the case [00:24:00] right now. I think, The dominant flows of these stocks are, I don’t mean it negatively, but mid curve. So you want to skate to where the puck is going. What are the mid curve? Penny Ether: What are they going to go after? What are they going to buy? What hooks are they going to latch onto as opposed to just strictly, these don’t trade strictly on Evita EBITDA, some fixed ratio. And if the EBITDA, you can know the share price. that doesn’t happen. And compounding that is , The actual, sell side analysts, the , the street analysts that give price targets and that everyone listens to, I guess, I don’t think they go as in depth as I do. Penny Ether: They do in certain aspects, but I’m not sure. They’re as keen to the whole quote, ASIC hamster wheel. And I’m not sure their incentives align with pitching that story. A lot of them are. Their banking side are clients of the big companies. They issue the shares, they sell the ATMs, they do the convertible note deals. Penny Ether: There’s not much incentive to give a full picture on that end, it’s very complicated. I’m sorry to keep making things [00:25:00] more and more complicated with each question you ask. But, I was thinking of doing, , a website or putting stuff behind a paywall and having at least monthly updates and commentary on whatever new things come out. Penny Ether: I’m just not sure the demand there, might be better just doing one off consulting things. It’s a, I don’t know, I’ve been thinking, , another option is to go work somewhere full time and do this. JohnPaul: And I guess that was one of my questions. My next question for you is financial incentives for yourself. JohnPaul: Are you buying just a stock outright when you’re entering a position? Are you buying options, long dated or short dated? Are you buying physical miners themselves? Do you have your own machines, that you’re hosting with someone or your own facility? Can you jump into how you allocate the capital? JohnPaul: Are you managing capital for others, if you’re willing to talk about that? Penny Ether: Oh, I don’t manage capital for anyone but myself. I provide my opinions and my feedback and my data, at a modest price, I guess. , so in terms of mining, I don’t do any [00:26:00] mining. I didn’t buy any ASICs or pay to host them. Penny Ether: That was a thought of mine a while ago. , hey, the, when a public company buys an ASIC and puts it online there, it imputes a huge premium on the value of that. suddenly they buy something for 10 and suddenly it’s worth 30. Based on their share price, just because they plug it in and they plug it in and they run it at a cost that is sometimes higher than if you just bought it yourself and hosted it. Penny Ether: So at one point I’m , maybe there’s an arbitrage there where I go long on my own hash rate that I host and I go short on the mining stock. Because over time I should outperform them because my costs are actually lower than theirs and I’m not paying a premium a three X or four X or five X premium on my own quote shares. Penny Ether: So that was a thought I had but I thought better of it because. That premium for public companies can last forever until someone has the same epiphany as me or the, until the whole market understands it, that premium is not going to go away. So I thought [00:27:00] better of that. I didn’t do that in terms of my actual positioning I core scientific a lot because they’re. Penny Ether: Using their megawatts for something that’s going to make more money. And hopefully they continue to grow that side and their actual mining businesses among the, in terms of their costs, it’s pretty much the lowest in the industry. If not tied, there’s a few that are, Neck and neck with each other. Penny Ether: So if they upgrade their fleet, that it’s going to look even better if they don’t. And they use those megawatts for HPC, then great. They’re going to make more money there. a lot of that’s baked into the share price already, but I don’t think it’s fully appreciated. I usually generally just go with straight shares. Penny Ether: I do someplace I’ll do call spreads where I’m , okay, I think that by March, one, this company or this company is going to have an HPC deal or just overall. they’re gonna appreciate a lot. And so I’m willing to place a bet that’s going to pay five to one. I view it as a binary outcome that it happens or it doesn’t, and so that’s the way I express it is with a call spread, I’ll go straight shares with a few things. #### Day-to-Day Mining Operations Penny Ether: Sometimes I’ll do pair plays [00:28:00] where I think, well, these two companies are essentially identical or. Except the one is just cheaper than the other. So I’ll go long the cheap one and short the expensive one. That’s harder and harder to do because there’s so many different we discussed this before. Penny Ether: There’s , it’s not just pure play versus pure play generally. Another thing is, if I see a company Mara, you can synthesize a Mara you can create it in the aggregate, from Moneyball. They have a HODL they have a mining operations and they have some cashflow so you can generate that by buying, say, , I want equal exposure to the whole FOMO and huddle craze by buying some amount of micro strategy. Penny Ether: I want to . Replicate their, cashflow and future BT Bitcoin production, per share or however, with a good pure play, which might be iron is looking really good lately because they have really good efficiency. And then, , I just want straight Bitcoin. Penny Ether: Because they have a, not going to put all my eggs in the basket of micro strategy. I [00:29:00] just want straight Bitcoin exposure. So I’ll buy some Bitcoin. And if you line those things up, you can get exposure to two metrics, the same metrics that in a cheaper way than buying Mara shares. Marker Penny Ether: And so there might be some ARB there that’s a longer term ride. And so you have to rebalance it and everything. So that’s more work, but I the intellectual aspect to it. So I play with that a little. None of my minor positions. are huge. I’m not only invested in minors. Penny Ether: It’s probably, yeah, I don’t know, 10 ignoring core scientific. It’s probably 10 or 15 percent or something. It’s not very big. JohnPaul: You’re not 100 percent miners. You have a bigger portfolio, to your point, that you’re managing. JohnPaul: Do you tweet about the other portfolio or the other positions you’re taking in the market? Or is your account usually fully focused on the mining side in Bitcoin? Penny Ether: I try to keep it focused on the mining side. I actually try not to post too much because I don’t want to dilute the value of each tweet. Penny Ether: Because a lot of the tweets are super in depth and really long. And if so, if I do those, but I also do these little, , maybe shit posts or [00:30:00] , Oh, look at this talk or look at this, or, , then I feel it’s makes it more work for my readers. On occasion, I do tweet about other stocks, I think just not very often, and the other stocks I don’t look into nearly as deeply as I do for minors. Penny Ether: So I don’t have as much high conviction, I wouldn’t say, trust me, I’m the expert on, , I don’t know, midstream natural gas. I just think , AI, , it’s going to need natural gas. So I’ll buy midstream, I’m totally mid curving it on most of my portfolio, to be honest, I don’t go nearly as in depth. Penny Ether: , but for minors, it’s just been a fascinating thing to look at because if , the inputs, you can know the outputs. It’s just , You take power, you put an ASIC, and then you get some cash flow on top. And it depends where Bitcoin goes or where network hashrate goes. It’s purely deterministic. Penny Ether: So , it’s been fascinating to dig into that. And on top of that, it’s the whole market aspect of how misunderstood they are and all the narrative things. And , so it’s just a really fun game, I guess. JohnPaul: And , talking about the [00:31:00] tweets, they are so valuable and so dense, which makes you as a content creator, I think, unique that you’re not just out there trying to get clicks and you’re focused on the value you can bring. JohnPaul: And one of those tweets I was reading, Penny, was about the grid, I think debt that they had and the ability to buy that convert. and they got bought by another miner. Can you talk a little bit more about that analysis? How that trade, it seemed it was way overvalued, but people were still Oh, oh, the Clean Spark warrants. JohnPaul: The Clean Spark warrants. Yeah, exactly. Clean Spark grid warrants. Yeah. Penny Ether: Oh yeah, , I can, I have it on a spreadsheet somewhere, so I, okay. I don’t know if the numbers are up to date. But, that was an interesting, , , mechanical thing. , sometimes there’s weird structures , of financial instruments that people misunderstand or they don’t dig into. Penny Ether: So, I think what’s happening there, I don’t know what CleanSpark warrants are at now, but what happened was, , CleanSpark bought Grid, and Grid had these outstanding warrants that were , , the strike price, Was way outside, , way [00:32:00] out the money. , but they couldn’t, , when CleanSpark bought them, they still have to make whole those warrants. Penny Ether: So they issued CleanSpark warrants, , in the terms of them are just crazy. It’s , , you need 14. 37 warrants. And that gives you the right to buy one share of CleanSpark for 165. Is just preposterous, right? , sure, you can buy 14 of these warrants, and then if CleanSpark gets to 165, your warrant is now break even, or whatever it is, right? #### Mining Profitability Analysis Penny Ether: It’s , these are just ludicrously out of the money calls. I think people just saw, oh, CleanSpark warrants, oh, warrants are leveraged to the underlying, so, I’m gonna buy a bunch of warrants for CleanSpark, cause I CleanSpark, and warrants mean I can make more money. So, I don’t know if they were, Aware that it takes 14 of them to equal one clean spark share, , or if they were aware that the strike price is so high or whatever it is for whatever reason , they were dramatically overpriced and, you could buy one share of clean spark and have a full share [00:33:00] for cheaper than buying 14 warrants, which would only get you a share of clean spark. Penny Ether: If the price went above 165, it’s at what now, 11 or 12 now. So, it’s , , , I don’t know how that happens. So, obviously you can buy a share and then short, 14 of the warrants. And , if you play it out for many years, you’ll make money. Penny Ether: But there’s, risks there of the warrant can blow up in price for no reason at all. And , your short gets margin called or whatever, or, , there’s also borrow costs there, but I just found it was an interesting situation. There’s no rash. There’s zero rational explanation for it. Other than I’m going to buy the warrants. Penny Ether: Cause I think there’s other people that. Are , don’t understand what’s going on and they’re going to buy them from me later for higher price, but on a technical fundamental value basis, it’s totally irrational to pay more for options that are really far out of the money than to just buy a share. Penny Ether: So that was what that was about. , it’s not really , advice , or anything. It’s just an interesting situation, which, I [00:34:00] guess,, to your previous question, I do cover other things, which are interesting market things as I’m learning how to, , do this type of analysis, , certain things come up. Penny Ether: Which mostly post just to get other opinions to see if I’m wrong or to point it out and, , just as a curiosity to people. JohnPaul: And to your point, the markets can be irrational longer than you can stay liquid when it comes to some of these trades , on shorting them. Penny Ether: Absolutely. Shorting is really hard. Penny Ether: Shorting something that has sentiment behind it is, , that’s how I made a lot of money initially, in 2021 or it was, yeah, 2021. I was in on the GameStop thing pretty early and. totally mid curving it. I didn’t care , that there were not an excellent business. I liked the setup of the huge. Penny Ether: Short interest. And I could see the interest , in, see the buying pressure building up every single day and the hype that was going on. And, all that matters to a stock price is the amount of people buying versus selling and, just those mechanics. So that was a very interesting time. Penny Ether: And that taught [00:35:00] me a lesson, not to get caught on the other side of that. And that, despite how bearish I am about pure play mining sometimes and I’m not bearish about it as a business. I’m bearish about the valuations put on top of the businesses, despite how bearish I am. Penny Ether: It’s I’ll never just go , just hugely short. , cause , I know not everyone’s going to have the same opinion as me. And what really matters is the money weighted opinion. JohnPaul: i agree with you on that. So the market can be definitely irrational more than you can stay afloat , as we mentioned with this grid and clean spark play. This is some pretty insane, very in the weeds financial engineering and opening up the 10 queues. , most people planning, they aren’t doing this. They’re seeing the stock ticker on Robin hood. JohnPaul: They’re clicking buy because the price is up 5 percent today. And then they’re clicking sell because the price is down 10 percent tomorrow. What keeps you going? in this business, trading these stocks, why do you do it? Why do you love it so much? Because you bring a unique [00:36:00] aspect to this, industry, and you bring in a unique position. JohnPaul: And I really appreciate how you are here , to dig into the fundamentals. And you also understand that the sediment matters and that the market can be irrational. But what keeps you up at night? And then what keeps you doing it?, in a good way. Penny Ether: I think I’m just a really curious person and, , there’s limitless amount of things to dig into when it comes to finance, any aspect of finance you can dig into. Penny Ether: So I’m always learning new things. I’m always , I have , some question I want answered, and I just try to find the answer. So for miners, it was how should you, they be valued? How do you put together all these different aspects of network hash rate goes up, but ASIC quality, ASIC efficiency goes up and the price of ASICs might go down. Penny Ether: So what does that mean? Do they balance each other out? Or is one factor going to be more dominant and When I hear things that seem too good to be true, I want to know what the catch is there. recently it’s been convertible notes and microstrategy. So now I’m pretty well [00:37:00] versed in convertible notes. Penny Ether: I know all the terms and I’ve been digging into how they’re priced. I’ve actually tried to create my own pricing model and it you start to get into things barrier options, which I’ve learned about. And it’s just , Every nook and cranny you go into is just, for me, it’s really fun. Penny Ether: just fun doing that stuff. And you don’t really get spoon fed this anywhere else on Twitter. I’m happy to share my findings, , because I want to be corrected if I’m wrong or what I’m misunderstanding. But also it’s a journal of my findings to some extent. But I just say that there’s an intellectual curiosity. #### Bitcoin Price Dynamics Penny Ether: That I have innately, and it seems to meld really well with Bitcoin miners because Bitcoin, I think, is a fascinating invention. I think the equity side and digging into 10 cues is really interesting. So , I’m not a CPA, but now I’m pretty decently versed in accounting. I’m sure there’s things I miss, but. Penny Ether: I have a pretty good mental model of all the things and, I’m not scared of 10 Q’s at all. Look at other companies 10 Q’s [00:38:00] and see what’s going on. So it’s nice to have the, a feeling of accomplishment of , climbing up the ladder of knowledge of financial knowledge and how, financial engineering and quantitative analysis and every little aspect. Penny Ether: Every time I, I get a new piece of knowledge, that’s its own reward for me. , and there also are opportunities to make money when certain. Miners seem definitely mispriced relative to others save for , some sentiment or , some factor, some aspect that I’m comfortable placing a bet on. Penny Ether: So Irene , looked underpriced. Relative to everything for a while because they were just going to have amazing fleet and it was going to grow really quickly So it’s easy to go long iron and short something else that has exposure to hash rate as plainly as possible Or just go flat out long iron and hope that Bitcoin goes up and hope that I’ll sure I’m gonna bet that the market might be a little irrational in how it’s being traded Applying a premium to hash rate. Penny Ether: I’m just going to bet that will [00:39:00] stay equally irrational for the next, , few months or something. I’m willing to take that risk sometimes. So sometimes there’s money to be had. And , if I wasn’t following these so closely, then in June, when core scientific had their HPC deal, I, Crunched all the numbers and saw how much better it is than mining immediately, within a few hours. Penny Ether: And the next day, even though the stock was up, I don’t remember 20 or 40%, I just bought a shit ton of it. I went crazy. Cause I’m , this is so much better. It’s so much more valuable than mining. And they have this dark horse aspect of emerging from bankruptcy. Everything was against them. Penny Ether: It didn’t look great. It looked too good to be true, , so that’s where I made, , a lot of money this year. It’s just being ready for. When new information comes out, I’m now more capable of ingesting it in a way that , I can determine what I think the value is of it. Penny Ether: So that’s how it’s beneficial to myself. , just the pursuit of knowledge and learning new things and adding things to my tool belt. So the past few months, I’m , now I’m fully up to speed on Monte Carlo analysis. [00:40:00] And now I know how barrier options are priced. Now I know how, what Asian options are. Penny Ether: I know convertible note, the key terms and what they mean. And capped calls or, , fully understand all that. So. , it’s just every month or two, it’s I gain a new set of knowledge. So it’s been fun. JohnPaul: And that’s really the journey of, and where you can get paid to learn what you’re doing here. JohnPaul: It’s the best of both worlds. You mentioned the core trade, which, , Adam Sullivan there as a CEO has done a great job building that company, out of bankruptcy, as you mentioned. Deploying into HPC AI, reinventing themselves as one of the larger AI, posting providers. What was the best trade for you this year that you’re willing to share? JohnPaul: And then number two is, did you trade the Wednesday, December 18th FOMC crash, we just had from 108, 000 down to 92, 000 this morning. I’m recording this on December 20th. And how do you view those larger macro events affecting all the [00:41:00] analysis and the fundamentals? Mentals, that you’re doing. JohnPaul: Do you trade those? Do you, how do you put them into your calculation? Penny Ether: I’ve been putting macro on the back burner, because analyzing the miners and keeping track of this industry takes so much time already, that I’m willing to just be , well, the price is the price I’m assuming that things at that level, There’s some market efficiency there. Penny Ether: And , I’m okay having exposure to it and being a little bit ignorant in terms of the FOMC meeting the quote crash or whatever, , of course went down a lot and I bought more I, and I bought more today. it’s at around 14 or something, which is where it was before their earnings, where they said, Oh, by the way, we have another a hundred megawatts of HPC available and we have 300 megawatts in the, that we can expand to, it was just. Penny Ether: They rallied off of that announcement. I don’t think anything has changed. , I don’t think that, the future expectations of rate cuts being less or paused is going to affect the AI demands that makes its way to course bottom [00:42:00] line. I don’t think it affects it to the extent that it’s now, 10 or whatever, 15 percent worse. Penny Ether: Then it was before, I don’t think if you play it out for 12 or 15 years, I still think the demand for infrastructure and electrical capacity and data centers that can, host HBC, I think that’s still a pretty good picture. , it looks a sale to me. There was, interestingly enough, there was a while where I was doing trades on ZQ on the fed funds futures. Penny Ether: That was another thing I dug into and there were some ARBs there that were just. Totally risk free. It was amazing to see them. I think this was back, I think last year in March, when was the, community banking crisis?, when did that whole thing go down? I think it was last year in March, but yeah, I think around there, something got dislocated with ZQ futures where you can price these out. Penny Ether: you can know exactly what they’re going to settle at. cause they’re based on the effective fed funds rate. You can know exactly what they’ll settle at for you put in whatever you think the. [00:43:00] Increase your decreases, bips or whatever. And so if you look at the month ahead versus two months ahead, you’re , well, if the month ahead went up by this, the two months ahead should move my, this, , even if there’s a FOMC meeting in between, there’s ways to structure it where you win no matter what. Penny Ether: So I think during March, someone, some, the market makers or something blew up, clearly there was some weird shit going on, but it was enough for me to see it by eye and dig into it and , put on a really good trade. And that worked out. It hasn’t really resurfaced again. , I guess I just got really lucky. #### Strategic Perspectives Penny Ether: I only mentioned that cause it was, it’s another little facet that I dug into at one point. And it’s a very interesting contract structure and there’s a few ways to play it sometimes in terms of macro effecting. JohnPaul: And as you mentioned, this risk free trades core scientific, the thesis is their AI play. JohnPaul: So the Bitcoin drop, to them is shouldn’t be as much to a pure play minor. And to your point, that’s why you’re backing up the dump truck and buying more core shares. Penny Ether: Yeah. And I’m playing [00:44:00] volatility, I guess, what you might do if you were long calls. So as it goes up, I’ll sell some and as it goes down, I’ll buy some. Penny Ether: , but I still maintain a core position. , this is know, in the interim, it’s not , , I’m doubling or tripling down on it because it went lower, I’m just, , adding some more and then I’ll take it off when it goes back up to , I don’t know, 15, 16, 17, 18, and I’ll be back with my core position. Penny Ether: Let’s talk about taking off a position. It’s definitely not risk free though. The risk free is the, , fed funds rate was , there was zero risk. It was actually really interesting. even if there was an emergency rate hike or rate cut, there’s zero risk there. It’s just all about what they’re going to settle at and how, one month was priced different, , wasn’t priced correctly versus some other month and the month after based on the date of the next FOMC meeting. Penny Ether: , it was pretty crazy. JohnPaul: No, , it sounds that’s the best trade. I was saying , let’s talk about exiting a position. You’re entering these core positions. When does it, do you have indicators you use? are you looking at EV multiples to [00:45:00] cashflow when you’re saying, okay, this miner’s a little frothy. JohnPaul: It’s time to step out of my position or to hedge it. Penny Ether: So for core, I have some price targets that I , and I manage my, my. Net Delta, my Delta dollars. So I have some calls. I have some warrants, which themselves have a Delta and I have shares. And I just look at my Delta exposure. And when I think it’s a better buy, I’ll go a little heavier on leverage. Penny Ether: So I might go more heavy on warrants or calls. I think it’s just slightly more efficient use of capital. I’d probably be doing just this, just as well. If I just went with flat shares in a bigger magnitude. I look at my Delta exposure there. For the other minors, I look at how they move relative to each other. Penny Ether: And sometimes it’s just sentiment based where I think one will rally, one might not, I’ve been trying to trade a lot less. So , I’m fine with the volatility and I’ll just hold through it generally. , sometimes I’ll add a little bit when it goes down and,, definitely trim when it goes up. Penny Ether: Bitdeer was , one of the [00:46:00] ones where back in September they were getting slammed. And it’s , well, they’re actually producing ASICs, which is almost equivalent to having a super low cost of power. , the capex of ASICs is either the number one or number two cost of miners. Penny Ether: It’s very close to the cost of electricity that you pay once you buy them. if you consider how you have to always buy new ASICs. So if they’re able to get those at cost, instead of paying. Some premium or some margin to the manufacturer. That is a massive competitive advantage. And they also had a really big power pipeline, and maybe they’ll get HPC from that, maybe not. Penny Ether: It’s a free option. So I bought a bunch of them in September and I was , , On a cashflow basis, they’re probably overpriced, but , again, , I’m willing to bet that the premiums on all the mining companies won’t evaporate overnight. It won’t evaporate by the time it plays out. Penny Ether: So there is some risk there. I saw a lot of potential there now, to be honest, I don’t know what’s going on. , I don’t know who’s bidding up their stock where it’s up 20 percent in [00:47:00] consecutive days and all this stuff. I don’t know if it’s someone that’s extremely bullish on their ASICs. Penny Ether: On their ASIC production and they understand what it means the market understands that or, if it’s their power pipeline or it’s the, I think , they had some convertibles with, was it tether? Maybe? I don’t remember. They got some. Some partnerships or something. I don’t actually follow them as closely as all the other ones. Penny Ether: So I’ve been trimming that it’s been rallying and I trim it and I maintain the same position size, but I’m taking profits off the top and if it drops down 20 or 30%, I’ll probably buy a little bit more. So, I’m not super strategic. I could probably do much better on trading, , if I were more. Penny Ether: Disciplined. And if I traded less, I could probably do well. I wouldn’t take my own advice, I guess. If you’re listening to this, don’t do what I do. JohnPaul: And when you’re gaining insight most of your insight coming from this 10 Q and the sentiments and Twitter, or do you also gain insight from meeting the people behind these companies, [00:48:00] understanding, the operators, listening to the CEO on a podcast? #### Operational Insights JohnPaul: How do you, I guess, weight those two types of data feeds? Penny Ether: Yeah, I listened to most of the earnings calls. presentations are probably one of the, most underrated forms of getting information on companies, but I guess this is something that , professional investors would do anyway. I don’t know if retail actually looks at the presentations. Penny Ether: That would probably be the best middle ground. But the thing with presentations is, there’s the footnotes are where the real information is. They’ll. Present the absolute best, the best view of themselves and leave some of the context out into the footnotes. , they never lie. They just present information that you could easily misinterpret if you’re not careful. Penny Ether: So I think presentations are a big one that’ll show their future plans for things. , The calls have, some information that’s not in the earnings themselves as they’re , there’s some of the guidance and some of their thought process. And, one of the things I look for is , I don’t know how to say it in a nicer way, but how bullshitty [00:49:00] they are, I guess how much context do they leave out and what are they saying? Penny Ether: That’s factually true, but it’s leaving out a major thing that I feel is misrepresents things. And that gives me less confidence. Although on the flip side, it could give you more confidence that , they’re really good at sales. they’re going to make their share price go up cause they’re good at pitching things. Penny Ether: So it’s a, can JohnPaul: you give an example of that? what are things that people would leave out , that you would want to be more transparent about? Penny Ether: I’ll give some examples that were pretty far in the past. When I first came onto the scene, it was clean spark, talking about their, I don’t even remember. Penny Ether: It was their cost per coin compared to the industry average. And they were using some Cantor report , that assumed that hash rate would drop to 450 X a hash after having, or 400 or something, I don’t remember the exact number, then they were comparing themselves using an assumption that hash rate would be even lower. Penny Ether: So they were using a different assumption for themselves than they were for. Some industry report, which was already [00:50:00] sandbagging everything. And another thing they did was, , with the whole, FASBA, the new accounting rules where Bitcoin is a fair value instead of a, I forget what it is, intangible, whatever, where it only gets marked down for impairment. Penny Ether: So there was one quarter where the value of their Bitcoin went up a lot. And so that counts as income. And so what they did is they consider that as part of their margin, where they said for every, I forget how they phrased it was for every Bitcoin we mined, it only costs us this amount. Penny Ether: And they were, Taking their costs and then adding the benefit of their Bitcoin going up and being , look, it’s we have no costs or it was something along those lines where it’s , it’s a really nice looking pie chart until you actually, and it looks too, too good to be true if you’re familiar with the numbers and then you see , oh, you’re counting things that are Not at all to do with your operations as a deduction of your costs and then saying you have a big margin. Penny Ether: And then you’re saying for every Bitcoin you mine, you actually make this amount of money. It’s , no, you make this amount of money, but you also got this [00:51:00] other huge, lump sum payment that’s really the more realistic picture of it. , and I don’t mean to just pick on clean spark. , So recently I’ve been pretty critical of, Mara. Penny Ether: , because it’s almost everything they say is bullshit. The CEO himself is talking about a future where this is the part that’s not bullshit is the future where I think mining will be more and more competitive and you’re going to need to have a really low cost of power. If you play out how mining works, the competitive nature of it just, you need a low cost of power is your only advantage you can have for the long run. Penny Ether: And at the same time, they have the worst. If you look at their costs on a per kilowatt hour basis, it’s the worst. I think it might be tied for riot, but riots improving quarter after quarter pretty rapidly, And then they also talk about, buying a wind farm and comparing it to some study, and the study’s not at all applicable to, , their situation. Penny Ether: It’s actually interesting, because I looked into the study and I saw how they did it, and then I repeated the study myself. They happened to choose the absolute [00:52:00] One point in time where it had the highest returns on ASICs. They said, if we bought a bunch of ASICs in January, 2020, and then we ran them out for four years, what would the return on IP based on the fact that our power costs would be this. Penny Ether: And it looked amazing, but that was one of the best times to buy. That particular ASIC and run it on a forward basis. Cause , that was right before this massive rally in Bitcoin and before a ban in mining, in China that sent hash rate down, it was you couldn’t ask for better conditions. Penny Ether: then Mara takes that report and says, look, the ROI on renewable energy is great. You can subsidize it with ASICs. it’s two completely disjoint JohnPaul: things. , and let’s actually talk about that. Cause I’ll give you some background. I found that wind farm. I found that wind farm and had an LOI with the seller three years ago, Penny. JohnPaul: And then the Biden infrastructure act came out. And they said, Hey, the deal stopped where we’re not interested in selling it anymore because we want to do hydrogen here. And I have to find out. it’s [00:53:00] interesting because I got to look at that wind farm and see how it produced power over the years. #### Market Commentary JohnPaul: And it was an older wind farm, but also it degraded. massively in the production of energy over three or four years. And so at some point, the value of that kilowatt hour, even though it’s has no fuel costs and it’s very low, you still have the maintenance costs and the capex to your point of the actual wind farm asset. JohnPaul: But I’d love to hear your perspective on it farther because I can bring it, I think an interesting aspect to that deal. Marker Penny Ether: As Far as I know it’s filed away It could be in the FERC JohnPaul: filings, because there is FERC filings there. I don’t know what a FERC filing is. JohnPaul: What’s that? FERC filing is Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, so whenever energy assets are sold. Yeah, it might be in there. Penny Ether: So they, basically what they said is, look, it’s zero cost of power and we’re going to put our older ASICs there and it’s going to be great because, they’re going to mine with a super low cost energy, but they didn’t provide any . Penny Ether: They didn’t say how much they paid for it. [00:54:00] They didn’t say how many, let’s say over the course of a year, what’s the average megawatts produced. I don’t know , what you energy guys to go off of, but , obviously it’s not operating at peak capacity, a hundred percent of the time. So they, it’s capable of producing whatever it was, 220 megawatts or I don’t remember, but what does it actually produce? JohnPaul: Yeah. So it was a a hundred and 122 megawatts on average. I could get 80 megawatts from that wind farm at, , fifth. D percent of the time, and the rest would have to be from the good. Okay. Penny Ether: So it’s basically 40 megawatts. If you average it out across a whole year, JohnPaul: you can get 80 megawatts running 50 percent of time, but 40 megawatts, you can’t get a hundred percent time because the the wind’s blowing, so you still needed firming power, which is , how are you going to run this at a low cost? JohnPaul: Because you’re interconnected there at SPP. That’s Excel energy. Excel energy’s interconnection to you is four and a half cents. So the grid power is 4. 5. , that’s with demand response. Penny Ether: But you don’t have to use the grid power. you can turn off all the ASICs when the wind’s not blowing. If you want. Penny Ether: You can, JohnPaul: hypothetically, but it would be a pain in the ass to make. Yeah. Penny Ether: What [00:55:00] I was getting at, you said you can operate it at 80 megawatts, about 50 percent of the time. So what I was saying is if you average that over the whole year, you get about 40 megawatts of wind. JohnPaul: Yeah, , we can go with that assumption. JohnPaul: And I think a price per megawatt there, they probably spent, I would say 30 million is a conservative estimate on that asset. Penny Ether: Okay. So I’m just wondering if you can crunch the numbers, , I guess my point was the fact that it’s renewable doesn’t mean it’s going to have the same ROI as some. Penny Ether: Study that looked at one point in time on top of that as an investor that’s great that you’re using renewable energy and it’s going to have low costs of power when the wind is blowing, but , I can’t determine the ROI on this at all, unless you tell me the price and , how many megawatts On average you get from the wind and your OPEX costs. #### Innovation and Technology Penny Ether: Then I can start to do a little math and see if it’s good ROI. But as it’s pitched, it’s just totally narrative. , Bitcoin mining in the future is going to require low cost energy. We just bought a source of low cost energy. And the study says it’s great. [00:56:00] So we’re awesome. And to your JohnPaul: point, they’re not looking in they don’t disclose the full details, which makes it hard for you as an analyst to look at this transaction and say, is this accretive to shareholders or is this just a bunch of waving of the hand saying, this is what’s happening over here, but we’re doing something different on the other side. Penny Ether: Sure, it’s definitely a narrative thing. , to be fair the scale of it compared to their scale of other operations is tiny, so it doesn’t really matter if it’s a terrible ROI or a great ROI. It’s a small impact. This is the type of thing that they consistently do is just push out these new stories that have no material impact to their bottom line. Penny Ether: they’ve been talking about the two phase cooling for a long time, and there’s zero revenue from that in the last filing. I don’t know if there’ll be revenue in it, in the next one. , and then they pivoted to the HODL thing, because they want to do what MicroStrategy does, because they just want a big premium on their share price. Penny Ether: , I think what it comes down to is, their shareholders don’t really care. The shareholders don’t really, I don’t know, they’re very mid [00:57:00] curve I’m not saying it in a negative way. That’s just a fact. Oh, great. Shrimp farming. Oh, great. , heating homes, which, I think is actually good purpose for mining. Penny Ether: , you get some cash back on that. Oh, great. They hodl MicroStrategy. Oh, it’s 0 percent interest. Oh, this is, it’s , they seek to check all the boxes of what you might think makes a miner good. Do they have a big hodl? Yes. Do they have Bitcoin yield? Yes. Do they have renewable energy? Penny Ether: Yes. Do they have is their hashrate growing? Oh, yes. Oh, this is so perfect. , how can anything be better? And they play to that very well. And. So it’s hard to bet against because when is that not going to work? But about this wind farm thing it, the scale of it’s tiny. It’s just what irks me is, we were talking about bullshitting and what irks me is , Oh, look Mara does everything we do renewable now, and this is going to be great, retirement home for our ASICs. Penny Ether: It’s perfect just trust us. it’s going to make money or it’s great or whatever. So that’s what I, it rubs me the wrong way. JohnPaul: It rubs you the wrong way because [00:58:00] they’re not giving, they’re not running it As a mining company that’s trying to optimize for those key things you discussed earlier, the cost per kilowatt hour, the cost of structure of the whole business, your energy infrastructure play. JohnPaul: They say that’s Penny Ether: what they’re doing. They say that’s what they’re saying. , Oh, it’s important to optimize for low cost power. And this is going to assist in doing that, but we’re not going to show you any of the numbers. And , they consistently get a free pass on that because I don’t know why, my only explanation is they’re the industry giant. Penny Ether: They have the biggest market cap. They’re in all the index funds and no one bothers to dig in. They just want exposure to the whole Bitcoin mining thing. So it’s , whatever even, family offices or something, or institutional investors, they’re , what we just want exposure and they’re the biggest one. Penny Ether: And we what they’re talking about and they seem trustworthy. The end. , that’s fine. That’s good enough for me. So I think that’s the degree [00:59:00] of, sophistication in their investment base. And it seems a lot of JohnPaul: capital is allocated that way. To your point, it’s not wrong, it’s just frustrating. Penny Ether: I guess it’s frustrating, it’s because it seems unjust. It doesn’t seem a good deployment, a good way to deploy capital. It doesn’t seem fair to other miners that are actually, , doing things quote unquote more right, more correct, actually caring about shareholder value and operational efficiency and whatever, and trying to. Penny Ether: Not fully jumping into the whole narrative bandwagon, not either. They’re doing things that theoretically should make them a more appealing stock, but they don’t necessarily get rewarded for it because something else is soaking up all the capital. Cause it’s just, it’s big and it checks all the boxes. Penny Ether: So it just, I don’t it. , you don’t hate the players, hate the game, I don’t know. It is what it is. I’m not gonna on principle, just naked short the whole thing because I think it’s terrible and it’s gonna blow up at some point. , I [01:00:00] think it can persist a long time. Penny Ether: But I will , , by exposure to many of the same things they offer for cheaper. I’ll buy hodl cheaper. I’ll get, mining production cheaper. I’ll get cashflow cheaper. So , I can hedge that. I feel comfortable doing that. JohnPaul: And we were talking about Mara the biggest player by market cap in this space, we haven’t mentioned many of the small caps we’re talking, , Cathedral, DMG, maybe Digihosh. JohnPaul: Hive, Griffin Digital, Mawson. That new one that came on the block. Yeah, the Chinese, coin, is it, with the Chinese car manufacturer? Kengo, that’s now mining Bitcoin and hosting S19XP’s with Bitmain at some ridiculous price, but their stock’s up 300 percent now, and it’s crazy they posted that. #### Growth and Vision JohnPaul: , they got slammed. Yeah, they posted that news report and no one noticed for many days, their press release. What do you think about these small caps? Penny Ether: It takes a lot of time to cover each minor. I’m already looking at eight of them. So every month there’s eight things to update and every earnings, there’s eight things to dig into. Penny Ether: And [01:01:00] invariably they’ll change a little thing in their 10 Q and how they report something. And I have to go and sort that out. And it’s pain in the ass. So doing it for the smaller companies is just way more work. And I’m sure there’s some value out there. I haven’t dug into it since a lot of the actual price action is sentiment based and narrative based and liquidity based and all that. Penny Ether: Even if I found a gem, I don’t know if I’d be willing to bet on it. Because there is a big advantage to having access to capital because the CapEx requirements are huge. And if you. Consistently have a premium on your net asset value, whatever you want to call it, the value of your ASICs, the value of your, whatever, if you consistently have a premium, you can just keep tapping into that with the ATM or convertibles and , that provides. Penny Ether: An advantage the people allocating that capital are the ones taking the risk, but it’s a self fulfilling prophecy in that sense. So long story short, I don’t cover many of the smaller ones. There’s probably some [01:02:00] value there. I do own some cathedral just because The CEO of cathedrals, totally Penny Ether: he’s great. , he understands the ASIC. I think he quoted ASIC Hamster Wheel. , he knows the name of the he knows the game really well. And, just on principle, I want And I find JohnPaul: the same thing with BitFarms and Ben. Absolutely. , he knows the game as well. And there’s some of these great CEOs that are just extraordinary. JohnPaul: Even I , I Well, I just made Penny Ether: a post on BitFarms before we started this thing. I’m eager to see all the responses. Cause , I asked why don’t they get any love? their costs on a kilowatt hour basis are among the best. They’re very, they’re neck and neck with the best. , and sure they’ve had delays on their hash rate and. Penny Ether: Okay, but if you, if everyone’s pricing the miners out of getting I don’t know, eight to 10 years of , high hash price, what is a few months of delay due to that? It’s a, it’s a drop in the bucket, right? If you’re assuming Bitcoin’s going to the pure play miners, if you take out everything else, we just look at pure play, they’re priced as though. Penny Ether: Bitcoin’s going to go up and [01:03:00] network hash rate won’t follow for many years. that’s just a fact of how they’re priced. maybe some of that is Bitcoin will go up a ton now they’ll raise a ton of money so that the next cycle it’s even more compounded maybe , there’s some path dependency going on there or whatever, definitely there’s some, a lot of optimism on where the path of hash price is going to go, where Bitcoin’s going to go and where network hash rate is going to go. Penny Ether: It’s definitely a bullish. Tilt to it. If you look at the pricing and so why should a couple months delay matter that much to bit farms, but you’re right. Ben is totally. , he’s up there in terms of understanding how everything, , they all understand how it works. I think they all are appreciative of the premiums they command at times. Penny Ether: Sorry, I , JohnPaul: no, that’s, that’s a good answer. And I, you can, thanks for running with that. , it seems some of the comments on this bit farms is that there’s clean spark and Irene are arguing no more dilution where it seems bit farms has a lot of, a high diluted share count and in order to get what they needed. Penny Ether: I was typing a [01:04:00] reply when we took a break. They say no dilution. , I don’t know where, I don’t think they said no more dilution. I think what they said is. The capped call structure means that we won’t have extra dilution up to the capped price provided we pay back the convertible notes in full, in cash. Penny Ether: I don’t think they gave guidance of, oh, no more ATM. Oh, no more, we’re done after this. I don’t think they said that. I’m not sure. the question is in four years or whatever, they have to pay back the convertible notes in cash in order for there to be no dilution as presented in those charts. Penny Ether: So, , did they say they’re going to make that amount of money to be able to pay it back? , what I think is going to happen is, in a few years, they’re going to raise new notes to pay off the old ones. , sure, it’s no dilution. I guess that’s technically no dilution. It’s just debt instead of dilution, and you’re kicking the liability down the road. Penny Ether: , there’s a fine line between what counts as debt and dilution it’s somewhere in between, right? Cause the debt you can pay back in cash or you can dilute or it’s debt. Debt is debt. They took on debt. If [01:05:00] you think they’re going to be able to raise the money to pay back that debt without paying Taking on more debt or hitting an ATM or something, then yeah, there’s no dilution, but I don’t think that’s what they said. Penny Ether: I could be wrong. I think they just got convertible notes with the capped call and their effective dilution will be at either the strike price or all the way up to the capped call price, depending on where it lands when they settle the note. I think that’s all that’s really been stated. I think they’ve said we’re in a position We feel really good and we feel we have the capital we need for now and now we’re just going to start Really pulling in the money. Penny Ether: I think they said that But I don’t think they can assure that they’ll pull in enough money to pay back the debt #### Infrastructure Focus JohnPaul: And how long can mining companies keep that trance up in a bear market it’s very hard to keep the same, Oh, we need to dilute you. We need to dilute you. And you see the prices from these bull markets of 2020 to today, some of these stocks are not even close to where they were in the bull market. JohnPaul: And obviously there’s a lot of [01:06:00] things that go into them, just the stock pricing and market cap and other things that really matter, but the dance of growth at all costs, no matter the cost did bite a lot of these public companies , in the butt, in 2020, how do you see growth in the future for these pubcos, is it always converts or is it more converts over ATM? JohnPaul: Is it selling of assets? Is it merging in acquisitions? Can you talk a little more about the growth strategy and a growth strategy, that something you would be supportive of, something you would allocate capital behind and maybe an ideal growth strategy for a public company that’s mining. Penny Ether: for me, , I would be very interested in investing in a miner that was fully all about, , just operational efficiency and lowering their costs. And let’s say they said, our plan is to dollar cost average ASICs, or our plan is to only run the. Previous generation of basics because there’s lower given our low costs, there’s lower risk there. Penny Ether: And we see a high ROI on those. we don’t care about our hash rate growth. We [01:07:00] just care about how much money per share we make. And , that would be nice, the problem there is there’s no growth that model they would just be a refinery with some fixed capacity and they could shed out a dividend I’d be interested in investing in that just because. Penny Ether: I think that’s how mining works. I think it’s some yield each year and it’s not a growth industry, if anything, it’s the opposite with the having and every, all the margins are going to be driven lower and lower. I lost my train of thought. I’m sorry. It’s a, JohnPaul: Oh, I think I muted you as well. So you’ll have to unmute on your end. No worries the real thought question is what do you value in a minor and what do you value When investing in one, and I think you did a great job of focusing on the keys that you can control, which is cost per year, ASIC’s dollar cost averaging into those operational efficiency and being transparent. JohnPaul: I don’t think a minor is really coming out there with a full transparency dashboard. I think how they does it. Decent job of showing all their sites and how many megawatts are running, but no one’s showing live [01:08:00] uptime no one’s showing live exa hashes or these sgna costs broken down on a per kilowatt hour basis and how that’s tracked over the past year So there’s a lot of transparency That I think that the industry would recognize and potentially reward what also would help move it forward and differentiate themselves from other minors. Penny Ether: So I have to disagree with you on, I think overall the minors are transparent enough. you see the data that you need to determine these things. there is a high degree of subjectivity in what you consider an overhead cost or a cost of revenue or, , whatever. So that’s up to investors to individually figure out how to interpret those things, but they all file 10 cues. Penny Ether: They all have, you can see their cash costs there. They all file all the things that give you enough information to make a judgment. I think where they lack in transparency and it’s , Necessary in an industry where you’re competing for the capital is just in what they omit. And so if one minor is [01:09:00] transparent about , Oh, are, instead of giving the direct cost per coin, they give their all in cost. Penny Ether: They’re putting themselves at a disadvantage because they might be compared against other minors, direct cost per coin. they’re just taking a risk there, even though they’re transparent. What’s the point if you’re transparent about something, everyone else’s omitting, what’s the benefit there? Penny Ether: it’s just that you’re being transparent, but the downside is that it gets misinterpreted in the exact same manner that pretty much everything they disclose gets misinterpreted and it works to your disadvantage. So I think there’s a competing force to only be as transparent as And that just so happens to be , it’s enough, for me at least, it’s enough, they generally say enough I wish in the monthly operations reports, they would show how much hash rate, , I did a whole thing on this earlier in the year of , what each report should say, and it’s really not even asking that much more from them, and some of them said they’re interested, but at the end of the day, none of them do it. Penny Ether: , they should show how many exahash they own, , if you [01:10:00] say you’re upgrading, you’re buying a new fleet or whatever I need to know how much of this you’ve already have delivered so that I can understand how much more you’re going to spend to get to the target. I think the funding aspect of ASICs, they could be more transparent on. Penny Ether: it’s going to cost us this amount more from this date. So from this date forward to get to here’s how much cash we have to spend to get from whatever we’re at now to whatever X hash, here’s how much cash we have to spend, relative to what you saw on our latest filing. Penny Ether: Without that, you have no idea how much of it is already, they already spent. bought, you don’t know what their core fleet is on a lot of them. I think Wolf shows every, how many of each ASIC they have. Some other companies do this as well. , it’s not very common, but right now, if you want to know, what they actually own, what their fleet is, you have to , dig through all their orders and do all types of, it’s impossible, frankly, it’s impossible. Penny Ether: . I think that’s their biggest point of transparency needs to be. , what’s their underlying fleet? What do they own? How much more are they going to have to pay to get to their goals or whatever? They’ll tell you, yeah, [01:11:00] we’re transparent about our orders and how much it costs there. Penny Ether: But it’s up to you to, Make a big spreadsheet of month by month deliveries and how much we paid for it, whatever. And read between the lines of every filing to deduce whether or not we receive the delivery yet and where it is, if it’s going to be installed, when it’s going to be installed. Penny Ether: It’s , I think that part’s ridiculous, but investors aren’t demanding of this yet. they see a big order. They see the. Projected targets and that’s it. they’re not really accounting for how much more money needs to be spent and where they’re at in that progress other than just the raw X a hash per second number. Penny Ether: So yeah, there is room for improvement in a transparency. I think it would have to be in the monthly ops. I want to see the jewels per terahash. I want to see the number of kilowatts used in your mining operation. Even just joules per terahash would be nice. Most of them do this. Some of them don’t. JohnPaul: And to your point, those are all crucial things to really understand a mining or extraction business , Bitcoin mining. #### Economic Realities Penny Ether: Absolutely. It’s here’s what we pay for gasoline. That’s our dollars per [01:12:00] kilowatt hour. And we’re ordering a bunch of new cars that are going to have some miles per gallon. Penny Ether: And we’re swapping out our fleet. but we’re not going to tell you, , our average miles per gallon of our current fleet. Or which cars we received, or whatever. Even though our entire business is about this fleet of cars. That’s where we’re at. JohnPaul: But trust us, we are heating greenhouses with our cars, so it’s okay. Penny Ether: Yeah, some of our cars, run off of ethylene or whatever, ethanol. JohnPaul: So Benny, this has been amazing. I have three final questions for you, and I want to give you, if you have anything else to say to the audience first, before we jump into these questions, where can they find you? What’s the best way to get in touch? JohnPaul: Anything else you want to share at this time? Penny Ether: , so I’m generally on Twitter or X. I think it’s penny underscore ether. You can DM me there or message me there. , that’s where I’m found. I also go to pubkey on a, Semi frequent basis, which is a quote Bitcoin bar in New York. Penny Ether: , there’s a lot of great events there. I [01:13:00] would recommend going there. If you’re into Bitcoin, JohnPaul: you can run into him in the wild. That’s how I ran into you in Nashville, which was a great time. Just randomly in the elevator. I love that. , so the last three questions, their predictions, not going to hold you to it. JohnPaul: If you’re willing to make them , I’ll give it, go through all three and then you can answer them, which is the Bitcoin price prediction for 20, for June, 2025. In a network hash rate price prediction for June, 2025. And your favorite, Bitcoin miner that you see as a, a good play. Penny Ether: Sure. So we didn’t get to dig into a network hash rate and how that’s also misunderstood by everybody. I would love to go into that maybe next time, but, I think any predictions of network hash rate need to include what you think the hash price or price per Bitcoin is going to be. , if today, if the price per Bitcoin went down to 60, 000, The hash rate would drop as well. Penny Ether: I have some predictions on exactly how that curve looks. I think it’s very important and it’s , my model has been working pretty well lately. I post that sometimes. So when people give a network hash rate [01:14:00] prediction, I find it’s generally worthless. It should be a whole curve or it should be. Penny Ether: If Bitcoin is this, then hashrate will be this. I think any other prediction is just up to luck. if I said, , at the end of the year, I think hashrate is going to be 600. I could be right just because Bitcoin drops, or if I say hashrate is going to be, 900, I could be right. Just because Bitcoin goes on a massive rally and, , if Bitcoin didn’t go that high, it wouldn’t have ended up that high. Penny Ether: So, but I’ll answer your question, Provided, I’ll just pick a number for Bitcoin and I can give an idea of hash rate. This was in June, right? JohnPaul: Yeah. June, 2025. And now you think to your point, you need all three of them or all two of them to give a good estimate. Penny Ether: Yeah. So I’ll go with one 30. Penny Ether: So yeah, I think one 30, and I think we’ll be at a, probably we’ll be, there’ll be , some data will show we’ve crossed the Zeta hash. So a thousand X a hash, , I think we’ll be flirting around there if we’re at one 30, I think actually with, In terms of future outlook, I [01:15:00] think, , hash rate might just grow regardless of Bitcoin so long as we stay above , in the hundreds or one tens, one twenties, one thirties, whatever. Penny Ether: So I would be confident in saying 900 XA hash nine 50. almost no matter what. If Bitcoin is in six digits in six months, which is a pretty significant growth June end, or end of end of June, I think we’ll see difficulty at nine 50. Exahash a second. if you convert the difficulty number into hash rate, I think it’ll be 950. Penny Ether: And I think there’ll have been some, if you look at a three day average or something, there’ll have been some spikes that crossed a thousand. Which is insane for how many JohnPaul: megawatts is behind one exahash of power of mining equipment. When you look at the whole scale, #### Broader Implications Penny Ether: well, you have to keep in mind that now the jewels per terahash is down. Penny Ether: Some of them are 13. 5 and , maybe in March and April and May, there’s going to be, I don’t know, 12 jewels per terahash coming online and also all the other, I’m sure there’s still S19s running. They’ll have been purchased from whoever sold them. There’ll be S19XPs instead, or, everything in the whole [01:16:00] pipeline just gets upgraded. Penny Ether: And new hash rate comes in the front of the pipe and really old hash rate comes out the end. So you don’t even need, you don’t even need an increase. You , if you consider the pipe itself to be the megawatts, you don’t even need the pipe to get longer or change because you have the higher hash rate, the higher efficiency coming in the front and the lower coming in the end, the whole amount of hash rate in the pipe grows exponentially because of that. Penny Ether: , if you make some pretty simple assumptions, so I think it’s exponential hash rate growth. Pretty much no matter what with some little. if Bitcoin goes down, some of that hashrate comes off. If Bitcoin goes up, you can’t add more hashrate. So there’s an upper limit and a curve on the downside. Penny Ether: But yeah, , I’m confident with . Great answer. JohnPaul: I definitely see it hidden over one X a hash by June as well. , or one pet, Zeta hash, a thousand X a hash. What’s your minor, your go to minor, if you had to choose one today, knowing what ? Penny Ether: Well, I’m still, massively overweight on Coors. Penny Ether: There you go, guys. I don’t know if they’re [01:17:00] considered a minor still. , they’re showing, , less beta to Bitcoin. Today’s a They’re down 3 percent today while some of the other miners are up. So it doesn’t feel great, but I would go with core, core, iron, because they have, they’re going to have the best fleet and their costs will be awesome. Penny Ether: A lot of that’s priced in, and maybe cypher. And I’m actually going to take a flyer on bid farms. Just because I think they’re underappreciated, but I’ll have to read all the comments to that latest tweet and see what I’m missing. , maybe it’s , geopolitical risk or something, or , something’s not working out as planned. Penny Ether: I don’t know. But I pick those ones because I want the HPC exposure. I think I’m hoping next year, , some of these miners get HPC deals. And so anyone that has HPC exposure is going to see an uplift from that. So it’s . If any of them get a deal, I think it’s going to be good for all the HPC ones, and, , I think Ironwell have good mining operations, plus maybe some HPC, and Cypher has some good sites, maybe they’ll get HPC, Penny Ether: and, , Wolf, , , they [01:18:00] appreciate it in price a lot, but , I’m hoping some of them get HPC and it just helps everyone else. But , I wouldn’t buy pure play. I’d rather just buy Bitcoin. , , certainly wouldn’t buy Mara. I think Riot, they have potential for HPC, but they’re mostly pure play. Penny Ether: Yeah, that’s where I stand. Sorry. Didn’t get, ,, it was a three simple questions, but my answer is 20 minutes. Those are JohnPaul: the best answers. And Penny, this was an amazing time. We’ll have to have you on the show as well. And I’m excited for this season two of digital gold here. So thanks again for coming on the podcast. Penny Ether: We’re not done yet. I didn’t get your predictions. JohnPaul: My predictions, I would say June of 25, a thousand X a hash. I agree with you on that Bitcoin price. I think it’s a little bit higher. I think we’re at one 65, 165, 000. And my favorite miner was, bitdeer and hud eight. I think they both had, a. JohnPaul: Rally, , Bitdeer’s rally has been crazy. , I the op Penny Ether: Oh, what? I didn’t even think about Bitdeer. Because I think that [01:19:00] might be one of the best. We talked about it before with the ASICs. It’s not one of the eight I cover even though I own it, which is interesting. But I think the ASIC story has huge potential next year. Penny Ether: Especially if the SEAL miner And they’ve launched really competitive units. Yes. Exactly. Especially, it turns out, working as well. I saw them in person, by the way, last week. Oh nice, at the event they had. Yeah. Yeah., so yeah, I think BitTheor has some potential. But they’ve just been, their price has just been, is, I don’t know who’s buying it, but I don’t mind. Penny Ether: But it’s been going up a ton. So, I guess that’s getting priced in? I don’t know. JohnPaul: I think it’s getting priced in, but we’ll see what the market says for 2025 of next year for them. All right. Well, it’s #### AI and HPC Infrastructure Penny Ether: been fun. JohnPaul: Thank you. Thanks again. This was a great time. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. 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If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Mining's Hidden Value | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 26 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/bitcoin-mining-energy-denis-rusinovich/ Bitcoin Mining's Hidden Value | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 26 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 26 # Bitcoin Mining's Hidden Value with Denis Rusinovich Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Denis Rusinovich to discuss bitcoin mining's hidden value. ### Bitcoin Mining’s Hidden Value: Denis Rusinovich Unpacks How It Powers Communities & Grids This week’s Digital Gold Podcast episode dives deep into the fascinating (and often complex) world of Bitcoin mining with expert insights from Denis Rusinovich, a Bitcoin mining strategist, infrastructure finance veteran, and regulatory advocate. We discuss the intricacies of the mining industry, offering a candid look at what drives sustainability, community integration, and how to navigate regulatory and operational challenges. Get ready to have your understanding of Bitcoin mining expanded. Full podcast episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/bitcoin-minings-hidden-value-denis-rusinovich-unpacks/id1539971833?i=1000706535024) ### Here’s a peek at what they uncovered: - Bitcoin mining’s role in stabilizing energy grids by absorbing excess power and monetizing stranded resources. - Creative solutions like repurposing mining heat for community use, transforming environmental concerns into local value. - Lessons from regions like Kazakhstan and Russia, where regulatory shifts highlight the importance of proactive policy engagement. - Emerging trends such as synthetic hashrate agreements and localized manufacturing, reshaping mining’s alignment with energy markets. - The strategic pivot to frame mining as “energy infrastructure” to attract institutional capital and reduce volatility-linked stigma. Listen to the full episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/bitcoin-minings-hidden-value-denis-rusinovich-unpacks/id1539971833?i=1000706535024) ### Key Takeaways - Energy Partnerships: Miners are evolving into grid allies, balancing supply-demand gaps and enhancing renewable energy viability. - Community-Centric Models: Heat reuse and job creation position mining facilities as community assets, not just industrial operations. - Regulatory Savvy: Proactive collaboration with policymakers minimizes risks of sudden regulatory crackdowns. - Geographic Diversification: Spreading operations mitigates geopolitical and regulatory vulnerabilities. - Innovation Adoption: Hybrid financial tools and localized supply chains future-proof mining against market shifts. ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Denis’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities and opportunities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/bitcoin-minings-hidden-value-denis-rusinovich-unpacks/id1539971833?i=1000706535024) #### Related Resources Managed Mining Program → Mining Services & Remote Hands → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Gold Mining Podcast, where innovation meets opportunity in the world of cryptocurrency mining. I’m your host, John Paul Baric, entrepreneur, Bitcoin Pioneer, and the CEO of Mining Store. We specialize in modular data center solutions and driving financial access to Bitcoin mining worldwide. Each week, we bring you expert insights, cutting edge strategies, and real world stories from the forefront of Bitcoin mining. Whether you’re a season pro, a curious investor, or someone looking to understand the power of digital gold, this is the podcast for you. Get ready to explore the evolving world of Bitcoin mining from energy innovation to the latest tech market trends, and how to build long-term value in a decentralized economy. Let’s dive in and uncover what it takes to mine successfully in the age of digital gold. Welcome back to season two of the Digital Gold Podcast. Today we’re joined by Denis Rusinovich, co-founder of CMG Cryptocurrency Mining Group. A leading advisory [00:01:00] firm, transforming the Bitcoin mining landscape with over a decade experience in project finance at the European Bank for reconstruction development. Dennis made the leap into crypto in 2017, combining his deep expertise in infrastructure, capital markets, and energy strategy. Now he’s at the forefront of sustainable and institutional grade mining solutions, helping shape the future of the industry. From navigating geopolitical challenges to optimizing energy use, Dennis offers invaluable insights into Bitcoin, mining’s evolution in its role in a decentralized, sustainable economy. Dennis, welcome to Digital Gold. I’m happy to have you. Thank you. Thank you for having that. So let’s talk about your 2017 journey. You’re working for the EU and you learn about Bitcoin. Does everyone think you’re crazy or what do you see that makes Bitcoin sound it can really change the development of the EU and the world, and what draws you to mining? Particularly. Dennis: Yeah, it was interesting start of a journey because I’ll be honest, everyone else at the time, [00:02:00] my knowledge, let’s say, was limited about the Bitcoin itself and purely from driven by articles ft. And you can imagine what was a narrative there. There was days, so when I was asked, , to come and join and assist a project in Kazakhstan, that was, for me, that was a challenge, a decision making process originally because I felt okay, what it is. But when I dive deeper into that, I obviously saw there is opportunity and there is a massive, let’s say. A convergence with, , the traditional sectors, even though the crypto at the time was not very friendly, received by, especially by central banks. So my journey started the project which originated when Kazakhstan, it was a joint venture between originally founders of genetics, mining, and, , Kassar Partners Project. Started with one megawatt in September 17 in Kastan and grew two a hundred fifty two megawatts over the course of, , oh two and a half, three years. [00:03:00] And the journey, I’ll tell you, the lesson learned that was that interesting alignment because I come from traditional project finance and banking from day one. I was trying to match it how I would perceive in traditional sectors. , that was my approach to trying to find some resemblance and similarities. And this is where I think Bitcoin mining has a unique, I. Characteristics because it consists of two parts. If you put a crypto pot slightly aside, which , freaks out quite a few, let’s say regular regulators and, and players, you purely look at infrastructure and this is pure infrastructure play where you have a, a large scale, very intense energy consumer in remote regions where usually this energy either has to be transported, exported, or made available for some foreign direct investment, some production industries trying to settle down there. And this is basically where I saw my discovery [00:04:00] was, , I saw was death. This is a, the data center alike structure, which can be capitalized as a , more or less within a data center segment. And at the same time, it’s a great value added for the energy sector. Specific JohnPaul: region. And when you’re shifting from to Kazakhstan, you’re working at the European Bank for reconstruction and development, and their motto is, we invest changing, or were you, or were you working somewhere else? Dennis: Yeah, it was 12 years at TBRD. This is, , and then I stepped, actually I worked, , three years in traditional metals and mining gold, copper and rare earth metals, , and private equity. And so let’s say my journey was, , slightly after the bank, but still the whole view and the setup, basically my scorecard. Originally an assessment was actually driven by the, let’s say, the approach, , that was, , from a bank. And the bank. You’re absolutely right. And still, I keep it inside as a , because it’s a fundamental assessment tool for me because [00:05:00] this is how I grew up professionally. It’s exactly, the bank focus was always in transition. This is where the mandate of a bank was saying, okay, this is remote regions to the new region, emerging regions to emergent sectors, and you are transitioning from, let’s say, entrepreneurial. Business model to the corporate bankable corporate structure. And this is also how I came to, , project in Kaza Stan, because we originally were looking at, , transition to the capital market. And if you remember back in 17, 18, , let’s say I think 17 because 18 where crypto Window started, this is where was the first wave of reverse takeovers taking place. The tool which was available at the time, let’s say the, the investment. Now we have obviously with institutional funding available, , quite widely, , for Bitcoin minus, but back then, or you fund yourself through, let’s say reverse takeover, where basically you do have some access to the capital markets and the platforms which were available at the time it was, you have a Toronto, basically Frankfurt, and I think it was in Sydney because this is where, where original mining juniors, [00:06:00] where traditional mining juniors were, , and this was used as a rapper. So this is where, let’s say, the logic I followed, , when I was stepping into a sector. That’s why for me, from day one. I was trying to see how to marry two parts which are completely contrasting to each other, but at the same time to bring it more into the bankable a wrapper. And this is where, basically why I mentioned about a division between, , infrastructure , and a digital assets play within a Bitcoin mine. JohnPaul: What was missing from being bankable, , 2017, what shifted in the industry? And you mentioned a few things, but what were the key things that shifted between 2017 and today that made the industry much more bankable? If Dennis: I would say one of the major development was the overall narrative for crypto, I would not say it’s. Prove substantially. We obviously have much more positive development, but at least it’s not perceived as a, so much with aggression by the central [00:07:00] bank regulators as it was back then. This was one of the things actually when we step up and stop engagement in the project in Kazakhstan, one of the first things, , which was done is establishing a platform for the policy dialogue. And this is where, where association was born, which basically became. the window for discussion with the government on the local level and trying to harmonize their understanding and education, which eventually led to the regulation for the Bitcoin mining. So because, , as a result of that, you are officially have a sector of economy with their own tax codes inside the country, basically who are becoming a part of a overall economic system. #### Energy Meets AI Demand And I think this is where the transformation, which I see now, it’s not only there, but , I already see it, , resembling of the largest tier. For example, Russia copied part of this, , framework obviously with some alterations. And they implemented the 1st of January. That is the other regions which are also are following. And I think this is a main transformation, which I see for the sector. This is actually the, in many regions, [00:08:00] the governments understand. Maybe they’re not happy with, , digital assets themselves, but they understand this is a, a large consumer and large , , valuable player for the economy, especially if it’s, , regions where we have a energy generation and they need to somehow, let’s say we create an additional value added to each kilowatt hour we produce. When you’re talking through with the city and the local municipality and states or provinces, you’re talking about the benefits of Bitcoin mining. Are you seeing what type of political and regulatory questions come up or how are you interfacing with these electric grids? , I’m very familiar with the United States electric grids, but what things are you seeing in these developing nations or other nations outside of the US where mining is being integrated and how do, how does mining and miners yourself? Really make a win-win partnership with the local community. Dennis: There is a lot of similarities here with us at the moment with the whole growth, , that and the energy [00:09:00] demand. The biggest bottleneck is actually of the power grids everywhere, , and it’s gonna be the case going forward. The difference to the, let’s say, to reform Soviet Union block and all these emerging countries, and regardless, even not the Soviet Union, but just an emerging communists, a big challenge that they have is, , outdated infrastructure with power grid. So basically, even if they have a generation in one place, and it was a case for Kazakhstan, there was a, a massive, , surplus of energy on an off of, of Kazakhstan. There is a continuous deficit in the South where the large , , production and residentials are located to the benefit for specific region where what’s an alternative? They have, the alternative is only to export energy. And this is what Kazakhstan was doing to they exporting at the time access to Russia because there is no one could consume it, , locally. And this is where the value added was brought. And, , and I’m always trying to apply this, , IFI template because this is how they judge you bring the value, let’s say with value creation locally. And [00:10:00] also the social factor. And , many people missing out, but it is also the important, because I think many of those location, and I’m not talking about Pakistan. If you look at the, let’s say Sweden, Norway, where Scandinavian and , , the Nordi block is the same. We have access capacity up north is the same situation there, where the downturn, for example, is another example of a downturn in, , 2007, the crisis , , shut down many metals and mining capacities up north in Nordi. And this has became, , a, a trigger per a pressure point for the government. Okay. What we we’re gonna do with utilizing this energy, and this is where the data center segment was coming in, and the mining as well, , and I think this is an important aspect for the local, for the regional, the, the state government authorities to, to have bitcoin mining as a client. Who can be replace some of the sectors or become a temporary solution or nowadays over grid balancing is actually can become ultimate solution. , that could be in place and , supporting the [00:11:00] energy grid developments. But other important aspect, whether I want to say it’s a social and this is hiring the personnel. Regardless of what people say, , they may say, oh, Bitcoin mining hires, , not many people. I’ll tell you, in a remote region, , when you have a village of, , two, 2000, 3000 people, if you hire 10 people, it’s still a big value added. JohnPaul: And to your point, it’s a value add across the ecosystem, not only for labor locally in these rural communities that are usually farther away from population centers, but also to the grid when it comes to noise. How are communities that you’re working with reacting to the sound, even if it’s air cooled or water cooled or immersion? And how do you bridge that gap with the local officials or with local community members of where you’re looking to build a mining facility? Dennis: It becomes a tricky because, , as there is a, let’s say the certain proximity to residential areas, and you have to be careful because , , and now why I’m saying you have to be careful because, , with tables turn, you’re coming in, , you’re a new [00:12:00] investor, , you’re bring, let’s say with value added, you’re building a capacity. And then in two years down the line there is a maybe some local political election and they pick up on this agenda of Bitcoin minus making noise and making this as a PA part of their agenda. Political. And I think this’s probably the danger that I see there is a genuine cases where size of sites, especially on airflow. Cool, cool. , and if you have an open area, if it’s not protected by the forest in between, obviously when noise can travel, and I saw the cases where basically residentials were located another hill, , . Two, three miles away. But because of this , let’s say, remoteness of proximity, how, , the sound travel and this has become an issue, an additional CapEx for, for the mining site from immersion. I think. I don’t see that’s an, it’s an issue, but , on airflow. Yes. And I think especially on mega sites, , , , I think will always be an issue, I guess, and a tool to trying to pinpoint, , bitcoin minus saying, okay, you are [00:13:00] being, , JohnPaul: and to your point, maybe there’s more that we bring to the community than just the sound and the value add. Outside of the grid stability, what are some of those other value adds that you’re exploring with Bitcoin? Dennis: If we build it actually from macro level, because I think that this is not only the community itself. You need to understand that if government takes it seriously and follows certain steps, it’s a value creation on. #### Industry Deep Dive Each step because from an importing of hardware, as , basically this is becomes a part of a servicing industry because obviously there is some minus needs to be serviced. , this is already developed in this branch. Then when you have a companies, then there’s obviously the company, if it’s registered in a remote location and becomes a, it’s paying to the local budget in terms of taxes, which is additional revenue flow for the local, plus the hiring of personnel and developing of ecosystem in general. Because, obviously this is, brings an attractiveness. If you look at Kazakhstan. Say prior to thousand 17, , now I was hurt, maybe something, but it’s managed to put itself on a [00:14:00] map, even though it was not US Russia, , one of its top, , three locations. It still promoted the ecosystem and attractiveness for investments to come in. And this has became an interesting opportunity for locals. I give you an example actually, as a part of development in Kazakhstan, we had a session, we’ve taken some of these officials to Sweden to show them as a showcase of, , what was done up north in Sweden, in Ula, that region where basically we attracted to, at the time a Facebook data center and was building the whole crypto friendly infrastructure developments there. And this is was a, a direct example which resembles even Pakistan. Obviously it’s very different locations, but characteristics of, , what was happening, it was the same. It was, , access energy. In remote regions, we’ve , , challenging to even create large operations because many people saying, okay, we’re gonna build a big factory. No, you’re not gonna build able to build factory because you need to relocate 500 people there. We finally, it [00:15:00] would be two, 3000. You have to build schools, hospitals, and everything else. No one will do it. And this is where it becomes, , you just, the whole thing’s breaking down and the saying, guys, listen, this is energy. There we are building the infrastructure. This is very clean. Comparing to other industries, this is very clean because , what you do, you just, you do a set shell and core data center setup, connecting to energy. You’re not polluting air, you’re not polluting water, you’re not polluting soil and you’re hiring some people. And I think this is where it becomes interesting for them and the stand and the mine. And now it’s also very emerging. If you look, obviously now there is a, a hybrid models emerging will go and stepping in into HPC ai, this is where it becomes, let’s say, expanding towards even a traditional IT sector development. And for example, in Sweden where they developed a more clusters , a certain lab, a gaming development. , because they were building besides Bitcoin mine, also the data center segments. And I think now we probably, it’s also. A good opportunity for that because there is a convergence also with traditional data centers and traditional solutions. And we see it, [00:16:00] especially in us, , the, on the business models, how people try and, , companies trying to nurture or converge into that. JohnPaul: And that’s, I think you bring up, , some amazing points, which is what other industries are gonna consume as much power as we are. And the pollutant is gonna only be sound and heat, right? And that’s it. And the impact is huge to the local grid, the whole community, and really can make a difference without needing to support tens of thousands or thousands of jobs for a factory when it comes to the heat. What cool reuses or what, , new applications and Howard’s this new phase of using Bitcoin, mining’s heat, changing your perspective or any real world applications where you are using it? Dennis: I think for heat reuse, I see there is a big opportunity and also the challenge because of, I see the challenge is that at least let’s say, , projected from European, , landscape, because in Europe this is a region which, . Has a deeply rooted, , sustainable development initiatives over two decades. So you understand this is, , not [00:17:00] as relaxed as in us in a sense, even because of just the whole society, how it’s built up. That’s why, for example, heat reuse application. Has a great benefit because this is where it brings an efficiency to local communities. Because you have a compact solution, let’s put it in a range, two to five megawatt, it’ll have much more opportunities addressing the needs either by District City, where you have a residential, you have industrial complex, and I think this is where it becomes a, another solution, which is, I love, let’s say the sector conversion part because this is where I see there’s a future for bitcoin mining where it lies, , where bitcoin mining can come in and saying, okay guys, we can take an immersion cooling solution and carry it at the inside the city. Because it doesn’t make noise. It’s very compact. And from this two, two megawatts, we generate a heat which can be used or fully cover certain needs, or at least partly compensate for on a cost basis is definitely would be beneficial for any community and a government or state. And the other interesting [00:18:00] application is that I see is , would be for, it’s very slow in process because of regulation, maybe for some industries, but I think it’s also can be picking up, it’s actually deployment on the back of, , existing sectors, let’s say, which allows the integration for the heat. For example, you have a multiple industries which, , as a part of the production process will require heat, let’s say from 40 to 150 degrees. This is where the Bitcoin mining can come in and saying, guys, we are actually plugging in and this is how gonna be value added here. Because , you ever need to boil, use a boiler and heat it up, or we actually come in and doing a a, a good combination, , a good collaboration here. So I think this is where ways becomes interesting in this sense. Other points, which I see also, again, I’m projecting from European, is, , on the waste management, the whole , , segment because you have, let’s say a landfill, which is basically you have a biogas or as a additional byproducts where you can generate [00:19:00] and basically use energy. And this energy can be used for Bitcoin mining and maybe to some, , , a local community needs. Because in most locations, if it’s a remote region, , and you have a, let’s say. 2, 3, 5 megawatt of, , power generated. , a Bitcoin mining can consume part and part can be given image through basic, , needs of work community receive a lighting or, , some state or a government building in a small villages or cities here. JohnPaul: And so these governments, when you’re telling them these additional benefits about Bitcoin mining these communities, what is, what’s their initial reaction? Are they , I didn’t know this could happen. I didn’t know Bitcoin could do this. Or are they saying it’s supportive? 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Let’s mine together. #### Technical Discussion Dennis: I think then we can break it up. , the initial reaction, mostly because of lack of knowledge and because many of them actually, they fed information which comes from main, , media sources, which are filtered through benefits, filtered more through actual a negative part, , over bitcoin mining. So we always perceive it as a crypto. And my discussion, this is where usually trying to step back and go with my former , , IFI, , bank hat on saying, guys, listen, let’s put the crypto aside. Let’s just remove completely this [00:21:00] digital assets, crypto, whatever is, it’s a byproduct of what’s happening on the backend. This is infrastructure and this is what’s interesting. I had a recently conversation here on Balkins about the energy flows and I was speaking to energy group and I said, listen, crypto, I said, oh, Bitcoin mining. And , I said, let’s put Bitcoin on aside and look at the basic. We are very complex solution, which can be put in place within very short timeframe and become a very valuable consumer for the energy of peak. Because I said at the end of the day, you do generate the energy during the day. Obviously there is a massive issue. I understand that I as a consumer of energy will be your competitor. , you don’t want me to consume it at the time when you as a trader, energy trader, , need to have a much better , client. But I do know at night an off pick hours, , you have nothing to do. You don’t know where to, to where to push this energy to. And this is where it becomes an interesting, and this is where it breaks up, , the [00:22:00] approach. Because then they actually understand, okay, in which bucket you are follow, I dunno how they see it, which over bucket, but I saw that there is a certain bucket. They allocate the Bitcoin miner as a consumer. And this is the case for the most actually governments in the regional governments as well. And let’s say people who are not native to digital assets. It’s lack of knowledge. So you need to educate when you speak about saying, guys, listen, but if you have allocation inside the city and this requires a heat, it can also regenerate a solution. And this is also for them, quite unusual input that, , makes them trigger and thinking. So I see that’s the educational part is a big issue and delivering the message, and especially delivering in the message in such a way that they, it fits in their template of thinking, , because all of them working with banks, , working with a traditional corporate sectors, they need to fit into that performer. And the second part I see, which is issue [00:23:00] when you come into the execution of a project. The issue is actually the ecosystem that they interact with. Because if ecosystem is not friendly to digital assets, this is where you’re gonna experience a lot of issues. For example, if you work with certain ifis and they have a clear on agenda and mandate saying, we don’t deal with, , this type of clients. And I think an example of, , a larger scale we see in El Salvador, when IMF basically was pushing, and this is exactly the case, and unfortunately it’s not gonna go away because this is where I have, is my own concept of saying that you need to always look Bitcoin mining. Are you ally or competitor for energy and capital? And this is where basically it becomes an issue when you’re stepping into a a playground. For afis, they don’t it. JohnPaul: The viewing of Bitcoin as a competitor for capital. Is not a new concept, but it’s something that the Nordic countries, at least from my, from my perspective, the EU has been pushing [00:24:00] back on. So are you seeing that hurt the conversations of mining in the eu or is the EU really accepting mining because of the benefits we’ve already talked about? Dennis: I actually see the situation on, , Bitcoin mining, let’s say opportunities is diminished substantially in Europe. And it obviously, it did change because of the whole energy crisis with developments has taken place to some degree. It was. Natural that, , it’s true in certain regions. For example, the large consumers of energy, but also in many cases, unfortunately, it’s played on political level as, as I mentioned before, a political local elections, especially in remote region. If you are a large consumer of energy, so obviously you are a good client and this is, , for a position, , if we wanna challenge, , the local government, , we’re trying to hit where it’s most painful. , and this is if you understand, okay, if you have a Bitcoin minus, you’re trying to remove them. And obviously this is shaking up the local situation. Unfortunately it does work [00:25:00] this at times, but. In general, the mining in Europe, it did dis diminish because, , Norway and Sweden, obviously they push the regulation where they removed the exemptions, which were for data centers. And there’s additional tax implication. There is a discussion about trying to narrow down the potential use of, , bitcoin mining facilities because, and making a priority, let’s say for traditional data centers. And I think this is where. , the pressure will intensify because especially with the whole AI , , agenda as we see it, , is definitely becomes, , Bitcoin mining will be more and more perceived as a competitor for the energy resources, , and I’ll assume , , on any , , process, , of evaluating the options or the preference will be given to, , traditional data sensor route coin minus. The other thing I see, the very important thing that at least for Europe is taking place, the narrative, which was sometimes was used by [00:26:00] Bitcoin miners, and we are balancing the grid is fade in weight very fast as we see very holistic development on the best battery energy storage systems. , this is because, , this is an ultimate solution and I was monitoring the radio for the last two years because I saw it originally picking up in California and, and then Texas, , because this was main regions for that. But I saw the speed of which. It’s actually scaling up now in Europe, including the regulatory changes and policy changes. So I see that this has becomes also, , a big challenge. So for Bitcoin mining, it’ll be tough. That’s why, let’s say coming up with some additional solutions hit use, it’s probably would be a defense strategy to perceive, JohnPaul: we mentioned battery storage and timing of market and demand response. In Europe, are you seeing Bitcoin miners enter the frequency market frequency control market using [00:27:00] machines to play in the European market for frequency control, which to my understanding is across almost all of Europe and is very competitive, is a very attractive opportunity. I. #### Strategic Perspectives Dennis: Yes it is, but it’s primarily, it’s in Sweden and I think it’s, , in Sweden. It is there because of, , history of Bitcoin mining there, because after a whole shake up in the sector, the facilities were already in place there. Quite a sizeable ones. Not a sizeable as you have in Texas, , but still 30, 50 megawatt. This is for, that region is good size and they already were integrated on FCR programs, , and I think this is where it is remaining. There is obviously much more positive developments in Finland taking place because they started, , the nuclear power plant, 1.4 F1 0.2, and 0.5 gigawatt, , gigawatt. So obviously it’s creates a good environment. And then obviously the solutions there also, , , looking at FCR, but generally in Europe, across Europe, it’s a tough because, , and it’s tough because of a base. There over the [00:28:00] last, let’s say three, four years, were on a higher level, which were not feasible for minus to establish themselves. So, yeah, and I think this is where it’s, , becomes a, a challenge as well, , even now, because for, I’ll give you an example. I think the starts for Germany on the grid balancing for last year, I think was 2.5 or 2.7 billion euro were, were paid, , so you understand it’s a huge market potential for these solutions to come in. But I think this is where actually again, the competition comes in because you obviously have a, a large funds and institutions look at to fund the best, , model or solution, , and deploy them. And I think this is what we see, , so if you JohnPaul: wanted to choose, if, let’s say you had a $50 million to put capital to work anywhere in the world where.Is the most friendly mining environment that your, you think that capital should go [00:29:00] for the next 10 years? Per se of Bitcoin mining Dennis: next 10 years. 10 years is very, , as I always say that, , every four years of having a reset, this is where we have a major reset. And if you look at the regions, none of the regions maintained more than two. The other one I would say, I would probably think about it’s not very orthodox solution for Bitcoin mining is I’m looking at small, let’s say in Europe where you’ll be, again, more in defensive part, it’s actually [00:30:00] gear fmo, , because there is a solution that possible that you establish yourself with a generation. So power generation capacity, and this is where your reference to 10 years can play well still, because this is where basically on the back of it, you still can mine, you can scale down. Obviously agreeing with the government saying, guys, listen, I’ll build that much. I’ll utilize it initially and then I’ll phase out part of it. Or it could be available, let’s say for emergency response, the one you need it because , at the end of the day, , any capacity, even 10 20 megawatt capacity, it’s beneficial if you’re looking on a microgrid management, , this is a, or maybe on a a state level, maybe a drop in ocean. But actually for some local community it could be a massive input. So this is where I see a potential, at least let’s say, on, , JohnPaul: European space. So you keep on highlighting the fact that as Bitcoin mining gets harder and as the havings continue to occur. The integration into the local community, into the local energy resources, into [00:31:00] ancillary services, heat reuse, waste management. It’s only going to have to be, become more entrenched in order to stay competitive and to have government approval or to be a win-win versus just a mine on its own. maybe back in Genesis days where you were doing something new and unique and doing it very well, but it was not really maybe impacting the community in as visible as a way and the conversation wasn’t in the forefront back then. Is that a, a a fair assessment? Dennis: I’ll make some alterations because I think you need to look, because I think Gene mining probably was a pioneers because, , this is the first guys we saw in Bloomberg coverage, , going into Iceland, and I think they, they created this flagship solution, , reference point, and I think this is where you need to look at the whole, let’s say this is a part of natural evolutional phase for bitcoin mining. Why, let’s say the model, which we still perceive for people who’ve been long enough in Bitcoin mining, they’re still saying, okay, [00:32:00] what’s bitcoin mining? This is a pure energy arbitrage. You’re saying, okay guys, this is a region. This is a cheap energy below CapEx entry point. Okay, we understand the risk, we’re gonna deal with it, and we jump in. And then basically over the course of some timeframe, you recover, you grow your business, and then you see if it’s scalable further or not, ? So this will model will continue because , if you look at the world, , we have a, a major other smaller regions, which are emerging who never had before. And I think it’ll continue because especially if you’re looking on, let’s say, global south, this is an untapped territory, , , you go, obviously Laham, , the region was already discovered by some of the groups in Paraguay, , and, , other regions. But you have Africa. This is a massive, the geopolitical reshape is definitely, will be another area, , that we will see, and especially let’s say the issues they have on the actual grid developments, , this is where it becomes very interesting, , pocket for example, Ethiopia. , [00:33:00] Ethiopia is, , it’s only, I see it taking places because, , the, there is infrastructure development of hydro with, , , Bitcoin mining naturally serving. As a anchor client has basically scaled up continuously. We’re able to absorb this energy because there is no connecting point to a wider grid network to transport this as soon as we’ll be available, if this becomes a challenge as well. And I think in Asia Pacific, this is where I see that, let’s say, , where I see you need to view the Bitcoin mining, it’s evolving very fast. Comparing to our any other industries. I think we are living, , each four year cycle is 10 years in traditional sectors. And I think this is a part of evolutionary process. That’s why I’m always saying, guys, there’s defense story. , we’re drying wood, , heating with the airflow, the greenhouses. #### Operational Insights it’s, it’s only leaving so long and then you have to move on. JohnPaul: And I think to your point, it seems . Bitcoin mining CH changes where it’s at every four years. And it also, it only can grow so large in these [00:34:00] communities ’cause there are physical constraints and at some point in Ethiopia that power will be directed to another buyer who is willing to pay more. And so those miners will, will have to, at some point, maybe start to shrink their operation because they did their job in the Ethiopian’s government at eyes, which is they stabilized the development of a large hydro facility, which benefited all of society and there was a glut of cheap energy for six to 10 years.That’s an amazing way to look at Bitcoin. Dennis: This is exactly the point and why I always see that. You need to understand there’s gonna be there. To the cycle, , you might remain it, but not to the same level because naturally the government, and I think Ethiopia for me, , I’m looking at the wider picture because actually there is also a challenge. You should not forget the hydro energy use by bitcoin mining. This is, you are actually competing for energy, which is, , in the national security because it’s actually a big support for agri sector, not only the energy. And actually if you look in [00:35:00] Ethiopia, if you look at Nile, there’s actually the issue of Egypt because the, this is a water resources which actually is supply in the Egypt agribusiness. And this is if you, there is more behind the scene. And that’s why I understand that sooner or later. There’s going to be some mediation process saying, okay, about the energy. And obviously minus will need to step out and release part of the energy for the government because maybe we’ll say, okay, we’re gonna be building new factories and we’ll need the 200 megawatt. So sorry guys, , but , you have to leave and JohnPaul: it’s great while it lasts. But to your point, energy resources are so complex. They impact, the damming of the Nile is impacting Egyptian farmers, but it’s giving cheap energy to Ethiopian miners. these industries are very complex and as you dig into them for your clients, what expertise, you’ve already talked a lot, but what expertise do you bring in and who are the clientele you step through developing and building a mining process and , can you talk more about that at your advisory services? Dennis: Yes, sure. [00:36:00] So I see it, , it’s tailored solution and again, I’m trying to, , align it with a traditional, let’s say due diligence assessment pro. Project finance assessment process that they had, , with a bank, , with a, any a traditional sector, I pay quite a substantial attention to potential country risk and, , local risk, which could exist. And again, , it’s maybe it’s been too conservative and sometimes, , if you come more the entrepreneur, you’re saying, okay, , this input is actually, will limit my possibility for potential upside because you are trying to cut out the opportunities. , maybe I’ll go all in and then, , I’ll be lucky and I win. But I see, for example, again, I’m reference point, I’m trying to integrate in the overall assessment. A client is coming and saying, okay, I, I want to place the capital. In most cases, they are not actually crypto natives, IE from Bitcoin mining natives. But because we’re saying, okay, I don’t wanna have be involved in any operations, I want just [00:37:00] let’s say the clear cut assessment, the site. The project team, what’s the potential risk of the government? And then basically the assistance maybe with, , infrastructure set up the legal structure. Because in many cases, , this is where I also put it highlighted as a risk. Especially if you doing a large commitment of capital, you can go to a region, you set it up, you import the hardware use to station it. But then you have an issue of, , fiat , crypto owner ramps, you’re not able to pay properly. And then some of ’em saying, okay, we are looking at rails of USDT additional back channels, but this is not sustainable. Especially if situation changes, a local regulation changes and is reinvents you, , , this is becomes a massive issue. And okay, if you are having 10 machines, so you can find the method, but if you have five megawatts, it’s become a real issue. Especially if you are more transparent entity. So I, , I see that it’s important to package all and then to [00:38:00] see, , and make an assessment what, let’s say risk appetite is. JohnPaul: So that’s an interesting point that, , I think I take for granted as a US based miner. , Bitcoin comes in, you sell it on Coinbase, Kraken, you pay your bill and your a CH account. Have you experienced issues with miners paying large electricity bills? And it, talk to me more about. What that looks , why they come about those issues. And capital controls are probably a, , a huge constraint to that. And to your point, miners create this digital internet, money, Bitcoin, but it’s outside the system. And I do have to bring it back into the local area to effectively deliver the cash legally to the person and say, Hey, here’s the cash of course that be done in the US as a wire. But talk to more about that because I don’t think most people think about that in the mining space. Dennis: I’ll give you a one probably if this is the first discovery and, , use case. It was actually with Kazakhstan because , , as a operation was growing [00:39:00] on a large scale operation. We eventually was, , the setup was done in Switzerland because at the time I remember because Kazakhstan. Back in 2017, 1819, obviously it was no means of actually legally liquidate Bitcoin and getting, , local or US dollars, , to pay for the energy you need to legally structure yourself that, , you actually able to take hash rate to jurisdiction, which has a legal basis allowing you to do the OTC trade, , let’s say A BTC, you traded for USD or Euro, and then you’re able to send money back and pay for your energy and operational costs. And this is where we, we looked at the time. I remember it was interesting because it was 2018 with Big four. We looked at jurisdiction and I remember you asked for me was on the list and recommendation. , basically the discussion point was. We still unclear how us will react. Why I mentioned it is [00:40:00] that this is where we said, okay, , let’s look at the wall already established, and this obviously Switzerland and this is how it start working. , do Swiss entity that obviously takes a head rate enabled to deal in , , , interact with, , subsidiaries in our companies in within a group. And this is where the important part is actually, this is an entity which able to open a bank accounts because for example, you can imagine crypto business in Kazakhstani, you’re not gonna be on bankable, , for anyone. #### Market Commentary why I mentioned us? For me, I do admire the steps that us taken, , during this 2019 and 20 because with the emergence of, , civil ligate and signature, you guys, you locked the whole system. It was able. To grow much faster and be able to service the sector because this is where of a conservative approach, let’s say in Europe, limits it completely, , with development. And that’s why now even with why I mentioned it, I think with a positive developments, what you had actually, I think it was two weeks ago about that banks will be allowed to deal with much more freedom with digital assets. [00:41:00] I think if that resurrects the times that we had, , back in 2019, 2021, you definitely will have a much better benefits for developments. But the issue remains and the issue remains in many regions. If you look globally at the moment, if you look for example, nor dish people’s to in Sweden, , Norway. The Bitcoins are not sold in inside the country. They’re sold, , outside. You only have part of Bitcoin mining processes, data centers. And this is the important component, especially for players who want to capitalize. Okay? If someone is, you have some retail type of clients hosting in there is their business. But if you are corporate business, , you need to establish legal entities here and you need to establish flows. You need to understand that the bank, for example, in Paraguay, is able to take money from a entity which deals in digital assets and does the, , bitcoin mining to pay for your energy. And I think this is the big challenge. You obviously don’t have it in US because you are , say self-sufficient system, [00:42:00] but anything to do with cross-border business, , globally, this is a major issue. And I think it was a issue and I think it will still remain as a issue going forward. , , it’s one of the biggest challenges, , I think for the sector, especially , , as, as, as it’s pushed towards transparency, . JohnPaul: Have you seen any energy companies that you can work with except stable coins? Or has that conversation not even happened yet? Dennis: In Europe with Amica is a regulation. , we have certain restrictions. The main issue is energy company or any corporate, is actually the banking relations that they have, . We are banking with traditional banking houses, , we are not crypto friendly. There’s no way you’d be able to work. It will say, , go and do it somewhere else. And I think, , this is a main issue. JohnPaul: And so to your point, it’s the regulation at the federal level that’s preventing it, or the state level versus the bank or utility saying, yes, , I want to take this as a [00:43:00] payment option. It’s much farther than that. What other regulatory issues do you see on the horizon for Bitcoin miners, either in the EU or in other developing nations? Dennis: I actually will give you even the live cases now. So this is, , I dunno if other governments will pay attention, but I think I’ll give you two examples and then you’ll see the impact is good. You can project the view. Kaza Stan is the one. This is where the full, let’s say proper regulatory environment was created. And this is genuine, I’ll say in that sense probably Kaza Stan is the best and the worst case if you look at assessment, because they did manage to formulate the proper transparent environment, but they overdone it in terms of maybe the timing because in Kazakhstan you are required to sell Bitcoins inside the country. Yeah. So you can understand if you as an international player, non Kazak, , company, it becomes a major issue because you are capitalization point. You need to have a inventory of [00:44:00] Bitcoins inside your main group structure, and this is where you’re forced to sell on a local level and basically to buy back just to match it. This is, I guess, one of the issue. That just created. But there is a logic to it, , because obviously the government was, had a BL appetite at the time. We were pushing it forward. The price was different. It was before even, , we had this spike last year. So obviously we had appetite thinking, okay, let’s bring the profit center to the actual Kazakh level. And this is logical, , and I think this is where it’ll come eventually for more many regions as very me, , an evolution taking place. It’s very likely that the government will start bringing this, , let’s say the point saying, okay guys, actually we need to recognize the revenue inside the country. And you have a paid taxes. But the other problem that they had. They did not. And I remember this is an initiative we’re trying to push forward even 2018 19 in Kazakhstan with requesting just allow one bank, at least one bank to deal with corporate clients to do the [00:45:00] conversion. The issue was there is no proper banking support even to do it. So technically you have a license, you have a trade. Now we already have it, some banks, but this is the, the bottleneck. Another example I give you this is, , the Russian government, , they looked at this, they replicated part of it and they implemented it from 1st of January. , so now officially all the miners across inside have to be registered with tax authority. So where minus have to be registered with their equipment on the balance, which is matching to the custom office. , , it’s pretty nice. Transparency. They do not require you to sell the Bitcoins physically inside the country, but. Still as soon as they leaving your wallet, it’s a trigger event of , let’s say the calculating on the tax basis. And in that sense, for example, the issue that, , government, let’s say would be facing in sector in Russia is that, , any outside clients who, and there was quite many of them to supply, let’s say from bricks block who [00:46:00] are hosting there, it becomes an issue because technically now you cannot repatriate, you need to build the structures inside. They might review this position maybe this year to keep it running, but I see sooner or later we’ll still lock it up because I think this is where we see the challenge. On regulatory landscape for any government who are nurturing the ecosystem. Sooner or later the taxes will be calculating how much revenue generated inside and outside and trying to squeeze. #### Innovation and Technology We obviously will be squeezing, trying to do, squeezing on transfer pricing, but also, we’ll, because they sometimes we don’t understand that bitcoin mining business sometimes is done by non-residents of the country because you are, as a investor from completely different region, you are looking for opportunities and I think, let’s say the hosting opportunity, because governments sometimes see it as a one piece, the hosting provider and the miner. And I think this is where the challenge will be, will be interesting [00:47:00] to see. the if us, but I think US is self-sufficient market, so it’s , but I think some other regions might be copying that, , so it’s something to watch out JohnPaul: for. And as you peel the layers back on mining, you realize just how complicated it is using a local resource energy. And exporting to a global commodity. It’s the beautiful nature of Bitcoin and that the fact that it creates, it makes every local energy market a global energy market, but it is the politicians and regulatory nightmare of capital controls and all of these things that are inundated. , oh, if you move the Bitcoin from your wallet, that creates the taxable event. It’s , what happens if the Bitcoin, , wallet is in the US or in China? In Brazil? It’s insane to think about all of these different levels that you help people walk through when they’re setting up outside of a, let’s say, friendly jurisdiction to Bitcoin and crypto and stable coins, which there aren’t too many of those out there even [00:48:00] today. So I definitely. admire the details that you’ve been able to go in and, and dig into this. What keeps you going in the Bitcoin mining space? Why do you enjoy doing this? At the end of the day? Dennis: I think with the dynamic, , there is no stagnation. Let’s put it this way. There is no stagnation and you’re learning curve. If you think it’s flattering out there, something happens. And we saw it last week. I was thinking, okay, that’s it. We set for this year, we have a US in a dominant position for the hedge rate growth with American Bitcoin news coming out and next day we have a tariffs. And this is completely, and it’s obviously tricky because you can imagine, , even on the client side, I see, I had some , follow up saying, okay, , what’s, how the situation shifted now? I said, yeah, this is a new input and I think it’s stressful. But I think after a while you understand, that’s why I’m sure you yourself understand, when people call you saying, oh, it’s happening to the prices. you say guys, , the more you look at the price, you [00:49:00] know, the more stressed out you get. JohnPaul: Zoom out. Zoom out. So yeah, let’s talk tariffs the us. Are we losing as a US citizen, our competitive nature to mine profitably. the tariffs on machines coming out of China and potentially this tariff blockade. And , right now these bitcoin mining companies are slapping a Malaysia sticker on or slapping a, , made in the Philippines or other Asian countries. Is that gonna be a viable solution in six months or is it completely changed the game and us will build its own chips and or it will import chips and build its own machines in the us. What are your thoughts on that? I did a post Dennis: about this in LinkedIn. I remember after that I’ll bring it up, , into pieces. , let’s say I definitely see there is an impact on the short term. There is obviously the medium, midterm, and long term set of implications. If you look at the localization of production, let’s move, put in a different stickers. This is a great type of activity. , it might be sustainable for some players in the short term, but then eventually it will be caught up. [00:50:00] But localization of production in us, it’s possible. And to be honest, I see if this is something already in discussion and for example, I think, , one of the candidates ly is, , American Bitcoin crop. , they obviously have a big bargain in power on their , , PR side. Let’s say if they agree with Bitmain and Bitmain does some even basic localization, which not gonna remove a virus, but maybe move some. Let’s say improvements on overall cost structure, but most importantly it’ll start localization process because, , this is a way you, in the process of going forward, maybe not this year, but year after, you’ll be able to source some of components and the use of the assemble by assembling the, obviously creating a local expertise, as , in the sector, , it’s the semiconductor sector, so the expertise and work, and this is very critical. I’m very skeptical about, let’s say, populating own production. , what you have a reference to block and some other initiatives, which is done. These guys will definitely make a [00:51:00] good for themselves because of the whole perception on the market. They obviously might get some orders, but I, I’m very skeptical that they’ll be able to have any sizable or any meaningful supply lines for the US market. Taking into account the size of it and demand, and basically the growth potential. And then for the following reasons, there is no expertise. , that if you look back. When the first, , tariffs were implemented, , when bit Bitcoin was stepping out into Malaysia, if you remember first batches from Malaysia, people were saying, where do you get it from? Is it China or Malaysia? Because , they all come, were poor quality and we’re talking about this is a bit, pain was replicated and it’s in new environment. It took very quickly respondent, but because this is a strategic, this is a, a biggest play on the market still, 80% of our hash rate out there is all the bit main, , so I see that this is the main challenge because none of them, we have no expertise. We’ll know way. We’re gonna aggregate the, the competence, , level of personnel for that. And obviously it takes a while, , to implement it. And let’s say [00:52:00] if we are looking realistically. The implementation process for these guys, , is two, three years at the best, , to get to a certain level. So the only way it can be done, it’s, I think it’s , a bit main micro bt, , stepping in, , quite actively on the summer assembly line. So that’s the part, let’s say implementations for the overall hash rate. This is interesting because obviously it’ll slow down some development and I think some of the futures contracts by Bitman or Micro BT will be reviewed by some of the players. #### Bitcoin Price Dynamics Spot market will be on for hardware trading would be affected. , obviously some projects will fall down because they’re not, they able to get the funding to because of the whole story now. But if you look at overall head rate globally. Number two position is Russia. Russia cannot scale up now. And I know from a Chinese , speaking to Chinese hardware market players, there is a challenge because Russia has stopped buying the volumes it was buying before because of regulatory changes and the market because of [00:53:00] it’s a transition process. So we are looking now an interesting situation where we have two largest markets almost shutting down, , at least narrowing down the consumption very substantially. And then we have this big producers, Bitmain, micro, bt, especially Bitmain. They need to sell it somewhere. And I think this is where it would be interesting, maybe in at least I see it into the business model, which will be coming back quite more actively. Maybe it’s , by Bitmain and Micro BT going into the own hosting model of own hardware. Because for them it’s synthetic sale for maybe some friendly structure. So they have an ecosystem of that or basically going to models. . In some regions, , with a model of, , host to sell, , where basically we understand we’ll do a synthetic sale maybe at a, at a cost plus basis, , , to us, , pay the customs and at least there’ll be a way host it to hardware and then we can sell it off. So I think [00:54:00] this is, might be an interesting development, but this is again, will be, do some transformation on, , market participants, , JohnPaul: in the regions. To your point there, it’s going to maybe change the flow of capital from US participants in, I really the host sale model because you’re still following the regulation. You’re still paying the tariffs on the cost of the goods, but instead of bitmain, let’s say making 50% markup on the machine, when you buy it, they make 50% markup on the machine once it’s plugged in and installed. And people will, buyers be comfortable with owning. Machines in facilities that are hosting, or maybe it’s a short term hosting contract, maybe one month, and then they can take it to their own facility. So that brings up a lot of, , unique ways to look at this situation. I do think it’s is how the US industry will go and we’ve seen them do things with HUD eight, as you mentioned, with the Bitcoin mining there and this, and the ability to have ade buy the miners from them at a predetermined price [00:55:00] after they’ve been plugged in and operating. So it’s starting to, maybe this will be an explosion of host and buy in the, , next bull market, , to come. What advice do you have for someone looking at this industry and what’s one underrated lesson from your journey, , that you would to share with the audience? Dennis: Single exposure thing is the main risk, because, let me elaborate on that. It could be, , in, , any path, especially on location, , because as we saw the region, , the region, , that you pick, . If it’s a cheapest, an tariff, it’s not always the case that it have a reasonable risk for you, especially in the midterm, because especially you’re trying to get over recovery from your investment. And basically additional upside, I think this is where have a diversification point comes in, , need to look at the wider, let’s say, and , not aligned markets. IE just completely maybe contrasting jurisdictions, , just to trying to be in [00:56:00] a more diversified position from a regional perspective and also the entry point, , because for anyone who is trying to step up operation, obviously the hosting model is probably one of these options. Or even if you’re looking at some , , hash rate products, , because there is already the good , , use of developments that’s taking place, I think is, let’s say at least to have a feel. Again, it’s from a life example, , you can have a client saying, okay, , I see that as I wanna be in Bitcoin. You look at the location structuring. But then it becomes an issue that, for example, their own private bank, not able to deal with this because they are not capable, for example, to interacting with, , that type of laws or for, let’s say a jurisdiction. And this is where it becomes a bottleneck file. And I had this in instances before where basically it’s all prepackaged. It’s good to go. Then the bank says, oh, actually no, and this is where I say to them, guys, maybe you should simplify it. , as you just go, for example, one refresh rate product, we have a [00:57:00] number. You give an order to your banker and just to book it on your brokerage account and you have a fill. Okay, your participating in the sector. And that’s really the entry position. It depends, , how deep they wanna go and which risks to take. Because for example, I saw, , some, , players trying to go for the cheaper option moving into new regions, and then there’s some local government changes, and then something happens to where hardware and this is, becomes the main issue. And I think this is the worst scenario because this is where you have a newbie for Bitcoin mining trying to go in. And if they actually experience a difficulty, this is a reputational damage for a sector because this is where we go and speak, saying, okay, , I’ve been, , JohnPaul: mistreated. And so you mentioned, I selling synthetic hash rate, and I think that’s where it’s this, these tariffs conversations, these geopolitical risk, the banking conversation and issue of payment, it all opens up the door for synthetic markets. Are you seeing the ability to build synthetic products around [00:58:00] hash rate? , we’ve seen them develop. Are you seeing the next couple years be where those products will receive significant traction, and do you think their hedging of difficulty really will step into the synthetic products and maybe bring a more stabilized or levelized yield to some of. To the institutional clients looking to get exposure to Bitcoin and bitcoin mining. #### Growth and Vision Dennis: I think, , let’s say if, if you go into the, the hedging product on, , let’s say the whole derivative of space for, , the difficulty, this is, , a separate niche because , obviously you need to see who’s gonna be, , the, on the other side of a, of a strait, how it’s, , basically how deep would be this market is. It is definitely, it’s a case I am more actually bullish on, , synthetic products where because of whole regulatory landscape changing the local player, for example, you have your host insight. As soon as you have a more and more this, , pressure building up on risk regulation, , cross border interactions, fiat on off ramps, your core business is actually. This hosting [00:59:00] facility. So for you, you need to find an optimum way to cut off point where you’re saying, guys, I say a hash rate and this is where you take it and this is where it’s actually, you deal with all the BTC conversion and then all these interactions that will be on the back of it. And especially for at least with, from my , . View on some regulatory environment, what I mentioned to you, Russia, kastan, and I think some other regions will be, , picking up on that. This is where it’s , becomes an interesting that , eventually we might have a new lay emerging, which is a purely hash rate trading. I. Where basically you are interacting with a, a various multiple location on a data center of hosting setups and which, , pushing through the hash rate, obviously you, the, the, it can be on a spot market, , a certain a pricing mechanics will be created. And it is there because you already have a different opportunity. You have a guys nice hash guys in the marketplace which are doing, and I think we’re doing quite an interesting [01:00:00] pioneering, it was, , to admire this as well. They created, , European guys is why I also focusing, , we did it I think, , a couple of blocks where basically they are fully , , , , done by a nice hash, even though a nice hash by itself. It’s not a mining pool, it’s not a minor, , it’s a pure marketplace aggregation. And, and this is where I see this is a very interesting development that will have this additional layer. Maybe it’s even will be transforming the mining pool. , because I think this is the pressure I see as well because if you look, you have a foundry, basically the dominant player in us, it’s definitely the representation of American hatch rate. I think for Russia probably will push it as well. Quite substantially. They are quite slowing it down. Again, we learned from Kazakh Stan, maybe we should not push with demand creating a local mining pool because Kaan had its , done. , you actually have to go into Kaza pool, declare it to [01:01:00] a tax authority. Russian government still push , living in it. But if they create then it’s gonna be another one and I think it’s gonna be a transformational mining pool. So this is the has product. It is definitely something coming, , and especially coming in what you mentioned before with investors, , because some of investors. They don’t wanna deal with the local matters. They want just a pure clean hash rate. , because they’re interested in the hash rate and what comes out of it, , BBTC JohnPaul: ready to earn Bitcoin at a 60% discount. With Vault, you can get access to the most efficient Bitcoin mining machines. For as little as a hundred dollars, no technical expertise needed. Not only can you accelerate your Bitcoin holdings, but you’ll also enjoy tax benefits, 40% accelerated depreciation on mining equipment in 2025. Our low cost energy partnerships and advanced hedging strategies lets you skip the headache while maximizing your Bitcoin exposure. Join the [01:02:00] revolution today and start building your digital gold portfolio. Invest now at To the Moon Cash. Your journey to the future of money begins here. And Dennis, so financialization of hash rate you just touched on. Hmm. How do you pitch mining to a bank traditional financing? You mentioned you to take away Bitcoin and take it out, but when your clients are talking to these banks and these banks let’s say are doing a deal versus aren’t doing a deal, what is the key positioning you’re using? And I wanna really wrap it up with that last conversation. ’cause I think as with your previous background, you can provide, , a unique insight to all the miners out there as they have this constant conversation of education of what our space is and how it really interacts with the local markets Dennis: on the banks. Banks is a tough one, I think. I would say if it’s a big bank, you have zero flexibility. If it’s not crypto friendly, as it’s, , unless it’s a very sizable client that can [01:03:00] negotiate a position internally, you are in a losing position with a smaller bank, obviously. , and I had this interactions as well where the bank, if it’s not crypto friendly, but it wants to accommodate a client, you are stepping in into some discussion of, let’s say, validating all the full flow chat. Because at the end of the day, they need to take it back to where compliance, risk management and to see, , and validate, okay, so what’s the risk, potential risk , because Bitcoin mining still high risk sector, how based or or region as well. , basically what checks and balances they will want to see for you to be able to fit somehow into a profile. And I’ll tell you an example, when we, , , we did for Kazakhstan, obviously with Switzerland. At the time, I remember everyone saying, you go to exchanges, , finance and this, and , with Phoenix Kraken, , I explicitly went in with zero exposure [01:04:00] to exchanges because exchanges in themself represent the risk, especially from a compliance and credit risk perspective inside the bank. And I actually went to, with pre-approved OTC desks, again, , you looked very serious. So you validate them to see that you obviously don’t have this , let’s say, intermediary type of structures. You mean they, because they need to do a background check on them and this is how you implement all the steps, including the what will be a custody solution. how basically, which reports even I had to submit the samples of reports saying, okay guys, . Going forward, are you going to be comfortable on a monthly basis that actually when we do a trade or BTC tool, let’s say the, the fiat conversion, we actually supported that. Basically this is how basically this BTC will populated from this market pool. You show the full flow chat and this is, , times it works because they see it, they validate it, and they may internal assessment, and you stick to this sort [01:05:00] of, , roadmap, which you define any alteration from that. Going forward, you need to discuss and notify it. Obviously, some might happen for commercial reasons, some might happen for other reasons, #### Mining Industry Dynamics JohnPaul: and I think, think you’re highlighting. Really to your point, the complexity of the space bankers, the counterparty risks we saw with FTX, which only scared all of the bankers. They were , I don’t know about Bitcoin and crypto anymore, ’cause of one bad actor. And it’s sad to see that in the space, but I really Dennis, appreciate the conversation of today. We’ve gotten in touch and highlighted tremendous amount of different topics. Is there any last words and last comments you’d to make before signing off? Dennis: Well, I think I wish basically everyone to just to, , remain rational. Even sometimes we get emotionally involved in the market for the developments, but I think step back and, , have a cult calculated look at what’s happening. It’s JohnPaul: patients and mining projects don’t happen fast. They’re the one, one of the slower things in the crypto space. But machine [01:06:00] prices move fast, tariffs change quickly. Regulations can change locally. So it’s a, a slow moving. Fast moving industry. Yeah, exactly. Well, thank you Dennis, for the time and if you’re what listening remember to mine on and don’t freak [01:07:00] out. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. 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If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Mining as an ESG Asset | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 27 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/bitcoin-mining-esg-dennis-porter/ Bitcoin Mining as an ESG Asset | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 27 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 27 # Bitcoin Mining as an ESG Asset with Dennis Porter — Founder, Satoshi Action Fund Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Dennis Porter to discuss bitcoin mining as an esg asset. ### Proof-of-Work as an ESG-Positive Asset Class: Reframing Emissions, Energy Sovereignty, and Strategic Bitcoin Reserves with Dennis Porter This episode of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric, spotlights Dennis Porter, CEO and co-founder of Satoshi Action Fund. Dennis traces his pivot from grassroots miner to nationally recognized policy advocate, emphasizing Bitcoin mining’s growing value in grid stability, clean-energy integration, and methane abatement. He also details Satoshi Action’s legislative wins and the regulatory battles ahead underscoring why grassroots mobilization now sits at the center of Bitcoin’s policy playbook Full podcast episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/proof-of-work-as-an-esg-positive-asset-class/id1539971833?i=1000709447857) ### Core Insights: Visionary Leadership and Narrative Control: Dennis’ rapid evolution from advocate to policymaker illustrates the power of agile upskilling and narrative stewardship in shaping pro-Bitcoin legislation. Offense-First Legislative Strategy: Satoshi Action Fund has already converted six model bills into law (a seventh is imminent), institutionalizing self-custody rights and transactional flexibility for roughly 20 million Americans. Proof-of-Work as a Flexible Grid Asset: Bitcoin mining now serves as a demand-side “shock absorber,” evidenced by a 1.7 GW curtailment during Texas’s Winter Storm Elliot, outperforming legacy peaker plants on both cost and carbon metrics. Methane Mitigation and ESG Upside: Strategic co-location with stranded methane sources transforms environmental liabilities into monetizable assets, backed by near-total combustion efficiency and peer-reviewed data. Inclusive Energy Economics: By monetizing excess or stranded power, mining catalyzes rural electrification and GDP uplift in under-powered regions, linking energy accessibility to socioeconomic growth. Coalition Building and Regulatory Defense: With entrenched energy and banking lobbies deploying protectionist tactics (e.g., the Genius and Stable Acts), scalable grassroots activation and bipartisan engagement remain critical to preserving an innovation-friendly policy landscape. Listen to the full episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/proof-of-work-as-an-esg-positive-asset-class/id1539971833?i=1000709447857) ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ The case for Bitcoin mining as an ESG-positive asset class - ✅ How Satoshi Action Fund is shaping pro-mining legislation - ✅ Why policymakers are warming up to proof-of-work ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Dennis’ insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/proof-of-work-as-an-esg-positive-asset-class/id1539971833?i=1000709447857) #### Related Resources Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Guide → MiningStore 62.5 MW Iowa Facility → Learn About Bitcoin Mining → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Welcome to Digital Gold, the podcast exploring Bitcoin mining’s transformative approach to power and energy. Today we’re joined by Dennis Porter, CEO, and co-founder of the Satoshi Action Fund, president of Satoshi Action Education, and a leading advocate for Bitcoin’s role in energy innovation and policy reform. With a background in finance and tech startups, Dennis educates lawmakers on Bitcoin, mining’s potential to stabilize energy grids, reduce emissions through methane mitigation and foster economic growth. He’s been instrumental in passing pro mining legislation in states Texas, Oklahoma, and Montana. And his insights have been featured in Forbes, CoinDesk, and Major Bitcoin conferences. We’ll dive into how Bitcoin mining can reshape energy infrastructure, why smart policy matters for US leadership and blockchain in the future of decentralized technology. Dennis, welcome to Digital Gold. It’s good to have you. Dennis: It’s great to be here. Always good to see you. I know some people will probably only listen to the audio version, always good to see a friendly face. JohnPaul. JohnPaul: Thanks. I’m excited to talk to you more about what is the [00:01:00] DC in Politics of Mining. As , someone who’s building the space, we focus on the energy and deploying, but every day it seems we’re pushing up against more and more political and regulatory hurdles. So excited to, to jump into those. So, Dennis, what made you want to do this? Walk us through starting off in your early career in finance and startup, and then what was the pivotal moment that sparked that transition into Bitcoin advocacy for yourself? Dennis: Yeah, absolutely. The big thing was I found Bitcoin in 2017 after trying to find, jumping from one thing to the next, trying to find what the next thing would be for me. And I found Bitcoin in 2017 because a friend of mine told me it was perfectly anonymous internet money. And I said, no way. That’s not possible. Nothing on the internet is totally anonymous. So, I went to go study Bitcoin right away immediately to prove my friend wrong. But while I was in there studying Bitcoin and learning about. If whether it could or couldn’t be, perfectly anonymous internet money, which of course everyone in the space knows it’s not perfectly anonymous. I found so many things about Bitcoin that I truly fell in love with. I fell in [00:02:00] love with the ability for Bitcoin to be a peer-to-peer technology, to be able to bank the unbanked, to provide financial services for people globally, for people that have been traditionally left out of those systems. And I just started to fall in love with the technology. Even though I don’t know, code or I’m not a coder, I’m not a expert when it comes to technical components of Bitcoin even today, I would say. But at the time knew nothing about Bitcoin and nothing about coding, and yet I just dove right into mastering Bitcoin by Andrea Opolais. I had to read it probably three or four times before it started to make sense. It sounded a lot a foreign language to me, which at time, at the time it was. But, that research and then just going online and just seeing the thriving community of people that were standing up and defending Bitcoin and sharing their views on Bitcoin, which helped to educate my views on Bitcoin as well, ultimately led me to a scenario where I knew that I wanted to do something in this space. Initially in 2017, going into 2018, I was , what? I’m gonna launch a code. I’m gonna launch an app. I am going to create something for people. And then I learned very quickly and reminded myself why I was really bad in school. For those of you that dunno me, [00:03:00] don’t even have a high school diploma. I have a GED did a little bit of college, but it just really wasn’t my thing. And, , trying to learn to code reminded me of how much I hated, going to school and it just wasn’t a good fit for me. So I was , what? Okay, scrap that idea. First idea is never the good one, right? You go, I went right into mining and so I started mining outta my basement. And I even built my own, black box, so to speak, for those that, are familiar with upstream data. They have this little black box and you put it outside and it’s very much nicer than the one I built, but mine was indoor only, but built that so I could stick it out the side of my garage. ’cause there was way too much heat. And was about to go all in on bitcoin mining. And then eventually the market collapsed. And I was , okay, I clearly don’t know what’s going on here and I, I need to study this a little bit more so I can prepare for a true entry to the space. [00:04:00] Went pretty quiet for a while, right? 2017 to about 2020. I, this is the time to shine. , just most people out there who don’t have much shelves to put into the space, or I’m not sure , how they can add value outside of just talking about Bitcoin, I was , what? I’m just gonna become a content creator. I’m going to focus on educating people about this technology. I’m gonna focus on delivering real high value content. I was able to get some of the best speakers, the entire space, everything from sitting Senators to Michael Saylor to you name it. I was able to get them on my show and had an awesome time doing that. But eventually started to circle back to this idea that , what? I wanna really do something in the space. And although there was a lot of value that I was creating in my show, I didn’t feel I was actually doing something myself. I was hearing a lot and talking a lot about what other people were doing in the [00:05:00] space. So I had that thought sitting in the back of my head, going into about 2022 and, also at the same time, I noticed there was a lot of political activity taking off in the space. people all of a sudden were paying a lot attention to the political components of Bitcoin, but I didn’t think we were paying enough attention to it. And so we started yelling and screaming into the void how we need to get active. We need to educate lawmakers, we need to get ’em on our team so that we can have a country that is very pro Bitcoin and very proco mining. Eventually there was attack on Bitcoin, you could call it that. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it’s unintentional, but it came through the Infrastructure and Jobs Act. It was a huge problem for the space. And that’s what galvanized so many people to realize , oh my gosh, we do really need to pay attention to what’s going on in Washington DC and in the political space because if we don’t, we can get hit sideways and be put in a really bad situation with our ability to use the technology and , to be able to engage in building a business in the space. So that galvanized a lot of support around people getting politically active. And people just kept telling me over and over, you really need to go all in the space. You need to launch something. And so that was the impetus, I should say, for the launch of Satoshi [00:06:00] action, which launched in June of 2022. And happy to share more about Satoshi action, but that’s just, how I got started in the space and what led me to getting political. #### ASIC Hardware Evolution JohnPaul: Dennis, for those people that are not this policy, can you speak on what the policy was that everyone started freaking out about? Dennis: Yeah, the IIJA had an issue in there where they wanted to essentially regulate everybody in the space as brokers, which would mean that you’d have to go through the same financial regulatory steps as a bank or a very large stock exchange. And that’s just not really possible for the average person. if you just want custody or Bitcoin, if you just wanna mind Bitcoin, you should not have to comply to the same standards that a bank has to meet because you’re not performing the same services they are. But because they didn’t either, either it was an intentional attack or they just didn’t understand the technology enough, it’s putting square peg in a round hole. they pushed this policy forward and actually got it pushed pretty far, and for the most part, kept most of it intact and passed it into law. Fortunately, I would say, smarter minds prevailed and some folks didn’t actually push to. Pushed , the regulations that were passed into law onto the [00:07:00] greater space. But it did end up passing into law and that’s what freaked everybody out. So that’s what got everyone excited to be much more politically active and start engaging lawmakers to help them understand why this type of policy matters or why engaging in the policy process matters and why instead of just fighting back against policy, we can also go out and enact our own policy. And that’s a big part of what, how Satoshi action operates is we care a lot about scoring wins for Bitcoin and the digital asset ecosystem. We don’t just wanna play defense if, ’cause if we’re playing defense all the time, ultimately we’re only gonna be on guard. And if you’re only on guard the whole time, it’s playing a game of soccer. If you’re only guarding the goal the whole time, you might not have very many points scored on you, but you’ll never score any points of your own. And so we need to go on offense. Just any sports game you need to be on offense to score points. So we gotta go on offense, score some wins for Bitcoin and digital assets. We’ve done that since launching Satoshi action. We’ve passed we’re on the. The edge of passing our seventh bill into law. Six bills have already been passed into law so far, protecting the rights of 20 million Americans to engage in Bitcoin digital asset transactions, [00:08:00] to hold Bitcoin to self-custody. Bitcoin in some states there’s rights around protecting the mining of Bitcoin using a node for, the Bitcoin digital asset ecosystem. All these things are now protected, for roughly 20 million Americans, and that number is gonna just continue to grow as we pass more of these bills in more states. JohnPaul: And to your point, you have to be on the offense because the way the states are set up and the system set up is that there’s so many levels of compliance that if you don’t have clarity or if you have group who wants to push for, let’s say control over a sector that you then get looped into, , now I’m gonna have to act a bank. That creates a huge headache for everyone trying to do business and hire people and build this industry farther forward. So you launched the Right to Mind bills. Was that the first bill that you put out into the public and can you talk about what the of that bill was and maybe the challenges of getting it to getting it passed? Dennis: Yeah, absolutely. So the Rights of Mind Bill was our very first, I would say model policy that [00:09:00] was very successful. We had a couple other models we tried to work with, and for people that aren’t familiar with the policy process, the basic premise of a model is that a group of people, , could be corporates, could be individuals, could be advocates, could be policy professionals. They’ll get together and they’ll say, what? This is what we think the law should look . And then you take that model law and you hand it over to lawmakers and you say, , these are some of our ideas and these are what we think you should, pass into law. And that is one of our core focuses as an organization, is that we craft these model policies and then hand them to lawmakers and help actually walk them through the process of getting those bills passed into law. And the very first time we did that was with a bill called Right to Mind. That was what we, called it because that was essentially what the bill does. We had seen a lot of attacks on Bitcoin mining across the country. Across the world really, but across the country, we were seeing, people trying to restrict the ability for Bitcoin miners to operate by making zoning changes, doing weird rules around zoning, changing zoning laws. There was a group in Montana that had a multimillion-dollar project go completely bankrupt because they changed the zoning on [00:10:00] where they were trying to build. And so they were not able to build that there because at the last minute they had this emergency meeting, we were , oh, we’re gonna change these zoning laws, so you can’t build your Bitcoin mine here. Same thing with, basically with, noise problems. Obviously, Bitcoin, minings. Make my mind does create a lot of noise that is known. That’s fine. I get that. , there are ways to mitigate that and people definitely should mitigate it. We’ve been on the front lines of telling minors, you really gotta make sure you’re on top of this and not let it become a major problem in your community. But what was happening is because it was an easy attack factor, there was local jurisdictions that would try to pass aggressive noise ordinances, specifically targeting Bitcoin miners. And they’d have to meet a lower threshold than anybody, including other industries. And there are other industries that are much louder than Bitcoin mining, but it was this easy attack vector. We saw a lot of hit pieces coming out about it. And so the right to Mind Bill also protects against discriminatory Noise ordinances. Those are the two major components of the legislation. Of course, there’s also a part around discriminatory, energy rates, which we saw in the state of Idaho. They tried to create, well, they did create a discriminatory, energy rate for Bitcoin [00:11:00] miners. And we fought back against that, and that became included in part of , our grander bill. And we ultimately passed that legislation into law in our first year in Montana and in Arkansas. , to a lot of people’s frustration, there was even actually attempts to repeal the law that we passed because people were so upset about it. In the state of Arkansas, we successfully prevented, , the major repeal of the most important parts of that legislation, but there’s definitely been real world attacks on Bitcoin mining and they’re continuing to take place, and that’s why that became a major focus for us as an organization. Since then, we’ve gone on to expand into what we call digital asset rights. So it was right to mind, and then it became digital asset rights. So instead of just protecting the right to mind. We wanted to protect the right to self-custody, the right to run a node, you name it, I, solicited ’em all earlier in the show. But that is the second core piece of policy that we’ve had, and that was passed now in four states. So six states total, if you do right to mind twice on digital asset rights, four times. And that covers literally over 20 million Americans today. #### Energy Meets AI Demand JohnPaul: And to your point, that is amazing because as a small miner, as a miner in any of these states, you [00:12:00] are feeling, let’s say you must collaborate with local zoning officials, local city officials, local county officials, permitting officials, and then the energy company. And so there’s plenty of places for bias to fall into decision making and policy and procedures. So how do you take this thing that sounded a foreign language to you in 2017 to. These policy makers, how do you help them grasp the benefit of Bitcoin mining to their community, to their energy grid? The benefit of digital asset rights. And can you talk about any, maybe metaphors you use to explain Bitcoin mining, , to policy makers or just digital assets in general? Dennis: Absolutely. So, , it really came down to that time, that period of time that I had to just educate myself, learn about the technology from 2017 to 2020. And then of course, having the show that I had previously, I would have a lot of great guests on. So, I got to learn a lot that way as well. And then eventually I just really became very focused [00:13:00] on defending the technology through social media. , at the time my social media had started to take off and so I started using my voice to come up with reasons for why Bitcoin mining was so valuable , and trying to craft it in a way that was. Understandable to the average person because this is a very technical space and, it’s a new space. I think once you really get your head wrapped around it, it’s not too hard to understand. But any new subject matter is gonna be difficult for anyone to comprehend or to jump into. So I’d always try to dumb it down as much as possible, make it five level, a preschool level reading practically, for these folks. And that really catered well to the eventual engagement in the political space because a lot of these lawmakers, most lawmakers are 45, 50 plus. When you’re coming to them to talk about a new technology, you have to be able to explain it in a way that it makes sense for them. And that’s true with any new technology, not just Bitcoin mining. But the thing that we did is we started to talk about Bitcoin mining as a huge value add to the grid, to the huge value add , to clean energy. And it is, if Bitcoin Mining is one of the most powerful grid balancing technologies on the earth, on the planet, and it [00:14:00] can be used to help. To provide backup services to the grid when there is an emergency, , it can be used to help provide, ancillary services to the grid when there are very, very short but severe changes in what’s called frequency. Obviously, gets a little bit technical when you talk about frequency, but the basic premise is the grid is constantly fluctuating and you have to have someone that can come in and to fill that void when it goes up or down too quickly, because if it does, the grid can collapse. Same thing, , with the clean energy side of things, wind and solar are variable. Renewable energy is what they’re called, right? that is the name of the technology that is used amongst industry insiders. It’s inherently variable, but the problem with being a variable energy source is when you stop producing energy for the grid, then. People aren’t gonna stop buying energy, they’re just gonna continue going on. And so what you can do is you can have Bitcoin mining play a really big role in supporting clean energy by being a variable load because you have variable generation mattress variable load that’s really valuable for clean energy. But also because oftentimes wind and solar is placed in extremely , remote parts of the world, [00:15:00] it’s very far away from city centers. Every time you see a solar plant or a wind farm, it’s, you’re never close to a city most of the time when you see these really, really big farms. And so what you have to do is you have to transmit that power over very large distances back to where people actually buy the power. While lo and behold, building these really, really long power lines, which are called high voltage transmission lines over large distances. Beca has been much more difficult than people predicted. One reason right off the bat is that you have to essentially take people’s land from them in order to build the lines over those large distances. They’re an eyesore, they’re very expensive. So, there’s been a lot of pushback on the expansion of high voltage transmission lines in the United States, and that has bottlenecked, a lot of clean energy, wind, and solar. It’s caused a lot of wind and solar energy to be what they call stranded, where it just can’t get to market. And so a really great thing that Bitcoin mining can do there is it can go in and it can be co-located right next to the wind and solar because unlike traditional data centers, you can put these things. Bitcoin mining, you can put ’em basically anywhere. it doesn’t really matter as long as you can get access to it some way, even if it’s a dirt road. Especially with the [00:16:00] advent of starlink, things this where you’re able to connect remotely from pretty much anywhere in the world. You can have a Bitcoin mine virtually anywhere in the world. And so if you have a solar farm in the middle of nowhere, can’t get the energy to market, you can place a Bitcoin mine right next to it and monetize 100% of the energy that they haven’t been able to sell, which is called curtailed energy. And there is a lot of curtailed energy. , it’s incredible amount of curtailed energy. If you go to California ISO’s website, which is the people that operate statewide grid, they track all the curtailment that they have each year. And California is on track right now to curtail more energy by 2030 than the bottom 36 nations combined. So it’s a massive amount of power that they are curtailing and that they’re not selling, and it’s bad for those clean energy providers. It’s bad for rate payers. I won’t get into the details of why, but ultimately by having that Bitcoin mine come in and be placed right next to it, you can solve this problem permanently for the clean energy space. JohnPaul: And it’s bad for rate payers because you’re incentivizing energy that no one is consuming, You’re creating these. [00:17:00] False incentives in a market, which we have seen with, I’ll jump into the federal, , infrastructure Act has been great to lower the cost of energy in the market, but there’s now a regulatory hurdle for consumers to access this because of the current structure of how cooperatives and market makers buy power from these energy markets, which is SPP Miso Kaiso, as you mentioned. So we have this divide of federal policy, which subsidized energy rates in the us which is a net positive for an energy consumers and should result in lower rates for Americans. But then you have most Americans who are expecting a higher energy bill next year because of all these other inflated costs. I know we’re, not talking necessarily fully about changing the energy grid here, Dennis, but how do you see the grid, I guess, . Changing with the times of cheaper LMPs, but then the problem being accessing those LMPs , for communities that are in bigger cities, but communities that are [00:18:00] local to the LMP should have , very cheap energy. , and , , when will the politicians or when will groups start advocating for accessing these LMPs? Are you seeing anything on that front , at the moment? Dennis: I am not seeing a big movement on that front. At least not in the work that we’re involved in, but certainly I agree with you that to an extent, , we subsidize wind and solar and the people that are subsidizing it are rate payers. And so whenever these wind farms or solar farms, which I it, I clean energy, I think it’s a great resource. But whenever they are not selling their power, the way that they stay operational, at least barely operational, right? Because they’re not getting paid as much as they could be getting paid. But the way that they stay operational , and not sell all their power is , there’s a subsidized program through that, through things capacity markets, for instance. #### Industry Deep Dive if you just have power available, the grid will pay you for it, even if you don’t sell it, which is a great way to make sure that you can expand wind and solar. But the problem is that we’ve seen so much of that. Without the actual transmission lines coming in to solve the problem of deliverability, that it’s caused rates to go up for people across the country. And now people are starting to point the finger [00:19:00] at wind and solar, which it’s not technically the wind and solar energy industry’s fault. It’s more so the outcomes of the policy. we predicted that this problem would’ve been solved many years ago to get the power to market and we just haven’t been able to get it done. And so that’s a really important component where I think, interestingly enough, instead of having the rate payers through policy set by the federal government or state policy, instead of having the rate payers subsidize wind and solar, you can essentially have the Bitcoin mining, subsidizing wind and solar by buying up all the excess energy that they can’t sell. And this is something that I’ve been talking about over and over again. And finally I’ve been actually able to talk to some generators, some wind and solar generators. Consistently where they’ve been , yeah, actually this is great. We love this. This is such a good idea. It’s been so hard to break into that space though, because when I first started in June of 2022 fighting for Bitcoin mining, there was such a negative connotation around Bitcoin mining that it was hard to even get into a room. It’s hard to even have a conversation with anyone because they’d read the New York Times or they’d read wherever they’re seeing these hit pieces and they would want nothing to do with it. , and so that has been a [00:20:00] major holdback, but we’re starting to see a little bit of that focus around the energy concerns of Bitcoin mining shift over to the AI space and a lot of that coverage as well around the concerns of energy consumption. And so it’s opened the door and enabled more folks to pay attention to the space. And obviously, of course, also Bitcoin mining has matured as an industry quite a bit. So the players in the space are much better at engaging folks in the energy world, where I think you’re gonna continue to see emerging of those two worlds, as time goes on. JohnPaul: So what’s one of the most persistent myths that you see people, either policy makers, energy companies believing about Bitcoin mining and how do you dismantle it? Is it the energy concerns? Is it the noise, Dennis: I would say that, yeah, the, obviously the noise is probably more of a direct problem, look to local communities. But the big fud that we’ve constantly been fighting or what they essentially is just misinformation around Bitcoin mining is that it is going to strain the grid and that is going to cause grid collapse. And the weird part about that, ’cause you could argue about energy consumption, it really just [00:21:00] depends on what your opinion of Bitcoin is at that point. Because if your opinion of Bitcoin is bad, you are going to assume that the energy consumption is just writ large, a misuse of energy. And that we run into that a lot too, right? You have to take people from Bitcoin is bad to, Bitcoin is good and that’s what changes their mind around justification of the energy consumption. But one of the really, simple but persistent, , pieces of misinformation that we see around Bitcoin mining is that they’re going to collapse the grid. And the strange part about that is that. The reason why it’s so odd that continues to move on is because Bitcoin mining is actually one of the best technologies that we have on the planet. , no, it’s not even close for balancing the grid and for making sure the grid is not strained because it is so flexible. , we were talking to one of these renewable energy generators and they said, oh, you guys can shut down quickly. That’s great. In case we need you to , we can depend on you for that. And they said, well, can we warn you a day in advance? Is that enough time to warn you? And we said, you can warn us five minutes before. Theoretically you could warn me seconds before, and I just have to have enough time to get, to the switch or to get to the remote control, [00:22:00] and they’re blown away. this is time and time again. We see this with people in the energy world, people in the grid world, and the average person, when we walk them through the power of Bitcoin mining as a grid balancing technology, they’re totally floored because nothing can do it this. , batteries to an extent can do some parts of what Bitcoin mining can do. So there’s a little bit of crossover there where you can help some folks understand if they’re familiar with batteries, but it’s the amount of load that these miners take on and the fact that they’re not a battery, they’re just a consumer of power, and the fact that they can just shut off instantly and make that power available to the grid when it’s needed most is so, so key. The story that we typically tell people is about Texas. Texas had two big winter storms come through. About 18 months apart. One winter storm came through winter storm uri and it took the grid to its s knees. It was almost a system wide outage or what we call a black star across the entire state. And if you’re, not familiar with that term, it’s basically the absolute worst case scenario. , and it results in, when I say system wide average, literally the entire system is down. And when that [00:23:00] happens, you can’t just turn the power plant back on and things start to work all magically again. You have to piecemeal it back together small piece by small piece and it can take weeks or months. And then while that’s happening. , best case scenario, the food in your fridge is going bad. Worst case scenario, people are dying. And even though they didn’t get to that point of a total system wide outage, they did have localized collapse. And because of that, over 700 people did die in the state of Texas because of that winter storm. There are billions of billions of dollars in damages. Fast forward to the next winter Storm Elliot, and during that time period between the 12 to 18 months, roughly where there was those two winter storms, something really interesting happened. China bans Bitcoin mining, and a bunch of Texans, , convinced a lot of Bitcoin miners to move into the state. And when they moved there, they plugged into the grid and they plugged into these pre-existing programs for balancing the grid. Well, winter Storm Elliot comes around and there was roughly 1700 megawatts of Bitcoin mining plugged in at the time. And during that storm, nearly 100% of all Bitcoin mining across the state, switched off and made their 1700 megawatts of power [00:24:00] available to. The rate payers available to the hospitals, available to the people that needed it. Most people trying to stay warm during Winter Storm Elliot, and for putting it in context, 1700 megawatts of power is not a trivial amount of power. #### Technical Discussion It is enough power to heat 1.7 million small homes. It’s enough power to energize 320 large hospitals. So, it’s a huge amount of power that was delivered right back to the grid when everybody else needed it the most. The Bitcoin miners were the first line of defense to be able to provide that energy back to the grid. And so that’s a huge story that is helps people understand just , oh my God. wow, that is a lot of power that can just be made available instantly to the grid when it needs it the most and helps to overcome these obstacles people have around Bitcoin mining being a strain or something that is gonna collapse the grid. JohnPaul: Dennis, so you mentioned the Texas storm, and one thing I wanna dive into you and get your opinion on is, the storm happens. Ercot is who runs the grid in Texas and they fire , the head of the Ercot, , let’s say market. , and they put in a new guy who, , has a different opinion on how to solve this problem. Starts [00:25:00] attracting Bitcoin miners, seeing the regulatory environment in Ercot, the ancillary service market to step in. And I was reading articles that Bitcoin mining stabilized the grid in Texas and saved Texans $18 billion because of stopping groups , or not needing groups Berkshire Hathaway Energy to build these natural gas peaker plants. How often do peaker plants come up in conversation? ’cause they are so expensive to the rate payer and they’re only running or 2.9% of the time. So talk to me more about do politicians see this horrible cost of capital and cost to consumers to support the grid versus, this all new alternative, which is flexible load and having a three to 5% of load being flexible to meet the same demands of the grid in consumers. Dennis: Yeah, absolutely. It does definitely come up in conversation, but usually we’re the ones bringing it up. Most people are unaware of, , the use of peaker plants or how they operate or how expensive they are. And they’re also not only are they the most expensive [00:26:00] power in the world because they’re only on for a very short period of time. , they basically wait for people that are not familiar. They’re these giant turbines that are sitting on idle, so they’re constantly burning gas, a small amount of gas, and then when the grid is basically at a point where it just doesn’t have any power left, they boot up. So it’s a useful technology. I don’t wanna , talk down to the peaker plant people too much. But, , it’s a ne it’s been a necessary technology , up to this JohnPaul: It got us to where we’re today. Yeah, a Dennis: Yeah, , we need them, but at the same 10 sense, Bitcoin mining is moving us past a world where we need them as much as we do, and maybe we don’t, won’t need them ever again in the future. If Bitcoin Mining is as successful as I think it can be as a grid balancing technology. But the boot up and energy will be in incredibly high numbers, $1,600 a megawatt hour, $2,000 a megawatt hour. And so they make a lot of their money in a very short period of time by selling all that power to the grid at that moment. But they’re not only one of the most expensive types of power, they’re one of the most, emissions heavy types of power. ‘ , it’s just you’re just burning through straight gas. So [00:27:00] if you care about the environment, if it’s someone out there who cares about reducing our emissions, peaker plants are the absolute worst option. But they’re a necessity had been a necessity in the past. But what you can do instead of course, is obviously instead of winding a peaker plant up in those times is instead have a bitcoin mine shut down. And it’s much, much cheaper to pay someone to shut down than it is to pay a peaker plant to wind up. Because they’re trying to capture the top of that market. You can essentially book Bitcoin miners in advance and say, Hey, if the market takes off, if energy goes through the roof, well you be willing to shut off at X price. , and we’ll put you in some incentive program , to do that. bitcoin matters are naturally price averse, so they don’t wanna pay high prices. So even if they’re not in one of those grid balancing programs and energy goes to, 70, 80, 90, a hundred bucks a megawatt hour, they’re gonna wanna shut down just by the fact of cost avoidance. , but sometimes it’s better to have them start to, , engage in those programs earlier on. And that’s why. And also to let the grid know that they can depend on them, I think is the big component. ’cause grids are in the sense of weatherman, they need to predict [00:28:00] how things are gonna be going into the future. , how much energy is gonna cost tomorrow. The next day they try to go out, forecast that out as far as they can when they see a big winter storm coming. they know that energy prices are gonna go really high and they’re during those winter storms. And so , in order to improve the reliability, which is a common term in the energy sector, , they will ask people ahead of time , Hey, will you agree to sign up for this program? Could be a demand response program, could be primary frequency response program, and we’ll pay you a little bit. To just be in the program. And then if we utilize the program, we actually ask you to shut off, then we’ll pay you a little bit more. And then this is , this is the dumb thing too, is the pushback that people had for this too, that created a whole misinformation campaign. Oh, the Bitcoin miners are taking advantage of the grid and getting paid , to pay, to shut off and not use the energy. It’s , yeah, , that’s what the grid wants. they have, they want people to act in this manner. They want the bitcoin miners to be a resource. Would you rather they go to the peaker plant? , most of the time it’s these people that are , on the environmental side. They’re , well, this is energy that someone else could have used. Which is, that’s a whole other area to go [00:29:00] into, which I don’t even want to get into that one. But, , and they’re causing energy to go up and then they’re shutting off just in time to capture , that margin. #### Energy Costs and Economics Well, the alternative is that when energy goes through the roof, you’re gonna boot up a peaker plant, which is one of the most, environmentally unfriendly technologies and also one of the most expensive technologies. So the miners are saving the grid money and they’re saving them from some of their emissions output as well. It’s definitely a thing where that does come up and we talk about it, but we’re typically the ones who bring up the fact that peaker plants even exist and why they exist. JohnPaul: They are a huge, crucial component to the development of the grid, as, we were talking about. And so the fact that we gloss over them before and we don’t, we’re not aware of their impact is just, it’s concerning to a large energy user myself. What do you see Bitcoin mining in 2030 you mentioned as we’re gonna farther integrate into grid demand response and supporting the grid. Where’s the vision? Where’s the next five years taking us, Dennis? Dennis: I’ve always viewed ever since reading Brandon Quims article about Bitcoin [00:30:00] mining. It’s called Bitcoin is a Pioneer Species. It’s really illuminating article that helps to highlight how valuable bitcoin mining is but does it through the lens of nature. Go read that article if you haven’t read it yet. But I’ve always viewed, ever since reading that article that Bitcoin mining is not just a tool for, balancing the grid. It’s not just a piece of energy infrastructure. It’s actually a tool for energy development, which means that, let’s take a step back. So in order for you to build power, before Bitcoin mining existed, you always had to have a customer. And so you’d have this chicken and the egg problem where it’s , well, in order to build power, you need a customer. In order to get a customer, in that area, you need the power. So there’s this constant patchwork of building and matching and building and matching, power and demand or customers and finding customers. Because if you don’t have the customer, obviously your power generation site is going to not sell any power and you’ll go bankrupt very quickly. These are very expensive pieces of infrastructure to build, so you always need a customer. Well, the interesting thing about Bitcoin mining coming along is [00:31:00] that now you have a customer that can go anywhere at any time, at any scale. It can wind up, it can wind down, it can buy as much power as you want. It can turn off for as long as you want, and that’s never existed before. And so essentially what Bitcoin mining has done , it has become the first ever energy development tool where you could quite literally build a power plant on the moon. you could mine Bitcoin, right? Obviously there’s some technical components to, sending the blocks and actually getting them there in time to beat the other miners. But you could build an energy asset in the Sahara Desert. You could build an energy asset in the north slope of Alaska, and you would know, even if you can’t find any other customer, you can’t find another large load to come in. Maybe you’re thinking you’re gonna build a neighborhood 20 years in the future, and you just need to get started now. And building the energy assets out, you can do that now because of Bitcoin mining. So obviously I see Bitcoin mining as a tool to balance the grid, enhance clean energy. It’s gonna do those things or is doing those things. But the thing that it hasn’t really done yet at scale. Is be used as an energy development tool. Although I do know of one project, which is very, [00:32:00] very interesting that is looking to build literally gigawatts of power and is going to use Bitcoin mining as the jumping point for them to be able to get into that space. Because you can’t build gigawatts of power in extremely remote areas and not have customers. No one will even give you the money to do that. But now people will be interested in investing those types of projects because they know no matter what they do have that backstop or what people call the buyer of last resort with Bitcoin mining, JohnPaul: I think that Bitcoin mining obviously is, here to change everything and when it comes to the electricity that we utilize in our day-to-day lives, we take it for granted across the world, especially in the United States. But can you talk more about how real GDP per capita and energy consumption are correlated and just this broader picture of stable energy for developing nations? The chicken and the egg problem in remote areas where energy is currently not stable, doesn’t exist, which causes problems that people don’t know, medicine going bad because they don’t have a stable grid or, life support going off in a hospital. ‘ cause [00:33:00] they don’t have, I run outta battery backups or to your point, just food going bad and food shortages and food poisoning. ‘, how is this all correlated as we zoom out to, let’s say, the biological level of humans and energy. Dennis: Absolutely. that’s such a key thing that a lot of people don’t realize, and we take it for granted here in the US Europe, places where we have a lot of, , availability for, purchasing power, purchasing energy. , there’s a great chart. I don’t have it in front of me right now, but it basically maps out all the countries and it maps out their quality of life and it’s perfect representation of how the quality of life is directly matched to the amount of energy that you consume as an individual. And so what you see is, in places Africa, in some of these third world countries or developing nations, is the vast majority of them, individuals do not have access to affordable power. The poorest people in the world do not have access to affordable power and then there’s big consequences for that, right? you said, obviously medicine is one, but just think about the ease and the difference it makes to have a refrigerator, to have a freezer. Think about the difference in your quality of life. If you [00:34:00] live in somewhere Africa. If all of a sudden you can afford to have air conditioning on, if all of a sudden you can afford to have lights on at night so that you can study for school. There are huge parts of the world, massive amounts of people, billions of people who are living in energy poverty. And they don’t have the ability to keep the lights on. They don’t have the ability to even run a blender or a microwave. And so the interesting thing about Bitcoin mining is that we said earlier, you can now place energy generation anywhere in the world and you can have a buyer. So the problem is if people might think, well, why not just build the energy generation and start selling it to the people? You can do that. People have tried to do that. The problem is that if you go build a power plant in the middle of a rural African village, nobody there has any electronic devices yet. So over time, of course, they’ll buy those electronic devices, start plugging into the grid and start using the power. But that’s gonna take years. It could take a decade to get to the point where the energy is actually fully consumed. And so energy, I would say grids, one thing to keep in mind is they operate a lot shopping sites, a shopping mall. #### Strategic Perspectives If you go to a shopping mall, you’re gonna notice lots of [00:35:00] tenants. They’re full, they’re doing well, the big stores oftentimes subsidize the smaller stores and they all work together to create this harmonious shopping experience. If you have those big stores, pull out the tenant stores, pull out, what happens is that the landlord, the guy that owns, that shopping mall has to raise rates for everyone in order to keep the shopping mall alive in order to keep the shopping mall profitable. Well, typically what happens is once you get to a 30% drop in vacancy, you see a what’s called a death spiral. And these malls collapse and they can’t support themselves financially anymore. That same exact thing happens with, energy consumption as well. If you build out these energy devices, if you build out energy generation and you don’t have a sufficient buyer of power, what ends up happening is the rates for the people that are buying the power are extremely high. And so they’re super cost prohibitive. So, in Africa, they do this all the time. They build these little, hydro facilities, they build little energy generation sites, and the cost of power for the individual, because very few people are buying from the generator, are so high. That they just can’t even afford ’em at all. So, the beauty here is of bringing Bitcoin mining into the [00:36:00] situation is you can have them be that large tenant buyer of power to subsidize the cost of power for all the individuals on that microgrid, which is essentially what is taking place in Africa. Before Bitcoin mining existed and now it’s accelerating. there’s all this energy generation that’s being built out all across Africa, have some really good, smart friends, really, , active friends in that space. And that’s basically what they’ve dedicated their lives to is using Bitcoin mining as a tool for energy development in Africa. It’s happening on a micro scale, but, it’s really important because it’s impacting people directly. ’cause instead of paying 10 x what we pay here in the United States for energy, they’re only paying maybe double or, close to 75% more than , the average US citizen. And ’cause we have some of the cheapest energy in the world, even though our energy is expensive, it’s much cheaper, , than places rural parts of Africa or other parts of Latin America. JohnPaul: if, we’re talking about energy in the Midwest, we’re talking about remanufacturing in America, making it America, this whole tariff conversation. One thing I’m realizing, and as I work more in the energy space in the mining spaces, that we have [00:37:00] a level of, way to distribute energy that was set up in the 1940s and thirties to energize rural America and allow farmers to have stable electricity to grow crops. This is where the first cooperative system came out of. And in this cooperative system we have local cooperatives which serve their members and they don’t handle generation of energy. They’re just the local transmission network. Then above them you have another cooperative, which actually handles generation and transmission, which is , the larger transmission lines between these cooperatives, connecting them together. That generation company connects to the power markets. But my question to you, or the topic I wanna bring up is these G and ts built power plants, and let’s say they built them with a 30 or 40- or 50-year outlook and the cost of the plant is tied to the current customer base and they’re paying that plant. But now what’s happened is the federal government came in and subsidized all of this wind and solar and so that energy market is now much cheaper than the cost of power [00:38:00] for the g and t to produce for, let’s say, 95% of the time because of the nature of renewables, which creates a higher energy cost for the community. And it does create a death spiral in rural America for manufacturing because now, the loads there can’t get access to the cheap energy. So they have to leave the community, which then has the community have less kilowatts being bought, which means you have higher admin cost per kilowatt hour. And what can we do with policymakers to understand this problem that, you highlighted that the affordability of power and the importance of it to community and GDP ’cause it’s in rural America. It’s not just Africa that’s having this issue, it’s in our own states and it’s holding us back as a manufacturing region. Obviously, it’s a huge conversation topic with tariffs right now. So how do you view making power affordable for all Americans? Dennis: Absolutely. It’s a really important component to why we have been, , such a strong country over the many years, and we need to be doing everything we [00:39:00] can to help reduce the cost of power, not just for the average individual, , but also for manufacturing. If we ever expect to bring manufacturing back. To the United States, we’re going to have competitive energy rights. We’re gonna must have more energy in order to do that. I think obviously we should be doing it in the cleanest way possible. I’m a big fan of nuclear. I would love to see nuclear make a massive resurgence in the United States For too long. We have feared nuclear energy and for too long we have pushed it to the side through very stringent regulatory procedures. And, , not only the regulations, but also the costs have gone up extremely high for building nuclear. I hope I’m very, optimistic about its future, but I think it’s still one of those things where it’s , continues to be a decade out and when something is a decade out, it could easily be 20 or 30 or 40 years out. So, I do wanna see way more growth of energy here in the United States. I think it’s pivotal for our success as a nation, and I think it’s very shameful that we’ve gotten to a place where we are gutting our own. Ability to [00:40:00] keep these rural communities alive, not just because of, rates of inflation, costs of power going up, but even just energy availability. So there definitely needs to be some very smart policy, thoughts that need to be going on. There’s needs to be some folks getting together and thinking really hard about how we fix this problem because we’re at a place now. Where’s, , even in, is it even fixable? We’ve gone so far the wrong direction for so long so there’s, there definitely needs to be some thought put into that. It’s not something that we have done yet at Satoshi action. We’ve more so just been focused on helping these states and helping these, , individual energy companies and folks in the policy space understand how valuable Bitcoin mining can be as a tool and how it can be used to help them accomplish a lot of the goals that they do wanna accomplish. And one of the big things too is as, manufacturing has pulled out, we’ve seen a lot of Bitcoin mining go in and fill the void. Utilizing underutilized energy infrastructure. And on top of that, keeping jobs in some of these rural communities. , these Bitcoin mines, they don’t produce thousands of jobs, but even 10 jobs in a city of a thousand people is a [00:41:00] huge difference for those communities. And we have Bitcoin miners producing, of course, many more jobs than that in some of these small towns, but that makes a massive difference for those folks. I went to one recently, and I got to walk around the facility and I was able to ask one of the gentlemen that was there from the community, and he was just , beaming with light because he finally had a good, hardworking job again that he could provide for his family. And he felt confident about the future and in a way that he had not felt for a very long time. JohnPaul: That’s amazing. , that’s one of the things I love about building and hosting and running operations with mining store in Iowa, is that we are working with local people, training them up on it, skills that are gonna be used for the rest of their life, bringing them onto AI tools and having them take responsibility to run, the thousands of these servers. And so bringing that purpose and meaning, to the ability for workers to have that, especially young men in these rural communities, I find is very important. , just. And is needed when it comes to the DOE, you mentioned nuclear. I think it’s something that, we need to continue to look at. And so people that, [00:42:00] that aren’t aware of why we don’t have nuclear in the US it’s, ’cause , there’s one rule which is when you’re developing a nuclear plant, you have to, , minimize the amount of allowable radiation , that can be , received when building it. And the problem with allowable is it’s a word you can redefine and so we always are redefine what allowable is and that constantly is moving the, making it much more expensive, , to deploy these facilities, which is why the DOE just came out and said, Hey, on Department of Energy land, we don’t have to follow those rules. , because I guess the federal regulatory, how it’s being enforced come build on our land. So they’re launching 10 different AI sites. Do you think the US government will get into. Supporting Bitcoin mining directly. We’ve saw Trump come out, with Bitcoin strategic reserve and all these conversations around that. But will the federal government, in your opinion, step in and start subsidizing Bitcoin mining or energy directly? Not saying I’m advocating for that because any type of subsidy creates problems in the market, but do you see the administration, doing that and [00:43:00] also, tariffs on semiconductors, on asics. Let’s jump onto that topic. Dennis: Yeah, certainly I do believe that there will be a period when the US government is very involved and interested in helping with the development of Bitcoin mining. The US government has consistently been very involved in the development of energy, and most countries are very involved from a federal, regulatory and government perspective. Nation state perspective, they’re very involved in their energy sectors. I would say that the United States is one of the few countries where we do tend to have a lot more, what I call wild, wild west approach to energy, where you can actually have people get into the business of energy. A lot of countries, they are state owned. you can’t, you actually cannot drill your own, Oil Well, you cannot just have your own wind farm. all these things are state controlled even if you go up to, Canada or down to Mexico, there’s much, much more, control from the state around energy. So I certainly do believe that the United States well though, participate in the development and the growth of Bitcoin mining because it has so many valuable tool. #### Operational Insights It is a valuable tool in so many different ways. Everything from balancing the grid [00:44:00] to renewables and then we didn’t even touch on how it can help mitigate meth emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells and also from flared gas. And these are all things that the US government wants and knows it needs. They know they need more energy and energy development. They know they need to fix some of the problems with wind and solar and find a different way to subsidize them. They know they need to reduce methane emissions from flared gas sites, from abandoned oil and gas sites and Bitcoin mining is a tool for all of those things. And so it only makes sense for the US government eventually to get in, much more heavily than they are today and find ways to encourage the growth. Of Bitcoin mining all across our energy systems because it has so much value to provide everything from protecting states during winter emergencies to making sure that the average person can power their house during those emergencies and , keep the heat on. So absolutely, I do think there’s a lot of value there and I’m looking forward to the day. Maybe it’s close, maybe it’s far away. It’s kinda one of those things again, it’s , could be next year, could be five, 10 years from now. So we’ll see what, moves next [00:45:00] come from this administration and also future administrations. JohnPaul: And so let’s jump into methane a little bit just for our viewers that aren’t familiar with it. So you co-authored re. Search in the Journal of Cleaner Production highlighting the urgent need for methane mitigation. And in this study it notes that the high cost and regulatory barriers often stall mitigation projects. Talk to me more about why that is and how Bitcoin mining is this perfect key that fits in this mitigation keyhole. But it’s a key that policymakers originally didn’t want and still I don’t want that today. I would say, and they have closed some tax loopholes or tax advantages accessible to Bitcoin miners that are solving this problem as they’re noticing, oh wait, this is the wrong consumer for what we wanted to incentivize. We’re gonna close those incentives and make it much harder for them to access. Have you seen that and can you talk through anything, from your perspective of why that happened or how that’s going when it comes to methane and actually accessing the incentives that are [00:46:00] supposed to be provided for that type of work? Dennis: , this is a common thing, so it’s not just with methane, which I haven’t seen as much of it, so I’d love for you to push me whatever you’re seeing on that end. But, it has happened also with Bitcoin mining’s ability to balance the grid. And it’s with also Bitcoin or even things stable coins as a disruptive technology. Whenever a disruptive technology comes along, the people that are in the current status quo are , oh, no, no, no. That’s not why we wrote those laws. We didn’t make these incentives for you. We made them for us. And so you’ll typically see policies that are good for Bitcoin mining. You’ll see them try to exclude Bitcoin mining from those policies or those incentive programs because they want to keep them for themselves. The industry that is currently getting the benefit of those incentives wants to keep those incentives entirely for themself in Texas as an example, there was a bill there that they attempted to pass SB 1751. And it essentially would, almost entirely excluded Bitcoin mining from grid balancing ancillary service markets if, and that bill actually made it through the Senate and was eventually killed in the house. And we played a major role in, defeating [00:47:00] that legislation. In fact, former Ercot, CEO, Brad Jones joined us in that fight and was able to help us make sure that bill did not make it to the governor’s desk. But why would anybody wanna stop Bitcoin mining from balancing the grid or participating in grid balancing programs? Well, because the people that were a part of those programs were eating up all the revenue from it. And when Bitcoin Mining came in, it was suppressing the revenues down for them. And so they were losing out on revenue that they were previously getting. And so they were, we believe, we didn’t actually have direct confirmation of this, but it’s kinda obvious if you follow the money, we believe that the energy generators and other folks that were benefiting from those programs were leaning on the state government and saying, Hey, you guys should stop these Bitcoin miners from. Participating in these programs because, oh, they’re a national security problem. They’re all, these machines are made in China they’re coming up with any reason that doesn’t have anything to do with the grid balancing component directly. But , the ultimate goal was to kick miners outta those programs so that they could keep the revenue for themselves. So, I’m not surprised to hear that it could be happening, with the methane side of things. But on the methane side of things, [00:48:00] the basic premise is that methane is a combustible gas. When you pull oil outta the ground, it produces associated gas called methane, and that methane can be burned. It can also be used as fuel in an engine, which can also be used to generate electricity and mine Bitcoin. You can also get the same type of methane similar type of approach from things landfills. Landfills, naturally produce high amounts of methane. So what we’ve done in the past is we’ve said, well, this is a really bad gas. It’s actually 25 times more that, that’s the minimum amount. People think it could be, as much as 80 times more potent than CO2. And everybody’s, , gets very upset about CO2 and we need to reduce our CO2 methane is way worse than CO2 , for, , making the planet warm. And so what they said is , well, this gas is so bad for warming that we have to make sure it doesn’t make it into the atmosphere, so let’s just burn it. So that’s why when you go across Texas or you go buy some landfill, sometimes you’ll see a big stack and some flames coming up the top. Its methane being pulled up and burned so that it doesn’t go into the atmosphere. But in some cases, and especially in other parts of the world where it’s not the United States where we don’t have very high quality [00:49:00] environmental protections, they just vent it into the atmosphere. There are places in the world where they are venting incredible amounts of methane, which means they’re just releasing it. They’re not doing anything to prevent it from, getting into the environment. both of those things are obviously the venting is way worse the flaring still has a negative component to it because it’s very hard to capture and flare all the gas. Typically, people in the space will say it’s anywhere from 90 to 95%. Now the EPA will push back and say, well, that’s just because they didn’t build the flare the right way. But ultimately across the space we see a lack of capturing that methane coming out of those flares. Well, what you can do is you, of course you can place a Bitcoin mine there. And you can place a generator there that consumes nearly 100%, probably closer to 99% of that methane, and then uses that as a fuel source for generating electricity. And you can use that electricity to mine Bitcoin. So in that way, Bitcoin mining is not only balancing the grid, not only, incentivizing clean energy, it’s also reducing methane emissions, which is incredibly useful for not only for folks that are concerned about the climate, but also as well for groundwater and for low level ozone. So methane is a, [00:50:00] is a toxin. So CO2, you can breathe it, it’s in everything. It’s in my soda can right here. , it’s safe from the perspective that it’s not going to poison you if you breathe it in. Methane is completely different. It is. Poison the groundwater and it will create low-level ozone, which is toxic for human beings. #### Market Commentary So by getting rid of methane, you’re doing a very, very good thing. And Bitcoin mining is one of the best tools, if not the best tool for doing this. And we outlined the economic profile on how to get it done, in the paper for clean air production, which is a peer-reviewed journal. And we were able to get that in that journal pretty recently. And that was a big, big shock to a lot of people that we were actually able to get it across the finish line because most papers just don’t even want to see this type of research. It’s an old boys club in the academic world; there’s a lot of gatekeeping. And if they don’t what you’re trying to put forward, they just won’t even let you get to the point where you can go through the review process. We had gotten about five papers through low level journals, which are journals that are , , we call ’em working journals, journals where you can just , you don’t get a, a big thumbs up or you, it’s not a gold star if you get it in there, but it’s , okay, it’s cool. You got, at least you got it across the finish line. At least you got something done. But we had never [00:51:00] gotten one into a high tier journal, and this is the first high tier journal that we did that with. It was led by Dr. Murray Rudd, who of course is our, world class researcher. That helps us to get these papers out and definitely you should have ’em on some time. If you think it would be valuable to learn more about the paper. JohnPaul: Yeah, , I’d love to dive into it and do a deep dive in, into methane gas. And just to, for , for the listeners, there’s , 147,000 million cubic meters of flare volume of gas from the World Bank dot org’s website, Bitcoin mining. When we’re talking about energy usage, , it’s, we’re always , oh, it’s using all the energy, but. It’s a pioneer species, you said, it’s going directly to this methane area where no one can use this energy and it’s using it. And if we were to tap all of that gas, , , the Bitcoin mining network would be solving a huge problem, would be growing more decentralized, more resilient, and it’s not even gonna make a dent in the energy consumption of other people or the ability for other people to consume energy. So that’s this fundamental, I think, misunderstanding that we have is that we have an abundance of energy. We actually have so much energy, we don’t know what to do with it. The problem isn’t energy [00:52:00] production or electricity. It’s simply transmission. And most of the time politically, not allowing you to buy the cheapest energy or the most efficient energy, or the cleanest energy for yourself because of just the decades of, what do you call it, legislation Dennis: Yeah. Policy on top policy of that has led to this environment we’re in you made a great point too, just I think, I’m pretty sure someone did a paper one time that showed that just in the United States there is enough methane gas. That is going unutilized either through flaring or venting to power the entire Bitcoin network. So it’s not , if we had the right policies in place, in theory you could create an environment or an ecosystem where bitcoin mining is only using energy that no one else is using, which I actually think it is gonna go further and further that direction. That’s gonna happen with stranded wind and solar. It’s gonna happen with stranded methane or just stranded natural gas. , because , the main reason why is because the hash prices are constantly crashing and hash. Price is a measure of how much you get, you earn. For every time that you [00:53:00] hash a Tara hash or a peta hash, of Bitcoin mining compute, and that margin is continuing to crash and crash and crash and crash over time, especially as hash rate explodes. And the difficulty continues to go up and then they’re having every four years. So all three of those things have, an impact on the amount that a miner can earn from the work that they do. And what’s gonna happen is it’s going to eventually become, in my opinion, almost impossible to buy energy off of the grid unless we create programs that encourage that because mining is such a valuable resource for balancing the grid, but it’s really gonna start shoving it into these pockets where no one is using the power. That can be a stranded wind farm, that can be a stranded solar farm that could be stranded natural gas that nobody can get access to. So that is where I see the energy development is one component of it. But the other big component of it is absolutely this idea that, there is so much energy in the world that’s not being used. I think they, there’s numbers are 30% of all the energy that we produce goes wasted or something that. I’d have to look up the number again. It could be even much higher than that, but there’s so, so, so much energy that nobody [00:54:00] is using and Bitcoin mining is an extremely powerful tool for using the energy that no one else does and creating value out of it. JohnPaul: I think it’s important because when we’re talking about energy, it’s not we’re talking about, a resource oil or water, which I can put in a barrel and let it sit for decades and then use it. This is a resource that needs to be stored, it needs to be used. And even if you’re storing it, you’re losing 2% a day in a battery. So, you’re not able to keep it forever. So, and it needs to be used immediately. And most people I don’t think realize that and most policy makers don’t realize that. They view it as this , resource that I can call on at any time. It’s a wizard magic and it always works. Which is something that I would say switching topics, stable coins you guys just sent out an email today on acting now getting, interest in the hands of the American people from these stable coins. And talk to me more about policymaking. In the stable coin space, it’s been, interesting because you’ve had other players, let’s say, pushing their own interest that are also crypto native [00:55:00] companies or crypto native organizations that maybe don’t want interest in the hands of the consumers. And it sounds Social Action Fund is taking the right, backing, an approach telling Congress to support, interest-bearing stable coins that are safe and protected by, safe assets treasury nodes. Dennis: Yeah, absolutely. And so we get a lot of questions about stable coins recently. Lot of interest as in people caring about the topic and caring about the policy. We ultimately found that there were two really important components to stablecoin legislation that we felt needed to be changed. They have the federal, policies of the Genius Act or the stable Act moving through Congress right now. And there are two big problems in those policies. One is that both bills actually ban the ability for stable coin issuers to offer yield to their consumers or their customers. And it’s funny because I talked to a lot of Bitcoin miners, and I know a lot of Bitcoin miners use stable coins all the time. It’s very, very common in the space. , it’s probably a preferred method of payment for most of them. And even in the Bitcoin space, the crypto space were large, it is a very much a preferred method of payment. In fact, [00:56:00] stable coins just overtook visa in the amount of transaction volume that they did in 2024. So there is a massive amount of demand and utilization of this technology, and we wanna make sure it’s the most innovative technology possible. So right now, if you go take your money, you put it into a bank, you high have a high interest checking account, you can earn, 1, 2, 3, 4%, 5% depending on the economy that we’re in, depending on the bank that you go to. And that is completely legal. And the way that they do that, when you put your money in the bank, they take that money and they go and they give out loans. So they earn interest off that, which can be anywhere from, 4%, 7%, not too long ago. Interest was even much higher than that. You can also make, generate yield off of it by getting treasuries, or by buying bonds. If you buy debt. If you, , if you issue debt and someone else comes along and buys that a bank, they can generate yield off that and , the banks are allowed to turn around and say, Hey, in order to get you to come be a customer of ours, we’re gonna offer some of this yield that we’ve generated off the loans, off the bonds, off the treasuries that we [00:57:00] have engaged in as a way to market to you. #### Innovation and Technology Because otherwise you just have this ecosystem where there’s only a few big banks, which, is an environment we’ve headed much closer to more recently. But all that is completely legal. What they’re trying to do is they’re trying to say that exact same process. Is illegal for a stable coin issuer to participate in. And it’s not really as much I would say, the issuers or the people that are in the space. I would say it’s the banks. The banks are the ones that are saying we don’t want stablecoin issuers to be able to compete with us. And so we don’t, we want congress to ban the ability for these stablecoin issuers to compete with this sound pretty familiar. We just talked about how in Texas they tried to ban the ability for Bitcoin miners to compete in ancillary service markets and grid balancing programs. They are trying to do the same exact thing right now in stablecoin legislation. They want to ban the ability for stablecoin issuers to participate in this space. They have a whole system of regulations that they’re trying to implement for what they call payment stable coins. And payment stable [00:58:00] coins are just what they sound . It is a dollar for dollar backed stable coin. So the stable coin represents the exact equivalent of a dollar and it’s used for payments. And what they’ve done is they said, okay, here’s all these regulations to allow this stuff to exist, but we’re going to ban the ability for stable coins to offer the same level of. , customer service and rewards that a traditional bank could, because we wanna protect those banks. But, the most interesting thing about all this as well, is that none of these rules apply to the banks. So if the bank wants to launch a stable coin of their own, if they wanna have their own stable coin and offer interest to people, they can, but the stable coin issuers cannot. So it’s definitely this very interesting environment we found ourselves in where the politics has become a problem. Obviously, lawmakers, regulators, all the people in the space, the issuers, the folks that are participating in this ecosystem, everybody gets it. Yes, of course, they should be able to earn yield off of these, treasuries, off of the bonds, off of anything else that these people are doing. But they won’t even allow, even the most riskless, which is short, dated treasuries. [00:59:00] They won’t even allow that to take place. They want, no ability for stable coin issuers to participate in offering yield to their customers and ultimately, that’s gonna hurt the customer. That’s gonna hurt the consumer. It’s gonna hurt the American consumer. Roughly $7 billion in interest was generated last year alone from stable coins. And if stable coins are going to where I think they’re gonna go, which is that they’re gonna 10 x in at least the next five to 10 years at bare minimum , they’re already surpass visa, so they’re gonna go much higher. I think it’s, in my opinion, this is a total revolution of banking system stable coins are going to, once this type of regulation gets in, passed, is gonna completely reshape the banking sector and the way that we engage in finance for a variety of reasons. But if stable coin’s 10 x, that’s $70 billion that cannot go back into the hands of consumers and will only sit in the hands of really, really large issuers and really, really large banks, we think that is a mistake. And we think that in order for this innovation to be truly experienced, the innovation that stable coins have to offer, that we need to be pushing Congress to say that we should allow for stablecoin to offer yield to their customers. JohnPaul: And I couldn’t agree more [01:00:00] on that point. Dennis and I wanted to dive in for the listener a little bit more about this concept of, really what we’re talking about is narrow banking and it came out in , the 1930s and it’s the idea that the bank holds on. Hundred percent reserves against the deposit, which means they don’t use the deposits for lending and investments, as you mentioned. A traditional bank would lend out your money, pay you savings, and so this idea. That we have two systems of banking. One that would happen in the 1930s of narrow banking that didn’t take off because it didn’t have the technology behind it. And then the system today we have of banking, which requires a lot of trust and has bailouts all the time, and banks going under. So stable coins are saying, we have figured out how to make narrow banking really profitable and alone. We’ve also figured out how to give potentially interest to other people participating in this ecosystem that use our narrow bank. So it seems in the energy markets we have this separation of the old energy. , guard in the new energy guard of Bitcoin miners and consumers and AI data centers to con and the same thing here, [01:01:00] the old banking groups and the new narrow banking groups tether making more than BlackRock in, in a in profit last year. , and that’s just the craziness of the world is we’re seeing the shift. And to your point, the legacy groups are holding on by their dear life of saying, clawing back any type of good incentive that could exist, or could come outta these technologies and saying, no, we need them for ourselves. We don’t let the consumer to have them. So how do consumers, step up and , make it dent or make an action, to impact this policy changes. What should they do? What’s the first step they can take to get involved in Bitcoin advocacy? Dennis: We offer a variety of ways that people can do that. Right now we are working on a letter writing campaign to push back on the bans on stable coins. , recently we’ve done letter writing campaigns to help push state lawmakers and federal lawmakers to support strategic bitcoin reserve legislation. So there’s a lot of opportunities that we’ve done about 11, this is our 12th campaign, I should say. In the last 18 months, we’ve had over 220,000, I think almost 230,000 letters be written in those 12 campaigns that we’ve done. And it’s important for people to [01:02:00] make their voice heard. , , just a couple days ago, there was a hearing in Oklahoma where someone on a committee switched their vote. They said it live during the hearing. They said, the reason I’m went changing from a no to a yes is because some of my constituents reached out to me and explained why this policy is important. And so I’m switching from a no to a yes because of that. So your voice as an individual voter can have a massive impact on your lawmaker, much more than you thought possible. But you have to actually make your voice heard. You have to actually write letters. You have to actually call your representative. You have to call your leaders and let them know where you stand. And especially with this new technology, it’s really important because you might understand the value of the technology. You might see how important Bitcoin, Bitcoin mining, stable coins is for the future of the United States. But these state lawmakers and these federal lawmakers oftentimes haven’t even had someone approach their office to talk about the issue. And so, if you are able to get in there and talk to them and you’re even just a constituent, you don’t even need to be a great educator. You’re just a constituent. That can add a lot of value because they’re hearing directly from the people that vote for them. And at the end of the [01:03:00] day, the votes are what get these people in office. And if they think that their constituents care about an issue, they’re gonna change their viewpoint on something, especially if it’s something they haven’t set their viewpoint on. Now, if you’re gonna go try to talk to Elizabeth Warren, you’re gonna have a really hard time getting a meeting. They don’t take meetings with anybody that likes crypto so that’ll be tough even if you’re a constituent. But if you’re a lawmaker or you’re a regulator, or anybody that is in the political space that you can get a connection to and get a call with, or get a phone call with, and they haven’t set themselves up as an anti-crypto person, you have a very good chance of helping to shape the way that they view the technology. JohnPaul: So it’s grassroots, it’s making the phone calls, writing the emails, and I’ve done a few of those letters. I just wanna let people know it’s not that hard. You guys make it easy to send a letter to the right. People and, to sometimes follow a template that can help us educate what the viewpoint of our industry is. #### Mining Infrastructure Development So thank you for doing that, and really appreciate the support that Satoshi action has put out for miners and for everyone in the crypto space. highlighted the strategic reserve bill. I just saw you were in Utah recently, helping with that [01:04:00] bill. Who’s the first state to pass it? First one that comes to mind. Dennis: There are a few states that are really well still positioned to do it. We’ve actually stopped talking about who are the most well positioned because it’s actually started to hurt us. , , on the airwaves, who we think is gonna pass it first, those states have actually started receiving calls from people that don’t what we’re doing, and convinced people to go the other direction. So, I think there’s certainly some states out there that people are probably pretty aware of. You can go do, dig around and you can find it. Obviously Arizona is one of them, but, , and Texas , but there’s a couple other that people don’t know about that we don’t wanna publicize too much. So, we’re keeping our cards close to our chest so we can actually get it across the finish line. honestly, there’s way too many people paying attention to this stuff back when I did this first asset rights, nobody cared. they cared when we got the bill passed. , but it wasn’t this big investigative series on where we are in the process. now there’s an entire tracker that auto tracks, every single bill, every part in the process where it is they do an amazing job. It’s called bitcoin laws.io. Love the website. But it’s people are seeing real time, what is happening and they’re paying a lot of attention. And [01:05:00] actually it’s caused a lot of people that don’t what we’re doing to pay attention and try to stop us from getting these bills across the finish line, which we know for a fact has actually killed, two of the bills this year alone. It’s happened before, but we’ve not had it happen in the scale that it is. So, we’re trying to be a little more careful about sharing information because it is going to impact our ability to get it across the finish line. But we’re very optimistic that at least one, if not two states will pass it into law this year. JohnPaul: I’m super excited to move to one of those states, Dennis: Yeah. JohnPaul: but to your point, this this visibility is, hard. It’s , you wanted support and that was what you were built the organization on and now you’re realizing , actually I’m highlighting and people are realizing that they don’t, some people are realizing that this is, they don’t want this ’cause they maybe don’t understand the technology and the benefit of Bitcoin and how it’s one of the greatest saving vehicles on earth, but. They have a voice too, and in democracy, their voice matters, which is important. And I never want to disregard that, even if someone has an opposing opinion on me, as long as they’re, , factually stating, deploying their voice in a cordial way, I think it should be recognized [01:06:00] and respected. How are you viewing, , I guess this across the aisle, communication and what tips or what do you take to bridge that gap with these lawmakers or even other citizens that don’t think Bitcoin should be on the balance sheet of the states? Dennis: Yeah, so there is an increased level of bipartisanship happening in the space. I’d to see that. We’d love to see more of it, and we’re working actively, we’re very nonpartisan or bipartisan in our approach, so we’re always working with both sides of the aisle. Obviously, Republicans are way out in the lead when it comes to advocating for the technology, but there are a lot of Democrats who have learned a lot in the last couple years about Bitcoin and digital assets, and you’re gonna see an increasing number of Democrats come out in support of the technology as time goes on. JohnPaul: It’s just a matter of time until everyone’s orange peeled and sees the future. Dennis: I always say we are gonna go from a world where we’re debating whether or not we do Bitcoin to a world where we debate how we do Bitcoin. JohnPaul: I love it. Dennis, what other one-liners do you have, if any, to [01:07:00] throw out the show before we end it for the day? Dennis: I don’t know. I’m not good at one-liner recall unless it, there’s a question that just , makes me think of it. But absolutely. I think that people need to just realize how important it is to engage with their local lawmakers, to engage with folks that are in those positions of power. They can make a real massive meaningful difference. We’ve lost votes by one vote. We’ve lost, lawmakers that support the work that we’re doing, that are supporting, that are sponsoring our legislation by three votes. they lost their election by three votes. So, by being engaged and by being active, there is a way to make a massive difference and to also show the world that the United States, is going to be a leader on this technology now and far into the future, but you have to be engaged. And, if you’re not engaged, I would say some people are , I just hate politics. I don’t want nothing to do with it. Be a builder in the space because if you’re building something in the space and you have success in the space and building something, it gives us in the political space things to point to and say, look at all this great stuff that’s going on, and we wanna keep it all here in the United States. JohnPaul: I love it. If you’re not advocating, you must be building.[01:08:00] And you’re not building, you must be producing content about this world. So, last question. What is your content routine? You’re active on Twitter, are you just , every day, 10 reminders to tweet? Or how do you manage Twitter? Email, podcast, YouTube. Tell me , end it on that. Dennis: There’s no science to, it’s more of an art. I don’t have a quota that I need to meet. I just, whenever something resonates with me, I craft 100% of my own personal tweets., we have multiple people that oversee the Satoshi action account. And when it comes to spaces or anything that, it’s just impromptu. I was for a while, last year in, going in from December to January was basically accepting any podcast invitation that came my way. So actually you’re one of the first podcasts long form podcast I’ve done in a very long time because I’ve been trying to actually a long time for me. I’ve been trying to focus on the work and getting things done, but I think I’m gonna start opening it up, but you’re the first one to hear from me in long format for probably four months. JohnPaul: I’m excited, to launch a Dennis, and as always, it’s great to connect with you. It’s great to see [01:09:00] you along this journey as we both build, \ , two different companies in this space and try to lead them to wealth creation for us and our employees and for the broader ecosystem. So thanks again for all the work you and Satoshi Action Fund do. #### Growth and Vision Dennis: And thank you too, man. You’ve been in this space a long time you’re the first guy to make Bitcoin mining Cool. To the average person, and you advocate too. You’re out there in the political space advocating and building. So, I gotta get up to your level soon. JohnPaul: Gotta get on Dr. Phil, me and you. Dennis: That’s right. That’s what I know. I finally made it. JohnPaul: Awesome. Well thanks again guys for listening and remember to mine on and keep stacking SATs. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # NFTs and Future of Crypto Art | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 13 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/coin-artist/ All Episodes Episode 13 # NFTs and Future of Crypto Art with Coin Artist Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Coin Artist to discuss nfts and future of crypto art. ### NFTs and Future of Crypto Art Guest: Coin Artist Episode 13 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host JP Berwick 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. [00:00:14] 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 in the space. [00:00:21] JP Berwick 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 [00:00:33] foreign investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:47] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. This is your host JP Berwick and today I'm with Marguerite aka Coin Artist who's a technologist, game designer and blockchain enthusiast. Her background is an art where she has served as an art director at the Lions Head Art Gallery [00:00:59] in California. She then integrated her background into the blockchain space by becoming the director of the Dark Wallet Puzzle which involved creating a viral marketing campaign for cryptocurrency as an asset in educational puzzles and gameplay. JohnPaul: [00:01:11] Currently she serves as the CEO of Blockade Games which specializes in integrating blockchains, puzzles and games to create experience that transcend the digital world. The most recent project has been creating Neon District, a cyberpunk role-playing adventure where players strategize and fight to progress through a sci-fi dystopia while collecting [00:01:26] characters and gear backed with blockchain technology. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today, Coin Artist? CoinArtist: [00:01:31] Hey, thank you for having me. Of course. I want to jump in. JohnPaul: [00:01:34] My first question is how did you come up with the name Coin Artist? CoinArtist: [00:01:37] What's the story behind that? Oh my gosh. I wish it was a really good story. I joined Crypto Twitter January 2014 and this was in the beginning of the first type cycle, [00:01:47] not the first actually. I guess there's been technically like four, but one of the first and needed a name and I was an artist at the time. So Coin Artist, it was. CoinArtist: [00:01:54] It could have been con artist, could have been something more clever, but no, just scoring. Well, then is that how you got the coin ticker name for your token? Can you touch a little bit more about what that is? [00:02:06] I think that's a really interesting idea, something that I've been playing around my head about how do you tokenize influencer or your personal brand? Yes. So people called me as a nickname and discord and other chats coin for short coin artist. CoinArtist: [00:02:18] And so coin is a social creator token that I use for inspiring my community. People that want to do a quick hackathon project, but they maybe need other developers with them. We can use coin to help get their project started. [00:02:29] So with my puzzle background that I've had since that time 2014, developing these crypto puzzles along the way, I've created a pretty healthy developer ecosystem in my community. So when I launched my company later on in the years, we launched it into a vibrant community that was already there because of the creative work we were doing in the technology space. CoinArtist: [00:02:48] And the blockchain sector. So coin was the attempt to bridge the gap between having been that organic community builder and then turned official formal company. We missed the connection because blockade games in our products. [00:03:01] The majority of it is not open source. So because of that, we missed that connection we had with the community and coin actually works to bridge the gap. People can stake with it. CoinArtist: [00:03:09] It's actually shards of an NFT. JohnPaul: [00:03:11] So can you explain real quick, what is the shard of an NFT? CoinArtist: [00:03:14] Because I've heard that concept, but I don't think the audience might. NFT is ERC 721 token, Ethereum. And when you shard it, what you do is currently right now, the people that are sharding it is Niftex exchange. [00:03:26] If you're curious about that, they will shard us 721 for you. And then the shards of it become ERC 20 tokens, which represent fractional ownership of the originating NFT. So that NFT gets locked into a contract. CoinArtist: [00:03:38] And then the ERC 20 shards are then distributed to all the holders in whatever mechanic for in my community, we did it through farming so people could farm for shards for other means. But with the actual coin allocation, we set up a Uniswap with the shards for people to buy [00:03:51] a coin. It's been pretty cool. There's some fun magic tricks about shards though. Once you own all the shards, you can unlock the NFT. CoinArtist: [00:03:58] So people then compete to own the fractions on the marketplace that Niftex has. And they go into bidding wars. And then if somebody submit to bid and nobody outbends them, then in a two week window, the NFT will be rewarded to that winner. [00:04:11] And then everybody else has aetherium that they can take their shards and go claim. So we mentioned a lot of terms. I want to make sure that listeners know NFT stands for non-fungible token. And that's on the ERC 721. CoinArtist: [00:04:22] Is that correct? Yep. And that is a contract type on aetherium. And then you're sharding it and you're giving it to all of your fans or people that you [00:04:32] know you in the community that are familiar with your brand or even if they're not, and they're just new in the space, they want to kind of capture some of the potential upside to the coin artist brand. And you mentioned staking or sharding. CoinArtist: [00:04:42] And so when these individuals are putting their tokens and they're staking them, that's the creation of new tokens correctly. So there's new coins being created. JohnPaul: [00:04:50] Can you explain that process? CoinArtist: [00:04:51] We made an NFT farm so you can stake your coin tokens. Like most people don't think of them as shards. We just call it coin. But when you stake coin at these NFT farms, you're then farming shards of artworks that [00:05:03] we've collected. So there's different NFT farm pools that you'd see on a webpage featuring the art and the artist. And you can see basically how much we were able to acquire on chain. CoinArtist: [00:05:13] And it's also linked to NFT decks directly there on the website. So anyways, people will then go and stake their coin allocation and over a period of time, they will be yielding the shards in proportion to their ownership of the coin they're staking for the shards of the NFT artwork. [00:05:26] And that happens for about a week. And then we'll roll over and we'll have new artworks. And we were doing three art pieces at a time. But as you know, the aetherium gas prices have become astronomical. CoinArtist: [00:05:36] So that whole farming ecosystem was successful. And we had people doing the fun bidding wars. But since, for example, my game is on a layer two of aetherium for purposes of cheap transactions, we need to do the same with all of the coin, DeFi, ecosystems and NFTs as well. [00:05:50] And we use polygon, which is formerly known as Matic, which is our layer two solution that we've been working with. So polygon, Matic, a lot of things to be named there guys. Definitely check them out. CoinArtist: [00:05:59] And the coin artist is on coinartists.io if you want to see a little bit more about the coin in the main website. Is that correct? That's correct. [00:06:07] Sweet. So if you guys are interested in checking out the token after you listen to this conversation, that's would be the best place to really, in my opinion, get a piece of the personal brand or the ecosystem that you're building. CoinArtist: [00:06:17] Is that correct? Is there any other benefits they get? I know some of these recent NFTs or some of the recent artists coming into space are offering, let's say time with the creator. [00:06:25] Like I saw a post Malone's doing like a beer pong game. What? Post Malone's doing a beer pong game? Yeah, NFT beer pong. CoinArtist: [00:06:31] There's so much happening in this case. I cannot. Discord. It's a token controlled access to lock channels within our neon district discord. [00:06:39] And we have in there what's called coins Eden. So coins Eden is a syndicate within the neon district universe. Think of it like your underground mafia crew. So you'll be with all the most hardcore players, the biggest advocates of my project for multiple CoinArtist: [00:06:52] years in there. And basically there is where we scheme and make plans and I take the community very seriously about their feedback because these are my committed folks. So there's different tiers that you get assigned according to the amount of coin you own. [00:07:04] And then eventually as we play more with token controlled access, we can even defund things within the game universe itself about having access to content in game you wouldn't have otherwise or being able to acquire or get dropped certain gear that maybe is exclusive for coin holders. CoinArtist: [00:07:18] In addition to that, I'm rolling out a cyberpunk fashion line. So for context, there's neon district is a cyberpunk RPG. That's our big game title. So coin is going to be creating what's called mirror where mirror where is where you have [00:07:29] physical assets that are basically tagged with an NFT through a cold storage wallet device embedded into the clothing and it has Bluetooth. So you also have capabilities of geo caching and using augmented reality filters for your gear. CoinArtist: [00:07:44] What's neat about this is that this NFT is also represented in the game universe. And with mirror where you can do things like you could play almost Pokemon go style experience where you're traversing the real world and things that happen to you in real life or in the digital world, your stats can have an impact over like let's say you go to a location [00:08:04] that you're supposed to for game purposes, you're interacting with it through your AR camera, your AR clothes can also reflect back what's happened to you. Let's say you're damaged. And then also when you play on the actual game in the game itself, your jacket can look CoinArtist: [00:08:17] differently as well. It's almost like next level ready player one because even a ready player one, it wasn't this bridge between virtual and physical. And for those people who don't know, we're ready player one is a book about this guy [00:08:29] who's in this virtual world and everyone basically lives and spends them almost their day in the virtual world. And they're looking for the creators treasure chest and actually read something about that. Some people think bitcoins or Satoshi Nakamoto's, I guess treasure chest of bitcoins could CoinArtist: [00:08:41] actually be a puzzle like that, which is interesting comparison there. But talking about neon district and these NFTs or these clothing items that you guys are launching. So you're going to get a physical piece of clothing correct with an NFT. [00:08:54] And obviously when you sell that NFT, you're not going to be necessarily selling the clothes. So it's only the first issuers that are get the both items together. Is that correct or do the items move together? That's correct. CoinArtist: [00:09:04] So when we have the store set up, we're using Metafactory, I think it's Metafactory.io and we're working with them. It rolled out the clothing line. So everything's custom crafted. [00:09:11] They're going to be pretty sweet pieces. Like I'm really excited about having a cyberpunk lighting and cool edges custom crafted. I'm not sure if you're not familiar with the on district, the art is just out of this world. CoinArtist: [00:09:23] I'm so proud of our team. So yeah, basically getting to use them as clothing designers is going to be next level. So definitely check out neon district guys. And then how will you be dropping this? [00:09:32] Will it be the discord or Twitter when you open the store for the clothing? Will you guys be dropping like one item a day or just a bunch of items a month? How is that going to work? Have you thought about that? CoinArtist: [00:09:42] Yeah, we're starting within the next month, rolling out the first piece. It'll probably be an auction format for buying it. And they'll be limited editions basically. But we'll do to support some auctions within coin that are specific to just the coin brand [00:09:53] and then also cred when you liquidity mine with coin. So that's when you go to Uniswap and you provide Ethereum liquidity and coin, you get an LP token. And when you stake the LP token, you start yielding coin rewards and it comes with a CoinArtist: [00:10:07] secret token called a cred, which is street cred. And it's the only way to get that token. And we use that token for very special auctions and opportunities. And also it gives people the chance to anything we have something in a store that's for sale. [00:10:20] If someone just makes a bid using cred, I generally just accept it. It's kind of like the cool kids token of our game universe. And so when you're selling all this cool stuff, NFTs, clothing with these tokens, cred and coin, do you take Ethereum and other currencies as well? CoinArtist: [00:10:36] Or is it only cred and coin to buy the products? Yeah, we will be accepting Ethereum. But there will be items that are designated specifically also for coin and cred. So there will be a broader more general one to allow people to get in, but it will [00:10:48] have an exclusivity to coin holders as well. One question going with the coin and the cred. People are earning these tokens through different mechanisms. And when they pay for these items, you guys take those coins, then do you end up liquidating CoinArtist: [00:11:00] on the market to obviously pay for the raw goods? Do you hold it something in your wallet? JohnPaul: [00:11:03] How does that work after the NFT is bought for digital artists a little bit easier? CoinArtist: [00:11:08] I guess the credit has to be paid to ever made it. But then for physical stuff, there are some raw costs there. JohnPaul: [00:11:12] Can you talk a little bit more about what happens after people buy the NFTs from you? CoinArtist: [00:11:15] So currently with the clothing sales, I don't think that's actually been designed yet with how we're going to handle the coin we receive. I would imagine we would roll it back into things like staking rewards and back into the economy. [00:11:26] There's a pretty large allocation there of coin that's reserved for liquidity mining and staking purposes for the community. But then also with the game company. So we accept coin for blocking games for a neon district. CoinArtist: [00:11:37] And actually we have quite a few developers that work for coin. So people submit monthly for hours they've done for us and we pay them in coin. So I could imagine those funds we receive basically through neon district. We haven't sold any yet. [00:11:50] We've just been holding it. And same with the credit we've been receiving. I imagine we'll be putting those funds back into our development pool. Now there's only going to be 3.4 million coins created. CoinArtist: [00:11:59] And you guys have around a million coins in the circulating supply. And so for people who aren't familiar with this whole concept, you basically have your community, which you were interacting with them previously in US dollars or in Bitcoin. And then you decided that it would be better to transact in your own cryptocurrency. JohnPaul: [00:12:15] Can you explain where that shift came from and maybe any obstacles you came across when CoinArtist: [00:12:19] you were making that decision and making that move to your own currency for your fans almost or your community? We're actually just getting the tip bot set up in our Discord. And I come from the space where I don't know if you remember pink coin or when we used [00:12:33] to have tip bots on Twitter. I really love that gifting culture and the tipping culture. And I love being able to support creatives and developers and that I'm not necessarily have to work for free. CoinArtist: [00:12:44] I think people should be allowed to be rewarded in a tipping culture style, especially when they're contributing to the health of the community. When I did an interview with CoinDesk about the launch, I did try to clearly communicate that it's play money. [00:12:57] Think of it like play money because we're doing such highly experimental things with it. That if you're not there to experiment and have fun and be a part of this really creative ecosystem, it's probably not the place for you. I could see that people could look at it and be like, this is an NFT ecosystem. CoinArtist: [00:13:11] I definitely want to invest in coin. But that's not really the purpose of it. It is there to cultivate that ecosystem and by a secondary nature, it could be successful financially for its own reason. [00:13:22] But as a community, when we talk about it, we don't have people coming into our Discord because this is not a community that was formed out of a launch. And I would agree with you on that. I think about how I view social money or these coins and currencies that you're referring CoinArtist: [00:13:35] to that help communities transact. It really just reduces the friction by giving everyone their own currency that they can be a part of something bigger now. And they see, I guess, the members of the community and yourself see different types [00:13:48] of returns and financial mechanisms that you wouldn't see if you just used Bitcoin or if you just used US dollars because it is more niche. But you're right. People shouldn't view it as an investment and think about, oh, when's Moon and when are CoinArtist: [00:13:59] we going to hit the dollar per toge coin type of conversation? But more of like, how do I use this to increase the experience or even reduce friction with the experience of participating in the ecosystem and in the games that you guys have developed? We have developers that are just there already that have an idea and they want other developers [00:14:16] that are also in the community to experiment with them. When I see that kind of positive behavior happening, I will usually, if they need a help to bridge the gap of something they're trying to launch. We had somebody working on interactive NFTs, basically just started up their own project CoinArtist: [00:14:30] and I'm now trying to get them to go out and set up their formal business and fundraise, open their pre-seed because they're there. And this all came from just encouragement from all around and within the community. And also when they needed a little bit of coin to build out, they did, but they didn't [00:14:46] really need that much even. That kind of culture is really healthy. And you see it a lot in the Ethereum space, the developer ecosystem kind of like, you see it with Bitcoin and developers just helping other developers out. CoinArtist: [00:14:57] It'll be interesting to see that that culture gets repeated on any other network. It hasn't yet, but Cosmos just launched today or not Cosmos. What was it? IBC? [00:15:05] Yeah, the IBC with Cosmos with IBM launching their own token. That's going to be huge. It's supposed to be the Internet of blockchains. But apparently today I can go spin up my own blockchain and claim a name, like blockchain name. CoinArtist: [00:15:16] I'm not sure exactly the depth of this. I need to go check it out. And so for people who are wondering, that's cosmos.network. Feel free to check that out and they just seem to be launched with IBM. [00:15:24] But that would be super cool if you're just saying anyone can spin up a coin or reduce the friction. How hard was it for you to start a coin and cred? It wasn't difficult at all. CoinArtist: [00:15:33] I worked with NFTEX too with my original NFT. I wrote a story about my brand capturing the years of work I done and my community and how they contributed. Just really tried to tell that story with the NFT and then we sharded it. [00:15:47] And then I actually had NFT sales where each NFT gave access to a crypto puzzle. So you had to be an NFT holder to be able to call basically the prize at the end. And it was a pretty significant prize. It was 1% of the coin supply. CoinArtist: [00:16:02] With that money though from those sales NFT sales, that's how I seeded the Uniswap pool. Then I made a pair of the ETH and the coin. How does seeding a Uniswap pool? Oh, what does that look like? [00:16:11] Because I've never done that myself. Is that like you have to put up so much capital and then to get on Uniswap? Honestly, but just put up as much as you want. But it does set the price for your token. CoinArtist: [00:16:19] So the first time I did it just messing around, it wasn't paying attention. I just wanted to try something. And it ended up setting the price really high for just a totally random token we had made up before. [00:16:28] We tried to set a price at me since when we did that. That's the only thing you really have to think about. It's pretty straightforward. I don't know if you saw that the Uniswap just made an announcement. CoinArtist: [00:16:36] They did something like a what is it? A billion. Uniswap is growing insanely fast and there's so much volume there. Feel free to check out Uniswap. [00:16:44] Feel free to check out the Cosmos network with IBM guys. One thing I wanted to mention, which you briefly touched on was the crypto puzzle. JohnPaul: [00:16:51] So how did you first get started creating crypto puzzles and hiding these in your artwork? CoinArtist: [00:16:55] And what is the feedback then from the community in these different pieces? The art community or the crypto community at large? So I just wanted to clarify real quick. Are you sure about IBM? [00:17:04] Yeah, you're right. It's not IBM. That's a great, codifying thing. I might. CoinArtist: [00:17:08] I'm much too lucky to see it properly read it like that. We're not involved IBM. So you're exactly right there. JohnPaul: [00:17:13] Thanks for clarifying. CoinArtist: [00:17:14] And also, the number that Uniswap did was 100 billion in volume as a decentralized exchange on the 15th. And that cumulative volume. Yep, that's great. [00:17:25] So pretty awesome. Anyway, so how did I get into puzzles? I read Ready Player One. I read a book called Damon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez. CoinArtist: [00:17:34] I read Snow Crash. And this was all in 2013 around the same time as I was. We just started mining Bitcoin actually with our gaming GPUs. I clicked immediately that Bitcoin would be like an internet money. [00:17:47] Like how you could use it and interact with it in the same way like you do with games. So basically turning the internet into a game like playground, which we're just now starting to see with NFTs for I think they're really bringing that to life. But anyways, I wanted to play immediately with Bitcoin as a creative tool. So it hit me when I was doing a portrait for an article on the creators of Dark Wallet with Cody Wilson and Amir Takai. CoinArtist: [00:18:10] They were the developers for that token. So I was doing portraits for them. And as I was creating it, I realized I needed to hide something in the art piece. And I thought it should be something that leads to a private key. [00:18:20] So because a private key can be represented visually, I had been reading about Stegenography. And actually, Cicada 3301, which is a very famous alternate reality game style cryptographic treasure hunt was out. If you don't know about it, you should definitely check it out. I just kind of like blurred all those different inspirations together and launched it on Bitcoin Talk and when the painting was complete. CoinArtist: [00:18:40] And it became the most popular thread on Bitcoin Talk at the time. And this is a social forum. So if you can imagine, I did not expect that to happen. Being an artist, you're always competing to galleries or show off your work, make sales, seeing that kind of reception. [00:18:56] It made me realize that I just did something. And what did I do? And I kept wanting to iterate on it, eventually started doing works, basically being contracted by different projects. Because what happened was it was such a positive experience and great community building tool that people, when they embark basically on these digital CoinArtist: [00:19:13] quests across the internet and whatever mediums you roll out, which can be pretty much anything in it, can transcend to physical experiences as well. But there's a bond that's created that is so tight knit that a lot of times people don't leave. Now you're basically invested emotionally in this project. And you've also along the way, if we did our puzzle trail right, you're learning about the technology. [00:19:33] So at the time when we did it for that first Bitcoin one, a lot of people were just getting familiar with Bitcoin, but forcing them through the puzzle and the mystery, they started trying to look at all kinds of information and learning all about just the code was I referencing different Bitcoin commits to the GitHub, like just people are just diving into everything. And so this happened again, over any project or for any Bitcoin or blockchain company that we did these treasure hunts for, you had then all of a sudden a very intelligent community, a lot of times people with skills because they needed skills in order to decipher the puzzle. And it's actually how I found my CTO of blockade games. CoinArtist: [00:20:10] I worked with Charlie Lee and a very famous cipherpunk to do a light coin puzzle. And it looked like the light coin brand, but as a design, it had little nodes all strung together. And you had to understand said what to unriddle it. And I watched my CTO solve it in the different public chats. [00:20:27] And from there, like, I just basically snatched them up and wanted to go. And that's basically what happens with a lot of my puzzle designers or developers is I'll recognize that talent. And then instead of having them put their time into these puzzles, which obviously they have passionate time, they're willing to contribute to something, give them a different kind of puzzle. Let's go build this really hard engineering challenge. CoinArtist: [00:20:47] And they're great. So I'm really proud of my team and my CTO. So for these puzzles, are you the one getting into the SegWit logic and piecing that out? How'd you start with going from here's the code or here's the private key, which, you know, I believe that's what you're saying, you're encrypting or hiding in there. [00:21:04] And that for people who don't know is a string of numbers and digits or numbers and letters, usually. How do you go about hiding that and kind of figuring that whole puzzle section out for then someone to come and solve? Because it's not like you can just put in a software and it, you know, gives you a bunch of different little pieces of paper. You go hide somewhere, like digital pieces of paper. CoinArtist: [00:21:21] Actually, we have done so many different variations of hiding information. If you're curious about some of these tactics, like at DEF CON, there are different challenges they put out online. But like with SegWit, for example, we start with Charlie Lee saying, I want it to be the Litecoin logo. He wants to educate people about SegWit. [00:21:37] And the result is going to be this private key. So with enough information there, then we start thinking about the user experience. And where's the easiest place that you think you would be starting? So people, even if you don't say it in words, you have to, as a puzzle designer, walk through the logical solving process of how you would receive enough information. CoinArtist: [00:21:55] But it can't be too easy because then you're going to have someone just rip apart all this work you've done. A lot of times it takes about a month, a matter of hours, which has happened to us before. Even if you think you have all the checks in place and you think that it is difficult enough, but not too difficult, because if it's too difficult, it'll not have the intention you want, which is to be a fun community building experience. Instead, you'll have a room full of very angry people that are mad at the pacing of like making certain solves along the way. [00:22:22] And that little solve leads to the next solve, which leads to the next one. And you shouldn't be able to skip ahead to like step four without completing the first three. So there is an art to it. And then also putting includes to let people know that they're on the right track, because you could think you're on step four just because like coincidences lined up to certain information and you think that's right. CoinArtist: [00:22:41] So we try to put little checks in place along the way so that you can almost be solving hand and paper from a visual puzzle. But if you have the right information, basically what I'm saying is there's little code in little tips that you're on track. It's complicated. Well, what's neat about the puzzles was they take about a month to develop and then usually about three months total at most to solve. [00:23:02] If we did it really right, there are certain times like my hand painted torch tarts painting, which is the most famous probably of my puzzles. It took three years for people to solve. And they were so close for a couple years, but people just kept talking themselves out of it at the end. No way could I be right until the last of both cycle, a couple of engineers, they solved it in about three months once they caught up with Bitcoin. CoinArtist: [00:23:23] Talk. What was the guess the reward for solving that puzzle? JohnPaul: [00:23:26] And then can you talk through that final leap to get? CoinArtist: [00:23:28] Why did people think they weren't able to solve it? Or what was that kind of that last puzzle? Because I really find interesting. You mentioned adding breadcrumbs to make sure people get that first early win, but you don't want to give them too much information. [00:23:38] So that first puzzle was five Bitcoin and the peak of it was a hundred thousand dollars. And when it was actually solved, they were able to claim 50,000. And I don't know if he sold it or not. That's no small prize. CoinArtist: [00:23:50] Seriously, there's a lot to be said about you putting even your coins in there. And that's a huge thing. [00:23:55] Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial institutions and energy companies. CoinArtist: [00:24:02] By combining over seven years of mining experience, 24 seven 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 OrmCapitalCentures.com. I think it was about $300 per Bitcoin when I loaded that wallet in 2014. This group of engineers waited to solve that for three months. JohnPaul: [00:24:26] And can you talk about how that last puzzle might took so long? CoinArtist: [00:24:30] Was that the hardest puzzle you guys have done in your opinion or is there other ones that are even harder? I don't know. It just depends because the challenges are just different. So skill sets range because sometimes we embed things into audio files and using different techniques, doing something by hand like that is always more challenging for people because it brings in a layer of the abstract where I didn't render the image with a computer. [00:24:52] I took a photograph of a physical painting. And so that leaves out people like the idea that the stegenography is in the file. And if you can't use computer software, it is harder for people. And so I've done a couple like that and I should make more. CoinArtist: [00:25:06] It's just the fact that doing them by hand actually is very time consuming. And anyways, with that puzzle actually was all self contained and there was no actual clue along the way. It really was just like us. The only clue was that the painting was inspired by Shakespeare poem and there was a line in that poem that once you figured out the private key, which was embedded into the flings on the outer border of the painting, it had that line. [00:25:29] In the beginning of the string. So you knew that you were right. So you made a mistake somewhere. You're trying to decode it. CoinArtist: [00:25:35] You'd be able to run different checks. Well, that sounds like an adventure, especially one that lasted for three years and that you've been doing continuing to do it. And obviously people trust you that the bitcoins are there and not only that they trust you, but they can be verified by the blockchain and you're seeing in that wall. And then everyone know which I think is super cool. [00:25:51] And we're going to see when these puzzles are found. So how big is this puzzle hunting community? I guess gotten or the coin community grown over the past couple of years since you've been doing this. It's called alternate reality games and it's a org.net. CoinArtist: [00:26:03] And there's other communities like Reddit has different puzzle hunting communities. I think they were bigger back in the early 2000s. Maybe when video game companies were spending a lot of money on these hidden Easter eggs. And I'm curious because I'm kind of removed from that culture at the moment. [00:26:18] I wonder what that's like. But this puzzle community has grown. I'm sure that I feel like everybody must have stumbled upon something crypto puzzle related at some point at least now. And so it's cool to see that. CoinArtist: [00:26:30] It's cool to know that I inspired a trend of a way to interact and play with crypto that people didn't initially think of. But other people I think came even without my inspiration. I think that there have been people that also just kind of stumbled on putting two and two together in the same way. Yeah, it is this, I guess movement, as you can say, and the playing with blockchains, which I think was [00:26:51] really popular back when not the bear markets, when people are looking for things to do with these coins and the price action isn't everything. Then people overspending time, I would say jumping into some of this, the smaller bits or the more minutiae details and niche details in the blockchain world. So I know we talked a lot about coin and credit and all of that. Is there anything else you want to touch on in that NFT space with coin and credit before we jump to more like talking about your GPU mining rig and stuff about how you got into Bitcoin around that conversation? CoinArtist: [00:27:19] Well, just actually on the puzzle front. We used to hide stuff in the Bitcoin blockchain. And if you're a puzzle hunter of any sort, there's a lot of images and ASCII art and notes and things stored in the blockchain. We had a lot of fun making fake addresses, hiding things, playing with transactions, weaving, basically puzzle steps through the Bitcoin blockchain, which is so cool. [00:27:38] We could not afford to do that today. There's some really neat pieces and there's different sites. If you look up secrets or pictures on the blockchain, fun lore there to go catch up on. But anyways, within NFTs, I'm really excited about non-fudgeable tokens in the way that it's leashing just a creative storm in our space. CoinArtist: [00:27:57] And it's a little unsettling in the way that I don't know if we were totally ready for it yet. There's questions we get a lot of times. I'm an artist. I want to make it NFT. [00:28:06] Where do I go? What's the platform? There's a lot of artists that just want to participate and get in on it because it's a way since it's less saturated than traditional art space. It's a way maybe to get your brand stronger or to create a following and maybe have your first really big art sales. CoinArtist: [00:28:23] But it's also a little alarming because artists aren't very completely up to speed on the technology or what they're doing or the why. Like usually when artists choose a medium, canvas or paper, they're making that choice because it supports their art in a way that like the entire artistic experience and what they're trying to communicate with their artwork. And I am more excited about artists using tokens or smart contracts or what's possible with composability and essentially that magic trick feature that we have with smart contracts and tokens as a part as an integral part of the NFT and the token in the art itself. We're seeing generative artists using this function, having real time code, render NFTs, interactive NFTs. [00:29:04] And there's quite a few different projects working on that, like, each block art, art blocks beyond NFT, async art. These are all projects that you should watch. The idea that you can have an NFT broken up into multiple layers and interact that a user can actually interact with an NFT and it could be a game. Do you have a list of where, you know, a lot of these websites you're making, like a list of all of them? CoinArtist: [00:29:27] I know that's a hard ask, but I'm just thinking like there's so the NFT space, as you mentioned, is so hard to keep up with because there's so many people doing so many cool things. And it's just like, wow, like I just looked up beyond NFT because I was the first one I could remember. And that's a whole nother level of fractionalized NFTs. Or really, like you mentioned, being able to work with an NFT and generate them in programmatically. [00:29:48] So do you have any like, where's your best resources? That's the problem right there is that as a user walks in and then they're just hit with a million different avenues of different types of platforms, different types of NFTs and what's the right fit for you? OpenSea has a NFT Bible. It's called the NFT Bible. CoinArtist: [00:30:06] And if you just Google that and openSea, you'll get it. It is a good primer, but OpenSea is just one of many platforms. And really, it's just whatever the artist is going to be most comfortable with. OpenSea does have the ability for artists to basically mint these assets for free. [00:30:19] They're not like actually minted on the chain yet, but it's designed in a way where it's bound by the blockchain. And it's when the consumer buys it that the gas fee is made or the transaction happens and they take on the gas fee. So the artist is not taking that burden. So that means that there's more content basically to shop through. CoinArtist: [00:30:35] This should be that all NFTs were minted at the expense of the content creator. There's some pros and cons to that, but we're going to have an abundance of NFTs flying around, which is fine. It's just a matter of that means that now we need more people doing curation. And that question opens up, do we want high-end fine art curators to be telling us what is good NFT art or do we want to centralize dows and communities or some sort of voting mechanism for us to have like a popularity contest? [00:31:02] Talking about curating and who is going to be picking these NFTs. Have you heard of their community? Whale, the whale.me guy. JohnPaul: [00:31:08] Can you talk a little bit more about what that is and then what they're doing? CoinArtist: [00:31:12] And if you see that fitting into that curation conversation that you mentioned? Yeah, they have a vault and they collect artwork. I know the whale shark community and I interact with them, but I haven't participated directly in the community. So I can't speak as an authority on that, but I do know they have a vault. [00:31:27] They accumulate high-end art pieces. And I know that their community makes quite a bit of money participating in whale shark does have their own token. I found this actually this happened to me. I needed to buy some assets for crypto voxels, some wireables. CoinArtist: [00:31:41] And when I went to go shopping on OpenSea for them, everything was listed in whale shark or the whale token. And I didn't own any. So I was kind of like, damn it, I'm gonna have to go buy whale to get these cool assets. So it works. [00:31:54] They do buy good art and I was definitely finding myself wanting to go pick up some whale for that purpose. That money goes back into them accumulating more artwork, but he has one of the founders, if not the only founder. He is also launching like an esports fashion line. Yeah, so I don't know if there's two worlds will collide. CoinArtist: [00:32:10] I imagine they will. I bet he's thinking like I am with mirror where I'm thinking that sort of mentality and mirror with mentality that he is probably in the same mindset. And the whole whale community or whale platform is like you said, they're locking these NFTs in a vault. And then are they just holding that and waiting for those enough to sell them? [00:32:29] Because that's one of the things I've had concerns about are just really confusion. It's like, OK, as NFT start going up crazy and value, is it going to become so oversaturated when it's just there's not really any. I guess there is a physical aspect of the NFTs and it does create take time to make them. But at the same time, it's very low cost to distribute and keep on creating new NFTs. CoinArtist: [00:32:48] And we see massive pack drops. JohnPaul: [00:32:50] So can you talk a little bit more about where you would see the price and kind of this overall space of NFTs going in the next couple of years? CoinArtist: [00:32:57] Obviously no one has a silver ball, but I'm happy. We'd love to hear your thoughts on that. We're going to see there's going to be more demand for utility game assets as we scale on layer two networks assets that actually exist in other universes and or interoperable across a couple of different universes. NFTs are really, I would think of them as toys for the internet, essentially. [00:33:18] And the more that they're going to be able to play with the toys, the more valuable they're going to be. There is going to be this argument that what about artwork, for example, hadn't it can be displayed in your multiverse apartment, right? Sure, that's probably going to happen too. But I think something that has, for example, stat something that can be upgraded or improved or where you can basically drive additional value to it. CoinArtist: [00:33:40] So let's say you buy something and that's a dud value wise. You can't sell it for the life of you on a marketplace. You don't really care if you have it anymore. A user that has the ability to invest in the actual NFT themselves and create additional value around it, that NFT is going to be more interesting, I think, to people. [00:33:58] There's going to be a lot of people I think that collect duds in this market thinking that they're going to be valuable at some point. And that's just look at counterparty, the layer that was on Bitcoin. I have a ton of counterparty assets that are absolutely worthless. I don't know about rare pipes today or any other of those types of NFTs that were on counterparty, but it's not something that people are thinking about right now. CoinArtist: [00:34:17] They're thinking about this trend, but really what we should be thinking about. What is it that we can do with the technology? Think of the energy as a technology. As a technology, and I really like looking at it in that view because I agree with you being in the altcoin space and being in the rise of 2013, 2017, we saw massive projects where those coins. [00:34:33] Now, if you look back, of course, they haven't died because they're blockchains, but they've been delisted. No one's really supporting them. The value of those coins were dumped on by founders. And so sometimes some of those coins don't really have staying power unlike NFTs. CoinArtist: [00:34:46] Those are those were fungible tokens on like NFTs that are non fungible, which means they're all unique. But you mentioned adding assets to an NFT. JohnPaul: [00:34:53] Can you talk a little bit more about that? CoinArtist: [00:34:54] Because I have been really interested in a project called charge.5, which is about charging an asset or kind of like you're having your sword and you can start staking ERC 20 tokens on that sword to give it some more power. But what do you what did you mean by that? And can you touch a little bit more on that? Yeah, I've been following that project too and that's neat. [00:35:10] But I was talking more about. So, for example, neon district, the way it works is you have different assets that you compose together to create your characters and then your characters you have for that create your party. Everything you're issued at the beginning is basically level zero and it's only through your gameplay and development and your leveling and you are selecting in a very specific way how you want to level every time level has a option to pick new attributes to the assets and everything combined and how it plays together is a formula for that player and this team will play better in certain situations than a different team that they have assembled. CoinArtist: [00:35:48] And as you level, you are manicuring that experience of how they're going to play. And so it's very strategy heavy. It's like a RPG Final Fantasy classic with a backbone, like magic, the gathering as far as how wide the game design is. And that's important for the blockchain asset because it doesn't matter how powerful, let's say, something is necessarily as much as it matters how skilled the player is knowing when to play the right or make the right move or execute the right character at specific times, knowing your deck really, really well. [00:36:17] When I talk about that leveling or bringing new value, it's the opportunity for the player to use skill and develop an asset, which mirrors their skill and then I'm also executing with skill with this skilled asset. JohnPaul: [00:36:29] That part of neon district, can you explain real quick, high level, what the gameplay looks like? CoinArtist: [00:36:33] So you mentioned swapping is like a card game. We were playing cards down or is it like a 3D world? Yeah, and district is 2D. It's very painterly. And the way it's designed is that a character, when you level, you see a display of cards that you're picking. [00:36:47] You have three and you pick one. And when you're playing the actual game and the turn based gameplay, and when it's every character's turn, there's a deck that's assigned to that character. And you get a random draw from a 3 cards for that character's turn. And you'll be playing with those 3 cards for anyone that's played Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone might be familiar with some of that mechanic. CoinArtist: [00:37:08] That was a lot on entities. And I want to make sure we get the chance to real quick talk about this, the mining aspect of this, of the Ethereum network. You mentioned you had a GPU mining rig. JohnPaul: [00:37:18] Can you talk a little more about maybe when you set that up and what got you into deciding to mine crypto currencies? You can try. CoinArtist: [00:37:25] I mean, script coins had just taken off. And we were just on the edge of being able to mine Bitcoin. It was basically right when a six were coming out. So I also had taken some of those early mining rewards and funnel them into if you're familiar with butterfly labs. [00:37:40] I am. I actually bought a jalapeno miner back in the day. I think we were both in that conversation with script mining of Litecoin and all that. So it's crazy story. We had bought these more expensive GPUs one for gaming because we had multiple monitors. CoinArtist: [00:37:53] We were running with our graphics cards, but also because we would want to mine Bitcoin too. But then as those became outdated, this was a really natural progression. If you think about it, the fact that then asics came and then everybody had these GPUs and what are we going to do with them? Well, of course, we should do some script coin mining. [00:38:09] So that was really neat. And at that first, I don't know if you remember, cryptocurrency, but everybody mining their different script coins. And then that you have people like crypto, Cobain, who's still around today. And he tweeted at you last week, I believe. CoinArtist: [00:38:21] We know each other. I don't want to say friends about that. We know each other just from these different this long timeline, right? But these big influencers on Twitter, even back in 2014, making like basically token calls and people that have been mining that token, it was time to go and sell it on the marketplace. [00:38:36] And so actually, I'd say my last mining adventure, though, was the Zcash launch. So I actually invested in an entire mining setup at a facility in Washington and was ready for that launch. And that was an interesting launch. Did you participate in that one? CoinArtist: [00:38:52] I did not. So when you're mining, getting on the network launches, you want to get on the network as fast as possible. And the launch was a little difficult that first day, but made up for it in other ways, I suppose. But these are things I cannot disclose. [00:39:05] Mining of the cryptocurrency, especially what was that one mean coin, not mean coin that came out that was supposed to be a handshake algorithm. I don't forget the name of it, but there's all these coins when they're launching. It's everyone tries to jump in. I actually remember when we were mining Ethereum, they just launched the Ethereum network. CoinArtist: [00:39:19] I started mining Ethereum at like $3 a piece and we had 300 graphics cards. At that point, we're mining 500 Ethereum a day, but it's crazy to see how much the mining space has changed from at home users, butterfly labs, two weeks shipping to now the real industry we have today and how much it's progressed. Are you still actively mining any with those GPUs? No, I would say the last time I was mining at home was when I was mining Decred and Ethereum doing dual mining. [00:39:44] That was pretty cool, but that was about it, I think. I was actually as you were talking, I was like, I wonder if there's anything in the mine right now. I haven't been really paying attention to mining, but is that it still going? Is that a culture? Yeah, this definitely a lot of mining happening. CoinArtist: [00:39:59] The mining space has matured a lot in the Bitcoin side when it comes to the other cryptocurrencies. I mean, not slowing down, but it's definitely you can't get your hands on any new graphics cards. There's a lot of new software coming out. So that space is still growing. [00:40:13] I wouldn't say as rapidly as the NFT space because it is hardware and it takes a little bit longer, but it is growing massively. That's exciting. So puzzles that use, for example, mining are so interesting. I always wanted to do a puzzle that required people to roll back the blockchain, throw some mining power and reverse the 51% attack. CoinArtist: [00:40:32] But also, when you open up a block, you can unlock information there that you didn't know was there before. But you can only do it when you reach the block. Yeah, there's some really cool tricks that would be neat if someone were to do. But the whole idea there was even though if you created the challenge, would people do it? [00:40:48] Exactly. And I think the mining, it does take a lot of niche knowledge. And then also you have to have the hard work to actually to do that when you're talking about turning back a chain. Yeah, that's a whole nother conversation when it comes to mining. CoinArtist: [00:41:01] So you're not doing any more mining, but you got into it back in the day and you've had this experience. When you're working with NFTs, I noticed there's the community, as you mentioned, there's so many things to check out. Did you see the Logan Paul NFT packs that he launched? And do you have any thoughts on those? [00:41:16] This one's really familiar. I think it might have seen this pop over my feed, but I didn't. Yeah, so Logan Paul launched some NFTs with a company called Bondly and they are basically almost like Pokemon packs with his name on it. And he was selling them for close to $5,000, $10,000 a piece, I believe, starting off the bids. CoinArtist: [00:41:34] So he didn't sell all of them off. I think he set his price way too high and went to the route of the camel and do a limited 5,000 of them or a thousand of them at a higher price instead of a million tokens at a dollar. That's basically all I know about the project. Do you have any preference or would you go back and do anything differently when creating coin? [00:41:50] As you mentioned, Ethereum fees are pretty expensive. So would you change anything going forward and how you would price your tokens there? No, actually, in regards to pricing to a coin, it's been awesome. Like we started, I think, at 10 cents a coin and the community just picked it up and people hold it. CoinArtist: [00:42:06] It's funny because it moves up with Ethereum because everyone who hasn't basically holds it. So I've never seen a token move in conjunction when the tokens are moving together. Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? [00:42:17] Do you know how many people dump their altcoins? I actually just bought some coin and about 500 of it. JohnPaul: [00:42:21] So I'm excited to be a holder now while we're on the podcast. CoinArtist: [00:42:24] I'm like, I need to buy some. I don't let you down. Yeah, I think last I looked, it was like $1.30. But it was so hilarious because crypto covane, when he did that tweet with me, [00:42:34] my girlfriend, we were in Miami. We were just bantering for fun on Twitter and just trolling. And I looked at coin and it's $2. It had gone from $0.80 to $2. CoinArtist: [00:42:43] And I felt like I got trolled. People are getting excited about the NFT space and also just us being OGs in this space. I'm not going anywhere. My token is not going anywhere. [00:42:51] And that's pretty neat to see that response coming in with this new market. It's interesting to stay relevant as a project. So it's cool to still feel like people care, even though it's not like newly launching. There was no big hype news. CoinArtist: [00:43:04] We do consider you experimental things with it. It will be a fun coin. But yeah, so that's me. That is huge news, especially with, as you mentioned, the media attention [00:43:13] that just that Twitter storm over the past few weeks, you've been able to experience. And do you see that it's hard to get people we engaged in the community? Or do you think you guys are building enough utility? I bet that's a question you get a lot of. CoinArtist: [00:43:24] What is the utility with this coin other than the community? So you talk a little bit more on that and maybe ideas you have in the future of how to continue to reengage the coin community? Yeah. Well, I think because Neon District is an ongoing project itself [00:43:37] and you get a discount when you buy with coin. And then it's going to have utility within that Neon District universe. And coins eat in itself has presence in the game. We have, I can't talk about it yet, but there are some things planned CoinArtist: [00:43:48] with partners in ways that they become immersed in the universe that coins, you know, and is also going to have the same sort of place. So like, it's pretty neat to be able to flex all of the development power behind District and NFTs and utility there because that's two and a half years [00:44:05] of incredible work we've done and content that's lined up to roll out over this next year already done. So coin is basically that fringe experimental currency on the side that we all just use for interacting with each other CoinArtist: [00:44:17] and building out experimental projects. And even if we do something we really like, for example, this fashion line idea, it can get adopted into the universe itself. I hope when other syndicates join the universe that they have their own token. [00:44:30] We have a community manager who's just kicking butt basically on all the leaderboards and he has a following, like his own fan following because of the game now. And he's also one of our best puzzle solvers. And so if he establishes a syndicate within the universe, CoinArtist: [00:44:44] he gets to drive story and narrative and even help work with our designers and come up with his own assets and people that are part of his syndicate or opt into it, they get identified when you're playing them. You'll in different various ways, be it you can see underneath, [00:44:59] but also on things that their assets, their characters are wearing. And at different times we can come up with all kinds of syndicate wars in which different syndicates can have bonuses at different times for different challenges across the community. CoinArtist: [00:45:10] And just like, Neon District is such a playground that when I think about the value of coin and what is the ecosystem, it's going to be participating in. This is, yeah, it's a long tail game. We're talking, I don't like, I don't see this vision shaking off any time soon. [00:45:25] We were early with NFTs, we were early and ambitious with what we wanted to do. So Neon District is free to play, for example. There's no gas fees for you as a user and you're able to develop and play with NFTs for the first time anywhere on any web browser CoinArtist: [00:45:38] and then convert that when if you want to, either into your first cryptocurrency or even be able to swap peer to peer with players, if you're trying to design for a different style of team or you want a certain aesthetic. [00:45:49] So all those pieces together, it was really ambitious. And the fact that we are now public alpha, just it's not even been a month yet, we're just really getting going. I definitely agree with you on the fact that you guys have been putting a lot of time CoinArtist: [00:46:01] into the community and building out the infrastructure, the game. It seems like something I need to get on and start playing around with more. So with these syndicates, are you saying this is basically a group of teams that are a group of people, like almost like a sports team [00:46:15] and then they're fighting other syndicates in the Neon District? Yeah, so you can align with people and work against other parties that you think are getting too powerful. And that was designed so that that could happen and then it is happening. CoinArtist: [00:46:27] It's happening organically. And it's just interesting how the personalities of the people with the different characters and then how people align and how it ends up being represented visually across the game. [00:46:36] And so right now Neon Pete says what's live and it's the free to play onboarding that has its passive gameplay, but the actual live real time gameplay is coming and the campaign play. So the content's all there, but it's actually just the rolling out of all of the pieces CoinArtist: [00:46:52] and the UI and the UX all together at the same time and like easing everybody into this whole massive pipeline and updating as needed. So it's just, it's just a process now. And how many people are working on Neon District or the coin ecosystem? [00:47:06] Ooh, so Neon District and coin ecosystem, I would say about 15, probably dedicated just to and maybe even more than that actually because we have some really active community. But with just Neon District, we range to about 10, CoinArtist: [00:47:20] but we're actually hiring right now. We're looking for engineers, operations and trying to scale out the company. And have you guys taken outside funding or has this mainly been funded by you and any of the other founders? [00:47:30] It's funded by me, but also we have raised something like 2.2 million in total funding to date and we're set right now with our traction and numbers to be opening another round here in the new future. Awesome. Well, that's super exciting. JohnPaul: [00:47:42] Thanks again for coming on CoinArtists. CoinArtist: [00:47:44] Where's the best place for people to connect with you online and what social media platform would you prefer? Yeah, I'm on Twitter, so coin underscore artist and then Neon District is Neon District RPG, District site, [00:47:54] is Neon District I0, and I'm happy. I get slammed with DMs and my telegram is basically rest in peace. If you want to talk to me the best chance of me finding you or seeing you is coming to our Discord and tagging me in our Discord on a general chat channel. CoinArtist: [00:48:10] And if I don't see it, it will be brought to my attention or moderator will be able to talk to you. So yeah, absolutely. Come check out our stuff, give us feedback, participate and come play. [00:48:19] And honestly, I feel like people that are going to find the value in this space and NFTs. The best way to learn is to play yourself, create yourself, participate and what's interesting to you, you'll be able to identify quicker, CoinArtist: [00:48:32] what is probably going to be interesting to other people. And that is, in my opinion, the best way to find the next hot thing, if that's of interest. JohnPaul: [00:48:39] Thanks again for the time. CoinArtist: [00:48:40] And if you guys are looking for the next hot thing in the NFT space, there you go. Look at CoinArtists on Twitter and Discord. [00:48:47] 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 CoinArtist: [00:48:57] to become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening. [00:49:00] And until next time, mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Crypto Media & Marketing | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 25 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/crypto-media-marketing-kyle-reidhead/ Crypto Media & Marketing | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 25 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 25 # Crypto Media & Marketing with Kyle Reidhead — Founder, Milk Road Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Kyle Reidhead to discuss crypto media & marketing. ### The Future of Crypto Media and Marketing with Kyle Reidhead Co-Founder of Milk Road Building Trust, Brand, and Community in the Next Wave of Crypto In this episode of the Digital Gold Podcast, MiningStore CEO JohnPaul Baric sits down with Kyle Reidhead, co-founder of Milk Road, one of the fastest-growing newsletters in crypto with more than 330,000 readers and a thriving podcast audience. Kyle shares his story from marketing-agency founder to crypto media leader, breaking down how trust, storytelling, and user experience are shaping the next era of Web3 adoption. From the rise of the “fat-app” thesis to real-world business models in DeFi, this episode is packed with insight for anyone building or investing in the digital-asset space. “In crypto, everyone can build anything. The key is cutting through the noise to show what’s real and that starts with trust.” Kyle Reidhead Full podcast episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/why-80-of-crypto-investors-fail-the-hard-truth-no/id1539971833?i=1000702064403) ### What You’ll Learn - From Zero to Milk Road: How Kyle turned a niche newsletter into a 330K-reader media platform with one of the top crypto podcasts. - Marketing in Web3: Why storytelling, clarity, and community-driven design beat hype and jargon every time. - The Fat-App Thesis: Why the next trillion-dollar crypto opportunity may belong to applications, not blockchains. - Investor Education: How to build long-term wealth in crypto by focusing on fundamentals, trust, and the user layer. - Entrepreneurial Lessons: Kyle’s playbook for building winning teams, scaling multiple companies, and leading through volatility. Whether you are a Bitcoin miner, DeFi builder, or curious investor, this conversation shows how the smartest founders are navigating crypto’s maturing landscape and what’s next for blockchain media, brand, and business. Listen to the full episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/why-80-of-crypto-investors-fail-the-hard-truth-no/id1539971833?i=1000702064403) ### About Kyle Reidhead Kyle Reidhead is the co-founder of Milk Road and Impact3, a Web3 marketing and strategy firm helping projects like Bankless, BadgerDAO, and Meanwhile Insurance reach global audiences. A pioneer in crypto storytelling, Kyle is helping bridge the gap between traditional media and blockchain culture, making crypto clear, credible, and fun for the next million users. ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ Why 80% of crypto investors fail and how to avoid their mistakes - ✅ The Milk Road approach to crypto media and audience building - ✅ Marketing strategies that work in the Bitcoin ecosystem #### Related Resources Learn About Bitcoin Mining → About the MiningStore Team → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Gold Mining Podcast, where innovation meets opportunity in the world of cryptocurrency mining. I’m your host, John Paul Baric, entrepreneur, Bitcoin pioneer, and the CEO of Mining Store, where we specialize in modular data center solutions and driving financial access to Bitcoin mining worldwide. Each week, we bring you expert insights, cutting edge strategies, and real world stories from the forefront of Bitcoin mining. Whether you’re a seasoned pro, a curious investor, or someone looking to understand the power of digital gold, this is the podcast for you. Get ready to explore the evolving world of Bitcoin mining, from energy innovation to the latest tech. tech, market trends, and how to build long term value in a decentralized economy. Let’s dive in and uncover what it takes to mine successfully in the age of digital gold. Hello, and welcome to the digital gold podcast, where we spotlight the innovators and visionaries shaping the future of digital assets and web3. Today we’re joined by Kyle Reidhead, co-founder of milk road, a crypto newsletter, breaking down the [00:01:00] industry’s complexities for over 330, 000 daily readers with sharp insights, humor, and accessibility. Beyond milk road, Kyle Reidhead led impact three. A Web3 marketing powerhouse transforming brands NFT projects and DeFi protocols into thriving communities. A pioneer in crypto storytelling, he’s redefining how trust and loyalty are built in this lightning-fast industry. In this episode, we’ll explore the evolution of crypto media pitfalls in Web3 marketing and strategies for building trusted brands. Kyle Reidhead also shares his vision for the next wave of crypto growth and adoption. Whether you’re an investor, builder, or simply curious about the digital gold rush, his insights will challenge how you see this dynamic space. Kyle Reidhead, welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Hey man, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So when you first learned about crypto, what were you doing before? Take us back to that first, what is Bitcoin moment for you? Kyle Reidhead: So I got into crypto back in 2019. I was running a marketing agency at the [00:02:00] time, still run the same agency today. I’d been in the, let’s call it the creator economy. So it’s maybe the media space, whatever, for many years working with content creators who are building, , online courses and who are building subscriptions and things that. So that was always my world. And at the same time, I’d always been investing since I was really young. I had been trying to invest in newer industries. So as a Canadian, I was early in the marijuana stocks before marijuana became legal in Canada, because I knew that was becoming a thing. I was early playing around at the time. I was really young, so I wasn’t really any good, but playing around with social media stocks and some of the tech stocks and stuff. And so it was always part of me to . , learn investing and learn the new things that I thought were going to be a thing in the future. And then around 2019, I was , Hey, if I’m going to do this investing thing, I need to really understand economics. I need to really understand what’s going on in markets. Cause , I didn’t fully get it. I understood [00:03:00] tech. I understood the products, these kinds of things. I didn’t quite really understand markets. And I was , okay, I’m going to go deep down the rabbit hole. And this is again, before I had heard about Bitcoin, what, what happened was just before I’d heard about Bitcoin, I’d read this book all about economics. I can’t even remember the name of it now, but it was basically an economics textbook. I think that you would read in a school and I was just reading it every morning. So I started to get after a few books to understand economics, to understand this idea of scarcity and things this supply and demand, et cetera. And then at one time I was in Mexico and I met a buddy, he works for Exodus, which is a wallet provider in the crypto space. And he was telling me that he worked there. And I was , huh, I’ve heard of this crypto thing back in 2017, never really got involved. , what is this thing? what’s going on? And so we went for dinner and had a couple of drinks and we sat there for three and a half hours. And he just explained everything he could. And I just questioned everything. He got me to download an Exodus wallet. And he sent me, I think a little bit of ETH, maybe Bitcoin, I can’t remember, but I think it was ETH at the [00:04:00] time that he sent me, just a small amount. And I was , okay, this is cool. this seems wild. I couldn’t imagine this idea of , , you could sell these things that were stocks, but you could trade them to anyone, anytime, it didn’t matter where you were. There’s no additional fee. If you were across borders, it was , you can do all these payments. And I think they were talking about tokenizing their stock at the time. I was , This is wow. This doesn’t really make sense to me. So I went home and I went deep down the rabbit hole. I read the Bitcoin standard. I read basically every Bitcoin book that there was out there, started listening to podcasts and went down that rabbit hole. And so I started buying a little bit of it and then COVID came along. And everything went down by 50 percent in a day. And I was , what is going on here? , I haven’t been in a space for that long. It was late 2019 when I first heard about it. And by the time I started buying, I had to get my exchange up, et cetera. So I just started buying and then everything goes down. And I was , Whoa, what is this? And again, I was in Mexico when the COVID crash happened and everyone was getting locked down. We [00:05:00] weren’t really locked down in Mexico. And so didn’t have this stress and fear that all my friends and family and everyone else had. And so for me, I didn’t really, it made no sense why everything was crashing. I was , I don’t think the world’s ending. Everything’s nice. I’m literally living on the beach surfing every day, even though everyone else is locked in their homes. So , I was lucky to , not be just filled with stress in those moments. And so I ended up going, what? I’ve learned about this Bitcoin thing for so long now. it’s time for me to , Really go all in here. I just got this beautiful blessing of Bitcoin and ETH. Bitcoin was at three grand. I think at the time ETH was 150 bucks. And I was , okay, I’m going to start loading up and see what happens here. And so I just started buying that day. And then every day after that, the thing just went up and up and up and up. And I was , what the heck? And so then I got addicted and I went down the rabbit hole. #### AI and HPC Infrastructure At the time, I didn’t really understand ETH. I really, really went down and understood Bitcoin. I didn’t understand smart contract platforms. So over the coming months, I started to really [00:06:00] look into this and go, whoa, this is more than just decentralized money. They’re decentralizing everything, the whole internet. And I was , if this works and this is even bigger. And I started to think, well, I have this marketing agency with all these digital creators, right? Who are making money online. They’re creating these products online. They’re creating social media content. And I was , I think that whole market’s going to change. Social media is going to change. The way that we monetize is going to change the way that you have business model is going to change. And I thought, okay, I got to figure this thing out so that I can help my clients understand how the world’s going to change now. Web three and all that didn’t come as fast as I thought it would at the moment. Everyone in 2020 thought, okay, this thing’s happening right away. The metaverse, all this stuff, none of that happened. But I began in 2021 to start to pivot my company into working with more crypto companies. In 2020, we started working with bank lists who a lot of people know. who are in the ETH community. We actually built a website for the [00:07:00] founder of the Bitcoin standard Saif and a bunch of other companies. And so that moved us into thinking more about crypto, not just from the investment side, but , what does this mean for businesses? What does this mean for content creators? And then today our marketing agency has basically pivoted fully into crypto. We only work with DeFi protocols, crypto brands, blockchains, et cetera. And we help with a ton of different things there. And then of course, we have our own media company that explores this world, both on the investing side and on the building side as well. JohnPaul: So you took the orange pill, it sounds in Mexico. Yeah. And you were fully committed to learning more backing the truck up at the COVID crash saying, this is for me, this is something I want to continue to invest in. You saw how it could change money across borders without any Extra fees and how the technology didn’t care about your race where you believed in and it could facilitate that trade, which is not something that our current dollar has. So when [00:08:00] you’re working with these influencers and we’re starting to orange pill other people. What are some of those questions you get that you had to clearly articulate why this was a better system or how it’s going to change the marketing and change the payment rails that maybe they were using to sell their courses previously? And how much of that actually has manifested into reality with those influencers? Because I work with a lot of influencers and would love to hear your take on their view on crypto. Kyle Reidhead: Yeah. . A lot of the people that we work with now, I never really actually had to influence. There was just a need, I think, for marketing from people who are already in the space that they knew that they loved finance and they were building some cool products, but they were , I don’t know a thing about marketing. It seems to be a trend in the crypto space. But at the time when I first started learning about it, I was , Hey, I got to go. And I got to talk to my team. I got to talk to my co founder, talking to friends, et cetera. And I realized as excited as I was about it. And I think for me, it was just , It was the perfect timing, right? I just read an [00:09:00] economics book and gone deep down that rabbit hole. So then to understand and learn about Bitcoin, you’re , Oh yeah, this is the perfect fit makes complete sense. A lot of people I realized though, after a year of trying to go and tell everyone I had heard of about Bitcoin. Most people just actually don’t care. It was wild. I couldn’t believe it. I was , man, governments are printing this money and they’re inflating away our currencies and blah, blah, blah, blah. And everyone’s just , whatever. It sounds terrible, but that’s okay. Don’t worry. Yeah. They just , they go about their day. Right. So the one thing I actually really did learn and realize was you got to meet people where they are. There’s a lot of people that I realized they don’t care about decentralized money. But maybe stable coins made sense to them, or maybe an NFT made sense to them because they’re more of an artist type, or maybe whatever the thing is made sense to them. For example, one of the things that made me understand Ethereum so quickly was. In 2019, actually, before I started the marketing agency, I used to have my own content creation business where I was actually [00:10:00] in the health space, had a podcast and a huge community on Facebook, et cetera. And one day I woke up and my Facebook got shut down. And today it’s still shut down. I just don’t have it anymore. This is my Facebook from when I was a kid, had all my photos and everything. But I had these two huge Facebook groups on there. That we’re bringing in so many of my potential clients. And I had this automated thing to sell them on my courses or whatever. It was great. One day I woke up and it was just gone. And there was no reason or right. , I still don’t know today why they did it. And so I was , wow, this is crazy. And so when I started learning about theorem, I was , oh, this would prevent that from happening, right? You own your data, you own your addresses, et cetera. And I was , so for me, if someone explained that to me from the beginning, that would have clicked with me. But when I explained that to other people that have never had their accounts taken down, Doesn’t click with them. So what I always find is with content creators, that was the thing I went to them with. And I was , look, what if Facebook shuts their Instagram shut down today, your business would be done. Right. [00:11:00] And they’re , yeah, that’s very true. And I’m , and so think about this world. Think about what’s happening over here. And everyone was , Oh, now I’m starting to get it. But if I told that to my mom, she’s , I don’t need . #### Industry Deep Dive My Facebook isn’t that valuable to me. I don’t care. Right. So it was very it depended on who, what the person’s problem was or their potential problem was right. That was the main thing that I figured out over time after talking with so many people. JohnPaul: So identifying the users problem or the influencers problem and then to your point, you had to position it as in this is now the new opportunity. This is your opt out because the existing rails, they’re great until they don’t work. And when they don’t work, you don’t think about it and you have no backup as a creator. If you get de platformed, you are screwed if you’re relying on AdSense. And Kyle Reidhead: yeah, well, and a good example was during COVID, some of our staff, our team for our agency is from all over the world. We’re fully remote. We don’t have an office anywhere. We had two people, one that was Russian, one was a Ukrainian, but that Ukrainian was living in Russia at the time. And [00:12:00] so all of a sudden when the sanctions happened, we couldn’t pay them. And they didn’t really know much about crypto at that point. We were, they were just starting to learn it, but when the sanctions came through, we were , the only way we can pay you a stable coins. And so for them, they fell in love with crypto in that moment, right? They’re not even investors. They don’t really care about finance stuff, but the moment they learned that crypto was a thing that saved them, they could still get paid in Bitcoin or in stable coins. They were , Whoa, this is a game changer for me. And so probably about 35 percent of our team right now is paid in stable coins. Mainly those who live in places Argentina, Turkey, Russia, right? places where they actually can’t accept dollars, or if they do get dollars, they’re taxed an insane amount on them. And so again, it’s when the problem becomes a reality for people and crypto is the thing that solves it. They’re , Oh, I get it. This makes complete sense. But people in the U S people in Canada, we don’t really have problems with our banks that much. We don’t really [00:13:00] have problems with our currencies that much. So it’s , it’s not a huge issue for these people. Right. We also don’t really have a lot of censorship. Well, , I guess we do in terms of social platforms, but it’s a lot less. It’s not as bad as it is in other countries. Right. And so we don’t see it as much of a problem. But other places in the world, man, do they ever see this? And it’s a necessity, not just a, this is cool and something to invest in. It’s , I actually need this to function in my life, ? JohnPaul: And so, , to your point, the benefits, you’re meeting people where they are versus getting them to have to understand the technical aspects of money and what it means to solve the Byzantine general problem and how that’s going to change the world. I’ve mentioned you acquired Milk Road. Can you talk me through When did you realize, okay, I need to build a marketing asset in this space and this is the right one. Were you looking at other ones, did something fall through and what’s something as you went through the process that you learned that you would give advice to someone else who was going through the process of, let’s [00:14:00] say, building a marketing asset in the crypto space or acquiring one? Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, sure. So back in 2022. Out of our marketing agency, we launched a podcast and newsletter called Web3 Academy. And the reason we did this is we found that a lot of the media that was out there back then was either super technical and didn’t make sense for a lot of people, or it was super finance and didn’t make sense to a lot of people. And what we wanted to do Was let’s discuss what’s really being built in this space. And a lot of this space is absolute garbage, right? And we wanted to separate that noise and be , here’s the things that are being built that will exist in the future stable coins, right? This is not going away. But whatever the fad was back in the day, that’s probably not going to stick around. That’s just more speculation and whatever. And so we really wanted to get into the nitty gritty of simplifying things for the average person and also helping them understand what’s real and what’s not real. [00:15:00] Because in crypto, it’s permissionless. Anyone can build whatever they want. And so you can launch a white paper, put a token behind it and call it this thing. And , if you really knew what’s going on, there’s absolutely nothing going on there. But most people don’t realize that when they come in. So. We saw an opportunity there cause it wasn’t a lot of people doing that. And so we did this during 2022. It happened to be the terrible bear market, but we continue to grow through all of it. And we realized, and this would go to your question about advice is we just solved a problem for a lot of people. There was a lot of new people that came into the space in 2021 and even in 2022. And they just didn’t have someone that was speaking to their level, right? Because again, too technical or too finance and for people in the web three space that we’re trying to come in and. Figure out what’s going on, tease and tokenizing and all this stuff. That stuff just didn’t make sense. There was a lot of jargon. So we solved the problem in the fact that we just, we spoke people’s language, right? And we were able to get that noise and all the hype that happens in crypto and just move that out of the way and just get to the reality of what’s really being built. And so it worked quite [00:16:00] well over the time. We ended up launching some products within their paid side to our newsletter. We obviously had the podcast, et cetera. And we reached a point where we were growing, but it was quite slow. But interestingly, Milk Road was a company that we were working with for our marketing agency. #### Capital and Investment Strategy And they’re very similar to what we were doing a little bit more on the investment side, but simplifying things. Trying to separate signal from the noise, that stuff. And they actually approached us, the guys that had purchased it off of Sean, who’s the founder of my first million is one of the biggest business podcasts in the world. He’s the one that founded milk road originally. These other guys bought it. They weren’t crypto guys. They bought it at the top of the crypto market in 2021 and realize, Hey, maybe we should have done that. This isn’t really for us. And they trusted us. They knew that we already knew media because we were running a media, a marketing agency in the media world. And they knew we knew crypto because we already had Web3 Academy. We worked with Milk Road, we worked with Bankless and a few others. And so they approached us about acquiring them and we realized, Hey, this is the perfect opportunity because [00:17:00] we already have the team that creates content. It’s very aligned with the milk road audience as is, and they’re 20 X bigger than we were and milk road didn’t have any products at the time. They were just a newsletter that made revenue from sponsorships, whereas we already had products. And so when we acquired it, we were able to lower expenses immediately because we already had a team. And implement a bunch of products we already had that were great products already had product market fit right into the milk road brand. That’s the podcast. That’s our pro content where we give deeper dives into investment vice, we show our portfolio, et cetera. And so it was just a perfect fit. So we made that move last year. And that’s grown crazy now. And it was a great success so far from that. We’re very excited about it. But yeah, it all came out of opportunity. JohnPaul: And Kyle Reidhead, talk to me more about the numbers here. So they acquire it. Any idea how many subscribers? And then you guys acquire it. How many subscribers? And then was there a viral moment? Was there multiple viral moments? Did you hit an inflection point? And then where are you today with the [00:18:00] platform? Kyle Reidhead: Milk Road had its viral moment. I think it was in 2021, late 2021 or maybe mid when Sean Puri, he started it, and that went pretty viral. It went to , it was one of the fastest growing crypto newsletters in the space. So it went from zero to a hundred thousand in seven months. It was pretty crazy. I think when the guys acquired, it was around 200,000 or a little over 200,000, when we took it over, it was about 300,000. Today we’re sitting a little over that 330,000 or something that. But more importantly. It’s not just a newsletter anymore, right? We’ve got a podcast, which now is over 150, 000 plays per month. And it’s become one of the go to podcasts for investing in crypto, which is really cool. That’s podcast and YouTube channel. And then our pro membership has grown just significantly. We have thousands of pro members in there. We have a community where everyone can talk with each other and share. What’s happening in the space, we haven’t really hit a viral moment, let’s say, since we’ve taken it over. But I also think over the last year, there hasn’t been a ton [00:19:00] of, let’s say, new entrance into the space. Obviously, when Trump won the election, there was a bunch of speculators that came back in. A lot of them were people from the last cycle that just came back and Punted a bunch of money and meme coins and whatever, but I don’t think we’ve had a ton of net new people. And I think that’s going to come over time. And so that’s what we’re building for is more long term. We’re not expecting a zero to 100, 000 anymore, they had in the beginning back in 2021. I think the crypto industry is now, it’s not going to be as these crazy ups and downs. I think we’re more going to be gradual momentum forward and upwards. And so that’s what we’re building for and planning for moving forward. JohnPaul: Ready to earn Bitcoin at a 60 percent discount? With BitVault, you can get access to the most efficient Bitcoin mining machines for as little as 100. No technical expertise needed. Not only can you accelerate your Bitcoin holdings, but you’ll also enjoy tax benefits 40 percent accelerated depreciation on mining equipment in 2025. Our low cost energy [00:20:00] partnerships and advanced hedging strategies let you skip the headache while maximizing your Bitcoin exposure. Join the revolution today and start building your digital gold portfolio. Invest now at tothemoon. cash. Your journey to the future of money begins here. You highlight on the fact of an audience, but products and When you’re talking to influencers, you’re talking to these two people in this space and they’re building an audience. , we’ve seen these products be added and for influencers to bring in really their own products Mr. Beast burger, the feastables for Mr. Beast and other influencers out there. How do you view the integration of audience in products? And you obviously want to keep the original thesis of milk road to your point, but you’re wanting to add additional value that doesn’t take away from the newsletter. So What advice do you have or what was your experience with integrating those products into Milk Road and what was the feedback? Was it , Oh, this is a one plus one equals four or was it , this is a one plus one equals, , negative one because it didn’t [00:21:00] work. So how do you see integration of those products successfully? Kyle Reidhead: I think when you have an audience. One, I think the best thing you can do if you want to build any business is start with just building an audience, right? Because then when you launch a product, you already have a bunch of people that you can market that to for free, right? And so I think there’s no better way to start a business than building an audience first. When you go to launch a product, the key thing here is adding value, right? So we already gave a lot of value in our newsletter for free. People loved it. We were educating people. Our goal with milk road is to help people become better investors, right? We want to help them become financially free to capitalize on the opportunity of crypto to understand where the space is going. And so we thought, okay, what products can we build that will help people do that even further? Right? And so one, we launched a podcast that was more just we can interview more people throughout the space. So that was one way to connect our audience to more people within crypto. Great. We launched our pro membership. #### Bitcoin Price Dynamics There’s a bunch of things involved in this, but basically it’s , More in depth research to [00:22:00] understand what’s going on in the space, both from an investment side and a building side. We’ve got our portfolio in there. So our researchers, what do we invest in? How would we manage risk, et cetera? So all of these were around helping people to navigate their own portfolios and their own investments. We’ve also recently launched Milk Road Swap, which was, again, we noticed a problem with our audience. Every time we told them about X token that we thought was really good and you could buy this thing, they go, well, where can I get it? And they’d be , do I got to look on Coinbase? Do I need to look on Uniswap? It’s funny, the most foundational thing in our industry is to swap tokens, right? Trade from one token to the next. And a lot of people just still don’t even understand how to do it. It’s 2025, which is wild. And I think the reason for that is confusing. There’s all these blockchains, there’s a gajillion tokens, there’s so many ways to swap. So we launched basically an aggregator where one user interface and you can click Ethereum based tokens, Solana based tokens in a bridge, all in one spot. You don’t have to go to Uniswap and then Radium and then this thing. It’s just [00:23:00] , it’s all just right there. It’s not a big deal what we made. It’s literally just a webpage that integrates existing DEXs and people are loving it, right? Because just making everyone’s lives easier in trading. And so again, we just listened to our audience. We ask them what their problems are in this space, and then we go and try to build things to solve those problems. And I think the more that we do that, the more our audience is just , hell yeah, , I’m loving being part of this milk road community because you guys keep making my life easier, , and I think ultimately. If you’re an influencer, if you’re a content creator, you’re building an audience, just speak to your audience, right? Try to create some community where you can actually have conversations with them. One time I just literally did for a full month, just a one on one calls with our audience. Back to back to back. I probably did 50 calls in two, three weeks. And as exhausting as it was, it was probably one of the best learning experience I’ve ever had. Cause I got to , actually just this one on zoom, chat with these people know where they’re from, who they are, what [00:24:00] jobs they have, what problems they’re having, what they think about our brand. Cause I have an idea of what I think people think of our brand, but until you actually speak to your audience, you don’t really know. Right. So that to me was probably the best thing I’ve ever done. And that’s really helped us to level up and just keep building for our audience and keep launching new products. And JohnPaul: you’re hitting an interesting point here where there is other tools where people can swap and you’re not unique in the swap ecosystem. You maybe not even be the best, most efficient swappers, but that’s not the point. And the point is that. People trust you. People trust milk road. And so when they go through this portal, they are accessing the confusing crypto space through a milk road lens. That’s going to almost protect them. And one of the questions that I have on that is how do you balance? information, integrity, and also the value of investing and number always have to go up and telling people of a coin when maybe it’s overinflated [00:25:00] versus if it’s 200 EMA. , how do you guys Knowing that people are going to take this advice and most likely allocate capital to it. How do you balance that versus them missing out completely? And I know there’s nothing you can do in the future. You don’t know where the coin’s price is going to go when you suggest it, but how do you meet them where they are versus getting them rug pulled? a Facebook account, right? Kyle Reidhead: That’s a great question. One of the things with Milk Road you touched on already was trust. And milk road has had a lot of trust for a long time. And that’s the reason why we wanted the company, the reason we wanted the brand. And the most important thing for us is , no matter what, we just want to keep trust with our audience because honestly, that’s not a thing that comes very often in crypto, how many companies have gone bankrupt or shut down or scammed their audience or whatever. So trust is huge to us. And one of the ways that we teach the way that we invest anyway, is we’re very much long term investors. We’re not traders, we’re not in the trenches, trading meme coins and dumb things we’re looking at this space globally [00:26:00] and we’re saying, okay, what has real value here? What do we think we could put money in today that would hold or grow in price 10 years from now? Now there’s not a lot in the space to be completely frank that would do that. There’s Bitcoin and then a few others. Okay. So there’s not a ton. And so , it’s just being very upfront with our audience. everyone’s , well, one of those took me guys. We don’t care until it becomes something more vibrant that, that is really solving a problem again. what I just said about how you build a business. That’s what we’re looking for is in crypto, who are the companies or the defy protocols or the whatever that are solving real problems in this space. And when you can locate those, and then also understand the tokenomics, make sure they’re not . 90 percent owned by the team or something, then at some point you can start to find an investment thesis there. We don’t invest in a lot of tokens. I know there’s a lot out there that are , they’re in different tokens every day and whatever. We hold a portfolio of around 10. They’re very longterm. We’re looking multi cycle here, if you want to call it cycles. So we’re [00:27:00] trying to teach our audience because I think what happens, especially in crypto, but more for any retail investor is. They think that you got to trade all the time. You got to be in and out of markets and you sell and blah, blah, blah. #### Technical Discussion And you jump from token to token. And , that’s just not how you do it. That’s not how you succeed investing, right? all the best investors in the world are very slow long term. They hold for very long term right. Warren Buffett, the best in the world. Guy holds companies for decades. And so one of the things that we try to do at milk road is just help educate before you go look at our portfolio, understand the foundations of investing, understand the foundations of crypto. And that’ll help you just , see the world a little bit different, see the markets a little bit different. And instead of , every time some news headline comes out thinking, Oh shit, I got to sell. I got to get rid of this. Or price goes down 20%. I got to get rid of this thing. It’s zoom out, right? And that’s everything we write. Everything we do is just helping people try to zoom out. Cause I feel in today’s world, it’s so hard to do, right? We all have ADHD just running around, , it’s just an [00:28:00] education thing. It is really what it is. And then we do that to try to help build trust as well. JohnPaul: As you mentioned, I think it’s a balance of getting the new information in their hands. But then also letting them know, , don’t need to trade every day. And actually trading every day is a sure way to lose money. You need to trade once a month. , what’s the best trade this month that you can make? And then how are you going to sit on that cash portfolio so that you don’t say, Oh, I put my 10K and it’s down 90 percent upgrade and have 1, 000 now to go and invest. that is one of the hardest things with crypto is just. Losing that value so quickly because it is so volatile and maybe the liquidity isn’t there for some of these smaller caps Kyle Reidhead: or you don’t need to trade once a month at all. And it’s just if you found something that works and something that’s good, you just keep buying it there’s not a better move than just continuously dollar costing averaging into Bitcoin over the last. 15 years. Bitcoin’s JohnPaul: boring. I don’t Kyle Reidhead: want to just buy Bitcoin. I don’t get it. This is the thing that we try to teach people. Boring is actually the best thing you can do for investing, right? Investing everyone, people did try to complicate it. And my advice is [00:29:00] always do less. Right. It’s just always just do less is the thing I repeat to our audience all the time. It’s , yes, Bitcoin might be boring, but the thing goes up 150 percent per year on average. How is that not the most exciting thing you’ve ever heard of? if I get a chance to compound 150 percent gains year over year for 10 years, I’m through the roof. But then you have people coming. ’cause in the tradify space, if you invest in the nasdaq, you’re maybe getting 10% per year on average, right? Bitcoin is 150% per year on average. for Tradify people, that’s unheard of. And yet crypto people come and go, nah, I don’t want 150%, I need my thousand percent this year. And I’m , guys, manage your expectations. That makes no sense. And so a big advice that we give to investors is , listen, 80% at least of your portfolio needs to be in the majors, right? It needs to be in things Bitcoin and not in these small caps or altcoins because at least the thing I would hate to see is for someone to be in crypto early. And not make any money from it. A funny story that I always teach [00:30:00] people is when I first got into crypto, as I said, I went around telling all my friends, I got a bunch of them into crypto and we went through that cycle together. The last cycle, 2020, 2021. And most of them ended up with less money than they invested at the end of that cycle. And I was , that makes no sense. This industry literally 10 X it’s a marquee cab. Even at the bottom of the bear market, it is still way higher than it was back in early days, 2020. And yet most people that I know lost money and it’s because they went down the risk curves, they levered up and they lost their money in Celsius or an FTX or whatever. And it’s , guys, some basic things, just hold the majors. Don’t use leverage and custody it yourself and you have no issues. And so , I was actually the only one of all my friends that came out making money that cycle. And I was , that is insane. That was one of the reasons why I wanted to acquire milk road because they were preaching the investment side. And I was , I got to help people just understand the basics of investing. Cause I know everyone loves crypto. They want to come in, they [00:31:00] want to buy this stuff and it’s fun and it’s exciting. But , if you just get the basics, you can actually do really well and go have fun. Playing around in whatever Trump coin you want or but as long as you get the basics, right? And you get most of your portfolio and something that is just gonna go up long term Then do whatever you want with the rest of your portfolio JohnPaul: And I think one of the key things you highlighted on is that you don’t need to be focused 100 percent on crypto and digging into and learning every single thing and trying to keep up with all the news because the reality is It’s great, but it moves so fast and it’s , what sticks and most of the stuff doesn’t stick. Most of the stuff is going to zero versus Bitcoin. And so it’s , what really is going to add value? And from what I’ve seen online, you have a thesis called the fat app thesis. And can you talk through why you think maybe people are over allocated to other L ones and L twos and the application theory, and we’ve talked a little bit about it with the swapping function through milk road already, [00:32:00] but why is the fat app thesis important to you? And then how are you, I guess, investing or making, looking at apps and products to capture that are capturing some of that upside. #### Energy Meets AI Demand Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, for sure. So when I think about the crypto market, there’s a few buckets you can call it. There’s money. That’s your Bitcoin, right? Store value, money, call it whatever you want to call it, right? Probably more store values is the way to determine it. And then you have blockchains, which are selling block space, right? These are smart contract platforms. And they’re what’s enabling a lot of the decentralized applications. Okay. So you have blockchains. X Bitcoin, and then you have apps. These are all the use cases that exist. This is apps, which could be your DeFi protocols, Aave and Uniswap and Maker, whatever. These are stable coins are considered use cases or apps, even Coinbase and cracking the exchanges. These are technically apps in the crypto world, right? They all work because of, and on top of blockchains. And so for the last, , 15 years of crypto, [00:33:00] the first five, 10, it was all Bitcoin, basically. Then when a theorem came around in 2015. Everyone was , okay, theorem obviously dominated for a while there. And then it became all these other chains, right? So Lana and BNB and whatever. And so if you look today, most of the market cap of the crypto space is in blockchains and that made sense for a long time there because we actually didn’t have a lot of apps and there was this idea of, well, everything’s going to be put on blockchains. And so these things are going to be worth a lot of money. And so, well, I think that’s true. If we look at what happens in other technologies, let’s take the internet, for example. Early days, it was a fight of , which protocol is going to win? Where are we going to build the internet on top of, right? And then if you look today, now that’s not a battle anymore. We know where it is, HTTP, etc. Now, all the value accrues to the applications that are on the internet. Facebook, Google, right, Amazon, these things are trillion dollar companies, and that’s because they are front facing to the [00:34:00] user. They own the user, right? And so when you own the user, you have all the leverage. They can go to the things behind it, the protocols, the companies that they’re building on top of and be , Hey, I want you to charge me less because I got. Million users or a billion users in Facebook’s case. So they have all the leverage, right? Because it’s if , AWS isn’t going to run my cloud service, I’ll go over to Google or whatever, right? So they have the power there and in the crypto world, everyone has thought for a long time that the smart contract blockchains are what has the users, but in fact, they actually don’t. It is the apps that have the users and more and more. What we’re seeing is once apps become Successful, they go and they launch their own chain. Now it could be an L2, could be a version on Cosmos, could be whatever. But you see it with Unichain, for example. Uniswap, the best app that’s existed in crypto today, has now launched its own chain, right? Coinbase. Right. Probably one of the biggest apps in the U S they’ve launched base, [00:35:00] right? And you see Athena, which is one of the most innovative and new stable coins in the space. They’re launching Athena chain and so on and so forth. You’re seeing this a lot. And so what’s happening is the blockchain world is actually becoming a bit of a commodity. Right. There’s going to be thousands, millions of chains. And again, are they going to be L2s, the L1s doesn’t really matter to me. What matters though, is where’s the value going to accrue. And I think that’s actually going to be the apps, the thing that’s closest to the users, just what happened with the internet. And so I think there’s a big opportunity. Really, I think the best way to explain it is if you look at what Coinbase is doing, I’m extremely, extremely bullish on Coinbase. And I think that’s because they own the users. They probably have the most users in all of crypto outside of Binance. And if you think of what they’ve done, they’ve built base, right? And now they’ve just, in their app, they’ve integrated what’s called Morpho a lending protocol. And so what they’ve done is said, Hey, instead of going on chain and getting a meta mask, wallet or whatever wallet and going, doing lending with your Bitcoin on morpho. [00:36:00] Instead, you can just do it right in my Coinbase app, right? And so now who has the leverage? Well, Coinbase does, not Morpho anymore, and definitely not the blockchain underneath of that. And so Coinbase has the power to go to Aave and be , Hey, right now we’re using Morpho. We’ll use you guys if you charge us 10 bips less, right? And so you can see where the leverage is going in this space already. It’s going to the apps, the thing that’s closest to the users. And so I have this feeling, and it’s not yet, The market is way too allocated to blockchains and not yet enough allocated to apps. Now, to be fair, there isn’t a ton of really good apps in this space yet, but it is coming. We’re starting to see it. There’s starting to be apps that are generating real revenues. Getting real users have good tokenomics. Mainly it’s the ones that have been around for years and years and years. And, or it’s the equities Coinbase, even Robinhood, right? It’s those that have the users. And I think they’re going to start to accrue a lot of the value in the [00:37:00] coming, probably starting this year. I think we’re already starting to see it. And so I think we’re soon going to see, and maybe it’s going to be in a year or two years or so on. We’re going to start to see a lot more value go to the app tokens and the app layer instead of the blockchain layer. My time frame on when that happens, I’m not sure, but I feel very confident that this is going to happen. I just don’t know exactly when yet. So it’s something I’m really following, keeping my eye on and really trying to understand. So , our portfolio is still mainly in the majors, which means the blockchains and very small to the apps. But I think we’re soon starting to figure out when can we start to allocate more over here and be ahead of that because I think the industry will figure that out and we’ll see that soon and eventually the capital is going to move that way. But for now, it’s just going to take some time. JohnPaul: And while you’re speaking, it almost reminded me of the neo banks and this revolts and so fi. And chime that built on top of this banking layer that was standardized. It was built for many, many years, but they didn’t have the overhead of a [00:38:00] traditional bank, and they were able to go out and collect users and understand what their cost per user was and then put marketing behind that and bc dollars and really grow that user base and create a massive value chain when it comes to the fat apps and blockchains. #### Strategic Perspectives , a bank isn’t paying you. Hey, , a 5 percent of our fees go back to users. I’ve never seen a bank do that. So , but apps and the apps Aave, we just saw with protocol and incentivizing, and you mentioned protocols Moonwell or Aerodrome, which are apps on the base blockchain that they are incentivizing users. How important is it to have a buyback mechanism to have some burn mechanism when you’re looking at one of these fat apps and then how does a user look at the tokenomics and say, okay, this is. Something that is actually a good investment versus, Hey, this is just going to be not really seeing daily active users, not seeing any give back to the community, Uniswap. So maybe a good example, because this Uniswap token holders didn’t get much for holding that. So can you talk more about what’s important to you? When it comes to [00:39:00] analyzing a fat app to make sure that the value does incur to users and to token holders. Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, absolutely. So first, what’s interesting is the dynamics we’re seeing right now is if you think about the last couple of years in crypto, all L ones have been racing to lower their fees, right? Solana, Ethereum, all the L twos, every chain you can think of their whole goal right now is lower fees as much as possible because that will attract more users, right? So their revenue. And what they’re trying to do is actually going the opposite way. So that’s a commodity, right? Whereas what apps are trying to do is one, they obviously want to deploy on these cheaper chains. And as they continue to get cheaper and cheaper, that’s just more opportunity for these apps. Now there’s gonna be more activity. And so these apps are actually trying to find ways to create more and more revenue. Many of them starting to do it. , you have Maker and Sky. Which is a lending protocol with a stable coin making over a hundred million dollars a year annualized. Right. They’re absolutely printing money. A lot of these DeFi protocols have been around for a long time are just printing money. [00:40:00] And when they have this much money, cause you got to remember DeFi protocols don’t have a lot of employees, right? Once it’s code on chain, and then it just . That’s it, right? It’s not a fintech company that has to hire hundreds of people and have this huge corporate office, etc. And so, not only do they have way less expenses, DeFi protocols, because they’re just basically the expenses to transact on chain, which oftentimes the user pays for anyway, they also don’t have a lot of employees, so their expenses are next to nothing. In fact, Sky’s goal by the end of this year is to have no core expenses. That’s just unheard of, right? Absolutely unheard of, but they have basically sub DAOs and these , they call them stars, which are building on this. And these are people that own the token that are incentivized to work on the protocol, rather than the protocol paying the expenses itself. So, there’s this whole weird new dynamic. And so, in that world, When you do generate revenue, you have next to no expenses. It’s , what do you do with that profit? Right? And the early stages, these protocols, these apps, [00:41:00] they should be paying for growth, right? They need to go and incentivize more users. They need to do marketing. They need to do all that stuff. Just in traditional world. Once you get to a point where, okay, I’ve got all this profit and I don’t know what to do with it. It either just sits there. You could put it in stable coins and get some yield on it. Or what a lot of companies do in the trad world is you start buying back your own stock, especially if your token is at a low price, right? Or your stocks are always at a low price. And so we’re starting to see that play out now in a lot of apps. Sky does it. Aave has just recently announced a proposal to start doing it. Athena has also launched a proposal to start doing it. And so what they’re doing is now buying back their tokens. And what’s interesting here is a lot of people, when you invest, you’ve got to think to yourself, who’s going to be the next buyer of that token? Who am I going to sell that asset to in the future? Right? you buy a home, you live in it and you’re , well, I got to sell it to someone in 20 years so I can buy my next home, right? Who’s my next buyer. And so the same is true. And I know a lot of people don’t think this way, but you should, when you buy a [00:42:00] stock, when you buy a token. It’s , who’s going to be the next buyer, right? Bitcoin. It was , well, corporations are going to buy this thing eventually. And then sovereign wealth funds are going to buy this thing. Hopefully. Right. you had this idea with all these apps. You’re , Oh, I don’t really know. Is retail going to come in and buy this? Maybe institutions will come by this. What’s really interesting is apps that are generating value. The next buyer of the tokens that you hold is the protocols themselves, right? They’re so profitable and they’re using that profit to now buy back their token. Well, it doesn’t matter if prices go up, price go down, they’re just consistently buying. And so for me, I’m looking at, okay, what are the apps that are generating real revenue here that have the leverage, meaning they have the users and the control. And they’re going to use that leverage to generate revenues and then buy back their own tokens. There’s not a lot of them in this space. And also because with the previous SEC, they weren’t allowed to do this. It was just illegal, right? Now, I think that’s going away. Basically, every big lawsuit in [00:43:00] crypto has been dropped. And so it’s given the green light to a lot of these protocols that are making good money. To start buying back their tokens. And so pretty much for the first time in crypto, we actually have real apps generating real revenue, solving problems for real people, real businesses, and actually decent tokenomics. Yes. It’s not the Bitcoin where there’s only 21 million. It’s either that where they have a finite supply. Plus they’re now buying it back every day. Right. And you can see how much they’re going to buy back because you can track the revenue. Cause it’s all on chain. So it’s transparent. And so for me, it’s this whole new thing that I think is going to take the financial space by storm, right? Right now in the finance world, we got to wait every three months for the quarterly earnings of all these companies to see how well did they do? How much money did they make? How much stock did they buy back? And it’s , I can go look at sky right now and watch it live every day. I can watch it by these tokens. That’s pretty freaking cool. And I got a feeling that’s where the [00:44:00] future of the finance space is going to go. And so again, I think the way that I look at these apps, I’m looking for those that actually have leverage, they can drive revenue, and then they’re actually buying back their token. To me, that’s a great place to park some capital. #### Operational Insights JohnPaul: And it’s not only that you can see the buybacks, but you can see all beyond chain activity. There’s great dashboards, I think it’s called Dune out there that has the ability for anyone to make their own dashboard for a protocol or for an app. So that does change the name of the game, as you mentioned, it allows us to get way more insight on what’s happening on the ground. Kyle Reidhead: Oh, so it was so funny. We launched Milk Road Swap just a couple weeks ago. So this is our decks I was talking about. And so our community and our audience is starting to use it. And we built a Dune dashboard just to track transactions and volumes, et cetera, et cetera. So we could see how people were using it. What’s interesting. We also can track , what are they trading? Right. So if there’s been a sale or a swap, what are they swapping? And so the other day when markets tanked. I went and I looked and we had all this increased [00:45:00] activity. I was , Oh, what’s going on. And I could see our audience buying the dip in real time. It was USDC to ETH, USDC to CBBTC because they were buying Bitcoin on base. USDC to this token. I was , Oh my God, I’m literally watching our audience in real time. By the dip. I was , this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. And so it’s really, really cool to be able to watch this stuff transparently and just on chain. JohnPaul: And that’s the beautiful nature of on chain protocols. I think there are a few other people pitching the fat app thesis. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard Mark Yusko back in out of Chapel Hill, he preached that back in the day. And so it’s taken a while, but into your point, a lot of it hasn’t been tech, but regulatory uncertainty. And that now is clear the path. So a lot of these protocols. Can now do things that maybe they couldn’t do before, or they definitely couldn’t do before in the U S but opened up the door. So I think maybe the meme coin craze is going to continue to die down. And this might be a new craze that we’re, we’re jumping into, but more importantly than a craze, but a real value creation mechanism, [00:46:00] because users and attention, as we know from Facebook and Google. That has real value no matter what investor you talk to. Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, I do think a whether you want to call it a narrative or whatever that’s going to come moving forward is these token buybacks. It’s when people start to understand you have these crazy profitable protocols with no employees buying back their own tokens every day. to me, that’s not just a narrative that’s going to spin with your average investor. It’s institutions are going to be , Whoa, that’s super cool. I want to do that too. Do what ? , so I think it is going to become a big deal. Will meme coins go away? I don’t know. I don’t ever do anything with meme coins. I wouldn’t say I hate it, but I don’t love it either. I think it’s a net. Let’s say maybe negative for the space, but one thing I’ve realized after being crypto for a long time is traders are going to trade. Speculators are going to speculate. DGNs are going to DGN. And so whenever we have animal spirits back in the markets, I got a feeling, I know everyone’s saying mean coins are dead. I’m pretty sure they’re going to come back and we’re going to see a bunch of dumb stuff. There’s JohnPaul: always a room for the casino, right? Kyle Reidhead: Right. [00:47:00] There’s yeah, there’s always going to be the younger people or I don’t know. It’s probably not even younger people at this point, but . People always want to go and punt these crazy stuff and try to get to a thousand Xs. That’s just part of the world we live in. It’s why, , sports betting is one of the biggest things that are out there, right? It’s just , kids love this stuff. They just want to bet and try to for these thousand Xs. I don’t do it personally instead take a long term view, but I think that’s always going to exist. And so I got a feeling meme coins are going to come back just as they were before, which I don’t love, but. It’s just is what it is, right? you can’t put your emotions or your opinions on the market. You just have to let the market be what it is. And traders are going to trade. It’s just how it works. You can’t stop them from going to the casino, JohnPaul: but you hopefully can be the one holding the sign or the books outside. , have you heard about Bitcoin? Are you ready to be saved? , this is how you can. Kyle Reidhead: Part of the ethos. , the Bitcoin ethos is . Let this, everything be permissionless and decentralized, right? we shouldn’t shut things down. Right. And so I hate the idea. There [00:48:00] are people that saying we should shut down meme coins. And I’m , what? I disagree. let people do what they want. Let’s have some regulation if we could, or at least some laws. , obviously if someone’s doing crime, they should go to jail. I don’t care if it’s on a permissionless thing or not, they need to go to jail. Just if you’re laundering money using Bitcoin. It’s still a crime. It doesn’t matter that it’s on Bitcoin, right? It doesn’t matter that it’s on #### Mining Profitability Analysis JohnPaul: blockchain, exactly. Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it’s , there should still be, , rules, but ultimately people should be allowed to do it. I understand there’s sanctions in certain parts of the world, but , Bitcoin exists to give people the ability to move value no matter what, right? And I love that, and I think that should never change, even though I don’t agree with what people are doing with their money. , so it’s, , that gets JohnPaul: into a whole nother, , if we were to talk about the Bybit hack, right. And then using Thor chain to take money that was stolen, but Bybit, Thor chain is , we’re a protocol. We’re not going to sanction that, that it gets into this deep nest of , what really is Kyle Reidhead: ethical versus JohnPaul: state owned. [00:49:00] And to your point as a Bitcoiner, it’s , I don’t want anyone to control my network. So we’ll step out of that, out of that conversation on fat apps. I really appreciate you explaining that thesis. Talk to me more about entrepreneur life. How do you add impact to the milk road community? How have you built the team around it? What’s important to you when finding good writers and good content editors? Talk to me more about that. What’s the future vision for milk road? Are you launching your own app on the blockchain that’s going to compete against Aerodrome or Aave, but love to hear more about that side of milk road. Are you worried about paying monthly hosting bills or your Bitcoin mining machines becoming unprofitable during your hosting contract? If so, the Managed Mining Program by Mining Store might be for you. With a minimum investment of 50, 000, our proven mining formula delivers constant returns while we handle all the heavy lifting. You’ll receive monthly payouts, top tier security, and aligned incentives. Our [00:50:00] program minimizes the risk through at cost mining with a profit share model and 24 month contracts. Invest smarter, earn bigger, and schedule a call today at MiningStore. com to learn more about the Managed Mining Program. Your Bitcoin. Our expertise, let’s mine together. Kyle Reidhead: Yeah. So first entrepreneurial life for anyone that’s looking to start a business, know that it’s an absolute shit show. It’s very worth it. It’s the most gratifying thing every day to wake up and have my own companies and have employees that I can pay and help them navigate life. I love it all, but it is, it’s not easy, right? I’ve been doing this for years and years and years, and it’s had some crazy ups and downs. And what’s interesting is building a company in crypto is. Even crazier. You think building it, building a normal company as tough as is doing in crypto, where you have these crazy cycles, where you have millions of new people coming in one year. And then the next year you have everyone leaving and things falling apart. And it’s been doing this for a decade and a [00:51:00] half now. It’s a whole different beast building in crypto. I would say that. But I love it, right? I absolutely love building in this space. I love crypto. I love what crypto represents and what it’s bringing to the world. And my goal since day one is , I want to drive this forward. I want to help people use it. I want to help build products in it. I want to make sure people understand that I want to onboard people on chain. So , it’s totally worth it for sure, but it has caused a lot of stress in my life, let’s say that, but I will say this, the most important thing when building any product is your team. And finding the right people in your team and getting them in the right places. There’s a really good book called good to great. A lot of what I’ve built around these two companies has come from good to great, which is just finding the right people, even if they don’t, , you don’t know what role they’re going to be in yet, but if you find someone who’s the right person, get them in, help them find their role and build leaders. And if you can build leaders. It allows you to 10 X your output. if I didn’t have leaders in my company, [00:52:00] I wouldn’t be able to run two companies I do now that only exists because I have leaders, people in my company that I’ve been working with for years and years and coaching who think I do, but also they think in their own way a little bit differently and I can trust them. And that only comes from long term just I talked about long term investing. It’s , you gotta be long term with your team, put every piece of energy into your team because. Every person you get that all of a sudden can run on their own and be their own leader is cloning yourself, right? And so , no one’s ever going to work as hard generally as the founder of a company. But if you can get people to start to do that as well, companies can just do incredible things when you start to build a really, really good team. And so that’s something Jay, who’s my co founder and I have focused on since the beginning is just building leaders. #### Market Commentary Focusing on growing our team. And that is easily the best thing that we have done by far. So absolutely. , I think just something for everyone to focus on and read that book, good to grade. It [00:53:00] really helps people understand how to do that. So I would say that’s my biggest advice around the entrepreneurial side of things in terms of milk road. We want to do a few things, so we’re focused on growing our team, of course, and just getting smarter people getting better at what we do, right? We find that the better we can get an investing, the better we can get at explaining what we’re thinking, whether that’s through video content or written content or audio content. The better that we can get at that, then the better our audience can understand what we’re talking about. Right. And ultimately that keeps people around. That gives us the retention where people keep listening to our podcasts. They keep reading our newsletter, et cetera. So we’re focused so much in just becoming better researchers, becoming better investors, and then figuring out better ways to explain it to people. So , that’s our constant daily grind. And then of course, we’re looking at what can we build? What other products can we build? And. Milk Roadstop was our first, let’s say, on chain product that we built, right, where it actually requires someone to have a wallet and they can go do things with their finances. [00:54:00] And we really enjoyed that. And our audience really enjoyed that. And I think we’re going to continue to find more ways to build a better UX for crypto. So one of the reasons why I’m so bullish on what Coinbase is doing is I see Coinbase is the Apple of crypto. They’re basically controlling the UX of everything you want to do in crypto. So right now, when you go into Coinbase app, you can move your fiat into crypto. You can buy Bitcoin. You can take out loans on your Bitcoin. You can buy ETH. You can buy SOL. But if you want, you can go on chain and you use Coinbase wallet, right? And then on Coinbase wallet, you’re using the base chain where they have whatever apps on there. So it’s the whole experience of finances. Is basically done in this Coinbase brand and they control that whole UX, which I think about is what Apple’s doing, right? And they’ve done with the internet. It was , okay, you get your MacBook back in the day and then you’re going to use iTunes is what it used to be. Now it’s Apple music, right? And you’re going to use iCloud and everything is I something, right? And it [00:55:00] made the experience of using the internet so much easier because it was all one brand. And everything integrated with one another, right? I see Coinbase basically doing that right now for crypto. And so what we’re trying to do with milk road is something similar, which is we have this trusted brand, as we talked about at the beginning. And what I noticed is people still struggle to do things on chain. And so milk road swap is our first thing swap, very basic, but we’re trying to think of , what’s next. We’ve got a lot of people that want to use stable coins and get yield on their stable coins. But again, It’s very daunting. It’s hard. Do I go use this defy protocol? What’s my risk, et cetera. And so we’re thinking , how can we build the front end, the UX for defy and for , just your average person, your retail investor to manage their finances. Right now it’s very easy now to swap in the milk road brand. Well, what about also getting a loan or holding onto a yield bearing stable coin? all these kinds of things, we’re trying to think about how can we better integrate that and create that for our [00:56:00] audience. And then of course, combine that in with also still learning about investing and learning about where the space is going. And so it’s . If you’re going to learn about the stuff, you might as well write in that newsletter or write in that piece of content, be able to do the action on chain right there. Right. That’s one of the beautiful things about crypto is , it allows you to just integrate it all into one place in the trad world. It’s , I’ll learn over here on sub stack, but then if I want to go and , Buy some stock, I got to go and get my Schwab account or whatever. And I’ve got to go KYC and then do everything over there in a different spot. And it takes forever. Whereas I think we can start to integrate social media or social content, let’s call it. And on chain or finances right into one. And you can just do it all in one spot. And that’s really what we’re trying to merge and bring together and create the a seamless UX for all that. So how we’re going to do that, we don’t really know just yet. We’re obviously . experimenting and innovating and strategizing every day on this stuff and getting feedback from our [00:57:00] audience. So the idea is we’ll build some platform, some experience for our audience, but we just don’t know exactly how it’s going to look just yet. JohnPaul: You guys want to be the view, right? The New York times where everyone wakes up in the morning and learns about the world. And with milk road, I feel this similarly, where it’s, I want to be the portal to this future of crypto. And one of the things I find interesting when I help people that are in trade, fine managed portfolios, have tons of real estate, no filing taxes for a hundred companies, no problem, but lending against my Bitcoin on Ave. Oh my God, I don’t know where to start. Yeah, right. And then it’s , they write down the rule. , , just walking people through this. Who is the audience of Milk Road? Are they the trade fi? Are they the younger generation looking to make their first million? Are they your mom and pop? Who would you say the audience is? Obviously, everyone can be a Milk Road subscriber. And Kyle Reidhead: it’s interesting. It’s tech savvy people. So people that usually work in tech, but are not crypto native. So. There are people who are , okay, I’m a [00:58:00] finance person. I’m either trad fi or , I was born in the crypto world and I’m a DJ and, and , what ? That’s I speak in that whatever tech jargon. And there’s people who are , I work for Google. I work for Apple. I work for AI startup companies. I work for whatever in tech. It’s , I’m very tech savvy and I love crypto. I want to invest in it. But , It’s not my life. I’m not a crypto native. I’m not an anon with a NFT PFP on Twitter or whatever. It’s these people, which is actually, I would say more mainstream retail type investors, people that have a lot of money, right? They make good salaries, but their life isn’t in crypto, ? And so that’s why, again, We do such a good job of just simplifying and saying, okay, here’s everything going on in crypto Twitter, which is a complete shit show. #### Innovation and Technology And most people, you probably don’t want to read that because it’s so confusing and the memes and the things don’t make sense. And we’re , okay, let’s take the things that are important from that. Digest it in a more simple way and then give it to the mainstream people. Right. [00:59:00] And so that’s who we are. So I would say we’re more . The adult in the room, right, where the 3040 year olds have good jobs, maybe have a family and can’t spend 24 hours a day trading and diving into the on chain world, but I still want to have my hand in it, right? I still want to know what’s going on. I still want to allocate some of my capital to it. And so I would say that’s who the milk road subscribers mainly for JohnPaul: so switching to impact three. What’s a product that you’ve helped build that maybe our listeners might have heard or listened to and help market for them, even if it wasn’t building it and what have you taken anything from a case study there or a project there and how could you tie that back to milk road and maybe using it in your marketing with that entity? Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, sure. So when we first started in the space, we focused only on media companies because media is what we knew. So we worked with Bankless, we worked with Milk Road, we worked with, as I said, Saif, and we worked with just tons of most of the media companies and big YouTube channels on the space. So that was [01:00:00] the beginning of our days entering in crypto with Ebec3. Now what we’ve done is moved more towards the protocols, which has been, I think, quite interesting and those building businesses in crypto. So they’re not media. They actually have products. One of them in the Bitcoin world is called meanwhile. Meanwhile, it’s a life insurance, but instead of paying life insurance in dollars, you pay it in Bitcoin. Really, really cool product that they have. And so when we come in, they’re , Hey, we have this great product. We don’t really know how to market though. And so we go, okay, that’s what we do. And so we go, we take over their social media accounts. We start creating content for them. We start simplifying their content. We build their web pages for them. And so that their message, one of the biggest problems, I think, in crypto is people struggle to write a good message, right? You go on any crypto website and they’re , where are the decentralized blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, L2 of this and that. And I’m , man, nobody knows what that means. Nobody cares what that means. It’s when you go on Amazon, they’re not saying , What technology they’re built on. They’re just [01:01:00] , yo, we help buyers match sellers for anything in the world, right? With everything store and crypto just really struggles at doing that for some reason. I think it’s because this industry is built by a lot of tech nerds, right? Marketing is not their thing. And so we have to find protocols that are doing cool things meanwhile. , meanwhile, it’s not really a protocol, but they’re a product, let’s call it. And then we’ll come in and just say, Hey, here’s how you should do your message. Here’s how your branding should look. Let’s get you on other podcasts. Let’s get you some content across TikTok or Instagram or Twitter or whatever. Let’s get you more active and out there. And then we also do some stuff where we connect. They’re a founder to go on podcasts or we connect their brand to go on YouTube channels or in newsletters, et cetera. So let’s call it PR type work. So it’s a full house thing where , Hey, you’re a crypto company. You got a great product. You just need people to know about it and understand it. You come to us and we’ll hit everything depending on what you really need. So the most important [01:02:00] thing though, as one of the questions you’re saying is , it’s all about messaging. It’s all about your branding and helping people really understand what your product solves, what it does. And I think not what it is. No one cares what it is or what it’s made of or what chain it’s on or this and that that does not matter in 2025 that mattered in 2020. Right. When we had all these tribal wars and it was, well, today it doesn’t matter just. If you have a product that solves a problem for people, then promote that, say that, make sure your website shares that, right? That’s the key thing. And I think that’s the thing that most people struggle with, not even just in crypto, I’d say probably anywhere. There’s a bigger problem in crypto for whatever reason. JohnPaul: Well, in crypto, there’s just more layers of abstraction from the what I know today than what is the reality. And meanwhile is actually, I’ve heard about them might have been from your marketing. And for people that are listening in, it is this Bitcoin denominated life insurance product where rather than paying your [01:03:00] premiums in dollars or having your life insurance policy grow in terms of dollars, or borrowing against a life insurance policy in terms of dollars, that all happens in Bitcoin and your beneficiaries get paid out in Bitcoin. So. That’s one of the key things that’s separates it completely. It’s a tax advantage strategy, not sponsored, but to go and get that Bitcoin exposure and life insurance. So these unique opportunities come out in the Bitcoin space, , the Bitcoin health insurance that came out and I forgot the name of it, but those are amazing things that are built by Bitcoiners for Bitcoiners. So I’m glad to hear that you are doing the part of getting more Bitcoiners aware of these tools. Anything else in your portfolio that you think Bitcoiners specifically should know about? Kyle Reidhead: Oh, I saw EBTC JohnPaul: on Impact 3 and I know that’s a WBTC CBPTZ competitor. Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve got, so BadgerDAO, which is a protocol basically that Bitcoin and ETH and get yield on it. #### Growth and Vision And they have their product EBTC. [01:04:00] So again, another product that’s great for people that know about it, understand it. But again, they struggled with, , they’re a Dow and they’re a massive Dow. And so there’s just a lot of disorganization. And so we were able to come in and say, look, You guys focus on building your protocol and we’ll help you guys just get this out there, right? And help people understand it. So you guys don’t have to worry about that. And so yeah, that was another one that we did specifically for the Bitcoin community. Now there’s, that’s not just Bitcoin actually, there’s ETH and stuff that you can do in there as well. We also have BakerFi, which is a place where you can go and put your ETH DeFi protocol to put your ETH in and earn yield on. And they do a good risk adjusted way to earn yield. That’s higher than just staking. So, yeah, we look for , what are good protocols? What are good things that are solving real problems? And then let’s see how we can help spread that to either the Bitcoin industry, the ETH industry, the crypto industry, or what we’re really looking for now is , we want to find products that we can spread to mainstream. we want to start marketing, not to the [01:05:00] crypto native industry anymore. It’s so small. I think that’s what a lot of crypto still does is , let’s just market to crypto people. And I want to be , let’s take these products that are crypto underneath, but they don’t know it and let’s market to the world. Right, and let’s bring them into crypto, but they might not even know they’re using crypto. That’s the things that we’re starting to, we want to try to find those clients because we’re finally getting to that point where we have apps that solve real problems in the real world and all the technical components are abstracted away, right? So that’s where we’re hoping to get to and the clients that we’re looking for in the future. JohnPaul: And to your point, the, it’s so easy to talk in the eco chamber, but the stable coins are such a great tool to allow humanity to transact without permission, without borders, and without the knowledge that those exist, people aren’t even going to get a taste of what crypto is. And at this point, we’re trying to even abstract, okay, I’m using crypto, but this is just a way better product experience. [01:06:00] And wow, this was the right thing for me at the right time. And that’s one of the beautiful things about marketing is showing people the path so they don’t get distracted and lost, but also let them not even know what their. The bridge they’re walking on or the protocol they’re using, because that to your point, most people don’t care, they care about what’s my problem and how are you solving my problem? Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, exactly. And the friction needs to be removed. we’re not going to get billions of people on chain in the way that crypto exists today. It’s going to happen, in my opinion, probably from existing companies, existing apps. Let’s say Twitter and Robin hood, et cetera. They’re going to be the ones that actually onboard everyone on chain because they have the good UX and they already have the users that they just need to integrate stable coins in or integrate whatever, stripe integrating stable coins is absolutely massive, right? they move some of the most volume in the entire world around for payments. And they’ve now integrated in stable coins. That’s just absolutely huge. Right. And you don’t even really know, need to know what stable [01:07:00] coins are. You just look and it’s , it’s cheaper. And it settles immediately. Okay. I’ll do this instead of waiting three days to get my payments and paying whatever fee I’ll just do this thing. Why wouldn’t I do that? Right. So again, we have, I think in my opinion, stable coins are the best use case we’ve created in crypto outside of Bitcoin. And again, somehow the world just doesn’t know about it. And it’s , there’s so many people that are sending money to their families back in other countries, paying 30 percent remittance fees with Western union. And it’s . Man, if you just use stablecoins, it’d be free. But a lot of people don’t understand that. , as a JohnPaul: marketer, how the hell do you get someone using Western Union to use stablecoins? Are you just going to stand outside Western Union with a sign saying , Did there’s a better way? Because that’s such a big gap. Kyle Reidhead: It’s huge. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Look, it’s creating good content. It’s, , we run a lot of social media ads for clients to reach a broader audience. But ultimately, it’s making noise. Right. the thing that I think a lot of people don’t realize you create a product and you’re just , okay, come use it. [01:08:00] People come use it. And it’s , that’s not how it works. You need to get loud. You need to create content and you need to create content every day. And a lot of businesses don’t do that. And some of the best businesses in the world, they happen because they just have people that. Consistently every day, create content and every once in a while, that , it’s going to go viral. Right. And then it’s , now go on podcasts, get in newsletters. You just need to be everywhere. That’s what marketing is these days. It’s just , go be present. Right. Get attention. And it’s hard thing to do, but it’s all about consistency. Right. There’s no, just . One thing, , I guess the Superbowl commercial would be your one thing to just reach most of the world. And so that works too, but obviously there’s a big budget that goes with that. But otherwise, we live in this world where social is free, right? You can write a newsletter, you can go on podcasts, you can create content on Twitter, Instagram. Anytime you want, and it’s absolutely free to do it. And I think every brand, every company just needs to double down. #### Infrastructure Focus That’s the [01:09:00] Gary Vee special, right? He’s been preaching this for 20 years and somehow still brands aren’t doing it, but yeah, it’s free. Just go and create content. That’s the best thing you can possibly do right now. JohnPaul: Content is leverage. And to your point, it’s free and everyone has this leverage, but one of the hardest things. At least for me and in creating content is sitting down every day, or just even once a week, creating that space and time, because to your point, Kyle Reidhead, it is so easy just to be busy. It is so easy just to trade the memes or trade whatever token and to keep yourself occupied. But as. A leader, you’re not going to be able to get direction, get into, , see intuition, feel what you’re really experiencing and what you need to, decisions you need to make, or conversations you need to have, or marketing ideas that are going to resonate with other people, unless you’re in the silence there. So when it comes to your ending out here with your content routine, Your writing routine. Do you have a set time and space for that? Can you talk more about how [01:10:00] you get into the flow of generating content or generating these marketing ideas? And are you the main guy that really goes behind the impact three brands and says, this is how we’re going to market the life insurance policy. Or is there other people on your team that you rely on that are good leaders to do that? Kyle Reidhead: I’ve got some amazing people on the team that do that. So I don’t, thankfully don’t have to, it used to be me every day. And now we’ve got a team that handles that. So I don’t have to be so involved. I’m now more. Able to go and create content for milk road and for impact for other people to learn about and hear about going on this episode here today in terms of how I create content. First is in the mornings is best for me because my mind is clear. And before you go on Twitter and before you go, , open up, we use discord or slack, whatever, before you open all that stuff, you can just, I feel I can write so much in the mornings. And so when I’m going to write a long form newsletter, that’s when I plan to do it as before I start my day. So that’s one. The other thing is . I find sprints works really well. So sometimes I [01:11:00] want to be tweeting a bunch cause I want to grow my presence there. And it’s , you said, you just find other ways to get busy. And so I was at goals. I’m , okay, this week I’m just going to tweet 10 times a day. I don’t even care what it is. Just going to do it. Right. I actually did this a couple of weeks ago and I had my best week ever on Twitter in terms of impressions and new followers, et cetera. And from that week, what was interesting, I was just tweeting anything and everything. And at the end of the week, I was , holy shit, I just learned so many new strategies that I actually went to my social team. I was , Hey guys, have you guys do this? Or what about this? , and had a bunch of ideas and , Oh, that’s smart. Blah, blah. And they’ve started doing it. So it’s , sometimes it’s just making a focus of yours that week. Or that month or whatever. And you’ll notice it’s anything, right? You’re playing sports. If you really, you shoot a foul shot every day for the next month, you’re gonna be a lot better at foul shots that day than you were the month previous, right? And it’s the same thing here. Just go and tweet anything and everything. And even if it doesn’t hit, you might miss a bunch and that’s completely fine. Who cares? No one remembers the tweet that didn’t go viral, [01:12:00] right? But you’ll start to see which ones do because you’ll hit some and you’ll start to see the tricks and what’s working. And then all of a sudden it just becomes , it’s developing a skill. Right. And I really do. What is my advice for anyone who’s running a company is founders should be present online. You look at any company out there right now, even the biggest companies in the world, let’s say Coinbase, who do you see on Twitter all the time? Now, Brian Armstrong, look at Elon Musk, that guy’s on Joe Rogan all the time. Now he’s obviously the most used user on Twitter right now, obviously because he owns it, Mark Zuckerberg’s all over Facebook. Now, he’s going on podcasts. So. The biggest founders in the world are finding time to create content. And that’s because it’s a great way to build trust. People love brands, but people love people more, right? And so as a founder, you gotta find time to go and build your presence because it’s a great way to drive people to your products or to your businesses because people love people. And if you can relate to your users, they’re going to relate to you more than [01:13:00] a logo, right? So it’s a very powerful thing. We’re starting to see a lot of companies do it, and I think we’re going to see that even more, which by the way, I know it’s not easy. This is part of what we do at Impact 3 is we’ll just do this for you guys. We ghost write your guys content for you or help you guys come up with more ideas, right? Because I do understand there’s struggles there and you’re busy trying to run your company. And so we take a lot of that off your guys plate, which is, can be also quite helpful. And obviously even myself, I have my team helping me do that too. So I’m not a one man show, that’s for sure. JohnPaul: And that’s the key to any good company is the team. So you can focus on building. The future. And I guess that’s one of my last questions I want to ask you, Kyle Reidhead, which is beyond financial success, what deeper purpose do you associate with your work? And what legacy do you inspire to leave within the entrepreneurial ecosystem, within the crypto ecosystem, as you build these two brands and in your personal brand? Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, I think for me, the most rewarding thing is growing our team and seeing these people, we hire a lot of young [01:14:00] people actually, and they have not a lot of experience from various parts of the world. And we find it’s a way to. Give them an opportunity to work for a company that’s a Canadian company that earns in us dollars, et cetera. So we have a lot of Eastern Europeans. We have people from South America whenever, and they’re younger. And so , we spend a lot of time coaching them, training them and seeing them grow and gain experience and get raises and make more money and start to build a life. And I’m just , that to me is the most rewarding thing ever. #### ASIC Hardware Evolution We do a retreat every year where we bring our entire team somewhere in the world. This year, we’re going to Croatia. Last year we brought everyone to Canada. The year before that we did Portugal and to meet everyone from all around the world in one place, we fly them all out and just have real conversations with them and , see how them working here has changed their life and improved their life. That is the most rewarding thing for me. And so , when I think about building, making money is great. And creating these cool products is great. I love all [01:15:00] that stuff. But the thing that really gets me going is just seeing our team get bigger and seeing all them make more money and . Establish a life as a result of that. I didn’t know that’s what I loved when I first started the company. I actually didn’t even think I really wanted a team when I first started coming, it’s just , I’ll just do it all myself and that’s it. And then as you grow, you’re , okay, I need help. And then you start to build these teams. You’re , okay, this actually matters to these people. how cool is this? And if I can get them to buy in and really want to drive this company forward too, we’re together. We’re all building something. Right. And to me, it’s just, it’s exciting and it’s fun. And I think our team feels the same way. So that’s the most rewarding thing for me, for sure. JohnPaul: I appreciate that. Thanks for sharing. And to your point, similar with running mining store without the technicians, without the customer success staff, without the accounting team, I could not be able to have these opportunities to host the podcast and spend two hours during the day recording and, and going to conferences and meeting new people. So. The team backs both of us up, and that is an [01:16:00] amazing thing. Kyle Reidhead, where can people connect with you online? What’s the best way to, to stay connected? And is there any last things you want to shout out before we end the show? Kyle Reidhead: Yeah, sure. So probably best place just follow me on Twitter. It’s just my name, Kyle Reidhead Readhead. Maybe you’ll have it in the show notes to find it rather than me spelling it out. But that’s the best way to get to anything that I do and keep up to speed with what I’m doing. I’m quite active there. And then obviously if you love crypto and you want to learn about investing crypto, go to milk or. com if you need help marketing and you’re in the crypto space, go to impact three. co that’s our company there. That’s the best ways I think to get in contact with myself or with our teams and how we can help. Otherwise, my advice, I always just zoom out. If you just zoom out, think more long term then life’s going to be so much easier. And this as an investor, as an entrepreneur. That’s basically anything, right? If you just zoom out and think more longterm, then that’s the key to success in almost everything. JohnPaul: Well, thank you for Kyle Reidhead for coming out and as a listeners, make sure to zoom out, [01:17:00] hold Bitcoin by Bitcoin and mine on. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Investing in Blockchain Technologies | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 8 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/dan-hannum/ All Episodes Episode 8 # Investing in Blockchain Technologies with Dan Hannum Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Dan Hannum to discuss investing in blockchain technologies. ### Investing in Blockchain Technologies Guest: Dan Hannum Episode 8 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] Today I'm joined by Dan Hanham. Dan is the founder of Hanham Capital Management, a capital management company focused on digital and blockchain based assets exclusively in the blockchain technology sector. Dan is also the CEO of Zen Ledger and has been fascinated by the custody side of crypto since the beginning of his participation in this space. [00:00:59] Before starting Hanham Capital Management, he was a buy side analyst and portfolio manager at TD Ameritrade, an analyst with blockchain capital. Dan has been the crypto space since the early days and is truly passionate about the future of the industry and helping his clients navigate the world of Bitcoin. Dan, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing JohnPaul: [00:01:14] to that? I'm good, man. Excited to have some crypto with you and appreciate you having me on. Of course. So my first question I want to jump into is how are you introduced to the world of finance and then how did you end up transitioning or why did you end up transitioning [00:01:26] to crypto? Yeah. I'll try to make this as short as possible. I guess medium-sized story is I originally went to school for criminology. I was a young 17, 18-year-old kid who just wanted to go Dan: [00:01:37] to school and didn't really know what they wanted to do in life. I went to school reasoning for criminology and then my sister was actually up in New York and venture capital and it's about three years ahead of me. So she was just getting out of college when I was just getting into school. I'm going to open my eyes to what the market looks like for someone [00:01:54] with a criminology degree versus what it looks like with someone with a finance degree. I was always good at math and numbers and really enjoyed investing. At the time had a couple dollars here and there and nothing major. So that really sparked my interest. Then I went up to New York and visited with my sister for about a week or so. She set Dan: [00:02:10] up still very thankful for what she's done for me. But she set up about a week full of interviews with traditional banks, startups, fintech startups in the New York City area and was fortunate enough to be able to get a position with Goldman Sachs in their internship program. And that's what kind of switched up the entire college experience came back [00:02:29] to school, ended up changing my major, ended up going up to New York for the summer and working for Goldman. It was a really great experience. I got into the nitty-gritty of what it takes to be in traditional finance. One thing I didn't realize at the time was you needed a sponsorship to go through your series seven, series 63 and series 65. So Dan: [00:02:46] I was studying on my own thinking I could just go online and take a test. But it was really amazing to have someone that was willing to sponsor me, really amazing to be in a culture like that. And that's how I originally got my start within the traditional finance realm. Was lucky enough and I guess fortunate enough to do pretty well in that initial role and [00:03:04] was offered a position outside of school. Came back to school, ended up finishing up my MBA at the University of South Carolina and then went back up to New York and jumped full time into finance at Goldman. And then I went from Goldman to Morgan Stanley. And then when I was at Morgan Stanley, I had a lot of people around me that were really Dan: [00:03:19] interested and fascinated with crypto. I was really interested, but more from a passive investment perspective. It wasn't something that I thought that I could jump into full time. And this is back in like early 2015. So completely different market than we have now. I met with a few people and some of the people that I met with, but were the Stevens [00:03:37] brothers and Brock Pierce at blockchain capital. They were looking for an analyst to come on and just do all the, the nitty gritty grunt work. And I was just looking for an opportunity to be able to pursue my passion full time and was, was willing to drop everything in New York and move out to the West coast. And that's kind of how we'd have the transition Dan: [00:03:53] from traditional finance and the crypto went. So I know I said I keep it short, but I guess that's like the medium version. JohnPaul: [00:03:58] No, thanks for sharing that. So when you were with Brock Pierce and you were working and Dan: [00:04:03] you said you moved over to the West coast, what exactly were you working on as an analyst in the space and the crypto space getting dropped into it? Yeah, pretty much everything. They were just getting the fun off the ground. I had made of probably 15, 20 investments at that time. And this was once again, like back in like [00:04:18] late 15, early 2016. So market was completely different. We were still trying to figure out like what everything was going on. One of the original projects that I was originally working on with, with Brock and Jara Willich was master coin, which is one of the first ICOs even before Ethereum. So that was like, that sparked an interest into smart contracts Dan: [00:04:36] into scalability. And that kind of just opened up a plethora of other options that were interesting to me. But yeah, the original role was just a low man on the totem pole. Just we need to go figure out what's the best hardware wallet, what's the best way to keep our clients fun, safe, what's a great custody solution, whether it's like a bit go or I'm [00:04:54] trying to think of some of the other ones that are around at the time, like Anchorage wasn't around and some of the newer ones weren't around. So yeah, it was just, I know I was very fulfilled with crypto in New York. I was spending a lot of my nights and weekends and pretty much all of my free time just really studying crypto, speaking with people on, you Dan: [00:05:10] know, Bitcoin talk forums and Twitter and everything else. And so I was just very thankful that someone was able to give me a shot and at the time I was able to get paid in Bitcoin. So that was probably a risky move at the time, but I worked itself out. It'd be too Bitcoin here, five Bitcoin there. If it was a, you know, pretty extensive analysis or research [00:05:27] project, it'd be a little bit more than that. So I was able to stack some of some Bitcoin pretty early on. And like I said, for me, it was just really thankful that I was given the opportunity to follow my passion and get out of traditional finance. Were there any like early stage companies that you guys passed on that actually ended Dan: [00:05:41] up taking off at the blockchain capital with block peers that you remember? I'm sure there's a few none that really like come to mind. I guess there's two kind of disclaimers on that. Like one, the availability of early stage companies at that time was a fraction of what is today. But you can look up today and every week, or it seems every [00:05:58] week, either a new company is raising capital or a company that's already raised a seed round is raising it in a or they raised an A and they're raising a B, etc. So the venture markets in crypto five, six years later are so much more robust than they were then. There really wasn't that many people wanting to get into crypto wanting to get into crypto Dan: [00:06:17] full time. And at the same time, the idea is that we're coming up weren't very sustainable from a venture perspective. I think that's something that a lot of people really don't understand with venture capital is that having a small to medium sized business that's, you know, profitable sounds really good on paper. But sometimes that just doesn't fit [00:06:33] within your model. And for us, us now speaking for hand on capital and then even at my time at blockchain capital, having those companies that would, you know, five X, 10 X, 20 X were no the ways that you're able to keep your fund going and keep moving forward. So yeah, the market was just completely different. I'm sure there's a couple companies that we Dan: [00:06:48] passed on that either raise capital or an interesting thing to think of is some of those companies or some of those ideas that may have been passed on have come back around three, four, five, six years later. And now they're, they're companies that have a good product market fit or just the timing. And I guess a very easy example of that is like the chewy.com [00:07:06] and pets example. Or if you look, or excuse me, pets.com and chewy, where you look at like pets.com came out in the early 2000s. This was before people were using cell phones and they weren't really comfortable ordering things online. And now you look at chewy, which is exactly like the exact same business model cell dog food and dog treats and dog Dan: [00:07:23] toys online. But they did it in 2008 when people were used to smartphones, people were used to shopping online. And now they're like a $10 billion business. So there's a lot of those where it's not necessarily that the product or service was wrong or that the team was bad. It's just the market timing wasn't there. Yeah, there's probably a few that we [00:07:39] had either passed on that have come back around or a few that may have been good ideas at the time, but just the market went in a different direction. So the good thing for me is I was able to do the way I look at it is I was able to be the Indian a little bit before I became the chief. And I think having the experience of working with people who really knew what Dan: [00:07:56] they were doing, really knew the markets really had connections was really important and really set myself up for success. I'm getting into raising my own capital and then starting my own fund and managing that. So very thankful for my time there. And a lot of those connections have held through over the last five, six years where some of our [00:08:13] earlier investments through hand capital came from connections that when I was at blockchain capital or, you know, they were employees at a company that we invested in that left and started a new company or things like that. Yeah, it was a great time learned a lot and definitely wouldn't be in the same position I am now without going through that Dan: [00:08:28] experience. So Dan, you mentioned when you went from the Indian to the chief, I love that analogy. JohnPaul: [00:08:34] Can you explain or talk a little bit farther on when that realization came up that you wanted to make your own firm, your own VC company and kind of what may do it and how did you Dan: [00:08:44] feel, you know, during that process? Yeah, great question. So I guess the answer like the first half, like the Indian the chief thing, I think we've seen a lot of funds and especially more liquid funds. Once again, quick disclaimer, hand capital, we're an early stage venture fund. So we don't invest in [00:08:59] liquid tokens. We're not buying token ABC and trying to sell it tomorrow for more than we bought it. We're typically investing anywhere between 250 K to 1.5 million in the seed or serious A stage. So just like a quick disclaimer on that, but we've seen a lot of those liquid traded funds where someone comes in, they write a decent amount of content, they get Dan: [00:09:17] a pretty big following on Twitter or within the crypto community. They raise capital from outside investors, but they don't really have a solid track record and they haven't gone through the ups and downs of the market. So when you're investing in assets, when everything is going up, it's somewhat easier to make money. But the real, the real skill is being [00:09:34] able to navigate the waters when when it's a little bit murkier. So unfortunately, we've seen some high profile funds in our space over the last two, three years that have came out of nowhere, raised a bunch of money, but the darlings of the crypto markets for a little bit and just as quickly lost other capital and went right out of business. And I think Dan: [00:09:50] a lot of that happened from there's a difference between managing your own capital and the risk reward element to that and then managing other people's capital. And I think that was one of the amazing elements that I learned, not only at blockchain capital, but in traditional finances, being responsible and being fiduciary to other people's capital is way different [00:10:11] than just investing your own capital. So I guess that's like the way that it'll get like the chief and Indian perspective is, I really wanted to learn the nitty gritty. I wanted to see the good and the bad. And there's definitely whether it was at Goldman or Morgan Stanley or blockchain capital, there's things that every company has it's, it's fault Dan: [00:10:27] or communication issues or whatever. So it was really important for me to have that experience to see what a really well run company looks like, what a company that's really successful looks like, but still has some issues. And then just timing. Brock was getting into a new phase within his life of getting more full time involved with EOS and Block 1 and [00:10:46] was getting less and less involved with the fund. And I got an opportunity to sit on a board for a token called Gear or a green energy and renewables token. We had Stan Barty, Jim Rogers, Larry King, some other high profile individuals on board. And I was the ICO advisor for that project. So that was a really fascinating look into how to raise quote unquote non-deluded Dan: [00:11:06] capital at the time, how to manage an ICO. And through that experience, I was able to get some of these really wealthy individuals participating in this ICO. And we were able to get the minute, I don't know, I don't remember the exact numbers, like six tenths of the cent, like something like tiny. And then through the crypto markets of 2017, that token went on to be like 14, 15, 16 bucks in [00:11:26] two weeks. And they all put in a million bucks here, two million bucks here, five million bucks here. And maybe to the listeners, that sounds like a lot of money, but to someone like, someone like those guys, that's a drop in the bucket. To wrap up the story a little bit, they were able to make five, 10, 20 million dollars in two weeks. And one thing that rich people like is getting richer. Dan: [00:11:44] So they were like, how do we get involved in crypto? And that was with the turning point where I felt comfortable with the experience that I had. I felt comfortable with my connections. I felt comfortable with all the things I was able to look at that, that kind of venturing out on my own kind of made a lot of sense. And then I was lucky and fortunate enough to have four LPs I [00:12:03] really believed in what we were doing, our thesis or value prop, how we were getting into crypto. And then for me, I was able to be early enough into crypto that I was able to make a little bit of money for myself. So I put up out of the 25 million that we raised for our first one, I put up a million of that of my own money. And I think that really made people feel a little bit Dan: [00:12:20] more comfortable knowing that for them, it's a drop in the bucket. For me, it's my entire net worth. So if this thing doesn't work out, I'm not going to be in good shape. So I think that skin in the game, they'll made them feel a little bit comfortable. The fact that I had already made them a considerable amount of capital and short amount of time, I think gave them the insight that I knew what I was doing. [00:12:37] And that's how HANEM Capital got started. We were able to raise 25 million back in early 2017. And then I've been able to scale up the operations of our company and our investment since then. So with HANEM Capital and the creation of that and the day-to-day running process of the company, what's one thing that you thought was going to be easy, but actually turned out to be either Dan: [00:12:58] much harder than you expected or just completely different in how you ended up handling the problem or that opportunity. Yeah, I think one thing that I think some people may not realize is running a fund is way more than just putting a dollar here or a dollar there. The operational aspect of having a solid team, having great analysts, having great legal, having great accounting [00:13:20] really makes a big difference. And that was probably the biggest struggle is at the time, this is 2017, four years ago. So I was 24, 25 years old. So for someone of my age to go to some of these higher profile people at Goldman at Morgan Stanley at City Group and say, hey, I would love for you to get rid of your four or five, $600,000 salary. I'll pay you $80,000 and come work for me. So it was Dan: [00:13:43] a little bit of a challenge to get really great people on board. And I think that's a challenge whether you're running a venture capital company or for us, a lot of our portfolio companies have that same challenge, getting quality people on part of your team and not only quality people from an intelligence perspective, but just like quality individuals, people that you want to work [00:13:59] with and people that you're excited to wake up in the morning. And that's not just make it sound like it's all Sun Chimes and rainbows. But there's still there's always some day to day arguments or some disagreements or whatever. But just really building a team was an interesting perspective because I wasn't the one hiring anyone at at Goldman or Morgan Stanley or boxing capital or any of Dan: [00:14:18] my other stops hiring, firing, promoting, trying to figure out the company organization, what was really new to me. And it's been a great experience learning a lot about that. But oh yeah, to answer your question, I think that was probably the most challenging thing was to get some high profile people that had very solid careers and very solid jobs to be willing to [00:14:39] throw that away and take a chance on a younger kid. And I think one of the ways that I was able to make that happen is we gave equity in the company and carry in the fund to a lot of our early employees. Financially incentivizing them long term was more important to me than hey, we'll give you a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand dollar salary. But at the same time with Dan: [00:14:57] running a venture capital fund, typically that initial capital or your management fee is really how you get the fund off the ground. What we have was a two and twenty percent management fee and then twenty percent performance fee. Two percent of twenty five million sounds like a lot of money, but it's really not. So trying to get X amount of people hired, trying to get good accountants, [00:15:15] a good lawyers, get a good office space, good everything that goes into it, most of a challenge. But we've been able to scale and through that challenge, we were able to find the right individuals, the people that were willing to think of this more long term and the people that were truly here for the right reasons. And it's worked out. But I guess that's definitely was one of the Dan: [00:15:33] biggest challenges was just the back end and the operational side of running a fund, not necessarily [00:15:38] dollar goes here or dollar goes there, if that makes sense. Orm provides a bridge to the digital Dan: [00:15:42] currency mining world for individual investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over seven years of mining experience, 24 seven 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 ormcapitalventors.com. No, that makes complete sense. Was there any [00:16:01] points in running the fund where it might not necessarily didn't perform well or was just on that moment of time where it's right, the bounce before the crazy 2017 increase, where you're on the edge of your seat, making sure everything is going well or after you've deployed the capital. Did you have any of those interesting moments in life if you Dan: [00:16:21] grasp what I'm trying to ask? Yeah, yeah. No, I think you hit the nail on the head 2017, what was a pretty crazy year for us. We we raised our capital in February. So I think February 8th of 2017 was right when we finished up the first round. So 25 million in the door, all all signed away. We had a five year lock up period, which most venture capital firms have [00:16:42] some type of lock up, whereas a liquid fund will typically have either quarterly or annual redemptions where if you're not happy, you can take your money back out. For us, it was you're putting your money in for five years. And if you want to back out, good luck. So that was the ability to have that lock up really allowed us to think long term. And especially with venture Dan: [00:17:00] capital. And at that time, they're really still even 2017. There really wasn't that many people that want to venture capital. For some of the listeners, I know this is a crypto specific show. So I imagine most people are familiar with ICOs, but a big kind of promise quote unquote with ICO, so that you're able to raise non dilutive capital. So you're able to raise capital without giving [00:17:20] up equity in your business, you're giving up board seats, you're giving up authority or control. So that was a big thing for a lot of companies that were like, why would I go raise money from venture capital, give up 10%, 20% of my company, have some VC on my board and blah, blah, blah, blah. So that was a big challenge for us was with us, we're focused primarily on that early stage Dan: [00:17:38] venture side. So seeing some of these tokens that were going up 10, 20, 100 X and a day or two, we definitely added some questions from our LPs that were like, we'd be willing to amend the mandate to allow for liquid investments. But I truly believe that the value would accrue on the venture side. So yeah, that was definitely a kind of an interesting period that October, November, [00:17:57] December of 2017, where it seemed like anything that had a ticker, pretty much anything that was listed on CoinMarketCap was going up 10, 20, 30% every day. So that was definitely an interesting time. But I guess on the flip side, you know, that was an advantage for us in the sense that our LPs are limited partners or the people that invest their capital into the fund and then we Dan: [00:18:17] deploy their capital for them, they understood the venture capital methodology, they understood that we'd be a little bit slower to deploy, they understood that we would take our time and try to find the right fits and they understood that model. So I think it would have been harder for me to say, Hey, give me 25 million, I'm going to put it into some random token and there's no [00:18:35] team and there's one line of code on GitHub. And but trust me, to work out, like, I probably could have, but I just, I really felt that raising the fund the way we did in the style that we did, not only set us, but our LPs up for long term success. And I think we've seen that over 2018, when that ICO bubble popped, we saw a lot of entrepreneurs come back in, they want a venture Dan: [00:18:55] capital, they saw the value of having strategic investors on board, they saw the value of being able to work with portfolio companies, they saw the value of having people that have done this and invested tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars into this industry for the last five, six, seven years. Yeah, so I guess, you know, specifically to your question, that Q4 of 2017 [00:19:12] definitely was got a few emails or a few phone calls or that board meeting was a little bit interesting to be like, why aren't you doing this? But yeah, I think at the time, and I still believe we set us up for success, not only for us internally, but for our LPs to have to know that they were, we were managing their money in a way that was long term focused and wasn't short term. And I Dan: [00:19:33] think that's something that we've seen a lot in crypto is like we talked about earlier, fun pops up, they invest in a few things. So those few things go up in value, that kind of goes to their head a little bit, and then they put money into the next thing, and that thing goes down just as quick, and then the funds gone. So for us, having that cushion, having that long term perspective, [00:19:52] and having that relationship with our LPs was more important. I think that's, you're always looking for an edge when you're investing and having long term focused LPs that understand your mandate, understand the methodology, and are really there for you have been an amazing advantage compared to some of the liquid funds that are dealing with quarterly redemptions where you Dan: [00:20:11] have this great setup at the last minute the investor wants their money out. And all you want to do is say, hey, give me the next 30 days of the next 90 days, let me make this investment, the money will go up and they're like, no, I just want my money. I think both ways of setting up a fund have their own challenges. But yes, that was an interesting period when it seemed like any token that [00:20:28] was getting listed was just going up in value. So Dan, you talked a little bit about how back in 2017, those tokens, people were raising capital as through vehicles, but they weren't giving up any equity. And it was a little bit harder for VCs to get into the space. How has tokenization affected capital raising farther induced? Obviously, we had the ICOs, then we had the STOs, and now Dan: [00:20:52] we're almost in this like DeFi space where these token models are putting out governance JohnPaul: [00:20:58] tokens. And that's the way to govern and own that asset. How do you see this evolving? And how are Dan: [00:21:04] you guys participating in that space if you are at all? Yeah, great question. I think there's a few different things. One thing that I think a lot of people haven't paid attention to recently is the reg CF adjustments. So before you could only raise a small amount of capital, I think it was up to a million dollars from a limited amount of non-accredited investors. And now you can raise [00:21:24] up to five point something, a little over five million dollars from non-accredited investors. And that was always like the big thing is the accreditation in investing has limited a lot of people that have the experience, they have the knowledge, they have the wealth, but they just haven't gotten that accreditation yet. So I think that's been a big thing. And I think something Dan: [00:21:41] that would disrupt the venture capital industry moving forward is if you're a VC that doesn't not any value, you're not going to get placements in any of these investments. And I know that's kind of cliche to say we're value ahead. But I think being in this industry for six, seven years, I think there's a lot of value that comes with that, a lot of experience, a lot of we've seen, [00:22:00] a lot of the good and the bad. So I guess the reg CF is definitely something for a lot of venture capitalists, whether you're in crypto or not in cryptotically aware of. On the token side, I guess we've seen different elements, like you said, we went through the ICOs and we went through STOs and we went through IEOs, your initial exchange offerings. There's always been this Dan: [00:22:17] theory that you could raise non-deluded capital and it'd be great. And don't get me wrong, I think the idea behind that was valid. But I think even with a lot of those ICOs, you saw pre-mines or you saw early allocations to venture capital investors at very reduced valuations. And those valuations were obviously better than they were when they hit public markets. So by the time that token went [00:22:41] live, the early investors already made 51020X and then the public gets in and if they made money, good for them, if they didn't, but the early investors already made money. So I think we've still had that insider, not insider trading, but the venture capitalists, especially in this industry, have had the value and the ability to get in early on a lot of things. And you brought Dan: [00:23:01] up Define, I think that still holds true. Like when you look at some of the most valuable tokens, compound is raised venture capital money, Unistwap is raised venture capital money. They've since tried to go into the decentralization route of providing a token, providing a governance token, providing pass through ability for revenues. But most of the most successful [00:23:19] DeFi protocols have raised venture capital money. So I still think there's something to be said for that fact. But I agree with you, I think we'll see a trend of the exit to community style where you'll have more community engagement. And then you start seeing companies like a Sushi swap, which is a Unistwap competitor that kind of popped out of nowhere, excuse me, had a few lines of Dan: [00:23:40] code one night and they were able to take hundreds of millions of dollars in liquidity almost overnight. That was during the craze of yield farming. I think that the market was pretty frothy at the moment. But yeah, so I guess to answer your question, we've definitely seen new ways to invest in these markets. But I think one thing that you'll notice, whether it's DeFi or IEOs or ICOs or STOs or [00:24:00] whatever acronym we come up with next, I think you'll still see the adventure capitalistic behind a lot of these projects. And I think there's a reason to that as well. For those venture back deals that you were talking about referring to earlier in that you're to be a venture back company, it requires a certain set of things. Assuming that the venture back those venture back companies are meeting that Dan: [00:24:19] set of criteria, what's the most important piece of the the criteria from being a venture back company that you guys focus on or that matters the most to you when evaluating a potential deal? Yeah, I think there's like a checklist. And I think we covered one earlier, just like the timing and kind of using that like chewy at pet.com example. There is a lot of companies that [00:24:41] have a great idea, have a great concept, have a great product, have a great service, but the market's just not ready for it. And we've seen that in crypto a ton of time. The timing is a big one. The team is a big one. And I think that's one of the reasons why venture capital will stay around is the entrepreneurs that are coming around for a second time or we're seeing especially in the Dan: [00:24:58] last two or three years, a lot of really successful entrepreneurs from other industries, whether they're in fintech or healthcare or sports and gaming or media. They're starting to get into crypto. So having someone who's raised capital before, having someone who's built the team before, having someone who's been able to recruit top talent to their team or organization is a big thing. [00:25:18] Product market fit timing the team. The valuation is a big one. We've seen in especially in early 2018, we've passed on a lot of companies just because of the frothiness from the ICO market, where they would look up and see token ABC raised $100 million. So they come in and be pre-product, pre-revenue and be like, we're raising a $10 million seed round at $100 million valuation. It's like, Dan: [00:25:40] in what world does that make sense? Like, we have no ability to raise that. And if you're able to, I wish you the best of luck, but that doesn't make sense to us. So valuation is a big one. And we've seen, we've passed on deals where the valuation is just too frothy for what the company can hold. And you always have that tug of war where the entrepreneur or the operator wants to get [00:26:01] the most amount of capital for the least amount of equity to give up. And the venture capitalist sometimes will be the opposite. They're trying to get the most amount. But the best investments, the best teams and the best VCs try to find that middle ground where a venture capital investment company gets to get a good allocation in a good team, at a good valuation, and is willing to not Dan: [00:26:22] try to take the maximum amount to either bring in another strategic investor or to just, we've seen times where we'll ask company to decrease the valuation a little bit, but increase the option pool for their employees so that they can go out and attract new people. So there's a lot of different ways to look at an investment, but I think those are some of the biggest ones. We're just timing [00:26:41] product market fit, the team, the valuation mark, the four big buckets. And then there's a lot of kind of other checkpoints that you look off of. Is it a single founder? Are they co-founders? Are the co-founders? Are they aligned in the mission? Is one looking for a quick exit or quick acquisition where the other one's looking to sustainably scale a company long term? Is the company able to hit? Dan: [00:27:02] Can we talk about this early on? Is the company able to hit venture capital like returns? And if we invest a million dollars in the company and we make 1.1 million back five years from now, like that's not very successful loss. And that doesn't really fit within our fund. But for an average investor, oh, I'm up 10%. But that just doesn't really work for us. So there's a lot of [00:27:21] kind of intricate decisions that go into making that final investment. But there's definitely like a checklist that we go through of looking through the team, looking through the product, speaking to partners, a lot of times if even if they're pre-products or pre-revenue, they'll typically have a partnership that's in place. Or we've had this MOA in place with company XYZ Dan: [00:27:42] that's going to purchase our product, your purchase our service. So meeting with employees, meeting with partners, meeting with other investors, whether they're previous investors or co-investors or potential co-investors are really big. So there's, as we mentioned earlier, there's a lot that goes behind running a venture capital firm that just we have $1 and we put $1 here. But those are some [00:28:01] of the high profile things that we look at. And then there's a lot of things in the mix between the moment that our analysts first meet to the team before I meet with the team. And then for us, we have an investment committee where we meet as a team to finalize investment before it goes out. So even though my name's on the door and my name's on the firm, I'm not the sole like I'm the sole Dan: [00:28:20] GP. So I get to ultimately make the decision. But I still rely on my team heavily for their feedback, for their insight and for their experience and their knowledge. So yeah, there's definitely a lot of different factors and a lot of variables that go into play to finding the right fit, finding the right team and really just believing in that team. And especially with where we invest [00:28:38] at the seed in Series A round, a lot of the times you're betting very heavily on that team. It's not, we can look at the company they're doing 10 million in revenue and if we invest 5 million, they can get scaled to 50. There's times you can do that with a Series B through Series F or whatever. But typically on the earlier stage, some of our companies pre-product pre-revenue, Dan: [00:28:58] they've never sold anything. They still need to go hire new people. They need to do all these things. And that's really where that value ad comes from. We can really set them up for success and really eliminate a lot of that headache, a lot of the time and take care of a lot of that back and stuff for them so they can focus primarily on the product you're on the service. So I know [00:29:14] that's a lot to throw out there all at once. But yeah, there's definitely an interesting checklist to go through. And I think each firm kind of has their own perspectives on how to invest as well. So I don't think it's like a uniform standard at all. JohnPaul: [00:29:29] Dan, I appreciate you touching on all those. I think there are key points for everyone who's Dan: [00:29:33] looking to raise capital. Do they understand what makes a VC backed business, what makes it an appetite for a VC? When it comes to the team, you mentioned a couple of times new players coming onto the space, coming into blockchain in 2020, seeing the opportunity of maybe using the token models to incentivize communities and really just innovate with the overall technology we have here. [00:29:56] My question for you is, is most of those guys, as you mentioned, have already had one successful either exit or a company and they have the experience in building the team. And as you mentioned, that's one of the most important things. But for you, it seemed that you started at Goldman and then you went to the blockchain capital. Where did you get that hunger and that work ethic needed, Dan: [00:30:15] but to be able to be at that level where you were able to get those early wins to then set yourself up in your career where you are today? Yeah, great question. I think even going back to Goldman, as we talked about through my educational experience, I originally went to a very small school in Pennsylvania called Indiana University of Pennsylvania, or IUP. It's a school like a [00:30:36] very big party school I've heard. Maybe it's something different. You're definitely the right one. It's like literally the IUP Santa, I usually party. Anyway, so I went to a really small school for the listeners that are listening not to toot my own horn or anything, but I just worked with Forbes last week to do a profile on some of the nitty gritty of my life. And Dan: [00:31:01] I've had my share of ups and downs and got into a lot of trouble when I was in high school and that kind of eliminated a lot of the options that were available to me to go to school. And I think IUP was willing to take a chance on me because I was from out of state and was paying like five times more than someone from in state. So I think they're like, all right, we'll give this [00:31:17] up. We'll give this enough. Go ahead a shot. And if he doesn't work out, we just we made quick dollars. So anyway, so I guess the hunger came from the fact that I went to a really small school. Like I said, my sister was very instrumental in getting me a foot in the door at some of these institutions. There is no reason why I should have ever gotten an internship should have even gotten Dan: [00:31:37] an interview let alone. But that was the hunger where it came from. Like during my internship, I was the only person in my internship class that wasn't at Warren that wasn't at you know, Goldman or excuse me, Coleman, that wasn't at Harvard that wasn't at Yale that wasn't at one of these Ivy League schools. And I think that was humbling but also the same time super exciting. And this [00:31:57] is not like a knock on anyone that has successful parents or had an easier childhood. But I came from an area where I really had a hustling grind and that hustle got me into some trouble. But that hustle also set me up for a lot of success. And I knew that once I was able to get my foot in the door with a company like that, that I would outwork out hustle out grind do whatever I needed to do Dan: [00:32:16] to show them that I was worth it. And I think that's the unfortunate part is Wall Street is still a very much a walled garden where if your dad didn't work on Wall Street, or if your uncle didn't work on Wall Street, if you didn't go to the Ivy League, or if you don't have some type of connection, it's a really difficult industry to get your foot in the door. And like you said, I was very [00:32:34] fortunate that my sister was able to be that conduit to me getting my foot in the door. And I knew that if I was able to get my foot in the door, that I'd be able to show the value that I could bring. And I think that hustle that grind that tenacity has carried me through everything, whether it was in traditional finance, whether that was early on in crypto, whether that was Dan: [00:32:52] the through hand of capital, or even now my day to day role with Zemlager, that hustle, that grind, that tenacity, doing things the right way, being very careful about the relationships that I craft and really caring about those relationships, making sure that I don't burn bridges. Just a lot of stuff that sounds very intuitive, but it's hard to do. I really came from feeling [00:33:12] that I was lucky to be in a position that I was in. And I knew that a lot of people would do a lot to get in that position. And I wasn't going to squander it. And I wasn't going to let it go to waste. And you know, as I said, once I knew that I was able to get my foot in the door, I was the one that was getting into the office three hours before it opened. I was the one that Dan: [00:33:28] was leaving at midnight, probably not the most healthiest thing for my mental health or sleep schedule. But I was just, I was hungry and I was willing and I was so thankful and grateful that someone was able to give me a chance. And also, when you have someone that vouges for you or someone that's willing to put their name on the line to get your foot in the door, there's a sense of [00:33:47] obligation to make sure that you don't make them look like a fool. And I wanted to make sure that my sister and her friend who was able to put me at the top of the list for the internship internship class, that they weren't three months later, like, you guys, who is this kid? Why? Well, you're an idiot. He shouldn't ever been here. So there's a lot of factors that came into play Dan: [00:34:06] and right around that time, not to get into anything too crazy, but I had made the decision to stop drinking alcohol. And that was a game changer for me. It really cleared my head and made me realize what was important to me in life, who was important, what I wanted to spend my time on. And as we talked about, that was why I was willing to take, I think when I was leaving Morgan's [00:34:24] hand, I think I was making like 350 a year. I was like 23 from the outside, a pretty decent life. But I was just like miserable. I was working like 18 hour days. I wasn't fulfilled with what I was doing. And I really sat back and I had a lot of really great mentors that were like, you're going to make money wherever you go. You're going to be successful wherever you go. So go do something Dan: [00:34:41] that you actually want to do. And that's once again, was very fortunate that someone was able to give me a position within crypto where I could make a little bit of money, have a roof over my head, have some food in the fridge. But I think it all started from that hunger, that tranacity and the ability to really take control of my life. And I knew that if I could get myself out of the way, [00:35:00] that I could make my life wherever I wanted it to go. So that's where that like hunger or driver's nasty came from. And I think it's carried over, you know, well to the other positions that I've gone through. And I think that's been a big blessing of me is I've always tried to do things in the right way. So when I left to Goldman, when I left to Morgan, when I left to blockchain capital, Dan: [00:35:19] making sure you give notice, making sure you leave on the right terms, those relationships have come back tenfold where, you know, friend at Goldman's like, hey, my friend's raising capital, they're doing XYZ. And you get you get an introduction there. No, not to keep rambling too hard. But yeah, so I think I came from just a place of gratitude and thankfulness and knowing it's a scary thing [00:35:40] to think of. But for me, I feel more comfortable knowing when the ball is in my court than when it's in someone else's court. And I think a lot of people have this, I won't say fake, but they have the sense of security when you're an employee that every Friday or, you know, every two weeks, you get your paycheck. But that seems secure to me. And I saw so many people get fired instantly or Dan: [00:36:01] laid off or just thrown out with a win. And it was like, my life is my life. And I think if I can not control it, but if I'm very willing to bet on myself is how I wrap that up. Didn't know that was all great. There's so many follow up questions I have after that. One of the things I do want to touch on you mentioned in the Forbes article that you were recently featured in [00:36:21] where you went in that deep dive. If you if you're a listener will be linked in the show notes, it was really great read to just understand your background. And in that kind of the end of that article, you mentioned something where it says to get unstuck, you've got to identify where you're at, where you want to go, and what you can do today to support where you want to go. Creating Dan: [00:36:38] your life is about knowing exactly where you are, and then doing things for exactly where you want to go. I agree with you completely here. One of the things that I've been telling myself and have been working on is that fictional reality or the fictional perception of ourselves we have in the future and trying to get that almost as close as you can to where your current situation is, [00:36:55] and then building from there. And so on to that, with that topic in mind, what are compounding activities or what compound activities are you working on every day? And how long have you been working on these different problems where you're working on these habits and really building results? As you mentioned, it takes a lot of time and you have that longer outlook, Dan: [00:37:15] and you've been betting on yourself. Yeah, great question. I think something we touched on briefly was the sobriety aspect. And I think the longer you go, sober, the easier it tends to get, but it's still somewhat like a daily battle, daily struggle. And especially when you start seeing success, it's really easy to get back and kind of those old habits of those old ways. And I think that [00:37:38] was the story I kept telling myself was I had a good degree. I had a good MBA. I worked at a good firm firm that everyone across like pretty much anyone who has an internet connection has heard of Goldman before. And so I had all these things on paper where I was like, oh, my life is good. I'm making really good money. All these like kind of things that like went from the outside Dan: [00:37:57] looking in, you're like, oh, like you must live a great life. Internally, I was drinking a lot, living in New York City. Unfortunately, there's not too many activities that you can do outside of going to this is all pre COVID. Going to bars, going to nightclubs, going to restaurants. One of my first positions was in our client success department. Literally, I think I got paid like [00:38:15] 80 grand a year just to take people golfing and take the restaurants and take them to dinner. And it was like the best job you could ever imagine coming out of school. You're like, wait, you're going to pay me to go do this stuff. That kind of just led me down to a spiral where it was a couple drinks at at a dinner, then a couple drinks because the football game was on, then it was a couple Dan: [00:38:31] drinks because it was a day ending and why. And it was spouted in that sense. But I think I kept holding on to the fact that I was like, I have good friends and I went to school and I don't have a DUI. And like, my wife's not divorcing me or all these kind of like rock bottom things where I think people like people don't realize that you can change your life before you hit that kind of rock bottom. [00:38:51] I guess to answer the question specifically, drinking is definitely a big one. A very fortunate enough that I'll be five year sober of alcohol in March of 2021. So that's something that like you said, it's definitely now going into year four and a half year five. It's not as day to day as it was for the first 30, 60, 90, 120 days where it was a real struggle to, you know, stay sober and Dan: [00:39:13] not drink. So that's a big one. And that's opened up a lot of other doors to more of a holistic lifestyle. So whether it's like dieting, whether it's eating well, going to sleep on time, actually having a sleep schedule was another big thing that I didn't care about forever. This works at the office till 1 a.m., 2 a.m., go to sleep for three hours and wake back up at 5 a.m. and go right back to the [00:39:32] office. And I was part of that like hungry tenacity work ethic. But at the same time, it's not very sustainable. And that's really where my focus shifted into short term thinking into long term sustainability. And that's not only through the way that we invest, but the way that I live my life. Eating healthy, going to sleep on time, having a good sleep schedule. For me, I do yoga three Dan: [00:39:52] times a week. I'm like, unfortunately, I live here in Los Angeles and we have great beaches and great hiking trails. So going out hiking, going out on my paddleboard, going out surfing and just being outdoors and in nature has been really impactful for me. Breath work and meditation has been a big one. Physical activity on a former athlete, more of a wash up has been than an athlete. At this [00:40:15] point, some part of my head likes to think that I still have a step here or there. Whether it's getting out and running or just going to the gym or even now like having some dumbbells laying around the house or throwing up YouTube and watching like a yoga class or a Tai Chi class or a home workout class where you don't even need weights. You can just do a lot of like body work and core Dan: [00:40:33] work and push ups and pull ups and sit ups and a lot of boring stuff. But like stuff that like really makes you strong really quick. Yeah, I guess that's the way that my mindset has shifted into what can I do today that puts me in a great position tomorrow. And I think the tail end of that quote that you brought up earlier kind of highlights that as well is I forget the exact wording I put [00:40:50] but be in patient with your actions, be patient with your results or something like that. And I think that's really true is you can only control today and you can only control this hour. You can only control this moment. And if you can continue to do the right things day in and day out over the course of a week, probably nothing's going to change. But if you keep trying to go to bed, Dan: [00:41:08] my motto is I want to go to bed with a couple more dollars than I did with when I woke up with some better relationships with better a better feeling. Just knowing that I've improved myself every single day has been a really amazing. So like viewing myself as like a software like you have version 0.01 and then point two and point three. And that's how I view myself is if I can continue [00:41:29] to prove each and every day when I look up six months or 12 months or 18 months or in March, it'll be five years without drinking. And if I look at where my life was five years ago versus now, it's night and day. But that didn't come from just saying, oh, I'm going to do this in five years, it came from, I'm going to do this today, I'm going to choose not to drink today, I'm going Dan: [00:41:45] to choose to go on a run, I'm going to choose to eliminate the people from my life that aren't adding value. I'm going to choose to welcome in the people who I thought were weird because they didn't want to drink the people that were like, yo, let's go play chess, let's go do some other, let's go golf or let's go do something other than just sit at a bar for four hours. I'm like, [00:42:03] that sounds horrible. So it's, I guess a way to look at it is if you can make those long-term decisions, but be very short term in the way that you do that, just continue to improve each and every day, you look back over the course of a year, over the course of two years. And I think your life will be night and day, but I think that's something that sobriety really taught Dan: [00:42:19] me is, and I know this may be a little controversial because some parts of alcohol, anonymous or other groups are very religious-foken, but I truly believe in my heart that it's a decision that I make every day. And I believe that if I wanted to go to the grocery store right now and buy a 12-pack of beer, I could. And if I wanted to come home and drink them all, I could. So for me, [00:42:39] I truly believe that I'm making that choice not to drink, and I'm making that choice to surround myself with people that are welcoming to that moment. And that doesn't mean that everyone in my life doesn't drink. It just means that like the people that would drink 18 beers because it was a Sunday and we're watching the Redskins game or excuse me, the football team game or whatever they're Dan: [00:42:59] called now, it was just a different topic. I guess that's a way I view it. I think that's, I think a lot of people got some value out of the end of that article because I think people look up and that like Bill Gates quote, if you underestimate what you can do in whatever year and you overestimate what you can do in 10 years, it's true. And you just need to break it down, take it day by day. And [00:43:17] that's the key. But the last thing that I would say is just you are on this earth to live your own life. And if you're okay with living, you know, the life that you're living, then good for you. I just, I wasn't okay living in kind of mediocrity. And I wasn't okay with knowing that I could do more and knowing that I could be a better person and knowing that I could have better relationships Dan: [00:43:37] and knowing that there was just so much more out there for me to enjoy and experience and do in life. And like I said, I knew once I could get my own self out of the way that I could be able to go experience those things and have those memories, have those relationships and have that at that time. So I guess that's kind of like the way I look at kind of those like sustainable habits and [00:43:56] pick some that add value to your life. But stay true to them and make sure that you continue them even when you start feeling a little bit better. And I think that was always a challenge for me is you wake up on a Sunday morning after going out all night on a Saturday. And I'm sure we're not the only ones that have probably said, I'm never drinking again. And then they Tuesday rolls Dan: [00:44:13] round. You've you haven't drank for a few days and maybe worked out once or twice, you've gone to work, you've hung out with some people and you're like, Oh, like I feel better. And then then those decisions don't become as prudent. Yeah, not to ramble too much. I think just making sure that you're focusing on what's important to you living the life that you want to live is number one. [00:44:31] But I think there's a lot of people out there that have that inkling from more and they're willing to not or I don't know if a willingness to write word that they're just they're not as hungry to go chase whatever that is. And I think I'd rather go on my deathbed and be like, I wish I didn't do that then I wish I would have. And that may be right. That may be wrong. But I'm very thankful for all Dan: [00:44:52] the good and the bad of my life because it's put me to the point where I am today. And I know a lot of people, whether they was high school or whether it's college, especially from my area right in the Northern Virginia DC area where it's you're supposed to do everything the right way. You're supposed to go to school, you become a doctor, you become a lawyer and you're supposed to have [00:45:08] this amazing life on paper. But a lot of those people that I know are like miserable. They have a mortgage that they can't pay for. They have five kids they can't really spend time with. And it's just I was willing once again, whether it's life or business or whatever to go bet on myself. JohnPaul: [00:45:22] And it's worked out pretty well. Wow. Thanks, Dan. That was a lot. I appreciate it. I think one Dan: [00:45:27] of my favorite quotes was you said you're on this earth to live your own life. And that life, everyone has their own idea of what that taste looks like for them. It has their own goals and things they're working on. That was amazing. One of the questions I had after you mentioned that was your accountability network. And I know it's super important when you're working on changing [00:45:48] challenging yourself, changing some of these maybe core ways you're looking at your life and trying to build these compounding daily habits. How have you seen how has your accountability group changed, I guess, over the years since five years ago to where you are now? And how is that how are those people supported you or that network of people supported you over the years? Dan: [00:46:07] Yeah, great question. I think there's two things in there. The one thing that my mentor taught me a long time ago was when you're looking to elevate your life, having three buckets of people around you is really important. You want one bucket where you're a little bit farther ahead. You want one bucket where you're pretty much neck and you want one bucket where you're really behind. The bucket [00:46:26] where you're a little bit ahead allows you to know that you're doing pretty well and that you're it's not necessarily a comparison, but it's you can peg where you are versus where someone else is at. Having that head-to-head person is what kind of drives you day in and day out, whether that's a friend or relative, whether that's in a business, you'll typically have some competitors that are Dan: [00:46:44] doing the same exact thing as you and knowing that you're competing and thriving is going to benefit you both. And then having someone that's way ahead of you and that's where I've been really lucky. So I've been able to get really great mentors that have been there and done that and they're willing to go lend their time back to me and say, hey, I've been in your shoes and I've [00:46:59] been there and I've done that. And I wish I could say that I've listened to every single advice, but there's a lot of things that I've had to screw up on my own to figure out. But those are the three buckets that I've really looked at. And I think if you can find those people around you, whether they're students or colleagues or other professionals, it's really important just to have Dan: [00:47:17] someone you're a little bit ahead of, someone you're competing with and someone that's really ahead of you really helps you put stuff in perspective and really allows you to continue to move forward. And then on the other end, to answer more specifically the question, it's been a whirlwind. A lot of the people that I was around five, six, seven years ago, I don't talk to at all now. And that may sound [00:47:36] like super depressing or like super like, oh, that kind of sucks. But for me, it was such a blessing. It's a cliche topic, but you like you are who you surround yourself with. But it kind of is. And as much as I like to think that I've been like a leader my whole life, I've definitely been a follower. I've definitely been peer pressured into other things or if you're with four people Dan: [00:47:55] and those four people, all they want to do all day is drink, smoke, pop pills, do whatever like you're probably going to fall into that trend because those are the people you're surrounding with. And those are the priorities that like your friend group and your tribe really care for. So it's definitely been like a 180 like the people that are in my life now, I guess on the new side [00:48:13] are people that enjoy bettering themselves. And that's not necessarily just physical or mental or whatever. It's like holistically just being like a better person each day. And I think being a better person for me equals hitting those buckets. So like having a decent physical typically shows that you care about yourself and typically shows that you're willing to Dan: [00:48:32] work pretty hard to get to that perspective. It's pretty hard to whatever bench xyz or keep a six pack or whatever. Like you have to make some sacrifices whether it's your diet or your eating habits or just go into the gym. A lot of we all have time to binge watch Netflix for 10 hours. But we all are like, I don't know if I want to go to the gym for an hour. So it's [00:48:49] finding the right priorities. And then I've been fortunate enough to have a really great support system like really close to me. So like my mom, my sister, some like really close friends from growing up have been there for me along the way. And I think that's why that Forbes article is really cool for me is I have a lot of people in my life, especially from like middle school high Dan: [00:49:08] school that like the last time they saw me, I was in handcuffs getting sent away. And now they see me like on they log into Forbes.com and see my face on the front page. And then vice versa. There's a lot of people over the last five years that have seen this like meticulously crafted, well organized, well put together person. And there's no way that like you went through all that other [00:49:27] stuff. But anyway, so I've been fortunate enough to have a really solid group of friends and family that have stuck with me through thick and thin. Good times, bad times, and we'll continue to do that. And I'm a very loyal person. So those people are the ones that will get anything they need for me, whether it's my time, my money, my connections, my resources, whatever I can do, Dan: [00:49:46] they know that they I got them and they got me. And that's amazing. And then that outside friend group has definitely changed over the last five, six years. Like, I'm no longer willing to be in positions that I don't want to be in. And that sounds really selfish. But once again, we talked about it, it's your life. And if you're not selfish with your own life, then no one else [00:50:05] is going to care about it. So being able to craft who I spend my time with, being able to craft people around me that don't have drama. And that's not to say that life throws curveballs at you all the time. So it's not like everyone around me lives this perfect meticulous, nothing ever happens in their life. But there's there's life drama. And then there's drama that like we create. And like Dan: [00:50:24] that created drama is what I've been able to get rid of. And just have people that around me that enjoy bettering themselves. And there's things that I enjoy doing. And there's things that they enjoy doing. And we've had those trade offs where they're doing something that's really cool and really interesting. And I like to learn about that. And like vice versa, I'm doing something that's [00:50:40] really cool. And they like to learn about that. Just having people that really want to continue to better themselves each day, weeds a lot of people ahead of your life. Because it's not very common to find that. But once you find that, and you get that tribe around you, that tribe can be really instrumental into how you continue to move forward throughout your life. So Dan, with that supportive Dan: [00:50:56] tribe that you're mentioning, that is one of the most important things for being able to take the risks that you've taken so far in your life to get to where you are today through Goldman, through launching your firm, through being an analyst. I guess I want to hit on that risk question, which is in your eyes, what is the biggest risk that you've taken so far in your life? And how did [00:51:17] that end up paying out? Or how is that playing out currently? The one that I would put as the biggest risk was probably early on. And I think I touched on it a little bit in that Forbes article was when I was like 16 or 17 years old, I had a big tendency and habit and enjoyment for cannabis. And it started off pretty small, where me and a friend and then Dan: [00:51:43] me and a friend of a friend and Yada Yada, so on and so forth, had another friend who had an older brother who was in college at the time. So we were able to get a lot of quantity. And then we went from eighth grade into high school. And you go to high school with, I think, our graduating class was like a couple thousand people, like very big area. So anyways, one of my biggest risk, [00:52:03] I think, was starting this like weed selling business, pretty much. I had people from all these different surrounding schools that were selling it for me. I was like the CEO of the organization, hacked like my lieutenants. And if you've ever seen like the show wire, it gives you like a good example of trying to make this into a sustainable business. And taking Dan: [00:52:23] that risk really taught me a lot about business. It's taught about marketing, supply chain management, accounting, finding the right people. We talked about team adventure, having the right people along, even if you're selling weed is super important to have good people that aren't stealing from people that you trust, etc. So that was a really big risk, but had a lot of really big rewards. [00:52:42] But also that risk turned into kind of like that big element in my life that my life really changed from. So I ended up getting in a lot of trouble. I had like a couple run-ins with the law. And then one night it was more of a bust. Someone down the line had gotten caught and said, you know, some stuff. And I was driving down the street one night and about four or five cop cars came Dan: [00:53:03] out of nowhere, not like a tropical traffic stop. Like, surrounded my car, what right to the trunk. It was a very well planned organization in operation. And that was the end of my athletic career. I was playing three varsity sports at the time, got kicked out of the sports. About two months later, got kicked out of the entire school, got kicked out of our entire county school system. [00:53:23] And then I ended up spending like a little over my year of my life in a juvenile detention center in a six by six concrete slab for 20 hours a day. And that risk really sucked. But that was like one of the best things of my life is it really won. If I didn't get in trouble then I would have kept going. And a year and a half later I would have been 18. And that would have been like the Dan: [00:53:41] end of my life. So I'm very fortunate that it all happened when I was at juvenile, not only because of the sentencing, but also because of being a juvenile, you can go through different programs. We'll only expand your record if you meet, you know, certain standards. And that's once again, I got very lucky that on the day of my sentencing, there's this program called beta, which was like [00:54:01] an 11 or 12 person program. And if you're able to get through that, you had to come these perks and you're able to continue to go back your life. And anyways, I was supposed to be getting sent down to Hanover, Virginia, which was a facility, a juvenile facility right across from a prison. And literally they send you there so that when you turn 18, you like you walk across the street Dan: [00:54:21] and you continue your time in big boy prison. So that was supposed to be my life. And that was just like, all right, I've this one up and that's it. And I'm done. And the day I was supposed to go to sentencing, one of the kids like fought a guard and got kicked out and they had one spot open. And I somehow got that spot was able to get my head back on my shoulders. In Fairfax County, it's a very [00:54:42] like wealthy area. So we had really great support staff around us. Like we had drug and alcohol, as part of the program, we had a therapist we met with every week. We had like yoga and Tai Chi classes. We had all these things to try to help rehabilitate me and the people that were in our program. So long story short, I think the biggest risk reward was definitely that. Dan: [00:55:03] The risk was doing making those decisions I made. The rewards was a lot of that lifestyle. Like I think I was like a 15 year old kid making 10, 15, 20 grand a week when the teacher who's trying to teach me science was making like 30 grand like the whole year. So that reward was there. But then also getting into trouble really was the biggest blessing for me because it helped [00:55:22] me get on the right track. I was able to sit there for a year and just read books and study. They were they allowed me to leave the facility for a day to go take the SAT, which allowed me to get into school. But yeah, that's like really where my life changed. I don't I think I generally think if I didn't get in trouble at that time, I just would have kept going. I would have kept Dan: [00:55:39] getting more and more involved and the operation would have kept bigger and bigger. And then I would have been 18 and it would have been game over. Yeah, I think that's like the biggest risk that I've taken was being the risk was making decisions that allowed other people to have control over your life. And that sucked knowing that I couldn't go shower when I wanted to. I couldn't go leave [00:56:00] when I wanted to. I couldn't even stand up when I wanted to. I couldn't eat when I wanted to what like lights out was at 9 p.m. It's like the first few weeks I'm used to being up at 2-3 a.m. partying. I'm like sober staring at a concrete wall and like hoping I can fall asleep. Yeah, it was a it's a very crazy experience. One that I don't wish upon anyone. But one that really set Dan: [00:56:20] my my trajectory in life in a different path and one that really made me very comfortable with me. And as we talked about when you're in a six by six cell for 20 hours a day with no phone, no laptop, no nothing, you really get to know yourself pretty quick because there's nothing else to really do. And that's something that I am very grateful for and something that I think a lot of people [00:56:41] haven't had the experience because sitting with yourself and sitting with those like those demons and those those things that you don't like about yourself is not very comfortable. And a lot of people don't have to do that because they're not forced to and being forced to really understand who I was as a person what I wanted to do where I wanted to be who I wanted like who I wanted to be. Dan: [00:57:02] I didn't even know who I was. I was just like I was some kid trying to figure out his life and so yeah that was the biggest risk reward and the best kind of underhanded blessing that has ever come around and then was fortunate to be able to get into IUP. And then that led me into the University of South Carolina. I ended up transferring because the internship they're like you need to [00:57:22] go to school that you know actually has a business program and then that led to a lot of different things. So I was probably like the biggest risk but also biggest inflection point of my life. It was that year and a half from 16 to 17 and a half. No that sounds like a huge inflection point just about how your identity was changing as you mentioned being able to ask those questions Dan: [00:57:41] of yourself of what you want in life where you want to go. Having that year many 17-18 year-old kids they don't get that opportunity it's just not it's not they don't have to think about it. They're in their own protected space. They go to college they're just following the steps and they're not actually asking themselves those hard questions of what is the life they want to live. And it sounds [00:58:00] like that up that risk that you took ended up providing an opportunity where you were able to make have those to take those questions make those have that conversation with yourself and then move forward. Dan so my last question or one of my last questions with you today is I want to JohnPaul: [00:58:14] understand you where do you see yourself in two years and what are you most excited about when Dan: [00:58:20] working with Zen the Zen ledger in your day-to-day job there. Yeah I don't know where I see myself in two years is I've never really been good at that as we talked about earlier I've never been good at being like in two years in five years in ten years I'm like what can I do today and if I can continue to do the things I'm doing today then in two years I'll be okay and that's like the saving [00:58:42] grace for me is my day-to-day life is largely in my control which I'm very thankful for. I have my own company that's we have eight full-time people working from on the Hennem Capital side on the Zen ledger side we're about up to about 20 full-time people across eight states and two countries so I'm very thankful that I have two businesses two methods of income two things that Dan: [00:59:01] not only just on that short-term income but two two companies that are doing very well that I own significant positions and one especially on the Zen ledger side has a really good opportunity to have an exit in the next few years we have about 30,000 US customers US-based paying customers which when you start looking at the landscape in crypto there's not that many companies that can say [00:59:21] we've raised about five and a half million dollars in capital from some of the leading angels and investors in our space we've been able to scale a really great team you know we've gone through my trajectory my background Brian our CTO sold his last business for two point three billion dollars he's been there he's done that our CEO Pat has been around the block with his own businesses Dan: [00:59:40] you Chicago Booth MBA Air Force captain as we talked about going through that checklist on an investment the same checklist I went through on joining a team and I was always looking for the right opportunity to get back on the entrepreneur side the table really was really wanted to be a part of something and building something and I think investing is great and I've [00:59:58] learned a ton from investing we're still actively deploying capital but really being on the day to day has been really rewarding and also really challenging we talked about you look on the outside of a lot of companies and all these good stuff but like the day to day there's a lot of blood, sweat, tears, anger, emotion, happiness, joy, etc that goes into running that and that's life like Dan: [01:00:20] the all the messy middle is like the fun stuff I don't know if fun is the right word but the the rewarding stuff so I don't know where I'm going to be out in two years I just know that if I can continue to make the right decisions day in and day out then that'll take care of itself as far as Zendlager I'm really bullish as obviously I'm very biased as an investor now an operator [01:00:38] of the company but we walked through the executive and C-suite team but we've been able to assemble a really great staff not only on a development side on our sales side on our customer support side as I mentioned I'm definitely very biased as an investor now an operator but I truly believe we have not only the best customer service in crypto but one of the best products in crypto and Dan: [01:00:58] one that actually is needed and you can always get into the conversation on taxes should we pay taxes should we not but that's the decision that I don't get to make so all I can do is taxes are a thing and if we can make them simple and easy for for users that's a win and that's what really led me into Zendlager at the beginning was I the first IRS notice around having to file crypto [01:01:20] taxes came out in 2014 and I know a lot of people are just now waking up to the fact that they need to pay taxes but it's been a thing for six years that few are investing in crypto and not paying your taxes obviously we can get you squared away but but anyway so at the time I was using like handwritten notes and Excel spreadsheets and Google Docs and it was just like a mess so having Dan: [01:01:39] software I could just throw in an API key for an exchange throw in a wallet address and be done and it just auto-populate my tax from so it's like that's great and those are some of the best companies is as a founder as an investor would you use this product would you use this service and not only me but pretty much everyone I knew back in like early 2016 early 2017 especially in 16 [01:02:01] when the market was starting to increase then 2017 things went crazy a lot of people were making a lot of money and had no idea how to handle any of their taxes and a lot of these people also have other things like they have a K1 from running their own company or they have a W2 they have a real estate income they have XYZ outside of crypto so making sure that you have your crypto Dan: [01:02:18] and non-crypto accounting and taxes done it's like a no-brainer so anyways looking through that checklist that we talked about earlier good team good product good service the beautiful part about our company is it's not optional you have to do your taxes or I guess technically it's optional but we would recommend you choose the option where you don't get thrown in jail for not paying so that yeah [01:02:38] that's been nice and then also the element about crypto is as we talked about early whether it's an ICO an SEO an IEO DeFi NFTs they all circle back to having a taxable element to them tracking cost bases across 30 different blockchains tracking cost bases across buying NFT on OpenSea and then selling it on or like even listening on Decentraland there's so much complexity that goes into really Dan: [01:03:00] providing great accounting and great tax help and now we've been able to bring on tax professionals to our team that can help you with your crypto and non-crypto taxes so we have a lot of people that they just don't want to have to handle it they don't want to think about it they just want something to do with form and we can now do that for them as well incredibly bullish on our team [01:03:16] on our product on on the industry there's a lot of things that we've seen like we were featured in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago for the IRS was moving the question of if you've ever invested in crypto from the schedule one which is a form that you that not everyone gets but some people do to the top of the 1040 which is a form that every single American gets so you know Dan: [01:03:35] that is going to increase enforcement if you go on and say no and it comes to be yes like you're probably not the best move and I think something that you know you and I probably know but some people may not know is whether you're using DeFi whether you're using Bitcoin pretty much even if you're using like Zcash and Monero there's ways to track this information and not only from [01:03:55] a chain analysis elliptic cypher trace level but from a tax and accounting perspective as well so there's no longer the days where you cannot file not like care about it not really and get away with it the IRS has come after some bigger name people we've seen John McAfee who was extradited from another country from from a back taxes just this year not just from taxes but other things but Dan: [01:04:16] the ability to get him out of other countries came from the the United States tax authority so anyways you know long story short super super bullish on what we're doing at Zenledger we've been able to invest millions of dollars into our IP our technology our team over the last few years and we're now in a position where a lot of people are looking for tax and accounting help [01:04:34] especially with DeFi I think really only us and token tax are the only two companies out of 15 that have actual DeFi integrations like we support I think 30 they support maybe 2025 we're now the only crypto tax platform that supports NFTs so we're oh and that's the beauty as we talked about earlier from being in the space five six seven years is I have those Dan: [01:04:55] relations I have those connections investing personally my own capital in a lot of these things so being ahead on DeFi we're pretty early on DeFi we're bringing ahead on NFTs we're early on NFTs whatever comes after that like Dow infrastructure we can help out Dow's and the investors behind the Dow's on their tax and accounting so long story short super bullish [01:05:15] on Zenledger super bullish on HANEM capital the amazing thing for both is that both are completely remoted distributed I'm sure you're familiar with with LA right now if we had a storefront we probably be shut down so the ability to have both my companies online the ability to be able to not only hire retain but now give you know that security to all of our employees that Dan: [01:05:36] we have capital in the bank our runways three four five years it has been really rewarding and to know that roughly 30 35 people are trusting me to make the right decisions day in and day out for their own livelihood it's been really amazing and I don't have a wife I don't have kids but a lot of our employees do and the fact that their families are now relying on me and Pat and Brian to make [01:05:57] smart articulate decisions on the future of our company and those decisions affect them directly is a really magical place to be in so I don't take for granted the fact that I've been able to assemble two great teams two great companies and I'm really bullish on the investment style that we have at HANEM capital and then the team that we've assembled at Zenledger like I said Dan: [01:06:15] it's just very grateful very thankful with the business that I'm in and as long as I can continue to make right decisions and live life with integrity and keep moving forward then I think we're going JohnPaul: [01:06:26] to be in a good position whether it's me personally or Zenledger or HANEM capital. Dan thanks for sharing all of that I appreciate it I appreciate you touching in not only on your personal life and Dan: [01:06:37] getting vulnerable there but then also touching on Zenledger and giving some advice to these young founders that are looking to raise venture capital before we close up for the day I wanted to go through some rapid fire questions real quick and there'll be about three or four questions then we'll close it up and let you tell everyone where they can connect with you online the first question I [01:06:55] have is what is your favorite Arizona iced tea? I'm a ghetto or owner-pomer guy it's uh the the nice mix between some lemonade and iced tea just hits the spot and I'm the one thing that I always get I get chit for I'm sorry I don't know like the one thing I always get some stuff for is that I'm incredibly cheap with the things that I don't care about I enjoy the car like I have a Dan: [01:07:20] vehicle that I really like I have where I rest my head at night it is something that I really enjoy but drinking a 99 cent of years on iced tea like I love it it tastes good I spend a dollar it's perfect so yeah I probably have to go with Arnold Palmer it's he's a great guy he's a legend in that he definitely knows how to make a good drink and that was a great one there didn't he just [01:07:41] have passed away this year or was that was that him that passed away I think or was that someone else do you know that was recently that thing was the last like two three years okay I just remember that happening on twitter and the whole world crying about it what is your best tip for making the world a better place god getting getting deep on me I don't know I think we talked about it Dan: [01:07:59] earlier I just think I think if not to get corny but like the Michael Jackson man in the mirror stuff like it starts with you and and if you can make your life a better place make the people around whose life better than like it's that pay it forward method where you know that stuff builds and that stuff is sustainable and that stuff really makes an impact and I think starting with you [01:08:21] has been or starting with you speaking from I guess the third person it's like the most impactful you know I'm very fortunate to be in the place I am now and as we talked about I've had mentors and people along the way they've opened up doors for me and for me to be able to now be in the position where I can give back whether that's my time my money my you know a small intelligence Dan: [01:08:41] I can I can you know hopefully help other people out and that's been something that's near in near and dear to me and also highlighted a little bit in that Forbes article is every year I spent about a week with with with an organization called Experience Camps which are camps for kids that have lost a parent a sibling or guardian they're free one week camps where where kids can come and [01:08:57] just be a kid but also be around other kids that are going through the same thing and my father passed away when I was six years old and I think that obviously had a very big impact on my life and not really having a male figure around and especially in my area a lot of people around me had very good family structures not many people really got divorced they had a mom they had a dad Dan: [01:09:16] they had some security at home and I just didn't have that and I think that's really important to me is a lot of these kids are now being exposed that they're not the only one you like you have friends you have support now work around you have the counselors you have this really amazing family that's going to be there for you and then the other one is the is arc which is a organization [01:09:35] here in a lake which is the anti recidivism coalition and recidivism is basically just like the percentage or the rate of people that are getting carcinrated and go back and arc is really focused on youth and as we touched on I've unfortunately made some bad decisions in my life when I was when I was a kid and had to suffer the consequences and if I think it's always helpful to be someone who's Dan: [01:09:55] been there and done that and I think that's always what we had growing up it'd be some random Joe below that came in it was like don't do drugs and it's okay I don't care about what you're saying but like for me to come in tell my story I'm like hey you know I was like one of you if anything I've gone through some deeper shit and was able to get out on the other side and let me let me try [01:10:14] to be here for you and it's not something where I get to live their lives for them mistakes are made things are happening but to know that you have a support network whether it's because you've lost a family member sibling or guardian or a lot of those kids have a lot of the kids in arc have lost of fathers in prison mothers on drugs and they don't have a support system so the streets become Dan: [01:10:32] their support system so anyways long story short I know this is supposed to be rapid fire I think if you start with yourself and you really do what you can to make you the best person that you can be and live by your own set of values and guidelines and morals that's how you can really start to make an impact on the world and as you continue to make yourself a better person you can be a better [01:10:51] mentor a better leader a better advocate for people that are going through the same things that that you're going through so Dan where can our listeners connect with you online after the podcast after this amazing conversation yeah I'm pretty active on Twitter I believe my hand was just D Hanham DHA and UM8 pretty active on Twitter I'm trying to think if anyone in the audience is Dan: [01:11:14] on clubhouse I'm pretty active on clubhouse which has been really fun Jess loss who runs a company in the space called seed club and I do a weekly meet up every Wednesday at 9 p.m. Pacific so if you're on clubhouse feel free to come in and tune in tomorrow just we wanted to create a safe space where you know we could come in and talk crypto and get into the weeds a little bit but also welcome [01:11:34] people that are just trying to get in just trying to get involved so pretty active on clubhouse really active on Twitter and then on email as well my email is just Dan at zenlajr.il so if you need any tax help tax accounting you have some questions more than happy to get you squared away and then on the investment side my my email is just D H at Hanham capital management.com I know it's always Dan: [01:11:55] a weird thing for people to give out their emails but I'm here to help in any way I can if you have a product that makes no sense you'll probably hear a note pretty quickly but if you have a you got a good product good team good uh good traction going on we'd love to meet with you and see how we can be helpful and once again it probably sounds really cliche but there's a lot of investments [01:12:11] where we passed on and and have been very helpful to those teams moving forward it just didn't make sense from a pure investment and pure number perspective hopefully people can see that I'm not a perfect individual I've had my ups and downs my mistakes and I'm trying to just take things day by day and keep getting better and if there's anything that I can do to help people out feel Dan: [01:12:27] free to shoot me a DM on Twitter or shoot me an email and we'd love to see how I can help anyone out JohnPaul: [01:12:32] thank Dan thanks again for coming on and for all that advice and for all those stories Dan: [01:12:37] and definitely reach out to him guys if you're looking to raise some money for your venture JohnPaul: [01:12:41] backable business thanks again Dan I appreciate the time thanks man thanks for having me on of course [01:12:47] 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 Dan: [01:12:56] become the number one crypto podcast thanks so much for listening and until next time mine off you ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Bitcoin Changing the Energy Industry | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 9 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/daniel-kauffman/ All Episodes Episode 9 # Bitcoin Changing the Energy Industry with Daniel Kauffman Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Daniel Kauffman to discuss bitcoin changing the energy industry. ### Bitcoin Changing the Energy Industry Guest: Daniel Kauffman Episode 9 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:31] Today I'm very excited to be joined by Daniel Kaufman, an entrepreneur and management consultant serving energy sector companies, service providers and investors. Daniel is the founder and CEO of Empira, a software company providing analysis and data services to electric utilities and building portfolios. Daniel has worked for Fortune 500 companies and large consulting [00:00:49] firms, helping to solve challenges at the intersection of energy, technology and business. Daniel's work has spanned the energy sector from oil and gas to smart grid, power generation and energy efficient consumption. Daniel has degrees from Duke University in the War and School. We are thrilled to have Daniel on to help explain the connection between mining JohnPaul: [00:01:07] and energy in the future of cryptocurrencies. Daniel, welcome to the show. Daniel: [00:01:12] Thanks for having me on JP. Of course, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we're actually able to put this conversation now in front of an audience and to dig into some of the details that we need to talk about JohnPaul: [00:01:21] on a regular basis. My first question for you, Daniel, is how did you find out about Daniel: [00:01:26] Bitcoin and what are you interested in this space? I first found out about Bitcoin around 2013. That's when the first articles were coming out in mainstream media and energy sector rags around Bitcoin mining. I remember thinking that there's this whole new industry, which at the time looked a lot like a derivative [00:01:48] of data centers, which is an area I've done a little work in. But the output was this obscure commodity type instrument called Bitcoin. I remember thinking this is very intriguing and something that I really need to pay attention to. After that, I would say that the chatter in the energy sector really started around 2016 Daniel: [00:02:12] and really in 2017 as Bitcoin prices rose, there was an increased awareness of the potential for blockchain technologies in energy sector applications. The first thing I thought of was for making it easier to trade land rights and mineral rights with oil and gas. It can be very troublesome to figure out who owns rights and to acquire them. It struck me [00:02:39] as a natural application, or needless to say, actually executing the real world would have its challenges. Many of the ideas I saw being proposed around 2017 were really around energy trading and transactions. Some on the wholesale level, but there were also ideas around peer-to-peer transaction of solar production and even tokenizing demand response and unused energy and monetizing Daniel: [00:03:04] that into various markets. I saw a lot of ideas, frankly, and at the time I joined local energy blockchain working group, which was essentially professionals in the energy and technology space trying to understand how this interacted with them. Everything from software developers who had actually implemented blockchains to people from electric utilities saying, [00:03:26] this guy just called me up and asked for a gargantuan amount of electricity at $0.05 a kilowatt hour and I'm not even sure if I need to create a new tariff for this guy. One of the things we saw when looking for power prices, Daniel, was that it's really hard to get below that four cent rate in the United States in the regulated energy space. Do you Daniel: [00:03:45] know why that is or have you run up against that in your search for energy? A utility needs to get regulatory approval for a new tariff and those tariffs are designed for certain customer classes. The cheapest tariffs you'll find, if you can find one at four cents, they do exist but they're hard to find. It would be for established industrial [00:04:07] customers who have large electric needs and would presumably use them over a long period of time located at the same space and located near a large base load electric producer so you could think of dams, large hydro power in Washington state or other places. Texas has very low wholesale power prices on the grid. The thing is that Bitcoin miners don't Daniel: [00:04:38] fit neatly into a tariff. No tariffs existed specifically for mining and there was a natural conflict between the time horizon of the investment of a miner and that of a utility. A utility likes to make investments over 20 year periods if they're going to put in new transformers, switch gear, substation equipment versus a miner might pack up and move after two years, [00:05:00] or less if economics change and they find a better deal elsewhere. And aligning these different time horizons of investment, I think struck me as one of the first challenges of having the Bitcoin community and the electric utility industry speak to one another coherently. I think we saw that as well when I was looking for power up in Grant County in Washington state where they did add Daniel: [00:05:24] some of those tariffs because that was the cheapest energy that you could regularly go and get on the grid close to about one to two cents. That was selling to traditional data centers. So Daniel, the first challenge you mentioned with the Bitcoin mining space was the different outlooks that the energy industry has versus the Bitcoin mining industry has and the ability for Bitcoin miners [00:05:43] to get up and move where the energy industry is putting in a more expensive investment, a longer term investment. How else do you see these two industries interacting? Maybe one of the challenges are there for the two industries to be able to work together to use energy and bring cheaper energy prices to an area? It comes down to the unique aspects of mining. So first of all, Daniel: [00:06:03] it's worth commenting that mining is a very energy intensive industry. It requires a lot of kilowatt hours to make a Bitcoin. So today, the rate at which you make Bitcoin is roughly about 120,000 kilowatt hours to make one Bitcoin using today's miners at today's hash rates. An average home would use 10 to 12,000 kilowatt hours a year. So we're talking about to make one [00:06:30] Bitcoin the equivalent of what 10 homes would use over an entire year. The way a mine operates is that it wants to use that energy all the time. So day and night, but the grid prices are not so stable, right? During the daytime, you tend to have higher prices when there's demand and overnight, you have cheaper prices. Miners are looking for the cheapest blended price. Daniel: [00:06:56] And so they're looking to avoid places where you have spikes in power prices. And then the third component is that cryptocurrency mining, unlike data centers, is not mission critical. You don't need uptime guarantees to clients. Cryptocurrency mines can essentially shut down at peak without suffering business consequences. And so there's a certain number of [00:07:18] hours per month that are or even per year that are curtailable by a mine. And this allows the electric utility to have a customer that can absorb a lot of cheap electricity when it's not wanted, but at the same time, not be consuming energy when all of the other customers want it. So it can serve to both increase the aggregate demand in a certain area for electricity, Daniel: [00:07:43] while also not creating impositions for peak demand, which is really where the need for capacity investments are driven or driven by. And this peak demand issue for people that aren't aware of how that works, can you just go into on a high level, what that is? Yeah, sure. I think we've all experienced this where utility during a hot summer day will ask to shut off our thermostats or there'll [00:08:11] be a switch on our air conditioning system. In commercial and industrial sites, there's something known as demand response, which is where the capacity of the building is paid for by the market or by electric utility. And the factory or the building goes into a routine where certain things are shut off in order to shed the amount of load promised by the facility as part of the agreement. This all Daniel: [00:08:40] helps keep power prices down, right? Because we need to have enough power production to ensure that we can meet that last final highest kilowatt at the day that we need all of it. So if we can avoid building out peak demand, we can avoid building power plants. And going back to cryptocurrency mining, the nice part about a cryptocurrency mine is that it is curtalable. What that means is when a [00:09:06] market or utility asks it to not consume power because prices are going up and there just isn't the power production available, the mine can shut down. And so it can help the utility avoid meeting those peaks where at the same time when the power is cheaper and in abundance, and you might even have generators sitting idle, those generators can produce power that the mine Daniel: [00:09:29] would want to buy. So Daniel, it seems to me that most of these utilities have, when this statements in 2016, 2017, where people were coming to ask for hundreds of megawatts of power, took the stance of like, no, we don't want Bitcoin miners because you guys, you don't, we don't know if Bitcoin's going to be around this long. We don't have the same time horizons. You guys just use JohnPaul: [00:09:48] all this energy to do nothing. How has that changed their opinion understanding maybe the benefits Daniel: [00:09:55] that these Bitcoin miners can bring as you mentioned, being able to turn off immediately? Do you see that shift in perspective in the energy sector, which is just the amount of new generation that's already coming online in the amount of excess energy that we have throughout the days as we see negative pricing in some areas? I think that there's a couple of facts. One is that [00:10:15] I actually think that there's there might be less interaction between the mining community and utilities than there was because cryptocurrency miners have become more savvy and sophisticated. And instead of simply finding a warehouse contacting utility and trying to buy power, I think miners are increasingly looking to wholesale markets to buy their power in bulk, Daniel: [00:10:37] working through procurement advisors or doing the procurement themselves even, or going right upstream to the power generation and being able to generate their own power or working with those who have excess power, be they in the oil and gas sector, who might have an excess fuel that or even a standby generator that can be used or a merchant power producer, somebody who [00:10:58] would otherwise sell their power into the utility space but instead can sell it to a cryptocurrency miner. So in some respects, I think that the electric utility industry might be circumvented in or at least the electric distribution utility industry might be circumvented in the quest to mine cryptocurrencies. But the second thing I'll say is that you do have utilities that see this as Daniel: [00:11:23] a customer base that can help benefit their own economics. So if you are looking at places that have, for example, factories that have been shut down, industrial power plants that are no longer used, deindustrialization, but you have the grid assets, you have the power generation, and the utility is looking at declining revenues, this is an opportunity for utility to entice [00:11:47] miner into their territory, leverage pre-existing infrastructure, maybe renovate it and provide a new stable customer base for the power that can help supplement the other customers in that area and their need for power as well. You mentioned Bitcoin miners have the ability to move directly to the source and sometimes consume that power behind the grid or off the grid. And you also Daniel: [00:12:11] mentioned market to market in merchant power contracts. Are we able to talk about maybe the differences between how most of our listeners buy their power and what a market to market contract would look like or what a Bitcoin miner or how sophisticated Bitcoin miners are now beginning to buy power on the grid? Most of us, when we buy electricity, we just pay a utility bill [00:12:32] to a regulated electric utility or possibly a cooperative utility for which you remember owner or perhaps a municipal government that is a municipal utility. But these are all you can drink contracts. You typically would pay a monthly service fee and a rate at which you buy the power. So that rate would be 10 cents a kilowatt hour, 12 cents, 14 cents, whatever it is. Daniel: [00:12:58] Other places, there are different tariffs, there are time of use rates and other things. But so I'm oversimplifying here. The thing to understand is that the economics to the utility are not the same as what you so when you buy your power, you might, for example, pay $10 a month plus 10 cents a kilowatt hour just to make up a very simple tariff. The utility might see you as having a [00:13:21] service cost of $25 a month to maintain all the poles and wires in order to get it to you. But their power cost could be three cents a kilowatt hour. And so what you end up with is a system by which the utility through its tariffs is essentially supplementing one group of customers in favor of another. Very often, what that means is that if you're buying a lot of kilowatt hours of 10 cents, Daniel: [00:13:45] you're overpaying. And so as someone who's overpaying, this would be your traditional industrial user who's maybe supplementing for all the home users. And so for those far distance, those extra wires to feed that one customer. Is that what you're saying? So these industrial customers will get a lower tariff because they'll negotiate it directly with your utility. [00:14:05] As a homeowner, you don't call your utility and negotiate a rate. But if you are opening a factory somewhere and are going to be consuming a lot of energy, you would do some energy engineering and work out what the right energy procurement is for your factory, what the mix would be of electricity plus maybe onsite generation and onsite storage, what you can put in solar panels or perhaps a Daniel: [00:14:28] natural gas generator, you might have a need for combined heat and power. And when it comes to the electricity, you might have tranches that you're buying. So you wouldn't just pay a single tariff. You might promise to buy a certain amount of power from the utility. And then you would buy a second amount of power from the utility at a higher rate per kilowatt hour, but it would [00:14:49] really be marginal. So it'd be as you need it, whereas you could commit to the first tranche. If you're large enough and you're in the right regulatory environment, you don't really need a distribution utility at all. You can buy the bulk power from a wholesale market and have that power delivered to you pay a transmission and distribution fee and negotiate with wholesale power traders Daniel: [00:15:09] and power marketers to get you to get you that wholesale power. And there are obviously big discrepancies around the country in terms of power cost. You wouldn't want to see cryptocurrency mining in downtown Los Angeles, for example, but in the middle of West Texas, where you have lots and lots of wind and a wholesale and a transmission grid that brings that power [00:15:32] to retail markets, it could be a good place to co-locate cryptocurrency mining right at the site of the generation so that you can avoid bringing it to market altogether. When it comes to JohnPaul: [00:15:46] sourcing power for the cryptocurrency mining sector, where do you see the most opportunity Daniel: [00:15:52] laying in the whole generation mix? Because it is very complex and there are a lot of different ways to generate power. As a cryptocurrency miner, what you're looking for is both the cheapest fuel cost, but also the cheapest generator. So consider your options. You could look for a power plant that needs renovation that might need a new transformer or a new substation. An industrial [00:16:18] power plant to that has been decommissioned and needs renovation, possibly a hydro facility somewhere that needs upfit. As a general rule of thumb, for every million dollars in capital cost, you could think about the improvements as being $200,000, maybe in the range of 20% plus or minus 10% in order to get a generating station up and running. The generator itself, wherever this Daniel: [00:16:42] is cited, there are going to be reasons why it is decommissioned. It might be old, but most likely it's because there just is not enough power demand in that sector, in that area, a geographic area. It's too remote or the customers who used to use it, the industrial plants or possibly homes, they've since moved away. There's a reduction in demand. So the cryptocurrency miner is looking [00:17:07] for these places where there used to be a power demand. So there is incumbent infrastructure there but that demand doesn't exist anymore. The other big opportunity for citing cryptocurrency mining is with renewables. So as we incentivize more and more renewables, we're essentially putting in incentives for power generators that the market is not asking for. Daniel: [00:17:32] And the result is energy that the market isn't asking for. And so as we build out more and more solar and wind with tax incentives and other local incentives, there are going to be opportunities where the grid simply can't absorb that power economically. And so there are opportunities to make deals behind the meter, if you will. So it's before that power is put onto the grid directly [00:17:57] in a bilateral contract with power generator in order to avoid all of the electric distribution industry altogether, the tariffs and everything else and simply form a bilateral purchase agreement. How is this different than, as you mentioned, the cheap or negative fuel cost in bringing online that power generator? You have these sunk assets in both scenarios. But how do you view Daniel: [00:18:22] these natural gas generators versus maybe the renewable wind farm that's already built in generating energy? Is there a difference there? Is it just because one subsidizes and one's not? And why the economics worked out? So if you look around at the natural gas in the United States that's available, it comes in different types. So upstream at the well head, [00:18:45] you see what are called flares. This is when the gas is coming out of the well and is being burned. And you think to yourself, gee, this is basically free energy. Or if there's a fee for flaring, it could be negatively priced energy. Somebody might pay you to take that flare off their hands in order to not emit it and not have to flare in the first place. The problem with flares Daniel: [00:19:07] is often they don't last long. They're part of a process called well testing, reservoir testing. And so you have to figure out where these flares are, bring in power generation to their site, presuming there isn't power generation on site, bring in mobile cryptocurrency mining. And then when the flare moves, you have to move with it. This doesn't lend itself well to cryptocurrency [00:19:31] mining. It doesn't lend itself well to anything where you want to put down some routes. Because small scale and mobility costs you money as compared to the ability to build a more permanent, physically permanent infrastructure, a larger scale. So then you look downstream a little bit and you have processed gas and you have areas of the country where you have plenty of natural Daniel: [00:19:53] gas and it's not in raw form like a flare. It's had some of the natural gas liquids, these heavier molecules taken out of it brought to market. And so it's going to lend itself better to power generation. And possibly there just isn't the pipelines in place for whatever reason. Maybe they just there couldn't be approval or they couldn't be built fast enough. And so you have [00:20:15] semi stranded gas or you have opportunities to buy gas locally at discount. Now there are problems here too because oftentimes this gas doesn't have power generator associated with it. So you might have to put in power generation equipment or perhaps this gas is seasonal. So there might be there might be cheap gas during nine months, the year, but during the winter time that gas is Daniel: [00:20:38] needed for heating and that could hurt the economics of the cryptocurrency mine. So even when you find cheap sources of energy in the oil and gas sector, you have the problem of figuring out the capital cost of the generator needed to turn that natural gas, whether it's refined, separated refined or raw natural gas and the operating and maintenance costs. Whereas if you can find cheap electricity, [00:21:02] all of that works already been done for you. And so you can feed it right into your miners, which is the right transform. And as we're seeing, I would say is that as you mentioned earlier, the amount of renewable energy being deployed and subsidized by the government is creating plenty of pockets of power where the prices are negative or are very low, where it as a Bitcoin Daniel: [00:21:22] miner who's always looking for the most efficient or cheapest electron, it makes more sense to actually go to those areas where the market economics are already off compared to maybe the excess gas supplies we have or the gas for mining, as you mentioned. I think that's right, JP, I would agree with you. So the big refueling we're seeing here in the electric industry in the [00:21:47] United States is the decommissioning of coal and the installation of renewables and also natural gas. If you take out a coal plant, 50 megawatts of coal and put in 50 megawatts of wind and solar, it's not really the same thing. Needless to say, you save all those emissions, but you've increased intermittency. So a coal plant works when you turn it on and burn coal, whereas sometimes the Daniel: [00:22:11] wind is blowing and sometimes the wind's blowing too hard. And sometimes it's sunny and sometimes it's cloudy. And so what you end up with is intermittency, which leads to price discrepancies. Sometimes that electricity becomes very expensive and sometimes it's so cheap that they're desperate to get rid of it. I have a story from about 10 years ago, I was working in Germany and Germany [00:22:35] was undergoing something, they're still undergoing something called the Energevende, their energy transition. This was in its early stages of decommissioning anything that wasn't renewable, nuclear and coal and what have you, and putting in lots of wind. The problem was sometimes they had too much wind and they were not allowed to ground it, they had to sell it. And so sometimes Daniel: [00:22:57] the power prices would go negative. What happened at one point was that the prices went negative and the German grid was connected to the Polish grid. The Germans were literally paying Poland to accept their excess wind energy and Poland took the money and then grounded the power. And so for people who don't know what grounding the power is, they're literally just putting it [00:23:20] into the ground and taking the electricity and putting it straight into a pole in the ground in a wire and because they couldn't do it in Germany because of regulatory issues, is that correct? That's what happened. So this is all growing pains for all of us, of course. But the lesson here is that the mix of energy, the type of energy and its production characteristics Daniel: [00:23:42] and the regulations you're dealing with create these pockets of economic opportunity for people to take advantage of. And the way I see it, the broader thesis here is it's the cryptocurrency miner that confined those pockets and set the floor price of electricity, where electricity can be reliably delivered for a very cheap price because it's an abundance at that location. [00:24:07] That's a place to put in cryptocurrency mining. When it comes to using energy, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the actual production JohnPaul: [00:24:17] cost of Bitcoin. Can you talk a little bit farther maybe about the production cost of Bitcoin and Daniel: [00:24:22] how we can compare that to other very energy intensive processes and how we could end up valuing Bitcoin or how you view that whole energy discussion and really energy in Bitcoin and stored in Bitcoin? So from my perspective, Bitcoin is a form of embodied energy. It is a finished good which is made by taking a lot of electricity and using that electricity to fabricate [00:24:53] In this way to me, it is somewhat similar to other commodities with finished goods with a lot of embodied energy. So a good analogy here might be cement or steel. So let's just consider steel for a second. Steel is made at about 40 megajoules per kilogram. That's just a measure of its energy per weight. Bitcoin has made it 430,000 megajoules per Bitcoin. And so the equivalent amount of steel Daniel: [00:25:23] would be about 11 metric tons per Bitcoin. That's about the weight of eight cars. If you were bringing that amount of steel to market, its value would be somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000. So you could take all of that energy, make steel and retail it for eight to $10,000, the equivalent of the amount of energy that would go into one Bitcoin. Right now Bitcoin is trading around, let's say, [00:25:49] $25,000. So what you've got is a finished good which has more market value given the same amount of energy required to make it than for example, steel or cement, which again would be in the eight to 10,000 range given the same amount of energy that it would take to make one Bitcoin. Is it safe to say that this Bitcoin mining is a new industrial process that will be able to Daniel: [00:26:16] be created for the Bitcoin miners and then be able to consume that energy and produce more value than maybe a cement factory or steel factory would have. So basically in place of energy generation for those different asset production of cement and steel, we're now putting energy and generation in place just for Bitcoin mining or similar activities. [00:26:37] It seems to be the case at first blush, I'd have to study that in detail to understand fully how they compare or read a study on it. What can be said is that it is very energy intensive, but that energy is converted into something that the market is clearly valuing. I think the core question is really around the value of a Bitcoin. So when you buy a Bitcoin for $25,000, Daniel: [00:27:06] what exactly are you buying? So a portion of that is clearly spent to pay for the embodied energy required to make it. But the rest of it has characteristics that are non-utilitarian. So people don't buy steel and cement because they want to own it or believe that it's going to appreciate in value unless they're really trying to hedge a major construction site. [00:27:31] Bitcoin, the analogy falls apart there and Bitcoin starts to take on characteristics that are more similar to some other store of value such as gold or any number of other things that we could draw analogies to all imperfectly in order to fully understand what exactly Bitcoin is. I think hitting on that farther basically when it comes to what Warren Buffett and some of these Daniel: [00:27:53] other large institutional investors think about Bitcoin, they say, I can say with almost certainty that it'll come to a bad end and that's from Warren Buffett. He says it doesn't produce anything, but it has no value beyond someone else willing to buy it. Now, in my opinion, it seems like we just talked a lot about how there's a lot of value stored in Bitcoin in the [00:28:11] form of energy. So how do you view that value storage, as you mentioned, similar to gold, but different? It's not steel, it's not a commodity. How would you do you disagree with Warren or how do you view that? Yeah, it's always tricky to disagree with Warren Buffett, especially in public. But I read that comment and I can say very little with almost certainty. And so I found it odd Daniel: [00:28:34] that he would even say those words. His criticisms are interesting. So that Bitcoin doesn't produce anything, I think is what you said, and that it doesn't have value. He is correct that from a practical perspective, Bitcoin doesn't have any uses. Unlike a fiat currency, it can't be used to pay a tax liability to a government. And it's too new to have the full social construct that gold [00:29:01] does. Gold has thousands of years of history as a store of value, whereas Bitcoin has 10 years. But that's basically where his criticism ends. So his complaint about Bitcoin is essentially the same as his complaint about gold, that when you own it, it just sits there and looks at you. I think Warren Buffett is taking the position of an investor. So he is a person that allocates Daniel: [00:29:25] capital in order to create value. And the way he sees it, holding Bitcoin doesn't do that. But that doesn't mean that it can't. So you and IJP, we're not economists. We're not even traders, at least not yet. Maybe one day we will be. We're entrepreneurs. Our job is to take people in capital and create value. And if somebody were to lend you Bitcoin, you could take it, deploy it [00:29:50] to create value by mining more Bitcoin, or perhaps using it to do some other endeavor. So Bitcoin can be put to work as a financial instrument, at least in theory. And we're starting to see that happen. As soon as you're deploying Bitcoin as a form of capital, it's no longer just sitting there looking at you. You're using it to productive use. So that kind of knocks down the Daniel: [00:30:11] whole argument that it doesn't produce anything. It certainly doesn't have to, but it also can. And this second criticism, which is it has no value. So that criticism could be made of Bitcoin, but it's much harder to make it of Ethereum. So you have Ethereum being used to essentially to automate the adjudication of smart contracts. Does that adjudication not have value? If a lawyer [00:30:40] were to perform the same administrative work, would we argue that the legal work has no value? The ether is used to pay for services to support the contract. So that ether was part and parcel of the production of something of value. So I think that there are reasonable arguments, but they aren't necessarily true in every circumstance. And I think more to the point, as we see the Daniel: [00:31:02] development of financial instruments around cryptocurrencies and more and more blockchain applications that are driven by cryptos do appear to have more real tangible value. They seem to produce things and more value on top of them. And I think most importantly, the social construct JohnPaul: [00:31:22] that gives us all comfort that they have value deepens. Let's talk about Warren Buffett for one Daniel: [00:31:29] more second. He's a stamp collector as I understand it. So do stamps produce anything? The value of a stamp is really driven by what? Paint in paper? My son collects hockey cards. I think that's great. But these things are just a different form of energy that went into their creation and a different set of economics. But at the end of the day, they're all driven by collective psychology [00:31:50] that can further them with value. I think that Bitcoin's value is somewhat derived by collective psychology. But I also think that in some respects, everything is or many other things at least. And I would agree with you on that, Daniel. I think for what we're talking about here today, Bitcoin seems to have become this value transfer mechanism that you don't have to trust any other Daniel: [00:32:17] financial intermediary. You don't have to trust the PayPal's, the Visa of the world. You can just understand that I'm going to be able to send value to anyone in the world without asking permission from anyone. And that could be a contract, as you mentioned, like a smart contract. Or that could be for a Bitcoin miner, for a good or service. And there is no, I guess, regulatory [00:32:38] or there is no gatekeepers stopping you from transacting that value. I think that's one of the biggest arguments I've seen in why Bitcoin has value. It's just like the internet has value with information being able to transact across or being able to communicate across wide ranges of geographic area. Bitcoin is now this next leap where we're able to transact value without having Daniel: [00:32:59] to meet people. And I think stamps, art, hockey cards, those were all maybe ways in the past of cementing social value. And that story behind it or why Bitcoin or why they have value. It's interesting because Bitcoin has really stayed the same over the past 10 years. It hasn't changed when it comes to the overall fundamentals of what a Bitcoin is and what you're getting when you buy [00:33:23] a Bitcoin, what has changed though is the perceived social value and the overall macro value of the environment. Take the volatility out of Bitcoin for just a second. As a way to transfer value, you're entirely right. It's much simpler to simply move it from my wallet to your wallet or to anybody's than having to deal with a full range of financial intermediaries who benefit from their incumbency Daniel: [00:33:53] in our financial system. As a quick story, I recently had a client project and at the conclusion the client offered two mechanisms to pay me. The first was they said, we can provide you with a credit card number, a visa number managed by a bank. We will deposit money into the account tied to that visa number. And you can pay a payment processor to transfer the money from that card [00:34:25] into an account of your choosing. And between those three intermediaries, the bank, visa, and the payment processor, they would extract around 3% of the value of the transaction between me and my client. And the second alternative was, we'll mail you a paper check. Okay, so we have two choices, one in which the financial industry collectively extracts 3% Daniel: [00:34:53] for just being there. And the second is Victorian era technology. So the argument that there is value to be captured by simplifying transactions and payments through using cryptocurrency to me goes without saying there is absolutely value to be captured by the frictions that are in our current financial system and the payment systems that we use. I think that brings up a great next JohnPaul: [00:35:22] topic, Daniel, which is how do you see the role of governments in cryptocurrency is over the next Daniel: [00:35:28] few years? We've already seen central backed digital currencies or CBDCs come on to the stage in 2020 and 2019 with the Chinese and the Euro and also the US dollar. Where you see this playing out, do you see the banks and intermediaries getting cut out and the Federal Reserve's really JohnPaul: [00:35:48] stepping in and acting as that frictionless payment mechanism? And I guess, how do you see Daniel: [00:35:53] Bitcoin playing an Ethereum playing with these large government cryptocurrencies here to come? Yeah, I wrote a blog post this weekend about this very issue called it's a crypto Christmas. And I was just imagining what the world would look like in 10 years, if all of these challenges against Bitcoin were to find some resolution in Bitcoin's favor, what if the volatility decreased? [00:36:23] What if governments embraced cryptocurrencies? What if it became a useful medium of exchange? And there's a scenario by which all of these could play out. So if you look at just imagine yourself in the position of the government and asking yourself, what do we do about this? So is it possible that the government could just simply outlaw cryptocurrencies in the long term and say, Daniel: [00:36:49] we can't tolerate this parallel currency that we can't control within our economies? I think it's possible, JP, that there is history there. There was a time when Americans were prohibited from holding gold. That didn't end until the 70s. So it isn't crazy to think that there could be a prohibition against trading Bitcoin in the US. The real question is that likely? What [00:37:11] is the most likely scenario that will play out? And I think to answer that, you have to think like the government collectively and ask yourself, how is this viewed? So the first question is really around the IRS because the government's first interest is in taxing it. And to some extent, I think this question's been answered. The IRS has already put out guidance on cryptocurrencies. Daniel: [00:37:36] When you speak to any good lawyer or accountant in this space, they give you the same advice, which is to keep a good tally of trades as you would any stock or other tradable commodity and report faithfully to the IRS capital gains and losses. And that's the IRS's guidance. So we already have the beginnings of a mechanism to deal with Bitcoin. So then we have to enter the [00:38:01] political domain. We're really asking the question of what the politicians will do. From my perspective, if you want to make a guess about the future of American policy, which I admit is a fool's errand, start with something that stands a chance of bipartisan consensus and also doesn't fire up the base and on one side or the other. And if you look at cryptocurrency Daniel: [00:38:24] from this perspective, it actually checks both boxes. So it was very promising, I think, for a lot of people this year to see Andrew Yang actually articulate the beginnings of policy platform around cryptocurrency. He clearly understands its innovations and the opportunities for cryptocurrency and blockchain and the need for the government to catch up with this reality. [00:38:47] Okay, so let's look around the political spectrum just quickly, JP. On the left side, you have progressives like Elizabeth Warren. And I think it's fair to say that their interest will be in consumer protection and preventing fraud and theft and ensuring that if people are going to use cryptos that they're doing it safely and securely, and that's just a matter of regulation Daniel: [00:39:09] and policy, I would think. And then if you just imagine a conversation on the right, you could see you if you squint a little, you could see conservatives advancing pro blockchain and pro cryptocurrency legislation. You could even imagine a floor speech by a staunch conservative. If they ever take away your crypto, what else could they take? It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that as a position somebody [00:39:32] could take. And I think you hit it right in the head because if crypto is value, it's like now they're stealing a property. And at that it has been treated as property previously by different departments of the United States. And now we're talking about this is why we have the rule of law and the US is to protect property. And it has been for centuries. It's been what our judicial Daniel: [00:39:53] system has built on even looking back in slaves and them viewing viewed as property, which is obviously not the case nowadays, but it shows you that's why we created this system in place is to protect the assets. So I don't, it would be very far a fair statement to say we're able to take people's crypto and hand over the keys to your own personal property. [00:40:15] So take the ingredients personal property protection, as you point out, innovation, legislation, the fear that if we don't do this, we'll miss out on something that will happen elsewhere in the world and taxation. And then the rubber hits the road because the question you're really asking about is what the Fed will do and whether we'll start to see Fed coins and central [00:40:41] bank to nominated coins. Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual Daniel: [00:40:48] investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over 70 years of mining experience, 24 seven 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 Orm capital ventures.com. We were talking about Bitcoin versus gold and whether Bitcoin has value, [00:41:16] what derives gold's value, what derives gold's usefulness, aside from us all believing it has value and frankly, having believed it for thousands of years. So I looked into it a little bit, 2000 metric tons of gold were produced this year, 50% of that for jewelry. So gold demand is driven by our desire to turn a metal into finished goods we wear. It's too bad you can't make jewelry out Daniel: [00:41:46] of Bitcoin. Not yet, you can't make jewelry out of Bitcoin. Hopefully, I think there will be a future where people will show off a watch with one Bitcoin in it or a handbag with half a Bitcoin. Like here it is. You could showcase your Bitcoin in a virtual world. You could have Bitcoin jewelry and virtual reality. Yeah, that will definitely be coming. So Daniel, this concept of believing [00:42:11] that it has value because it's a collective belief. How far do you think Bitcoin's value is because of this just collective belief? Because in my eyes, over the years, people like, oh, I don't want Bitcoin is $70. I don't want Bitcoin at $5,000. But oh, it's at $25,000. Let me get it now. It's interesting now. What a tough question, JP. I certainly a lot of it is dependent on our belief Daniel: [00:42:37] that it has value. But to me, the real question is whether that belief is founded. So what supports the Bitcoin price? So if you just disaggregate pricing of Bitcoin, if you say what drives its market price, there's three components from where I see it. There's what we'll call the technicals. So what the traders will analyze in order to find signals to move the Bitcoin one [00:43:08] direction or another. And in that way, the technical analysis is much like any other commodity. The second is the supply of Bitcoin. And the third is the demand of Bitcoin. And let's take the supply first. So we've talked a lot about mining and the hardest to make these things. We all know that the number of Bitcoin is limited. And we know that Bitcoin are simply Daniel: [00:43:35] hard to get. They're hard to make. They're hard to buy and they have scarcity written into their algorithm. And as soon as you say the word scarcity, you have the attention of people who are looking for a store of value. So it seems to me that all of our confusion is on the demand side. If Bitcoin prices drop low enough, you have Bitcoin miners who don't want to mine it anymore. [00:44:03] So that helps create a floor. You have existing holders of Bitcoin who see a dip opportunity to increase their holdings because they don't want to see their value of their Bitcoin asset base drop too low. So you have demand there. It tells you that there's a floor price to it. I'm not sure where exactly. Then on the demand side, that's where all the confusion is. What exactly drives Bitcoin Daniel: [00:44:26] demand? And that is the open ended question that I think nobody has come up with a great answer to yet. And I think that's the question that makes Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio confused about it. Is what can you buy with it? Can it be exchanged for goods? Is if it's so volatile, does it accurately reflect the price of those goods? I think these are the questions that need [00:44:53] to get answered in order to fully understand what portion of Bitcoin is driven by some fundamental value versus what is driven by just the idea of it. And I would say it's probably fairly hard to even argue what the value of transacting or trust over the internet is. And as we saw the value of the internet has been completely underestimated. What is the value of being able to trust these Daniel: [00:45:18] protocols? Maybe not having to trust third parties anymore to do these transactions of legal work or even value storage or wealth storage, as we've mentioned, and being able to transact in these systems that are permissionless. That is one of the biggest questions that is hard to even put an answer or put a number to because now we're evaluating it in US dollars or in other types of [00:45:45] currencies that are being printed by the federal government and by other governments. And so stepping into this digital world of federal government issued coins, how do you think we will have? Do you think we'll have a Fed issued digital wallet on our smartphones? Or do you think that basically the banks will be replaced by the federal reserve in some sense where we're interacting Daniel: [00:46:09] more with them than we are these financial institutions that we know of today? Let's look at this question of what will the Fed do? Because I think that's driving this whole discussion, whether there will be a Fed coin. I remember the Bush stimulus checks of 2001 where they mailed $600 per person and the idea was financial stimulus. They didn't have much impact. [00:46:38] People instead of spending the money, they used it to pay off credit card debts and home loans or they put it into savings. From what I've seen of this spring's analysis, it's basically the same story. This spring's stimulus, the analysis reveals the same story. People use it to pay down debt followed by savings and then some spend it. So what motivates the Fed? What's motivating them Daniel: [00:47:01] to expand their balance sheet by 3 trillion and increasingly look for more and more exotic ways to stimulate the economy? There's an insatiable appetite there to stimulate, to entice the economy. If you look at the amount of economic activity right now in the US in 2020 and you consider the share of stimulus between monetary and fiscal stimulus, it is such a huge portion of the economy [00:47:33] is based on stimulus. It's unhealthy. From that lens, you say, do we think that Chairman Powell is looking at Fedcoin as a possible stimulus opportunity? I think he is. He's even said so as much. If we were to have a Fedcoin, you could write in rules for it requiring it to be spent instead of saved or paid off debt. You could create smart rules around Fedcoin stimulus. Daniel: [00:48:07] It would be a very easy way to track economic activity to see how money is being spent in different sectors would create all kinds of information for economists to be able to better steer Fed economists to better steer their common to their wishes. Here's the strongest argument I've got, JP. If the government had to rebuild the entire financial system from scratch right now, if we were [00:48:31] to rethink the whole thing, money would certainly be digital. US dollars are largely digital anyway, but they weren't born to be. There's incredible friction there. I think they'll still be durable forms, but I do think that as soon as somebody embraces a Fedcoin, whether it's a Eurocoin or a Wancoin in China, other central banks will feel compelled to look very carefully at this Daniel: [00:49:01] left they be left behind. Do you think that there are benefits for the consumers? You've already mentioned some of them direct stimulus being able to have less friction in the system, but is there any other benefits to using a Fedcoin to the users or will it be required almost where, in order to get your stimulus, you have to take a Fedcoin? I feel like that's very far [00:49:25] fetched to have people move to that so quickly, but I think it will be an option that a lot of the tech-literate population will be able to utilize. That question reminds me a little bit of a story from the 90s, which is so funny, it must be true. It was a company that was looking at implementing email within their corporation, and the executive asked for an analysis of the Daniel: [00:49:53] economic impact of having email. It's an innovation that just changes the way business is done, because it makes it easier, more seamless, and has benefits that previously weren't contemplated. So if we had Fedcoin, if we had US dollar-denominated approved coin regulated within our wallets, it would simplify the way we pay for things, it would simplify the way we do our accounting, [00:50:28] in my blog post-type, postulated that if you paid independent contractors in Fedcoin, you would be able to auto-file their tax documents, because look, the Fed is already monitoring the blockchain, they know how much money is going to everybody, and so they're going to know exactly how much everybody made, and if it will be the natural currency of the gig Daniel: [00:50:52] economy and freelance workers. When I look at the next generation, frankly, this is going to age me just a little bit, or date me, but I see people who live on their phones in a virtual world, and they will be transacting between, frankly, between, if there were a Fedcoin, between Fedcoin, and Bitcoin, and other cryptos, within any environment that they exist in, they could be buying [00:51:20] things within apps, they could be buying things within games, they could be trading things with friends, and I see this all as a more seamless way to manage a financial system. In somewhat of an analogous way that email is a more seamless way to manage a communication system as compared to paper memos. And it's, as you mentioned, potentially 10 times more efficient, more available, Daniel: [00:51:50] easier for the person who's already a digital native, who's already working on their phone, you mentioned the ability for freelancers to transact, and potentially even almost have their taxes already calculated based on using this Fedcoin, which would provide so much really, a ton of relief for people who just feel that pent up anxiety of having to track all of it and file [00:52:11] taxes. So I do think, I do agree with you, Daniel, that this issue and Fedcoin into the day to day hands of the people is here to come. And I think, like you said, once the First Nation state or First Bank, Federal Bank does it, from there, it's off to the races on how quickly we can get on the mobile app on your phone and have it be a federal issued wallet. So my last question, or one of my Daniel: [00:52:36] last questions, Daniel here for you today is what concerns do you have over digital security going forward, understanding the massive solar winds hack that just happened and the overall JohnPaul: [00:52:47] Chinese and battle versus China in the US that we have going on here? You know, where do you see digital security going and how do you see blockchains either living or interacting with the overall, Daniel: [00:52:59] I guess you would say almost battle at play? Your question almost answered itself. If I was sitting on a massive stockpile of Bitcoin, which I'm not, I wish it was, government regulation, unfavorable regulation would be my second biggest concern. My biggest concern would be cryptographic security. We seem to be living in a world right now [00:53:22] of cyber war. To say it's a cold war in the cyberspace isn't even accurate. I think we seem to be at war with whom sometimes we don't even know. Often times we do, of course, other nation states and what have you. But we need to move into a decade here where we think about cryptographic security as intrinsic behind any asset because the alternative to it is the old-fashioned trust, Daniel: [00:53:49] is that if money is stolen, there's somebody to sue. There's some door to knock on. There's somebody to call on all high-friction mechanisms of dealing with breaches in trust. We have to, I'm certainly one of the first person to say this, we have to be moving towards a system by which trust is built into the way that we interact with the world. We've seen, we saw breach of Equifax. We've seen [00:54:16] breaches of credit reports. We've seen breaches of government records. Just imagine what a large scale breach of Visa would do. Just imagine what would happen if all of a sudden a huge number of credit cards were invalidated. There are industries all over the place that require automated monthly credit card billing that would have liquidity issues and cash flow issues immediately. Needless Daniel: [00:54:43] to say, the electric utility industry being one of them and other utilities that charge on a monthly basis. On this idea that the payment infrastructure could be halted or attacked and how much we rely on today, do you see that being feasible with blockchain or do you think it's built well enough to not have a single point of failure? I think blockchains need continuous improvement. I think [00:55:08] that there are some very smart people who are working on cryptographic security behind blockchains who are committing code to improving it. I see this as an arms race too. The desire to break a blockchain, to redivert payment or to do something that is nefarious to a blockchain, to me will be irresistible to people who have the power to do it. We're starting to see the emergence of Daniel: [00:55:42] the type of quantum computing and artificial intelligence technologies that might be able to compromise blockchains. We're in an arms race against future quantum computers to create quantum networks that are impenetrable to them and to create quantum proof cryptography on the blockchains. To me, it's going to be a perpetual arms race that will never go away. There will always be [00:56:10] desire to make things more secure and desire to make keys that can open any lock. If I can advise young computer scientists of anything, it's to learn quite a bit about cybersecurity because cryptography is one thing that will, in my opinion, will never go away. Never go away and only be used more and more in our day-to-day lives as we hopefully are able to Daniel: [00:56:35] prove valuable information that we hold like our Social Security number or biometric data DNA without having to give it up, which I think is currently where we are, which is you give up all this information that we don't value as a consumer, as an individual. Instead, it's taken for granted, but in reality, that information has lots and lots of value as we're seeing to the nation, [00:56:57] states and companies that are able to easily access it from us or give it away. Its information is so insecure that full value can't be extracted by those who own it. I agree with you, I'm completely, I think that's what blockchains in crypto are here to change. Daniel is that I think that over the next coming years, we will start to take back some of that Daniel: [00:57:20] data, the value to that data, be able to really own it. If that's location data, that's payment data, and hopefully be able to utilize it to produce passive income or be able to at least monetize it individually instead of where the corporation level, corporate level. Yeah, I wonder about that. I wonder as we adopt cryptocurrency, whether it's, let's say we move [00:57:47] towards Fedcoin and we adopt cryptocurrency for payment and we move towards more blockchain applications, the extent to which it will be the individual who will capture the benefit. I can't help but think that in that world, the corporations and government will certainly be capturing their fair share. So I hate to divide, I hate to presuppose how the value creation will Daniel: [00:58:11] be divided. I think that there's plenty of opportunities for savvy entrepreneurs to introduce services that create value and extract value for themselves. So I can't put a stake in the ground yet on what this will look like from an individual perspective beyond the fact that whatever a smartphone will look like in 10 years, it'll have a lot of blockchain based apps, including payment JohnPaul: [00:58:37] that we haven't quite contemplated yet. Daniel, thanks again for coming on the podcast. Where can people connect with you and what's the best way to keep in touch if they want to learn Daniel: [00:58:46] more about what you're working on? If they want to check out my company, the website is in period.io to contact me personally. LinkedIn is probably the best way. Or if push comes to shove, I would say call JP or contact JP. You know how to reach me quite well. So if anyone is looking for a mutual introduction and believe that there might be some opportunity to work with Daniel on some of these [00:59:11] topics or if anything you want to discuss, definitely reach out to me there. Or as meant Daniel mentioned JohnPaul: [00:59:16] on LinkedIn, all the notes will be in the show notes. So feel free to check out that. Thanks again, Daniel: [00:59:21] guys, for listening. We appreciate a five star review. If you haven't already left one and to share the episode with our friend or family, we always grow by making better content for you and by JohnPaul: [00:59:31] you guys telling the world about us. Thanks again, Daniel. I appreciate it. You have a great day. [00:59:36] You too, JP. Thank you. 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 Daniel: [00:59:47] support our journey to become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, mine all. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Dirty Coin, Clean Truth — Bitcoin and Energy | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 24 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/dirty-coin-bitcoin-mining-alana-mediavilla/ Dirty Coin, Clean Truth — Bitcoin and Energy | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 24 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 24 # Dirty Coin, Clean Truth — Bitcoin and Energy with Alana Mediavilla Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Alana Mediavilla to discuss dirty coin, clean truth — bitcoin and energy. ### Dirty Coin, Clean Truth with Alana Mediavilla: Bitcoin Mining Through a Filmmaker’s Lens The Film That’s Changing How the World Sees Bitcoin Mining In this episode of The Digital Gold Podcast, MiningStore CEO JohnPaul Baric sits down with award-winning filmmaker Alana Mediavilla, creator of Dirty Coin, the groundbreaking documentary that’s reframing Bitcoin mining as one of the most misunderstood innovations in modern energy and finance. Alana’s film premiered at the Bitcoin Film Festival in Warsaw, taking home Best Movie honors and igniting global conversations about how Bitcoin miners transform wasted or stranded power into global value. She shares her incredible three-year journey from Silicon Valley producer to independent filmmaker, exploring the humanity, engineering, and energy economics behind the digital-gold revolution. “Energy is life. We are an electrified people now and Bitcoin is part of that story.” Alana Mediavilla Full podcast episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/dirty-coin-uncover-the-truth-behind-bitcoin-minings/id1539971833?i=1000698117421) ### What You’ll Learn in This Episode - The untold story behind Dirty Coin, how it was filmed, financed, and premiered on the day of the Bitcoin halving. - Why energy matters more than ever and how Bitcoin mining funds renewable infrastructure and microgrids around the world. - How storytelling shapes public perception, the responsibility of filmmakers to bring truth to controversial topics. - The future of media, technology, and Bitcoin, from cinematic narratives to decentralized finance. Whether you are a miner, investor, or creative fascinated by the intersection of energy + innovation + culture, this episode offers a rare look behind the scenes of a film that challenges the mainstream narrative on Bitcoin’s environmental impact. Listen to the full episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/dirty-coin-uncover-the-truth-behind-bitcoin-minings/id1539971833?i=1000698117421) ### About Dirty Coin Dirty Coin is an independent documentary that reveals the truth about Bitcoin mining’s role in global energy markets. Through case studies from Puerto Rico, Paraguay, and Finland, it shows how miners are driving innovation in renewable energy, district heating, and grid stability, while challenging outdated environmental myths. ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ The truth behind Bitcoin mining’s environmental impact - ✅ How the Dirty Coin documentary separates fact from narrative - ✅ Why energy usage criticism often misses the bigger picture #### Related Resources Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Guide → MiningStore 62.5 MW Iowa Facility → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast, where innovation meets opportunity in the world of cryptocurrency mining. I’m your host, John Paul Baric, entrepreneur, Bitcoin pioneer, and the CEO of MiningStore, where we specialize in modular data center solutions and driving financial access to Bitcoin mining worldwide. JohnPaul: Each week, we bring you expert insights. Cutting edge strategies and real world stories from the forefront of Bitcoin mining. Whether you’re a season pro, a curious investor, or someone looking to understand the power of digital gold, this is the podcast for you. Get ready to explore the evolving world of Bitcoin mining from energy innovation to the latest tech market trends, and how to build long-term value in a decentralized economy. JohnPaul: Let’s dive in and uncover what it takes to mine successfully in the age of digital gold. Welcome back to another episode of The Digital Gold Season two. podcast where we explore the intersection of Bitcoin technology and the visionary shaping our decentralized future. Today we’re diving into [00:01:00] one of the most debated aspects of Bitcoin mining, its impact on energy markets, sustainability, and global narratives. JohnPaul: Joining us is a powerhouse in storytelling, someone who has captured the discussions through the lens of film. Alana Mediavilla is a multifaceted professional producer, creative director, writer, founder, award winning filmmaker with over a decade of experience, Shaping compelling narratives for Silicon Valley giants, including a tenure at Google, Alina has honed the craft of translating complex innovations into visually striking, thought provoking films that captivate and inspire audiences. JohnPaul: Her latest documentary Dirty Coin premiered at the Bitcoin Film Festival in Warsaw and took home the best movie award. The film dives deep into Bitcoin mining. It’s proof of work mechanism and it’s evolving role in energy markets. It challenges mainstream narratives and offers a fresh perspective on Bitcoin’s environmental and financial impact. JohnPaul: Beyond her documentary work, Alana is building Campo Libre, a [00:02:00] media venture focused on pushing the boundaries of storytelling. Her past projects, including Miso Miso and Stranded, a Dirty Coin Short, showcase her ability to blend artistry with investigative depth. Today we’re going to discuss her journey from Silicon Valley to independent filmmaker, her thought on Bitcoin’s role in shaping the future of energy, and what’s next for her in the world of media and technology. JohnPaul: Alana, welcome to Digital Goal. Alana: Thank you. Thank you for having me. JohnPaul: So, explain to me the feeling of taking home the best movie award in Warsaw. Let’s talk about that. That sounds amazing. After all this hard work to be able to receive that recognition. How did that feel? Alana: Oh my God. It was an emotion filled day. Alana: Completely. I was not expecting it. Dirty Coin premiered the day before on 4 20 24. And I picked that date because I thought it was a beautiful number. It would be a perfectly palindrome number. The only one for 2024. And I picked that date in January and I didn’t even [00:03:00] pick the date. It was actually the Bitcoin Film Festival happens to be that weekend. Alana: And Tomek and I were talking about should Dirty Coin premiere there or not. And this was , again, back in January. And we’re looking at April and I’m , yeah, we’ll be done editing it by then. So let’s do it. And it’s for 2024. It’s so perfect. Such a beautiful number. So all right, Tomek, let’s do it. Alana: And I decided Dirty Coin is going to premiere at the Bitcoin Film Festival, and then we made the film, we edited it. It was the last three months were so expensive, so painful. I was raising while I was directing and editing and it was , Oh my God, it was, I’m paying all the contractors and all the animators and everybody. Alana: It was so intense, but we got there. And then it just so happens that the having was on for 2024 in. Europe. So we premiered Dirty Coin, a Bitcoin mining documentary on the day of the having [00:04:00] that, as , , we had an idea that it was going to happen between March and April, but the exact day was not really known by anyone. Alana: And so we wouldn’t have known in January. It was a very serendipitous, , wow moment. Had I been in the US, it would have happened for 1924, but thankfully I was in Europe. And so it was for 2024. And yeah, so we premiered and there were Bitcoiners from all over the world there and to watch the premiere. Alana: So that was really cool. They were , More than 350 people in the theater. people were just sitting down the stairs and I was so fricking nervous because this was so many minors, so many big corners, so many people. And I was , wow, what a room. , what a room you can’t fool these people. Alana: these people, they know this industry, they’re in the industry. And so already just premiering it on the day of the having, and then the standup [00:05:00] ovation, that to me was , that was. the biggest award and it was just the energy in the room. I honestly, my knees were , were a wobbly from all of the emotion and all the energy in the room. Alana: And so the next day when they were announcing the awards, I really hoped I would win one, but I already felt I won, , I premiered on the day of the having, which was for 2024 to a standing ovation. , ah, I’ll never forget that moment. But then when we won Best Movie, and I saw the other movies, and so that’s why I wasn’t sure we were going to win anything, because there were some great movies at the festival that year. Alana: And I had seen some of the other ones that I’d be , Damn, it’s good stuff. JohnPaul: So is that internal critic we always have just , Oh, giving us that feedback. #### Energy Meets AI Demand Alana: Yeah, , look at how good all their interviews are. None of them are out of focus at all. , , I’m , completely nitpicking. And, and so anyway, so yeah, so that moment, I’m not, thank you for asking me. Alana: Nobody’s actually asked me about that moment. That moment, I feel, [00:06:00] I feel I just relived it for a little bit there. It was really special. So then I got up and I was , I was so in shock because I really didn’t think that I was going to win. I thought I was going to win audience. award because my theater was the fullest theater of all the other movies. Alana: And so I thought , maybe I’ll just get by numbers because there were so many people, but the way that they were voting was through lightning donations. that’s, those were the votes were lightning. And my wallet got capped because I had an Albi wallet and my wallet got, I had a cap on it and I sold for dirty coin and then we couldn’t get more votes. Alana: And so that was so shitty. And so that, but then we won Best Movie and I was , oh my god I just thought we were, I didn’t even think we would be eligible for Best Movie. So it was just a shocker because I find out my wallet is maxed out because I get an email to everybody’s texting me that they can’t vote for me because the sats keep getting rejected and I’m , I lost the vote. Alana: And yeah, because I thought it was, that was [00:07:00] the only award that I would be eligible for, just because of the energy in the room. But anyway, but then we got Best Movie, so that was really cool. JohnPaul: I love it. Thanks for sharing what it felt , because I think that’s so important. At the long end of this venture, of this year long endeavor, be able to just appreciate everyone’s contributions, their votes, their , it’s our bids for support. JohnPaul: I feel that’s such an amazing feeling that, as a creative, to really feel that appreciation. Alana: Yes, yes, especially after so many people helped me get there. I had friends that even lent me their apartments in Austin so that I can not have to pay for a hotel while I’m in town for South by Southwest. So, while I was building the film, there were so many kind souls that helped me that didn’t know. Alana: What the heck? Who they were supporting really yet because they hadn’t seen the film dirty coin was in production for three years. So a lot of people knew me, but they hadn’t really, they didn’t really know what [00:08:00] it was going to all really come. What was dirty coin? , , yeah, a lot of works on dirty coin, but what is it? Alana: Is it going to actually end up looking , and so, yeah, it was good to get that recognition. And honestly, I got there. Thanks to a wave of. Pull up support all over the world before releasing dirty coin. We released strand in as a proof of concept, which is a short film and I released it for free. All you had to do was screen it. Alana: In person at your meetup or at your school or at your party, just in person with some friends. And I thought that only a couple of people would be down, but people from all over the world were down, Bitcoin meetups and education groups and blockchain groups and crypto groups and web three groups and film three groups and women in web three groups. Alana: And so many people showed up to support for stranded. And I feel that’s. In so many ways help pave the way for an appetite for Dirty Coin. , and it’s thanks to so many people. [00:09:00] So yeah, Dirty Coin is really just, it’s the work of many. JohnPaul: The work of many led by you. And that’s why it’s amazing to see that, that journey. JohnPaul: I want to hear more about maybe your first film. And not even a film, but your first time creating as maybe a little girl or a teenager or a young adult. And what did you make? Why were you interested in expressing through this medium of video and storytelling behind that type of camera? Alana: Well, I started with animation. Alana: I had a, a MacBook, or not a MacBook a, an Imec, the bubbly kind. And I had kid picks. It was an animation software and it was super easy animation. you could make loops, you could, it already had all these different assets that you could put together and you had a timeline. And it got me. And I just, , there was no internet back then, so it was just , if I wanted, I wanted to play on the computer. Alana: I love the computer, so I would just. Make animations all day long. It was either that or Carmen [00:10:00] Sandiego. Those are the two things that I used to do most on the computer. And I just really enjoyed, , showing it and impressing people. , how you did that? And watching them, , getting adults attention was so Fun for me, because adults are so, they have their mind everywhere else, especially my parents, they were running a small business. Alana: So to be able to captivate their attention was really cool. And then I kept animating and I kept doing just little projects. And I thought that I was good at marketing. And I guess I was. But because for me, it was , oh, I can capture your attention. And I’m good at that. , I can, , make people, , listen to my message. Alana: So I’ll sell them something. I guess that’s how I can make money. And so I got into, , art direction for the focus of, , commercial art direction. And I don’t know, I don’t necessarily want to go down completely the whole story, but Being able to tell a story and captivate people’s attention was important for [00:11:00] me and it was in 2020 that I with the world locking down and everything going upside down and I was living in California so I was really receiving the super one end of the spectrum of how the world responded to that that I just really completely burnt out on wanting to sell anything to anyone anymore I was no I’m gonna use This ability to get people to , listen. Alana: to my work for other messages that have nothing to do with buying anything. And then I stopped doing commercial. I stopped completely advertising that my agency was approaching a million. We were about to hit a million. And I was , , it was a conversation with my mom where I was , well, I’m just going to take the agency to 5 million, but I’m done with this mom. #### Industry Deep Dive Alana: And then I’m out of the game. And then she’s , what are you going to do after? I’m , I’m going to make movies, which is what I really want to do is she was , Why do you need to wait for 5 million to make movies? Can’t you just make it now? It was , [00:12:00] honestly, the most, , oh shit, I can quit my job, my job, my business job. Alana: I can just quit it and I can just. Do something else. Yes, then I fired all my clients and I burned the ships behind me and I decided to work on a film that Oddly enough makes people want to get Bitcoin That was not my intention at all I just wanted to I felt Bitcoin didn’t have a voice mine it doesn’t have marketing right? Alana: It doesn’t have a division that, , handles how people talk about certain things. It’s just every minor for themselves, however they want to defend themselves in front of whatever camera is in front of them. And I felt that the industry was lacking that, , PR voice. And although I rejected my marketing past, I do have it. Alana: And it is something I learned how to do is describe and [00:13:00] dismantle something highly technical in a way that a regular person can understand, which is what I did with my corporate work in Silicon Valley. , and so I was , , I’m not going to completely reject my past, I’m going to embrace who I am and I’m going to tackle a subject that isn’t really being tackled properly and I’m going to dismantle it just so that we can change public opinion to a point where we can now have a more literate conversation regarding mining, , it’s not , oh, mining is good to close the book. JohnPaul: So with a Bitcoin mining film, Bitcoin is very technical. How do you balance the technical aspects of your storytelling with the ideal viewer that you had in mind when you launched the Dirty Coin film? And then also, who was that ideal? Viewer that needed to learn about Bitcoin in your mind and the person that was sitting there watching this film Even before it was made your persona Alana: the persona. Alana: I was going for from the beginning was a [00:14:00] technical person that lives in San Francisco that has heard that Bitcoin mining is bad for the environment and They only read one New York Times article about it And that was it. They do feel informed because they read an article. They are a savvy, intelligent person. Alana: The one thing that they read said that it was really bad. It’s, , all the energy consumption and they didn’t really let, that was it. That was all the attention that they gave it. They filed that file in . This is where Bitcoin is and that’s it. And my idea was, let’s look at that. Let’s really look at what you heard and let’s really understand this industry because this industry, you’re going to legislate against it. Alana: You’re going to legislate against computers doing math, securing a financial network, uncensorable money. And this is important, whether. You understand this or not yet. This is important for other people in the world, for most people in the world. And yes, for [00:15:00] Americans too, but it’s , we still have the dollar. Alana: So I have definitely seen other places adopt it much faster and. It’s when I, especially when I work with international people working in Bitcoin is , that’s really where it really comes in super handy is I can just Venmo you, but I can’t just Venmo somebody in South America, or I can just Venmo somebody in Africa. Alana: So when you start really moving your body around the world and start seeing that not every place is the same, but you still want to carry that modern. Zapping, , I’ll just pay virtually if you still want to carry that, then you need a new mechanism and Bitcoin has become that already. And so that was the persona that I was going for. Alana: And that persona is not going to start mining. They don’t need to know how to mine. They don’t need to know the algorithm. That persona is not. Maybe they invest in mining. Maybe they buy Bitcoin. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they set to side there. Maybe they see the value in GPUs. [00:16:00] Finally, they understand data centered a little bit better. Alana: And, , don’t know what people want to do afterwards, but I know for a fact that if they want to learn more. There are more technical videos out there that they can find for free. There’s incredible podcasts that really do more deep dives into what exactly are the machines doing? Alana: What exactly is hash rate? What’s the difficulty adjustment, all of these things that you have to really get so excited about it, that then you start digging and frankly, that search is so exciting that have a. But my viewer is probably not that person. And if they were that person, then they’re just going to go on YouTube and find those videos and continue going down that rabbit hole. Alana: So for me, I didn’t want to confuse the person that will not want to continue to look at Bitcoin anymore. I just want them to understand one thing clearly, or at least. One new concept, I wanted them to see a new concept and yeah, [00:17:00] but the intricacies of exactly how everything is working and also some of them, I just didn’t really have the budget to do the animation for, , the Byzantine generals problem. Alana: I had a killer storyboard for that animation. I did want to explain that. But I just didn’t have the budget and that was the one that I cut. I felt explaining how a landfill works, how I felt the animation that explains how methane collected from a landfill and turned into Bitcoin was the animation that really nobody had done yet versus this. Alana: Byzantine generals, you can go on YouTube and you can find it. So I opted for doing the thing that I felt wasn’t really done yet. Then I had to kill some darlings, but I’m still happy with the way that it came out. JohnPaul: I love that you mentioned the Byzantine general problem because that was me in high school. JohnPaul: Bitcoin’s going to save the world because it solves the Byzantine generals problem. what that was? why that’s important for trust when people are , what are you talking about? Well, you see, there was [00:18:00] these horsemen that attack a castle and everyone attacks and they’re , what are you talking about? JohnPaul: So that was me as a 16 year old running around in 2013, trying to explain Bitcoin to people. I love that to make it into the film, but that you had that on the storyboard. So. , walk us through the storyboarding process you’ve been doing this for years. How do you visualize not only the abstract concepts you mentioned that maybe you’re not diving deep into, but you’re still highlighting, but also then the whole story of this is Bitcoin mining here and this is Bitcoin mining in this environment out at methane gas. #### Mining Infrastructure Development JohnPaul: Landfill, here’s one at a wind farm. , how did you think about this? Explain to us that process. Are you locking yourself in a room for a week? Is it over a month that you happen? Are you changing it, ripping it up, sticky notes? What is the process of storyboarding? Alana: So storyboarding was, so not only am I doing, making this film for a person that doesn’t understand Bitcoin, that’s my persona. Alana: I’m also working with animators that also don’t understand Victorian, so I couldn’t just [00:19:00] tell my animator just animate a person going to the store in this style and they get in the car and this, , I can just give quick, but when it came to this stuff, . They were , what? Alana: , energy, Bitcoin, mining, , all of these things were subjects that they just were not proficient in. My editor was improficient in Bitcoin. , that’s why I had to grab all the clips because at one point I remember I left him for a week to do a cut and when I came back he pretty much just Put a cut together, a rough cut of how incredible Bitcoin is all over the world. Alana: And I’m , okay, okay, great. No, we’re not doing this. This is not the film we’re making. There’s already films that. You can go on YouTube. we’re not making a, an expensive YouTube video here. We’re going to really focus on all this research that I did. These are , where we got to go. Alana: There was a lot of guidance and the, Oh, I do want to thank a bunch of people for the storyboard process. So I would put together the storyboard [00:20:00] and. This was just a lot of Canva shapes and very simple stuff. Then I worked with my illustrator and he would just share his screen and we would have two to three hour workshops where I would explain a shot and then he would illustrate it while we were talking. Alana: And I would see what he was illustrating and we already had a color palette from the very beginning of the film and actually the poster, we’ve had the poster since we started, so I always had visually what was the style that I was going for. And so at least that helped us in that regard and then I worked with the same illustrator for two and a half years to work on this so he and I were just constantly communicating. Alana: And every time I would see a good YouTube video, I would send it to him. So now he’s a Bitcoiner, of course. Now he’s , honestly, a proper Bitcoiner. But he didn’t start out that way. And so we would just work on that together. He’s in Poland. My illustrator and my animator are in Poland. [00:21:00] Everything was virtual with them. Alana: I did then hire a Puerto Rican, a local animator to help me with some of the later stuff that came at the very end. And she too is now a big corner. I swear I’m not trying. I really am not trying to orange pill people anymore, but it just happens. So then after we would storyboard it, I had a couple of friends in the Bitcoin space that super nerds that are my super friends and I would send it to them and I would be , Hey, is this accurate? Alana: Is this correct? Is this how your machine works? Is this true? And then they would give us any feedback that they had and I sent it to a few different people and Nobody billed me. I zapped some folks because I cared, but nobody billed me for their expertise or their time. Bitcoiners were very generous with their expertise and their time. Alana: And yeah, and so then we just animated it once the illustrations were ready. But That’s when then we knew we first storyboarded [00:22:00] everything, which is something that I would do differently next time. I just, cause then we didn’t green light all of the storyboards, but we spent a lot of time on all the storyboards. Alana: So that is one thing, cause then it’s another 40 hours per thing or whatever. So when I was , that’s when I had to kill some darlings. So in the future, I won’t do such polished storyboards before nixing them. JohnPaul: It sounds , as , every journey we learn, we iterate. We can take in the feedback and it’s so amazing to hear that Bitcoin miners were willing to give you just without any expectation of something else. JohnPaul: Just , Hey, yeah, that’s how you do a shot 256 hash rate. That’s how the machine communicates with the pool. And then for you to animate it and storyboard it, that’s amazing. Let’s talk about fundraising. You’re building a massive movie. How did that work? What hurdles did you have in convincing investors that another Bitcoin story was needed and what was the high? JohnPaul: And if you’re willing to share, what was the low of that time and seeing this beautiful vision of [00:23:00] this poster behind you and a virtual world that you’re creating and animating that you want to bring into the world and knowing that it’s going to take real capital to do that. I’d love to hear that journey. Alana: Well, I was an executive producer at Google, but my role was . A lot, , I would just write what the projects were, what, how much they cost and then they would be approved. Amazing. So when I would talk to my LA executive producer friends or San Francisco executive producer friends, that’s not what they were doing. Alana: they were financing movies. They were finding capital. It was different. It was a different role. And so I always felt an imposter when I would say I’m an executive producer because it’s , I know in LA terms in the film industry what that means. And. That is not. Truly who I am because I have the golden handcuffs on the whole thing and I’m happy. Alana: I’m happy. Anyway, so I knew what the role was. I knew what it meant. I knew that it meant fundraising. I knew that it meant and I’m [00:24:00] no stranger to having to sell my services because I’ve had my company for 14 years this year or 14. Quite a while, more than a decade, and I was closing clients on commercials, again, selling them my services as a video producer. Alana: So I was used to doing proposals and contracts and that stuff from a service exchange perspective. I just had to switch that to, I had this idea. Can you give me money for this idea? Which is again, what I used to do at Google, except. I would be , I had this idea of making Google look good this way. Alana: Can I please have the money to do so? And then it would be an easy yes. Well, sometimes it was no, by the way, it wasn’t always yes, but it’s basically the same function, but my idea, selling my thing and some documentaries are hard to fund, I called a dirty coin from the beginning and. Either Bitcoiners were turned off by it or no coiners did not care enough about Bitcoin mining to [00:25:00] invest in a Bitcoin mining documentary. #### AI and HPC Infrastructure Alana: So, and then Bitcoin was at 69 or something when I started fundraising. Yeah, it got to 69. And then it just started . Plummeting and that was in so I think it was 2022 that is just , and so suddenly the Bitcoiners that were interested in saying the story and that those are the people that knew me because I had been in Bitcoin, but I didn’t go to networking events. Alana: I wasn’t a Bitcoin influencer, I was on Twitter before, so I wasn’t a part of the cult. I was in Bitcoin, but I wasn’t in the cult. I was just a solo Bitcoiner out in the world that got lucky finding Bitcoin really. And so. I didn’t really have a big network to really fundraise from, but I was lucky enough at the beginning to meet people that had early podcasts and things that they just had me on and discussing the project. Alana: And booted up a geyser page. It’s a, Kickstarter, but for Bitcoin. [00:26:00] And I would just point people to there and there were In the barest of markets, people would send us 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 30 bucks, a hundred to work on the film. And that’s actually when I started just really using my Bitcoin a lot more because I needed to pay for the services. Alana: So then I started paying my illustrator for certain milestones in Bitcoin. I started using it to pay cinematographers because now we had enough of a bank that. I eventually didn’t always go down, eventually went up again as well. And we were able to pay for a lot of stuff. And again, this is why my accountant had to learn how to deal with a Bitcoin business and what that means. Alana: And yeah, , it has been a really long and beautiful, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I lost the train of thought as soon as I thought of my accountant. JohnPaul: Oh, taxes and accounting. Yes, yes. Yeah, cause Alana: that’s . 20 stories come to mind. I will say none of them unless you ask, [00:27:00] but no. JohnPaul: So you’re building this piggy bank. JohnPaul: You’re doing it through, it sounds , some crowdfunding, a Bitcoin crowdfunding mechanism. And when do you go to that first location to film? Did you go just as just a filming group in, I guess, that first spot? And why that spot? And what operational realities did you realize once you got to the mine? JohnPaul: , it was way too loud to film inside. Or what happened in that first scene or that first filming session that you remember? Alana: Well, the first one was here in Puerto Rico and I voted the bill for that one completely. , I voted the bill for the film for the first year on my own just because I had to put my weight behind it. Alana: I had to really Convey what my idea was. It was the beginning of a bear market. I could feel it in my bones. We started the war with Russia. , it was right after 2020. , it’s a dark time. And I was , I need to build this as much as I can so that I can accurately communicate the vision to other people. Alana: And [00:28:00] so I stayed local. I stayed in Puerto Rico. There was a minor that I happened to meet here. And he was an OG miner, one of the first large scale miners, his name is Sean Walsh. And , he’s from Redwood City Ventures. So we had a lot in common, also coming from California, moving to Puerto Rico. Alana: And he was the first person that when I explained to him why I felt the energy component was so important, and that’s why I was making the film, it wasn’t just , don’t pick on Bitcoin. It’s more , bro, we can grow energy infrastructure thanks to Bitcoin mining. So let’s look at that. that, that’s important stuff. Alana: And so when I explained that to him, that was entirely his passion in life was how can Bitcoin mining really be continued to be that tool. And this was back in 2021 and I knew that he was the interview that I needed to have. He [00:29:00] wasn’t sure if he wanted to be on camera as many miners, especially when I told him the name was dirty coin and that I would ultimately publish whatever I actually saw because Satoshi didn’t pay me to do this. Alana: It’s my name. I’m the one. Going out there. So ultimately it is a branding decision to call it dirty coin, even though I wasn’t against it. I do believe Bitcoin should stay dirty. But anyway, that’s another story as well. But we filmed that interview and it was thanks to that interview that we filmed here. Alana: We filmed it with great gear. I hired a local production company that brought all excellent lighting and gear. Cause I also wanted to prove the quality that I wanted the movie to be. I couldn’t start with , Oh, this is a webcam video, but trust me, it’s going to look good. I had to look good. Alana: And so I’m really happy that I took that bet. Cause that was , I had just left Google. I had, my runway was running dry really quickly and I invested in that. And then I was able to get investment after that. a little [00:30:00] bit, but enough to keep going and then keep pulling that thread. And the first big farm that I went to that wasn’t just somebody that had racks in their houses was in Paraguay. Alana: And so that was , I just felt I went to one of the ground zero, even though there are several ground zero, so Bitcoin mining around the world, Texas being another one, but one of the epicenters. And that was, Yes, it is. You cannot interview. I did have in the storyboard that I was going to interview somebody inside the container. Alana: Obviously we couldn’t, we had to do B roll in the container and then do the interview outside. #### Technical Discussion JohnPaul: I know. I love that. And you mentioned energy. And it is such a fundamental aspect of not only Bitcoin, but human life, human longevity, quality of life. So walk me through this conversation with this first Puerto Rican Bitcoiner. JohnPaul: You’re convincing him that this project is worth filming and getting on camera for. Why is energy [00:31:00] matter so much to you? And how does that show up in the film? Alana: Energy matters to me because it is life. Energy is life. , you feel the energy of something alive and you don’t feel the energy of something that is dead. Alana: And even dead things don’t still have energy, right? this still has atoms. There’s still energy in this, but when you touch something living, you can feel the difference. You can feel the electromagnetic field or something. There is there that you can just Really know that the energy, and I’ve always guided my decisions by vibes or energy. Alana: , we try to find these words to describe our emotions and our bad energy, good energy. It’s , I don’t even know if we truly understand what we’re saying when we say these words. And I don’t think we need to. It’s good or bad, right? , I don’t know. But energy to me has always been important from that perspective and seeing the growing demand of specifically electricity now when we’re speaking of that [00:32:00] energy or that way that you can consume, how do we consume that energy through electricity? Alana: , we need to charge our phones, we need to charge our cars, we need to have this modern life requires electricity. And. Even our factories require electricity, we’re at a point of no return as a society. Could we live without it? Yeah, of course we could. We did for a long time, but we’re at a point I feel of no return. Alana: We have flipped the switch to we are an electrified people and now we just need to keep making electricity because we’re not going back unless there’s another great flood. That’s the subject of a different conversation. But that we need to. Make sure that this thing that we now depend on is available for the next generations. Alana: And so when I see that I’ve always had an issue on obsessing over the issues of the past, when we have so many issues in the future that we should really be [00:33:00] focused on because this train is going forward and. How are the tracks up ahead? Who cares the condition of the train is now because of the tracks in the past? Alana: , I get it. I get it. , this is why the train goes , rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah, rah. But , where are we going with this train? And so that, to me, is super important. It’s , we are an electrified people now, period. We are driving people towards that. We’re telling people they need to have EVs. Alana: We’re telling companies that they can only make cars that are powered by electricity. Where is that electricity going to come from when our grids can barely support the needs of today? And we’re also saying no to fossil fuels. The math doesn’t add up. The math isn’t there. So that’s why I feel very passionate about the energy side, the electricity energy side, because I feel we need to I need to, I can’t know this information and not do anything about it. Alana: I can’t [00:34:00] look at my grandchildren and be , yep, it’s fucked. And I knew it was fucked 50 years ago. And I did nothing, but you see, I was right. No. I want to . Do something about it so that they want to have an electric car. They can have it. I’m also not anti electric car. You can have whatever car you want, but I want there to be an amount of electricity that we can have data centers. Alana: We can power modern life. We can power the life of the future. And when we look at dirty coin and we see how big these data centers are, I don’t think people truly understand that Bitcoin does actually consume a lot of power and. So do other data centers and it will continue to do more now. Can it do it? Alana: Great. Can we use it as a tool to finance energy? Yeah. And all of that is happening, whether you it or not. It’s all happening already right now. And that’s what I documented in the film feelings aside, this is occurring, but we need to really look at the future and think, are we ready? And I don’t think that misgendering me is not going to make us ready for the future. JohnPaul: [00:35:00] You mentioned this, something I’m very passionate about as a Bitcoin miner, the energy space. And in someone listening to this, they’re thinking, what do you mean? I have energy. My phone always works when I plug it into the wall, my outlets always work. And that’s mostly because of my audience is US based. JohnPaul: But when you are going through the film and you’re showing that because of a Bitcoin mine, These people built a dam or these people built this energy production resource and they built a micro grid. And without that, it’s not economically viable to bring energy to these rural areas across the world that would leapfrog and empower these communities, allowing them to connect to the internet, now connect to the blockchain and have stable, secure working conditions and stable connection to the outside world. JohnPaul: That is an amazing, I think, undertone that the film really brings. That people don’t see it from the outside Bitcoin data centers, Texas freeze. It’s your fault. You’re Bitcoin miners that the freeze happened and people died. And that’s not the truth. The truth is that [00:36:00] Bitcoin miners are going to use energy when no one needs it. JohnPaul: And then when everyone needs it, it’s too expensive. For us to use. And that’s the beautiful benefit of it. When you were trying to tell that story, what was important to you when it comes to telling the story of energy to a community and the impact that you mentioned, the benefits of energy as a society level, but what did you see firsthand in a world community and how Bitcoin mining impacted it? Alana: In telling this story, I wanted to be as specific as possible. And that’s why. Only went with case studies because ultimately that’s been the issue is that we take one case study and we speak in general about the entire industry based on this one case study and I wanted to present a variety of case studies that people are not usually exposed to so that they don’t, it’s not just. Alana: Bitcoin mining in Africa is helping the Africans. It’s , where in Malawi, where in Bondo, how there, how many houses? that was the [00:37:00] level of detail that I wanted to get down to, because this is in this, I didn’t want it to be in marketing coming from marketing. We don’t give specifics. It’s. The African continent. Alana: We’re lighting up the continent. We’re going in a different direction, right? Because, yeah, it’s technically true. But I didn’t want to do that with the film. I wanted it to be very specific because if you’ve been in marketing, you can smell the bullshit. , it’s not the entire continent. So that’s, ultimately, it’s BS. #### Strategic Perspectives Alana: I wanted it to be authentic. I wanted it to be real. . The things that I was able to see in Finland when I met with the energy and heat director and he, about Bitcoin and mining, and he was, it’s very simple, the machines produce heat, we need the heat. Get the electricity, but we can’t get the heat there because Finland has a district heating network And we lose the energy of the [00:38:00] heat as it gets transported, but electricity goes for longer and so they’re able to then deploy Bitcoin miners and Areas where they can get electricity to but they can’t get heat. Alana: So they’re decentralizing their heating with These computers with Bitcoin mining. , that’s ingenious. Again, this is why I want to have the conversation. Cause it brings up things , well, what are they using? What heat pumps? I , it actually also helps other industries that are also related. Alana: And I met a lot of people that at mining conferences that were, I would be , Oh, are you in mining? And they’d be , No, I sell a component that miners use a lot of, and they just happen to, and they always sold it. But now there’s this industry that really needs this particular thing. And now they have a completely new buyer. Alana: And so it’s. Understanding also all of the industries that are being built around this one industry also speaks to the amount of money [00:39:00] that this industry truly, it truly takes to power this. This isn’t just some guys with some miners in their backyards anymore. This is, although you do have that too, but this is a global money printing Bitcoin mining business. Alana: So you can only imagine, , there’s everybody in this space. JohnPaul: And then that’s one of the beautiful things about Bitcoin mining. And I think Film does a good job of showing you, you can be a massive scale miner. You can be a small individual. You can be a city or a town heating your home. You can be a rural community using this to finance your energy infrastructure. JohnPaul: The fact that you don’t need to find a customer and that Bitcoin is your customer. Is it beautiful because now it’s the physics of money creation of energy usage of a level playing field that really brings anything allows Bitcoin to be accepted by more people and brings joy to me as a small miner that it is possible to build a lifestyle around it, but also to build communities around it. JohnPaul: And we have 23 plus employees at the mining store. All from local Bitcoin [00:40:00] mines in Iowa, supported from people in the Philippines there that are working for us, to people in Iowa directly there. So it’s just, you see this amazing impact all from this fake digital money made by Satoshi that is such a beautiful invention for the world. Alana: Yes, yes, yes. I didn’t even know that there were Bitcoin conferences when I was in Bitcoin, let alone Bitcoin mining conferences. And boy, is that fascinating. I’m so happy that DirtyCoin brought me into that because. Just understanding how big this space is and who is in the space. , , this is, it’s proper tech, it’s a proper tech conference. JohnPaul: And so for you, , what was your most unexpected reaction from the community or the mainstream audiences with this film? what was something you didn’t see coming, but people were . This resonated in this way with me and you were , I never thought about that. That that has that happened to you when you’re presenting the film to others? Alana: Their reaction has been, I wasn’t expecting such a [00:41:00] positive reaction from the Bitcoin community. Because the Bitcoin community is Savage, savage and I saw that while I was making it the forums, it’s the internet, , and a lot of people are anonymous. Alana: So it’s savage and at the beginning it was , oh my God, I would get into a telegram group and I would be , hi, I’m doing a Bitcoin mining documentary and I would love to interview Bitcoin miners. So if you would to end the. The name of the documentary is Dirty Coin, and da da da and then I would get , I would get my ass whooped, hand it to me in these chat groups, and then I’d be , okay, fine, well, and then one person would be , I’ll meet, whatever, and I’d meet with them, and then, or another person would be , I met her at a conference, she’s cool, and then it was such a, the first year that I knew that then all eyes were on me, in a way. Alana: Because it took me three years to, by the time I was done, everybody, because I was such a [00:42:00] , Hi, , I’m a lady in the room. And people are , you’re CIA. You’re , what the, I heard so many things. And so when the movie finally came out, I was , crap, people are going to tear it apart. That was what I was ready for. Alana: Because I’ve seen really good stuff that Bitcoiners are really mean about and I’m , that’s actually really good. , I love that video. Why would you? Okay, fine. People say dumb stuff. But so yes, so I was really expecting a lot of bad feedback and I was fine and I was ready for it. I was going to take DirtyCoin to a place where I felt happy with it and I felt proud of what I did. Alana: And I wasn’t really expecting the whole world to agree because the whole world never agrees on anything. I’m not going to aim for that. I’m going to aim for satisfaction only. So yeah, so that was really cool to have people actually my work was great. And in terms of reaction, we did record [00:43:00] reactions at a lot of the different screenings that we did. Alana: And I was surprised at how many people were so passionate about Bitcoin, so passionate about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining and how they needed dirty coin to communicate to their family. they were dirty coin is the one thing I’ve been looking for to show my friends and family. I wasn’t so, so not only was I expecting to just not please everybody, I was hoping that some people would it, , and then that was it. Alana: But to have so many people say You literally made the thing that I have been wanting that floors me every time I hear it. I just heard it last night in a screening that we did in Texas and I got logged on for a live Q& A and he was , dirty coin is what I needed to show my mom and my girlfriend, what I do as a Bitcoin miner. Alana: And yeah, so it feels really good to be able to create something that people . When [00:44:00] you’re a filmmaker, you’re not making a medicine or you’re not making a vital tool. So you don’t really expect that your work is the one thing that somebody needs in their life, unless it’s, I don’t know, suicide prevention or something. Alana: I don’t know. I had never really thought of that effect that I could have as a filmmaker. So it makes me really happy that Dirty Queen can do that for so many people that they feel finally, maybe they can be understood, that they can show it to their friends and family. Yeah, I wasn’t expecting that and it leaves me speechless and yet so much to say about just the power of Filmmaking and why it’s so important to have ethical people behind Storytelling because storytelling is it can control so much of human perception and human life I would say when I watched the film in Florida, it was Inspiring you’re sitting there. JohnPaul: You’re seeing all these other You’re seeing the impact of the work you’re doing. And I think as someone who’s been in this space for a while, you can get maybe disconnected from the bigger [00:45:00] story, the bigger impact and the wide ranging impact that Bitcoin mining has across communities. So for me, it was very inspirational. #### Day-to-Day Mining Operations JohnPaul: And to your point, , Oh, I can show people this and they’ll understand what I do as someone who dropped out of school. I was always for a part of my time thinking, who am I and how do I explain my role in the world? How do I explain what Bitcoin mining is? Oh, I build data centers. Oh, I build Bitcoin minds. JohnPaul: , what is it that I do and how does that impact my community? So this film does a great job of, I think, summarizing that. And I’d love to hear if you have any advice for other filmmakers who are tackling any niche or controversial. topics, , a Bitcoin mining and how do when does trust your gut and just say, you mentioned be ethical, make the right decision. JohnPaul: You seem you came into the film with a view of not having , Oh, I’m going to push that Bitcoin is good, but I’m going to be an investigative journalist and I’m going to look through the eyes of someone who is investigating what is Bitcoin mining actually [00:46:00] versus , that Bloomberg piece hit piece. Alana: My advice to filmmakers is don’t compromise your integrity ever, ever. I’ve never had to. , I’ve never had to in my entire career. I’ve never had anybody make me do anything that I don’t want to do, and I’ve never done anything that I’m not proud of. So you can live an ethical, fun life that, where you don’t compromise on your values and your integrity to yourself. Alana: You are your own best friend. So you need to don’t betray yourself. You can’t betray yourself. You need to be true to yourself and everyone else, but especially you. I’m , you are with you until you die. And I don’t know, I have a good relationship with myself and my gut and my feelings and I know where I’m strong at. Alana: I know where I’m weak at and As I get older, I only myself more than it is because of those moments that I am tried. And my advice to filmmakers is be radically [00:47:00] independent and radically responsible for all of your decisions. Don’t pin it on anyone. you make a decision. You have to live with it. Alana: A movie is a tattoo for a filmmaker. Every time you make a movie. That movie will come up and be referenced forever. I have seen interviews of directors when they’re 90, and they’re still asking them about movies that they made when they were in their 30s. So your movies as a filmmaker are, they’re yours. Alana: They have your name on them. Be true to yourself. I don’t care who else has their name on. , I guess that’s the filmmaker I am. There’s all kinds of filmmakers out there, but I don’t bend the knee. I do what I want to do, and whoever wants to come and do it with me can do it with me, and we can do it together, but I won’t sacrifice on the things that I want to do. Alana: And I also trust people when they want to do their own thing. And that’s part of the reason why I’m also investing in other indie filmmakers now as well as an executive producer. And funding them and letting them try their own thing as well. I also respect other people trying their [00:48:00] thing, but that is because I hope for authenticity. Alana: And you can only authentically say your story. If I want to say other stories, I’m going to need to let other people tell those stories if they’re going to be told authentically. So I would say to filmmakers, be yourself. Because nobody can do it better. And I know that’s super cliche, but it’s so true. Alana: I’ve had to embrace my marketing background. I’ve had to embrace my Silicon Valley background. I’ve had, , had I left all of that and just done something about flowers, I don’t think the documentary would have come out as good because I’ve been in tech. For a long time, I did films for Google cloud on data centers. Alana: I had to embrace my past to create dirty coin. And it is so authentically me because this is what I’ve been, I’ve been working on tech films forever. And so I don’t leave who you are behind because nobody’s going to be able to do it you. So, yeah, so that’s what I would tell filmmakers, especially niche filmmakers, [00:49:00] but also tell them get in the chat groups, even if they call you a spy, get in the chat groups and interact with your community. Alana: What community is it? How do they communicate? What are they talking about? I think that one of the reasons why Dirty Coin has all of the memes and all of the clips and everything that it has is and that it feels it resonates with minors is because I’ve been with you guys. I’ve been in this community for now four years. Alana: , I’ve been in the chat groups. I’ve been to your mining operations. I’ve been looking at your videos. You guys sent me content. I’ve been there. So if you’re going to create a film about a community, you better be ready to interact with that community authentically for an extended amount of time. Alana: If you don’t hanging out with. People from the carnival don’t make a documentary about people for us carnivals. you need to the people there and you need to authentically want to connect. Otherwise, I don’t recommend it because you’re never going to be able to craft [00:50:00] a good story because you don’t want to be there. Alana: So the story is going to reflect that. So I would say those things. A, trust your gut, and then B, authentically connect with the community that you’re Making a film about or for, and I think we see that authentic voice of you as the director through this dirty coin film, especially the animation. And I’ve never seen animation this in a Bitcoin film. JohnPaul: And so if you haven’t seen this film, guys, dirty coin, definitely check it out for not only the animation, but that’s how your story started. And I had no idea until I asked that question that your first. Foray into filmmaking was animation and seeing that truth that you’ve held with yourself since as a younger child till now and being able to then present. JohnPaul: A polished animated film on one of the most, maybe one of those controversial topics out there, one of the biggest impactful topics on energy and the future of life and Bitcoin and energy adoption. So I just want to congratulate you on following that [00:51:00] dream and passion. And we’d to understand and wrap it up with what’s next for you. JohnPaul: And how do you measure this, the success of the film? Is it adoption? Is it awareness? It’s just sounds it’s already feeling that success there. And I know we all set our own goals for success, but do you have anything that what’s next for you and what would make this a home run and it already is a home run, but what gets it a grand slam? Alana: Well, first of all, thank you. I appreciate your acknowledgement and I cannot wait to head to Austin and hang out with you and have a beer or a tea or something for sure. So thank you. Cause you’re , you acknowledge very, very authentically. And I appreciate that. What’s next for me is. I am still self distributing DirtyCoin. #### Mining Pool Strategy Alana: Last year, this has been a journey of much growth. And last year I was expecting to sell DirtyCoin quickly, that it was going to be a, it was going to be a grand slam. Alrighty, out the door. It wasn’t. It was in the community and that’s , it was amazing. But from a HBO set, no [00:52:00] Netflix set. No other production companies were , the film is already completed. Alana: You should have come to us before you finished it. So, , then we would have been enrolled. And so I just kept getting , no, no, no. Very nice. Now’s I appreciate that. Nobody was a dick about it, but I got a lot of no’s. Ultimately it was just a, no, that forced me to. Get it to the community somehow because the Bitcoin community wanted it the networks didn’t so I wasn’t gonna hold it for Hopefully a network someday wants it screw it if this networks don’t wanna in the Bitcoin community wants it then I’m gonna release it and so We took it to theaters, we took it to different people, screened it all over the world, we did around 500 screenings around the world last year alone. Alana: It was incredible, we translated the movie to five, four different languages, so we have five languages. We have Brazilian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, and English. And honestly, I wouldn’t have Been able to learn as [00:53:00] much about film markets and taking film directly to smaller networks and smaller movie theater chains and smaller licensing opportunities. Alana: Had I not, I don’t think I would have been able to connect with so many Bitcoiners and so many people around the world and learned so much about being able to, as a filmmaker, get your film in front of the people that want it because. You think you just want HBO, but ultimately they’ll just put it up on their library, and did people watch it? Alana: Did people it? So in a way, I really love that I can feel the pool of all of the interest of the documentary around the world, and I’ve been able to interface and meet all of these people that are interested in showing Dirty Coin to their communities, and these are really fascinating people that are doing really fascinating things, so It has expanded my network even beyond what working on Dirty Coin did. Alana: So it has been a wonderful year. I would say for the [00:54:00] moment, and we get rentals every day. So people can rent right now, Dirty Coin on Kinema and we get daily rentals. So that’s really cool. I appreciate everybody that’s going on there to watch it. Cause. Kinema only keeps 10%, so that’s one of the best gigs in town. Alana: Some of the other platforms, they keep 30 to 50 percent of the rental and they dictate how much the rental is as well. So , I would say it would be great to have one of these big networks be , Hey, here’s a big check. Can we license DirtyCoin for seven years exclusively? I’ll be , alright, cool, yeah. Alana: But for the moment, we have people all over the world renting it, screening it, inviting me to Q& As, so that works too. I’m happy with the way things are. Yes. I love that. And I’m excited to even show my team the video I was just thinking about that now. Maybe we need to do a team movie night, even though we’re remote, some people can be in person and I will remote and just watch the film together and [00:55:00] then have a conversation about it because it is so impactful and it helps you , as you mentioned. JohnPaul: Pull yourself out of that, out of the mind and into the impact that mining has on the world, especially when you’re in the weeds every day. You mentioned a little bit of where people can connect with the film. What’s the best way for people to connect with you, connect with watching the film and merge? JohnPaul: Can you talk a little more about that? And we’ll put it all in the show notes as well. Alana: Thank you. Well, this goes a little bit into, , the last thing that we’re talking about, which is the distribution. Through Kinema, which is where people can go on right now and rent Dirty Coin or schedule a screening. Alana: Anybody that wants to do an event or even wants to have the movie available on demand on a page that it has their logo. But our movie, they can make 45 percent off the ticket of that rental. And so one of the reasons why I’ve , I want that route and I, , if Netflix were to come to me or [00:56:00] HBO, I would have to remove it from cinema. Alana: They would have to have that exclusivity, right? And that’s what they’re paying for. But for the moment, not having that exclusivity means that. Any person that wants to make money promoting Dirty Coin can make money promoting Dirty Coin because through Kinema, they can create their landing page for Dirty Coin that is a place where other people can come and rent it. Alana: And in fact, they can even pre pay it. if they don’t want to make money and they’re just a big company and they’re just, , an awesome individual that wants to give, they can even pre license a bunch of Dirty Coin rentals. And then give that link to their community so that the community can watch it for free. Alana: And then every time that it gets watched, it’s just a seat that gets, it’s a license, right? That is a license. So by expanding that business, because it becomes a business, you have to contact people, you have to explain things to them, et cetera. But by igniting that. We are [00:57:00] able to just bring a lot of people up with us where it truly is a rising tide. Alana: And I really the idea of people that create content, people that have podcasts, onboard them, or the ones that are interested, onboard them to have their own landing site. And then whenever somebody rents, whenever they promote it and somebody rents the film, they get 45 percent from that. If it’s on Netflix and you send people to Netflix, Netflix is not going to pay you. Alana: No knock on Netflix if they offer me a big check, but from a business perspective, , I feel that this more indie route enables a lot more people to partake in the success. I enjoy seeing how this. It’s, it’s matures and develops. And so far we have a couple of partners that have done it, that have, , partners, they’re not partners. Alana: You just sign up on their website and everything gets handled. But different people that have joined, that have done it and they’ve been making money and we’ve been making money. [00:58:00] I don’t know. I’m curious about expanding that. I feel wouldn’t it be great to have an awesome success story in that regard where tons of people made money? Alana: I don’t know. I’ve never even heard about JohnPaul: that before. It’s amazing. , I’m excited about the idea. I’m , wow, you could. Promote 30 coins. I think one of the key things is getting good content in the hands of the public about an industry this. So it does align incentives. And as , whenever incentives are aligned, there’s growth and there’s opportunity for everyone, which is unique. #### Operational Insights JohnPaul: I never even knew that was a thing. So thanks for explaining that. Alana: Yeah. It’s a new company. They were just featured in Sundance this year. They were there. She did a couple of panels, the CEO of this company, and it’s exactly what independent filmmakers need. she really created the tool that somebody me needs to get to my public and to get my public to them, spread it to their public as well. Alana: So it’s pretty great. So I feel as the CEO wearing the CEO hat, not the director that [00:59:00] wishes that she could just Fully focus on the next project. I still need to make sure that dirty coin is a financially successful business as the executive producer of the film. So I will continue to market it. Alana: And money just means people watched it, , and just means that people, it got the, the word got out there. It’s a measure of growth and distribution. So ultimately that is what I want as well. So those incentives, it’s not just the money. It’s definitely because I want people to watch this. JohnPaul: Exactly. JohnPaul: It’s the impact and it’s, we know it’s not the money. It’s the Bitcoin that you’re going to get with the money. No, Jeff, that’s an important money. JohnPaul: But, and so where can people connect with you on Twitter or on LinkedIn? Where do you active on Telegram? Tell us more about that. So people can reach out and maybe schedule a filming in their local area or in their local Alana: town, Twitter and LinkedIn. I’m on Telegram as well, but Telegram, there’s just so many groups that sometimes it just gets lost in the fold much faster, [01:00:00] but you could contact me on Telegram, but I would say Twitter and LinkedIn, I check those, I don’t get as many DMs on those, so I’ll be able to see that. JohnPaul: The movie’s URL is dirtycointhemovie. com for anyone listening, and it’ll also be in the show notes, so feel free to look that up. Watch the trailer, see the reactions of people to the film and some of the quotes there, if you’re interested in watching, and then what was the name of the website where they can rent it and watch it and also share it with their audience is that, can you say that again? Alana: Kinema, it’s cinema, but with a K, but in our website on the top, there’s a banner that says rent it now or something, and that’ll link you to Kinema. So you don’t have to go through Kinema, but we are on their homepage. So if you do go on Kinema, you would see Dirty Coin, but they have a collection of movies and you can basically just rent any of these movies and then that rental goes directly to the filmmaker. JohnPaul: Is there anything else you want to share with the audience before we wrap up today? Alana: I would to share that it [01:01:00] is a very special time and I have met a lot of people in the last few years that have taken a risk on their vision and their life, including myself, and none of them regret it. They’re all really happy. Alana: So if you are listening to this today and you’re thinking there’s your gut is pulling you in a particular direction. I would say listen to your gut and Consider going in that direction sooner rather than later because we all need everybody to really Resonate with who they truly are when your actions reflect what’s inside It is such a powerful thing and we need more powerful People, because there are a lot of powerful people, but they’re not necessarily the nicest. Alana: We just need more so we can distribute the power around the world. So I suppose it’s a a hippie way of ending it. But I feel you’re a person that you did that, right? You dropped out, you followed your gut and your intuition [01:02:00] and your passion, and you’re a happy person and you’re a person that’s living your truth. Alana: And that’s just beautiful to see. And so I just really hope to live in a world where more people follow that. And whether it’s beekeeping, Bitcoin mining, mushroom gathering, whatever that is, we need all of it. And the world is downsizing. Corporate America is downsizing. But I think that this is a good opportunity for humanity to Come to their true potential. JohnPaul: Step into your authentic self. Trust the process, ditch Fiat and buy Bitcoin. There we go. JohnPaul: Thanks again for making it through a whole nother episode of the digital gold podcast. We’ll see you next [01:03:00] time. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Influencers Making Millions with NFTs | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 14 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/dj-dyl/ All Episodes Episode 14 # Influencers Making Millions with NFTs with DJ Dyl Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with DJ Dyl to discuss influencers making millions with nfts. ### Influencers Making Millions with NFTs Guest: DJ Dyl Episode 14 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 mining 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:35] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I'm joined by Dylan Rhodes, known as DJDil, is a recording artist, investor, marketing professional and entrepreneur from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Dilgaine recognition in 2015 with the early success of Platinum Hit Singul, Jordan Belfort, [00:00:56] and accompanying Tori performing 50 plus shows across the US. Dil continues to elevate his music career with several independent singles and recently released debut album Crypto Rich. Dylan independently distributes his music as a CEO and owner of a record label, It's Lit.org. JohnPaul: [00:01:10] Welcome to the show, my man. Yo, how's it going JP? Good to connect to you. You've got to be able to connect bro. It's been a crazy time. Let's talk about that. How did we meet and then let's go into the story of your journey into crypto. [00:01:23] Yeah, man, of course. So it's been a few years. It's great to finally connect. It's crazy to think how we met. It was back in like 2017, I believe the summer of 2017. Crypto is really just getting started. I think Ethereum had just hit $400 for the first time. I think we had just hit some kind of big peak right around there. And I was on JohnPaul: [00:01:46] a trip with some of my buddies who were also invested in crypto and JP was the same. So we were on a trip, a sailing trip in Greece. I remember, I think it was just like real casual. Everyone was getting settled in. We were meeting everybody from the different boats and everything like that. And we were just talking about crypto one night and it [00:02:05] makes sense in hindsight, right? Like crypto markets were having some of the best times ever. We were taking like this big you trip, having a great time. It was like the first night there and everybody was talking about what we do and lo and behold, it comes out that these guys do crypto. And so we immediately just start talking about Ethereum and crypto JohnPaul: [00:02:24] and all types of different altcoins and shitcoins and Bitcoin. I think that's how we met. We met out in Greece while we were taking a sailing trip. And we immediately connected because you guys were like the only other dudes who knew anything about crypto at the time. And that was before it was really that popular. Obviously in 2017, it was growing, but it [00:02:42] was still a new concept. Ethereum and Bitcoin was that your first time into the crypto journey? 2017? Can you talk a little bit more how you got into the space? Maybe your mining operation and now that anything you're working on today in crypto? Yeah. So that in hindsight, that really was my journey into the crypto space. But at the time, I had definitely already JohnPaul: [00:02:59] been in for a while, in some sense, because I got in Ethereum under $10 was when I first started getting in Ethereum. And so by this summer, I believe we had already experienced like a huge major run up to like $200 or $400 at that point when we met. So I had been in it, but it was only like a year or so that I had been in. And so when we met, I had just [00:03:22] started my consulting company. I wasn't doing any of the stuff that I do now in real estate. I hadn't figured out how I was going to connect my music career to crypto. I think when we met, I was way more focused on crypto. I probably led with crypto. And I don't even know if I talked that much about my song Jordan Belford. Like when we initially met, I know that throughout JohnPaul: [00:03:43] the trip, we got to know each other a little bit and obviously big part of what I do is music. That was before crypto. Before all this, I was doing music, making songs, everything like that. I had to hit record. That's originally what got me into crypto was that my buddy went online and searched how to get rich on Google. My buddy, Cuss Pack, he's in my on [00:04:03] fire music video and stuff. I've since made a ton of music with him and we've done crypto together, but he searched how to get rich and found out about Ethereum. He started learning about smart contracts and some of these awesome applications of Ethereum. And so that's when he really figured out that buying Ethereum was the move. And so he called me, we were 19 at the JohnPaul: [00:04:23] time. So I was his only buddy who had any money because I was making money from Jordan Belford's song. And I had just gotten a record deal. So he called me up and told me about Ethereum. I ended up buying in and just holding man. And from there, I started trading altcoins. Obviously, I saw the appeal of Bitcoin got into all different types of crypto. And that's what brought us to [00:04:45] that summer. And a lot of stuff has happened since then I've continued to build out my consulting company. I've figured out how to integrate my interest in music and crypto together with my album Crypto Rich. I bought miners from you. I tried to hold mining operation here in Philly. We got it going for a little bit, set it up and ultimately it failed. So we've liquidated it. JohnPaul: [00:05:06] He didn't fail. It just wasn't something that we were prepared to scale. So we ended up liquidating it. I've dabbled in everything in crypto, right? Like at this point, now I've been in it for four or five years or whatever. I've experienced the ups and downs. I've tried mining. I've made crypto art now. That's pretty much what I'm focused on. I work in real estate security tokens as well. DJDyl: [00:05:29] I work for Vertello, one of the top competitors in security tokens. They compete with securitize and some of the other big players in that space. And so we're doing exciting stuff here out of Philly through Vertello real estate. So that's something I've been doing in the past year. And of course, with the crypto market going crazy, I'm trading, I'm investing in all coins, [00:05:51] I'm getting involved in all types of different things right now. We have a crypto fund through my company advantage blockchain here in Philly. And at this point, I've dabbled in a lot of different forms of cryptocurrency. But I know that the same is true for you, my friend. Yeah, it sounds like you have gone from music now taking this full crypto red pill on those DJDyl: [00:06:12] where it's every little portion you tried out the mining, you're working on the fund, you're doing the securitization, the tokenization. Are you doing anything with the NFTs and NFT art when you mentioned crypto? Is that what you're referring to? I knew we'd get into that, man. Right now, it's hot right now. Honestly, I pictured this podcast and I was like, [00:06:30] it's probably going to end up going out with NFTs in the title. Because honestly, it's just like right now NFTs are hot. And yeah, man, I mean, I'm into it. Like, I'm definitely exploring what the best way to go forward is with it. It's like the hot shit right now. Everybody's talking about NFTs. They're making tons of money. Ultimately, what I was referring to is I've been DJDyl: [00:06:49] doing crypto art since I released my album Crypto Rich. And NFTs have always been a thing. But at the same time, I was fully devoted to crypto art before this recent NFT wave. That being said, that when I say crypto art, I'm really referring to like my music about crypto. But at the same time, I'm super into this NFTs idea. I've been going on Clubhouse a lot where NFTs are really popular [00:07:13] to talk about on there. I've been looking into the various platforms. I'm thinking about issuing an NFT of like my album cover that will have some kind of special benefits for my fans, as well as some kind of custom NFT art, which is going to be related to my music. So think like different NFTs inspired by different songs on my album and stuff like that. I think it's cool, man. DJDyl: [00:07:35] And I would love to hear your take on some of the NFT stuff because I think it's interesting. And there's a lot to be said about it. Yeah, I think for the NFT world, I've been in that space, the year to seven 21 tokens, which is the specific NFT Ethereum contract. I think that at the end of the day, we're seeing it might be a bubble of NFTs where we are. There's a lot of people creating [00:07:56] them. There's a lot of value being transferred. And the price of these assets are rising dramatically with Bitcoin pulling back. We'll see if that affects the space at all. But at the end of the day, I think where NFTs really can shine is when it comes to asset streams, bringing in those revenue streams from either music from creators, maybe other business lines, clothing, merch, DJDyl: [00:08:15] into an NFT product for the group to be able in the community to be able to not only gain on the upside and have advantages to promote the product. So I think that's at least my perspective on NFTs. I think they have a long way to come. I don't think they're going to disappear. I think they will evolve fractionalized NFTs are huge. I know some guys in the music industry [00:08:34] introduce you after the call, after the podcast on which do NFTs for tokenized music rights and are working through that. Some pretty big music guys. And I wanted to talk about your music production process. Has COVID affected that has crypto going up affected that? Are you still putting as much JohnPaul: [00:08:50] time into writing and recording? Can you talk a little bit more about why you decided on the DJDyl: [00:08:55] name Crypto Rich and the Crypto Rich Deluxe album? So COVID has definitely affected it. Of course, it's been tough for music artists just dealing with not being able to do live shows. For me, personally, I was getting a lot of momentum for live shows right before COVID hit. But other than that, I've been getting in studios a lot. I record a lot of stuff right here. I'm actually recording [00:09:16] from my studio right now in my bedroom. I record a lot of stuff. And so my whole album is recorded mixed and mastered right here by me. So I've still been staying on top of music production stuff. But you also asked about Crypto Rich and the inspiration. Really, I was having this point in my life where I was getting so big into crypto and I was trying to decide if this is what I wanted DJDyl: [00:09:39] to do. Did I want to switch back completely to being a business person and just be done with music? I was a finance major in college. Business is something I always thought I would do. The success of my song, Jordan Belfer, going platinum and everything like that was a bit unexpected. But it really allowed me to reassess my life and just say like, all right, you know what? Now that I see [00:09:59] that this music shit is really possible, this is what I want to do with my life. So it was this period where I took a step back from crypto. And this was during the bear market. Honestly, during the bear market is when you have those tough nights where it's like, oh shit, I was so rich six months ago. And now tomorrow night, I'm going to eat ramen for dinner. So it's during DJDyl: [00:10:18] that time when I just realized I really want to focus on music. Like crypto is awesome. I like investing. I want this to be a part of my life forever. But I want to focus on my passion. Because at the end of the day, whatever you put time into is going to work out. It might take a year, it might take five years, it might take 10 years. But if you spend so much time putting all that energy into [00:10:38] something that you're not passionate about, then you might get off track a little bit. So I was like, all right, I got to take a step back. So anyway, crypto rich was just inspired by my story, man. Like really, just everything that's happened to me, I wanted to combine crypto, I wanted to connect what I was doing with my music. And of course, Jordan Belfort is already a song that's about DJDyl: [00:10:59] investing. So it was like a natural thing for me to then make a whole album about crypto. And it's a great story. Like, I think it's a story that people still haven't fully realized yet. Like, I made pretty much the top song about investing. Maybe of all time, it's definitely one generation's favorite song about investing. Like for our generation, if you mentioned like top songs about [00:11:20] investing, everybody's going to say Jordan Belfort is one. So of course, crypto rich had to come next. And then shout out to chief Keith, you know, finally rich, that was a banger. I used to listen to finally rich. So that's what inspired it as well. I was just like, you know what, I'm crypto rich. [00:11:35] Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial DJDyl: [00:11:41] institutions and energy companies. By combining over 70 years of mining experience, 24 seven 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 OrmCapitalFentures.com. I actually just made a tweet about this. When I first put out crypto rich, Bitcoin was at [00:12:02] $10,000 approximately. This is August of 2019. And then I put out crypto rich deluxe, which was recently December 18th, 2020. So that was just in December. But Bitcoin was only at 20k when that came out. So it looks like I started the bull market, man, because now since crypto rich drops, we're already up to like almost 60k or whatever. It is very crazy how fast that went up and DJDyl: [00:12:29] in the timing with the market and the having and the album drop. You mentioned that you were on the original Jordan Belfort podcast, I believe it's called the Wolf Den. How was that experience? And do you learn anything from hammer? Do you teach me anything about crypto? I wish I got to teach him about crypto. That's actually a great question. He's super anti crypto. [00:12:46] So great story behind that. It took five to six years before I ended up meeting Jordan. Obviously from the moment I was writing the song, I was literally sitting there in West's house, writing the song West is my buddy who I made Jordan Belfort with. We were sitting in his basement or whatever, writing out the song. And I was thinking, wouldn't it be crazy if one day I ended up meeting DJDyl: [00:13:04] this guy Jordan Belfort? Years go by, he obviously knew the song. I've seen him dancing to it on TikTok and shit. But then finally, when my family moved out to LA, just through some good old-fashioned networking, we got in touch with someone who worked for him. And so I went to his apartment when I was out in LA one time, and I sat down with him. And I just told him about my story and everything. [00:13:25] And how Jordan Belfort came to be. Because he had no idea. The song was inspired by the movie. We put it on SoundCloud. It blew up organically. So he had no idea who made the song or anything about it. And so when he found out that it was just like two dudes who just made it on their laptops and put it on SoundCloud and blew up organically, he was like, oh, obviously, it's like a dope DJDyl: [00:13:44] entrepreneur story. So he had a song to talk about it. And we got to shoot the shit a little bit, exchange stories about Jordan Belfort. I didn't get to teach him about crypto though, man. I did not get that opportunity. But it was cool to finally meet him and talk about how the song had affected both of our lives. That's a great conversation. I think I want to jump into that [00:14:03] organic growth part. You've mentioned a couple of things that you've done and you've been able to take in your career to help propel your social media influence and reach. Or you're able to talk about some of those tactics you use to grow the song and maybe a new tactic to using to grow crypto riches, audience and reach. This is something I talk about all the time. A big part of what I DJDyl: [00:14:22] do is I help independent artists and creators with promotion. I do all types of different services, everything from Spotify to YouTube to different types of things on social media, right? I'm big on rap chat app as well. A big thing for me has always been multi platform, right? So post all of your stuff as many places you can try to stay active on different social medias. A big leap for [00:14:44] me was on rap chat app. It's an app where you can record and share raps on your phone. I have almost half a million followers on there. And that's been big as far as building a core fan base for me. And it's also fun as someone who's a music artist. It's a cool place where you can just go and release stuff for fun. So just like TikTok, for example, and you've been so successful with DJDyl: [00:15:05] that. It's just like another place where you can go and release content for fun and then use it to promote your end game. TikTok is dope, but as you can see, you're building it into something bigger here with like your podcast and everything that you're doing with your business and stuff. So it's all about having that long term vision. So when it comes to Jordan Belfort, well, let's [00:15:23] talk about the content. Like the content has to be good. So start with good content. Once you have the right content, you're going to know what audience you want to promote that to. So for Jordan Belfort, it was really like a college audience. We wanted to create a music video that was going to have a big party college scene that was going to appeal to that crowd. And so that really worked well. DJDyl: [00:15:42] And of course, Spotify play listing is really important. Soundcloud promotion, YouTube promotion, all these different things that really comes down to investing in yourself. And so I think a lot of artists these days, and I speak from like the music industry side, but this can apply to anything from starting your own business to being entrepreneur, artist, any type of artist, [00:16:03] it's that people are chasing a deal or people are chasing an investment when at the end of the day, it's really about building assets and investing in yourself. You don't always want to just chase, and this really applies to the music industry. You don't always just want to chase a deal, because at the end of the day, you can make a lot of smart moves and invest in yourself and DJDyl: [00:16:21] maintain 100% ownership of what it is you're selling of your music. And so that's been a big thing for me is we took a deal on Jordan Belfort, but now I do everything independently. So with crypto rich, I've been doing everything, Spotify, play listing, music videos, YouTube ads, everything like that is what's been working for me. Now crypto rich is almost that 2 million views on Spotify. [00:16:43] Total is probably at three to four million across all platforms, and it's growing, man, it takes time. We're at this day and age where people look at a million views and they think nothing of it, but I've seen how this happens. A million views year one, then a couple million the next year, and then it's even more millions the next year. That's how it goes, right? Jordan DJDyl: [00:17:03] Belfort didn't get to 200 million streams overnight. It seems like that to someone who's watching from the outside, but to me, I see it growing every single day. And so it took over a year and a half before Jordan Belfort even got to 1 million streams. Like think of that, to other people, it seems like the song came out of nowhere. But to me, the artists, I watched it go from zero to [00:17:24] 1 million. It took over a year. So that's just how it goes. That's one of the reasons why I think I'm most excited about NFTs and blockchains with creators. The first effect that you haven't gone over to a label, you do maintain all that control allows you to do some pretty unique things in the future. Because you mentioned that like anyone who thought this song was a quality song and shared DJDyl: [00:17:42] it with their friends and for the first million streams, they didn't get any residual value from that. They didn't get any upside, but there is an opportunity with a deal coin or deal social currency that they'll be able to become part of your community or own part of these NFTs. And so that's one of the things that I'm super excited about seeing about how because you understand the [00:18:00] blockchain technology and you are active in crypto, you can help move the two worlds closer. And I think a lot of artists are on one side or the other or on the crypto side that either have no idea what it is or they're familiar with it. So it's interesting to see you merge those two together as you begin to grow the platform and overall music brand that you have and the label. You DJDyl: [00:18:19] don't have your own label, do you? Like bring you on other artists? Yeah, so I do have my own label. It's called it.org. I want other artists or anything right now. It's just a digital record label focused on distributing and promoting my music. And then we also have label services. So I see my label and what it's going into as more of like a boutique label that offers services for artists to invest [00:18:40] in themselves. Do I think I'll ever want to sign and work with artists? Yeah, it's possible. Like maybe we will bring on artists and invest in them after I've advanced what I'm doing for my own career. Right now we're focused on really enabling artists to invest in themselves. I don't want to be signing artists to a typical record deal which requires a recoup and everything like that. DJDyl: [00:19:01] I just don't think it's ideal for the artists. At the end of the day, I think people should learn how to generate some income so they can constantly reinvest in their music. That's what's going to help them long term. And that's what I'm focused on now. At the end of the day, as my brand grows and as my influence grows, I'll be able to do more things. But right now I just need to totally [00:19:21] focus on myself, my own grind. Because I am independent, I do everything myself. So I don't have a big label behind me where I can focus on all these different things. I need to focus on directing music videos, creating creative personal finance, just managing all my shit so that I don't go broke. That's important. So I'm investing in my own career. I'm investing in cryptos and stocks DJDyl: [00:19:42] and all of that stuff to make sure for my future. But ultimately I do want to turn the record label into something where we are doing a lot more artist development. But what you're witnessing is just real time, like me growing this on the grind day to day. Like right now it's just all about selling my music as well as helping artists invest in themselves with boutique services. [00:20:01] I really like it how you're mentioning investing in yourself. I think that's really hard for young entrepreneurs and young artists to understand that. There's a lot of people that are here to help you, but you can run and chase the deals. You can chase the VCs. You can chase these people. But if you're able to focus on creating something that's quality that you can build a community DJDyl: [00:20:18] around and show consistent cash flow, people will start coming to you and insourcing you out. Sorry for cutting you off. What else were you going to say? No, I totally agree with that. It's all just about can you start from zero and just build yourself up piece by piece little by little. And I think ultimately when you get into the conversation about NFTs and how crypto is going [00:20:38] to revolutionize this, I think there's so much potential there. And sometimes when I get on Clubhouse, I get into these rooms and everyone's just so excited about it. But I feel like I have a very deep insight on this. And so sometimes I come with a little bit of an air of caution or just a little bit of an air of, okay, like I love NFTs. I think the idea is dope. But I think DJDyl: [00:20:58] there's a lot of confusion in the market about what constitutes a security and what constitutes an NFT. And so me being heavily involved in security tokens as well as now learning a lot about NFTs, I'm seeing a lot of people present ideas that for NFTs where I'm just like, all right, that is a security or that's going to be like a reg CF. And I just know from a higher level, [00:21:20] it's funny because like last bull market, I would see all of these ideas. And this is just how crypto is right? Everything's a security. There's tons of products that are available right now that when you really think about it, if you implemented this crypto and it wasn't just a vaporware shit coin, if you implemented it, it would ultimately be a security. That's one thing that I think about DJDyl: [00:21:39] with NFTs. But what I have been told and what I've learned a lot about is there's some interesting solutions coming up that are related to like reg CF and adjusting the guidelines that will allow non accredited investors to invest in your NFTs, which have some kind of revenue share and stuff like that. I just hate joining into a clubhouse and starting to say this shit because I feel like [00:22:01] a Debbie downer. There's some realistic hurdles that NFTs have to get over to be what they promise because the best thing about them, in my opinion, is revenue share, ownership, stuff like that. The whole thing about like unique collectible digital arts is a little bit pumpy bubble to me. But when it's like using a digital NFT type of product to split ownership or allow for like DJDyl: [00:22:27] resale of a work that someone's buying, I like that a lot. Do I think that every artist can release NFTs and get super rich off of it? Like everyone acts like that's the situation right now? Maybe it is true. Maybe for some amount of time, but eventually it's going to be like everything else. You know, there's going to be a lot of NFTs and it's going to be all about marketing and [00:22:47] investing in yourself and promotion and content. I definitely agree on the security side. I myself have been I think walking that path a lot on trying to improve the revenue stream distribution of different assets and different brands. And so for myself, I'm like, how do I do that with staying in line with security laws in the US as a US citizen? And let's just say that's much harder DJDyl: [00:23:09] than saying, oh, like China and all these other countries that don't have those type of regulations and laws regarding your time at the security company. What are you guys doing for the cryptocurrency JohnPaul: [00:23:20] industry? How do you guys view interacting with NFTs versus securities? Can you talk a little bit more DJDyl: [00:23:25] about specifics on maybe that role as someone who's looking in securities and tokenized securities? So I've been working for Vertello for about a year. What they do is they connect and able the digital asset ecosystem. So we have essentially a dashboard for interacting with security tokens as well as connecting the token ownership to investor data. So a big part of this [00:23:49] has to do with investor management and accreditation. So like essentially collecting all of the investor data and then providing a dashboard to which you can connect the security token to investor data. Because all this is really important when you start to get into regulated markets. Like in unregulated cryptocurrency, it's all fine and well that we have these sort of pseudo anonymous DJDyl: [00:24:11] wallets, which are only connected by a file. That's fine for crypto. But for regulated markets, you can't do that. Like everything has to be directly connected to investor names. You can't have an asset which can just disappear or be burned. Like securities, traditional securities markets don't work like that. You have to work with a transfer agent [00:24:33] and a custodian who's going to hold your assets. Let me just give you a perspective. With a security token, if there's fraud, you just undo it pretty much. That's how it's supposed to work. That's how securities are supposed to work. The entire US financial system with securities, it's more like when there's fraud, they undo it versus a blockchain. When there's fraud, DJDyl: [00:24:56] it's in the blockchain, it can't be undone. They don't want that in traditional securities. So the entire vertalo system is sort of think of it like instance, ERC 20 tokens, which get issued on the Ethereum blockchain. But then we are controlling them and sort of like a layer two solution. But each one is its individual ERC 20 token more like that. So each individual [00:25:20] security token that's created on Ethereum, but vertalo itself does not have a layer two coin or anything like that. That definitely I think helps me understand a little more on what you guys are working on and definitely see the potential growth there with the community, with NFTs. And as you mentioned, that space has matured a lot over the past two years DJDyl: [00:25:40] from where it was back in early 2018. If you had a million dollars to spend in the crypto space right now, what would you go do and where would you put that money? That's such an awesome question, man. It's tough, right? Because right now we're in this situation where it's like a rising tide takes all ships, everything's going up like there's not a bad place to put a million [00:26:01] dollars in crypto right now. But I could tell you if I had a million dollars that was all in crypto right now, I would probably sell some of it to cash and hang on to a little bit of it. But at that being said, I think we have a ton of upside. There's this could be the very beginning of the run like we saw in 2017. So there are people who think like that and have their Ethereum targets DJDyl: [00:26:22] at 5K or 10K or something like that for this run. And so I don't know what's going to happen, but I would be mostly in Bitcoin and Ethereum. I would also be in some of those DeFi projects. I think a lot of that's exciting. Uniswap, I think is exciting for Ethereum. I think that Maker is a big part of the DeFi ecosystem that's kind of behind the scenes that most people don't [00:26:44] realize is a great investment. And then I like Bitcoin. I think finance has been impressive lately. I don't hold enough of that. I'm in Litecoin right now for a trade. I think Litecoin is going to be a good trade for the next couple months. I hear that they might even be doing something with SushiSwap, which could be interesting. So I'm obviously watching the trends and the trades and stuff and DJDyl: [00:27:08] everything like that. I don't know. I'm quite invested in altcoins, mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum. I guess that gives you a little perspective. I would say I'd go something like this. One third Bitcoin, one third Ethereum, one third altcoins, something like that. If I put it simple, you can't go wrong or something like that. No, I definitely agree with you there. That is a [00:27:25] good allocation and some good upside. So since the release of your song, the Jordan Bell for the new crypto rich album, have you talked to any other famous people? Are they taking interest in Bitcoin? Do you have any stories or interactions you can share about marketing that new album? Right now, it's still really undiscovered. I feel like a lot of people know my song Jordan DJDyl: [00:27:45] Belfort. That never led me to the type of interactions you're talking about. Like other than meeting Jordan Belfort, and I met a couple cool people on tour, but we did everything independent. So it's just a little bit different than it happens for some artists. So we did like 50 plus shows all around the US. I met some really cool artists. I opened for Fettiwap. I met a little Dickie, [00:28:06] who's pretty cool. I met Ray Stremmer. Nothing crazy, right? Like I met a select handful of artists that I happened to open for or I happened to do a show with, but it was 50 plus shows all around colleges and universities, which are totally shut down right now. So right COVID has totally killed that which sucks. But yeah, I mean, I've gotten the opportunity to go out to LA and work in some DJDyl: [00:28:28] of the best studios in the world, work with talented songwriters and everything like that. And let me tell you that shit is overrated. After doing all that, I still choose to record here in my home. It was cool to learn all that and to get that foot in the door right out of the gate to be able to like, you thrust into the music industry and see all that shit. But at the end [00:28:47] of the day, it's like you end up giving up so much to get a record deal and giving up so much of your ownership of your art. And the net cost that you're paying just to like get in these situations that you could put yourself in, let me give you an example, right? Like a record label will fly you out to LA, put you in an Airbnb, put you in a studio, but then you have to recoup the entire DJDyl: [00:29:09] cost of everything. So it's like, why don't you save up like two or three grand book your own flight to LA? You can get a sick Airbnb. You can go to a sick studio for three days and it's not going to cost that much. It's going to cost an average person can save up a few grand in a few months. And I'm getting on here saying that like with truth. At the end of the day, most artists do [00:29:31] take a deal and then they're signed and they don't want to say these things. So I'm saying this shit because I'm independent. I release crypto rich independent. I'm not giving that shit up. We're going to hit 100 mil. We're going to hit a billion streams, man. Bitcoin's going to hit a million. It's funny because when I wrote the song crypto rich and I'm like, we're going on a run. We're DJDyl: [00:29:49] going to hit a hundred K. That was like a joke. That was like, now we're like actually about to hit a hundred K and it's so crazy because I literally just put that out a couple months ago. And when it came out, I was like, damn, I'm a fool for saying Bitcoin's going to a hundred K in this song. Like we're only at 20 K right now and I don't even know what's going to happen. [00:30:07] I don't anymore though. I think you're doing well in the predictions, honestly. By the time this song hits a hundred million streams, it could be at a hundred K. Oh, I think that's a given. Hopefully, yo, at the end of the day, I see this as so similar to the Jordan Belfort song, right? Like when the Jordan Belfort song first came out, I would have showed it to you and you DJDyl: [00:30:25] had been like, oh, that's a dope movie. Oh, this song's kind of catchy. That's cool. Whatever. Like onto the next thing. And that's kind of what people are like now with crypto rich, right? They're like, oh, yeah, crypto. That's cool. Like I heard of that. It seems like it'll be a big deal. And they're like, oh, yeah, your album is pretty cool. I guess the artwork's cool and the music's [00:30:45] cool. Like whatever. But then I think that after time, like the whole story about crypto becomes solidified in like the human consciousness sense. Like crypto is a big deal. Just like the Belfort movie, like that movie was a big deal. But it wasn't a big deal the day it came out. It was like after a year, everyone collectively decided like, all right, this movie is badass. DJDyl: [00:31:05] I think the same thing with crypto needs to happen. We're like right now, everybody's like, I don't get crypto. I don't, this guy's rapping about crypto. I don't get it. In two or three years, it'll just be like, oh shit, crypto is cool. That's rich people and shit. Hopefully we'll have that natural story and growth and shit like that. And I think like we talked about earlier, [00:31:25] we got to make some sick music videos. We got to get the Lambo pulling up to the Bitcoin facility. All that shit, bro. Like it's just about creating a story and just executing and just knowing that what you're doing is worth your time and that ultimately it's going to pay off. And I think that any entrepreneur can relate to that. There's always going to be that point in time where you're like, DJDyl: [00:31:46] damn, what is all this shit I'm doing? Is it really worth it? I'm sure you can remember back in your day, like being surrounded by all these weird ass computers and Ethereum's dropping from the state. And you're like, what the hell did I just invest in? I'm surrounded by computers. JohnPaul: [00:32:01] Going onto that conversation, keeping with that line of topic, what advice would you give your DJDyl: [00:32:05] 18 year old self before Jordan Belfort blew up, before you really got into crypto and knowing what you know today? It's tough because I don't know if I could have given myself any advice that I definitely would have listened to. But I think at the end of the day, I would say just really focus on working hard and continuing to put out content. I could have put out more content around when [00:32:26] Jordan Belfort came out. And I guess the biggest mistake I made was putting too much of my faith in someone else to help me. And I guess that's kind of on a deeper level of something to think about. I was constantly thinking like, oh, this record deals great. They're going to do it for me. Or like, all I need to get is like this one more deal or like this one more thing. And it definitely held DJDyl: [00:32:47] me back from taking everything in my own hands and doing everything in my own power to grow my own brand. I got the record deal and that was like a big win. And then I was just waiting for them to like do the thing. But there is no thing. Like, you have to do it. And so what I learned through that experience was the importance of just doing everything yourself as an entrepreneur. [00:33:09] And to the maximum level, if you want something done, do it. That goes to all levels. If you want comments on your new YouTube video, send it to people and ask them to comment until you have 100 comments, until you have 1000 comments. Go look at my bad hair video. Almost 500,000 views, like 500 comments. Everybody didn't just comment because they love me. They comment because I network, I DJDyl: [00:33:31] message people, I send them the video, I say, yo, drop a comment on this. So I think people underestimate that they look at my shit. And they just think, Oh, wow, it blew up because he's so viral and everyone loves him. It's like, no, some of the people hate me. I send him the video and they say, you I think that is the the guerrilla marketing technique that I've seen deal throughout [00:33:50] your career and just had you when you shared with me. That is what keeps an artist going, especially one who doesn't have full time people as a label pushing that you have to do the outreach. You have to build that community with your fans. You have to curate those relationships in order for you to build a successful base that wants to support you. So I think that is huge. Are DJDyl: [00:34:11] you letting your fans support you directly in any way through merch sales, through patreon, through tokens, anything like that where they can directly support you as an artist? Yeah, I need to increase the amount of ways that they can. But I just launched my merch line, which is really dope. Check out it's late.org fire emoji merch. We got fire emoji hats. I got one around here. [00:34:32] I got all types of different stuff, but really it's late.org merch is like all different fire emoji stuff as well as my crypto rich line just dropped. I think it's like a good blend of just like stylish cool shit that's just like this fire emoji. And then also like deal merch and stuff like that. Before we hop off the stuff about the label, I wanted to talk about this because this is something DJDyl: [00:34:52] you can relate to too, which is I feel like the algorithm is the new label. You've seen that with TikTok like how once you get the algorithm working, it blows you up. So I feel like as an artist, the thing to really focus on is like, how can you invest in like hitting the algorithm right way? Once you figure out how to hit the algorithm the right way, you don't need a label anymore. [00:35:16] This becomes a lot easier. So like you said, like I am constantly grinding because I don't have a team that's working for me like day in and day out to promote my shit. But I've seen what's happening and slowly over time, I have to do less and less to get the same results. And it gets to this point where eventually I'll just be big enough where every time I post a song, it'll blow up on its DJDyl: [00:35:39] own because it gets enough steam going to hit the algorithm in the right way. I'll give you an example. NBA Youngboy is a rapper who's been super successful on YouTube and he did it pretty much independently. What happened was he just started putting out so many YouTube videos. They were all hitting the top charts. He just became a favorite of the YouTube algorithm and became the most [00:36:00] viewed artist on all of YouTube. At the end of the day, it's the algorithm is the new wave. I like that quote. The algorithm is the new label. It's definitely changing how people are receiving this content. The biggest thing with TikTok, I've seen guys where it's honestly not that hard at the end of the day. You can figure out what type of content works, figure out on other people's DJDyl: [00:36:21] videos what is going viral, and then start building on top of that. A lot of people are doing product review videos recently, reviewing different products because those videos are hitting 10 million views on TikTok. And this is a platform that once it goes viral, it just goes crazy. And as people are commenting, spending more and more time on the video and the end of the day, it doesn't [00:36:39] matter what the content is, it just matters. Are people interacting and engaging with it? And I think that changes the game with Instagram, with Snapchat before it was paid a play. If you wanted to do well, you either had to growth hack, which was like playing the game on this side, where you had to pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote it through their algorithms. DJDyl: [00:36:56] Now with TikTok, they changed the game there. Wrapping things up, where do you want to go? Where do you see yourself in two years with the music and crypto world? I want to keep building what I'm doing in music. I just signed another lease here in Philly for the next years. I'm Philly based. I live here. I thought about moving, but I'm definitely going to be staying here for a while. [00:37:13] So making lots of Philly music videos and stuff like that. I just got a connection with a company called Imagine Lifestyles. They're based near Philly and Cherry Hill. They're going to be supplying me with all types of dope shit. We're going to get some Lambo's, some Rari's, some G wagons. And we're going to do the crypto rich album videos right. I already have another album DJDyl: [00:37:33] planned, but I think the way it's panning out, I'm just going to take my time and make sure I get the crypto rich videos right. This is something that is going to be cemented in history. I've seen it with Jordan Belford. If I hit these videos right and I get the Lambo's and the full crypto moon boy swag, it'll be timeless. Looking back, it'll be like, damn, they'll really did that right, [00:37:54] or whatever. It'll just be crazy looking back because I think we're at the beginning of this. I'm sure you agree with me. We're at 50,000 right now. I think in 10, 20 years, we'll probably see Bitcoin at a million at some point. And so to think back how I was doing all this crazy shit when Bitcoin was just getting started, I can't wait for that long term story. DJDyl: [00:38:14] I am agreeing with you there. I think the price is going to grow and that's going to lift all boats as you mentioned, including brands that are working on the crypto platform, even NFTs or the music section. It's interesting that you mentioned, you're just focusing on one thing. I think that's one thing that I think a lot of young people and artists have problems with and I maybe I do [00:38:31] myself. Maybe that's why I kind of like have that sediment. But if you can just focus on creating a process that's going to be able to compound results. And you like you mentioned, we don't do as much work as you started before to get these videos to pop off and go viral. That is huge for person to come out of college and say, wow, I now have this community or I have this product that's JohnPaul: [00:38:50] building momentum. So, deal, where can people connect with you on social media and where's the best DJDyl: [00:38:55] place to listen to music and help you as a streamer and independent artists grow? Yeah, you can check out all my stuff on it's lit.org and my Instagram is famous, dill. Just look up DYL, dill or famous underscore dill. You can find all my stuff there. I'm on all platforms, Apple music, Spotify, just look up dill, d y l, check out Jordan Belfort and crypto rich [00:39:20] deluxe. Some bangers on there, man. I've got a song called Bitcoin. I got a song called Ethereum. I got a song called blockchain. They're all bangers, man. Inspired by this crypto stuff, inspired by my journey. You're looking for some banger music guys to listen to while you're in the car, working out of the gym, trading crypto. DJ Dil is the place to be it's lit.org. Thanks DJDyl: [00:39:41] again, my man for coming on the show. I'm so excited to film those videos in the mine this year and excited to blow them up. That's going to be dope, man. They got to be watching for that. I think we got to do it with Bitcoin or Ethereum, probably Bitcoin, right? Exactly. Bitcoin mining video song. [00:39:56] Thanks again, guys, for listening in. This is another episode of digital gold 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 DJDyl: [00:40:11] become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, mine off. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Bitcoin Mining's Institutional Backbone | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 10 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/ethan-vera/ All Episodes Episode 10 # Bitcoin Mining's Institutional Backbone with Ethan Vera Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Ethan Vera to discuss bitcoin mining's institutional backbone. ### Bitcoin Mining's Institutional Backbone Guest: Ethan Vera Episode 10 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] Today I'm excited to be joined by Ethan Vera, co-founder and head of finance at Luxor Technologies, which is North America's largest mining pool and hash-rank management platform. Before founding Luxor, Ethan served as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and advised MND's on cross-border Asia M&As transactions across the semiconductor, renewable energy and internet [00:01:00] industries. Ethan, the team at Luxor, are focused on building a range of solutions for scaling blockchain infrastructure and vertically integrating mining pools in enterprise-grade management software to provide investors with a full-service investment vehicle for cryptocurrency mining. JohnPaul: [00:01:14] Ethan, welcome to the show. Ethan: [00:01:15] Thanks for having me on JP. I'm glad that you're here and we can have this great conversation on Bitcoin mining jump into the weeds of how the industry is changing and what you're JohnPaul: [00:01:25] seeing from your perspective. My first question for you, Ethan, is how did you get into mining Ethan: [00:01:30] Bitcoin? Mining Bitcoin was actually the first way I got into crypto. It was a natural transition for me coming from industries like banking and whatnot. Three years ago, I was going to school with my co-founder Eddie and Guzman. He approached us with this new software product [00:01:48] he was working on, which at the time was a Sia mining pool. We quickly went down the rabbit hole of mining pool software and started building a hash-rate liquidation platforms. Around the same time, we also invested in a facility in Kansas City. It was a four megawatt facility and we were building it out down there, basically hosting a co-location style. Ethan: [00:02:08] So that was my first two ventures into the mining space. And since then, we've touched on a wide range of different products ranging from pool software to now these half-rate liquidation platforms. Ethan, about the Kansas City mining site that you have, are you able to tell me any stories [00:02:24] about the wildest day when you were running the mining operation? There's quite a few, but I think one stands out in particular. We were at the height of Kansas City summer. I think it was over 110 degrees or something around that. And all these machines were constantly overheating. Our customers were calling us saying, hey, Ethan: [00:02:46] my machine keeps going down and we had to basically compensate for that downtime. And so we tried to make a big push on blocking off the cold and hot aisles and sealing it. And so I think the entire team spent about 24 hours in a facility working on the separation. And we eventually got it done by the morning the next day, but the team was exhausted and [00:03:07] I'll never forget that day. That was one of the longest days of my life. And so when you say hot and cold hour separation, for people listening that don't really know how mining facilities are structured or built, are you able to talk a little bit farther on what that means and what you guys end up doing? Ethan: [00:03:22] For sure. Yeah. So most of these Asics are built like tanks, especially like the S9s. So they can actually run in relatively high heat, almost everywhere in the US. You can run S9s off of air cooled. When some areas you may need to go evaporative cooling and then it's very small areas you need to do liquid immersion. But the biggest reason these machines [00:03:43] overheat is because facilities aren't built in a great way. Or at least they didn't used to be when kind of new people were entering the space. And the biggest problem was that basically these machines create a lot of heat and they push out a lot of heat. And so if you don't properly seal that the heat coming out of the machine from the intake, then that Ethan: [00:04:03] hot air will just circulate back through your machine and create like huge failures and destroy the longevity of that machine. So having a proper sealing from hot and cold aisle is extremely important for keeping your machines up and running. And that's something, unfortunately, we didn't know building the [00:04:18] facility. And so we learned it the hard way. And you mentioned it is pretty hard to do because you have these different miners or different sizes. You don't necessarily know which miners are going to be going in the facility until you get it. And the seal almost has to be perfect. And there's a lot of that Ethan: [00:04:32] backflow you're talking about that occurs when running this mining equipment that most people don't realize that you're like you said, there's no HVAC. Most of these facilities are just air cooled and they have thousands of machines running. And during these super hot days is when that issue compounds, usually the facility can run fine. But usually that [00:04:51] four to five, you know, PM hours when the heat is the hottest, that's when you see the most problems. At least that's what we see with running our facilities. I think most mining operators would agree. So after Kansas City and getting that site deployed, running it JohnPaul: [00:05:05] a lot and then closing it down, can you talk a little bit more about how you're feeling Ethan: [00:05:10] about the mining industry to build this facility out? You were talking about those feelings because it was must have been it must have been pretty hard to shut everything down. JohnPaul: [00:05:18] And after chasing this dream of wanting to be a Bitcoin miner, and how did you pivot into Ethan: [00:05:24] what you're doing now? It was definitely a hard decision. We put a lot of time and effort into the facility and built up a lot of great relationships along the way. Ultimately, it just, it turned out that building the infrastructure side of the business was too tough for us to do. Our team is mostly software engineers. And so we wanted to focus on what we do best, [00:05:44] which is software products. And fortunately, even during this time, we had a successful mining pool business going on. And the majority of the teams focus was still on our mining pool. So it wasn't a complete pivot of a business. It was more so letting go our dreams of being vertically integrated vertical integration sounds great on paper. Or maybe it's good Ethan: [00:06:03] for an investor deck, but in reality, sometimes it's just like a ball and chain on your foot while you're trying to swim. And it can distract you from your main products and what you really have your competitive advantage in. So that's really what we've been focusing on is like, what are we best at? And let's push that forward and let's build like awesome products where the [00:06:21] industry, awesome software products. And so how has Luxor as a mining pool evolved, you know, since then, what new products have you guys when you added what new features have you added? And how have you been helping out new North American miners? Ethan: [00:06:34] Yeah, in a few ways. The first, I would say is profitability. During this venture, we realized that squeezing out the most amount of profit for your machine as possible is vital to the long term success of your operation. And so when we think about building hazard liquidation platforms, whether it's the mining pool, profit switching, or best price execution, [00:06:55] we always have that in mind is like, how do we get our miners the most amount of Bitcoin per terra hash as possible? And from a software provider perspective, that's the greatest help we can give miners is keep them profitable for longer. So we try and do that with all of our products in regards to that. The second area would probably be on data and statistics. And so that's partly Ethan: [00:07:14] why we launched the mining data website called hashredindex.com as a way to provide free data assets to miners to help them think through their investments, think through their current operations and find ways to improve it. And as we move forward, I think we just want to continue to push that from a software perspective is tools that are useful and helpful for miners. [00:07:34] Now on a high level, what type of tools and services are you bringing miners to increase their profits? And what type of tools and services are you bringing miners to hedge their risk? On the increasing profit front, this is flowing from first our mining pools. Obviously, it's a Ethan: [00:07:51] big focus of us to reduce kind of latency and increase of miner efficiency. A lot of pools will give up 20 to 30 basis points on just stale and invalid shares. And so we want to make sure that we're reducing that number, because 30 basis points in this business is still considerable. On the profit switching front, we want to maximize the rate that we can get above what we call like [00:08:14] the base chain or Bitcoin in the example of SHA256. And so we're focused on generating uplift over Bitcoin FPPS rate for SHA256 and over Zcash, PPS rate and Equahash. And so in Equahash, we've been doing about 5 to 10% uplift over the base chain since inception. And we're hoping to bring some of those gains over to SHA256 in the new year. So that's it on the profitability Ethan: [00:08:37] standpoint. On the hedging front, this is still a very new industry and not a lot of great products are out there to date. There's a few that miners can use, but not many. And so we hope JohnPaul: [00:08:49] to bring some of those to market to in 2022 and beyond. Can you explain how a mining pool works and Ethan: [00:08:55] how it calculates profitability? How does it communicate with the miners and explain that for the users or listeners that don't really understand maybe mining or never looked into the mechanics of a pool? Mining pools were invented, I guess it would have been 2011 by slush pool. Basically, mining by yourself was too variable because there's only 144 blocks per day. [00:09:16] The chances you find a block yourself are just really low. So what they invented was a system where everyone pulls together their hash rate, UJP and I, we pulled together our hash rate and our chance of winning a block increases. The industry changed drastically in 2013 when BitPenny launched what was called like a paper share pool, which instead of paying miners out on the actual Ethan: [00:09:38] value of block reward, the blocks actually found on the pool, instead they paid out on the expected reward. And that changed a lot for miners. It took the variance away from miners to mining pools and allowed for more consistent and equal payments from the mining pool. And so that's how the industry has shaped up so far. So 95% plus of the industry works on this method. And from a higher level, [00:10:01] you can think of it as like basically a mining pool will buy your hash rate at, let's call it 98% of the expected value. And they'll take it off your hands right away. You don't have to deal with mining luck risk, but you give up some of that upside for them to take that variance off your hands. And that's why they buy the discount from you. And so they're buying the hash rate on Ethan: [00:10:19] discount. Are they effectively selling the hash rate to the Bitcoin network? Are they selling the hash rate to other pools? How are they hedging their risk? Or how are you hedging your risk? Majority of the hash rate does end up back at the Bitcoin blockchain. So these pools will buy it, [00:10:34] let's call it at 98% from a miner. They'll go turn around and mine on the Bitcoin blockchain Ethan: [00:10:39] with it and expect to earn 100% and make that 2% spread, obviously dealing with the mining luck risk there too and variable payouts for themselves. But there are increasingly more pools that are now doing profit switching, which basically will look across blockchains. And so being a single chain focus, they're chain agnostic, and we'll try and find the most profitable blockchain [00:11:00] for your hash rate. And that's really what Luxor is focused on is this idea that we're trying to maximize the value of hash rate. And so we can look across venues, Bitcoin blockchain, obviously being the major one, but looking to other venues too, in case there's times where it's more profitable for us to liquidate there. And these other venues, you're referring just to Bitcoin. Cash Ethan: [00:11:19] blockchain, or is it also involving selling the hash rate in an OTC market style where you have larger funds or someone else who is willing to buy it for a premium above maybe what the Bitcoin network's paying? That's a good question. This is a developing industry. This conversation we're having will probably look very different in six months. Historically, it's been just focused [00:11:39] on blockchains only. So mining Bitcoin, cash, BSB, Bitcoin, Terracoin, etc. But now I think we're starting to get into this level of the industry where you can look to other venues, things like selling your hash rate on nice hash, or selling it to a hash rate contract with a long term buyer, or selling it to another mining pool that has a really good profit switching algorithm. Basically, Ethan: [00:12:01] just taking in all these different sources and deciding which one's best. A lot of miners now talk through like demand response where they sell power to back to the grid when it's more profitable than mining. And so you can think of it the same way at the pool profit switching level, where you just have 10 different venues, whether it's blockchains or other customers, [00:12:22] and whichever one's most profitable at a given point in time, you direct your hash rate there. So it's pretty much like the demand response, but on the software level. JohnPaul: [00:12:30] And how do you see mining pools evolving over the next two years? As you mentioned, this space is Ethan: [00:12:35] growing rapidly and changing very quickly with just the multiple hedging techniques being brought in. And then as you mentioned, some of these cross chain sales where the ability to sell that hash rate for more than what the network's paying for it. What else do you see changing in the next two years? On the mining pool front, I think there's gonna be drastic changes for a [00:12:53] couple reasons. One, we're heading into an era of very low mining fees. And miners are increasingly fee conscious. So unless mining pools are doing sophisticated profit switching, I think they'll have a very hard time competing in the industry. And so I think the days of single chain mining are coming to an end here. The second, I would say is like bundling up mining pools into broader Ethan: [00:13:15] ecosystems. And so you saw that with like the Chinese exchanges, Huawei, OKX, now Binance. Basically, they're using the mining pools to weight a funnel liquidity into their other products being financial services. And so I think we'll start to see an increasingly amount of mining pools that are tied to things like exchanges, ASIC financing, collocations, and potentially more. [00:13:36] And so those are my two points on mining pools. But I think the biggest trend that people haven't really seen yet is that the market is eventually going to change from majority OTC to exchange traded. And what I mean by that is right now, you have to go to a mining pool and directly negotiate a mining pool fee with them, basically an OTC contract. Whereas in the future, Ethan: [00:13:55] I think a lot of hash rate will be sold on an open exchange where now these mining pools need to need to bid for your hash rate in an open manner. And what that will do for miners is basically increase the value of their hash rate and increase the transparency and what they're getting for JohnPaul: [00:14:09] their hash rate. So I'm excited to see all those three feeds play out here in 2021 and 2022. Ethan: [00:14:14] So our mining pools looking to lock in hash rate for an hour, for a day, for a week. How do you see them in this marketplace interacting where you're mentioning, bringing the value of the hash rate and increasing it and creating more competition for those buyers? Most of the industry right now works on a spot level, like instantaneous. So if you go and [00:14:38] negotiate with Luxor, Legas, or, you know, say like, slash pool or F2 pool or Binance, basically you have no commitment to stay with them. So every time you submit hash rate, they validate your share every five seconds and they credit you for that share. And so I don't think that pools will be locking in miners for a long period of time. There may be the rare Ethan: [00:14:59] example with say, slash pool and how they where they had an agreement for an extended period of time, or I'm sure in China, the same with pooling and F2 pool with their long term clients. But for the most part, this spot exchange will be very similar to the existing mining pool system today, where miners just get paid as soon as they deliver hash rate. And there's no long term [00:15:19] contracts between miners and mining pools for hash rate delivery, where I think those contracts do come into play. And I know you have a lot of thoughts here. And really interesting ones is that investors will take the other side where they'll want some extended period of hash rate and be willing to pay a certain amount for hash rate upfront and deliver it over a few months. Ethan: [00:15:39] And I think that's really interesting. In your opinion, what is holding back miners from selling hash rate futures or for selling their hash rate in these types of marketplaces where they are locking in maybe that delivery price or that cost per share? I think it comes down to a few things. One, miners historically haven't been the [00:15:58] most financially sophisticated and these types of derivative instruments, whether it's on the hash rate level or Bitcoin level just aren't widely used amongst the miners. But I think that is changing now as new players enter the space from traditional backgrounds. A second, I would say, is that miners are extremely bullish on Bitcoin. And they kind of default to this idea that they Ethan: [00:16:17] want to go long as possible and hedging their position and going short on their mining revenue. It wasn't the natural step for them. But I think there's ways that they can hedge portions of their revenue in a pragmatic way and still increase the value of their overall operations. I guess the third thing too would be that there's not a lot of good venues to trade these products yet. [00:16:37] There's some broker contracts going out there, but there's no exchange products that are available for miners. Going through the hassle of an OTC-style contract and negotiating what that value will be is just like a lot of hassle for miners yet. So I'm really excited to see multiple different companies build out products for these miners to hedge and use as financing tools. Ethan: [00:16:58] We're really talking here about hedging their value of the hash rate. And just for people who don't know where the hash rate value comes from, it comes from the Bitcoin price and then the Bitcoin difficulty. And with those two numbers, you can get something that Ethan and I are big fans of, which is the US dollar per terra hash metric. And that metric is a USD-based metric for how [00:17:21] much that one terra hash is making or being, or I guess how much the mining pool is paying for that terra hash on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, and hashredindex.com has a great chart where you can see historically how much that terra hash was worth and where it is today. Are you an investor looking for Bitcoin exposure? If so, Bitcoin mining provides daily payouts and [00:17:45] lets you dollar cost average your way into a Bitcoin position. Orm Capital Ventures provides Ethan: [00:17:50] the bridge to the Bitcoin mining industry for institutional investors and energy companies. Through 24-7 management, directly line incentives, and over seven years of mining experience, Orm's managed mining program is the most secure way to enter the mining industry. Reach out to us at ormcapitalvengers.com to learn more about the program and talk to the team. [00:18:10] On the difficulty side of things, because that's what brings in the complications of hedging out a JohnPaul: [00:18:16] longer contract. Have you used FTXs or any other difficulty hedges and how do you see potential Ethan: [00:18:21] difficulty hedges being improved over the coming years? I've personally traded on FTX for the past like six months now since they've launched. Just on my personal account, I find it quite fun. But that being said, I don't think difficulty is a good product for miners. A quick analogy here, with corn farmers, some people thought it made sense to create futures, where corn farmers, [00:18:45] whose revenue is driven off, obviously, how much corn they can produce, would hedge like weather conditions, because weather conditions directly impact the output of corn. But it turned out that those weren't great products for farmers, because it only represented a small factor in the overall revenue they generated. And so it wasn't a complete hedge. And I think difficulty futures is very Ethan: [00:19:07] similar, where difficulty is obviously a large part of mining revenue. But there's other aspects to it that mean that if you only hedge difficulty, you're still exposed. And if anything, you're overly, you're even more exposed. And what I mean by that is basically difficulty and Bitcoin price kind of act as natural hedges to each other. If Bitcoin price shoots up, difficulty will also [00:19:28] follow because more people plug in machines. And if Bitcoin price falls, difficulty will also fall because less people want to run their machines. And so if you only hedge one of those two, it actually creates a more kind of unhedged position where you're actually, your mining revenue is actually more volatile than if you left it unhedged. That's a long way of saying that I'm not super Ethan: [00:19:47] bullish on difficulty futures or difficulty hedges. I think that in the future, it all has to be based on the value of hash rate itself. And that's the complete hedge for miners. And that value of hash rate is what I work on getting investors and other people industry to build off of when it comes to modeling, when it comes to paying back debt and expenses, [00:20:05] because it's a very good metric in US dollars. It helps us understand, as you mentioned, if Bitcoin price goes up, difficulty usually follows. How much hash rate do you see coming JohnPaul: [00:20:14] online in the next year into 2021? How do you see bitman and microbt scaling their hash rate? Ethan: [00:20:21] And for just for people that don't know the industry as well as we do, right now, these major manufacturers are sold out basically until almost August of 2021 for any new machines because of the recent Bitcoin price. And because mining profitability has been able to stick right JohnPaul: [00:20:36] around the 14 to 12 cent range per tera hash. So Ethan, what do you see? How do you see these manufacturers producing chips? How do you see the hash rate increasing? And maybe how many Ethan: [00:20:46] exo hashes do you see coming online every quarter every month? You've identified really clearly like the bottleneck in hash rate production coming online, which is like the ASIC manufacturers. I think opinions on how many machines these guys are producing like varies quite significantly across industry. You'll hear estimates as low as 5000 per month per manufacturer. And then [00:21:08] you'll hear up to 2030K in rigs per month from each one. And so it's a really wide range and there's no consensus on it. This is especially true because the manufacturers themselves are not very transparent with production numbers. Sometimes at the end of the year, they'll announce how many they made that year, but they won't give you live figures on how much they're producing Ethan: [00:21:27] right now. So it's still an estimation. My personal estimate would be like in a bull case Bitcoin, let's say Bitcoin runs to 50K, even at current difficulty levels, like even bit main S5s will still be profitable if Bitcoin runs up to 50K. And so in that case, plus the manufacturers, I think that we could see like a 40, 45% increase in hash rate over the next 18 months. It's obviously [00:21:52] variable on what the manufacturers do. And if it gets their act together, but I think if so, you can see close to a 50% increase over the next 18 months, curious to hear your position on this too, though. We do have a lot of conversations with the financing partners in this space and understanding that supply chain and the constraint at the foundry level, which is limiting the supply Ethan: [00:22:15] for mining machines, as you mentioned, even with this massive increase of demand and mining manufacturers doing their best job to attempt to secure future capacity and future capital to match the demand, it provides that interesting balancing act where back in 2018, those manufacturers were selling machines fire sale because they had too much inventory and they just had to get rid of [00:22:40] it. So for me, personally, when I'm modeling out most of our models and for our new Oklahoma project, I'm modeling about 300 megawatts of miners per month. And then that compounding at 5%. And even with that, it's an insane return. You're basically mining over 4,500 Bitcoin over the course of a 36 month period on a $10 million investment with debt as leverage, which gets you around 1.6 Ethan: [00:23:05] exohash of a pass rate. So that's how I look at it, which shows that even with massive increase, because I don't think we're at 309 megawatts, put that in perspective for the listeners, that'd be right around 90,000 of the new machines coming out of these facilities per month from microBT and from Bitmain and from others. But as you mentioned, Ethan, I think it's closer to [00:23:27] the maybe the $10,000 to $20,000 unit range. One part I'm interested in is like, how do you forecast the value of your machine over the lifetime? So I think traditionally, people took a three-year depreciation schedule or even two-year. But now we're seeing a really interesting dynamic where people who bought machines in April for $24 a terra hash for the new gen machines can now sell Ethan: [00:23:51] it for $33 a terra hash or above, which make the whole forecasting the value of ASICS incredibly tough because they're so volatile and they could actually increase. I don't know, how do you factor that into your estimates? For most of our models, we basically depreciate it over that 36 month period down to $0 dollar value to really show the investor that this operation can run successfully, [00:24:12] can make profits and can return capital to the investor as long as the Bitcoin price and difficulty assumptions remain. As I mentioned, like that, 300 megawatts and then the Bitcoin price growing over the next three years. We don't actually factor in the value or the resale value of those machines, but I think that is a key component of really the icing on the top of the cake, Ethan: [00:24:37] which is going to bring additional returns because, as you mentioned, hash rate is worth a lot right now and it continues to go up based on the backlog of new machines. One of the things that I found interesting is that when you have these investors coming into the space or even investors who are already here, some of them have the belief that an S19 pro would be gone and it wouldn't be [00:24:56] unprofitable in a year or it would be unprofitable in a year and a half. I think it shows that there's a lack of information and a lot of clarity needed in the mining space to really open it up to larger investors as we're seeing S5s are still running. S9s are still running. Those machines have been out for almost five years now and the S5 is probably six or seven years. There's a huge misinformation Ethan: [00:25:19] about the value and lifespan of a machine and it really all comes down to the value of that terra hash and then how much electricity costs, as you mentioned. All gravy from there, I guess, that makes sense to be appreciated on that schedule. It's the most conservative thing to do. I can only have upside from there. One of the things I want to touch on is industry consolidation. [00:25:37] If people aren't able to get their hands on machines, those machines in these facilities obviously have a per terra hash metric or valued on the market, let's say at $35 a terra hash JohnPaul: [00:25:47] for a facility with a bunch of new S19s in it, how do you see the industry beginning to consolidate Ethan: [00:25:53] in 2021 and is it primarily at the mining facility level or also you're predicting the mining companies will begin to merge and to be acquired? I think the idea of these machines being locked in and really scarce is a really good reason for industry consolidation like you pointed out. Basically, if that's the only way that you can go and acquire machines, you can't get them from [00:26:15] the manufacturer so then go buy another facility. I would also say that there's a couple other reasons why consolidation might happen and that mostly comes down to the advantages you get from a larger mining company. One is increased purchasing power. If you have a bigger balance sheet, you can have a better relationship with the manufacturer. You can get a higher discount on Ethan: [00:26:34] your machines. You can get lower upfront payments for those machines and overall, it's just a better experience for you. On the power side too, as you can probably attest to, if you have larger amounts of capital, your chances of getting lower cost power at scale is just higher. There's all these advantages on the infrastructure and machine side that you can get being large. [00:26:55] On the software side too, if you have more hash rate, you can reduce your pool fee, you can reduce your firmware fees, you can reduce your ASIC management software fees. It's just a huge advantage in being a larger mining company right now. I think it's going to happen, consolidation. It won't be like an industry where it goes down to three players Ethan: [00:27:15] because of the decentralized nature of Bitcoin. We could see it go down from say 1,000 main players in North America to like 100. I do think at first it'll be on the asset level. If there's a mining facility that people want of a company that has machines, they'll go and just try and buy that facility themselves. Do you think a facility will be worth more a year from now? [00:27:35] It depends on your view on Bitcoin. I think right now we're definitely in a strong point in the cycle, whether it's the value of ASICs or the value of mining companies. If I'm a mining company right now, I think it wouldn't be a terrible time to sell some assets, take some cash off the table. That being said, if Bitcoin runs significantly here, I think we're in a complete gold rush phase Ethan: [00:27:57] where hash rate can't keep up, Bitcoin price is running, and you could be missing out on a lot of gains in the future. I would say it's not a bad time to sell now, but it could be a much better time in a year's time from now. I think one of the put numbers on this, public mining companies are at all-time highs or at least since the early stages of the 2017 bull run. The public [00:28:20] markets are looking really favorably upon US, Canadian, and UK listed mining companies. Most of them have gone up over 400% in value over the past few months. That type of valuation appreciation should also be thought of in the private markets where if you're running a private mining facility, you should think of your facility as now being worth to an investor like 4x the Ethan: [00:28:42] amount that it used to be a few months ago, given that you've already invested in machines in a supply and constrained world, and we're on the edge of a bull market here. I think it's looking good for everyone who is already in the industry and plugged in in mining. JohnPaul: [00:28:54] Ethan, if you had to make a guess, what do you think the average size of a facility is in North America in the mining space? How do you see that growing, as you mentioned? There are a lot of Ethan: [00:29:05] gains and advantages to being a larger player, but I want to hear your thoughts on how you see these facilities scaling in North America specifically. When we launched our facility in early 2018, it was enough power for 4 megawatts. I think we got 2.5 megawatts online in total. At the time, that was a relatively big facility. There was gigawatt in Washington State. That was obviously [00:29:27] much larger, but there wasn't a lot of large 300 megawatt plus facilities being built out. Then I think in 2019, people started transitioning to the stream of having 10 megawatt facilities. Then in 2020, really, the era of megafusilities, 20, 30 megawatt plus, in some cases, people are aspiring for 300 megawatts really started to come about. I would say that megawatts are probably Ethan: [00:29:52] overestimated. The 300 megawatt facilities, I think there'll be a few of them, but not many. I think there's a lot of great opportunity at the 20 to 30 megawatt range, but I know mine story that you've looked into this a lot more than I have. I think there's good tower opportunities anytime you get over a few megawatts. It's all about leveraging those opportunities [00:30:11] and potentially having multiple facilities around the US, leveraging different pockets of power where you can get them. I'm bullish on all stages of mining, whether it's mid megawatt range up until megafusilities. I think the industry is definitely heading towards larger facilities as we go here. I definitely agree with you on that point. We are seeing those 10 megawatt facilities being Ethan: [00:30:32] the norm and then quickly people building out 50, 50 megawatts, even to the point where we're getting solicited for offers for 200 megawatt plus deployments in conjunction with large energy companies who are looking to off-take power or who have generation resources that are no longer selling to the grid or are no longer profitable. I would agree with you at seeing a huge increase [00:30:57] as we see financing step into this space and additional capital. One of the things I want to talk about next is North American ASIC manufacturing. Do you believe any of the large tech companies, NVIDIA, AMD, Google, or potentially anyone else will start building ASICs to compete with Bitmain MicroBT, Kanan, Inosilicon, and those manufacturers? I personally think the biggest hurdle right now Ethan: [00:31:23] for American miners is the 25% tariff coming from China. Obviously, the facility is in Thailand and Malaysia for Bitmain and Whatsminer help with that. But I think that's still a number one concern for American miners is let's get ASICs that are at least assembled in the US. So we don't have to pay that tariff. I think over the next few years, what we'll be really great to see is the equivalent [00:31:47] of what Bitmain and Whatsminer did in Southeast Asia, but doing it in the US. So partnering with somebody like MicroBT and Bitmain, but manufacturing the machines or sorry, not manufacturing, but assembling the machines in North America to avoid that tariff and add some American labor component to it. And so I think that will be the case in the next two to three years is we'll start to see Ethan: [00:32:08] like MicroBT US and miners can buy from them instead of MicroBT China or Thailand. And so that's what JohnPaul: [00:32:16] I'm excited for. I think maybe five years down the line, we may start to see an American ASIC Ethan: [00:32:22] manufacturer, but I don't know, it's pretty hard to predict at this point. We were really close with the obelisk team based in Boston. They launched the AnSia mining and they had a really hard go of it. They eventually got a product to market, but we watched firsthand how hard it is to build ASICs in the US. So I'm not extremely bullish on that in the near term. And I would agree with you, there's [00:32:41] a lot to be said about the amount of capital that these manufacturers put in. I think it's been rumored to over $10 million just for a test chip run when they're designing these new chips for the mining equipment. So it's definitely not an easy market to come into and especially one that has not had as much financial backing as some of the other blockchain based industries just because Ethan: [00:33:02] of the hurdles and some of the, as I mentioned, some of the mists calculations or misinformation of the profitability or of the really size and scale of the mining industry for Bitcoin. What do you believe is the most difficult part of securing financing for miners and mining JohnPaul: [00:33:17] operations currently? And how do you see that space evolving? Ethan: [00:33:21] This is I think the big story of 2020 is new forms of financing available for miners. And it's really exciting. So as a quick kind of history, in 2017, public markets started becoming available for miners. And so you saw a lot of mining companies do backdoor listings, like reverse more mergers, basically, buying shell companies on these exchanges or going and doing an IPO like [00:33:43] Bitfarms or Argo. And so that was like a great venue for them to do equity financing. Then those markets cut off in latter half of 2018 and 2019, but it's since opened up again. So now public mining companies can raise insane amounts of money through equity offerings. You're seeing that now with Riot blockchain as well as Marathon. And they can go and use like off the shelf Ethan: [00:34:06] offerings, ATMs to basically finance their new rigs. That's great for the public markets, but on the private side, I think the largest still are debt financing, as well as now the new trend is ASIC financing using the ESIX themselves as collateral. So basically, you can go buy thousands of rigs from finance from a third party and they take your rigs as collateral for that loan. And [00:34:28] that's really exciting. There's almost a dozen players now financing those types of rigs in that manner. And so I'm really excited to see how that grows. And I think it's really great for miners to have another financing option available to them. And so now they can mix in equity, debt, and ASIC financing, and potentially hashrate forwards is all of these products that help them Ethan: [00:34:47] go build increasingly large operations. And as you mentioned, those ASIC miners are what is really valuable in this whole space and what does have a lot of volatility. So how are these financing partners hedging that volatility? Are they really taking a bet on the underlying asset and the overall profitability? Can you touch a little bit more on your viewpoint there and maybe some of [00:35:07] the risks associated with large scale financing? Yeah, we haven't seen any problems to date because ASIC financing really kicked off this year. And for the most part, ASIC prices have been increasing. It'll be really interesting to see when we head into a market where ASIC prices may drastically drop in a rapid manner. And then their entire ASIC financing, ASICs as collateral model changes. Ethan: [00:35:31] And so right now, I think a lot of the ASIC finance years are doing a similar depreciation says to what you mentioned before, which is a two year, potentially three year depreciation schedule for those ASICs. And hopefully having a fast depreciation schedule, as well as a fast payback of the loan protects their downside case. But I think in the future, they need to get more [00:35:51] pragmatic in how they value that collateral. So in a regular kind of Bitcoin loan, miners have to post like a certain amount of Bitcoin. And if they fall below their margin requirements, they have to post more Bitcoin on something like a matrix port platform. In the future, if we have more clear trackers of ASIC prices, we could do something similar where these Ethan: [00:36:11] finance years are tracking the value of the ASICs on a per day basis. And basically, those ASICs dip below a certain point, no longer meet that collateral requirement than the miners in Bitcoin. And so on hashredindex.com, our new mining data website, that's something that we try and deliver is this like idea that you can track the value of ASICs over time. And we want to get [00:36:31] to a place that eventually can be used by the finance years as a way to track their collateral and be more pragmatic in how they manage risk. Any opportunities or areas that mining operations can focus on in order to gain and strengthen their ability to be financed or to finance equipment quickly and easily. I think the biggest thing definitely is like track Ethan: [00:36:53] record. The miners that have long periods of stable revenue and have made it through multiple cycles are more likely to get financed. And so you see that a lot with all the public announcements being made on people like Bitfarms or Core Scientific. And people like Mining Store, right? You guys have gone through what three, four mining cycles now. So the chances that you [00:37:16] make it through the next one are just so much higher than someone new to the industry. So I would say like from a miners perspective, try to earn your stripes. It gets easier as you go because you prove yourself how it is like a good operator. What else you can do I think is just have like great assets. So they want to make sure you can pay back your loan. And so if you have a Ethan: [00:37:35] low cost of operation, you're buying low CapEx machines or a CapEx machine, like you're spending CapEx in a great way, then I think it gives them comfort and to the fact that you'll be able to pay back your loan and you won't go bankrupt and they won't lose on their investment. But being just riding the best operation you can and make sure that you maximize the chances of [00:37:53] you paying back the loan and then you become really attractive for these finance years. So one of the things that I wanted to talk about and mention, which is insurance in the mining industry. And right now there's the insurance products to ensure your mining equipment. After COVID, it became a little bit harder to ensure it's because the whole insurance industry Ethan: [00:38:12] in space had some difficulties with the overall policies they were underwriting. But so right now, these manufacturers or these financing partners are financing the machines and the requiring someone, another insurance company to ensure the value of those machines. And that protects if something in the event of a fire or disaster or tornado, [00:38:31] on hitting one of these mining facilities, that finance your partner has their collateral insured and protected and they have the opportunity to get a payout. One of the things that is new to the space that I've been working on for about, I would say two years, is the insurance products that will ensure the investment. And what I mean by that is that they'll ensure the debt payments Ethan: [00:38:52] and the interest payments on the loan or on the miners. The reason why I think this is going to be a huge jump in the right direction and over the past couple of months, we've had significant progress in that area, Ethan, where we're able to have we're able to work with a massive insurance company to underwrite this mining equipment in a hundred million dollar tranches, where they will [00:39:14] basically make sure that the lender gets paid and they take all of the risk. So now, the interest rates in the space, I think, could drop very quickly over the coming years, but then it also allows you to go out to other financing partners and other debt partners who don't fully understand the industry, but are now willing to write a policy or willing to Ethan: [00:39:33] lend capital to buy equipment because of this insurance wrapper. Have you thought about that at JohnPaul: [00:39:38] all? And do you see how do you see insurance overall affecting the industry? That's an area I haven't Ethan: [00:39:43] really explored at all. We had basic insurance for our facility and equipment back in Kansas City, but this again, it was just to like natural disaster and potential like theft or damage. The fact that you could create insurance for the value of the equipment itself, I think, is incredibly fascinating and it's the first time ever hearing of it, but I think you're the JohnPaul: [00:40:04] right guy to do it. So I'm excited for that product to come to market. And like you said, Ethan: [00:40:08] the fact that insurance is in place should just ultimately mature the industry in a really great way where now miners can get lower cost financing because they're insured and provide a wide range of other benefits. That's an exciting project. I'm super excited to see how that's going to change the industry because it, as I mentioned, these facilities aren't cheap. So for people who [00:40:26] don't know, it costs about a million dollars to build out a megawatt of mining equipment and mining infrastructure and probably about 150 to 160,000 dollars just to build out the infrastructure on a new facility that is even a facility at scale. That's a facility that's at least 10 megawatts. And so there is a lot of capital going to the space. And before, as you mentioned, it was most Ethan: [00:40:45] all equity finance, which was not an easy task, especially in a nascent crypto market, where people have to be comfortable with Bitcoin and they also have to get comfortable with the mining aspect and then the fluctuating value of those machines. So hopefully this helps mature the space and JohnPaul: [00:40:59] helps it grow. But I'm excited to see bringing that to market, as you mentioned, Ethan, and seeing Ethan: [00:41:03] how it can help us scale past 50 megawatts into the hundreds or thousands of megawatts in the future. We'd love to collab on that in some way if we can help provide data for that. It definitely will be needing a lot of good data. One of the questions they actually asked was, okay, how do you protect against Bitcoin from being used from nefarious activity? I'm like, [00:41:22] you see the Bitcoins we get, they're coming right from the blockchain so they never use by anyone. We, they're not used for anything. They're so they're clean coins and they're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. Yep, that's good. So many little questions like that that you never even think about as a miner about like why someone would have wanted to ensure a product or why someone Ethan: [00:41:38] would have want to work with you. I think it's definitely a great avenue for miners to get out of that. I think long term, just taking this out of mining for a second, but Bitcoin is a whole, we need to go through this internal battle on whether we consider coins clean or not. I know there's varying opinions across the Bitcoin industry on this. And so I think that's going to [00:41:59] be a really interesting debate topic over the next few years. And if it's good for Bitcoin, if we start labeling coins as clean or dirty, that is going to be interesting to follow. Definitely agree with you on that, Ethan. And I'm kind of going to wrap, come into some rapid fire questions, which is the first one is what problem do you face every day Ethan: [00:42:16] that nobody has solved yet? No hedging products for hash rate. We look at our mining pool revenue and complete variance day to day, no consistency and showing that to investors is insane because one month we may be up huge, one month we're down significantly, whereas it would be just much easier to show consistent growth. How are you seeing this fluctuate on your sides because people [00:42:37] are jumping on and off? Or why is that happening? I guess a few reasons here. The one we take the mining luck risk on from the miners as the pool operator, so our kind of revenue is jumping all around. But I think more importantly to this hedging part is the value of Bitcoin itself is fluctuating. And a lot of our expenses are in USD, that Bitcoin price and the value of hash Ethan: [00:42:57] rate and dollars per terra hash, that number is jumping around quite significantly. What risk have you taken in your life and would you do anything differently? I think the most recent risk I took was like leaving the corporate world, basically a year and a half ago I was working at Goldman. Pretty cushy like investment banking job. It was definitely tough, [00:43:16] but a cushy from a salary and compensation perspective as well as a branding perspective. And so leaping into cryptocurrency, which taking a salary cut being a founder of a company, as well as joining an industry that's a little bit less proven, I think was a risk, but I'm very happy I made it. Was there anything you wanted to discuss that I haven't touched on yet? Ethan: [00:43:38] I think one of the largest things you can have a whole podcast on this itself. I've heard your story a few times on podcasts, but I think you coming in and bootstrapping a startup is incredibly interesting. And specifically, I'd be curious to see how that's evolved. When I got in this industry in the beginning, it was a $50,000 investment from my uncle and some another $20,000 investment [00:44:00] from my grandma and then another $20,000 came for myself and 10k from my father. And I was like, let's go ahead and buy some GPU miners and build this out. So it was very family and friends, equity round, just in the project. And so that was how I got into this space. And then after that, really, like you mentioned, was bootstrapping it didn't really want to give up equity because Ethan: [00:44:19] I knew I wanted to work on this space and didn't know what that product market fit was going to look like. And we then went ahead and deployed out our Iowa facility and worked through deploying out multiple facilities between 2017 and 2020 for other clients and customers, GPU facilities and ACI facilities, and then also mining containers. We were deploying these containers at solar farms [00:44:37] at wind farms. And really, we're just acting as a service company in this space. And I guess about a year ago, I was like, I need to start focusing on how to build out that hash rate infrastructure so that I can work on improving the liquidation process and improving, giving access to a hash rate as investment vehicle as an asset class to retail investors, to hedge funds, Ethan: [00:45:00] to institutional investors. And this basically make it easier for everyone in this space to deploy and run and have exposure to hash rate as an asset class. From there, I think it really was, I jumped into the bond world a lot was like, okay, how do we finance this? How was, how are oil wells financed back in the day? And that was a lot of my 2019 journey and basically early 2020. [00:45:21] And then now where we are scaling, we're seeing that talking to large energy companies, integrating the energy play in more, as you mentioned, a lot of these companies, mining companies now are selling energy back to the grid. So working at doing that, looking at actually acquiring power plants and seeing what the cost there is in order to get the lowest cost power, we're seeing power prices, Ethan: [00:45:39] you know, drop consistently. During my discovery, or looking for a facility, I was sending all over the US all the way from Oregon down to Texas to Iowa to New York, all over the US and even Canada, whereas how do you find this cheap energy? How do you connect it? How do you find 10, 15, 20 megawatts? It's definitely not easy. But now we're seeing with all these [00:45:58] renewable energy and the power markets continuing to shift down that the power prices in the US will just continue to drop making North America a great spot for miners. And then as I mentioned, the financing background and the kind of insurance pieces are coming together, which I believe will really build a almost a risk free product for lenders in this space that Ethan: [00:46:15] has massive ability to scale, massive margins. There's very few, if not, if any, debt-based businesses that have the return profile that Bitcoin miners have and to the scale that they have. So I'm super excited for this space, Ethan. That's great. I'm bullish mining store, man, JohnPaul: [00:46:31] going along mining store. Last question is, where do you want to go? Where do you see yourself in Ethan: [00:46:35] two years personally? I think for us, we're all very young founders still. So Nick is our CEO's mid-30s or younger 30s. Eddie Guzman and I are all mid-20s. And we have a lot of room to grow as entrepreneurs, as well as operators. And so we want to make sure that we're building really great products for our customers first, generating good returns for our shareholders, and then, [00:46:59] I think, creating really good work environments for all of our employees. All three of those pillars are incredibly important to us over the next two years. And from a personal perspective, I can't wait to grow into more of an executive role and continue to build out our team and employ people and drive value for customers and shareholders. We're kind of listening to you. Ethan: [00:47:17] I'm on Twitter, Ethan underscore Vera. And then, if you want to check out our websites, we run hashredindex.com, the mining data website, as well as Luxor Mining Pool. And so, if you're a miner with shock to five six or equity hashrate, feel free to reach out. And I can talk to you about our liquidation strategies there and try and maximize your BTC for [00:47:38] terra hash. There's very few people, I think, in this space that I can talk to in the depth we're able to jump in today about this industry. So I'm glad we're able to have that opportunity. And I'm glad you were able to come on the podcast. [00:47:59] Thank you so much for listening. And until next time, mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Building the World's Largest Bitcoin Pool | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 31 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/foundry-bitcoin-mining-mike-colyer/ Building the World's Largest Bitcoin Pool | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 31 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 31 # Building the World's Largest Bitcoin Pool with Mike Colyer — CEO, Foundry Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Mike Colyer to discuss building the world's largest bitcoin pool. ### From Bitcoin Rabbit Hole to Global Dominance: A Journey Architecting the World’s Largest Mining Pool Digital Gold Podcast: Building the Biggest Bitcoin Mining Pool with Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry This episode of the Digital Gold Podcast dives into the fascinating and often complex world of Bitcoin mining with Mike Colyer, CEO of Foundry. Colyer explains that a fascination with Bitcoin in 2017 led him to become Foundry’s first employee in 2019, where he was tasked with building a North American mining ecosystem and counterbalancing China’s dominance of hash rate. Today, Foundry runs a full stack hash infrastructure platform. Its USA pool alone captures nearly one third of global block production, processing roughly 280 Exahash. Colyer highlights the Bitcoin network’s “ungameable” self-regulating design, predicts that miners will become integral grid assets, and explains Foundry’s strategic spinouts: Yuma for decentralized AI and Fortitude for venture mining across multiple proof of work chains. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/lWcdrepehsM?si=HF-SWCXUG_Ebagkf) ### Here’s a peek at what is uncovered: - From blank page to billion‑hash powerhouse: In late‑2019 Barry Silbert handed Mike Colyer a literal “white sheet of paper” and asked him to shift Bitcoin hash‑rate to North America; that empty page became Foundry. - Bear market bet that paid off: Amid the 2019-2020 bear and COVID chaos, Foundry invented an equipment financing model and wired “tens of millions” to preorder M30S and S19 rigs just when most miners were retrenching. - World’s largest Bitcoin pool: Starting with just 1 % of network hash, Foundry USA now processes about 280 EH/s (≈280 billion guesses per second), winning roughly 30 % of global blocks. - Beyond the pool: Foundry has morphed into a full stack institutional miner‑management software, robust aftermarket firmware, and outsourced site services that let big fleets offload day‑to‑day headaches. - Refocusing via spin‑outs: To stay laser‑focused on miner support, Foundry spun out Fortitude (venture/self‑mining) and Yuma (decentralized‑AI infrastructure) as standalone subsidiaries in 2024. - Leadership DNA: Colyer still carries GE’s famous “4 E’s” card: Energy, Energize, Edge, Execute, and those values anchor Foundry’s culture. - Industry coming‑of‑age: What began as wildcat speculation is now a field with 20‑plus publicly traded miners worth billions, drawing seasoned talent and institutional capital. - An immutable playing field: Collier emphasizes that Bitcoin’s proof‑of‑work rules “can’t be gamed”; even Wall‑Street giants get no special edge thanks to the difficulty adjustments built‑in fairness. The conversation mapped the journey of a key industry leader, showcased the growth and institutionalization of Bitcoin mining, and delved into the technical and strategic underpinnings of operating a large mining pool, ultimately emphasizing the intertwined future of Bitcoin mining with global energy infrastructure and the impact of emerging technologies like AI. If Bitcoin is a digital gold mine, Foundry is not just providing the picks and shovels; they’re building the entire logistical system from the secure vaults (the pool) and the specialized heavy machinery (firmware, management software) to the power grid connections, ensuring the gold can be efficiently and reliably extracted and distributed, even adapting to geological shifts (difficulty adjustments) and market quakes (halving’s). Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/lWcdrepehsM?si=HF-SWCXUG_Ebagkf) ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ How Foundry built the world’s largest Bitcoin mining pool - ✅ The economics of pool selection and its impact on miner profitability - ✅ What the future of mining pool consolidation means for the industry ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Mike’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/building-the-biggest-bitcoin-mining-pool-with-mike/id1539971833?i=1000718859265) #### Related Resources Managed Mining Program → Bitcoin Mining Hosting Services → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Today our guest is Mike Collier, CEO of Foundry, whose foundry USA pool now captures nearly one third of global block production and anchors institutional liquidity for digital currency group’s ecosystem. Since taking the helm in October of 2019, Collier has architected a full stack hash infrastructure platform, encompassing pool services, minor management software. Aftermarket firmware and mining site operations with scaling headcount beyond 150 people. In today’s dialogue, he delivers an insider’s readout on post having economics, supply chain arbitrage, and policy vectors steering bitcoin’s next generation compute grid. Mike, welcome to Digital Gold. Yeah, JohnPaul great to be here. JohnPaul: So how did you find out about Bitcoin mining? Let’s start there. Mike: Oh, wow. , My gosh, it is been about eight years. , , in other industries for most of my career. It was June of 2017, I went down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and, discovered, I’d [00:01:00] say, I guess I rediscovered Bitcoin ’cause I knew Bitcoin had existed, but never really. I knew much about it and, , we went on vacation. I read a book and it was talking about the future of mankind and technology. And, I came back from vacation and literally, read an article about Bitcoin and I was , wow, this is still here. At the time it was trading at , I don’t know, $2,800 or $3,000 or something that. And, , I was just , I can’t believe this is what they were talking about in the book. It’s this exists today, right? and I’m , I gotta learn more. So I went down the bitcoin rabbit hole, and I read the white paper, didn’t understand it. So I started googling a whole bunch of things, trying to learn. And, one thing led to another. I live in Rochester, New York, which is, , Western New York. I found a blockchain meetup group in Buffalo. And, , for an entire year, every Tuesday I would drive to Buffalo for an 8:00 AM meeting, , with a bunch of just random people who are interested in the [00:02:00] ecosystem. And I was the old person in the room. And I’d take a notepad and I would listen to everything they’re saying, and I’d go home and I’d Google it all. , so , one of those sessions we were talking about mining so then I went down the mining rabbit hole and learned all about mining, and it became, , well, how it is , with this industry, , once you start, it’s hard to stop. And, I’ve shared the story before, but my wife had at that point in time. been working for 20 years and she literally said, Hey, just take the summer off and , let’s just enjoy the summer. And I literally sat at my computer for 15 hours a day , trying to find out anything and everything I could about this industry. And, , at the time it was the ICO craze and there was all kinds, , e was blowing up , , so I spent a little time trading I was day trading, ? , Which is not, it’s , it’s not who I am. I could, I’m this, I hate this. I wanna build something, , I wanna contribute. I really had this , deep desire to wanna [00:03:00] contribute to, this ecosystem, and it’s been eight years and I can’t imagine doing anything else. JohnPaul: So I would say a few things on that. The first one is if you haven’t been to a meetup, you need to go to one. They’re a great way to meet your community. That’s how I also learned, Mike. I was in high school in 2013 and 14 back then, and just going to meetups every single Thursday night. I. At a bar, , wasn’t even able to drink yet. Just sneaking into the meetup and for a year just talking to people, learning from all these different types of people, from, people that are into the technology, people that are into the economics, people that are into the software side of things. So if you’re a listener and you haven’t been to a local meetup, do it. It’ll change your life forever and help you understand Bitcoin farther. Mike: A JPD, this group of people and I’m still friends , with many of ’em. Just some of the smartest people I’ve ever run into. They were on the bleeding edge and they came from all walks of life and , it made it so interesting. ’cause , some people were hardcore technologists. Other people were [00:04:00] investors. People were . Just speculators, , they were just, , and you get this mix of people in the room and it, it really led to some amazing conversations. And it’s been fun. It’s, , part of my story, I was , I would say I was, when I was in college. Right. You were talking about you discovered Bitcoin when you were in high school. So when I was in college, the internet came out . the first browser showed up in college? Not when I was in high school. Literally when I’m in, college. And, when I distinctly remember the first time I used mosaic, , browser, and it was just one of these of , wow, this changes everything. As I forget, I was 19 or 20 or something that. It just fundamentally changed the way I started thinking about the world of what the possibilities were. And , I was too chicken to move to Silicon Valley. You had to move to Silicon Valley to be, part of that internet revolution really at the time. And I didn’t wanna move to California. . [00:05:00] So, I went to GE instead. I went through their leadership program and it was great. It was an amazing experience and I met a amazing people and lifelong friends, and it was probably the right thing for me. But , when I learned about the idea , of Bitcoin and this decentralization and this idea that anyone anywhere in the world can participate, you don’t need permission and you can do it from any place. was instantly drawn to it, and I’m ,, I’m not gonna miss , this technology wave. #### Mining Profitability Analysis JohnPaul: Well, you weren’t instantly drawn to it. You were thought about it, and then you said, , I’m gonna go back and research, , which most people do that’s normal. I feel for a lot of Mike: , You’re exactly right. , It’s a journey, right? I love when I talk to people about, crypto. And I probably, most of the time I avoid the subject, right, because I just don’t want to get into all of it. But sometimes I lean in and I find it amazing how hard it is for somebody to buy. today, buy Bitcoin. It’s pretty easy. Back in the day it was really hard. you were signing up on [00:06:00] these , weird exchanges and you’re , I don’t know if I wanna put money on it. But. Today, you can just open up Cash app and literally you can buy Bitcoin. It’s easier to buy Bitcoin than it is to buy, , go to Starbucks and buy coffee. Yet, trying to get somebody to spend $20 to buy $20 worth of Bitcoin is a, , the conversation, it’s hilarious because you’re , oh. They’re , oh, I gotta really think about this., I may need to ask permission. This is a family decision. I think it’s $20 worth of Bitcoin. is mind blowing, but the fascinating thing is everybody who’s actually made that, , it’s stepping over the chasm, right? once they buy $20 worth of Bitcoin, they start researching it, they start reading about it, they start going down their own personal journey and eventually. I don’t know if I’ve met anybody , who’s gone down that journey and not arrived at the conclusion of, I don’t own enough Bitcoin,[00:07:00] so JohnPaul: And it’s amazing how everyone has the same journey, but I feel there’s that always that blocker , ah, I talked about it. I saw it, and then I was , whoa, my eyes opened up 14 hours on the computer. So let’s jump into GE a little bit. , What skills leadership training. Did you get from GE that you took to the Bitcoin mining space? ’cause you guys as Foundry, you’re one of the largest private mining companies out here providing services to the space in, in a multitude of way, and it’s a lot of that’s from your leadership. Mike: Part of it’s from my leadership. I think a bigger part is we have an amazing team at Foundry, right? So we were really JohnPaul: culture starts with you, Mike. Mike: So, , but the culture lives on with the team, right? And it really , I love coming to work every day, because of the people I work with and there’s, everyone is incredibly passionate about, , securing the Bitcoin network , and . That makes it fun. In terms of ge, I talk about missing the Silicon Valley. experience. And I went to ge and [00:08:00] quite frankly, it was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me. So I worked at GE during the Jack Welch years, so I don’t know, your audience probably has to look up who Jack Welch is, but GE at the time was the most profitable, most admired, it was the company, , of the nineties, really, the eighties and nineties. And, , Jack Welch was a really innovative leader. . So , I came in, we built locomotive. I went to the transportation business. So we built locomotives and, , I had to move to Erie, Pennsylvania, right? There’s not a lot of people , that want to move to Erie, Pennsylvania. I didn’t wanna move there, but I had to, if I wanted to take this job. , And GE brought in, every year they’d bring in 50 kids from college into their different divisions. And we were all thrown in and we had to compete against each other. And we were on a six month rotational program where every six months we changed jobs. And it was very aggressive. , You had to work really hard. for me, , I came in, I’m , oh my God, these people [00:09:00] are way smarter than me. I shouldn’t be here. They have better credentials, whatever. And, , for me it was , I’m gonna just have to outwork ’em. that was my only option, was , I gotta get here before they get here and I gotta stay, , late. And I did, I put in the energy and effort and learned it. Just a tremendous amount of skills. , I even carry the GE value card in my wallet to this day. , it was, that was 30 years ago. I still carry it with me ’cause , it was really JohnPaul: And do some of those values show up in Foundry Mike: , Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. JohnPaul: are they? For people who might Mike: , I used to always go back to, , now you were gonna put me on the spot. , I should get a, I should get the card out. I should show you the JohnPaul: Go for it. Go for it. #### Energy Infrastructure Strategy Mike: , who carries a wallet anymore? Right. JohnPaul: It’s a big crypto wall Mike: even have pictures of my kids when they were little in my wallet. \, But, , . , There’s the GE card, right? You probably look it up online. But the four, E’s were, you gotta come to work with energy, personal energy ’cause you gotta be able to deal [00:10:00] with the pace of change of what’s happening in the world. And then you have to be able to energize others, right? So if you want to be a leader, you have to be able to get people. Excited about what you’re trying to go accomplish and create this atmosphere that’s invigorating. You gotta have edge where you’ve gotta be able to make the tough calls, make the tough decisions, and then you have to execute. At the end of the day, it’s all about execution. And those four Es always stuck with me. And I don’t use those four Es at Foundry, but we’ve . let that bleed into who we are. It is who I am. I found the company that matched who I was just naturally. And that, I guess that’s why GE was, it resonated. So met some amazing people, did some incredible things. It was a lot of fun. , And from a Bitcoin mining perspective, and it’s different today than what it was eight years ago, . There weren’t a lot of, I would call people with a lot of professional experience coming into the Bitcoin mining world. [00:11:00] Right. It was a lot of speculators,. It was a younger crowd speculating, just the gold rush or the wildcatters in West Texas. , it’s , oh, , there’s gold there in them hills. I’m gonna run out there and start digging. Right? And , that’s what Bitcoin mining is or was. It was , ah, I found cheap energy. Ah, run, how do we set up a mining facility? JohnPaul: No permits, nothing. Mike: nothing just, ah, we’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. It’s changed today, now there’s, , 20 plus publicly traded mining companies. They’re worth literally billions of dollars. , And we’re bringing it just a lot of amazing people are coming into the industry, which is fantastic. , It’s wonderful. JohnPaul: No, and I love that. I guess, and , let’s talk through Foundry. So , you joined them and then what pivotal milestones occurred and how did you, I guess what did you come into, the foundry you came into, and then what was the foundry you are at today? Mike: Well, the foundry didn’t really exist, right? So I’m employee number [00:12:00] one. so as the story goes, I, decided if I was gonna, I wanted to go all in on the space, I talked to my wife and she’s , go for it. , Which was super important for me to have that support. ’cause I was, I literally was pivoting my 20 plus year career to go pursue this weird thing called Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. , what is that? And so , I worked with a small company here locally ’cause I really thought Western New York should be the mining capital of the world. , We have. A colder climate, right? , We have tons of cheap, , electric hydropower, really the Buffalo Niagara region. And to this day, I still am convinced it should be the mining capital of the world. Not West Texas, but here, this is a very stable environment. , Never did I imagine that New York state would do everything they possibly can to. Kill an industry, which still doesn’t make any sense to me. , But, , anyways, [00:13:00] I digress. , So I’m in an organization called YPO, young Presidents Organization if you’re running a company, it can be very lonely, , as the CEO of a business. So , I think it’s really important to build a network of people that are. In a similar situation that you can trust and you can share, and there’s organizations out there that, promote that. So YPO is one of ’em. EO is another one. I highly recommend people joining eo that’s for smaller businesses getting off the ground. , , so I reached out to the YPO network and I’m , who else is crazy enough to be in Bitcoin mining and found a few people? Turns out, the people that started Core, and today, I’d argue almost all, not, maybe not all, but the majority of the leaders of Bitcoin mining companies are actually YPO members, which is fascinating to me. #### ASIC Hardware Evolution JohnPaul: It’s an interesting stat. I didn’t know that. Mike: And then I got a phone call that said there was a company. Was interested in getting into Bitcoin mining, and I was at Core and things were going really well. We were [00:14:00] growing that business. They had the big, they really wanted to go public at some point. , , And then I was , yeah, I’m not that interested. , But then they said it was DCG and at the time. I was , wow, DCG wants to get into Bitcoin mining that really changes the game. So I flew down to New York, met with Barry. We hit it off and Barry was basically , here’s a white sheet of paper. Figure out , what we can do to help build the mining ecosystem in North America. So he was seeing large inflows of capital from institutional investors into Bitcoin. China really dominated the Bitcoin mining ecosystem, right? They made the machines. They had most of the hash rate, they had the pools. , So there was this worry that this would become a Chinese dominated token or people wouldn’t invest in Bitcoin because it was run by the Chinese. And Barry’s , look it, we have to get hash rate into North America. We have to balance this. And I wanna [00:15:00] figure out , how we can help. Gold leverage the DCG balance sheet. It’s brand, it’s network, it’s connections. Here’s a white sheet of paper. Tell me what we can do. And, he said, we’re gonna call the company Foundry. So that was, I was , all right. , That’s the beginning of it. And, JohnPaul: you have the name, you have the white sheet of paper. What’s on the paper? What did you put? What? What? How does this, do you still have the original paper today? You wanna pull it outta your wallet? Mike: No, it is still blank. , No. So we spent a couple months brainstorming what to do and for me, I was , look at the North American miners have built out the ecosystem, , , sorry, the infrastructure, , this is October of 2019, so there were. , It was bear market and it’s a bear market. We didn’t really experience the same bear market this time around. I think mostly because the public miners were able to print money from, , their ATMs. , , , but back then, and, well, you remember you were around October of 2019. We weren’t sure we were gonna, anyone was gonna make it , it was brutal. It was ugly.[00:16:00] JohnPaul: long bear market. I remember that. Mike: And the having was right around the corner and it was just , , this is not gonna end well. , , so, everyone was cash poor, but they had Rackspace. So we built an equipment financing business. I said, Hey, we could use the equipment as collateral. Nobody had done it yet. And , Barry, to his credit, he was , I love that idea. Let’s go all in on that. , And then COVID hit and again to Barry’s credit, he said, Hey, Mike, if you’re gonna do equipment financing, you probably should buy some machines. And I’m , oh, that, yeah, yeah, good idea. I said, well, how many you want me to buy? And he goes, I’d buy all you can buy. And I’m . Okay. That’s different than what I’m used to in the mining space where no one has any money. , So we bought, we started placing orders, , and what we didn’t know was there was a chip shortage at that point in time. And this was, we were placing orders for the new M 30 s and the new S nineteens that weren’t gonna ship until post. [00:17:00] Having so COVID, market collapses and, . Bitcoin’s back to 3,500 bucks or something, and we’re wiring tens of millions of dollars to China to jump to the front of the line to get machines. And we had equipment financing and I went, I called everybody saying I got machines, I got equipment financing. And the majority of people told me, your rates are too high. Mining economics stink. These are new machines and having is right around the corner. No thank you. And . What was tough was Barry said, the only thing I don’t wanna be was a Bitcoin miner. remember I flew back down to New York, I sat in his office and I was , hey, , this, , actually I didn’t fly back down to New York because it was COVID, so I had to, we got on, , teams call and he said, I’m , no one took me up on my offer and I got a lot of machines coming. And he goes, well, I guess we’ll be a Bitcoin miner. , so that was the beginning of it. , , so we were the biggest Bitcoin miner in 2021. , We didn’t want to be JohnPaul: Are you, were , bigger than [00:18:00] Genesis at that time. Mike: bigger than Genesis. JohnPaul: Genesis Digital, the, with Marco? #### Energy Meets AI Demand Mike: sorry. We did, there’s also the genesis, the DCG business that blew up. Were we bigger than them? Yeah, I think we were, I think we were definitely the biggest one in North America for sure. I don’t, we weren’t the biggest globally ’cause there were still really big Chinese miners at the time, even Bitmain. JohnPaul: But to your point, you had a lot of hash power. You’re packing it. You guys are expanding. Mike: , We put it everywhere. , I called everyone back up. They had Rackspace and we plugged in machines everywhere. And then of course. Economics flipped in the back half of 2020. Everybody wanted to become a Bitcoin miner. We did not purposefully, we did not wanna be the biggest, we wanted to build the ecosystem. And that was, that’s the heart I think of Foundry, is we continue to want to build out the ecosystem, make the ecosystem stronger.. And Barry was very much , think in terms of decades. He didn’t care what happened month to month, quarter to quarter. He is , [00:19:00] we’re, this is gonna be here for a long time. , We had this vision that long-term energy companies and nation states would be the biggest miners and they needed trusted partners. So we wanted to be that trusted partner, which is why we launched , the pool. ’cause it was we, the only option was really Chinese pools. So we launched the foundry, USA pool and then we, strategically sold the machines back into the miners so that they could get off the ground and get going and go public and raise more money. And we wanted to fuel that machine, for it to get going. , So yeah, , it’s been a wild ride, we never anticipated being the biggest pool in the world. , , But here we are. , So now we’re , what else can we do to help the miners? Right? So we’ve leaned very heavily into enterprise software solutions. , Running people don’t, I’m not sure everyone really understands the technical lift to run a pool this [00:20:00] size. It’s massive. , we’re literally doing something that nobody else in the world has ever done, ever. When we JohnPaul: that to me. ’cause I think most people have no idea. Mike: when we launched the pool, there was a hundred XA hash in the entire ecosystem today. , Well, so when we started growing, the network grew. , When we became the biggest pool in the world, we captured about 30% of the market. , We hit about 60 XA hash at that point in time. , At 60 XA hash, nobody had ever put 60 XA hash through the pool technology. So stratum servers, your relay networks, your infrastructure, right. Today we run 280 XA hash through our infrastructure. JohnPaul: Wow. Mike: And that’s, , it’s 280 billion, billion guesses a second, is what is basically being pumped through our [00:21:00] pipes. , So it’s a lot, it’s a lot to take care of. It’s a lot to maintain. There’s a lot of, , responsibility there. And , it’s a key part of making the Bitcoin network work, right. , . So anyways, we’re leaning into the expertise. We built around that from a software development perspective to provide minor management software that can scale that, , and we really focused on institutional customers. , We’re now leaning into firmware ’cause we feel there needs to be a really strong, stable aftermarket firmware product. , And then the other part of our business was site services where we said, Hey, these miners, as they get bigger, they’re gonna wanna outsource more of their back office. They’re not gonna wanna have to deal with all the headaches of running facilities. , And we said, Hey, , we think we can build that capability and do it better and do it at scale. And so we’ve been building that business for the last couple years. So , it’s been fun JohnPaul: I love it. , you’ve really highlighted some of the core businesses of [00:22:00] Foundry and I think one of the things I want to talk more about Mike is the pool, because it is such a core. Aspect of every miner’s revenue stream. And you guys are someone who, who’ve done it differently to your point by building it from the ground up. Walk me through , that development process. , What type of hurdles came up and what Any memorable moments you want to share, , that might be some behind the scenes that, , don’t usually come out Mike: Memorable moments. #### Industry Deep Dive JohnPaul: breaking a hundred hash. Do you have a party? Mike: I remember the first block we mind, November 3rd, 2020. I. I think we were three days in. , At that point in time, I think we had 1%, we were 1% of the whole network ourselves as a minor. Right. We were a pretty big minor, relatively speaking at that time, and we threw all of it at trying to get the pool off the ground. And I wanna say we went three days without mining a block. At that point in time, and those three days, [00:23:00] you’re , does the tech work? Does it not work? , How much can we burn? Right? , how much money can you burn? That’s a lot. We were burning, , 1% of alla hash every day for three straight days. And , I remember mining the first block and it was , holy shit, we did it. It worked we can mine a block. That’s exciting. And then , the variability is just, and that’s the part that most miners really do not understand or comprehend the variability around many blocks and it, which is also what makes the Bitcoin network so special. since we’ve launched the pool, I have such a deeper. Understanding , and admiration for the Bitcoin White paper. I really, it literally will go down as I think the greatest invention of our lifetime. And it’ll probably take another 20 years for us to really appreciate what Satoshi was able to put together. it really [00:24:00] is incredible. In terms of the, just even at the, , you , people talk about , oh, it’s hard money and there’s a 21 million cap. And, but the way mining works is just fascinating. And this idea of proof of work , and connecting it to reality, I think , is so cool. The fact that it’s driven purely by the software and it self regulates the fact that it can’t be gamed. , you can’t game it. there’s no, you can’t get an edge, which is mind blowing to me. , anytime that , the new coming in or the new big monies coming in, BlackRock coming in. And I listen to these guys talk about the Bitcoin network and I’m , they don’t realize yet that they can’t game the system. they still think that somehow, some way they’re gonna get an edge. And it’s , no, everyone, it’s a fair playing field. And they’re not used to that. [00:25:00] They’re not JohnPaul: where’s my edge? I paid for one. Mike: Exactly , I’m big enough, I’m sure. No, I’m look at, I mine 30% of all the blocks every day. There’s no edge and it’s really hard to live with, but it’s true and it’s amazing. , Or the fact that it self regulates, , the difficulty adjustment I think is just this magical, it’s so powerful. You talk about any other commodity out there. oil. , literally you have a bunch of guys sitting around a table deciding what the price of oil’s gonna be and how much they’re gonna pump out of the ground, and they’ve gotta come to some agreement. Now in the Bitcoin network, every 2016 blocks, the software decides whether it’s gonna get easier or harder based on how many people are participating. JohnPaul: Yeah, based on everyone’s agreement on how many people are running their power bills. Mike: it’s a wild concept. So, yeah, , so I definitely think the journey, the journey’s always more, more important than the actual [00:26:00] destination, right? So building the team, working with everybody in terms of their passion for securing the network, , is really cool. we take it very seriously. it’s a very important. We play a very important role in the ecosystem, and , we try to continue , to help our customers make the most money they can. , . How do we make their lives easier, right? , And I’ve been lucky and I , I, I know most of the people in the space. I always give ’em a hard time because I’m , you guys, I said, you go to bed every night. You don’t worry about whether you mind a block or not, or whether you’re gonna get paid in the morning. I am the one who has to , make sure that we’ve got enough Bitcoin to pay you guys day in and day out. And, , , I don’t think they really appreciate the variability and , the probabilistic nature of mining a block ’cause JohnPaul: I guess so what made you choose the payment strategy you choose and which, what is , the strategy for the foundry pool when it comes to, is it pay per share? Can you talk more about that and why you guys chose. Mike: I think one of the things that our customers appreciate is [00:27:00] the approach we took in terms of being, trusted, transparent, SOC compliant. we put in all of the things that we knew enterprise customers, publicly traded companies were gonna need, including, , look, we had a lot of debate early on. We kyc a ML, everyone into the pool. So it’s not open for everybody. You have to pass through our screen and lemme tell you, that goes against everything Bitcoin stands for, right? It goes against all the ethos of Bitcoin. But we just said, Hey, if you’re in, we didn’t think. US traded companies could mine alongside North Koreans and Iranians and , whoever else the US says is not acceptable. Whether you agree with that or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s that’s the law. So if you want to tap the capital markets, you’ve gotta follow the law. So , we chose to put a product in place that helped them do that. And it’s worked. . Yeah, what was your question? #### Bitcoin Price Dynamics JohnPaul: , you answered it is how miners are paid and why you chose the payment Mike: Oh, so then [00:28:00] the, yeah, sorry. With the FPS it was, that was the standard at the time in the industry, and everyone expected it. , we had to, , the Chinese dominated the market, so , we had to match what they were doing for people to. Start to move over , and then today we just went through a big exercise, over the last six plus months of really looking at the FPPS payment model and repricing it basically, where we’re , geez, we’re literally , , we gotta pay the bills. I gotta pay all these engineers. I gotta be able to maintain the infrastructure and the way it was priced, especially post having it just. Didn’t make any sense. So \, we had to go back and reprice it., So , that’s JohnPaul: can you dive into that at all of , , what you’re priced at today now, and maybe what you were before? Because I know for a while you guys had no fees on your Mike: yeah, when we had got off the ground, when we started, we had to do the no fee model because Bitmain was basically subsidizing that through amp pool. Right. So, , that’s the difficult part when you got someone Bitmain. [00:29:00] Who is just this massive gorilla in the market that makes the machines is the biggest miner, has the biggest pool. they can pull all kinds of levers to, , make money from the customer base. And so they chose to have the pool be a lost leader for right. So the first two years we’re , all right, we have to do that. And then we got to a point where we’re , okay, this business model is no longer, it’s not sustainable. it literally, we can’t do this for you. So , we can either turn it off and everyone’s , no, turn it off. Oh my God, don’t turn it off. And we’re , all right, then we gotta. Everyone’s , okay, you’re right. We gotta pay. And , that’s where we’re at. So, which is good. , I, it is a super valuable service to the miners and, I think we do a really good job at it. So. JohnPaul: I agree with you, I have not been able to use the pool yet. It’s never went through the KYC process, but I think that, , overall, I’ve heard amazing things from Foundry. Mike: can’t clear the KYC. JohnPaul: We [00:30:00] could, but it’s just, I, don’t know. I guess I got caught up in the co-branded Bitmain Pools, I would say for a while. And now I’m , okay, what’s the next move? But it, there’s a lot of, software development infrastructure that , that you build on top of a pool and it’s reporting techniques and it’s shares and worker management that it’s really hard to move is the reality of it. Mike: , Yeah. I would JohnPaul: It’s not impossible. Mike: most people are very pleased when they move to JohnPaul: Well, I’m open to being convinced, so we’ll have to talk more about that offline. , But Mike, I guess one of the things you mentioned, there’s earlier in the episode, , there’s these big shifts that happen and the first shift for you was your web browser. The second shift is Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining and the pool. And , where I’m going with the third shift is ai. how is AI going to change? Running a mining facility, so not oh HPC, running HPC servers, but using Opti Fleet and your firmware and your site operations business that you guys have at Foundry, where do you see [00:31:00] AI really bringing an insane amount of value to the end customer who’s running tens of thousands of servers, which we know is a very, can be very labor intensive, both on the physical side, but also on the management side and the RMA process and the after sales and. Mike: I was gonna say that where AI’s bringing the most value seems to be in the stock price of, , Bitcoin miners who are in quotes, pivoting. Which different topic than what you’re asking. , But, ,. The AI revolution is here, right? And most of my life people have talked about AI machine learning , and it was gonna change the world and blah, blah, blah. And it never did. And it never did. It never did. It never did. And then, really when Che GBT went live. For people to use ,, in my mind, , it will be more significant than the first browser that came out. And it’ll be more significant than the first PC that was ever built, [00:32:00] the speed at which the change is coming at us is gonna be breathtaking. And it’s hard to even imagine the full impact , of AI \ on everything we do. And I’m a, I think I’m just an optimist where I really fundamentally believe that the human species, we will figure out how to use this for the better. There’ll be plenty of bad that comes with it, any technology, but, net it will be way better for everybody and it’s exciting. , So will it impact the mining space? A hundred percent. Right. and it will impact the mining space. I think , in the first phase will be , how do you run the facilities more efficiently? How do you tune the chips more efficiently to the environment that you’re in? , . How do you integrate into the electrical grid in a more sophisticated way? , that’s all of what’s ahead of us. And look at the one thing that’s [00:33:00] very true about Bitcoin, about the Bitcoin algorithm is that it’s, it’s a drive to the lowest cost. , It’s a continuous grind to the lowest cost. And if you are not on that path of trying to figure out how to get to the lowest cost, you’re gonna get left behind. Whether it’s new machines, whether it’s , lower electricity prices, whether it’s optimizing your operations, it’s a constant grind to get more efficient. , there’s no stopping it. #### Technical Discussion , So AI will, I think, will be a really important component in, helping us figure out how to make that whole piece more efficient. And I integrating with electrical grid, I think is a really, is probably one of the biggest, next frontiers for us. , , I’ve got a fundamental belief that Bitcoin mining. We’re gonna leave the the spec we’ve left, actually the speculative phase of Bitcoin mining. It’s becoming [00:34:00] very institutionalized. I think it’s gonna become part of, it’s actually gonna become part of the electrical grid and Bitcoin miners will be treated more a utility, , where the utilities recognize this large. Base load , that’s an interruptible or intermittent ba load that , they can fine tune. and it’s happening, we’re seeing it, we’re seeing it on a grand scale in West Texas right now. Right? , I literally can watch, I’m , oh, must be hot in West Texas because the hash rate went boop. JohnPaul: How big of a drop is that? , is that 50 XA hash, a hundred XA hash? Now See it on Mike: Yeah, , , I was just looking. Yeah, , it can drop 80 to a hundred XA hash. JohnPaul: and that’s in, , 10 minutes now? Five minutes still, or is it over an hour? Because , people don’t understand. How many megawatts that is. So try to put that into perspective. Maybe for the normal viewer. Mike: do the math. You put, how many megawatts is JohnPaul: I I don’t know. , that could be [00:35:00] 3000 megawatts maybe, depending on your machines. A thousand to 3000, So is that too much power? Mike: Yeah, , it’s probably close to a gigawatt worth of power, right? JohnPaul: , because most people aren’t running hydros, most people are running s nineteens. Mike: yeah. So, but yes, , literally there’s close to a gigawatt worth of power that shuts off in West Texas to balance the Texas grid. It’s wild. , , , the amount of batteries that it would require to do the same thing. They don’t even exist, right? JohnPaul: , They don’t exist, but they’re also not as good because , they can’t do as , as long as ramped down for or ramp up. ’cause they have a limited amount of duration. There’s also tons of frequency control. You can do that, , batteries can do as well, but they’re, they only have one revenue stream. And that’s what I talked a lot about on my other episode with Lucas was , the multiple revenue streams that Bitcoin miners have from energy and Bitcoin. If you’re a battery and you have low energy prices and you don’t have volatility, you’re not making money. Do utilities in New York, are [00:36:00] they knocking on your door saying, Mike, we see the future Bitcoin miners are resources and what’s gonna take ’em to get that? Get there? Mike: You said New York, it’s not happening in New York. Right. New York will be the last, well maybe California, New York and California will race to see who’s the last one to adopt new technology. , I will say, , gosh, last summer I was at the Bitcoin park in Nashville, which is just an amazing organization, amazing spot. And. We met with the CEO of TVA, , and the CEO of TVA one year ago spent the first 15 minutes telling me and some other CEOs of mining companies how important bitcoin mining is to the TVA grid. As this stabilizer, as this enabler, they run new transmission lines. They see how they could drop Bitcoin mining at the end of the transmission lines to [00:37:00] monetize that deployment until the factories come in and somebody else wants to use that power and you can then move the Bitcoin mining to the next development. And it was one of those moments, JohnPaul, where I’m , oh my God, we’ve been preaching this for eight years. Now they’re starting to talk back. , Now , they’re preaching it to us we’re they, we’re getting there. Right. And look at utilities are the slowest, changing organizations on the planet. So it’ll probably be another five years. But it’s happening. And every case study we have, it just continues to drive home. The point that this is super important and looking at some point, I think I. Bitcoin mining will penetrate the electrical grid to the point where , you can’t shut down Bitcoin mining. #### Strategic Perspectives And I think that’s, or the grid will collapse, but we need it. they gotta work together. Right. , and I think that’ll usher in a whole new world. JohnPaul: To your point, we’re always searching for the lowest cost power. And so do [00:38:00] what happens if these miners at higher cost energy sites start to , have to turn off? Do the utilities have to rethink their energy rates because. It is such a large impact or has become such a large impact, or do you, do we think that it’ll just be a smaller turning off and over time or the upgrade cycle will always continue and, , 4 cent energy with Bitcoin price going through the roof will always be, , adequate to mine. Or do you truly believe, Mike, that four and a half cent, 5 cent energy will at some point be too expensive in the near future to run a profitable mine? Mike: So I think we’re a long ways away from that next step down in energy price. Because we drop, , , especially in the United States, well really globally, we’ve completely dropped the ball in terms of energy production. , And I think we’re gonna see a resurgence of new energy production coming online. And I think some of that will be fueled by Bitcoin miners wanting to buy more energy. Some of it will be the ai, [00:39:00] some of it’ll be just manufacturing coming back to the us . Or just new technology , , nuclear power and such. So I think we need a whole lot of additional generation before electricity pricing can come back, can come down, right? , But it will , and if you’re not at the forefront of that, when it happens, you’ll get left behind. So,, I think. Four between, , three and a half and four and a half cent power is what you’re gonna get in the United States. , And I think anybody that says otherwise, as you’ve been around a long time, there’s a catch. Right. It sounds too good to be true. It is. It literally is too good to be true. ’cause there’s some catch sure you can get two and a half cent power, but you have to curtail every 20 minutes. , It’s JohnPaul: your machines won’t last a year. Mike: , Your machines won’t run the numbers. That’s okay. But the problem is every time you curtail your, you lose, , 1% of [00:40:00] your machines or something. And JohnPaul: , And ta talking about curtailments , and reliability of systems. Are you guys running hydro machines yet? Have you, mo you’ve moved to immersion. , let’s talk through that iteration and do you still see air cooling being around? Do you think , it’ll fall off?, How are you viewing the landscape knowing that you have a very, , deep insight into everyone using all this hash rate? Mike: Yeah, so , we’ve personally, we’ve experimented with a lot of different. Parts of it, trying to figure out what’s gonna be the right solution. The bigger miners, I think, are way more advanced than we are in terms of the stuff we’re doing around that. So it’s, , , I look to, , whether it’s Clean Spark or Riot or, , how they’re thinking about it, how they’re deploying. I think naturally, , immersion or direct to chip cooling. , I. It seems that is where the ultimate solution ends up. It’s just way easier, way cleaner. It’s simpler. I think it opens up all kinds of new [00:41:00] opportunities for mining. , If you’re running a direct to chip operation, you can drop that into neighborhoods and cities and places, and it’s not disruptive. As much as we’d to believe you could, you can’t put a 40 foot container of air cooled machines anywhere near where somebody lives. Right. It’s just too freaking loud. JohnPaul: , even the dry wet coolers though, they’re still very loud. being above those, it’s different type of fans, to your point, it’s not facing directly at a house and it’s venting upwards, but they’re not quiet yet. Mike: and they’re not as quiet, , I think they’re more acceptable. ’cause it’s more , of . Background noise. It’s more, , . It’s acceptable. there’s plenty of noise pollution from building air conditioners and manufacturing plants and all that, and it’s just acceptable. And I think JohnPaul: the high pitch, minor noise. Mike: exactly. And it’s , what is that? And so, yeah, , I always think about , , you get all these. These charging stations for Teslas. And for me, I’m , well, , why isn’t there [00:42:00] a little mini box right next to every charging station that is mining Bitcoin? #### Operational Insights , So when the cars are not charging, you’re monetizing that power at that spot. And when the charge, then the car’s needed to charge, you’re turning off your mining equipment and it’s all an integrated system. JohnPaul: So Foundry, , we’ve talked about everything you guys do, but do you make Rackspace, do you have your own internal development of that? , The small box idea that’s just, that could be Foundry’s business. Mike: Yeah. So, , , last year, 2024, we spent a lot of time actually thinking about. how the business was gonna evolve. We had actually climbed to 300 employees, and we were into a lot of stuff. We were supporting decentralized infrastructure, a lot of different protocols, so it wasn’t just Bitcoin. And we went through a big phase where we split out those teams. So we’re doing a lot around decentralized AI tech. , We spun that out into a company called Yuma. Which is a DCG portfolio. We took our labs team that was [00:43:00] working on a lot of different protocols and we integrated that with the DCG team. Then we took our self mining business and we spun that out into a company called Fortitude. , And Andrea Childs is the CEO of fortitude. She was, , number two employee, or I should say the second employee at Foundry. So she’s. Worked with Foundry since the very beginning. , Been in the mining space for a long time and she stepped over to be the CEO of that , and that self mining business fortitude is out there. , They continue to buy machines. They’re actually buying sites. They’re leaning into more of that infrastructure side of the house. And then we provide services to them, right? So we try to make their life easier as a minor./ JohnPaul: So Mike, I recently saw you spun off two mining subsidiaries or two subsidiaries from Foundry Digital. Can you talk more about the reasoning for that and the benefits that might come from those spinning out? Mike: Yeah, so I think there’s a couple of aspects of that. One. , [00:44:00] From a Foundry perspective, it was getting, , rather difficult to explain everything we were doing. Anytime we were talking about Foundry, ’cause we were doing so many different aspects and I think part of the idea was we can get a lot more focus and attention by spinning out these companies and, giving the teams a very focused mission. And then, I also think it gives, DCG lots of optionality in terms of what they want to do with the businesses over time, and then, , for us, , with Foundry and the team of Foundry, it becomes a very clear mission, very focused mission in terms of continuing to support the North American mining ecosystem , and help miners be more successful. JohnPaul: So with Yuma and Fortitude, what’s the difference between them and , why those two companies versus other industries or other things that Foundry is doing? Mike: So fortitude is the, or was their self mining business. So they’re really focused on, , actually mining, right? So they got equipment, they got plugged in [00:45:00] around the country, , and they’re leaning into buying facilities and that aspect of building out the mining infrastructure. The one interesting thing , with fortitude is it’s, , they call it venture mining because It’s not all Bitcoin mining. They also mine other proof of work tokens. So you , , as they’re talking to investors and, as they look at the ecosystem that there may be a different token that’s a better token to mine. So they’ll buy those machines , and help support those other networks. , Yuma is really focused on decentralized ai, so it’s a very different, , world where, . You got all these big centralized AI players the hyperscalers, and there’s , this idea that, and there’s technology available that says, can we build AI in a decentralized way so I don’t have to live under Mark Zuckerberg’s rules or under, , Elon Musk’s rules. We can do this in a decentralized way, the way the internet was built and [00:46:00] yuma’s all about trying to figure out how to advance That mission in life, so very different on. Supporting the North American Bitcoin miners, JohnPaul: They’re adjunct businesses, but not necessarily directly supporting the North American Bitcoin mining that foundries. Exactly. It’s a different purpose. What is your take on different mining of altcoins, knowing that so much capital has gone into the Bitcoin mining via pubco, and maybe those companies aren’t mining as profitable as a private miner who didn’t have access to public markets? Knowing that there could be saturated with the difficulty and the actual profitability of Bitcoin mining, do you see more people coming into prop mining or other types of altcoin mining , to supplement, , the returns of Bitcoin mining used to provide? Mike: If you think about it just from a a return perspective, , there’s absolutely opportunity in the altcoin space, right? So there are. , Other networks where it may not be as competitive from a mining perspective Bitcoin. [00:47:00] And if you are paying attention and you’re engaged in those markets and you understand how they work, , there’s opportunity there. , For sure. , we’ve proved it over the last five years that, , but the, they’re smaller markets, you’re not gonna get the massive returns that you get if you can scale Bitcoin mining, but . You can get better returns on invested capital and just can’t deploy as much in those markets. , when you’re talking about foundries buying all these machines, working with all these manufacturers, what are some of the key learnings you have for other miners, private or public when they’re working with large manufacturers? Knowing how important time to delivery and getting machines that don’t have to be RA immediately. #### Market Commentary Is to a minor. I think it’s one of the most challenging parts of our industry. , and a lot of times you have to, you have to bet against, we always talk about zig when everyone else is zagging or zag when everyone else zigs. ’cause you almost have to bet against, the, what everyone’s thinking that you should do, right? So [00:48:00] there’s definitely times when it’s, I view it when nobody wants to buy Bitcoin mining equipment, it’s probably a good time to buy Bitcoin mining equipment. And when everybody wants to buy Bitcoin mining equipment, it’s probably too late to buy Bitcoin mining equipment. , And it’s true with, , altcoin world as well. . So , I think the most important thing is , you need to partner with people that you trust, , who’ve been there,, who’ve lived through the cycles, , that understand , how the industry works, right? JohnPaul, , , you’ve been doing this a long time. I would trust working with you to procure machines or to deploy machines. ’cause you’ve been there, you’ve done it, you’ve learned we all made the mistakes. , But man, when you first get into Bitcoin mining, , you don’t really understand what you’re getting yourself into and, don’t know JohnPaul: exactly. Mike: Yeah. Work with trusted partners. Right? , So we need more people you, in the industry. So. And wait, we’re getting ’em. It’s definitely a very different, I always joke ’cause , there was [00:49:00] always, , in the early days, there was always this guy named Kevin. People were buying machines from this guy named Kevin. Well, turns out it was Kevin Zang, he now works at Foundry, but he was one of the people that folks trusted because he was a good guy. He was an honest guy. But it was always in the early, , who’s Kevin? we gotta find Kevin. JohnPaul: Find the Kevin. , and , that’s a lot of these, to your point, the picks and shovels, , the people, the cowboys of the industry. And then now it came the suits of the industry and is it the princes now of the industry? Where are we going next as we scale mining to the energy space into the nation state? Yes. Mike: Look, and I think , the industry’s gonna continue to mature and, , there’ll be bigger and bigger dollars deployed. , And I think energy companies and utilities and nation states will continue to lean into Bitcoin mining. But what’s great about Bitcoin mining is it’s still open to anyone and everyone. So if you can get your hands on the machine and you’ve [00:50:00] got. Inexpensive power, you can be just as profitable as the big guys. , And that’s really powerful. It keeps everyone, Honest. JohnPaul: , As you mentioned, you can’t cheat the system. I think that’s one of the biggest explanations that I do at Bitcoin is for a nation state, for a company, for an individual, it’s all the same. We all have to use energy. Yeah. There’s no way around it. Mike: Yeah. , , the thought that , oh, marathon’s gonna take over the Bitcoin network. They’re not. Even , oh, Foundry’s too big. We’re not , if we were a bad actor, people would leave. Yeah. , , It’s a really incredibly robust system. I would go back to , we did have a nation state attack, the Bitcoin network when China banned mining. And , I think that was 21, right? Wasn’t that the summer of 21? Around there. Yeah. When it was July of 21 I think. And what? The Bitcoin network didn’t even blink. JohnPaul: Didn’t even blink. yeah, who cares? ? Block times [00:51:00] went to 12 minutes, that week and for a little #### Innovation and Technology Mike: while, and over time it adjusted. And if you had machines plugged in, you made a bunch of money ’cause hash rate dropped considerably, but the network kept going. JohnPaul: Boundary did great with the pool. , that was the, probably an explosion. Oh, it was perfect timing for us. Mike: Yeah, that definitely helped. That definitely helped., I think they’ll get back into it, by the way, the nation state themselves or just the mining and, no, , I think, I think eventually JohnPaul: China will open up mining more and more. , they’re building so much energy. , It makes sense for ’em too. It makes perfect sense. Yeah. So where do you see Bitcoin going as we end it here in the next six months? , end of year prediction because why not? Bull market usually is, ends in December or January, so, yeah, exactly. Mike: , , I think , the price of Bitcoin is tied to the security budget. , I dunno if we’ve ever talked about this before, but , it just feels there’s this link. , You’ll only store so much value on a network with a certain [00:52:00] amount of security and that the security is defined by hash rate. The dollars of that hash rate is the price of the equipment, it’s price of the infrastructure, and it’s the energy you are consuming to create the Bitcoin that creates the security budget. So the Bitcoin price can’t grow without the hash rate, the security growing, and they’re linked. And once in a while, they get out of sync. And that becomes a huge opportunity for Bitcoin miners to either make a lot of money or lose a bunch of money. , But I think , they’re constantly connected. So the last time Bitcoin crossed, the last time Bitcoin peaked, which was 69,000, I think that the hash rate was 160 or something that. It was 160 XA hash, securing a trillion dollars worth of assets. So today we have $2 trillion of assets secured. And that was a moment in time, right? [00:53:00] , yeah. , And then the market came weighed back down because I don’t think there was enough security to maintain a trillion dollar asset class. Today you have $2 trillion stored on the network and the hash rate is a 930 or something. you can start doing the math to figure out , how much more value can this network secure , or , how much more value can be secured by this 900 XA hash is one, is the way I think about it. That’s just my little piece of, it’s almost JohnPaul: this XA hash can only be tied to so much, , can only secure so much network value. And the reality is it’s it’ll keep coming back to reality. Yeah. And x hash will shift based on profitability. Mike: Yeah. So based on that one particular metric, I think there’s a lot of room , for the price to move. And it’ll probably over Bitcoin and then it’ll come back down and it’ll normalize. But JohnPaul: do you have a market cap that you think it would hit then if you want to use, versus a price per Bitcoin? [00:54:00] Do you think Bitcoin hits $5 trillion in mark in value in the next year? Mike: I think there’s the potential , for, yeah, for definitely to double. Yeah. And it may be just a moment in time. I don’t know if it’ll stay there, but look at , they’re continuing to print more money. It’s, JohnPaul: yeah, because Bitcoin and pricing gold is still not at a , new all time, high when it comes to the a hundred thousand dollars price point. , We had a few years ago, or a few months ago, Mike: I used to talk about it as . #### Growth and Vision Geez, there’s only a trillion dollars stored in Bitcoin and there’s 12 trillion stored in gold. , And then I’m , oh my God, today there’s $22 trillion stored in gold. And I actually, I haven’t looked at it in the last two months, so maybe it’s even more than that, but it’s , holy shit, there’s a lot of value stored in gold. Bitcoin hasn’t kept up. Yeah, JohnPaul: , it’s crazy when you see how much, how far their gold is from everything else. all the tech companies I was looking at. Bitcoin’s the number six asset I think in the world right now in terms of total value. [00:55:00] Yeah. So it’s still got a long way to go. Yep. Yep. So it’ll be fun. Well, thank you for the time, Mike. It’s great as always, and I’ll have to see you another conference. Mike: Absolutely JohnPaul, , thanks for the invite and I’m glad you’re doing these podcasts. It’s fantastic. JohnPaul: I’m excited to have you on. And remember guys to mine on. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. 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If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Grid Flexibility & Bitcoin Mining | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 28 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/grid-flexibility-bitcoin-mining-lukas-pfeiffer/ Grid Flexibility & Bitcoin Mining | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 28 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 28 # Grid Flexibility & Bitcoin Mining with Lukas Pfeiffer Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Lukas Pfeiffer to discuss grid flexibility & bitcoin mining. ### Bitcoin Mining: A Tool for Grid Flexibility and Energy Resilience Digital Gold Podcast: Lukas Pfeiffer on Why Energy Flexibility is Bitcoin Mining’s Key Product This episode of Digital Gold Podcast covered a wide range of topics related to Bitcoin mining, energy, and finance, featuring Lukas Pfeiffer, founder of Grid Imagery. Get ready to have your understanding of Bitcoin mining expanded. Full podcast episode here. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/BSYIxv5kcfs?si=_YUE2Za7ooSv0G3w) ### Here are the key topics discussed: Challenges in Central Asia Mining: Difficulties in explaining the constant 24/7 power load (20-100 megawatts) to local stakeholders, structural challenges with equipment like transformers, and security issues with materials like copper cables. He also described the cultural adjustment and the organization of the first blockchain conference in Astana, which involved politicians and secret service personnel. Industry Maturation and Investor Perspectives: The discussion covered how boardrooms and investment committees, especially in Europe, are still conservative about digital assets compared to the US. A significant shift is the understanding of Bitcoin as an asset class and its interconnectivity with energy, with infrastructure funds increasingly seeing its potential for monetizing power assets. Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/BSYIxv5kcfs?si=_YUE2Za7ooSv0G3w) ### Comparison of European and US Energy Markets: Europe: Characterized by an ideologically driven discourse, where ESG compliance often excludes Bitcoin, high production costs, subsidies, and energy taxes create market dysfunctionalities. US: Described as more pragmatic, sometimes agnostic, efficient, and less ecologically driven on the business side when it comes to Bitcoin and energy. ### Grid Imagery's Innovation in Grid Flexibility: The core of Grid Imagery’s work involves treating data centers as dynamic grid-responsive assets, stabilizing volatile energy networks. Their partnership with Flex Onyx Energy AG in Sweden uses ASICs to enhance grid flexibility by participating in load balancing markets. ### Economics of Flexible Bitcoin Mining: The revenue model is auction-based and market-specific, but Bitcoin miners are considered the “best flexibility asset” due to their low latency and ability to always be in the market. Miners can earn revenue by being online and getting paid to shut down, or by being offline and getting paid for the ability to ramp up quickly (often more profitable in fiat). In specific scenarios, like the hydropower situation in Sweden, they achieve three revenue streams: paid for being offline, paid additionally at negative electricity prices to consume energy, and Bitcoin mining revenues when running. ### Bitcoin Mining's Role in Grid Management: The discussion emphasized that Bitcoin mining helps balance intermittent renewable energy sources like solar and wind, acting as a “consumer of the last resort” and a crucial piece of the puzzle for energy transition ### Technical Implementation and Challenges: ASIC Degradation: While more maintenance-intensive, frequent on/off cycles haven’t significantly increased hash board failure rates with S19s. Meter Requirements: The need for high-granularity power meters with 0.1-second intervals and lead times of 2-3 months. Custom Firmware and Software: Development of custom software (a plugin for existing maintenance systems) and adaptation of firmware (with a producer’s support) to achieve rapid miner response and accuracy. Bitcoin Miners vs. Batteries in Flexibility Markets: Lukas argued that flexible Bitcoin miners are superior to batteries due to being cheaper, having an infinite ability to consume/not consume (unlike limited battery capacity), and providing an uncorrelated revenue stream (flexibility markets + Bitcoin). Challenges in Institutional Adoption: Despite investment managers’ enthusiasm, bringing these innovative Bitcoin-related proposals to investment committees remains difficult, partly due to existing investments in battery markets and Bitcoin’s lingering perception issues in Europe. ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ Why energy flexibility is Bitcoin mining’s most valuable product - ✅ How miners stabilize grids through demand response programs - ✅ The economic incentives for utilities to partner with miners ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Lukas’ insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/lukas-pfeiffer-on-why-energy-flexibility-is-bitcoin/id1539971833?i=1000711864801) #### Related Resources Bitcoin Mining Hosting Services → MiningStore 62.5 MW Iowa Facility → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Welcome to Digital Gold, where we uncover bitcoin mining’s transformative potential. Today’s guest is Lukas Pfeiffer, founder of Grid Imagery merges bitcoin mining, energy grids, and high performance computing, leveraging eight plus years in digital assets to deploy mining farms in Central Asia and pioneering crypto finance solutions. At grid imagery. He mimas data centers as dynamic grid responsive assets, stabilizing volatile energy networks through projects their partnership with Flex Onyx Energy, ag, and Sweden using asics to enhance grid flexibility. Lucas’s vision is to transform grid challenges into opportunities aligning energy resilience with business innovation. Welcome to Digital Gold. excited to have you. Lukas: Hey, JohnPaul. I’m happy to be there. JohnPaul: So you found Bitcoin, how, what was the very first interaction with it? And then tell me the story about your first miner before we jump into the journey. It’s been for you. Lukas: I found it through a friend who was, living in the same student [00:01:00] residence as I was living in, in Germany and Munich. , And this friend actually, , discovered Bitcoin. And , he is a mathematician. And, he was completely fascinated by it. And he then built his own, , mining rigs, , in the student dorm, in the basement. and he basically stopped focusing on his studies and only focused on Bitcoin. And I told him that it’s very stupid. He shouldn’t do that. And, , he needs a degree and , he needs to finalize the studies. And, let’s, , fast forward a couple of years. This guy, , Marco is the founder of, Genesis Digital Assets. And then he hired me. I must say that I I didn’t see it at all when I first saw Bitcoin in 2012, I didn’t see the potential and I needed five years until 2017 really to understand it. And once I did that, I also, I started focusing my career on it., I worked at, Genesis Mining, which is now Genesis Digital Assets. , Helped them scaling in Central Asia. And also because of my, background, which is coming from m and [00:02:00] a due diligence and traditional finance, I was always working at the intersection between , the traditional financial markets , and bitcoin mining. And , , so my first own miner really was, or the first miner, I actually saw was in, Kazakhstan in a, yeah. 40 megawatts, Bitcoin mining facility that we developed there. Yeah. JohnPaul: you were on the ground floor of, let’s say, one of the biggest mining firms with one of the fastest growth trajectories at that time. Bring us into a memorable story that you have of either things going really well or you stepping into facility and things going really bad. It and share that pace, that culture, the fast environment. For those who don’t know, Genesys was one of the original large graphics, GPU miners at high scale. ASIC miners at scale really would be today’s public Bitcoin miner. In, back in 2012. Lukas: Yeah, it was, , no, actually until I would say until. 2021 also, , the [00:03:00] scale, what Genesis has and still has today, is still , one of the biggest miners, on the planet. , But it’s not so publicly known because they’re not trading on the public market, so , they don’t have to report big they are. So that, that’s why, , , they’re not so much in the spotlight, but, , they were at times when Marathon and other players, they had their first 10, 20 megawatt farms, Chineses already had, in the hundreds of megawatts. It was distributed across, GPU mining. , They focused also a lot on Ethereum in the beginning, but , also transitioned more and more to Bitcoin and yeah, for me, it was, obviously for me it was a big challenge as, as a German national. I was basically put into a cold water and I was, I moved to Kazakhstan and I. Help there \, to connect \ , the basically the local companies with the overall headquarters. And, , the, one of the largest challenges was really to explain to local stakeholders that there is a constant load of, 2040 , up to a [00:04:00] hundred megawatts of power that is drawing this 24 7, heavy. And that the equipment that needs to basically provide this load all the time. So there was a time and also , some transformers when bus, , the equipment was ready for that. So there a a lot of structural challenges. , , we had to take care that, , some precious materials copper cables were. Still in place overnight, after that. So , that was quite a challenging environment , and definitely, not only culturally people there are super nice and well educated, much more than our Western perception would expect. So that, that has basically, brought me a long way, in my thinking of this region and also of, thinking about digital currencies and currencies in general. So , that was a great experience. JohnPaul: And so you drop into this region, you do how to speak the language or No. And you’re trying to explain to the locals the benefits of our industry. Gimme a little bit more on that experience specifically, #### AI and HPC Infrastructure as I can imagine how hard it might be. Lukas: Yeah. We had, , [00:05:00] actually also organized the first, , Bitcoin or blockchain focus conference in the region. So people speak Casa and Russian. I must admit that I thought, okay, I’m gonna learn some basic Russian that’s also useful outside of Kazakhstan. , So I was able to communicate in a cab. So that was my level. So very basic. But , we organized the first blockchain conference in Asana. , And it is also, we had , a bunch of politicians also coming there. So , not unfortunate that I’m , not , the president, but people on the first show of ministries and literally having, a whole security apparatus coming there. Suddenly people, from the Secret Service flooding the place. . And,, then having to basically sit in, or official meetings where you also still don’t really understand a thing and just listening in , and maybe say a few words that’s translated to you. , Being able to commerce with all of the stakeholders , from , politics and business is very [00:06:00] intertwined there. , As a European, I could drop ahead and say maybe that’s similar today in the US but, it was, it’s very intertwined. So that was, something where , you have to really,, understand also some of the local specifics to not, , to don’t basically pay any anyone’s territory that is. Might be a little bit tricky to, to play in. So that was always a fine line. And we had, through very great local partners that are still today, leading gene digital assets, were quite successful there. JohnPaul: And so navigate me. What’s the next career jump? Where do you head after Genesis? Is there a clear inflection point that an opportunity presented itself? Lukas: Well, yeah, it was basically , in 2021 , during covid, there was this big hype on, , the next big hype , on bitcoin, , and in general, , trading when a lot of the institutional also started really seriously looking at the asset class. And I basically , my profile was [00:07:00] quite requested because I had this very . , Top tier consultancy stuff, , background, and then went into digital assets, which was something that was not so, available. So I got actually a lot of requests from investment banks pe funds that to help them assessing opportunities. And that’s why I found actually the opportunity to also set up our own firm, crypto Oxygen, where we were actually one of the first, yeah, advisors in the space that Marker Lukas: helped PEs, , VCs, investment banks or big family offices to assess their digital asset investment opportunities. And, , that was , quite fascinating because we did it also , on different continents. We did actually a lot of work in the us. , I’m happy that, I can also publicly say that, , we were the lead, , commercial taking advisors . On basically the Pennsylvania nuclear power plant that had a proprietary, mining facility by Terra Wolf on site. So that’s was something that we facilitated also. And there were fantastic [00:08:00] opportunities in South America, Africa, Asia, and, I had the opportunity to see so much. , We did also, it was also funny because we did, not all, literally we did a lot of different digital assets. So we also did some NFT projects and exchanges. However, over the years, this has very much narrowed down and I would say today,, or in last year’s, we were really Bitcoin only. It has really shown that the most substance is in what is your podcast digital goal. So, , yeah, coming back there was pretty fascinating. JohnPaul: And you’re focusing on m and a initiatives, consulting, , large scale mining. , How did the industry mature and the investor type, mature, and your presentation change from? Presenting this to local politicians to maybe pitching a boardroom of an investment bank or PE firm, , what changed , and where did the narrative shift? Lukas: so I would still say that boardrooms and investment committees even today, are [00:09:00] still much more conservative than you would think. I think that in the US , it’s better. So typically there is already much more openness to digital assets and Bitcoin and, Bitcoin mining, , investments in the us in more institutionalized, funds. In Europe, it’s very far behind. So in Europe, still a lot of ICC still have a problem with Bitcoin. They cannot touch it. They cannot feel it. They don’t understand it. , But in general, you would be very surprised if we are stepping out of our own bubble, how, , far behind lots of the boardrooms and see, still are. The biggest shift though, I would say is the understanding of, , Bitcoin as an asset class and the inter connectability with energy. , How important energy is, what role energy plays,, , in, for Bitcoin, but also the other way around what [00:10:00] Bitcoin can play. , And can influence energy and thinking of energy. So,, a lot of the funds, which are now seriously looking at it, are more coming from the infrastructure side. , Institutionalized infras funds who are really, , seeing this great potential that Bitcoin as an asset class has for better monetization of their different kinds , of power producing assets. #### Energy Meets AI Demand JohnPaul: And so this. Merge of real large Bitcoin mining players and small ones and the energy markets. Now obviously on the podcast we talk about those interconnections decent amount. But walk me through industry and maybe where it is today in Europe, maybe where it was five years ago, and where you see it, it going. So of time can be spent on this question as we digest the market. And then we can talk even about the US as well and what you’re seeing there. Lukas: a [00:11:00] lot, I would say , the biggest mindset shift or the biggest difference is the, focus on. Pure financial incentives versus ideology and. The renewable story, I would say there is , the biggest, think a lot differences that there is, investors in the US are either more agnostic or have understood that actually Bitcoin is a great way to monetize renewable energy assets. in Europe it is still a very ideologically , driven discourse. So a lot of the funds did that are heavy investors infrastructure. , They having their mandates. They want to be ESG compliant and ESG and this ESG compliance. Sometimes just does not include Bitcoin , so I had a lot of situations , where we spoke, where we talk to, investment managers and they said , yeah, it’s great, but I it. But our IC wouldn’t probably touch it because , it has a Bitcoin exposure and the amount of education that you still need to do to get them across and explain [00:12:00] , look guys, , it’s bit Bitcoin today is the fifth biggest asset class. It’s there it’s, you are not the ones that are deciding whether that has value or not or whether that’s so ecologically or not. It’s there. And it’s, something that you need to basically, that you also need to, bring to your, investment committee, , in us that is already there. , this understanding is already there. In Europe you see , a lot of, , market dysfunctionalities. There is still a lot of, the energy markets, , are very driven by a lot of subsidies, by a lot of energy taxes. So that, that’s something a lot of complexity that you need to understand. And what’s happening is that sometimes that drives to, companies that grow very fast. So energy and battery companies, for example, , we have one, companies, one battery supplier in the Nordics North world, which was one of the biggest battery producers in the region. However, production costs are much too high compared to Chinese, competitions. So they were basically, they just went bus a couple of weeks ago. Another big focus , in Europe lies on hydrogen production. But even where a lot of [00:13:00] scholars tell you that it is, it’s just not efficient to, basically produce, , steel by firstly transferring energy to hydrogen and then use this hydrogen , to generate heat and then make green steel. But cost wise, it’ll never be able to compete with, , seed that you can source , , , on the global market. , And this is , where the biggest mindset difference, , is, I would say between the US and Europe, is that US in general is much more pragmatic, also sometimes agnostic, much more efficient, , less ecologically driven , on the business side of things when it comes to Bitcoin and energy. JohnPaul: And I would agree with that. And I think we have our own flavor of, and , it runs based on, I would say, the , who’s in charge of the presidential level and what type of subsidies that guide allocation of capital to certain energy resources, even if they’re not Lukas: Yes. JohnPaul: for broader society, , to access that cheap energy for multitudes of reasons. And when it comes to the demand response markets [00:14:00] and the ability for. Grid trees and its innovation and integration into the data centers with energy grids. Walk me through that process. Was it always available and now you guys are unlocking it, or is this new regulation that is allowing this type of frequency and grid control. Lukas: basically. How we got through it is that, in a very strong partnership with, Flexon, which is a data center operating company in Europe with, , data centers in, , Sweden that hosts a large share of asic , service. And, they basically ask us, more than two years ago, actually, , to, to look at the business , and assess , what can be achieved with, with it. , where are some value levers, a very typical,, for you very boring , consulting approach. And actually we were quite stunned because we saw that while they were already active in some low balancing markets, this whole market , was very big. And there was a [00:15:00] lot more potential to actually unlock. So basically what does load balancing mean is there’s different levels of, basically you’re helping with your flexible load to stabilize energy grids. And there are incentive structures from grid operators in place that pay flexible consumers are also flexible producers to be able to ramp up or down the energy production or consumption at a certain level of time. And there are basically 12 programs that globally, , it’s everywhere’s different, but it’s also very similar. So in general there are different programs that have different requirements in terms of reaction speed, in terms of accuracy, , in terms of being able to hold a certain degree of energy consumption over a certain level of time. And , we. Thought, okay, let’s see how many of these programs we can actually comply to with asics. And over the last two years, we managed to [00:16:00] actually even meet the fastest fast frequency response programs, which have a response time requirement of 0.7 seconds. So that the signal gets to the miners, , the miner is basically shutting off. And this has unlocked basically a completely new revenue stream for Bitcoin miners because grid operators pay the energy consumer for the ability, not actually, , not even the doing, but just already the ability to ramp up and down very fast. , And yeah, , that’s the basic concept. And this concept exists in a lot of European markets. I. , It also exists , in the US there is already lot balancing happening. Mostly I would say , on the secondary and tertiary reserve markets. , It’s a lot of lingo in, , and in Pennsylvania. PJM, , and basically we are here now and for us, this opportunity has really changed our thinking, , how we think about Bitcoin mining because we are [00:17:00] now mainly looking into Bitcoin is a flexible asset with Bitcoin as a side product, where , the key product is the flexibility that we bring to the energy grids. JohnPaul: And if you’re breaking down a revenue stream of, let’s say an ASIC or a megawatt. What percentage is coming from this new market that you’ve unlocked with? , 0.07 seconds. Guys, that is so fast. You guys are on the cutting edge of #### Industry Deep Dive Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: of this technology, what does this do to the economics, especially in Europe. Lukas: Yeah. And , the cutting edge , is pretty nice because it was a bit , in Formula one, right? So , we looked into, okay, what are all of the different aspects of the farm that basically slows down the signal and , we stripped them out and we, just made sure that a little bit, and also high frequency trading, that is as fast as possible. , And we can really be from the power meter measures the grid frequency , which gives us a signal, to the minor, , that basically reaction time , is so fast, as fast as required. So , that process has been [00:18:00] quite. , interesting. Also, as you probably know, that some miners, they have, restrictions and they have some safety mechanism in place. So let’s say that we have also had to, , circumvent some of these. So that’s, , was quite a nice, , r and d process. But your key question was actually about the economics., consultant in me will always, tell you, it depends. JohnPaul: Of. Lukas: It really depends on the specific market, on the specific incentives ’cause system. So it’s really different everywhere in the world. Also within Europe, within us, , even within Sweden, where we are mostly today, there’s four different zones where the pricing is different, but in general. It’s a auction-based pricing for different types of programs where you, the national or , the grid operates in a specific region. They say, okay, they need for a certain day. They expect to need this volume of, flexibility in one particular program, and then people start bidding on it. And, the great thing is that [00:19:00] actually miners are the most, , the best flexibility asset there is today., I’m convinced about this. So miners have , the lowest, , they are always in the market because they, if they want to participate in some progress and some program, they can always take it. And , our specific, , value add that we also bring is that we can select the best program. So sometimes. , How it actually works is that a program that people probably know us is that , you’re online, you’re up and running, and you’re being paid that the grid operator can actually , turn you down. So he can say, okay, now you need to shut down within the next couple of seconds. And then this is basically an automated program that shuts you off. , How the economics work is that , in such cases obviously you get your mining revenue and you get an , , additional benefit for the ability to turn off and then you have to pay your electricity deposit and stuff so that, it gives you a certain gross profit. what is interesting, what we are now mostly focusing on are the [00:20:00] programs that are working the other way round. So our miners right now are actually off most of the time we are being paid, but we are being paid for the ability. To ramp up very fast. , And what that actually means on the economics is that, , you are being paid for basically for doing nothing. , But sometimes you need to be very fast in activating your minus on a gross profit then obviously measured in fiat because you don’t produce any Bitcoin. That is oftentimes actually better than being up and running and just turning off. But the great ability now, for us as an energy, that’s why I’m saying we are looking more in the flexibility side and we’re less thinking about Bitcoin is that , we are basically profitable , in both scenarios. If energy prices are relatively low, we can participate in the programs that are, , paying us for being up and running. To shut down if energy prices are higher. We participate in the programs where we are being paid for being on the sideline and being ready to turn [00:21:00] on. , And , this is a true flexibility and the , true ability for law balancing that we bring to the market, which is a completely different mindset, but it really is the best. , It brings the most effect and the best benefits to energy grids. And it really is the biggest strength for bitcoin mining. Yeah. JohnPaul: And this is why mining is such an onion. When you peel it, you start to learn. More and more about this technology that pays you for being on but also being off you don’t need to go find a customer because you just connect to the energy market, but also the Bitcoin market, which is always paying effectively SATs or dollars to you for being on and securing it. But at the same time, you are also saying, let me flip it on its head and secure the energy market as well. Let me secure the power grid. And that’s something where, is that only [00:22:00] really Sweden? Is that mu the larger parts of Europe? Is that also , in America? Can you talk to me where this dual-sided market approaches? Because I most, people understand, oh yeah, you’re running power. I turn off my power, I pay less for the energy ’cause Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: But what you’re saying is the power is expensive and I’m gonna turn on, but I’m gonna get paid way more. Then if I was off. #### Technical Discussion Lukas: Exactly. , I’m going to turn on, , and get basically an additional revenue. I’m gonna get paid additionally because the grid operator is allowed to turn me off. Right. For a brief moment of time. So that, equation. Where are the, so these programs, and this is something where I must admit that unfortunately also I’m not already fully in all of the markets. Right. So we are really, , it’s, these markets have always very much specifics and experts in, already in Sweden, Norway, in Finland. But we are really now also diving deeper into other markets. And we are looking into, in US, we are very much focusing on Ercot and PJM [00:23:00] because they have. The so-called rack a, regulation A markets which are very similar. , So we are now, already having first discussions of the local players to see, okay, can we enroll them there? What else can we bring them in terms of flexibility? How is our product enhancing their flexibility even more? Yeah. So , that’s basically the, distribution. But, you asked me before also , about the economics , and the pricing. And what I wanted to share with you is basically, how the last couple of days, for example, you said that bitcoin’s an onion. , So in Sweden, we have the situation right now that there is a lot of water , in the hydro system. So flexibility and grid civilization in Sweden very much depends on hydrogens because you can imagine that whenever there’s . Too much, too little production or there’s too much energy in the system. They use, the hydrogens to pump water from bottom to top. So basically they fill the reservoirs. Now, , the whole winter was very wet, so all of these reservoirs are full. [00:24:00] So these hydrogens, , they have a very limited ability to react on, , times when they actually need to take energy out of the systems. And that means that the markets, , the energy grid, , the grid operator wants flexible demand to be actually offline, but ready to take energy from the system if they needed to. So what is happens for us at the moment in flexion is that, , we are basically being paid for being offline. , However. , We are getting a lot of activation signals and which means that we are being turned on, and then the grid operator pays us Additionally, basically, we are being turned on at negative electricity prices, so the grid operator pays us additionally to take energy off the market. And then additionally, we have Bitcoin mining revenues because we are on and running. So that basically that stacks our revenue. , JohnPaul: Three times Lukas: three revenues, yes, three, revenue [00:25:00] streams. , Which I think is basically something that is, , , quite unique worldwide. So, we are quite happy about that and it’s obviously, it’s all a situation, I would say all the time, but with our flexibility, we are able to profit from that and we are able to monetize it whenever it’s there. JohnPaul: And this is just from someone on the outside. They hear mining uses a lot of energy that’s it. what they don’t understand is that energy is water. And if you don’t have a place for it to go, it can the electric grid ’cause it is so powerful. Lukas: exactly. , as we have seen in Spain where, we had a huge outage, a huge blackout of the whole Iberian Peninsula just a few weeks ago. , It’s still not a hundred percent clear, how exactly it happened, but there was a lot of renewable energy in the system when the outage happened, and it’s likely to be interconnected there. So as you exactly say, it’s [00:26:00] water. you need to, the best thing for. Really enabling the energy transition and having more renewable energy producers solar and wind there, which have a very intermittent nature, is to also balance that on the demand side with flexible demand and Bitcoin is the perfect flexible demand. JohnPaul: So now let’s talk about the real technical issues with doing this. We don’t need to dive in maybe into the secret sauce or the, how you got from frequency trading to meter. And, , I’m guessing you got, a long ,. Fiber cable from the meter directly into the miner, perfectly across the ground in the perfect straight line. But for real, , the degradation of the Asics, turning on and off h boards breaking is that a problem? Are you using hydro cooling, air cooling? Does it work with s nines? Are you guys s nineteens s 20 ones? , where do we sit in the stack and what percentage is going down every time you, , every day? Or is it similar Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: running a normal Bitcoin mine in the same degradation? #### Strategic Perspectives Lukas: So it is more, [00:27:00] maintenance intensive than, just being on and running all the time. So, today, actually, in fact the most, data centers that we manage and also flexion, we have about different types of s nineteens. And, , we have some air cooled. So, obviously in Sweden also there’s not , so such a big difference in the temperature, so that’s okay. and we can see that basically turning them on and off and on fairly frequently. A few we have, we basically cycle a few times per day. Definitely requires us to have basically a more, yeah, rebooting a bit more, attention. , We haven’t seen so much increasing failure rates on hash bots so far. , obviously in the testing we had sometimes we broke something in the testing, which wasn’t great, but, you need to basically also, , find your boundaries. So , that was also,, we had some learnings there. But also it’s, let’s say it’s good that we are doing this on s nineteens and not off the latest stage hardware because it’s definitely something that you need to get comfortable with [00:28:00] and you need to get more learning. And you need to see , how this goes, before you roll it up in the later stage. Very, very expensive, very high efficiency, fleet. Yeah. JohnPaul: And so when that’s the degradation of the machines, what about the implementation? And the network interface and the programming, did you guys custom code all of that to work with the meters? , And is there obviously special types of meters you need? Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: Bitcoin miners would’ve to upgrade their meters, and I know in the US some of the programs to get into the meter might be a year out. Are you seeing the same thing in Europe and where you’re operating, where the meters are just hard to get? And then to that point, expanding it about the availability of these Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: what’s the scalability of these programs? Do they start to max out when you add 500 megawatts of this load, or is there really so much demand because of all the renewable energy and the inherent problems that you think the market can continue to grow? Or is there really a local constraint based on the local [00:29:00] economics or local grid needs? Lukas: That’s , very good questions. , So basically. I started on the technical side. So, , power meters. Yes. It’s a topic. It’s also, it has, long lead times here, but , not a year. It’s a three months lead time or so, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3 months. And, as you say, that’s also something we learned. you need to have a very high degree of granularity, in 0.1, , seconds interval. That basically takes the energy to be able to communicate the very precise, consumption to the National Grid operator. Also on the miner, , we actually looked into working with, existing firmware, also existing, , mining maintenance systems and, , We looked into integrating as much as possible so that we had just a very limited amount of code that we would need to write ourselves. But our software that we created is a plugin to that can be utilized with , any minor maintenance, Marker Lukas: , software. , Some of the formats they have already,, [00:30:00] dropdowns where you can choose an, , minor control for flexibility. And we are basically also doing similar things. But we actually also had , to adapt the firmware. So , we here, we actually worked with a, unfortunately, I, I can’t say whom, but a very well known, firm. Producer that has also , a very good, , understanding of energy markets. So , they have really seen what we are doing and they were quite, supportive. So , we are using one specific firm that has a function that allows us , to communicate very fast with the miners. And, yeah. And then we basically looked into, okay, what security, what does the stock firm or , what does? The miner has to actually slow down any energy consumption. , We even have built in a function , so that the hashing doesn’t necessarily start directly with the, ramp up of the energy consumption because that’s also something , that the miners want. They want obviously hash to hash as much as possible with every vats that you put in. So that’s something we needed to [00:31:00] circumvent and then, yeah, , we built this, whole,, construction that now allows us to be really fast and really responsive and also what is sometimes a bit underestimated, really accurate in our consumption. #### Operational Insights JohnPaul: And so you guys have built up this firmware from the ground. You’re using, , custom firmware, you have custom coordination layer. You have not custom meters, but top of the line meters with sometimes a long lead time. about the to be ability to add capacity to a certain market? Let’s say a grid is 500 megawatts Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: start to lose profitability at 50 megawatts? 20 megawatts a hundred megawatts? What is the look the saturation there? Lukas: , So basically, , the whole in, let’s say in Sweden or., Where we are right now. So in these markets, the flexibility market size is, , I’m just live looking, at the numbers, so I have it there. So, but the flexibility market size is big enough for all of the miners to participate in. So in overall Sweden, it’s across the [00:32:00] different energy zones. , It’s more than a gigawatt, which is on a daily basis basically participating in these flexibility programs. the whole European mining market is probably 500 megawatts. , , It’s by far not the same as in us. And so now translating this also to the , much bigger energy markets in ER code and P 3M, I’m just saying . The Bitcoin miners for, enabling the energy transition and , the amount of flexibility that is required. We are just a piece of the puzzle. we are by far not big enough to really saturate these markets, which is great, but we are actually bringing great flexibility , to the markets and we are helping them a lot. , , Also the feedback that we get from, , for example, Veka cnet, which is the Swedish National Grid Operators, very positive. , And I think similarly also, Airco Qua a Grid operators, they really that they can actually curtail all of these miners. , And hopefully they will also even it even more when we come to the play and help them to become even faster. JohnPaul: And that’s the [00:33:00] key your point, to a renewable future, which is really what everyone. maybe opposes Bitcoin mining in its energy consumption actually desires. how do we bridge that gap? Lukas: So , I’m an economist, , it’s this market. I think about these markets still in, in model types. And we are basically , what Bitcoin miners can do is just that in a world where you have just more and more intermittent energy supply, I think the global intermittent is basically solar and wind, right? So the share of solar and wind is expected to be over 40% of the total energy production by 2035 or something, 2030. So this means there is a huge amount of intermittent energy generation expected to be in the system. in order to make this actually , not only , for the grid to be reactive enough just to be flexible enough to not having these situations where , the grid might be contrasted or might have problems and [00:34:00] then it might lead to blackout and so on. But also to, make actually , all of this renewable energy, to monetize it, to make it profitable. We basically need , Bitcoin miners. in the, in overall economy, , they basically are the baseline, the base load that still the consumer of the last resort. But they’re always there and they can always consume when it is makes sense for them, but they also can just not consume. And ramp up really fast when they need to take out energy from the system. So they’re really the perfect piece of the puzzle. One piece of the puzzle, which is, complimentary to batteries, complimentary to, , EV chargers and other types of flexible loads, , , that are there. And that is just a very attractive, , very good. Also diversification. JohnPaul: And do you see batteries eating away at this market share or are this complementary? Lukas: our product, which is now the the flexibility product. , Batteries are our biggest competitors, I would say. So they trade on the same flexibility markets and , they do some, energy [00:35:00] trading, however. All of the calculations that we made so far have shown that actually on a unit economic basis, on a one megawatt basis, a flexible Bitcoin miner is much better than a battery. Why? One is it is cheaper for such products, you don’t need to use the latest age of equipment. We expect an uptime of 50%, maybe 30%. So that’s fine. You can use s nineteens. They are there on the market. Easy. is cheaper. The second is it has an infinite ability to consume or not consume. Batteries are full or empty, , they are limited. They have the capacity of sometimes two megawatt hours or four megawatt hours if they’re good. , Which means that they are very limited , in their flexibility actually. best example for me is that also, sorry, I’m talking a lot about Sweden, but in Sweden in the last, winter, we had unexpectedly low energy prices. They were very low. and also all of [00:36:00] these low balancing revenues, the profitability was very low. So for battery step was shit because they didn’t make money , on the load balancing programs. And additionally, there was no spread on the energy, so they couldn’t make a spread on the trading. For the miner, it’s still great, you’re online for , whatever, 98, a hundred percent, and , you’re just mine and vice versa. If there’s times where the energy price , is very high. Typically also the profitability of the flexibility is very high. So you can just be offline and just profit from, being paid for being able to turn on Whenever you’re needed. And you can do this also for 24 7, whereas for batteries, the spreads , is still very thin. #### Growing AI Compute Needs So, the second thing is that the, this infinite ability to consume , is a very distinguishing factor. And the third advantage is that there is an uncorrelated revenue stream. Batteries are , a hundred percent depending on energy markets for, , the flexibility. Bitcoin miners, , you have the flexibility markets and you have Bitcoin. so that makes you actually a much [00:37:00] safer asset to invest into. JohnPaul: And are the institutions that you’re talking to, are they getting this? Are they seeing this Lukas: I. JohnPaul: wait a second, this isn’t Bitcoin. This is energy disguised as a computer, I. Lukas: To be totally honest with you, all of the investment managers we are talking, we have spoken to and we spoken to basically the tier one infrastructure funds in Europe. The investment manager at the level, they love it. , They say it’s so great. It’s incredibly interesting. But then still, they were so afraid of bringing this now to, the investment committees. Which is a pain , , and I think it, has a lot of reasons because , a lot of them, they have a lot of, Exposure to batteries. They have invested a lot in battery markets, so they don’t want to really say , okay, , there’s a better product. It is not the easiest to them. So the mind shift is still not there. And for a lot of them also, Bitcoin is still a problem in Europe. Which for flexion, it’s not a big problem because we are actually very profitable and we can also grow this. We are looking right now, , we are still [00:38:00] trying to, get an institutional, large scale battery investor , on board because we think that, basically we can just improve , their portfolio so much and we can just be , a great add to their own balance sheet. And it’ll help foster very fast growth. But, That there’s still this concept, which is very clear to us, is still not an super easy sale, , in the financial markets, I must say. Still very innovative. JohnPaul: , We Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: hair dryers, we plug them into PDU and we control the hair dryers up and down right? To do the same thing, but without the extra revenue stream. , That’s what we’re doing. , , We’re making heat Lukas: Yes, it is. Yes. JohnPaul: up and down. Lukas: It would also work , economics would still work. It would still work, yeah. , It’s sometimes it’s not, sometimes,, it is not purely logical. , , what is being done? And there’s a lot of, , , influences also , in the infrastructure I vessel. JohnPaul: What do you call that as an [00:39:00] economist? #### Market Commentary Lukas: I would say it’s not pato efficient. It’s not efficient. It’s not an efficient market. , But we are getting there and, with, \ basically also the push also , from the us So where Bitcoin is now, on the brink of becoming also,, basically a state sta status reserve and, , federal. So that helps also to basically, these old, , fund managers, , drinking their cappuccino , or , their macha latte in Berlin or cappuccino in Paris. , They also wake up. JohnPaul: So five years from now, where do you see your company and where do you see this industry , we’ve talked a little bit about what happened in Spain. market’s only gonna become more volatile. Lukas: Yeah. JohnPaul: is only gonna need more control and frequency. What’s the future look ? Lukas: so basically, , if you wanna look five years ahead, , let’s also look five years back. So, , now it’s 2025. So in 2020 I think that people still haven’t realized that. as you say, as we are peeling the [00:40:00] Bitcoin onion, we are basically abstracting it even more, right? So in 2020 people started to realize. And started to dig into the interaction between energy and, Bitcoin. Right? , And how that can be monetized. So they started to look into basically exec access, energy, really remote assets and so on. , Now we are starting to look into flexibility, but if we abstracted even more, , the Bitcoin miners, they are basically reactive on any type of signal. So, and this can be not only the signal cannot only doesn’t need to come , , from electricity grids, but it can also come from, , for example, other data center applications. So I would expect that we will see even more integration between high performance computing data centers and bitcoin mining data centers where, The reactiveness of the asics can be used to [00:41:00] flatten out a, , very volatile consumption line of high performance computing that can be helped to basically have that capacity all utilized all the time. , It can be used to basically coexist in a hybrid data center, where you basically more and more have a very comprehensive approach to how energy is transformed into types of computational services. And I think that this is the way where we are going and a few of the large players are already making, leaps in this direction. And I think we will also see more interconnectivity, but I also think that we will also see you have more , , not the large. The mega size sites, but you’ll even see smaller size and having more market deficiencies, distributed , across the Ns. JohnPaul: And this is really the future of grid management. what, what Sam Altman says is , AI is not going to be stopped by anything else other than the cost of an electron. [00:42:00] And the grid is only going to become more and more important. And some could argue, , there was a period maybe the past 40 years before data centers really started taking off where the grid was flat. Consumption was flat. It was an interesting, but now it’s one of the most interesting and fast growing industries in the world because of bitcoin compute, because of AI compute, because of renewable. And that, , the stimulus, on renewable energy, , this whole space., If you are someone who’s looking for a role, , you have to be looking, , in this sector. And am just always amazed when I talk to people yourself and just how much more I can learn about the opportunities to. Across the world because to your point, everyone has electricity effectively, and every electric market has these same problems and it’s localized. So, which means it gives entrepreneurs yourself and me, opportunities to all play in the same market, [00:43:00] but not directly compete against each other. Lukas: Yeah. And you can learn so much from each other also. it’s different types of, so whereas some of these, systems are more advanced in Northern Europe, , they, they also being implemented step by step in, in the us and then you can basically transfer this knowledge to there , and, , , different settings, can be also transferred to other regions. What I find always very fascinating is to, , if you look into how the Bitcoin algorithm is set up, and we have through the halving , this crazy drive to more efficiency, this setup it’s a genius move. sometimes hate it because obviously the profitability goes down if the price doesn’t react. , But if you look at it more , from a philosophical perspective, it basically. Drives miners to utilize the cheapest resources or , [00:44:00] to be more creative in being more efficient in utilizing of the resources and to be very comprehensive in the approach. And the end game really is the most beautiful miner would be the one that is in a region where there’s a lot of renewable energy that is already reactive, is embedded in another data center. So you can basically also react to different types of comput loads. And you can shift these loads and you can be, , very, diversified your, , computational load. And then also that the excess heat is also utilized for whatever district heating or, , or greenhouses. So you basically have a complete. Circular column. He , just within this one product that is since still the ones that is basically has the best economics and is the, is the most beautiful setup that, , that you can have. , And people are going more and more in this direction. There is , on all these layers. There’s more and more products. , There, there are a lot of feature usage projects in the US in Europe, , where miners are being used for. , And yeah, [00:45:00] and we are playing our part in the flexibility side, so I’m very happy to work in this field. JohnPaul: And you are not only playing your part in the flexibility side, but you’ve been in the industry for so long and 80 plus years working through the different problems in the different errors of industry. , The first one with Genesis was really scaling, industrializing mining. Second one is the bridge between finance capital and bitcoin mining. And the third is one of the most exciting by far with the electric markets telemetry, keeping the grid running. And keeping people warm in their house and or cool with air conditioning because the grid’s always running and that’s really saving lives at the end of the day. #### Innovation and Technology Lukas: Yeah, it’s a good feeling to be at this, , actually very beneficial industry that is still, it is still nascent, it’s still niche, and, it also has a great spirit. I’m very much looking forward to be in, in Vegas, in two weeks. , Hopefully meeting you in person again. , And, , [00:46:00] speaking to a lot of the, yeah, forward thinkers , of the space. JohnPaul: So, Lucas, what would you tell yourself in that dorm room if you were listening to this and you’re in college again, knowing what now, what’s the advice you would give about this whole journey? Lukas: that there is, this one, comic, where a, modern human is traveling back in time and he’s, he’s sitting there with all of these s and the caveman, , and they say, so, so what is this internet? He says, I don’t know. He say, yeah, and what are , , these cars, how do they work? He says, I don’t know. As they ask that, , so what should we do? And he says, buy Bitcoin. JohnPaul: I love it. So the moral of the story is if you were too late to Bitcoin and you don’t understand why it has value and you can’t touch it, that’s okay this is the [00:47:00] value of a network that can pay people to use electricity anywhere in the world. And all to your point with the having, getting significantly harder. To actually earn that Bitcoin every four years. Lukas: I think so, yes. it’s always good to be, it would’ve been always paid off to be as early as possible in the market. I’m still very happy that I was relatively early, I would say. but in general it’s really, understanding how money works and why Bitcoin actually makes sense is I think a journey that needs to take time. So that’s something that people, I would recommend everyone that actually. Everyone is growing up to look into and to understand how money works because it will determine a large portion of your life. , And still everyone who is now looking into getting a space, it’s still not super early, but it’s still early. And we are seeing that with all of the macro movements that we have. , None of them actually are really speaking against Bitcoin. So \, it’s still a good time to get [00:48:00] familiar in the industry, look into, Hey, what is, what are opportunities that we can have? , How can I look into mining? Mining also sometimes is a bit overlooked I feel in, a lot of the discussions, and it has a lot of value and it has, it plays a huge role in the security of the system. So that’s also something that, , is, will always be there and thinking about creatively how this concept can be applied. in your own economy that you live in is always a good thing to do. JohnPaul: And as you mentioned, heat, and we haven’t talked too much about it, but are you guys exploring that in the Nordics at all? have you integrated that into your systems? Lukas: Unfortunately we have not in, so we are exploring it a lot. We haven’t integrated it yet. , The biggest problem is that, still if operate a already, if you operate a 10 megawatt mining site, which if you compare to the hundreds of megawatts that the riots and marathons and core scientifics of this world , are operating. Doesn’t sound a lot, but , [00:49:00] the amount of feed that you’re generating is actually a lot. So, the problem is really having the offtaker to the facility that it can be utilized. That this amount of heat be utilized, , or transported somewhere , where it can be utilized. , That’s, , , the key challenge. , We want to do it. If you have any ideas, happy to discuss. , But, it definitely plays a big part in, should play a big part in every new development , of any bitcoin mining site. What to do with the heat that is generated JohnPaul: And there’s so many options ’cause so many applications as you begin to realize need heat, the one issue I might see with what you guys are doing is that you don’t always have a constant source of heat with this miners being off for a long time. And so if it needs heat all the time, you still need a backup resource. But I don’t Lukas: Exactly. JohnPaul: an end of the game, a horrible situation to be in. Well, Lucas, thank you for so much for coming on the podcast. Where do our listeners connect with you and [00:50:00] are you guys hiring? , How do people get a job to work on this amazing stuff? Lukas: , You will hate me for this, but , you best way to connect for me is , actually on LinkedIn. , I’m also on Excel, on Telegram, but I’m not super active there because, yeah. Best way to connect is on LinkedIn. You can find me very easily. Lucas Pfeiffer. , And yes, , we are looking to grow our team. #### Grid Operations and Curtailment We are looking for energy market experts. , We are looking for people that are very familiar, especially with energy markets in the us. So , that’s quite, I think especially interesting for your audience. ,, I’m also very happy to get in touch, , in Vegas, in two weeks. , I’m going to be there on, on all of the days and , I’m happy to, if you bump , into me just having a coffee or a beer. JohnPaul: Thank you so much for coming on. This has been one of the most interesting discussions I would say on the grid, and I’ve learned a lot and I know our listeners have too. So remember guys to mine on and support your local electric grid. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin, Mine it or Buy it? | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 21 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/guzman-pintos-colin-harper/ All Episodes Episode 21 # Bitcoin, Mine it or Buy it? with Guzman Pintos & Colin Harper Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Guzman Pintos & Colin Harper to discuss bitcoin, mine it or buy it?. ### Bitcoin, Mine it or Buy it? Guest: Guzman Pintos & Colin Harper Episode 21 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation Narrator: Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host JP Barrick 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 in this space. Narrator: JP Barrick 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 for investment decisions. JP Barrick: Today, my guests are Guzman and Colin from Luxor. Guzman is the CEO, the Chief Product Officer at Luxor Mining Pool and Colin is the Head of Content at Luxor Mining Pool. Today, we're excited to talk about hashrate, how the capital markets have grown in the Bitcoin mining space and the discounts on future ASIC mining machines. JP Barrick: Welcome to the show guys. How is your Christmas? Guzman Pintos: Very well. Thanks for having us on, JP. JP Barrick: Awesome. I'm glad to close it out with you guys. It's the last podcast for 2021 and jump into where we all started which is hashrate. Can you guys give me an indication of what you have seen over the past six months after the China ban, what happened to the market, maybe what you were expecting to happen and how that's affected future deliveries of ASICs and current deliveries of ASICs? Sure. I guess the last year or six months in mining has been pretty wild actually. From the China ban, we saw 50% or maybe a little more than 50% hashrate drop immediately overnight in total network hashrate. Since then, we saw the network come pretty much to all the high hashrate and difficulty levels since then. It has been pretty much every miner has been struggling to get machines like them. Right away, everyone is fighting for the correct space. That's kind of very scarce right now. And then that's also kind of like reflected in the ASIC prices. From the China ban, ASIC prices also take quite a bit, maybe not as much as hashrate did, but definitely we saw like a 30%, 40% decrease in ASIC prices. But since then also with a little bit of help from Bitcoin price going into like all them highs towards Q3 of this year, ASICs prices have rebounded since then we are seeing like at least $100 per tera hash from like new J9.6. Yeah, that's kind of like a small summary of what's going on in mining and ASIC targets over the last few months. And for those people that aren't familiar with a tera hash value, Colin, can you give us the what a tera hash means and exactly what that means to a Bitcoin miner? Yeah. So tera hash is just a rating of hashrate. The lowest end of the totem pole is a single hash goes all the way up to exahashes and tera hash is the third largest unit behind petahash and exahash. And when we look at ASIC prices to kind of make pricing transparency or to make prices more transparent and to break it down on a more granular level, we look at prices of machines per tera hash, right? So for instance, right now, looking at hashrate index, I believe that the price per tera hash or average price per tera hash for a machine like an S 19 is 102 bucks a tera hash. So if you had an S 19 with 100 tera hashes of hashrate, you could expect to pay just a little bit above 10 grand for that machine. So it's basically just a way to break down ASIC prices. Well, I appreciate that for our audience. It's important that we use this new term tera hash. I was actually talking about hashrate of my mom yesterday. And she was like, I have no one to do with a tera hash. I was like, well, it's like the building block of this whole space. Most people are familiar with Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining, but this whole concept of a tera hash, we don't know much about. So can you guys talk about hashrate index and how you develop that and that tera hash value? So because for myself, I use tera hash values for modeling for my conversations. I think it's better than talking about how the cost of mining a Bitcoin or how much Bitcoin you're going to get at the end of the day. Guzman, do you mind jumping in and explaining how you guys built that index and what it meant to do for consumers and for industry participants? We started hash with index, I would say like almost two and a half, three years ago. And that time hash with index was kind of like a nights and weekend project outside from kind of like lakhs or main business, which is like mining pools. And at that time, what we were saying is we started to essentially craft this idea of hash price and the expected value of hashrate because we see hash rate as a commodity, which then it can be traded that you can start like building all sorts of financial instruments on top. But at that time, two and a half, three years ago, that was not very well understood in the market. So we went on kind of this mission, like small site project to start like essentially providing the community with some data and insights into what like hash price means, what's the miners revenue, what are the cost of these basic machines that not many people knew about and what they're on. And that's essentially pretty much how the hash index was born. We essentially went into the mine, the coding mine and put together some really good insights or at that time, what we thought were good insights for the community. And since then, we were even taking feedback, adding new stuff, adding content now, just relaunching it to our website with a bunch of new metrics and whatnot, all communities driven. Anyone out there that wants to see like a new metric or wants us to iterate on it, happy to take any feedback. And that's pretty much how we build hash with index since the beginning. Can you talk about the data sources that you guys have pulled to get this index created and how Luxor came about caring about the terra hash value and the fluctuation based on what the mining pools are paying for a terra hash. The hash price index, which is the expected value of hash rate, it's actually fairly easy to compute and we like probably going to have a lot of information, it's like blockchain data, which is essentially the expected value of hash rate the same way as full paper share mining pools pay to its customers. So that's like also very easy way to audit mining pools. So essentially what we do there is we compute that fpps rate and we come essentially convert that into like a dollar per terra hash per day, like metric. So in terms of data source there, it's big conno, it's great blockchain data and then have like a reference price for Bitcoin itself. Other data sets are a little more complex. For example, we have the re-index pricing. And in that index, we try to essentially estimate what's the value of different ASIC machines or different efficiency tiers. That's a little more complex to essentially generate because most ASICs and others happen OTC, essentially behind closed doors, between miners and brokers and sometimes even manufacturers. In order to compute that index, we've been on an animation for the last couple of years to scrape as much as possible from the web. And I think right now we have over 30 or 40 sources that we collect data from in order to compute that like re-price index. Can you talk about how these back of the market deals happen, these back room office deals, I think Marathon just launched or released today that they bought another 78 or 80,000 plus S19s, which is insane. I mean, that's over 300 megawatts of capacity, right? Where is that going to go? So can you talk about how you guys get insight into this market? Like, you just have microphones in all the boardrooms or how does that work? Kind of those like one-up deals that Marathon is able to do because of their size and how many ASICs, I mean, you just said, is 300 megawatts worth of ASIC is kind of like an insane number, not only of energy, but also rig can. Probably trade companies with like usually like advertised in their public filings or like even announcements from whom and at which like average cost they bought those miners from. So that's kind of like a very easy way to get a reference for what like Marathon is able to acquire ASICs. But that's not the reality for the rest of the market. The rest of the market usually operates, I would say like a much lesser and apparent transparent way. So there's a bunch of brokers all over the world, mostly in the US, which will try to sell ASICs to small to even like private companies and even some like public-driven companies, ASICs. And they literally have like Telangrups and they're like advertising, essentially their price for different machines. So we go into every single Telangrup, we chat, websites. We also have other brokers that submit data to us, in order to compute this index. And something that we've been seeing over the last few months since essentially Luxor started its own like brokerage business. There's a lot of essentially lack of accountability in the brokerage industry. One of the main reasons that we've been able to succeed in the brokerage business is because we are able to bring the Luxor brand really high quality legal contracts between all of the party symbols in all of these like off-take brokerage agreements and also try to reduce kind of the counterparty risk that happened on these markets. And that's also a data point that we take into consideration for the index, even like our own like brokerage business line. So yeah, if you take all of those data points into account, we are adding like hundreds of different data points that go into each week price update. Can you talk about where you are seeing the margin? Like you're saying $102 a tera ash. So I know it's possible to get a machine for $100 a tera, but that's not usually shipped, even at least for us. So can you talk about where is this spread? Is it 102 to 120? Is it 130? Is it 110? And how has the broker business taken off with Luxor? And what does that look like? So in terms of margin, what we're trying to do with the index is kind of like kind of the gross dollar per tera hash for the machine. So as Colin was mentioning, if you see like 102, 103 dollar spread to a hash, that bait and you are buying like hundreds of hash machine, that essentially means that that machine is worth slightly more than 10k a piece. Of course, different buyers and given economies of scale, we'll get different margins, right? So if you are going to, let's say a retail miner is going to buy an ASIC, they're probably going to be paying at least a 20, 30 percent premium, if not more. Like we are seeing for example, some ASICs on Compass marketplace going like wild for 150 or like 180 dollars a tera hash, which is insane. I have no idea how these people are going to write these machines in the short term. On the opposite side, you have like marathon, which is buying thousands of ASICs at even a much lower cost, like this, like a hundred dollars per per hash. So it really depends your volume, your size, but the egg like on average, if you are like a mid-sized miner, you should be looking to pay, as you just mentioned, something very close to this index. Yeah, I was going to jump in there with talking about Compass. If you look at their turn keys, because they have that new marketplace, so anyone who mines with Compass can now liquidate through Compass, and these turn key machines are expected. Usually the turnaround after you buy them, it's like a week and that's going to be online for you, right? Those carry a huge premium because instead of waiting a few months or in a lot of cases with some of Compass's machines, if you're buying them, you're waiting six months until it gets online. And those six months machines usually have a discount, right? Like you can actually find some S9s, S19s that are like 90 to 95 bucks a tera hash, and that's because the lead time wanted is so long. And inversely with some of the big players, if you look at pre-orders for the S19 XP, that thing is 140 tera hash, but it was selling for like 10,500 for some for the first batch of pre-orders. So that's like 75 bucks a tera hash. Obviously, the caveat here being no one actually knows how well this machine will perform. The miners are taking a risk. I mean, bitmane makes some good machines, but we all know that the S17 was garbage, right? So you always kind of run the risk of newer models, not beings up to snuff. And obviously those machines are not going to start hitting racks until Q3 of next year, probably even a little later, depending on how supply chain issues and just general logistical problems interrupt the supply chain schedule. So it sounds like this marketplace has a lot of work still to be built into it. Even though we have people building on top of it, trying to build futures and pre-orders and ability to shrink transparency to the market, it seems like it's still very destroyed. And that's what we're seeing on our side. Is that a statement that you guys agree with? It sounds like that's the case. How do we, what do you guys see this market being in two years? Does it compress? Do we get a easier to use platform? How do you guys see this market changing? Does it become tokenized where you don't actually own the physical machines? What things are people throwing around in the back of the office? This is the easy answer, but I'll build on it. I think that transparency, ease of use, and just general access to services only goes up from here, even in just this year, right? Like you've had product offerings from companies like Compass, then make it easier for retail to get into mining. You also have companies like Luxor that have started doing brokerage, right? So before the China ban, so much, obviously, of Bitcoin's mining industry was concentrated in China. And that also meant that machines were somewhat harder to come by if you weren't well connected, right? And even then you wanted to make sure that the supplier and the broker was a trusted or trusted parties because people got screwed all the time. And not even in just, you know, orders not being fulfilled, but you'd order a batch of 100 machines and 90 of them would be lemons, right? So I think that with the China ban, there was this opportunity, right? And a lot of North American companies like Luxor jumped on it. There is this huge demand for not only more transparency, but just services for the North American mining industry. And so companies like Luxor, establishing broker charms, we kind of absorb some of that business. The other thing that I think is going to really, on the brokerage side, you know, you're going to see more and more players for mining companies across multiple different business lines just makes sense to do it. You're buying these machines anyway, you have buddies and friends and colleagues that need machines. And so it's just a natural extension of the business. Another thing that I think will help kind of grease the wheels of this going forward is just having more manufacturers too, right? So we had block stream purchase spondules this year. A lot of people are pretty optimistic about that, bringing some much needed competition and hopefully opening up access to smaller miners, right? Because again, one of the big problems right now with the current model, you have Bitmain and MicroBT, which are the giants. And who's Bitmain going to service? They're going to service Marathon, who comes to the negotiating table, and says we have $800 million to spend on pre-orders. And so, of course, Marathon's going to get that business. A lot of the flows from those kinds of deals, obviously go to the bigger guys. And then it kind of trickles down to the rest of us. Some people think that block stream will probably not be able to compete with Bitmain in terms of efficiency. But if they can kind of carve out an ish with smaller miners and retail miners, even if the machines aren't as efficient, then perhaps they can really kind of make some ground on that front. When does Samsung NVIDIA AMD Intel get into this space and really start putting pressure on the market? Bitcoin mining, we have 20 years left where 99% of the coins will be mined. So that's where I tell people after that, I don't really know what's going to happen. But I know we have another 20 years left to really play this game. Have you guys heard of anything like any of these guys, the bigger chip players getting into this space and really showing Bitmain that they can do it better? And it's not that hard to do. Guzman Pintos: They've been in this space for some time, right? Mostly on the GPU mining market. NVIDIA and also Intel, they released GPUs that are specifically designed just for Ethereum mining, right? I think at 8, they are taking the delivery right now of a huge batch of GPUs that were designed by Intel. And these GPUs, they got them before the rest of the market or the GPUs were essentially available to the market. So they got these miners well in advance. I think they are still getting their feet into the water and testing for these giants, right? There's a lot to be said about the kind of, if you are not into the space, what's essentially what's like long term Bitcoin mining going to look like. And if there's actually worth the time and investment for them to get into the space, at least I think that's what's going on into all of these executives' mines, right? Kind of like an ASIC pointer is completely different to the kind of chips they're used to manufacture. ASICs are, I'll say, robust, in a different sense of the chips that go into cell phones and all of the MacBooks and computers that we use. Yeah, I think they're kind of like thinking what's the long term outlook for them to essentially decide if it makes sense for not to get into the space. Colin Harper: And I think too, it depends on the overton window of how much people actually accept Bitcoin mining. I think that there's still a lot of people in the United States who are looking at Bitcoin mining and seeing its wasteful, saying we don't need that, talking about how much e-waste it creates and how much the resources could be allocated to other industries like cell phone manufacturing, car manufacturing. You know, chips go into everything, right? And everything from your refrigerators to your TVs. So I think that for some of these bigger players, they're going to need both more public support. And it's going to have to be normalized. I think that once you start having large energy producers in the United States and grid operators mining Bitcoin, I think that kind of opens up the avenue for them. And it also, to go to the Guzman's point, like it has to be in their interests, right? The kind of business that they might get starting out from just the mining industry who's got all these ties with all these legacy companies like Bitmini and What's Minor or MicroBT might be a little harder to get their foot in the door. But if some American companies and some American entities start mining Bitcoin at scale, like those energy providers, and they kind of set up these deals with Samsung or Intel or something like that, then maybe that kind of opens the door a little further and kind of spurs them on. JP Barrick: So it definitely seems like it's going to come from these larger, well-financed companies that are going to come into the space and build out this new layer, this new side of the business for chip manufacturing and for new or machines. How do you guys see the capital markets and the recent string of public companies in the mining space affecting capitalization, affecting how much percentage of mining is done by the public companies versus the retail market, is retail dead? Can you guys talk farther on that and what you're seeing from the interest side, from the content you guys are creating and your pulse on the market in general? Guzman Pintos: I think over the last 2021, in my opinion, was kind of the year for publicly traded mining companies. Specifically in the public markets, what we are seeing is like a market arbitrage, where a miner is able to go and raise funds in order to procure ASEX and get a really good multiple. So like more detail, like beyond this, in hashred index, we have kind of like a stock dashboard in which we track a bunch of metrics on publicly traded mining companies. So for example, if we take marathon as an example, and also their latest filing in hashred, they are operating just over three exahashes of Bitcoin mining hashred. And under market capitalization, it's just over 30 billion. So if you look on a market cap to hashred ratio, that means they were $1,000 per term hash, and they're able to plug in right now. We've been talking since the very beginning of the podcast, what's the cost of the SAC miners? And we are talking like on a spot basis, you can go and procure new gen hardware for 100 bucks at their heart. So essentially, that means that they are getting a 10x multiple on essentially any amount of money they can raise and get their essentially their hands on miners. And that's kind of the arbitrage that all of these companies are trying to pursue. You get 100 bucks and you can immediately turn it into a thousand just to public market valuation dynamics. And that's kind of what like every single public company is trying to aim for. Just raise money in a couple of markets, get orders and future orders from Bitmain, Micro-BT brokers, Luxor itself, and try to go and get this crazy valuation multiples. Probably one thing that could be said is these miners might be taking a little bit to risk. They are not necessarily trying to build long-term cash flow positive businesses, but at least seeking short-term valuation while we still are in a bold market. JP Barrick: And so you hinted at Luxor's plan. How does Luxor fit into going public? What does the roadmap look like? You guys have discussed internally or you're able to share externally without Ethan, the CEO breathing down our throats. Guzman Pintos: I'm in like public markets procuring ASICs from Luxor. We are not necessarily looking to go public anytime soon, especially not in 2022. Colin Harper: So I feel like a public mining pool, I mean like marathons public, right? And they have a pool. I feel like they're just opens up a very interesting dynamic. I mean, once a mining pool, especially one that's retail focus, Luxor is pretty retail focused. I mean, we've got a lot of guys slinging big hash rate, right? But the business, the core of the business was built on the back of pleb miners, right? And so once you go public, I feel like those, I mean, it really kind of puts those guys in a tough spot. Suddenly the pool is kind of making decisions based on the board and based on what they feel like their shareholders want and no longer really making choices based on what the core of the business the retail users need. Narrator: Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over 70 years of mining experience, 24 seven 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. JP Barrick: So let's talk about this future of hash rate. And I want to talk about financialization of hash rate more specifically. So can you guys discuss where you see TerraHash or when you see Terraash as being purchased in bulk quantities, and we're not buying the underlying asset, is there interest from investment banks? Is there interest from family offices? What type of structures are you guys seeing in the marketplace? And is there anything out there today that's actually working? Guzman Pintos: Oh, that's a couple years we've been seeing different approaches to this idea of financialization of hash rate, right? Kind of that first take was cloud mining contracts, where essentially you could go with your credit card and buy hash rate future, like X amount of compute power. In most cases, it was like focused for retail and all of these people were gripped off. But that was the idea, right? Like sell hash rate future. Then we had like approaches, like pooling, some finance hash rate tokens. So it's a way like tokenized hash rate as well. And both tokens got quite a bit of market capitalization in them, not only retail, but like a bunch of people like trading them. So in terms of volume, there's definitely kind of like an offering there. We also have like FTX difficulty adjustment, like instrument. And then we have kind of like best poke to the OTC hash rate contracts, right? So there's been like multiple iterations over the last couple of years, while like a hash rate, the realtive could look like specifically hash rate futures, right? I think none of them have fully succeeded from like a product market basis for different reasons. But we're like, lock circuits in. And I think where we have like our differentiation, there is we believe that hash rate, like a financial product that involves hash rate needs to be built by the mining pool, because nobody knows how to manage and deliver hash rate. And like also, like understand hash rate better than the mining pool. Essentially, all of we do is take hash rate every single second, in order to build consensus and blockchain, right? And we buy the hash rate and pay miners for the service. So essentially, what we're trying to do is like take off the knowledge that we've been building into receiving and delivering hash rate, right? To be like a financial product on top. One of the key aspects that you can like start thinking there is like physical delivery of hash rate, you can do like a physically delivered hash with contract. And the only way to do it is if you're the mining pool that you are able to like proxy hash rate, just basically contract and run on. I think there's where like our different take on the hash rate product is going to look like with sound like a broken record here. We've been trying to bring this to market for a while now. I think 2022 is going to be the year where we start seeing some of those like first iterations. JP Barrick: And I definitely think it's needed. But you guys have been on the podcast earlier talking about this, at least Ethan has. So it's not a broken record, but it's innovation. And something like this where we had to even explain what a terra hash is to people shows you how far we have to go before we're financializing the value of a terra hash. So Colin, can you talk to me about the marketing and the content game at Luxor? I've seen a lot of blog posts, but I haven't seen many TikToks. I'm just so confused. What are we doing? No, I'm joking. But what are we doing at Luxor? And how are you guys getting the name and brand out there? Colin Harper: It's funny that you say that because Will Foxley was talking to Ethan. Will Foxley from CalPose was talking to Ethan the other day and he tried to convince him to get me to start a TikTok. Maybe if I was a little bit younger, personally have no interest. I'll do what these guys tell me to do though. I don't know how many zoomers are going to be hopping onto the mining pool. Maybe they'll mine some pirate or some Zcash or something like that. I think when I started at Luxor, the way that I was viewing content or trying to position Luxor in terms of getting research and stuff out there, I really wanted to put our proprietary data sets at the fore of what we do. So a lot of the time that I spend in the content mines is just looking at differences in ASIC prices, looking at trends from that, looking at a hash price too and trying to pair those together to give a picture of exactly what is happening both on the ASIC market front in terms of what machines are being prioritized. Why are they being prioritized that way? For instance, one question, it relates to one of the things that Guzman was talking about earlier. ASIC prices have not hit a yearly high again, even though Bitcoin roared to an all-time high in October and November. I think usually you expect ASIC prices to perform a little bit better than Bitcoin and up swings. But they haven't since the China ban. Why is that? It's what Guzman was talking about earlier, Rackspace, infrastructure, all of that is still being built out. There's not enough demand to absorb all of the supply that the China ban left in people's labs. I really just want to bring more transparency on some of these topics, especially rig prices. When I first heard about hashrate index in Luxor a few years ago when I was a journalist, Ethan dropped this data into my lap and I was just like, holy shit, how do more people not know about this? I can actually quantify how much money a miner can expect to make at a full-paper-share pool with hash price. That to me was completely revolutionary. Same with rig prices. This is something that I feel like the mining industry out of everything in Bitcoin, except for maybe core development, which is just a Leviathan that very few people I feel like are really equipped to fully understand. Mining is such an obstrucent and esoteric topic that there's a lot more that can be done to shine a light on the darker parts of the side of the industry. I think that our data sets are great for that. I really just try to use those as much as possible, draw in supplementary research for certain metrics and data when it's needed. JP Barrick: I definitely agree with you guys. You guys have one of the best data sets out there. I utilize it for not only research purposes, but also our team use it for internalized internal purposes for models. One of the things that I think would be very helpful in the data set world would be the compounding percentage decrease or increase of hash rate over time. If you could set a date and see how far it's dropped or how far it's gone up, that's something that I've noticed when I modeled that data out. I was really shaken back, taken back by like, wow, when this drops, hash rate drops low. Let's talk about the bear market of 2023, 2024. What can people do today? Because you mentioned $180 a terra hash. What do we need to do today, especially for the plebs out there, people who are buying one or two or three machines and are running them at other people's facility? That's why I have really stopped doing hosting contracts personally, is because I understand when there's blood on the table and you sign a contract that's six, seven, eight cents a kilowatt hour. The odds of you owning that machine is zero to none, especially if you have more than 10 of them. What advice can we give people today so that they don't set themselves up for failure in 2023 or 2024? Of course not financial advice, but just advice as market participants and being in the space for as long as we have. Guzman Pintos: Also, kind of the scenario that you describe, it's not as mad as some of the contracts that we are seeing in the market right now. I've been saying, given large miners, not only plebs, but getting into 10 to 12 cents hosting contracts, which is insane. I mean, right now you could potentially be profitable with S9, of course, an S19, but that's not not going to continue to happen. I mean, hash price will go back to like under 10 cents eventually. I mean, hash rate is only going to go up until it's like marginal cost here. So I think like a buy, there's seems like a few golden ages of mining. The China ban was one of them where you could procure a six in June. And if you were able to plug them in right away, you have potentially already arrived those miners. If not, you are very close to doing so. But right now, that's not the scenario anymore. Right? So kind of like thinking long term, try to secure hosting rates as low as possible. But most important on the hosting rate is what's the cup packs that you are deploying, because if you're buying 150, 180, 200 dollars per dollar hash, that machine essentially takes twice as much to ROI as what like everyone else or all of the other institutional miners are paying for. If I were to invest, I would much rather get into high like, op-ex hosting rate, much lower cup packs. So I'm sure that I can like get a ride before we go into a better market, which eventually is going to come, right? But yeah, if you're a player, try to look for the best deal possible and not get into the first opportunity that arises. Because yeah, I mean, we've seen lots of miners going bankrupt. Even the probably companies that right now are trading like a few billion a piece. If you look at August 2020, most of them were like really close to going bankrupt. Like these machines were like hash break was like seven cents a their hash. Always keep that in mind when you are like modeling kind of what we are going on right now, it's like a super cycle of hash break, where margins are really, really effective. But that's not going to be the case moving forward. So keep that in mind and prepare for it. It's the recipe for success. Colin Harper: Yeah, don't drown in the in the froth. I think that like during bull markets, everyone gets so jazzed. There's so much excess. And every cycle, some Bitcoin or some pleb wants to start mining, which is awesome, right? I would never discourage people from trying. But I think people just get in a little too deep. So like people need to manage their expectations instead of trying to find a hosting contract and trying to buy a bunch of S19s and negotiate all that just like get an S9 running at home, see what it's like, figure out how difficult it is. Like why did it just go off? Like you were hashing 10 minutes ago, and now you're showing me the red light. There's so many factors to consider. But to me, it's almost like, I know it's easier because you can buy the machine and plug it in, but it's almost like handing someone a shovel and saying like, all right, now let's go find a backhoe and start gold mining. People think that it's so simple. You just plug the machine in and it prints money. And that's true. But like Guzman was saying, I was modeling out 2021 ROIs for different setups under different kilowatt hours and different capex costs for this report. And when you buy your machine and when you get it plugged in, it changes everything. If you bought a machine at the beginning of this year, like you bought an S19, you were ROIing that S19 in 258 days and S9, you were ROIing it in 65 days. This is under four cents. So it's not really fair for everyone. But if you look at six cents, it's not much different. But you turn around and you buy that machine in July after the China ban, your ROI actually goes down because you're getting basically the same price, if not lower, than at the beginning of the year. And you're turning it on right before this golden window of opportunity for hash price, specifically BTC denominated hash price. JP Barrick: So you mentioned BTC denominated hash price. So for the listeners who don't know, that one's when you take a terra hash value is nominated in Bitcoin. So you guys get the question, Bitcoin buy it or mine it? What do you say? What's the answer in short two or three minute kind of spiel? Because it's a hard question to answer. And I think there's multiple variables, but I'd love to hear your guys' thought and approach on that question. Colin Harper: Yeah, I think it going back to our previous question, it really just depends on your situation. I'm actually appalled to hear that some people were paying 10 to 12 cents in these hosting contracts, Guizmann. That's what I get in Colorado. I get 12 cents at home. So for me, it's almost like, dude, I mean, not everyone has that right Colorado has pretty decent electricity rates. That's well below the national average in the US. I think it really does depend on everyone's personal needs and their setup. I was living in Colorado or my home state of Tennessee. My residential rates are pretty low. Home mining for most of 2021 would have been a very good idea, especially if I started earlier in January. Now, if I was living on the west or east coast, it's not possible. Unless I was just willing to eat the electricity costs for a newer machine and just basically dollar cost average KYC for Bitcoin. And that's another thing entirely. But if you are someplace with higher electricity, you obviously need to get those hosting rates. And that's a whole new hurdle, right? These hosts are not sharks, but they're economic actors. They want to squeeze the lemon as much as possible. And if you don't know what you're doing at the negotiating table, you're going to get squeezed. So I would generally say, I think it's worth it to try. I just wouldn't be betting half of my stack on mining equipment, right? And I personally probably wouldn't have as much equipment as I have today if it weren't for the connections I've made through Luxor and the mining industry, like getting more favorable hosting terms, having the BD team help broker deals for employee mining program we have. It takes expertise. And if you don't have that expertise, I would generally advise against exuberance. But I would always encourage someone to get one S9 if they are more heavily capitalized, maybe an S19 to run it at home, if they're really passionate about it. I just think it's about managing expectations, right? JP Barrick: Yeah, and I would add to that, it's about managing expectations, but it's also timing. A lot of this comes into when do you get into the market? We've talked about getting in in the frothy time and how that's not good. We've also talked about opportunities like the June China band and when that was a great time to get in. So, I mean, my advice to people is if you're interested in Bitcoin mining, watch, learn, pay attention and wait for the time to really deploy a lot of capital. Start off the least getting your foot in so you have reason to stay and pay attention and that would be one or two machines. But if you're only have a million dollar net worth, put in 50,000, don't put in 500,000 or 250,000 because it can provide great returns, but without leveraging debt, without a low energy price and without a low cost per terra ash for acquisition, it doesn't make sense. I want to ask you guys one last question and that is what advice would you give your 18 year old self now that you come into this mining space into the wild, wild west of an industry for those people out there that are 18 years old or younger listening to the podcast today? What do you what advice do you have for yourself and work if you will connect with you guys on social media and contact you guys for more about Luxor? Guzman Pintos: I would say definitely buy more Bitcoin when we have like 2019 crash going Bitcoin back to like four or five K. I definitely got as much as I could but I could probably have gone like even deeper. So, continue to stack to DCA every single day, every single week. I'm then mining for me mining is my perfect DCA strategy because through Luxor mining pool and getting Sats onto my wallet every five minutes at the much favorable electricity price. I'm not only stacking in Bitcoin every five minutes without my ASX, I'm also doing it that this comes to spot because my machines are profitable. So, yeah, definitely, I would say getting to the industry as early as possible and then just learn. Going to like for example, this podcast, try to listen all of the people in the industry, go and read, get into into a rabbit hole off and research and Bitcoin mining research. I think there's amazing, I'm really intelligent people writing about topics related to Bitcoin itself and layer two technologies and mining. So, I would say those would be kind of my two recommendations. Colin Harper: Yeah, I would say obligatory tell my 18 year old self to buy more Bitcoin, to buy Bitcoin at all. I didn't hold any Bitcoin at that point. And then to just anyone else, they're interested in the industry. They're interested in Bitcoin or trying to find maybe a way to make it into a career. I would say is that like we need everyone, we need all stripes. I mean, I studied English in college, right? Like I was reading Faulkner and Shakespeare. And now I use Excel and I never used Excel before and I model out these charts and do all of this research. But to Guzman's point, like there are a lot of really smart people learn from them, understand the lingo, figure out what are the talking points and learn how people engage in discourse. Because the Bitcoin community is truly amazing because it is so global and so connected. I've met so many interesting people from all around the world through this thing, all really united under this passion to learn more about and to build this alternative monetary system. And so I would just say, take what talents you do have, figure out what interests you have outside of Bitcoin and try to find a way to make them fit. Because some people might want to try to get into mining as a way to make money and look at it as a career. I remember I was in a spaces with Steve Barber a while back and some guy was asking, how can a guy like me get started? And Steve was just like, honestly, dude, maybe mine as a hobby if you want to, but don't try to make a career out of this right out the gate. Find another way in with a way that plays to your strengths and compliments your God given talents. And I think that's really important. Because back in 2017, there's this conception that this Bitcoin crypto industry, you got to be a finance bro or a coder or something to make it work. And as the industry matures, it's just not true, right? Like we need people from all walks of life to build these companies. So figure out what your talents are, take them and then try to market yourself to one of these companies. JP Barrick: Well, gentlemen, where can people connect with you? That was a great rundown and I really appreciate the time today talking about hash rate. It's hard to get people with your level of expertise to talk about this in an open form. So I appreciate it. Guzman Pintos: So definitely you can find us on hash rate index.com. That's like lock source data platform, all community driven. Then I'll say a corporate website that mining pools likes attack mining that lacks attack. And then we are also over Twitter writing and publishing new threats insights data points. So you can find us also at hash rate index and for and also at Luxor tech team. Colin Harper: Guzman's Twitter handle for anyone wondering is goes at Guzman Pintoas. And I'm at as I lay, hodling. You can also just look us up by our names. Guzman has S nine S nine fans for his eyes on his Twitter profile picture. JP Barrick: Well, I like it gentlemen. Thanks again for the time. Everyone remember to continue to mine on and thanks for listening. Narrator: 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. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Your Heater Can Mine Bitcoin | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 30 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/hestia-bitcoin-heating-curtis-doran/ Your Heater Can Mine Bitcoin | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 30 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 30 # Your Heater Can Mine Bitcoin with Curtis Doran — Founder, Hestia Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Curtis Doran to discuss your heater can mine bitcoin. ### Your Heater Can Mine Bitcoin: The Revolutionary Tech Turning Waste Heat Into Digital Gold Digital Gold Podcast: The Cheapest Power in the World and only Getting Cheaper with Hestia’s Heating Products with Curtis Doran This episode of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric, features Curtis Doran, a Labrador native and CEO of Hestia, who reveals how Bitcoin mining leverages the region’s 1.6¢/kWh hydro power to transform local economies. He details his journey from operating iron mines to pioneering Hestia’s noise-reduced Bitcoin heaters, which repurpose mining heat for homes and businesses even at 40°C below zero. They also explore Bitcoin’s role as a ‘pioneer species’ enabling EV charging, internet expansion, and jobs in remote communities amid regulatory battles over energy exports. Full podcast episode here. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/q2P1oVb3kys?si=BQem3vLW_RoJ4fZt) ### Key highlights from the discussion with Curtis Doran: - Labrador’s Energy Paradox: World’s Cheapest Power, yet a Government Ban on Bitcoin Miners Despite having industrial power as cheap as 1.6 cents Canadian per kilowatt-hour and exporting 5,000 megawatts to Quebec for 0.02 cents until 2041, Labrador’s government banned cryptocurrency miners from its abundant hydro power. - The Shocking Truth About Grid Management: Why Labrador Hydro Dumps Water (and Revenue) Instead of Embracing Bitcoin Labrador Hydro’s sole load control method for Churchill Falls is dumping water over the dam, losing revenue, even though increased data center usage decreased industrial power rates by 1.3 cents and Bitcoin miners can shed load in milliseconds. - Hestia’s Revolution: Bitcoin Furnaces That Provide Free Heat and Eliminate Energy Waste Hestia’s CSA-certified Bitcoin furnaces capture nearly 100% of energy as usable heat, acting as standard air handling units, and have been heating a non-profit ski lodge for free since 2019. - Beyond the Hype: How Bitcoin Mining Is Building a New Economy and Providing Crucial Services in Rural Canada Block Lab and its companies employ 32 people in Labrador, providing stable jobs not tied to iron ore, and have used Bitcoin revenue to fund internet service for underprivileged indigenous reserves - Bitcoin: The “Pioneer Species” Solving Unsolvable Problems. From Frozen EV Chargers to Cold Communities Bitcoin mining, acting as a “pioneer species,” can solve problems like keeping EV chargers operational in minus 40 Celsius by using its waste heat, addressing the issue where 55% of Canadian EV charging networks were often down. Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/q2P1oVb3kys?si=BQem3vLW_RoJ4fZt) ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ How Hestia turns Bitcoin mining heat into home heating - ✅ Why residential mining could be the cheapest power source available - ✅ The dual-revenue model of heating and mining simultaneously ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Curtis’ insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/the-cheapest-power-in-the-world-and-only/id1539971833?i=1000715607305) #### Related Resources Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Guide → Learn About Bitcoin Mining → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I’m joined by Curtis Dorin, treasurer of the Lab, west Chamber of Commerce, CEO of Block Lab, and Hestia and co-founder of Blake Big Land Networks, a veteran of both crypto and traditional mining. Curtis merges blockchain innovation with resource industries, leveraging over 20 years of experience in operations, finance, and community development. Memorial University graduate. He’s driving regional economic growth through decentralized tech and connectivity, proving Bitcoin mining’s potential to empower local economies. Curtis, welcome. Let’s dive in to Digital Gold and see how it meets the real world impact in Canada. Curtis: Thank you. Glad to be here. JohnPaul: So let’s talk about Labrador, because most people wouldn’t be able to put it on a map and even point at it, but you happen to find one of the best Bitcoin mining sites, arguably in the United States, in the North America. How did you end up there and what makes [00:01:00] Labrador so special? Curtis: So luckily, born and raised in , Labrador West, , Labrador is basically the entire eastern seaboard , of Canada, , north Atlantic. , So I happen to grow up here. Traditionally an iron mining community. It’s, basically the largest iron ore producer in Canada, along with a couple , other mines, that are also iron mining. So the entire industry, , the entire community was built around the iron mines , in the late sixties and seventies. , Grew up here. Dad was a welder basically in the mines, and, started my life actually in the iron mines as a, an iron mine. , Went to university, finished with a business degree, came home and, , got a job driving haulage trucks, which, completely opposite direction from what , my university had given me. But, , luckily it, showed me traditional iron mining and, , really where it comes down to Bitcoin mining. , The bigger the infrastructure, the bigger the input, the bigger the output. The proof of work in, in iron mining is building and digging and producing and, , proof of work in Bitcoin is very, very similar. The bigger the infrastructure, the bigger the [00:02:00] payload. So, , that’s basically where I started, , operating haulage trucks, running drills. 20 15, 16, they automated my drill. So I ended up sitting in a pickup truck watching the drill operate while a couple of my friends started a , or they actually worked for the local nonprofit internet service provider. So we’d sit around talking about how they. If the nonprofit wasn’t doing what it could do, they were on, cable at that point. A lot of ideas for fiber to the home. , We decided to start a company. I was basically sitting on the drill, on the truck, watching the drill, not really doing anything. Cell phone booster on my truck started this business, big line networks where we would, , look to do internet service, network communications, et cetera, , with an intent , to, , put internet in the community of Churchill Falls. So Churchill Falls is, , on the map for the world, basically for the 5,000 megawatt hydro generating station that was built in the seventies. Much of the power goes to Quebec, but since the seventies, Labrador West, has been powered by electricity. All the heat , is electricity and [00:03:00] basically renewable energy and all the carbon footprint from the project is pretty much consumed at this point. So sitting there started this internet company and we were trying to figure out how somebody gives us. Money to put fiber to the home. In this Church of Falls community, young guys don’t really have much credit or history. And, , we’re sitting around my garage one day 2016 and one of the guys , why don’t we mind Bitcoin to raise money to put internet in Church of Falls? I’m , what’s that? And basically , the rabbit hole opened. , We started with one miner on a shelf in my garage and, , and basically spun on from there. We applied for power once we realized , the very low rate of power. so we started applying, looking for places where equipment, where now Newfoundland Labor’s largest Bitcoin miner, about 14 megawatts built over there past, , seven years or so. , Eventually did get an RFP to put fiber in Churchill. Churchill Falls launched Big Link internet, which we’re a fiber ISP now as well. So didn’t actually have to use the Bitcoin money for [00:04:00] that, but I. , It started down that road and then Block Lab actually spun out from Big Land Networks and became its own entity , and started getting, , a lot of traction here with this renewable energy, coal climate that we’re in. So you got the first minor plugin. What year was that in the It was 2016, it was a batch two s nine, we basically all threw in a thousand bucks each or something, and bought this mine and put it on a shoe rack in the corner of my garage. And, a week in we’re , why did we buy s nines when we could buy 10 s sevens for the same price? Very little power price. The Canadian 3.10 cents for residential, somewhere around, I think 2.2 us. So even residential power is very inexpensive here. So , we realized very quickly that waiting for Bitmain to ship a new batch of high demand miners versus going on Amazon somewhere and buying 10 s sevens. Get 40 or 50 Tara hash for the 13 or 11. I think at that point you would’ve gotten so realized very quickly that we didn’t [00:05:00] need to be cutting edge with our power prices so cheap. So bought 10 s sevens next, and then eventually took over an old grocery store, put 150 s sevens in just basically the chiller power that was in this old grocery store that basically got us going. Eventually, we swapped those in rat knots and , started applying for bigger power. JohnPaul: And that’s one of the biggest things about Bitcoin mining that I see outside investors don’t really understand is, let’s say the power cost, how that scales and how it allows you to run these machines for a much longer lifespan. And to your point, I can get s sevens faster. I can get them so cheap back then. And , the example would be maybe s nineteens today because no one, people aren’t really making much money off of it, but having to send power is. Almost twice as good as having 4 cent power, then four times as good as 8 cent power. But you don’t really think about that when you’re getting into the industry. #### Energy Meets AI Demand You’re , oh, I’m gonna try running at six and a half [00:06:00] cents and , that can still be a very, very profitable business. But you guys have really found the gold in Labrador port per se, out of these iron mines. , And they’re , we have so much cheap electricity , and not so much of it, but just cheap electricity in general, which gives you a much longer lifespan lets you run a very different business where your capital allocation strategy is to just tear hashes less efficiency. So tell me about that journey of building from the grocery store into the 14 megawatts today and highlight maybe the biggest operational challenge you guys faced and how hard it is to run a 24 7 operation in a small town. That is, is more remote than, let’s say a big city Quebec or outside of, , New York City or. Curtis: Absolutely. Yeah. So it’s, , we to joke that , if we take no for an answer, we would’ve been gone long ago. , We started basically in that garage. We outgrew the garage pretty quickly, got that grocery store and [00:07:00] realized that there’s power here in Labrador. , Not a ton of available power because the contract with Quebec to export the power, is a , long, drawn to contract that we could talk about for hours. But, realized very quickly that residential power at 3 cents, Canadian commercial at 2.3, industrial at 1.6. Rarely do you see these big jumps lower in power from bigger consumption. So we actually applied in 2017 for 20 megawatts in Labrador West, , province. Premier came out and basically said, yes, they’re getting 20 megawatts, , hydro. And the hydro utility came back and said, we don’t have that available. We need to study what we’re we’ve got for power. We can give you 7.75. So, okay, off to the races, we’ve got 7.75 megawatts, cheapest power in the world. , We’re ready to go. Banks don’t Bitcoin at that point. They still don’t, , finance answers when, again, back to the thing where we’re young , and don’t have a lot of history, really hard to finance these things even though we’re soaked in it and really believing, that we can do it. But [00:08:00] one of those things where you’ve gotta build, you’ve gotta order transformers. We have a 46,000 volt, , standard. Energy grid here in Labrador West, which was built by the mines in the sixties, seventies I guess they got it on sale or something at 46 kv. It’s not a very common voltage. So next thing our engineer is , you have to order custom transformers. There’s nobody that makes these. You need to go find somebody that will make a 46 KV transformer 50 week lead time, et cetera. So, , all off to the races, and then hurry up and wait. You sit there and wait for , your equipment. Even at that point there wasn’t a lot of pod manufacturers and so on. So , we bought one pod, built our own after that because Labradors climate is challenging. , we get snow in late October. We have it until just last week. The snow melted here in May, so it’s, cold climate, very windy. So we ended up building our own pods for that site. , During that we ended up with a, , somebody reached out to us in 2019. There was a local group here that had power. [00:09:00] They were building. , They went outta business famously, , great North Data, if I’m sure your listeners have probably heard of them. They had everything ahead of them, and we were one minor on a shoe rack in my garage when they, , started building, but they pre-sold their next site to pay for one site, and they ended up getting themselves pretty backwards on, on their infrastructure. We had somebody call one day, , we’re sitting there waiting on our transformers that are gonna be a 50 week lead time. This guy calls and says, we’re sick of our tenants. We’ve got a site in Goose Bay, Labrador, which is in Labrador East, six megawatts. We’re sick of these guys. We wanted somebody to come make an offer and we know you guys are, in Labrador West building. So, took a drive. My wife’s actually from Goose Bay on the other side of Labrador, so took a drive over and walked into this site. Transformers are sitting there. , The owners are ready to make a deal, so. Through the jigs and the reels. We ended up, , making that deal with them. The site was ready to go. Basically. We had to finish the connections and finish , the actual mining infrastructure, but, , managed to get it online. , We took over in 2019 and had it online early 2020, which [00:10:00] really saved us because waiting those that lead time for your transformers, you’re sitting around spinning, burning capital waiting to, to be able to build. So, luckily, , managed to get that site and build it up, and it’s, been running now since 2020. So six megawatts on basically the cheapest power in the world , that I know of. JohnPaul: Love that. ’cause it truly is the cheapest power in the world. Now , let’s zoom out , and just talk through why it’s the cheapest power in the North America and also why it isn’t a hundred megawatt public mining companies there. So there’s two, I think, very unique, opportunities that came about. ’cause you are a local and because of your ability to navigate local politics. So talk more about how important that is as a minor, but then also what gives this area the cheap energy. Curtis: Yeah, so basically the RO mining, industry, basically in the sixties before they had roads , into Labrador, they were [00:11:00] flying infrastructure in to be able to build these mines. So Twin Falls generating plant is an a 200 megawatt generating plant that the r and o company of Canada built in the late fifties, to power their site in Labrador West when Newfoundland Labrador Hydro started this deal with Quebec to build the Churchill Falls generating station. About 5,500 megawatts built. Completely with no roads into the region. , They dug through a mountain. The actual spillways and turbines are all built inside of a mountain. Made a hundred plus land Earth dikes. No JohnPaul: mean that amount of megawatts, why do they choose? That’s so much. Why would they choose that? Was there a bigger vision that you’re aware of? Curtis: No. So it was basically the churchill Falls was a, , waterfall on the Churchill River. So very early on , in, Explorer’s history, , they discovered that , the potential water, if they were to dam off, make a reservoir, they’d had , this, power. So Quebec really needed power, even then. They still do now, , made a deal with Newfoundland Labrador to build up , this, , [00:12:00] site. , British Newfoundland Co is what the company was originally. Winston Churchill was involved in this development basically. And, , during the middle or so of , the build. The, a plane crash happened. #### Industry Deep Dive , The plane was coming , into Labrador West, crashed with the entire C-suite of Brico on board. Thought the mine lights of IIOC were the lights of the runway crashed into the mountain, completely wiped at the C-suite , of Brico, , Quebec took advantage of that opportunity, basically not to comment on whether it was good or bad, but they ended up getting a very, very sweetheart deal to finish the project for Newfoundland where there was no escalator clauses. They ended up paying 0.02 of a cent, so 0 cents, per kilowatt hour up until 2041. Basically, what this deal ended up with, about 5,000 megawatts of the 5,500 megawatts. So over the last 40, 50 years, Newfoundland has made into the hundreds of millions. Quebec has made multiple billions on this project. So the power was basically [00:13:00] required for the iron mine development as well as exporting to Quebec. So. That’s why they built it. And when we were sitting there realizing, look, we’ve got tons of power here in our backyard. We can use this to your question. , Many companies did come in here. There was at 1,800 megawatts of applications , for power, for cryptocurrency miners, , early, say 2020 ish. The 8,000 went to 1800, 600 of that was us. We borrowed the money, we put the money on file, , told ’em, yep, we want it. Study it, we’ll fund it. And , 12 months later, the Newfoundland Lavender government put an order in council in banning cryptocurrency from foreign power. Gave every penny back. Didn’t study it basically for the year they had agreed to, because [00:14:00] I guess we called their bluff. And, , and that just, they’re contractually obligated to sell power to Quebec. So as much as we see , there’s 5,500 megawatts at that point, 800 more came out with Muskrat Falls a couple years ago. There’s 2200 more in G Island to be built. Now. Over the next little while, Churchill Falls has an upgrade project to add another 1100 megawatts. Plus they’ve replaced their turbines, which adds another thousand, about 10,000 megawatts of energy, hydro energy on this river. And, , the answer is still , from their point of view, we don’t have power. So it’s , very troubling , from our point of view, we ended up building, the black eye, great North data put on the industry. Didn’t help us in any way. So we were very adamant in getting out to the community, getting our logos out, sponsoring teams, sponsoring whatever we could. Getting message out there that this is an industry that is not r and mining, it’s not linked to the R and mining cycle. Why not hedge your bets a little bit? 32 employees at this point now that, all get paid by Bitcoin , being generated. So JohnPaul: And with 32 employees. [00:15:00] I understand if you’re in your house or you’re in the grocery store and you’re just starting the company, but with 32 employees, do you feel the community now looks at you guys a real industry? does do the, how does that feel? I. Curtis: locally, the community does the province still. We made an argument, , at one point we’re , we have 32 employees. This is block lab. And our group of companies, the internet service provider that serves internet to indigenous, , reserves, et cetera, we’re , we have 32 employees making good money in Labrador that aren’t Aren based. Their answer is, well, we’ve got 30 people in the export division trying to export the power outta the province into New York and New England. So it’s one of those things, the Energy Control Act of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Public Utilities Act of Newfoundland and Labrador was set up for in, for development of the province first, maximize revenue after that by exporting. No other industry has been told, no, you can’t build here because it’s better for us to export power because of , the ability to [00:16:00] get more revenue opportunity costs, effectively that, , we could sell the power outta the province and somebody in Quebec can build a data center , and hire these people, but we get a bigger kilowatt hour price than we can get from selling to you. If they were to look at IOC, they iron our company of Canada and say, we’re gonna raise your rates by 5%. Even it would destroy the business case. They have 250 megawatts running now. They have 2000 plus employees, so it’s easy for them to say. We deserve the megawatts of cheap power. , And that’s the argument the province generally makes. They don’t quite get the bitcoin mining side of things. They don’t get that Bitcoin mining can be a load control. The only load control that, , CFL Co, which is Churchill Falls has, is to open the dam and dump the water over the waterfall. So when they have ice conditions going into Quebec, when they have any issues where they need to slow the turbines down, the only way to do it is dump water. They don’t have any controllable load where we’re sitting here, you mentioned, or I mentioned, s sevens , at near free [00:17:00] power. We could probably still make money on s sevens if we had a load bank set up at the generating station, et cetera. S nines can still be profitable here. , It’s just a space, we don’t have enough power . it’s something that education wise and I think the AI push and everything now, people understand that. So it’s something that , we’re pushing in as well to say , you can build AI on firm power, any non firm power, you obviously can’t. So let’s find , a merge together where we can use Bitcoin as the fringe or Bitcoin to build out the infrastructure and then look at higher tiers of data. So that’s basically been our push and feels it’s been a hundred years, but it’s been about eight now at this point. And. JohnPaul: So if you could solve one energy or policy hurdle overnight to accelerate projects yours to reshape your local community and bring development and jobs into it. ’cause it’s not just those 32 jobs of you guys providing stable employees. It’s the electricians, it’s the truckers, it’s the HVAC guys, it’s the concrete guys, it’s the [00:18:00] local internet company that if you’re not getting internet from yourself, , what’s a policy that you think really moves your community forward? Curtis: Well, I think the biggest thing, I to joke, if Tim Horton’s wants to open a new Tim Horton’s, nobody’s looking at them saying, we could sell that power to New York for more than, then you’ll pay for it. A McDonald’s, any business or service, They don’t look at Bitcoin as real. And that was fine. That was an argument. When Great North Data went out business, , went out with 13 million in liabilities, a couple million to the government, basically, right? So I understand the back black eye, but when you’re in business, six, seven years at this point, building, continuing to push, it’s not so much a nascent industry anymore. #### Technical Discussion We’re here, our people have families here. , It’s, , something that I’m hopeful that the new premier of the province , just, , took over and he has a more forward thinking idea , that even going back to the Energy Control Act of Newfoundland Labrador, , energy was supposed to be for Newfoundland and Labrador. First. Quebec got their deal on [00:19:00] export and that got the project built. And now there’s a new deal with Quebec and Newfoundland to build the new projects where Quebec will get a lion’s share of the power. Now they’ll pay a little bit more for it and, , make Newfoundland a little bit more whole. But why are we rushing to send their power to the province? For secondary value to be added in another province or another state. And it’s a typical issue with, even with iron ore producing, we produce some of the finest iron in the world. It’s sought after worldwide, , even better than Australia, which is world known for iron. We have very, very high quality iron ore. We ship it out, let somebody else make steel with it. We ship it out for all the other added values. We make the raw material. And sure that’s an economic driver, but why aren’t we producing steel? Why aren’t we producing value add products? And that’s similar idea to our side. Why are we sending the power thousands of kilometers over transmission lines with losses when we can turn it into Bitcoin, move it anywhere over a fiber line. So it’s something that, , [00:20:00] hopefully as, , we’re, I think we’re talking right now during all time high zone. So it’s,, hopefully those types of things will show these, , these young blood that are joining the political side that. It doesn’t have to be all iron. We’re not looking to take away power from the iron mines. We could go in and heat their water. We could go in and heat their spaces. , We can compliment them. , It’s really what we want to do here. JohnPaul: And so effectively the one hurdle or one shift is put the province first Curtis: Absolutely. JohnPaul: , Be province first. Don’t be, let’s find how we make a few pennies here, a few pennies there by giving all the value to Curtis: Yeah. Yeah. And , I love my home province. I don’t , to poo booo on them very much, but that’s been a traditional Newfoundland attitude. Let’s get our quick buck, get our bird in the hand instead of the ones in the bush. And, and Max, , instead of maximizing the true value of a resource that you have, , you’re making that quick sale and shipping it out. So I’m hopeful that we’ll see those shifts. And I mentioned at the top of the call, we won’t take no for an [00:21:00] answer. We continue to push our message. And from that first monitor in my garage, we were cutting holes in my garage trying to get the heat out. , Even then we’re realizing that, we’re in Labrador, the two main communities, 30 20,000 of the 30,000 people that live here have electric grids, , for heat. They were built in the seventies for electric heat. So we’re here producing heat that we’re dumping outside in cold weather when we could be utilizing that. So, it’s something that we’re pushing on the data center side, but at the same time, repurposing that already existing grid is something big to us that, that is what spun Hasia out from work lab. JohnPaul: And so let’s get into Hestia, because I think you guys were one of the first groups to say, wait a second, Bitcoin mining produces this thing called heat. And everyone just throws that away for free. But maybe that’s the product for a lot of consumers, and I, if I’m, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you guys were one of the first major companies in that [00:22:00] space. Talk to me more about the design, maybe originally and then how it shifted to what the design is today and how consumers can, should be thinking about the problem that they might not even know they have about their current heating system in their house or business. Curtis: Absolutely. So, I mentioned, we’re cutting holes in my garage trying to get the heat out. , It’s, it might be minus 40 at that point where, , I’ve got electric heaters in the walls of the garage, , producing heat while we’re dumping the heat from the computers outside. So by the time we had to cut the heaters out to add more miners. Okay, well this is a problem that we need to solve. So very rudimentary. We built a duct system, a couple fans set on a thermostat so that when you need heat in the garage, the fans come on and dump it in. And that was, , probably early 2017 really, that we were recapturing the heat from the operation in my garage. , By the time we did the grocery store, we’re looking at ways that we can get heat up into the tenants that were above from the basement. And , basically just ways that [00:23:00] at that point we want people to not complain about the noise. , hey have some free heat. ’cause the miners were just sitting on shelves , and very noisy and something that anybody knows about Bitcoin mining, you can tell a bitcoin mine from the noise, from the heat. So we’ve just made that rudimentary by necessity to be able to get that extra 5,000 watts outta my heaters that I had to cut out to be able to add those couple miners extra. We were repurposing the heat. And then my engineer that came on to build, actually build out our sites. He’s a very smart electrical engineer. He spent a lot of years in the iron mines developing and innovating. So we’re talking about building data centers and dumping heat. And I’m , say one day to him, , ’cause he’s, he looks at something, he looked at the first ant miner and he is , we could cut the fans off this and be more efficient. We could eliminate the power supply and put it on a VFD, all these ideas. That first day I met him, I’m , whoa, don’t reinvent the miner. de design me a Bitcoin mine, right? , And [00:24:00] he’s , okay, well I’ll design you a Bitcoin line and then you’ll listen to me. , Is that a deal? #### Strategic Perspectives I’m , yep, deal. So he designs the Bitcoin line , and he’s , if we, , started eliminating power supplies at that point, , the S nine was on a 12 volt architecture that you could have actually put a VFD. In series to each other, et cetera. The newer miners scrapped that idea, but through the conversation with him, I’m , he’s I’m all about eliminating waste heat. So the power supply loses five or 6% or whatnot in transformation. And I just say one day I’m , what about the other 93% of heat? And you could see the gears grind a little bit and he’s , oh, it’s all heat. And then that was , the aha moment where even my engineering is , , we can make heaters. We can make heaters that mind Bitcoin , and pay people. So it’s where it JohnPaul: what year was that? Because , you guys, I said, were pretty early on in this I, Curtis: Yeah. That was 2018. We started down that road. We, we took over our landlord actually for one of our sites. We took a little space in our [00:25:00] shop and built a little room where we could do an RD facility. And within months we were heating her shop. , By late early 2019, we had taken, , built some engineered but home built units that we replaced the heat in the local ski lodge. So the ski lodge here in, in Labrador West is a non-profit ski lodge and was built in 1965 or something. Used to host world downhill ski championships. Very poor insulation, obviously for this building that was built 80 years ago or whatnot. , We went in and replaced the heaters with s nine versions , of our furnace that basically removed the noisy fans, put one central fan and started pressurizing the building with heat. So since early 2019, we’ve actually donated the heat to this nonprofit, , basically donation in lieu of rent. We donate the power bill, we actually get the Bitcoin , from , the operation. So it’s. It’s, a great way to donate really. But, , that was 2019. And then at that point we’re , okay, well we need to build something that we can certify, that we can install anywhere, air handling unit [00:26:00] furnace. By late 2020 COVID came on. It slowed us down, obviously a little bit, but we put our first unit in our own building in Goose Bay in 20 21, 600 volt, 80 kilowatt furnace. So it actually has 21 watts, miners hung up inside of it and, fully automated to be able to dump heat into the building or dump heat outta the building. Transformer JohnPaul: that’s a huge furnace. 21 machines. , no one is really building at that scale. And this is where you guys started, which was let’s heat a, how much square foot or Curtis: that’s about 10,000 square feet in our climate. And that was the thing we, my engineer and I drove around the community, , the, there’s 4,000 homes here, in the region. The industry is big. So you’re talking haul trucks that are 50 feet high and a hundred feet long. So a garage door in minus 40 that has to open to let one of these trucks in or let equipment in, , you’re losing all your heat even at 2 cents. It’s still a couple hundred dollars. Basically you’re spending to be able to open your garage door in [00:27:00] the winter. So that’s really where we spotted the first niche market is all of these buildings have to open their door. If a truck shows up with equipment, or if a truck comes to pick up equipment, it doesn’t matter what the temperature is, the door gotta go up and, , minus 40 Celsius is minus 40 Fahrenheit. That’s why I , to compare to that for , your American listeners. But minus 40 is cold. , , It’s two or three minutes exposed and you’re, you’ve got frostbite. So even for the people working in the shops. They’ve gotta put their coats on, they’ve gotta get bundled up before a truck can come in or go out. So that’s where, why we went with such a , big unit first. , Basically the idea being in Labrador West or Labrador in general. We can walk into a business and say, we’ll put in the unit for free. We’ll maintain it for free. We’ll pay the power bill based on the power meter that we’ve built into the unit. You’ll get free heat, we get the Bitcoin. Don’t, you don’t need to understand any of that. We’ll maintain the internet connection to it. We’ll, we’ll change the filters because we obviously want the best uptime for our equipment. So , that was , the way to get people who [00:28:00] don’t need to really understand what’s going on Since then, now we’ve got some people that are , I want the Bitcoin. I’ll just buy your furnace. That’s perfectly fine as well. But the power is so cheap here. The energy is already here. The grids are built for heat. So 55 ish megawatts just in our, one of our industrial parks is there for all the buildings that are there just for heat. The big thing with the hydro utility, they’re , well, we don’t have enough power. We can give you non firm allotments. We can allow you to run and curtail when we need you to, because we need the power for heat. So we can go into these places, and we don’t put any more load , on the coldest day of the years when the grids are at tr at risk in Labrador versus many grids , are in the hot summers, but we don’t have a lot of air conditioning here because we don’t really need it. So the, , they’re here saying, well, we might need you to curtail your data center because we need heat. So we’re , okay, well, where the heat? And in the summer the unit dumps outside. More kilowatt hours are being consumed on the same grid, no [00:29:00] extra maintenance. We’re not, we’re very careful to look at sizing our equipment for the building and not blowing transformers up, et cetera. So overall, really efficient. JohnPaul: So how many of the local population businesses have hestia units, even a percentage? Are you guys at 10%, 30, 50? where do you #### Operational Insights Curtis: So all the 50 megawatts were just about two megawatts so far. So it’s , still , little in its infancy. Now we’ve got six in Quebec that, , our manufacturing partner who actually builds the units in Quebec, he replaced oil furnaces. So a little different of a model where he’s paying six or 7 cents power, but he’s eliminating oil. , Plus , he built our data centers, built our units so he understood the Bitcoin side of things. So it doesn’t make sense for us to say, we’ll go in and maintain and et cetera. But that type of stuff. Now you, we, you get more and more of companies coming around Quebec. We’ve got a few people in Manitoba interested in our equipment as well, that you’ve gotta pay for the heat anyway. Bitcoin is the byproduct at that point. So that’s one of the taglines that [00:30:00] SDS had . Heat is the product in this unit. , If you need heat, even a few months of the year and your prices is decent enough to make it make sense, , Bitcoin becomes free generation at that point for the times that you need heat. So that’s the market we started in and now we’ve developed products all the way down to three kilowatts where we can go into homes, garages, residences, commercial offices, et cetera. Where in Labrador, we still won’t look at that model where we give you free heat for a small unit because I’m not gonna go to a person’s house and change the filters at two in the morning or whatnot because the machine’s acting up. But you give somebody, you say, look, you’ve gotta pay for the heat anyway. It’s very cheap. , Your heating costs compared to most places, but why not make money while you do it? , There’s no such thing as a smart heater until we came along. JohnPaul: And you guys, as I mentioned, really I think revolutionized and started that conversation of. Get heat to the people. Don’t worry about Bitcoin. And to your point, as the price goes up, people are , wait, what’s that device doing again in my house? , I want to, I want some of that Bitcoin, which [00:31:00] is good. You wanna bring the person across the journey. , And when it comes to local customers, , are they coming from the us they coming from other cold climates as well? Or you really focus just on the Canada market and That’s , where the growth has been the most. Curtis: , So far the growth has been mostly here, Labrador and Quebec. Now Quebec is 46,000 megawatts of hydro energy, so we have about 10,000 eventually when it’s all built. We’re small compared to that, but 4 million homes in Quebec. , Whatever number of businesses. , So that, obviously that market very close to us. , Makes a lot of sense to go after. But our units, when we built them, our patents that , we’ve achieved on them , we just received a unitary patent for the European unitary countries. Many coals climates in that area, renewable energy. So those are markets that we wanna reach out to. , We’ve certified the unit as an air handling unit for anywhere in North America. So for an electrical permit, you’re not installing Bitcoin monitor, you’re installing a furnace and it’s just a tick box, just a heat pump and whatnot on the note. So [00:32:00] right now, for our hash rate, for our decentralized development, we’re looking at Labrador, but the goal is if I sell two units to Manitoba or BC or whatnot, , we’ll take the revenue from that, put a unit in Labrador to build their hash rate. So the goal being, we’ve got a team here at Block Lab that our hash rate technicians. A little bit more maintenance on having a vehicle to drive around versus having everybody on one site. You buy electric vehicles. So we’ve got a fleet of Ford Lightnings, , costs us next to nothing to operate. So really the opex difference , is not much, 1.60 cent power on our traditional data center, 2.30 cents , on the, heater. Half a sink gets eaten very quickly when you’ve got snow clearing, property tax. All of these overheads that come with a traditional data center, along with the fact that you’ve gotta build custom transformers and deal with outages when a transformer blows up, et cetera. When we’re going in the 600 volt or four 80 for many US areas, it’s already there. It’s already there [00:33:00] oftentimes for heat. So we build the final step transformer into the unit. We actually capture the heat loss of the transformer in our process as well. So nearly a hundred percent of the energy that goes into that unit, it’s coming off as heat and we’re capturing it and allowing people to use it. So. , It’s a really what Satoshi intended in decentralizing the mining. And when we get into the smaller units now, the home, , units, that’s micro data centers that, that can be installed anywhere. JohnPaul: And with , these micro data centers, do you see the ability to do de demand response in Europe and other places as you expand? Or are you really truly focused on, , just, , providing them the heat or , have you looked at that? Curtis: Yeah. So demand, , it’s something that we’ve actually offered. , , we’re the only, we have a, one of our sites, block Lab does, we’re the only curtail non firm customer of the province currently. We can shed load, we could do it within milliseconds if they wanted to on a frequency response. But right now we actually developed the system for Newfoundland, Labrador Hydro. They can call this one 800 number [00:34:00] that even, I don’t know the number to, but , it will ring everybody’s phones. Let us know the site. Let us know what you need, and , we can demand response that. Hestia is a perfect way to be able to do that on a bigger scale, because every heater can be on our network, especially the ones that we own here in the community. The only thing with that is oftentimes when there’s a grid issue, it’s heat. Heat is the what you want to keep. So that’s the beauty, of it, because you can’t take people’s heat minus 40, , you can take the data center and shut it off, but if the data center is the heat, you can’t shut that off. People will freeze. So it’s, useful tool for other options, , other issues other , than a grid response because of heat. But that is something that , we’ve talked about with the hydro utility. We can get very granular. Every one of our units is on a map basically to show you what it’s using at any time. And you can pick a spot on the grid and say, we need load response here. And we could log in , and, ramp the units down. , It’s something the hydro utility hasn’t really felt they need to take advantage of. We [00:35:00] actually ask them in a public utility board intervention on , their non firm rates. #### Market Commentary How do you load control? What do you do for demand response? They’re , we open the dam. That’s basically all we can do is dump the water and make no revenue is JohnPaul: saying that, they’re , duh, , , of course we do this, and you’re , well, do you have another option if the dam is, can’t be opened or if you have an issue? Curtis: Or why would you want to, when you open the dam, that’s revenue that you’re dumping over the falls. So as public owned. Your requirement is to make revenue, you should want to find a user of last resort. You should have somebody set up to be , yep, we’ll take it when you need it. We’ll ramp down and when you don’t need it, we’ll ramp back up. And we can do that on frequency , if you wish, because everybody’s doing it already. So I’m very hopeful that this new non firm rate application that they have to file now in the next six or eight months, we’ll get some more insight in. We’ve been very adamant. We actually appealed their decision. We’re the only operator actually operating under , the non firm rate. But one of our sites here actually in Wabash was [00:36:00] 14 cents in January, 14 cents Canadian when we were 1.60 cents last January. , And their ice, their lines were froze up into Quebec and they had the falls open. So even that type of things that they didn’t really foresee in these options where it’s you should interruptable tariffs work for Ercot. You should give us a user of last resort price and if you need it. Pay us to shut down when you don’t need it. We’ll take that. Use our last resort. You never need to dump water. You can let us be your capacitor. So hopeful that they’ve learned over the last year or two, , while we fought and continue to operate in these variable prices. Luckily, our goose base site grandfathered in , on the industrial rate that, that the iron mines pay. So, , for the iron mines, I mentioned, if they saw a 700% increase we did in January, they would have 2000 people laid off and, , be completely shut down. So, types of things where we want to build the education and let them know that these grids, , even from your podcast with Dennis, the grids are operating more efficiently because of these [00:37:00] miners acting as these load banks and, Quebec , and Labrador should be no different. JohnPaul: And I guess I don’t, I feel , the energy industry and the local politicians that regulated or on the boards don’t necessarily understand. I. What a 700% increase does to a local business, even to one that’s energy intensive to a manufacturing. If you are having that much fluctuation in your energy prices, you are destroying your manufacturing base. it seems it’s just laissez-faire, , oh, no issue. when you look at home energy prices in the us it’s 17 cents a kilowatt hour, 14 cents a kilowatt hour. Why is it so expensive? Why don’t we as a society, number one, care about our energy price in your opinion? And number two, care about how that energy price impacts our community and the jobs we can provide to our community. Curtis: absolutely. It’s something that coming back to, . you [00:38:00] mentioned at the top of the call asking how we were lucky enough to be in Labrador. It’s one of those things where if I wasn’t from Labrador, I’d be long gone. I’d be gone to anywhere, Alberta, Ethiopia, many places with arms open, looking for people to come in , and develop this industry. , Luckily I’m raising children here. I’m second generation living here, luckily, or unluckily I guess you could say, because , , they don’t get it. And the ones and zeros they don’t get because they come out and say, no cryptocurrency. But AI or other tiers of data , would be fine, but , how are you going to tell us what we’re doing unless we ask you to come in and see what’s on our shelves? , it’s one of those things where anybody else, if you’re gonna open a McDonald’s, they’re not asking you if you’re gonna be profitable or what you’re gonna do. They’re , if you go, if you wanna pay for it, you pay for it and you operate your business. , It’s something that people are afraid of, they don’t quite get. , And you’re right, they’re not really thinking about. The overall societal benefit that can happen. And we’ve built the internet companies, we’ve built the indigenous relationships. We’ve built many, [00:39:00] many times. Those small companies that are part of our group of companies didn’t have enough money to get a project over the finish line. Where’d it come from? Bitcoin. We sold our Bitcoin and paid and loan money here and loan money there. So this bad, big, bad Bitcoin that people are afraid of, , has built societal benefit internet to , underprivileged communities that would’ve not otherwise had a chance. We’ve done these op these projects and it’s something that, it’s, I say, it’s just a miseducation part that people are afraid of that, , you might be a fly by night operator, but again, 30 of the 32 people, there’s 20 plus of us that were born and raised here. That would’ve left software engineers, electrical engineers, , network engineers. There’s no other real high tech jobs here for people to keep people in their home province. , And it’s something that. Really should have a bigger light shine on it. JohnPaul: And what I’m hearing from Hestia in Block Labs is that you guys really have a people first, but also an engineering first mindset. How have you developed that in the company , and how, what do you suggest other CEOs do to have a [00:40:00] first principle approach to problem solving? Curtis: Well, I think the big thing, what we learned in Labrador versus somebody say in Montreal or somewhere else, if you have an outage, you’re down and you’re in the middle of nowhere. So spending that extra money, you’ve got that good, fast, cheap triangle where you can do something. You can pick two of the three good, fast, and cheap. #### Innovation and Technology And many times people pick fast and cheap and then they’re up and running, but a transformer blows up or something that happens and you’re in trouble and you didn’t build to the right quality. For instance, even a a firefighter response might not show up and actually help with an issue because they don’t know what you’ve got in there. They don’t see any drawings, et cetera. So that’s something that we learned very early on, luckily, because we, the engineer that we hired was an I Iron O engineer, 25 plus years innovating at the Iron O Company of Canada, which has a very, very low tolerance for, near misses or issues they wanna engineer to the highest standard and, , [00:41:00] be , the best practice set. So luckily, because very early on I’m , Hey man, can’t we use this? Do we need to do this? I was the CEO that needed to be able to get it built. So luckily he was adamant enough to say, look, if you have an outage, if you have an arc flash in this equipment, if you have this go on, you kill somebody, you’re going to jail and your business is done. So luckily we listened to that , and built to those higher standards and then that transcended. So our site in Goose Bay that we took over. One wing of it is hot aisle, cold aisle, loud, noisy fans, two properties over. Luckily there’s no properties on that side, but two properties over, they can hear our noise. Well, by the time we engineered our wing, we built everything inside. We actually built a tower where the fans are in the ceiling, pressurizing the attic of this old army bunker. And that basically was the first hestia because it’s the same technology we’re using in the smaller scale. But we were building that first to mitigate noise from neighbors, then to look at, well, if we eliminate the fans on a [00:42:00] megawatt, that’s 40 more miners that combine. So your power usage efficiency can go way up if you’re actually eliminating fans. And then Hesia basically piggybacked on that technology to be able to build these micro data centers. That 65 decibels from a meter away from this unit with 21 Watts monitors. And anybody who’s ran a Watts monitor, they’ve heard the Rick Flare. Woo. It’s, . Something that is very iconic for Bitcoin mining specifically, that you come by a building. You can tell, if you’re a miner, if you’re a Bitcoin person, , you can almost tell what type of miner is in there by the noise. You hear our unit. , Unless you’re actually digging into the unit, you don’t know that it’s anything but , a air handling unit. JohnPaul: And so that, , that’s a crucial change to mining for local people running this in their house. And so to, so you guys basically remove the Miner fans and then are deploying, , a central exhaust fan. Effectively. , Is that the case? Is Curtis: Yep. That’s pretty much it. , It’s not really much of a secret sauce there. It’s use [00:43:00] the right fan, not the fans. axial fan doesn’t have a lot of. Lanar flow, for instance. It’s not super efficient. And back when I said don’t re-engineer the miner, , let’s build a Bitcoin mine. He was right. , it was, , something that came to us later. And, , if you can move air efficiently, , we can attain 10 to 15% overclock on air, , when people have to go to hydro or immersion to be able to do that, use the right equipment and you can save all that infrastructure and still get the same type of overclock and stability. So a lot of what we’ve been doing now is profile management, et cetera, so that you can take one of our small units. Our three kilowatt, seven kilowatt units, they don’t necessarily have to be ducted. So in a higher price power area where , you only want to mine while you need the heat, you can have it actually ramped down so it’ll get more efficient. Follow its profile down so that it uses less power, gets , better watt per terahash to heat your space. If you’re in a place where you wanna mine maximum Bitcoin, you [00:44:00] ducted it, you set it up on the automated system, so it only dumps heat in when it needs it. So, even similar to us picking s sevens over the s nines today, if I was buying miners, it’d be an S 19 xp. I wouldn’t look at 20 ones, really, because what’s the point in paying so much more for a little bit better efficiency? So the miners \, in our hestia, same idea. If you wanna maximize your Bitcoin mining, you don’t care about the efficiency so much. , You ramp it up as much as you can and dump the heat out. If you do, if you’re in a higher price area, 6 cents, 8 cents, et cetera, then you ramp them down, you under clock and get the heat that you need. For the space that you need. So a lot of what we’ve done with our app is basically giving user control where you wanna mind Bitcoin, you don’t quite understand it. An immersion system is really not for you. If it’s your first setup, hydro maybe, but depending on your cold climate, et cetera, you got a lot of risk of freeze ups. So, these units that we sell, you could buy it with the miners included. You plug it into a regular 50 amp outlet or a 60 amp, depending on the size. Scan the [00:45:00] QR code on the unit, add it to your wifi, put your wallet in and away it goes. Two weeks later, you’re , holy crap, I’m making all kinds of money. So I’m gonna buy one s 21 user open, open it. Put your miner in. The app picks up what miner is in it, upgrades to the right firmware, put your wallet in and you’re back mining again. So it’s, the idea for that is to be very user friendly because being in a small community and building , this project, I get a lot of people, friends, family, even strangers, Hey, how do I mine bitcoin? Okay. Do you have an hour? Let me get a whiteboard out. It’s something that, in a grocery store anywhere at all. I’m talking about this and basically comes from that. , We’ve made it as simple as we can for somebody to mine, actually mine, you can pull it. You won’t, it’s not a pickax, which I also love. I think it’s really the whole idea of bringing Bitcoin back to the masses. But our units in places where you need heat, , 3000 watts, 7,000 watts, 10,000 watts. Then we have the 80,000 watts and we’ve actually got a [00:46:00] 225, which is large industrial c camm based unit, that similar technology where we drop it outside your building, ducked in, dump it when you don’t need it. So, goal for us being anywhere that needs heat, we wanna be able , to step in and at least offset the cost, if not eliminate. JohnPaul: And when it comes to certifying these, and you mentioned getting this patent for these heaters. Talk to me more about that, how that process was. , you’re trying to bring this to a new type of clientele and the branding and the certifications really matter. How was that , and what does that process even look ? #### Growth and Vision , When it comes to certifying , a machine, you’re not even making in the sense that you’re not making the asic, but you’re then putting it in another device and then trying to certify the whole device and sell it as a one enclosure. Curtis: Yeah, so a lot of that came from the engineering side and where, I mentioned, he was engineering for perfection in the iron mining industry, et cetera. So a lot of that went into the development, a , few iterations back and forth with the, , the inspector to [00:47:00] basically. Understand what was going on. The unit actually ships with no miners in it. It’s all CSA certified cables and whatnot. You can pick what you wanna put in it. So if something, if a miner comes on stream that has no certifications, whatever user risk you can decide to put that in yourself. It’s basically mini infrastructure is really what this unit is. It’s a shelf space for 80 kilowatts or it’s a shelf space for 10 kilowatts. But through the patent work and everything, it’s basically we went down that road. ’cause some of it is novel and, we wanted to make sure we were trying to do that work. But I look at patents a little bit proof of work. It’s really, you show that you did that work. , Am I going after people for trying to use our designs? Probably not, because our industry is all about finding innovation and being able to do things. , We’re building these units based on asics that somebody else built. So it’s not so much as a patent trolling or whatnot, but we wanted to do that work to be able to make sure that we were, . We were showing people that it’s not just a fly by night idea. We actually put the effort in and went through the [00:48:00] work. Luckily, our first patent from start to issued was about eight months, which was way quicker than we were told , by the patent lawyer that was starting it. We just happened to luck out, I guess. , The next couple patents were a little bit longer, but the newest one we actually were looking at coupling the ev charging. So basically in Labrador, many cold climates we , we have EVs in our fleet and generally people think EVs are no good for cold. They’re great as long as you don’t want to go far our distances outta town, five, 600 miles or whatnot. Even that you can do with the chargers along the way. But you get to a charger in the middle of Labrador or say for Churchill Falls and the Charger’s outta service because it’s snowed in, now you’re stuck there. So we can heat the charging area and we don’t care if anybody ever charges because we’ll ramp our equipment down when you plug in to be able to mes load that you need. Then we’ll ramp back up when you drive away. So the proliferation of charging network is one of those chicken and egg scenarios where nobody’s buying [00:49:00] EVs because there’s no charging network. Nobody’s building charging networks because there’s nobody using the charging network. So we don’t care if you charge, we’ll, mine, whatever we can mine, you’ll pay more per kilowatt hour to charge on a fast charger. Then we can mine even with an S 21 or something really efficient. So we’ll happily stop mining for that hour for you to charge. Off you go. We turn back on the unit, start heating the space so the unit’s up the internet connectivity is paid for because , we’re running. So that’s basically our next product that we’re working on now that we received a patent for about three or four months ago to, to couple that technology together. So really think that’s something that, it’s pretty novel. It’s something that, , we’re. Uniquely aware of because we have one fast charger in our community, one in Churchill Falls, and , I’ve been that person get to the charger and it’s outta service because snow got in the, built in the cabinet. So I lived it and, , my backseat being , what are we doing waiting for somebody to bring us in a gas vehicle so we can leave this thing here and [00:50:00] drive on? So it’s, , something that stubbornly we went down that road as well. JohnPaul: And I think you mentioned this earlier, is Bitcoin mining being the buyer of last resort. But maybe what people don’t fully understand is that Bitcoin is a pioneer species. And what by that is in ecology, it’s moving to areas these EV chargers that have a problem that can’t be solved without. Creating costs for society. And so Bitcoin, as a pioneer species says actually we’ll use that power when no one’s using it and we’ll fix the main cause of the problem of why these chargers aren’t working ’cause they’re too cold. ’cause there’s too much snow. By using the heat that we’re creating to make sure that this local environment can be used for its main purpose, no other asset, no other use case can do that because Bitcoin connects to this network of money. And so as you think about Bitcoin money and you say, well, all that [00:51:00] darn energy usage, why is it good? Because it can happen in areas where energy usage is needed to create the ideal outcome for everyone, which is this decarbonization, which is this increased quality of life. This making sure heat’s always available to that the consumer. How do you view? , you’ve already mentioned a lot here, Curtis, but Bitcoin being a pioneer species, and for those who haven’t read the article on this, I will link it in the show notes so you can read a very detailed article on this metaphor. I. Curtis: I think it’s spot on. It’s something that we’ve seen along the way, from our , heating exposure from the ev charging. Even going into you picture, say a Costco or Home Depot would love to provide free charging to their customers, but they’ve only got so much infrastructure, very expensive for network addition. You can install a heating system where you’ve got a thermal mass tank of water, et cetera, where when someone’s charging, you shut the heaters off in the building and let somebody charge. So these are ways to be [00:52:00] able to proliferate this network. And you mentioned , natural Resources Canada was actually the ones who put out the first charging networks at one point. About a year ago, 55% of the charging networks were down at any one time. ’cause nobody will fix them. So somebody gives you funding and you’ll put a charger in, but. You don’t care if it’s running because you’re not making any money on it. So why would you do it? And then a family gets to a charger and can’t charge. So they sell their ev and now , you’re stepping backwards in, in productivity on building this newer new energy, for mobility. So it is something that no other energy use can do. Any other tier of data, , can’t just shut off momentarily. There’s punitive issues with contracts, whereas we can shut offshore, we lose the revenue for the time that we’re down. #### Infrastructure Focus We can get it for every minute that we’re up. And infrastructure development for ev charging specifically. Even when Newfoundland, Labrador Hydro looks at us and says, we’ve got no power. And in Labrador West, a business right now wants to build, there’s a 200 kilowatt [00:53:00] moratorium that you’ve gotta pay. , I think it’s 465 KA megawatt or something to actually develop out infrastructure for any business or for anything because , their argument is , well, we don’t know where we’re gonna get the revenue back to make this make sense. So same thing for us. We’re , well build JohnPaul: I think I wanna comment on that ’cause that’s really, sadly. Not true because you have been allocating capital underneath the same premise for the past 70 years that you will not know if it’s gonna get back unless people use your grid. But guess what? That’s why you build an electric grid. And so now that everyone’s , oh, new loads coming online, we don’t know if it’s gonna be here. That is going to restrict your community, restrict the jobs you can bring in, restrict your tax base because you don’t have a forward looking approach on how do I deploy , the energy infrastructure in my system? But a lot of people are , oh, because the prices are high, we don’t wanna raise them on rates. Well then look, let’s look at why the prices are high, ’cause the prices should be dropping as more [00:54:00] usage is increased across the system. Curtis: Yeah, exactly. It’s funny because 20 19, 20 20, the public utility board of Newfoundland and Labrador sets rates basically, hydro has a set margin, a profit margin that they can make. So in 2020s, not, or rate application or somewhere around there, due to increased data center usage in Labrador, the industrial rates went down 1.30 cents. So we were at 1.75, we went to 1.67 or whatever that number was, already the cheapest power in the world and it went down. So hestia now, we are adding kilowatt hours to the consumption with no extra infrastructure maintenance. So to me, in the next application that will happen whether or not they actually admit it or whatnot. But the rates should go down for everybody. Not only the people that have free heat because Hestia is heating , their business, but all summer long when the waterfall would be open or when the turbines will be slowed down. We’re using that power no extra maintenance. We’re not blowing up transformers. You’re not [00:55:00] degrading a transmission line by moving more electrons over it. It’s only when you overload cause issues. So to me, it’s coming specifically for Newfoundland Labrador. The public utility board is gonna look and say, why did you make a. 5% more revenue than you did last year. You’ve made too much profit. Give a rebate to every customer in the province. And those are what you mentioned. JohnPaul: and that rebate should be branded hestia, , reap RA or rebate. , that’s amazing. I’m so glad to hear that Curtis, that you guys are seeing the penetration and seeing what happens when we take two megawatts of usage that isn’t being used efficiently and maybe not always on and making it to always on running during the summer and the winter. , that’s real impact in your community. Curtis: absolutely. Yeah. Hesia, , very quickly mentioned that, so Hesty was the goddess of the hearth. So the fireplace basically. So if you put a fire in the fireplace, we all sit around and get free heat. So basically that’s the idea where Hestia came from is, everybody sitting around the [00:56:00] campfire, whoever started the fire gave everybody free heat. So that’s where Hestia came from. Just for , your listeners to, to know. JohnPaul: No, I love the naming. I love the branding. You got the bright orange colors for the people that haven’t checked out the website. So if you are building a new home or looking to upgrade your existing, , heating infrastructure, definitely check out Hestia high quality products Well engineered team, as mentioned by Curtis here, and people that care about not only Bitcoin, but the system working for you. So Curtis, , how do you see the future of this industry? , 2030 Bitcoin mining, where are we? Bitcoin, where are we and. Is the public there yet, are they saying, wow, this is an amazing technology, or do you think we’re still a, this isn’t what we are expecting. This is Bitcoin mining. It’s gross. How do you view the narrative? Curtis: I think we’ve come a long way from , the growth side of things. I think in say the next having cycle or the one after that, [00:57:00] you will get to the point where. Just traditional data centers. Dumping heat is really not gonna cut it. It’s. Your overhead is gonna end up killing these big miners because if you can be the heat, I mentioned, Bitcoin is the byproduct when you’re the heat. So becoming foundational, getting into these places that need energy or need have excess energy and they need to be able to offset their costs. That’s where I think you will see that push. And we are seeing much more heat recovery, in this most recent having cycle. But I think the people slowly, , but then fast. I think it’s been traditionally the model, , we do locally here, we do get more and more people asking, daily inundated about. Hey, how can I mine Bitcoin? Tell me more about your products, because we’re trying to push that out there and , but even back when I was still in the iron mine telling everybody about Bitcoin, telling everybody I was gonna quit and I was gonna go full-time at this. #### AI and HPC Infrastructure And everyone’s , no, you’re not. You’re stuck here. The iron mines pay really, really [00:58:00] well. , Very few people I know were able to get out without getting their 30 years punched. I got about 12 years. It’s about four years of working for my companies while sitting there. But, , all that, while those people are , no, you’re crazy. This Bitcoin thing is never gonna work. I see these people in the grocery store now four or five years later, and they’re , how do I get involved? How do I add one of these to my house? ? So it’s slowly coming and I think that is where it’s gonna go. , And I hope that’s the case because Satoshi’s vision was that everybody can mine Bitcoin and you can do it at home. So I do , the Cannan Avalon series. We actually just partner with them. We’re a distributor for them in Canada for selling their smallest units. , They’re Avalon s. Not the smallest units, but smaller than ours. We won’t go into that small level because why would we compete with an ASIC manufacturer that already has had that light bulb moment? So, , I love that. I love the BID X, all the versions of BID X that are coming out. , It’s really what the tosi want. Everybody can be a mine and, , where we should go in the , next decade. JohnPaul: And Satoshi’s vision of all, [00:59:00] everyone decentralizing the mining power and changing the proof of work system forever, I think is truly fundamentally is changing local communities and reality across the world. So Curtis, thank you for doing your part, and thank you for continuing to innovate in this industry being, , full lighthearted and really just, I would say genuine about what is going on. And is there anything else you want to dive into before we wrap it up for today? Anything else on your mind that , you really want to share with the community? Curtis: No, I think , we’ve had a great discussion here. I would tell people certainly go to hesty heat.ca if you’re interested in learning more. , , And again, , I appreciate your candor on that. My whole team, we’re basically, we live and breathe this and it’s not one of those, let’s get rich quick, , 2021, we had every public company you can imagine flying here at Labrador during the last bull run. , Of course Scientific’s Jet [01:00:00] picks us up and we go over looking around because everybody wants to be in Labrador and offers come. And we were , no, , we’re gonna give up too much control. We wanna be able to help steer this industry. And again, it’s something that if I wanted to get rich quick, I would’ve done it in 2021. And I’m still here pushing because I believe that. Bitcoin is the right money. Digital gold is very correct. And , that’s part of what I tell people. I’m , how are you gonna move a million dollars worth of gold without trusting somebody, ? That’s not something we have an issue with in our industry. So it’s something that I believe in and I hope that, , your listeners, I’m sure are feeling the same way as me. JohnPaul: And share this with someone. you’re listening to the podcast that doesn’t understand the benefits of the heat, we capture and , might be interested in a Hastia product or might be interested in even understanding how they can heat their barn, how they can heat their workshop, how they can heat their house more cost effectively. And remember guys to mine on and celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day [01:01:00] and Bitcoin at $111,000. 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If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # From Fish Tanks to Megawatts — Industrial Bitcoin Mining | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 32 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/industrial-bitcoin-mining-carson-smith/ From Fish Tanks to Megawatts — Industrial Bitcoin Mining | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 32 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 32 # From Fish Tanks to Megawatts — Industrial Bitcoin Mining with Carson Smith Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Carson Smith to discuss from fish tanks to megawatts — industrial bitcoin mining. ### A Bitcoin Mining Pioneer’s Story Digital Gold Podcast: From Fish Tanks to Hundreds of Megawatts: Carson Smith’s Industrial Leap In this Digital Gold Podcast episode, JohnPaul Baric talks with Carson Smith, who went from DIY immersion cooling with fish tanks to building SBI Group’s global 250+ MW mining arm and now runs 21 Tree Capital, Density AI, and Merkel Edge, aligning Bitcoin and AI infrastructure around energy economics and survival strategy. Full podcast episode here. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/QByHL51cmsM?si=WXaxEeSbFcrBmVV9) ### A snapshot of the insights they surfaced: - Origins and Early Engineering: Carson Smith started mining with improvised immersion cooling rigs built from fish tanks, learning early that hands-on experimentation and fast iteration were vital. Those early failures and pivots instilled a pragmatic mindset: treat mistakes as data and keep moving. - Scaling SBI’s Global Mining Arm: At SBI, Smith helped deploy over 250 megawatts across multiple continents, building out operations while inventing internal tooling to turn opaque fleets into observable, manageable systems. He also reframed mining as a grid friendly flexible load by integrating demand response, helping ease stress on power systems. - Energy Economics, Bitcoin and AI Crossover: Today’s focus is on securing ultra-low cost power and recognizing that AI infrastructure will face the same brutal energy cost pressures as Bitcoin due to rapid chip depreciation and commoditization. Carson sees power as the new strategic bottleneck that will differentiate winners in both domains. - Treasury Discipline: Carson stresses preparing for downturns with multi year runways, balanced holdings of Bitcoin and fiat, and ample cash reserves to maintain optionality. Surviving bear markets isn’t luck; it’s engineered through conservative capital management. - Entrepreneurship and Learning from Mistakes: Big even multi-million dollar mistakes are inevitable at scale; the key is absorbing the lessons quickly and persevering. Resilience comes from framing errors as fuel rather than failure. Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/QByHL51cmsM?si=WXaxEeSbFcrBmVV9) ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ From hobby mining fish tanks to hundreds of megawatts of industrial infrastructure - ✅ How to scale Bitcoin mining operations efficiently - ✅ The role of containerized mining in rapid deployment ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Carson’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/from-fish-tanks-to-hundreds-of-megawatts-carson/id1539971833?i=1000721064650) #### Related Resources Bitcoin Mining Hosting Services → Mining Services & Remote Hands → MiningStore 62.5 MW Iowa Facility → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: Carson Smith is an early Bitcoin miner who went from an engineer in a tier three in tier four data centers for telecom and high frequency trading firms to co-founding and running SBI groups previously. SoftBank Investments, multi ex hash mining arm before launching 21 Tree Capital, . A single family office building high efficiency Bitcoin and AI data centers, and investing solely in Bitcoin native ventures and infrastructure and co-founding density AI slash Merkel Edge, a data center development and energy company offering the lowest price energy for data centers in the us. He prices power in Satoshis pioneers immersion cooling in stranded power sites, and treats Bitcoin 21 million supply cap as the era’s most reliable monetary constant. Carson, welcome to the show. Carson: Oh, thank you. Glad to be here. JohnPaul: So tell me about your experience in these data centers and, did you learn about Bitcoin while you were working in them and when did you start realizing that mining [00: 01: 00] was for you? Carson: I realized mining was for me early on. , I’ve always kind of been a nerd and a tinker at heart. That even started, well, early on when I was in elementary and middle school. , I came across mining, , sometime during my college days. , I was playing with, , SETI at home. And someone on the forms mentioned, using idle, , computing power for mining this, , digital currency of the future. , Study at home was using idle computing power to do protein folding, to find some type of medicine, or maybe a cure for cancer or other things, in biology. I wasn’t much of a biology guy. I was always more engineering computer science. , that side, but it was always an interesting concept, and that’s what originally brought me into Bitcoin. , At that time there were no data centers. , It was just people running at home or like me in their college dorms, which is what I did. , I expanded a little bit. I started, I tried at that time, in CPUs, but by that time it was already had moved on to GPUs. Did a little bit of GPUs, for a while. , That [00: 02: 00] worked and then people started moving to FPGAS. I tried to design an FPGA, but I was too slow, , for that. Then next round, quickly came ASICS. I got some of the first generations of ASICS. Some of them, I got, some of them I was burned by, lost a lot of, Bitcoin. And those are extremely high numbers and, today’s value. I try not to look back too much, but, , hindsight is always 2020. JohnPaul: And so let’s talk about this ASIC development of yours. So was it with fried cat? , , How did you get into building your own, , circuit boards or chips? Of where did you sit in the stack and, , were you successful in getting it operational? Carson: let’s first focus on development and then also mention Fred Catt. ’cause that’s, there’s another interesting story there as well. , So on some of the development, a lot of that really never really got off the ground. So at that time I was studying electrical and computer engineering. At NC State University and I worked at some of the classes and stuff, I worked with semiconductor physics and design and mastering, embedded electronics. , I did some designs with FPGAS and I was in [00: 03: 00] college at the time, so I was trying to use what I was learning. that I had just learned maybe like weeks or months before, that is a long time ago. So I can’t quite remember when exactly it was now. But, utilizing what I had just learned to like try to build an FPGA because, , I knew I could, make some optimizations if I could just get certain number of things right. , But the design and my limited experience and actually building. A big FEGA. , I wasn’t able to get that off the ground in time By the time, , that ASICS, , started hitting the market and that goes into fried cat. Fried cat was actually, , I ended up buying a lot of, ASICS from Himm, the ASIC miner, the blades. There’s these blades. I still have, , dozens and dozens of them. , Back in, North Carolina, which is where I’m from. I still have those. And I ran these, blades in, , fish tank aquariums that I bought either from, well, I bought from both Lowe’s and from Walmart. I got shelves from Lowe’s. , I used an aquarium fish [00: 04: 00] pump that, I can’t remember if it was Lowe’s or Walmart. , The pump. I used the tubing, but then I needed a radiator. None of them sell the right radiators. ’cause you gotta actually remove the heat from the oil. So for that, I went to frozen cpu. com. I found the biggest radio I could and I made it connect to the Fish tank Aquarium. Tubing and then I use kind of fans like actually computer fans inside the fluid along with the fish tank pump to circulate all the oil that had dumped into these aquariums to circulate it through the radiator. And then I just lined up all these boards and a fish tank, , aquarium. And I had, several shells of them. This was running well, and, but these ASICS were also very expensive. And the, of course, just even like many years later, the hash rate was shooting up, especially as ASICS were taking over and replacing GPUs. I spent a lot of Bitcoin, , both Bitcoin and dollars, , into buying, new ASICS. Some of these ASICS were like butterfly [00: 05: 00] labs, KNC minor, and ended up spending a lot of money into those, and a lot of those were unfortunately never delivered. , ASIC design is very expensive. Especially when you get to like just the risk wafer phase that a lot of the r and d, that’s the really expensive part. #### ASIC Hardware Evolution Once you get past that and you generate a good ASIC, then it’s a lot cheaper to produce, but they have to charge a higher price because they have to make back all their initial r and d costs and of course all the costs for their employees, maybe some of their marketing and all the other overhead. But once you get to that phase, the actual chip cost is cheaper. That’s why some chips you can buy really cheap. But what these companies did is they didn’t have the right teams and such to fund this. So they funded it all through pre-sales. And I think probably the story, what happened is some of them maybe ran away with the money, some they tried to design and it was an ultimate flop. , I really don’t know the full backstory behind all of those. And, , for some of that it makes sense where some miners were delivered, some not. , This can go where you have like a wafer, [00: 06: 00] you get yield problems where a wafer, some parts of the wafer will produce viable chips and some parts will not. And so if they were expecting like a certain amount of production from the wafers that they had ordered based on the money that they had coming into their company. Then the yield was much worse. Then they don’t have enough to, supply the orders that they promised. , I’m not saying this is necessarily the case, but this could potentially align with some of the cases that, some people saw in Isol where some minors were delivered and some were not. , , This was like 2013, especially mid to late 2013, early 2014. Is also around the time of Gox. , , There was a lot going on at this time. JohnPaul: That’s right. When I was getting into this space, ’cause I actually bought a butterfly lab, jalapeno miner. It was a five Carson: I still have one of those. JohnPaul: So you got that, did you buy it? , And that was the two week problem, for them it was always two week delivery, we’ll be delivering in two weeks, as, the biggest kind of, scam going, on the message boards, and the memes back then. So, you got into mining, I mean the fish tank [00: 07: 00] operations. Sounds like you were immersion cooling. So is it clear to say or you’re one of the first immersion cooling minor, if not the first. Carson: I think I ended up talking to someone, , at some point who tried immersion cooling before I did. I can’t remember that clearly. , So then they may have been the first immersion, or if I’m remembering wrong, then maybe I am the first immersion cooler. But could definitely say with confidence, I’m one of the first, so I experimented with different types of oils. , I just bought like oils online and I think I was just buying from Amazon. , At the time and I just bought like large jugs of ’em and just filled, the tank, , with oil in it. And it probably like wasn’t the best at the time, but I was working a lot using some of the engineering knowledge. I had a lot of, , trail and error and experimentation. , And just going from there, went to using oil because the air cooling wasn’t quite working ’cause I was working in a smaller, limited space, especially when I was either at a dorm room or at home. And I wanted to [00: 08: 00] expand a little bit, and I had some access to some warehouse space as well. My family is, runs a logistics company, so I was able to utilize a little bit of space there, but most of it was in smaller room settings. , The heat, the cooling capabilities, as well as the noise. , And properly, just aligning everything on all the shelves. Everything was just became a lot easier. When I did immersion cooling, JohnPaul: How many devices are we talking about? It’s hard to measure in Gigahash or mega hash back then, but how many devices were you trying to run at a time? Carson: it was several dozen. for the ASIC miners that actually got from fried cat, which I never talked to ’em later. I have no idea what happened to ’em. So fried cat, if you ever see this. Hello? , I bought a lot of miners from you at the time. But, , so buying those, I ran several dozen of those. , A few others that I did. , Some of the GPUs were radiant. They were the. Seven, nine seventies or seven, nine nineties if I remember correctly. I might be wrong on that. Don’t hold me to it. , But that’s, I think [00: 09: 00] that’s what I was running, , when I was do doing GPUs. And then I was running several dozen, of these miners and, at first I was running most of ’em on air cold setups. And then I moved to the immersion setup. Then I also went to going from home and having gigantic vats of oil and then realizing also what a pain it was to dispose of that. That was actually a problem that I didn’t think I had on, at least at the time, but I was very young and naive Then. JohnPaul: most people don’t think about that. So you’re going from one of the first immersion coal miners ever working with Fried Cat, who those listeners who don’t know, , sold a lot of these first ASIC chips and collected tons of Bitcoin in pre-orders for a batch, and basically ran away, kind of moved off the assist off the blockchain. Disappeared. But you, Carson, you’ve stayed around. Where did you go after this? , And how do you end up at SBI, which is a huge achievement in launching withCarson: Yes. So in some ways [00: 10: 00] I actually didn’t fully stay around and that’s how I ended up there. , Because it wasn’t an industry at the time, it wasn’t a career like you, you couldn’t fully make a career yet. Out of it. #### Energy Meets AI Demand I mean, , you could make money, but even then it was still difficult because just like it is today, you have to properly maintain like your cost of power, your cooling and everything. And at that point, , I was very new to this and that gave me the proper exposure and learning and applying that to, with the engineering concepts, of just who I am. And, but also too what I learned in my schooling, oh, and then the concepts that I learned later on in my career. So now, how did I end up to where I was in my career out from going from mining? So 2012, 2013 was around the time that I graduated from NC State University. While the time I was at NC State, I did study abroad in Japan. I really liked living there. , Many good things about it. Good food, good safety, a lot of things that drew me to wanna go back to live there. And, but around the same time though, rather than doing for ASICS, because the, as I just mentioned, [00: 11: 00] a lot of the. Original ASICS, , manufacturers or the people who tried to manufacture ASICS ended up flopping and I gave them money. Lost a lot of money. I was very discouraged. I almost lost a lot of money in Mount Gox. I missed it by like just a week or two. I had some delays of trying to do they wanted some extra KYC documentation. This was just like one or two weeks before they went belly up. And I kind of saw this, and during this process too, I had also started going down the Bitcoin orange rabbit hole and learning about the history of money economics. And I mean, I have a slight autistic streak as well, so that too also. Powered me further down the rabbit hole to learn a lot. And so I really believed in the ethos of Bitcoin and what it could become later. But I didn’t wanna scare myself and it wasn’t a career yet, and it couldn’t pay the bills that I needed to pay, especially with, , trouble with Mount Gox happening, a bear market now in suing, trouble with delivering an [00: 12: 00] ASICS. , , And I wanted to go to Japan, . All that together drove me to go to Japan and start a career. The first company I worked with was a telecom company. They were an ISP and a cable TV provider. they provided, , their ISP services. They would do fiber up to a point, and then for the last mile they would use copper, coax seal cabling. And I managed the servers, , mostly DNS and DHCP servers, , for that ISP, in their tier three, tier four data centers. , Primarily tier three. And then after that, there were several reasons for that company that, I wanted to move on and look for something better. And so through a recruiter, I found S-B-I-S-B-I used to be SoftBank. Probably the SoftBank. Everybody knows the SoftBank Vision Fund. One of the CFOs, one of the finance guys at SoftBank previously, many, many years ago, was handling the investments and that’s created S-B-I-S-B-I was originally stood for SoftBank Investments that eventually spun off into its own company. It went public. [00: 13: 00] Then SoftBank sold its shares, in the exchange, and they kind of divested and became mostly two separate companies and SBI group. Now, what was originally SoftBank investments, but now known as SBI group, became a FinTech conglomerate, almost kind of like a fidelity maybe in some ways, a Morgan Stanley. They do like asset management, , high frequency trading exchange. . They own and lease cargo ships and airplanes, insurance, all kinds of stuff. There’s like 270 to 300 Cary companies now. , And in securities exchange, they’re the largest online securities broker. So I ended up working for them. I worked for their high frequency trading exchange as an engineer. I have a strong background in Linux. I can do a little bit of programming, not enough as like a full software developer, but enough to make me slightly dangerous. And utilizing that to, basically tweak and develop code as infrastructure and work with the coders and the traders doing the high frequency trading algorithms [00: 14: 00] and the fixed trading income desk and at various points within the company. I worked within, those groups, , as an engineer. At some point, they became interested in Bitcoin as the market started moving up in 2016, 2017. They knew about my previous background that we just talked about in Bitcoin, and they asked me for help. So I gave them some advice and helped them in setting up, teaching them what a wallet was at that time. , All the Japanese guys who are executives, they’re in late forties, late fifties. They have no idea what a wallet is or what coins or Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency is. , And they’re wanting to set this up, and capture this, new change, new revolution in finance. Some of the younger guys knew, but they still didn’t quite grasp it, right? I had developed already a good relationship with several of the, executive and SVV team. Of the group companies. And through that and them knowing my background, they asked me for advice to set up, teach them what a wallet was. And now of course they expanded and they’re well versed. They have a [00: 15: 00] good infrastructure for that. But in the very beginning, right, I had to set essentially like an advisory and setting up the exchange and then telling them, okay, who’s the right people they need to hire to do this all properly and secure? During this process, , I started, I was talking, I developed a, as I said, a good relationship with the chairman and the SVPs. I pitched internally along with some others to start a Bitcoin mining arm, and we were successful and getting them to approve that, and they ended up investing a few hundred million dollars into doing that and building out more than 250 megawatts around the world. That ended up, , building out in Sweden, in Iceland, in Virginia, in Texas, for example, Texas was originally, it was in Rockdale, what later became the site that now is operated by Riot. Also did some sites in Kyrgyzstan, in the Middle East, in Russia, and just all over the world for a [00: 16: 00] while. , In that process, after starting it up I started as operations manager and then I eventually, , was promoted to CEO and I did that for a few years and that basically kind of sums up my most of my career at SBI, and how I kind of moved to that position from my early Bitcoin mining days to Bitcoin mining again. JohnPaul: The 250 megawatts. I mean, that’s, some huge scales. Well, if you can you dive into that, just the, launching a new site, you’re, , running the bitcoin mining operations across multiple continents. What are some of the struggles that Bitcoin miners of that scale face, and maybe specifically where was the industry in terms of large scale operations? , How big was Genesis? , Was Mar just getting into the space? Kind of where were you SBI compared to other competitors? ’cause when we talk about 250 megawatts, that’s obviously a huge amount Carson: No. So that built over time, , a lot of that was built, between 2017 and 2021. , And then of course, in those early days, 250 megawatts, it still is a massive amount, [00: 17: 00] but it was also a much bigger amount than it is today. I remember one of the first, entities that we looked at. #### Energy Costs and Economics We actually, to quickly jumpstart. We looked at acquiring existing entities. , For example, one of the entities that we went and looked at was a company, called Project Spokane, running out of Missoula, Montana. And there I met a few other guys, one who many in the mining industry would know, Kevin Zing. Who is the SVP at Foundry? . He was one of the ones behind that site. , And he later moved on. He had some disagreements with management and he moved on to work at Greenwich and then Foundry. , There were a few others. Some of the guys like at Hash House were also connected to that. And then we looked at other sites at least as starting out as in acquiring at that, going back to that site. I think at that time, this was October, 2017, they were running about 20 megawatts and they built this on a very low, almost like a shoestring budget. It was very interesting site to see. . Speaking of Genesis two, we ended up, , investing in a company. When I say we, I mean [00: 18: 00] SBI group. It was done through another SBI, , group company into, a data center company out of Europe who, , we partnered with to build data centers in, , Iceland. And they ended up also. That process acquiring a very small Icelandic entity. And we built a data center within like a stone’s throw of Genesis, , data center just outside of Keflavik, or actually in Keflavik, just outside of re, , revic. And we built, in northern Iceland. So it definitely expanded a lot, and in that, , time, 250 megawatts was definitely a lot larger, than it is today. And through that process, , we learned several mistakes along the way. I mean, , we made those mistakes. We learned from them. I learned from them. And, I’m still like taking what I learned and, and, JohnPaul: What are some mistakes that come to mind? Carson: , So some of the mistakes too and just how, , some are contractual, , some of the engineering design, some, and being careful of like how the power, infrastructure is done. I [00: 19: 00] mean there are several, that just, it’s there. There’s a lot, when you go through this size and you go through several procedures. Some are large mistakes, some are small. And no matter how small it is, even for successful operation, there is always. Some, , thing that can go wrong and something that will go wrong no matter how successful operation is. And each one of those points turns into a learning opportunity, and that’s what we were able to capitalize on, and that’s definitely what I’ve taken to heart and continued to take into the future. JohnPaul: And, as you mentioned, every infrastructure project is always not on time. It’s really hard to get them on time, especially if it’s your first one of that scale. Carson: Yes. JohnPaul: We’re talking about managing tens of thousands of units. So did you guys develop internal tools to do that? Were you relying on third party tools? And what operational knowledge maybe that didn’t exist before in the fish tank existed in the 250 megawatts, of deployments? How did you get from, , the fish tank to that? Carson: So at that [00: 20: 00] time, maybe foreman and some of those other, if it’s okay to mention specific names, but maybe some of them, , existed at the time, but I don’t recall them. A lot of it was, for each of these data centers, , they built their own. Local systems to manage. And in this case, using my programming and my engineering, my Linux background, I have some Python experience, bash experience, I have networking experience. , And that’s through my studies in high school, through my studies in university as well as my own hobbies. I partially wrote the system. To get one of the first data centers started that, that we got running and the first one that we started, we ended up not buying an existing one. We ended up, \ building it. And what I ended up doing was using something, Very cheap, but smart switches cheap, so we could save on cost, but smart switches, so we had access to remotely manage the switches and see the Mac tables. We had a system where each port went to a specific physical place and I wrote a [00: 21: 00] script. That could scan the entire network. So even though each machine was DHCP, it had a random IP address, so we couldn’t necessarily tell what it is without making a blinking light, which we could do. You could do a blinking light, but when you have 20, 000 machines, that takes a long time to find the blinking light. Especially when they’re actually all blinking in one way or another. These are all s nines at this time. The s nines they glow green and they have some blinking, right? So finding the right blinking light, is not always the best method, , or especially when we need to locate a specific device. , And so what we did is we created this method, , , I wrote a script. It would occasionally just run as a batch, , or what’s called a CR job. From a local server and it would scan the network, pull the Mac tables, see what machine, what IP address was connected to what port, because we physically designed each switch from a, port one goes to this physical location on the rack like. This rack, the first position is port number one. The next one’s port number two, the next one’s port number [00: 22: 00] three, and we go down that shelf. And then the next one in line is like port, it goes port number eight, and we go in specific order. And then the switch names were named after the rack. #### Industry Deep Dive So if you know the switch name and you know the IP address, you can instantly find it within this list of tables. You know exactly where the minor is. And, we did that and then. Building on top of that where we, the miners had an API exposed, we would give information about like hash rates or temperature. , We built that, plugged it into like open source systems like Grafana and, I don’t think it was Prometheus at the time. I can’t remember what, , system backend we use for Grafana. We use something else and we use Grafana to graph it. And we basically put this up on large, , television screens in the, knock or in the monitoring room. And we use that to like monitor the data center both locally and remotely. And this was like built from like a hodgepodge of like different scripts that I wrote and some of the other, [00: 23: 00] engineers and software developers wrote, and then eventually, right? , You have more unified solutions like a creator that was bought by brains you have for and a few others. then there are a few other companies that are now developing some that, , I probably shouldn’t say, but, , yeah, so JohnPaul: space has come a long way. Carson: It’s definitely, it’s come a long way from what it was before where everything, when we built, the data centers, back then, early stages when I was doing the aquarium tanks to even then in 2017 when we were doing, , 15, 20 megawatt data centers, it was still like not to the level where it is today. , And we were kind of like having to like basically hack together a bunch of scripts to make it work. JohnPaul: It makes sense. And obviously it’s the progression of the industries, the maturity that you’ve been able to see throughout your time, as a miner. What about negotiating some of these sites and leases and contracts, any, is there, what can you talk about back then, on how that process worked and maybe give any details on. The difference between [00: 24: 00] negotiating a Bitcoin mining lease or an energy contract as a Bitcoin miner versus a traditional data center, or what some of the things you learned for people that are considering negotiating their own energy contracts that are still applicable today. Carson: A lot of that too. , We worked, , and we empowered, , and definitely, worked very closely. We found local partners to work with. And the reason we did that is local partners are well connected in the community. And that community, can include like the utility companies as well as, , people that you would need to like hire jobs. , So when you’re working with government, a lot of, for example, government workers, improving zoning rights or some permit or regulation, what they like to see is they like to see jobs. This is like a big thing. Another two that we saw, and we saw even early on when we were looking in 2017 at the project in Missoula is we also have to be careful of, even though a zoning condition may be right, we have to be careful of like sound issues. , And this one, it was actually an industrial zone and there wasn’t really much residential. There [00: 25: 00] were a few residential plots in industrial zone. That’s a kind of a thing in of itself. But they also had some other issues where acoustics would bounce off the mountains and you would not hear it in one place, but here in another place, miles down the road. , But then without, even without those acoustics, you have to think, for example. Of how it may affect the local, , population. So we have to be careful of things like that. , For power. , When we’re doing grid contracts, it’s very similar to what, , a lot of companies do today. And that, it forms like mining typically forms as a base load, for power to help secure a stable load of power. As, a grid provider, a grid maintainer job is to maintain supply and demand to power. Both are important, otherwise you get blackouts or brownouts. If you have too much power but not enough demand, you have problems and vice versa. And so Bitcoin mining, runs 24 7, but it can respond with the software on it. It can respond [00: 26: 00] within seconds to changes in supply for power infrastructure. That allows, , grid providers while working closely with them to help them balance the grid. So this is a useful application for grid providers. So, many of them are now, JohnPaul: like that, demand response, implementing demand response with SBI, you guys were one of the first people doing it at enough of a scale where grid’s like you actually make an impact locally here, running 10 20 megawatts. So how do those conversations go in the beginning, in the early Carson: In the first stages, they didn’t, I mean, they had some understanding, but they fully didn’t understand it because they didn’t see, , there’s not often many, large industrial users that can just scale down, Bitcoin mining, for example. Other large industrial users that, some Bitcoin miners used to run out of and some that we actually repurposed was like an aluminum smelter. An aluminum smelter cannot scale down. If you scale down, the aluminum’s gonna solidify and it’s gonna ruin your entire factory, pretty much. Or at least that’s my understanding of it. I may be wrong, but that’s my understanding. [00: 27: 00] But, in other cases, other factories, you have a factory line. , You can’t just easily scale down where Bitcoin mining, it’s just a simple command to the firmware on the devices and you lower the clock frequency of the machines or you, or in some cases you cut off power to the machines and you can. Basically instantly scale down to meet the power demand, such that, if there is a power plant that goes offline and there’s not enough power for the grid, the bitcoin miner that is taking power from the grid can then scale down their operations. So now there’s enough power for residential homes and such to, , so that grid is balanced. And this helps provide a financial incentive because anyone coming in to build extra power for a grid. That, whether that’s state money, private money, , even if a state money, there needs to be some type of return on investment. And when you have different, , variable factors to consider and what the cost of power may be, it can be hard to financially model. To an investor what their return may be. [00: 28: 00] Or with Bitcoin mining, you can model it as a, for a power contract, you can model it as a very flat rate that the power contract will return. And this provides a very stable modeling for a power utility provider, building a plant to model on and they can model a return on investment and structure, that in a right model that fits for their investor profiles. , And we worked, in educating. Grid providers. This was difficult in some ways early on. , We also worked with a company called Lanum. This was a company that SVA group invested into. They’re based outta Texas. , And Lanum started, , in educating, , ERCOT about this program. , Lanum two. #### Technical Discussion We also, did this. Utilizing, wind farms, we were looking at wind farms in West Texas. , If you look at kind of wind maps of the United States, where most wind blows and is produced, that area, kind of west Texas, I think it’s like New Mexico. That rough area of the US produces a lot of land, but [00: 29: 00] not many people live out there. So you get a high supply of electricity, but a low demand problem. Now you need transmission to transmit all the electricity to like Dallas or Houston or other major population centers. But those transmission lines weren’t well built out and wind farms kept building because they got subsidies from the government. So they would further oversupply power. This would create a problem because now this is a problem for the power grid on maintainers in balancing that supply and demand. So sometimes the energy prices in West Texas would become negative due to these, , wind forms, and sometimes they would, , adjust their fan blades. So the, that they would kind of resist the wind and not flow. And sometimes they would let the. Farms generate electricity anyway, and they were so profitable because they were receiving subsidies from the government. We would come in behind the meter and offer, say Hey, we won’t pay negative prices. We’ll actually pay a low price, but a base load so that you don’t have to sell at a negative [00: 30: 00] price. And then, we’ll actually, in some cases, if we negotiate the term, if the contract. We would negotiate the contract such that if the price becomes a reasonable amount that you can sell to the grid, to factories, industry homes, and other users, then you can sell to the grid. We’ll turn off our data center and we would use low cost miners to do that and, we would essentially provide like a base load for that. , In doing so, that kind of helped expand some of that, , growth there in west Texas as well as, , educate ERCOT and other power grid providers in the US on the benefits of these types of programs. speaking of too, that company Lanum, , they recently signed, an agreement with Stargate, which is also a SoftBank, but the original SoftBank and, , open ai. And they’re doing campus for their AI development together with Oracle and Stargate and those guys in, Abilene, Texas. JohnPaul: And you see all these previous crypto miners, some of them did make it to the ai, big leagues, you [00: 31: 00] know, core, core weaver being one of them. And, as you mentioned, Lanum Cruso. So there’s plenty of those groups that are in development with ai. You mentioned one thing about the credit worthiness really, and Bitcoin mining. To these power plants and to the grid operators. When you were with SBI, how was the credit conversations with these local electric providers, especially state owned electric providers, knowing that Bitcoin was still a little bit on the fringe, how often did that come up and how many of them maybe didn’t believe you were gonna be around in a few years? Carson: That’s definitely the case. For us it wasn’t as much trouble. But that’s definitely the case for the lot of miners. And even today, , for example, if I go try to raise money now with Bitcoin mining, there’s enough still firms even today and like private equity firms that won’t trust the credit worthiness. Bitcoin miners, even public Bitcoin miners. Like even if I were to like secure a public Bitcoin mining client, with a data center I’m building. And I try to use like some firms as well to help, come into the [00: 32: 00] cap table to raise money. There are some that are still distrusting of that. And of course some pub co miners, I won’t say names, have economics that they need to improve on, , and their operating costs. But, in terms of capitalization. Especially for smaller miners. It is a concern. And often what will happen is, , there’ll be large deposits, especially for PPAs, for collateral, and this will require significant cash reserves, at least on credit. And we still had to do this at least on credit worthiness. We, behind us, , we had SVI group, which is a financial conglomerate of 200 7300 companies. Right. . It’s publicly traded. It’s audited by Deloitte. , It is a public company, so everything’s all public, so we didn’t quite have that problem. But it is definitely, when you’re negotiating those kind of contracts and credit worthiness becomes an issue, it can be a and can be a problem. And, there are several creative ways to do it, and that can differ depending on state, depending on grid provider, [00: 33: 00] your power broker. That can be things of depositing money for collateral, using some of your assets, as collateral if you’re able to do that. And there’s different methods to do it. , But that is still an ongoing issue today. JohnPaul: So let’s transition to, where you are today, Carson, and you’re at 21 Tree Capital and any of your other endeavors and projects. Tell me more about that, and what do you see for the next, , couple months for you guys and building Bitcoin mining? Are you still actively involved and, what’s on the top of mind for you today? Carson: So I’m still actively involved in Bitcoin mining. , I would say I’m 99% Bitcoin mining. And the reason I say I’m 99% is Bitcoin mining. , Is in my blood, , and is what I want to do. I mentioned there’s, we talked some of ai and some of that comes to, in that, I’m not looking for necessarily for a turn play to ai. But, , some of the investors that I’m talking to want to do some AI and at the same time as Bitcoin mining. So, , utilizing some of the techniques that we learned in operating at [00: 34: 00] low cost, some we cannot replicate for ai. , , some very specific differences and that goes into another long conversation that’s too long for here. But, , there are some specific differences, but there are also some techniques that we can apply that we’ve learned over the years from Bitcoin mining to AI build outs and management. And that helps with, , what some of those investors want, in terms of building up new data centers. , So 21 Tree Capital is really just basically a family office investing, and primarily in either, , infrastructure, Bitcoin. And mining infrastructure or Bitcoin companies, some of the Bitcoin companies that invest to, even public companies like Meta Planet, it has investments into those. , Going into that below that, some of the companies as we mentioned before, are like density ai. Density AI does AI and, Bitcoin mining and then Merkel Edge. Merkel Edge is a US based company, with, my partner who’s a longtime oil and gas, working at several, , large investment bank and private equity [00: 35: 00] firms doing hundreds of billions in, , gas, oil and gas deals and asset management. And through that, , . #### Strategic Perspectives We’re looking at some renewable energy, but also focusing on a lot of oil and gas and utilizing stranded gas where we’re able to, achieve cost well below 2 cents, in some cases 1 cent, and maybe even below. , And we’re doing this at scales of larger than 10 gigawatts. However, we’re doing this too, in that. So we have exclusivity in that we’re the sole developer. We utilize our DA data center, , experience to develop data centers to do that, and then to purchase gas to develop data centers. However, we’re not able to develop 10 gigawatts of data centers ourselves. , That’s a lot of money to go in just for ourselves. So we’re also to like talking to others to raise money, to further build out data centers, some, and even that full capacity. We may not be able to bring everyone on the same cap table, especially miners who are competitors to each other. So we’re talking about two, breaking out in different areas, , into like different projects [00: 36: 00] or different legal entities where it’s okay, one miner here, one miner here that we’re working with and or like an AI or data center company over here. And that’s the same case. Two, maybe a data center company doesn’t wanna work with miners. But going back to the heart of it, , our focus is on, bitcoin mining and building out the infrastructure for, , the next, , or actually not the next, but the current revolution and, , digital finance. JohnPaul: So you haven’t left and you’re still building strong. And it sounds like to your point, you have, big visions and very cheap power costs. How important is it, obviously, the power costs and the bitcoin mining industry, AI doesn’t matter as much, but what are you seeing in this transition and, how important does it matter? Carson: I think AI will matter, and some of the AI companies I talk to are forward looking and they think the same thing. Maybe I’m wrong and maybe they’re wrong, but in some ways Bitcoin mining in the early days didn’t care as much about power costs as they do now. Ai, I think they will as well. , Several months ago, Jensen, CEO of Nvidia, he [00: 37: 00] came on at a, I think he was at a conference and he called himself the Chief Revenue Destroyer Officer. He’s made comments referring to like how he wants to have generations of chips that come out like every year or every two years, every three years. Sounds familiar, right? Sounds like miners. So you’ll have AI companies that will have to reinvest, , substantial CapEx into buying new AI chips every year. With AI chips, when you think of offtake clients who wanna use that, they’ll wanna use the latest and greatest AI chips. You’ll still find some, who don’t mind older ones, but most of your clients will wanna use the newest technology. So the oldest technology, in order for them to use that, you’ll have to lower the pricing, which lowers your revenue on it, and that severely, , affects the, , margins, , for running older ships as well as to the depreciation, because now, your assets are depreciating fast, you need a quick return on investment and all these kind of dynamics together along with a growing increase. And, , the number of competitors in the [00: 38: 00] market space will just further kind of commoditize the market and in some way that, commodity works, and how this, , kind of, This whole structure works, right? Is that I think it will push, the incentive for lower and lower power prices down for all or most AI companies. Maybe I say most, and that some AI companies still may be relevant, that they don’t fully care about as much power. They may care about, very specific like locations to population centers that may be their like niche and what’s always important to them. But I think over time, even the ones who aren’t caring about power will care about power and they’ll care about it more and more. , As I just mentioned, , some that I’m talking to now are already starting to see that and look forward and seeing that and from mining. We already do that now. And we’ve done that for the last several years, and that’s a key driver in any, miners metric whenever they’re planning a new build. And if you’re looking at this and you’re planning [00: 39: 00] a new mining build one of your biggest, factors that you should consider is your cost of power. And you should consider that cost of power too. Not just your pure cost of power and how much money you’re making each month, but also consider your cost of power and consider that too against your comp. In some ways, your competitors in mining, they’re both your competitors and they’re also collaborators. Everybody works together. To strengthen Bitcoin, and that produces, that helps support Bitcoin and drives Bitcoin price higher. But you’re also competing for the same, , Bitcoin rewards each day. And part of that too, with a main driver, your cost being the cost of power, you need to consider your cost of power in relation to, , the cost of power for other competitors. So for ones, if you’re paying, , 10 cent power, 11 cent power for mining. I doubt anyone is, but that, you should look for other uses. Things like that. And I won’t go into specifics too of like what you should use, because sometimes there’s different dynamics of like maybe, , of [00: 40: 00] just certain, where you utilize some power for mining at some point of the day and some points of the day use that power for other like factory other resources. And this kind of complicates the dynamics of your business model. And so every business model is different or some. You may use the heat, district heating, use the heat from miners to heat local homes or, hot springs or things like that. , That can change, the influence that, for power costs, and o other, , factors into your business model. JohnPaul: so Carson, I think you hit on, a few great points there. The first one being that the, just like miners move from site to site over time and from lower efficiency miners moving, from higher cost of energy to lower cost of energy as their life cycle goes through, GPUs are going to do the same thing. , And as we scale out, the applications and the customers, for AI is changing and is, , moving, I guess. , Up closer to smaller businesses, away from your cloud providers. So always still be there, but basically more customers are [00: 41: 00] always gonna come on the AI train and trying to bring their own AI resources and owned services. Needed to their customer. So my question is regarding the size and scale of these developments. Obviously we’re seeing massive gigawatt data centers across the board. Do you think there is going to be a need or for five megawatt, 10 megawatt, 20 megawatt sites for ai or is that unique to Bitcoin and can you talk more about that, maybe why those edge locations, where they exist and who their customers are? Carson: So going for ai, some of the AI companies that I’ve talked to, , that have done like very specific like direct requests for offtake that we may potentially build for. like I said, we’re still mostly building for Bitcoin mining. That’s what we really care about. But, , we’re still talking to some ai, as we just to maximize the power resources and data center development capacity that we have and our expertise. But going back to talking to some of the AI companies, some of them are. , Looking at to do direct offtake agreements [00: 42: 00] for smaller amounts. And those smaller amounts have been like five megawatts. , There’s one looking at five. There’s another one at 15 and there’s another one at 20. And then if you look at to like the full cost for developing an AI data center, , if you’re looking at like. Two. When I say full cost, it also depends on like from what voltage, and what, , levels of responsibility that you’re including. #### Operational Insights But, kind of a general rule of thumb, if you’re looking at NVIDIA chips, you’re looking at something of like 25 to $30 million per megawatt. So it’s a very high cost for that. , some of those direct off takers. , They’re looking at, smaller sizes and going back to like five megawatts. And then there are a growing number of like cloud providers or like middlemen that kind of. Function like an AWS, but for ai, , there is actually some use, there is some, parts of AWS that you can use for GPU computation, to do like AI based workloads. And then there’s also some other, , companies that we’re trying to partner and work with, what they do is they help other small businesses that may need a very specific [00: 43: 00] AI model for whatever they’re doing. Or maybe it’s not an AI model, , maybe it’s just some type of like. Not ai, but some type of rendering, physics rendering or rendering for motion capture or video content creation or something of that nature. I mean, there’s tons of ideas, tons of things to do. , And these, , providers work almost work like a middle arrow, AWS and that they route, , a request for computation to data centers free that they have, , collaborated and brought into their network. . For a data center, if you’re building like a one megawatt, two megawatt data center that’s AI focused, this allows you to connect in this platform and either fully utilize that capacity as much as possible. It may be hard to get a hundred percent capacity and it generally is, but you can try to get as much capacity as possible. Or you could also to go to other companies who want to secure an offtake agreement where they want to use your AI data center. For the GPUs that you have for some compute capacity, , or some physics [00: 44: 00] rendering, if it’s not AI for or for whatever. And then you may have some idle downtime where they’re not utilizing your capacity. And what you can do is you can actually connect this data center to these providers such that it’ll utilize the out the idle capacity and you can set priorities such that your contract for primary offtake, they will always get priority. Then if there’s ever a downtime, where they’re not taking, , compute power then, and there’s a request coming in from the cloud provider, then that compute power will go to the cloud provider and the cloud provider essentially, , as acting like a middleman, takes a cut in the middle and they route to data centers around the world. India, Europe, us. They do filters, if you need, , filters for privacy restrictions that some European companies, , may care about or have to follow, they route only their, compute loads to European data centers. , You can do different filters like that. And so there is a growing market for that as well, and that allows both, , small and [00: 45: 00] large data centers to, work together. JohnPaul: Thanks for that explanation, and, I definitely agree with you. It’s so expensive to build one megawatt of Nvidia chips. There has to be, a market for that type of compute, and that compute is going to be adequate, , for a large number of applications, even though it’s not a hundred megawatts. Of capacity. , My one question regarding, , the difference between or upgrading existing mines into ai, we saw Core Scientific do that and pay about $8 million a megawatt to upgrade their infrastructure. Is that feasible for most miners or is it, , put it down back to the pad, and start at a Carson: I would say it’s generally not feasible. I mean, there are some portions, especially some core electrical infrastructure that you can reuse, but a lot of like the racks and everything, you will have to just end up, tear down, and redesign. , There are a few companies and we are also working on. , Some designs as well and trying to make some designs that could be [00: 46: 00] reusable for both. And even then, , if you make it fully reusable for both, with very little change that’s, , that’s, , something good that, we hope to achieve, or at least something in the middle where, there is a design that, , is capable of supporting minors. Also too, it can support AI without like major overhaul of the data center. That would cause like a large amount of downtime to change and a large amount of costs. But this can also get complicated because you may have different form factors for what, , an AI server may provide, may use at one time, and then the different form factors of all the, , bitcoin mining companies and. Of them, as, they all like to change different form factors or really push their own, , without naming any names. And sometimes, they change and they use, \, slightly odd, factors. Like even when doing like traditional rack design, some like to do something slightly different than what the rest of the, , market does. And what this does is [00: 47: 00] it makes it hard to design, cross compatibility. But then there’s also whole number of other issues too, where, it can make it difficult to just very easily convert, , an existing Bitcoin mine to a data center, for ai. JohnPaul: And do you see with AI, most people moving towards liquid cooling or water cooling or potentially immersion? I haven’t seen much about immersion. How does cooling play an impact in all of this? Carson: That I don’t see yet that I still see a lot of air cooling. I do see some trends and some people looking at immersion. , But I see no like large trend there yet. But I think we may, see a growth in immersion cooling. I have seen like a few immersion cooling designs grow and we’re trying to look and, see if there’s some that we can do ourselves. , And I see that’s a possible trend that may pick up. It’s not something I quite see yet. , But then again, as I said, I’m still focused on 99% of Bitcoin mining, so I also might be missing these trends, just [00: 48: 00] as, , to throw that out there. And there may be a trend that I’m missing by focus on Bitcoin mining. There may be some of those trends in AI that like towards immersion, , that I am missing out on. , And so, but JohnPaul: And that’s totally reasonable. You can’t do everything. Carson: do notice some of that. Yeah, , you can’t do everything. JohnPaul: And being in the space for so long, Carson, how do you now manage running your own business? The volatility, , payroll, power, expenses, CapEx, especially during Bitcoin drawdowns. Talk to me more about treasury management and what you’ve seen as best practices slash what you’re implementing today, , in your organization. Carson: , For one, for the core of the treasury and the core of everything, fo as I said, focused on Bitcoin mining. Volatility is vitality. , Who was it? Maybe, I think it was Dylan Le Claire who coined that phrase. #### Day-to-Day Mining Operations Maybe it was sailor, was someone who coined that phrase, but I really like that. , And that is at the core, but we also do, , look carefully and we make forward looking projections several years, and we consider bear markets, and maintaining a, proper amount of cash. would [00: 49: 00] like to hold everything in Bitcoin, but we still have bills denominated in dollars, and some of those bills are like power bills. , Some are utility bills, some are payroll, some are taxes, and those are all $10 million and we need to be ready to pay those bills and we need to be ready to pay them in bull market times and in bear market times. And as we know, , I’ve lived through many market cycles. A bear market cycle will always come and it’ll come again this time. There are many people, I think, saying that a bear market cycles won’t come anymore. I hope so, but. I doubt it. , The history for the last few years of Bitcoin has said otherwise history for the rest of markets and the world history for hundreds of years have said otherwise. And so I’ll continue to follow as if another bear market is coming and looking at, Bitcoin. Like if you’re planning Bitcoin bear markets, right? If you look, they typically go from big drops from the all time high. Like, where the all time high is like. If we’ve reached there yet, or, if we’re going to reach there later. , I don’t know. , I expect and hope that we’re not at the all time high yet, and that’s gonna come, [00: 50: 00] sometime later this year. But from the all time high, it typically drops between like 75, 80% every, , just about every single time in every four year cycle. So being able to handle that drop is important and being able to make sure you can pay your bills even when it drops that 75, 80% and pay your bills, not get scared and not have to sell your Bitcoin, , is important. , That because those times are very likely to come again. But also one thing to throw out is that doesn’t also necessarily mean it’s gonna drop 75% from now because I don’t know, now, if we’re at the all time high, if the all time high is a million dollars and it drops 75%, or if the all time high is $110, 000 and drops 75%, those, you end up at very different numbers. But. The point, , is to maintain like a significant, and detailed plan of what kind of cash payments you need and having a cash reserve to be able to make those payments for at least several years in the future. And planning that based [00: 51: 00] on at least, a four year cycle, should provide you a runway to keep going forward. JohnPaul: Thanks all that advice. Carson, I think as anyone listening to this, can see your expertise, obviously from mining as a college student at NC State where we both went to school just at two different times and all the way up to s. I, and now the new projects you have working on, , is there anything else you want to talk about on the podcast and mention to the viewers about mining or AI and or entrepreneurship in general? Carson: , I would just actually go for entrepreneurship in general. You’re gonna make mistakes and some of those are gonna be small. Some of those are gonna be big. I made some really big mistakes and by big mistakes, I’ve made some multimillion dollar mistakes, , and I’ve learned from those, thankfully. I hope you never make multimillion dollar mistakes, right? And, you may not too, also have the ability to make that level, but I was working in a much larger company, right? , Where I had the ability at least to make that, but you’ll make a big mistake in a different way. So it may not be a multimillion dollar mistake, but it will be a big mistake to you and it’ll make a big impact on your life. [00: 52: 00] It’ll make a big impact on your business, and that will come no matter, how you plan, something of that nature will come and I can, almost guarantee that it will. And so being prepared for that and then also using that as a learning opportunity and, getting back up and trying again. Even if you fell completely. Get up and try again and, you’ll eventually succeed. JohnPaul: You will succeed. We all will succeed. And if you ride the wave of Bitcoin. It’s easier to succeed than riving the wave of like the dollar or something that is not necessarily growing like internet and ai. So thank you again, Carson for this time. This was amazing to have you on the Digital Gold Podcast. And remember guys to mine on. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Lightning Network Disrupting Payments | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 18 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/james-viggiano/ All Episodes Episode 18 # Lightning Network Disrupting Payments with James Viggiano Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with James Viggiano to discuss lightning network disrupting payments. ### Lightning Network Disrupting Payments Guest: James Viggiano Episode 18 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 [00:00:15] in this space. [00:00:16] 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. JohnPaul: [00:00:30] Welcome to another episode of the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I'm here with James, who is an avid cryptocurrency enthusiast and analyst who has written numerous articles and creative videos to help others understand the nuances of this ever evolving industry. He's a founder of Unspent Capital and the co-founder of CryptoSaver. CryptoSaver was [00:00:58] previously an investment platform for Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies and was designed to make it easy for users to purchase cryptocurrency and track gains on their investments. Welcome to the show James. I'm glad to have you here. James: [00:01:08] Awesome. Thank you for having me. JohnPaul: [00:01:09] James, can you talk to me a little bit more about how you got into crypto, what you were James: [00:01:13] doing before and why you decided to drop everything and start CryptoSaver? Yeah, my story starts, I guess I got caught up in the 2013 bubble so you could call me a victim of that but I was working at the New Zealand Sovereign Wealth Fund at the time and the asset allocation team and so we were looking at all these alternative assets and [00:01:31] Bitcoin was on my radar and it was having that big run up to about a thousand dollars and I just couldn't stop researching it every day. So that was when I really got hooked on Bitcoin and it wouldn't have been until 2017 during the big run up to 20k where I really had the courage to just leave the traditional finance industry and to do something on my own within Bitcoin. James: [00:01:51] And that's when I joined up with my friends and created CryptoSaver. Now the name suggests that it supported a bunch of cryptocurrencies but really the whole plan was how to encourage people to approach Bitcoin with a dollar cost averaging mindset. So the entire premise was you scroll away, put away a little bit of money every week to Bitcoin and will help [00:02:11] you track that performance. And yeah, that's really what I first did when I left traditional finance and then I've also spent time at a digital asset hedge fund and now I'm just doing my own thing. And when you mentioned doing your own thing is that trading, is that mining, is that building out PTFI apps, like where are you spending a majority of your time now? James: [00:02:28] The majority of my time is doing independent research analysis. I use mainly for my own fund that I'm managing but also just to put the information out there to help bring more awareness to the people and projects that are really helping move Bitcoin forward because anything a Bitcoiner can do to help bring more attention to Bitcoin is good for Bitcoin and good for everyone. [00:02:46] And I also do some I guess you could call it consulting work for companies to help them with their Bitcoin with their approach to Bitcoin. So now is this a traditional hedge fund or is this JohnPaul: [00:02:54] just managing your own funds or managing family and friends funds? Can you talk a little bit more James: [00:02:57] about that and how you got into trading? Maybe any coins that you really have moved into that major portfolio explode in a good way? Yeah, so I'm doing things a bit differently. So Unspent Capital isn't even a company. It's really just a domain name that's directing to my website. But I just wanted to have a word to capture my investment philosophy so I can start building [00:03:20] a track record. And so for me, I'm just defining Bitcoin as my Unspent Capital. And so that will be my default allocation. That's where I store wealth. And that's the amount of satoshis I have is kind of my score. And that's the number I want to increase. And so I've been trying to keep it all with a very Bitcoin focus. I am really hesitant to actually do much at all at the moment in the James: [00:03:42] altcoin space. Just because we've had such a long and big alt season ever since the halving, that it doesn't feel to me like good value for money to be parting with any Bitcoin at the stage. But within the Bitcoin space, trying to maximize returns on Bitcoin, there's opportunities to take very conservative leverage on the dips. And there's also opportunities within the decentralized [00:04:03] finance space like HODL, where you can lend out your Bitcoin and things like that. JohnPaul: [00:04:07] Can you talk a little bit more about HODL and how that works? Because I'm James: [00:04:09] familiar with Badger Finance. I'm using them for myself and my company to gain interest on our Bitcoins. Yeah, HODL is really cool. It's a pair-to-pair marketplace for lending. I think it's also still for trading as well if you want to buy and sell. But it'll set up a multi-signature contract where basically you can post an asset as collateral and then borrow against that. And so [00:04:30] you can go in on either side as being a borrower or lender. It's completely pair-to-pair. And the platform just provides the market place for people to meet each other and to match off the borrowing and lending demand. So that's quite interesting. That's actually something I'm only recently looking at. Another aspect of earning a yield on Bitcoin would be the Lightning Network. That's James: [00:04:49] what's really getting my attention. There's so much demand for liquidity. And some of the yields people are getting through using a service like Lightning Pull is pretty insane when you think about the fact that you're not actually taking a counterparty or credit risk because you're keeping the Bitcoin in your own custody. So that's really like a unique way to approach earning a yield. [00:05:08] That's completely unique to Bitcoin. And for me, makes it stand out as being truly decentralized JohnPaul: [00:05:13] finance. So you mentioned Lightning Pull and checking out the website right now. Can you talk a little James: [00:05:16] bit more about your experience with using that and maybe a high-level review of the Lightning Network? People who are not aware of that technology stack? Yeah. So the Lightning Network is what we would describe as a second layer on top of Bitcoin. And at its foundation is some smart contracts, these multi-signature contracts that form bi-directional payment channels. One analogy you could say is [00:05:37] that it's like a Visa network on top of the US dollar, except we're all able to be the bank that's providing liquidity to the network. And if there's no centralized Visa that's surveilling the network and censoring it, it's completely decentralized. And Lightning Pull is an example of a service provided by Lightning Labs. That's like a marketplace that helps people who want liquidity to find James: [00:05:57] people who have it available to offer. Because when you're running a Lightning Network node, it's really important to manage your channel liquidity. So what we're seeing now is some of these larger companies that run Lightning stores or the exchanges that allow Lightning deposits and withdrawals, they need to manage their inbound and Lightning liquidity. And it's like just providing [00:06:17] a place for them to meet each other. But at the same time, this can also always be negotiated directly. There's never ever a need to use a service that's centralized or anything like that. And so regarding liquidity and how much, if you put a one Bitcoin in there for a year, how many stats are you going to generate an interest on that point versus doing traditional James: [00:06:33] lending, either in the DeFi space or with BlockFi or other Celsius or other partners like that? Do you have any estimates or ideas? That's a really good question because it's a little bit different than traditional lending. It really comes down to the active management of the investor, the person who's providing liquidity. Because your yield isn't just a result of you putting up the Bitcoin [00:06:54] once as liquidity and getting a yield on that. It's actually you've got to calculate it based on the sum of all the inbound and outbound channels that you're managing and the kind of yield you're getting off of those. So there's an active role that has to be played. So it's going to differ per person. It's going to differ based on strategy of how you actually build up your channels and James: [00:07:15] create the liquidity parts through the network yourself. It's going to differ based on quite a lot of things per person. But someone that's really worth following in this space would be Alex Bosworth of Lightning Labs. He every now and then shares a little bit of his alpha when he tells people what kind of yield he's earning because he's at the forefront of this stuff where he understands [00:07:32] exactly how it works. So he's been able to take the risk worth putting quite a bit of money and a whole lot to do this. Because that raises another point because that while there's no credit risk lending your Bitcoin through the Lightning network, there's a huge amount of operational risk. I'm not as tech savvy at all as any of these other developers. So for me, the big roadblock is what if I James: [00:07:54] muck up and lose my Bitcoin and the other aspect would be in order for it to be in a Lightning channel. It has to be in a Lightning wallet which is online. So it's a bit hotter, they say, so it makes it a bit more of a security risk. So there's lots of factors that go into it. I've seen, for example, on Lightning Pool, which is where just for a single channel where people are demanding [00:08:14] liquidity, I've seen a yield as high as about 10% per annum. But in terms of someone managing their own channel for about a year, I think I saw Alex Bosworth, this could be totally wrong, but I think it was somewhere in the one to two percent area. But anything, anything above zero is pretty good when it's kind of risk-free. In terms of a credit market sense, it's not like James: [00:08:32] you're lending money to an actual bank or like a centralized platform like BlockFi. No 100% get that on the credit risk side. And I think that's super important when it comes to BTC maximalists or people that believe in holding their own coins and keys. And I'm 100% supportive of that. And you mentioned you said one or two percent, was that per month or per year [00:08:51] for people? Because you mentioned managing the channels. I still don't understand what that JohnPaul: [00:08:55] looks like. Is that choosing who you want to work with? Can you explain what that looks like when James: [00:08:59] it comes to managing a Lightning liquidity channel? So I'm still in the research phase for this, because I don't want to put too much capital at risk. But my understanding from what I've been reading and what I've been experimenting with is there's a lot of work to be done in rebalancing the channels. You can open up a channel. So first of all, you need to open up channels [00:09:16] across the network so that people actually will flow through your Bitcoin. I like to think of it like you're creating a right-of-way of your land and people will pay you every time they walk through it. But you want to make your land useful and to link up all the different parties, the people who need capital and the people who are spending capital want to help them meet each other. James: [00:09:33] So there's a strategy to who you pair with or who you open your channel with. And then it's also the strategy to how you keep your node balanced. Because if people are walking all in one direction that could move the shift of satoshis from one side to the other side from your inbound to your outbound or vice versa, the direction of your payment channel. So there is at the moment kind of hands [00:09:54] on management, active management of your channels. But I do think there's a lot of projects probably tackling this and there probably is going to be ways to make it even simpler. I think lightning pool is one way that makes it simpler where you don't have to go out and find the people who actually need liquidity. The marketplace is there where you can see where you could provide it. James: [00:10:11] Interesting. Yeah, I'm looking into just looking into more as we're speaking. This is really an interesting concept that the lightning space that I haven't really touched into. You mentioned that stacking sats and not all coins and wanting to grow your Bitcoin portfolio and dollar cost JohnPaul: [00:10:23] average. Can you explain how you've been approaching buying bitcoins and growing your Bitcoin allocation James: [00:10:28] in the space previously and how you think the best way other people can do it? Yeah, the reason for crypto saver was I think a lot of people in YouTube Bitcoin, it takes them a cycle like it takes them a bull market before they truly get the value of Bitcoin. And so I'm trying to help people get that mindset really early on that it's not about buying Bitcoin [00:10:46] and then taking profit on it in the future. Once you really get into understanding Bitcoin, you'll appreciate that it is the profit. It is the asset that you're going to want to fall back on to when you take profit from things that are riskier. And so one way to develop that mindset is why not work for Bitcoin? Why not ask for a party of salary to be in Bitcoin? Why not start James: [00:11:08] working directly for Bitcoin online? And so for people right now who don't have that offer from their employer, it makes sense to just dollar cost average where every paycheck you take a small percentage of it and you convert it into Bitcoin. You lock it in, you save it as sats because the longer you're in Bitcoin, the more you develop a relationship with fiat. That is, [00:11:29] I guess you could say hyper inflation expectations. So for me, the velocity of fiat is very high. Fiat comes into my bank account. I spend it very quickly. I think a lot of Bitcoin is would say the same. I don't actually even consider it spent when I buy Bitcoin. I consider it. That's where I'm just storing my capital. Part of the reason I decided to call my personal track record James: [00:11:48] unspent capital and my investment philosophy unspent capital is because first of all, technically, every Satoshi is the unspent output of a previous transaction. So it's money that hasn't been spent yet. It's just there in the blockchain, part of the 2,100 trillion Satoshi's that will ever exist. It's your percentage that will never get diluted that you own your score, I like to say. But then [00:12:11] when I look to invest in other things, I have to appreciate that my opportunity cost. The thing that I'm actually giving up is Satoshi's because whatever you buy, the alternative that you could have bought is Satoshi's. So with Bitcoin being the opportunity cost, that makes investing a little bit different. You start to price everything in cents. Since about 2017, James: [00:12:31] I've only looked at the old BTC pairs when trading. I've never actually looked at the US dollar price because it doesn't matter to me to make US dollars if it means I'm actually losing Satoshi's because if I'm diversifying out of Bitcoin, I'm taking a higher risk. So I deserve to have a higher reward. I should be making sex, not losing sex. That's one of the ways I look at it. [00:12:52] No, 100%. That makes sense. And I think the stacking of stats is the mindset that I'm looking to move into before we jump into stacking of stats and what I want to coin is stacking watts. Like when it comes to mining and stacking miners, do you think there'll be a leaderboard or people wanting to share how many bitcoins they have ever? Or do you think that'll become a socially acceptable thing? James: [00:13:12] Or is when people are going to want to brag about or share similar to likes for Instagram followers? That's interesting to think about. I think a lot of Bitcoin is like to keep it private, but I think there's still advantages to having transparency where it's needed. So for public companies, there's definitely a massive leaderboard happening right now. And micro-strategy is way [00:13:32] well ahead of everyone else. And having that publicly known can be useful if you're a public company and you want to do things with that wealth if you want to borrow against it or do things. I think like a central bank, for example, when they start getting into Bitcoin, they'll probably be quite public how much they own. I started by saying, did you say stacking watts like energy James: [00:13:50] for Bitcoin miners? Exactly. Yeah, I think I'm really excited about the idea that any electricity, any energy that the world is able to produce is now able to be monetized because you can just fire up the ASIC miner and just convert it into satoshis. So all of a sudden renewable energy is suddenly extremely viable and it's going to expand at a rapid pace, the generation of it. So there's [00:14:16] going to be a lot more renewable generators being developed because they have that variable supply problem where sometimes they produce too much electricity that they can't put onto the grid, they're overloaded and there's a huge cost of what's called curtailment where they have to find a way to expand their electricity without overloading the grid. So they threw negative pricing where they James: [00:14:35] pay people to take it off their hands. They pay to pump it up a hill, that's called pump-tiger. They do a whole variety of things to get rid of it. But now you can just convert it into sats and store it as wealth for later. And then there's also the ability for if demand for electricity from regular consumers is high, regular consumers are paying 10 times as much as a Bitcoin miner [00:14:54] anyway. And so the Bitcoin miners are able to have these agreements with the generator, if the Bitcoin miners themselves aren't the generator, for example, they're able to have these agreements where they can pull or turn off their miners at the flick of a switch to suddenly have that power that's been consumed by them available for the grid. And so renewable energy James: [00:15:10] is just so totally viable now as a green strategy. So I don't know, it just gets me real excited because when you said like sets per watt hour and stuff like that, it is very much like electricity energy that's pretty much what's backing Bitcoin. That's what makes it really exciting. I 100% agree with you on that. The fact that energy usage is the core fundamental [00:15:30] aspect to Bitcoin usage and Bitcoin backing. And that's what drives the overall value and adoption in my opinion. So it's interesting to hear you've had the same type of those feelings and thoughts. And just like you said about starting to dominate your life and holding SATs and not fiat, that comes with time. It comes with an understanding of the technology, James: [00:15:46] understanding of what inflation does to society, what poor monetary policy does to a country and the lack of infrastructure there. I think looking forward in the future calling Bitcoin mining is almost like virtual infrastructure, the ability to deploy this infrastructure that can be monetized by anyone. And just the simple usage of electricity is life changing and has the opportunity to [00:16:07] democratize that type of passive income strategy across society or just in general using energy and getting clean energy, keeping energy available for societies that don't have the type of infrastructure. Bitcoin kind of hacks the whole system by saying, we'll buy your energy no matter where you produce it. And that's crucial for developing countries and for developed countries. The energy production James: [00:16:28] process and how cheaply you can distribute and produce energy is massively affects a global economy. Yeah, like the Tesla strategy of having a solar panel on everyone's house and then having a battery in the garage, the power wall to power your electric car, like it makes total sense to chuck an a-sick miner in there as well. Because what's the point? And if you're over it, if the sun's [00:16:48] still shining and your battery packs full, it's not that easy to just build out more battery packs. It's good to just use that extra electricity, convert it into satoshis. I think that's going to be a huge trend. As more and more people start doing more renewable stuff on their own, like solar panels on their roof, their mining at home makes a lot of sense too. James: [00:17:04] And also, I think when I come back to stacking watts, the mining, being able to access low-cost power comes at building out of these large renewable facilities, the 100 megawatt wind farms, 20 megawatt wind farms. You can't get that in your house, just the nature of the market and electric industry is preventing that. So exciting to see where it goes. Yeah, on that particular note, [00:17:22] it's really exciting to see companies like Iris Energy, who have just raised $120 million Australian this year towards renewable only Bitcoin mining. And they also have commitments in place where they're trying to enter markets that already have supply issues, like oversupply a renewable, where they can actually help make the grid better and more efficient and have those James: [00:17:42] agreements where they can reduce their demand. It's interesting to see the capital that's being directed towards this at the moment. It's really ramping up. And they're seeing the same thing on our side. And I have a very similar approach, which is go find strand over the wind that has no tax credits and deploy facilities there. So it's really exciting to hear Iris, [00:17:59] obviously, Iris Energy is growing in the space and has been in it for a couple of years now, that the, like you mentioned, the capitals finally here for this industry, which didn't have insurance or private lenders really before. And it wasn't very accessible. [00:18:11] Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial James: [00:18:16] institutions and energy companies. By combining over 70 years of mining experience, 24 seven 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 ormcapitalfactors.com. JohnPaul: [00:18:35] James, can you talk a little bit more about why you believe Bitcoin is the best store of wealth James: [00:18:40] and maybe how you have that conversation with people that are just coming into this space and trying to understand why Bitcoin is going to be around for as long as it is and why you hold that strong conviction? It's the question that everyone wants to know the answer to. And I guess it does take time to build up the level of conviction that I have. I think there's, [00:18:56] I can give the sales pitch that everyone hears about Bitcoin. But right now, I think the important point of difference is really coming to a head when you compare Bitcoin to the rest of the alternative cryptocurrency space. It's really the decentralization that is what's keeping Bitcoin special and what's making the promise that it will be finite believable. Because myself and James: [00:19:18] any other Bitcoin is able to verify it for ourselves by running our node and we're able to keep enforcing the rules that we want to enforce. We're not going to allow someone to hijack the network and hard fork it in a direction that we don't like. So it really is. It's this ultimate democratizing force that has empowered everyone to have a voice through their node and it's empowered everyone [00:19:39] to have the full picture of how this new economy is going to be built. Like what the base agreement is that everyone agrees on. And we're basically all agreeing that there's only one Bitcoin. You can divide it by 21 million to get a unit called BTC, which is also called Bitcoin, which makes things confusing. You can divide it by 2100 trillion to get a unit called SENSE. And we can James: [00:20:01] definitely divide it more in the future. I don't know the technical, whether we could do it technically. Sure, through second layers and derivatives, it's going to get sliced and diced a lot finer in the future. But having such a simple foundational rule has made this economy that is just so vibrant and so free market where anyone is building anything on top of it. Everyone's leaning towards open [00:20:22] source because open source just eats the world and it just absorbs all the best things the world and gets better. An example recently would be BTC pay server. BTC pay server is the most Bitcoin thing ever. Basically started as like a revolt against bit pay because they were actually trying to, I don't want to say this, accuse them of something, I don't know, full details on, but they James: [00:20:43] were definitely on the camp that was spreading misinformation about Segward. And one of their tweets when they were trying to fud Segward, Nicholas Doria replied saying, this is lies, my trust and you was broken, I will make you obsolete. And he launched an open source project called BTC pay server. And now that is free for anyone to use and it basically provides all the point of sale, [00:21:04] the technical side of doing point of sale that anyone would need. So it's this awesome application on top of Bitcoin. And the recent example would be when Tesla got into Bitcoin, they didn't have to create their own like from scratch point of sale system, they use BTC pay server. They didn't have to be beholden to some payment provider and give someone some fees. They were able to use BTC James: [00:21:25] pay server. And then the thing that makes it really special is that they then contributed to BTC pay server to make it better. They found things that were lacking that could have been improved. And so their engineers getting paid money by Elon Musk were actually making an application on top of Bitcoin better for the whole ecosystem. And that kind of feedback loop [00:21:44] that just keeps on making everything on Bitcoin better. It's just why it's just like growing so rapidly and why there's such little barrier to entry and why the disruption happening on there is so like amazing and profound. Do you have any thoughts on Taproot and that being activated or any other protocol upgrades in the near future? I think it's really interesting to follow because James: [00:22:04] it's nowhere near as controversial as 2017 because it hasn't there's no parties trying to centralize Bitcoin at the moment publicly that I'm aware of. I'm sure they always are. But for this particular upgrade, I think it's really cool to see the consensus and how it developed. The nuances of Bitcoin consensus. It's not clear. There's no dictator telling people they have to upgrade. [00:22:25] There's not even a clear path for how this upgrade's going to happen. And also it's not even correct to call that an upgrade. It's a backwards compatible kind of activation that you can choose to activate or not. But I again am not the developer. And that's where I guess an element of relying on the people in the Bitcoin community, the out of Alpiers to be reviewing the code for me. And that's a James: [00:22:47] process that I do look at. And I do see the amount of effort that goes into all these peer reviews. So I don't think it's controversial at all. I think it's awesome that it actually is providing a more privacy to Bitcoin. I think there's a lot of people with a lot of plans on how they're going to leverage that. And if we get this done smoothly and it happens even [00:23:05] faster than expected, like if it actually gets activated this year, that to me is faster than expected because there was all this talk of being a bit contentious and maybe having to do a user activate its soft fork at the end of 2022. But if it happens fast and it's an improvement, it could open the door to a process that did help it continue to do soft forks that are going to JohnPaul: [00:23:26] get in lots of good upgrades. I'm excited. Definitely excited as well. I've been watching it at taproot.watch.com. James: [00:23:32] I think it will signal eventually have 200 blocks left till we get to the point where we have now had 900 blocks since they pushed it. It's not going to signal immediately. But it looks like it will more pools are starting to signal appropriately. You see anything with similar DeFi projects on Ethereum. Do you see that coming over to Bitcoin and people starting to build on [00:23:49] top of Bitcoin more as a native chain compared to Ethereum? Yeah, I think that's a really good question because I think my definition of DeFi, I hold the word decentralized to a much higher standard than what a lot of the projects on Ethereum are holding it to. For example, if you're decentralized finance product relies on an Oracle, like a centralized Oracle, I don't see that as James: [00:24:10] being DeFi, which draws out a vast majority of what's happening on Ethereum. And if they have these long term plans to become more decentralized, but in reality, there's still these central committees or these still this kind of governance process, things like Pre-Fistake kind of annoy me. I think that decentralized finance, the first and best example of it is Bitcoin. And then the [00:24:31] application of it could be seen as what's happening with lightning. And then for something that's comparable to the DeFi space, there's actually a lot of different projects that are doing things, like I mentioned, HODL. Because I guess DeFi for Ethereum has been, I guess it can mean a lot of things, people are looking at the way that earn a yield, which I would just caution anyone right James: [00:24:51] now that has their money earning a yield with all these random crypto tokens, altcoins, that if you're earning your yield in that token, it's paid and kind and it's diluting the total supply of the token and effectively creates a race to be the first one to liquidate it to actually lock in the return. And so don't assume that the value of the token will be there in the future. So don't [00:25:11] assume that the US dollars you might be ringing in now always be there. The only reason I bring this up is that I just saw on TikTok today a guy with a brand new car that he bought yesterday, and he was using the interest he was earning on his DeFi to pay off the lease or whatever on the car. The reality is that random token that's only in interest on DeFi can overnight lose its yield James: [00:25:32] quite quickly or its yield becomes worthless because the token becomes worthless that suddenly they've got this liability in the car that they can't afford to meet. So I think it's a bit risky what's happening there at the moment. I think that makes it hard to gain yield on Uniswap pools or other pools that have these tokens. Have you heard of interest bearing Bitcoin wrapped by Badger Finance [00:25:52] and are created by Badger Finance in DeFi Dollar? And those are not native Bitcoins but they are on chain Ethereum Bitcoins but there isn't another coin in the pool. Have you looked at that? I know they just launched pretty recently. Badger Finance rings a bell because I think I looked at them in the space of five minutes and in their documents. I saw a James: [00:26:08] couple of words that really just scared me away. I think they have a very kind of centralized government process. I think they had words in their documents about like emergency modes, committees. Let me have a look. Here we go. It's a Badger Finance. Permission changes. The Dow can elect trusted parties have various permissions for activities. [00:26:27] They can enter emergency withdrawal mode. So all these things with the Dow's and committees, especially when the influence over that is determined by how much of the coin people have. They're really just trusting the hedge funds and VC funds that funded it in the first place. I'm not sure about the specific token how it was funded but I just don't like seeing the word James: [00:26:44] committee and that would stay away from any protocol. Those get scary and consensus protocols. I think that's why I think understanding the lightning labs, the unified liquidity between the lightning channel is huge. Have you heard of Thor Chain? Yeah, I just read an article. I believe by Eric, the guy who created ShapeShift.io and they're using Thor Chain to provide on-chain [00:27:04] liquidity. The biggest difference for that protocol is that each vault is only, there's only one token per vault. You have Bitcoin and Ethereum and then you have their currency or they're like rune token for the Thor Chain. Have you looked at any of those new type of ways to provide the liquidity to these exchanges? That ShapeShift is building on top of so the goal is to really James: [00:27:25] decentralize the liquidity compared to like Uniswap or something where you do have that impermanent loss or the two tokens that match up and can provide price risk there. I saw Eric Voorhees talking about Thor Chain and how ShapeShift are going to use it. I guess I haven't really looked too much into it to see how it works and I wouldn't want to use [00:27:43] it until I knew exactly how it worked. The main advantage I'd see of that would be the promise of being able to get easily convert Satoshi's into another asset. But really I see that happening in very smart ways on top of Bitcoin too. It can even happen in I think they call it like atomic swaps. There's ways it can happen especially between lightning networks where it just feels James: [00:28:04] like it could be executed even better on Bitcoin but it's not actually a subject I'm that clued up on to provide too much of an opinion on it. I haven't looked at all that for a chain. I think that's kind of what I'm realizing as well. It seems like all this technology can be on Bitcoin in the way of you. Bitcoin is like it's a big ocean and people build on top of it like [00:28:20] layer one is shipping vessels through the ocean, container ships and then inside that container ships you have layer two applications. It seems like a lot of this stuff can be done on VTC but it just hasn't because of the maybe the slow development process or the fact that it does take a while to get consensus through the network as we're seeing with Taproot. But you mentioned that James: [00:28:37] after Taproot it should be easier to add some of these changes or features and why is that? One of the things that will be easier after Taproot will be the privacy gains from an on-chain transaction that's used to do things other than just transfer a UTXO from one public key to another. So a more complicated on-train transaction like the ones that are used to start a lightning channel [00:28:59] or the ones that might be used to have a bit of more of a smart feature built into it where I don't know too much of how it works but I think there's, I don't know if this is directly comparable but some smart contracts, they're called discrete log contracts or something. It just seems like by making it more private where it's indistinguishable to an outside observer James: [00:29:16] what's happening on-chain that would make the ability for people to do a bunch of stuff on-chain. It's just going to grow. I think a lot of this stuff is a bit underground and even though the ideas are all conceptualized by Bitcoin as many years ago, for example NFTs, the really old concepts in Bitcoin. The reason they might get more traction in the altcoin space is because first of all [00:29:36] the venture capital funding and a lot of that just goes to marketing. The attraction for the developers of becoming their own kings of the governance and having a token and having a return. It's just been like in a big experiment, the altcoin space in my mind, where throw everything at the wall and then what sticks? What kind of ideas or use cases that people actually demanding stick James: [00:29:57] is what someone in their own time will put the effort into building the open source version of it that doesn't have its own token and that just operates within the Bitcoin economy seamlessly. The ability to extract fees seems to be where we're sitting in this blockchain 2.0 space. Everyone's building on top of the technology so they can have their governance tokens, [00:30:16] they can have their LP tokens. So they're not necessarily just trying to build feature sets. If everyone had the goal of just gaining more interest on their bitcoins and providing an open source way to do that, that might change it. James, this has been an amazing talking through JohnPaul: [00:30:30] all of this. What advice do you have for someone new coming into this space? Do you have any resources James: [00:30:36] you usually recommend they check out? Because it seems like we're both very similarly to very Bitcoin, Maxillos, both got around 2013 and really understand the true value of Bitcoin and that's kind of where I've been sitting. That's why I'm into mining, that's why we're growing mining operations. It's just for me, it's how do you gain yield on your Bitcoin? How do you continue to grow [00:30:55] that that sat stack that you have without selling it? So any places you like to point people when it comes to learning and educating themselves about Bitcoin? It's the hardest thing, right? Because it depends on where the person is in their own journey. And I guess I overestimate, I feel like people are further ahead than they actually are. So sometimes my advice is tailored James: [00:31:16] wrong. And I would say to the average person, there is no official Bitcoin website. There is no official Bitcoin resource. Anything you Google about Bitcoin, you're going to find a fake piece of news that says the opposite of what's true. But if you actually are willing to learn more about Bitcoin, you can find the truth. It's all out there for you to verify yourself. If you're [00:31:35] technically minded in a developer, it's actually quite easy for you to verify this yourself. If you're not technically minded like me, maybe you've got an economics background like me in game theory, that's able to be verified for yourself too. So I encourage people to just keep going down the rabbit hole. There's lots of resources from Bitcoiners that you can look for, lots of writing that James: [00:31:53] people are putting out. This one's a hard one to say, but it pains me, I keep on trying to help people understand Bitcoin. But when I just blanket tell them to stick to Bitcoin only, it almost pushes them away. And then they go lose all their money on altcoins. So I guess I could be saying, if you're going to do anything other than Bitcoin, at least limit it to a very small percentage of your portfolio, [00:32:13] and at least have the courage to measure your performance in sets. Know exactly how many sets you're spending on that alternative investment and make sure you get those sets back. Otherwise, you're losing money. And I guess a lot of people are going to have to learn through mistakes and they're going to have to learn through getting burned in the market. You learn quickly. It probably James: [00:32:31] happens to everyone. And I guess you haven't really been in Bitcoin long enough until you've seen the value of your wealth for 80%, which has happened twice since 2013. And since 2013, and I agree that you completely about the Bitcoin and telling people to jump in this space and very small amounts of money, you should say, like, put only amount of money in Bitcoin, you're willing to lose. Now, [00:32:49] I'm saying any dollars you don't have in Bitcoin are getting killed by inflation, you just don't realize it yet. And you should put all of your cash in Bitcoin and as much capital as you're willing to not really invest. Because like you said, it's not really like you're investing, you're just transferring that out, you have liquidity in Bitcoin whenever you need it. It's more about like changing James: [00:33:07] your mindset and belief structure. But I guess where I was going with that question was, is, have you got into Bitcoin mining? Do you ever have a mining rig, either GPUs or Bitcoin mining back in the day? Or have you not experienced or played around with that? No, I haven't played around with that. The electricity price in New Zealand is insane. And even the price of getting [00:33:26] any kind of hardware here is insane. But no, I haven't played around with mining. But I am one company I'm talking to at the moment is a miner, which I'm helping a little bit with their message out there about being a green miner. So I'm learning a lot more about mining this year. I learned a lot about mining from reading Satoshi Energy's paper about energy-backed money that helped me James: [00:33:45] change my view on how to think about energy and mining. I'm quickly on your point about telling people that their fiat is inflating away and melting away like an ice cube. I definitely do that too. But I guess the way I like to, I don't want to cause people too much fear about fiat because they now start to speculate on a bunch of things, which is what we're seeing [00:34:07] across all asset classes right now. People piling into Dogecoin or GameStop, for example. I guess one way we could word it is if you're just a regular person and you're trying to build your wealth, you want to buy assets and most people want to buy property and that's great. I like property as scarce as well. Not as scarce as Bitcoin, but it is scarce. But the barrier to James: [00:34:26] entry for property is really high. The deposit required to buy a house in New Zealand to the average house price in Auckland got to $1 million. 25% growth in the last 12 months. If you're saving up cash for a deposit, basically the inflation that's happened here for those people, it's already being 25% because now you can't afford the house you wanted to afford. You need more cash. So what [00:34:45] I say to people is within your investment portfolio, the amount of money that you're actually saving is cash because you're trying to build a cash stack for a larger investment in the future. Think about allocating that 5050 between fiat cash and then Bitcoin because then you're neutral on whether fiat or Bitcoin wins because I do see it as Bitcoin really challenging fiat and fiat going through James: [00:35:08] a bit of an inflationary or hyperinflationary period. So yeah, I don't tell everyone to put 100% of the cash into Bitcoin. Although once they get to my level, they won't even need to think about cash because they'll be just assuming that every income they earn is Satoshi's. That's a default allocation for me. I think it's a bit of a bridge too far for people. No, it's a hundred [00:35:25] percent of bridge too far. I was saying I think the number one regret of the world might be not buying Bitcoin early enough as we continue to see it grow and grow and just the price go up. It's going to be detrimental as people always say, oh, it's too high now or I don't want to put capital into it. And moving to my one of my farther points here is do you view Bitcoin almost as a James: [00:35:43] credit default swap on sovereign wealth debt and sovereign wealth bonds and potentially defaulting on government debt? Like we saw with Turkey earlier this year. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought of that. I used to trade the Aussie sovereign CDS. It was like a five year contract, which was an insurance on the Australian government debt. Absolutely. Now that you mention it, [00:36:03] if you're a large institutional player and you have a lot of risk in a country, Bitcoin is people at the moment before Bitcoin came along. They would just rotate between the countries and then when it's time to go to a safe haven because everything's risk off in the world and everyone's panicking, they all flock back into the US dollar or into the Japanese yen. But now during that James: [00:36:23] scenario, Bitcoin is going to do really well. So it does absolutely act as a hedge against fiat going through a tough time. A very tough time of money printing as we've been seeing over the past couple of years and just the amount of asset purchases by central banks has been really scary, honestly. And I don't think most people understand that. I realize how big of a factor that's playing [00:36:42] in how much capital and cash being printed and the long term effects of what it's doing. And we've seen that in asset prices in lumber going up Forex and copper going up two to three X and metal. And everything. How do you not see the writing on the wall that inflation is no longer 2% and it's just a being lied to? Yeah, I think I've come to the realization that anyone that's actually James: [00:37:03] intellectually curious into economics and investing is probably now coming to the realization of what's really happening in the world right now. But for the average person who has no interest in investing, they don't understand and they don't necessarily care. And I guess I feel a little bit like I'm causing panic when I scare them too much about fear inflating away. So what I would say is [00:37:25] it would be great if everyone was earning a real asset with their time. They're earning a hard asset like Bitcoin, but we won't have these problems of worrying about having just spend it to be inflation. And I hope that people can learn that the easy way. But it does feel like it's happening the hard way for a lot of countries and it could happen in developed markets too, the hard way. James: [00:37:43] So James, you mentioned like putting their time into a real asset and realizing that one asset is Bitcoin. I think I read an article a couple of weeks ago that Bitcoin is the best way to keep track of our time as a civilization because of the blocks. Every 10 minutes we have a block. And since the mind civilization, I was just in Mexico, they were not the same, they were in Mexico, they built [00:38:03] these pyramids to keep track of the seasons and keep track of the days and times. And they built these massive pyramids just to do that. And we've seen with Bitcoin, it is the best way to track time. Previously, we've used us dollars to track time to track how we allocate our time and put capital and how we live a lot of the governments to do that. But now with Bitcoin, it is the best James: [00:38:20] way and it's the most efficient way. How do you try to explain that to people that at the end of the day, this is where you want to value your life and your life currency, you want to think in SATs? How do we work on getting this message across better? Is there any good analogies that you've used in the past? And do you have any thoughts on the Bitcoin tracking time being the [00:38:37] best way to track time? It's really interesting, isn't it? One example of Bitcoin is the money that you can actually price things over time. For example, a can of Coke probably started out as a nickel way back in the 70s or whatever. It's when we talk about the US dollar price of things, we have to always say what year we're talking about because it totally matters what year you're James: [00:38:57] talking about. For example, a billionaire used to be a big thing, but now a billion is the value of every little private startup that has no revenue. So a trillion is the new thing. But before a billionaire, it was millionaire. So the numbers keep going up. One way to think about it is before COVID, at the start of 2020, there were about 15 billion US dollars as measured by M2 money supply. [00:39:18] So if you had one trillion, you had one 15th of the wealth, one 15th of the US dollar wealth. And now it's 20 something. So you've got one 20 something of the wealth. If you have, since there's only 21 million Bitcoin, if you have 1 million Bitcoin today or 1 million Bitcoin 10 years ago, 1 million Bitcoin 10 years in the future, you still have one divided by 21 of Bitcoin. You're James: [00:39:39] not getting diluted. Your asset, you still hold that asset. The price of something costs a million Bitcoin, we can appreciate over time what that really means. Whereas if something costs a million dollars, what is a million dollars going to be worth in a year? If it doesn't make any sense. But yeah, it's really hard to articulate to people what is so wrong about fiat. There was a really [00:39:58] good analogy about a measuring stick or a yardstick. It's Bitcoin is this fixed length roller, this 2,100 trillion sets. And so now we can actually value things. Whereas if you're using US dollars to value things, the roller changes its length every year. It gets longer every year. So what really does the measurement mean? That's a really good way to look at it. What really does the James: [00:40:17] measurement weigh? Because most people are evaluating their time in US dollars across the globe. And they should be really getting 20 or 30% pay increases every year to keep up with inflation, especially with this last bump. But you're not seeing that across the board in any way. Most people are happy to get a 5% raise. Yeah, it is like the big screwing that's happening in the world, [00:40:34] where they, I don't want to do conspiracy theories like these people in charge. But it does always seem like this happens regularly and people get screwed. Yeah, I guess people just have to always be demanding higher wages to keep up with the cost of living. Yeah, cost of living is the thing that I think resonates with most people. And I think everyone would agree that that cost James: [00:40:51] of living is going up every year. And so in order to be to have just the same quality of life, you do need to have a rising income. And that's just the negative consequence of using a currency like fiat, where that's required to keep up with inflation. 100% agree. James, is there anything else you wanted to touch on? I think this was a great conversation so far. But I definitely want to [00:41:11] give you the opportunity to bring up any other topics that you might have wanted to touch on today. I don't really mind just glad to have a chat. I guess the one thing I'd say is Bitcoin is green money. It's not bad for the environment. That news cycle this year has been pretty aggressive. They've come out swinging with all these accusations and a lot of fake news about Bitcoin and the James: [00:41:31] environment. But I do think that narrative, the tide is turning. People are getting a bit more educated on what's actually happening. And we are starting to see the massive build up and renewable generation as a result of having these Bitcoin miners who can actually consume the electricity. So when you see a third headline like that, or see something negative about Bitcoin [00:41:48] like that, I guess it is a learning opportunity to go out and understand why it might be wrong. And to not just trust what one person says, try and see what other Bitcoiners have written on it. And Bitcoiners are writing about it all the time. Maybe the easiest way to follow Bitcoiners would be on Twitter. So I'm trying to put together a Twitter list that has Bitcoiners that I'm tuned James: [00:42:08] into and the thoughts that I read every day. And that might be a good starting point for people who want to hone in on Bitcoin. I don't want to call it Bitcoin maximalism. It is what it is, Bitcoiners money. And I'm all about maximum decentralization. So if you're into that, feel free to follow that list of people and learn from them. [00:42:23] That was great. James and I definitely agree with most people. We need to be sharing that message about the climate change and Bitcoin mining usage of energy sooner in the podcast. And almost for all my shows before this, before you came on, I had another individual named Karthik who works as an energy trader. We talked about just the minute details of renewable energy and energy James: [00:42:40] consumption and production, how important it is to match those two and the crucial role that Bitcoin mining will play. So you got to listen to that episode guys, make sure to check that out. But James, this was an amazing time, amazing conversation to really talk about maximalism and JohnPaul: [00:42:51] the interest opportunities for Bitcoin and then also your journey. I appreciate you coming on the podcast. And thanks again for jumping off. Awesome. Thank you for having me. [00:43:00] Thanks again for listening to the end of the show. And remember to mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Securing Your Bitcoins & Data | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 7 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/jameson-lopp/ All Episodes Episode 7 # Securing Your Bitcoins & Data with Jameson Lopp Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Jameson Lopp to discuss securing your bitcoins & data. ### Securing Your Bitcoins & Data Guest: Jameson Lopp Episode 7 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:29] Today I'm joined by Jameson Lop who is the co-founder and CTO of CASA, a Bitcoin philosopher and a professional cyberpunk. He has been actually building the Bitcoin space since 2015 and has become one of the most respected voices in the Bitcoin developer community. He has previously an engineer at BitGo developing its high-grade multi-sig custody service before [00:00:58] co-founding CASA, a company providing secure wallets and plug-and-play infrastructure solutions for Bitcoin. His mission is to use his skills as a technologist to build tools that empower individuals and he works to achieve this by making it easier for people to take custody of their Bitcoin and manage their private keys. JohnPaul: [00:01:13] Jameson, welcome to the show. Jameson: [00:01:15] Thanks for having me. A long time no see. JohnPaul: [00:01:17] A long time no see. Can you explain to me how I guess you started, how you became a cyberpunk Jameson: [00:01:24] Jameson? What does that even look like? How do you become a professional cyberpunk? Goes back to the white paper. I was not familiar with the cyberpunk movement or any of the decades of development leading up to Bitcoin. It wasn't until several years after I had been immersed in Bitcoin that I started looking into the history and realizing this was not [00:01:48] just something that appeared out of thin air but rather was the culmination of efforts of many people around the world for decades of trying and failing other attempts at digital currency. As I was looking into that, reading the historical posts and getting a better understanding of the mindset that those people were in, then I realized that I generally agreed with Jameson: [00:02:11] it and I wanted to further the cause. So you mentioned before Bitcoin. I think that's one of the potential flaws people have with Bitcoin. It's like the first one. How do we know what's going to be the one that everyone uses? It's slow. The 10 minute block time. Those are the normal excuses we get for people [00:02:26] why they don't want to adopt or learn more about Bitcoin. Because like you mentioned, previously there was some other coins or other tries at Bitcoin. Are you able to talk farther on how that research went and maybe one of the projects might have failed and for what reasons? Jameson: [00:02:40] It's hard for me to even say how many attempts there were because most of them didn't even really make it out of the gate. I think DigiCache with David John was probably the one that made it the furthest. I don't know how many years they operated. I know they raised some funds. They had a working network but eventually it just didn't get enough adoption and they [00:03:00] shut down. So there were other notable projects like HealthFenny had something called reusable proofs of work which had some similarities with Bitcoin but basically each coin carried its own proof of work along with it. It didn't have a blockchain though. There were still some missing pieces. I think it hadn't really solved the double spending problem. Jameson: [00:03:25] Ultimately the reason all of these things failed was because they were still centralized. That was the unique innovation that Satoshi figured out was how do you create a system like this without a central authority? So from that standpoint, Bitcoin is the first to be able to do it without central authorities but there's plenty of other reasons why you [00:03:49] would believe that given the level of adoption that Bitcoin has gotten, it's going to be very difficult to overcome the network effect that has gained so far. Because it is software it can continue to evolve though. It will of course not evolve at anywhere near the pace that for example a web app or a single company software project might change because by design Jameson: [00:04:13] it's very difficult to gain consensus across all of the participants to make any non-backwards compatible changes. So when you're referring to these non-backwards compatible changes and Bitcoin doesn't have a central authority gate and you are working on and you develop or I believe you have push code to Bitcoin Core. Have you ever committed to the normal, I guess not JohnPaul: [00:04:35] the normal, but the main Bitcoin client or how does that work from a developer standpoint? Jameson: [00:04:40] Because I myself have been focused on the mining but I've never actually written code for really any Bitcoin clients like you have. Yeah so I am not a protocol developer. The first project that I actually started and still maintain is a fork of the Bitcoin Core client. It's not a network fork or a protocol fork. [00:05:01] It is still running the Bitcoin node. Basically I just added in a bunch of metrics and instrumentation and built some cool DevOps style dashboards that I put up on a website which you can find at stettoshi.info. It's like settoshi.info but with an extra T after the first S. And as a result of that I'm not a C++ developer. I really don't like C++ but I do have some trivial commits in the Jameson: [00:05:30] Bitcoin Core repository. Generally just things that I ran into when I was mucking around in my own fork. No notable functionality really. Usually just like improvements of documentation or RPC calls or things that only really the developers would care about. So it's not challenging if you're familiar with open source development. If you're familiar with GitHub you basically [00:05:57] if you find something that you think could be improved then you write the code and you submit a pull request and then people review it and you respond to their feedback. And if you can make almost everybody happy if you can get an overwhelming agreement without any notable objections that other people find reasonable objections then your code is going to get merged Jameson: [00:06:21] for me because the stuff I have implemented it was all really trivial. It would generally get merged in pretty quickly within a matter of days or weeks. If you were doing some massive functionality change with a ton of logic that could be potentially dangerous. If it was buggy then you could very easily be spending months if not years trying to get that code merged in. [00:06:44] Wow and I think that was one of the things I want to talk farther on which is so you mentioned there's a client code base which is something that you've forked over and you're working on then you have the protocol code which is the main Bitcoin protocol which is decentralized and you just went through the process of really committing code to that depending on the complexity of it. Jameson: [00:07:02] Is there any upcoming protocol like changes or even merge requests that you're interested in or you're following at the protocol level because I think that's something that no one really talks about. We actually did get the taproot logic has been merged into Bitcoin core the client. However that only really means that you're going to be able to use it on your own private network. [00:07:28] There's still outstanding issues around how it's actually going to get activated on the main network so fingers crossed that will happen next year. The main reason why I'm following that is that it will be directly applicable for us at CASA. The ability to do aggregated signatures off chain that look like a single signature on chain is going to be a boon to anyone using Jameson: [00:07:54] multi-signature wallets which is what CASA's primary focus is and the reason for that is it's going to A improve the privacy because there's no more fingerprints that you're using the special multisig setup and then it's also going to improve your fees that you have to pay. Your transaction sizes will be a lot smaller you'll have to pay lower fees and I expect that we're going to see a number of [00:08:21] improvements and new applications come along that leverage both the aggregated signature functionality hopefully making mixers more private and then leveraging this tap scripts merkalized abstract syntax tree functionality which is it's really hard to explain in simple terms but basically it will enable developers to create much more complex bitcoin scripts without Jameson: [00:08:48] having to put the entire script on the blockchain once again improving the privacy and the scalability JohnPaul: [00:08:56] of doing these more complex operations. That is as I appreciate you walking me through that because Jameson: [00:09:03] taproot I was like okay what is this thing he's talking about so you mentioned multi-seg wallets JohnPaul: [00:09:08] and I would say normal wallets come a high level for the viewers who don't know can you explain Jameson: [00:09:12] the difference and why you see this evolution of multi-seg wallets and why they're just inherently better. Yeah so the easiest way to think of I guess bitcoin security is it's like a lockbox so when you send bitcoin to a certain address the address is just a human readable format behind that address it's actually a fingerprint for a more complex redeem script which this script [00:09:43] describes the spending conditions for what you what data you need to post to the network in order for the nodes to accept that you are the rightful owner and should be able to spend that value. So the most common way to store your bitcoin is in a single signature address and that basically means there's one private key and in order to spend that bitcoin you use that private key to Jameson: [00:10:13] create a cryptographic signature that covers all the details of the transaction and then you post it to the network and the network validates it and it propagates around and if you pay an appropriate mining fee then eventually it gets put into the blockchain in a block. Now that's simple it's straightforward but you have an obvious single point of failure you know if you lose that key [00:10:39] if an adversary gets that key then it's game over they take the bitcoin or you can't access the bitcoin and there's nobody who can get that money back for you so what we are aiming to do with CASA is to create a self-custody storage setup that eliminates single points of failure and the way that we do that is both on the the technical side and on the sort of customer service Jameson: [00:11:14] helping people make decisions about their setup side. On the technical side the way that we eliminate single points of failure is by using multiple keys so our sort of flagship product is a three out of five multi-sig setup which means there are five different devices with five different keys sets on them and these get geographically distributed by you into different locations [00:11:43] and in order to spend from your wallet you have to add signatures from three different devices so you have to physically travel around and access these devices and that makes it so that if any one device gets lost or compromised you're fine there's no catastrophic loss you can replace the device and just keep moving on with your life if there is any sort of disaster then once again Jameson: [00:12:12] you don't have to worry about having all kinds of crazy backup schemes or anything like the architecture of the wallet itself is the backup scheme it has robustness and resilience built into it and if we're getting attacked by someone whether digitally or physically it's going to be the bar gets raised to such a level that the attacker would have to be extremely motivated and basically [00:12:41] be willing to take you hostage for a lengthy period of time and go through multiple different physical locations which of course is going to be very risky for them and increase the chance that they get caught or could spend hours just talking about like the security model and all the different threats that we try to protect against but we've got all of those on our website and Jameson: [00:13:02] some people can spend hours looking through them but the whole idea is that being your own bank it comes with a lot of responsibility and few people are going to put in the time to think through you know everything that could go wrong so what we want to do is leverage the five years of experience that I have learning a lot of hard lessons seeing a lot of people lose their money [00:13:26] in a lot of different ways and build all of these best practices into a very simple piece of software so that people just follow the directions in the app and they'll be in a very good position from security standpoint and as people are following the directions in the app as you mentioned there's trade-offs I think with expanding the crypto ecosystem and regarding custody more Jameson: [00:13:55] specifically because with these apps like Robinhood and Cash App you don't actually own the coins but with CASA you are costing them yourself correct? Exactly and we believe that this is important for a variety of reasons it's important for the individual because if you're just giving all your keys to a third party then you've just thrown out one of the most important aspects of this system [00:14:19] which is getting rid of centralized middlemen and trusted third parties if you're if you're leaving your money with a custodian then you may feel safer but you have no way of actually knowing because the security that is going on in that custodian is a complete black box to you you have no insight into what it is you're just blindly trusting that they're following the best Jameson: [00:14:44] practices if you were following best practices yourself then you know you don't have to trust anyone you're verifying that you're doing it the right way yourself and also there's this issue of systemic risk you know at a higher level thinking outside of just the individual risks that you expose yourself to if you're giving your money to a third party they can exit scam they can be [00:15:11] running a fractional reserve there's just a million ways that they can still lose the money at a higher level it is unhealthy for the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole if a huge amount of the value in the system is being held by a small number of entities and that's because you start to get into potential governance style attacks where the reason that this system is robust and resilient Jameson: [00:15:42] against even theoretical nation state attacks is because there are so many doors that would have to be kicked down so to speak in order to force people to change the rules of the system that they are enforcing with their client software so if you get to the point where there's only half a dozen or a dozen or enough a small enough number of entities that they can start to coordinate with [00:16:08] each other and collude with each other then the system itself has become a lot more fragile and prone to malicious changes being instituted by a small number of entities that may benefit them and be to the detriment of everyone else in the system and we are essentially just in recreating a central banking cartel again so we're trying to fight against this inevitable onslaught Jameson: [00:16:34] of tantalizing convenience that people are falling into because they're willing to trade their security for convenience and this is a common theme and a number of different aspects of people's lives we trade a lot of things for convenience unfortunately because our time is precious to us if we do trade a lot of things for convenience I feel like that's one of the [00:16:59] the number one not problems but one of the reasons why people use the essential authorities or central wallets like Robin Hood Cash App coinbase so how is there anything that's going to make people feel like they have the same security as a bank using a self custody multi-sig product do you think we're already there or do you think that there is there are more things that need to be Jameson: [00:17:20] done to get people comfortable enough using products like CASA you know and have the same compatibility of storing that money in a bank or that asset in the bank where they know it's not going to get stolen and well at least they believe it's not going to get stolen there's still a lot of education that needs to be done still can be very difficult to explain to someone that [00:17:39] their bitcoin don't exist on any single device because this is simply a paradigm that has never existed before physical things really any other assets that you own you can always point somewhere and say yep this is where the asset you know actually exists or this is the custodian that is you know securing that asset but when you start to create these models where it's actually Jameson: [00:18:04] comprised of this amorphous set of things then it breaks a lot of people's minds and you know it's difficult to explain to them why this is a better security model because it's just a completely different security model and people don't even think about security models when they're going about their day-to-day lives so i think that in the short to medium term there's a lot of [00:18:28] education to be done in the long term to get to real mainstream acceptance it'll become like any other technology where people once again they won't know how it works but it will be the fact that so many other people use it that it just becomes a sort of de facto thing that you don't [00:18:45] even question orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual Jameson: [00:18:49] investors financial institutions and energy companies by combining over seven years of mining experience 24 seven 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 ormcapitalventors.com it's trade-off of convenience over over self custody throughout the space as i mentioned on [00:19:11] robin hood on coinbase and i hope the people are moving to a solution where they're in control of their own bitcoins i'm not very interesting jameson how you explain the fact that bitcoins not necessarily on one device it's on this ledger that we all believe to be true and i think that was one of the things that i realized back in 2013 when i was coming into blockchain and bitcoin Jameson: [00:19:32] space was that there was this one truth and you could believe it and it was backed by these computers where we which we're using energy to mine bitcoin so now jameson we met back in maybe 2013 2015 i think probably 2015 because we were both a local components of components of the bitcoin industry here in you know the south east and just decided that this was the future when [00:19:55] you got into bitcoin in the beginning how did people react to that and did it affect your perception of it or how is that conversation with some of those you know people that are closer to you changed over the years about maybe their perception of bitcoin and you know what you're doing in the JohnPaul: [00:20:11] space and all the work you're putting into can you talk a little bit farther on you know how that Jameson: [00:20:15] attitude has changed mainly maybe because the price has risen or just because the technology has gotten more awareness yeah i mean i was the crazy guy who would happily spend hours explaining the system to people and i don't know you know even if they got it from a technical standpoint i think there was generally just so much skepticism and a million reasons of why it might not get [00:20:39] significant adoption why it could fail even from a non-technical standpoint that most people just discounted it i would say you know it could probably count on one hand the number of people who actually ended up sharing my belief back then in the early days and then for the course of several hype cycles bubbles booms crashes a few more people have come along and realize that this is Jameson: [00:21:06] not a flash in the pan fad that's going to be disappearing but it's actually here to stay and i think that that is going to be how it continues to grow it'll be a little bit at a time though of course the growth will happen in spurts and it'll be like any other technology that once it becomes readily adopted and essentially ubiquitous then people will just take it for granted [00:21:36] and i think we've got a long way to go until we get to that point there's still a ton of things to be done on the usability side the security side the privacy side i believe that bitcoin is a project that is aiming to be the fairest and you know optimal form of money and we certainly have a number of weaknesses things that could be improved from a technical standpoint that i Jameson: [00:22:08] believe that i'm going to be continuing to focus my my time for the foreseeable future on improving this system if we ever get to the point where i feel like bitcoin is done has met all of its goals then hopefully i will be able to pivot and work on other technologies that will also empower individuals in different ways so you talk about this empowerment i think that's one of the [00:22:36] things that a lot of the early bitcoiners like myself and you really had in their dna it was this currency this money that was just true and fair and backed by math and really in my opinion for the people and i obviously with getting bitcoin growth we've seen a lot of institutions coming in just because of the nature of the industry and the nature of the asset class but over the Jameson: [00:22:57] past five years of being in this space this idea that bitcoin is the people's money do you still think it resonates you know with you today and with the community today or do you think it's become more commercialized oh i guess the downside to being open to everyone is that it also means of course that it's open to institutions and larger players who may not care about the ideology and [00:23:21] may only really care about using it for financial like hedging and speculation purchases but that is part of what you have to deal with any tool can be used in a variety of different ways and you may not agree with all the ways that they're being used for but that's fine i think one of the the things that we have fallen short on is we're a long ways away from being able to be Jameson: [00:23:52] a ubiquitous form of money that can be used by you know anyone including like people in third world countries that don't have access to to great financial infrastructure there have been some small good adoption cases but for a variety of reasons usability and scalability being the primary ones we're still a long way i think from having less well off people be able to [00:24:24] adopt and benefit from this technology we're still at the point where the people who are going to be benefiting from it the most are the ones who have the resources and the time to invest into scaling the learning curve required to get into it chain has a tool and i think for me i look at bitcoin as one of the best tools for society for scaling trust across a decentralized network Jameson: [00:24:48] but one of the things i wanted to touch on which it came out i believe two days ago was that usdc which is a coin bases stablecoin with the us government permission they partnered with the exile government of venezuela and distributed aid to people and health care workers in venezuela but i saw it that is now stablecoins are being used as a tool of us foreign policy [00:25:12] and this is i think one of the first real public use cases of his nation state intervening with another nation state citizens giving direct aid to the people through a stable coin or through a JohnPaul: [00:25:23] blockchain network how do you see nation states and central banks using blockchains Jameson: [00:25:29] as a tool in either a good or or a bad way cryptography in general is a double edged sword it can be used for two primary purposes one is to obfuscate or to encrypt things to keep them private so that only the intended recipients can see the data the other is almost the exact opposite which is identification and authentication basically using cryptography to publicly sign [00:26:04] messages to essentially attest that information has been created or authenticated by no one other than you and so i would expect that institutions nation states whatever are going to be using these distributed ledgers for the latter they certainly could build some privacy functionality into it but i don't think that it really is going to be of much benefit for them Jameson: [00:26:39] to do rather i expect that this type of blockchain or distributed ledger like central bank technology is going to be used as a tool of control and surveillance now there certainly are some potential good use cases for it where it would for example be really easy for i think entities to kind of airdrop money on people for example but it's also but going to become a lot easier [00:27:09] for them to track people's money and i would expect to censor their money as well we'll generally expect that cons will probably outweigh the pros at least from my perspective but that's not to say that they'll be like 100 complete bad and i'm sure that they will be able to help some people and as we see i guess he's competing currencies or competing networks show up and really come to JohnPaul: [00:27:33] scale over the next 10 years how do you see the media changing their perspective on bitcoin or Jameson: [00:27:41] there's the narrative in general to the public either in the united states or you know across the globe because i feel like the media now has almost looked at bitcoin oh it's too small it's still functioning very slowly like it doesn't really work it's volatile do you think that media story is going to change to where it's more of trying to get consumers to use the stable back or the central backed JohnPaul: [00:28:02] currencies or blockchain networks over bitcoin almost like shunning it or how do you see that Jameson: [00:28:07] narrative potentially playing out with these two two or three or four or five different competing blockchain interests i think that in general the media is just going to echo back to people what they think they want to hear and that a lot of that is influenced by powerful or reputable people and what we've seen happen and what i expect happens with a lot of technologies is that [00:28:31] early on pretty much everyone is skeptical and believes that the new technology is never going to take off and as these new waves of adopters come in the people who adopt it as the sort of total size of the adopter pool grows then there will be more and more people who are reputable for other things you know outside of that technology that will come in and they will start to Jameson: [00:28:58] essentially lend their own credibility to the credibility of the new technology and that's what we've really been seeing happen this past year we've seen some big heavyweights from software and then finance and other spheres publicly come out and say bitcoin is an amazing technology and these are the reasons why you should care about it and why it's important and why we are investing in it [00:29:26] and so on and so forth and so i expect that's going to continue to play out both with bitcoin and any of these other technologies is it'll just come down to who are the most powerful and reputable people behind them and how are they able to influence the media and other narratives and i think that narrative message has been changing just with the i'd say michael sailor Jameson: [00:29:49] coming on and doing the micro strategy purchasing 500 million dollars with the bitcoin on the balance sheet it was the first public company to really to do that publicly and go out and i think that's created a ton of news and we've seen that cycle of people like paltry de jones attaching their name to bitcoin so i i definitely agree with you there james and i see that continuing and i think that [00:30:09] will help build the legitimacy in the eyes of i would say you know that 40 to maybe 30 to 50 year old kind of crowd and hopefully that pushes them to continue to learn and be educated about the technology do you remember the first time you heard about bitcoin james and it was your initial thought this is gonna this is gonna something i'm gonna look into and potentially work on for Jameson: [00:30:32] years or did you initially disregarded i think it was too complicated to buy and use i believe that the vast majority of people you'll talk to will say that they discounted bitcoin the first time perhaps the first several times they heard about it i know that i did and that's why i'll never remember the exact first time that i heard about it because i know i heard about it two or three [00:30:58] times at least on various you know nerd news websites and i basically laughed and said oh this nerd money is gonna get hacked and everybody is gonna go broke and it'll all end in tears and it wasn't it was probably at least six months if not longer until some slash dot article i believe came along with some development in the space and i was like oh this thing's still around Jameson: [00:31:26] and so that's when i actually read the white paper and my computer science background kicked in i was like oh wow this is actually really an interesting elegant solution to a problem that i never even thought about and that's really when it was off to the races i started going down the rabbit hole and learning about money in general which very few people ever bothered to do so that's uh [00:31:54] i think there's very few people who just hear a crazy idea and immediately latch on to it and dive head first that's why the staining power of this system is something that will continue to change people's minds as they eventually realize it may take them six months like me it may take them years it may take them decades but eventually they'll realize that this thing is not Jameson: [00:32:19] going away and there's probably some good reasons why it hasn't gone away yeah why it has not fallen away i think that's one of the biggest things in my life and over the years because when i got into crypto i was only like 15 years old and just kept preaching and preaching this bitcoin thing it's 70 dollars it's 60 dollars it's 50 dollars it's not going away guys it's going to change the world [00:32:42] and as a young naive kid i was you know just running around preaching this new internet money that people were like oh okay yeah sure it's this digital currency it's gonna lose all of its value it's too volatile and i think that's one of the things i want to talk about which is how do you build a good position in bitcoin as a safe haven asset or as an investment and what i mean by that is Jameson: [00:33:02] what i've been telling people now is you want to be buying bitcoin consistently on a weekly or monthly basis you mentioned on another podcast about how you maintain your lower overhead but really how do you know when to hold bitcoin maybe when to sell some for profits when to secure more bitcoins obviously you have to be detailed in the market and paying attention but how do you hold or even [00:33:24] tell people or advise people on managing their bitcoin position or really growing it and not fomoeing or not selling it when it goes up by a hundred percent and leaving a huge upside on the table because of just a logarithmic nature of how bitcoin grows and how it doesn't scale linearly like normal stocks and bonds and other things like that i'm not a good poster child for the like Jameson: [00:33:47] dollar cost averaging because that wasn't even really a thing back when i got in like there were no tools to do that so i actually bought most of my bitcoin in three different major events there was like my initial oh i got to get some of this to play around with it and then there was a few years later when i was like oh it sounds like there's going to be ETFs and all these other [00:34:12] things so maybe i can front run it and i went through this whole process to convert my ira into a self-directed ira and then turn that all into bitcoin in a matter of a few months i was dollar cost averaging at that point because that was after the mount gox crash and the price kept going down and down and at one point i had actually lost half of my retirement Jameson: [00:34:33] because it had gone down so much eventually the long-term play worked out there and it's just really hard to give general financial advice and it's because everybody's situation is different there the reason why i was able to put a decent amount of money into bitcoin is because i had been diligently following personal finance forums and the like fire style financial [00:35:05] investment and budgeting and living advice for a number of years and had been able to build up a nice savings and so i i had multi-month cash savings emergency supply and i was maxing out my 401k and i was able to allocate money and beyond that was just discretionary budget and it was like i might as well put it into this bitcoin thing because i feel like it's going to be a good savings Jameson: [00:35:33] vehicle and and it's in the asset it's not like anything else for the average person i think it comes down to how well off you are you shouldn't be like going into debt to buy this speculative asset that you should treat it like a different type of savings account really and you don't want to put yourself into a position where you're harming your normal financial budget [00:36:00] other than that it's really just going to come down to conviction and what things you may be willing to sacrifice because you've lowered your time preference there's plenty of things that i could have bought or there are plenty of times when i could have sold bitcoin and bought something else and i just never did because i don't know it's most like physical things like lambos and Jameson: [00:36:25] stuff are not worth it to me maybe they will be someday but i drove lotus is odd so yeah i don't know if you know this detail but obviously that i drove the lotus elise for a few years and i had the bitcoin license played on it and i i considered that kind of an investment in advertising for bitcoin but the lotus that i bought was actually a salvage [00:36:50] title vehicle that i bought on ebay for really cheap so it it looked really expensive but it was actually far more affordable than people would have imagined even then i was trying to keep a low time preference and not spend a lot of money on a flashy car i remember that car it was always something where i was like oh that's such a cool car jameson and it definitely did work i think Jameson: [00:37:16] people thought it was more expensive that it actually was and the bitcoin license plate just had that final touch on it which really nailed it in the coffin especially bitcoin was rising at that time so i felt like everyone was like oh look an expensive lotus but really you mentioned a great point which is lowering your time preference and i feel like that's one of the biggest things [00:37:33] about bitcoin is you have to have that longer time preference and view this as almost an investment in your future self and one of the things you also mentioned is how you you seem like you prepare for the edge case really well not only with kasa but also in your personal life are you able to talk a little bit more about how you maybe have prepared for this edge case after you know you sold the Jameson: [00:37:55] lotus and you moved off the grid and why you maybe went that route and made those decisions yeah and i guess to back up a little bit to one of your earlier questions it helps to put your bitcoin into a high security setup that is difficult to access now that helps you protect against loss and theft but it also helps protect you against yourself because if it takes a lot of [00:38:19] effort for you to send your bitcoin out of your self custody to an exchange to sell it then and we've heard this from a number of kasa clients as well it's just less likely that you're going to panic sell so that can be a good thing as well over the long run now remind me what the point we were getting toward it was no worries that was a great answer on the like time preference Jameson: [00:38:42] really how you've transitioned from going to going off the grid and maybe why you decided to make that move in the first place yeah it's a very long story but even have several articles and full-length presentations about privacy and all the things that i've learned but the short version is that the internet and the communication age of course is a double-edged sword in the sense that [00:39:14] while it helps us be able to communicate with all types of people now you reaching out and making new connections and engaging in all types of interactions which can be very productive the inverse is also true you can engage in unproductive harmful interactions and it's also not just you being able to reach out to the world but now the world can reach back at you Jameson: [00:39:41] and especially what happens here with social media phenomenon is that you can go from being a nobody to having a hundred thousand if not millions of people all of a sudden in the blink of an eye looking at you and that can be due to anything like just a single viral post for example that you might make or somebody might make about you and when that much attention gets cast upon you your [00:40:12] threat level goes through the roof because it's just a matter of numbers that some small fraction of a percent of people are downright malicious and will seek to do you harm in order to help themselves that's really what happened to me is i went from being a nobody to having hundreds of thousands of people paying attention to me on twitter and then eventually some random guy comes Jameson: [00:40:38] along and decides he wants to try to extort me and so that's how i ended up with my whole neighborhood being shut down by a SWAT team getting called out to a false bomb and hostage situation at my residence and that exposed me to this what i consider to be a sort of asymmetric attack that is a flaw in our law enforcement system that can be exploited by anyone who's [00:41:05] technically sophisticated enough the only defense against that there are two defenses against that one is you continue living your life normally and you just tell you go you know to all of your local law enforcement people and get yourself put on a special watch list so that if any calls come in they get flagged as being potential false type of call or since i didn't want to do that Jameson: [00:41:33] the only other way around it is to essentially change your whole life so that it's not possible for someone to find your physical address it's not possible for someone to then attack you either on their own or by sending other people to your address that they may even be good intention people like the police but essentially misusing those resources that was a very long [00:42:02] journey it also costs a lot of time and money and in the couple years since i did that some very good resources have come out so that i feel like now i can just send people to buy a book that actually has everything that i wish i had known when i set out on that journey and talking about that journey that you went on i read your new york times article we talked about how to vanish in 15 Jameson: [00:42:29] steps can you share a brief summary of maybe some of those steps are the most important steps for our listeners the lowest bar that almost anyone can do is to just use software on your computer to hide what you're doing whether it's ad blockers vpn the tour etc because whenever your computer talks to another computer it exchanges your ip address and ip address can be used to geo locate [00:42:55] you and there's also a ton of other data that gets sent by your browser that it's preferable to block and things that can be used to track your activity all over going more extreme though and the thing where few people are going to do this is that if you want to own any property you need for that property not to be in your name so that means creating some sort of other legal entity like a Jameson: [00:43:23] trust or a corporation that essentially owns the various property and then your you are privately listed as the a member of that corporation and not publicly listed anywhere because you know any basically any property that you pay property taxes on is going into some public database that can be queried by really anybody going a step beyond that is making sure that your name and other [00:43:51] personal information goes into as few private databases as possible and this is where a lot of overhead comes in of using pseudonyms using physical remailer boxes not getting mail sent in your name to your home address but rather to other places it can become complicated it can become as complicated as you want because the more layers of obscurity that you use the more privacy use Jameson: [00:44:20] theoretically have and so the the short version of all these different techniques is essentially what you're doing is you're creating proxies you are shielding yourself from directly interacting with other things and other people and other legal entities and other organizations and every type of interaction that you have whether it's digital or physical or legal or financial there [00:44:48] is going to be a way to put a proxy in between you and whatever you're interacting with but some cases it's easy and cheap other cases it's really complicated and expensive so it's it requires a very different perspective on your life and the willingness to put in a decent amount of effort and think about these things and as we know how hard that is people aren't really thinking about Jameson: [00:45:15] the custody solutions or even you know the privacy just the amount of data that everyone I think gives up and the openness I find it interesting back in middle school when I was growing up they would teach us never to put your real information online never to meet in a stranger online and then now in this world today we live in 2020 everyone is uploading everything they do online to TikTok [00:45:37] or to Instagram and everyone is talking to everyone else online and meeting strangers you know online which is crazy how far that message has changed to the majority and the general public talking about bitcoin you tweeted yesterday that bitcoin is a financial escape pod camouflage as a bubble protecting its occupants from the relentless sucking vacuum of fiat I agree with you completely JohnPaul: [00:46:02] but can you explain a little bit more about what you've meant by that statement and expound on it for Jameson: [00:46:07] listeners so one of the problems with bitcoin and trying to explain it to people is everybody comes in with their own perspective bitcoin is a multifaceted system so you may approach it like I did originally from a technical perspective you may approach it from a like philosophical political perspective you may approach it from a financial or economic perspective this is what [00:46:33] makes it difficult to talk to anyone new person because you have to figure out what their perspective is and how they're approaching it and in terms of bitcoin narratives I think it's really helpful to just come up with more simple metaphors like that that don't require a lot of complicated explanation but rather just are trying at a very high level to describe what the purpose Jameson: [00:46:59] of the system is and there are certain narratives and perspectives of bitcoin that I'm not a fan of but I can't stop people from perpetuating them you know in particular I really don't like people coming in and just viewing it as like a short-term speculative asset I've never considered it to be a sort of get rich quick scheme but rather to be a don't get poor slowly scheme because what you're [00:47:24] doing is you're getting rid of the ability for your money the value of your money to be inflated away over a long period of time that was the original reason that I bought some it was more on a multi-decade investment time frame rather than a oh this thing is going to go 1000x in the next few years type of of idea but speaking back to the metaphor though is that a lot of people especially Jameson: [00:47:53] the financial and economist people will just look at it and they all they're looking at is the price charts and so obviously what they see is a bubble but bubble phenomenon occur all over the place especially when you're talking about the creation and adoption of new networks and a network doesn't necessarily even mean like a digital technical network gonna be any kind of networks [00:48:18] networks can be biological for example and the like the ebbs and flows of this the price and the adoption or whatever will turn some people off because they don't understand what organic adoption and growth looks like and they consider it to be a failure because they for whatever reason believe that like bikkoyne should have some sort of predictable steady growth curve in order to be Jameson: [00:48:43] a widely adoptable thing but that is not one of the goals of bikkoyne the goal of bikkoyne is to allow people to interact with this system that is resilient against change in manipulation by small kabals or third parties powerful entities or whatever everything else that happens there are side effects that it would be nice if there wasn't crazy volatility up and down and [00:49:15] people panicking and losing their money but those side effects those are a result of having a truly free market and there are not many truly free markets out there and so this confounds a lot of economists and other financial types which is fine either they'll eventually get it or they won't to sub-tweet it a guy just the other day who apparently has been a bikkoyne skeptic since 2013 Jameson: [00:49:43] and i don't think his skepticism has worked out from it as well as it would have if he had opened his mind a bit more to it you mentioned that people are always looking for that that 10 20 percent 15 percent return per year and they expect bikkoyne we saw the price drop by two thousand dollars yesterday last night and everyone freaked out i'm like no but it's up it's all the news [00:50:04] meters like bikkoyne is down two thousand dollars but it's up insane amounts went from nine k to this 19 k just in the past 30 to 40 days people have this assumption that they should be able to get as you mentioned those 10 percent returns so why is why do you think that is because we're just comparing it to the u.s. dollar is it because that's the linear growth that stocks have why do Jameson: [00:50:26] you think people expect this need for bikkoyne to grow at a determined growth rate or determined value over you know the next five years or 10 years for it to be an actual currency for it to work in the day-to-day marketplace not understanding that what they're comparing it to is the u.s. dollar which is being printed in the trillions and is losing relative value over has been losing relative [00:50:48] value for the past 70 80 100 years it's just a you know lack of sophistication and lack of putting time and effort into actually analyzing the thing if you want to there are hundreds of different metrics that you can track regarding bikkoyne i think that a lot of people only track the price because it's easy it's like it's on all the websites it's theoretically if you believe in in free Jameson: [00:51:19] markets then the price is theoretically the sort of aggregation of all of these other hundreds of metrics but because bikkoyne is still so tiny there's a lot of noise i think the like the signal that we're given from the price is really only applicable at an order of magnitude level if you're looking at these exchanges of single digit percentage changes per day like that's noise it's froth [00:51:48] a single billionaire can step in there and move the price by leaps and bounds if they want to which is actually if you've listened to like michael sailor talk about how they acquired the bikkoyne it was actually quite sophisticated that they were to able to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars with the bikkoyne without even moving the price that takes some real dedication and hats Jameson: [00:52:12] off to him you know obviously that's good for him if you're acquiring that much you don't want to move the market because you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot but if someone wanted to they certainly could move the market with that level of money and while hundreds of millions dollars sounds like a lot of money there are tons of entities out there that's a drop in the bucket [00:52:33] for them to play around with and i think that that adoption trend is only going to continue as these entities grow and see the real value of bikkoyne i myself was when i read about how they got the bikkoyne's through micro strategy through their strategies was amazed by just how liquid the market was enabled to absorb 500 million dollars without really putting a dent in the price of Jameson: [00:52:54] bikkoyne i think that helps show me that the fact that this market is huge and will continue to grow jones i have a few rapid fire questions for you that i want to run through and then we'll be done JohnPaul: [00:53:03] for the day so real quick what advice would you give your 18 year old self oh my i've had plenty Jameson: [00:53:11] of good and bad things happen over the past decade or so but i don't really regret them every thing that happened was learning experiences and got me to where i am today i don't know i think the only real advice would be to remain inquisitive and keep learning new things that's how i ended up where i am i would say some things happened to me over the years where i probably took a step back [00:53:38] from that and was distracted by other things but the culmination of all human knowledge is at our fingertips now and it's a huge waste for people to be spending a significant portion of their time just doggling around and watching cat videos they should be learning about bikkoyne instead of doing watching cat videos what is the best tip for making the world a better place in your eyes Jameson: [00:54:06] minding your own business i think it's the opposite of your question but i think one of the things that makes the world a worse place is when people start trying to meddle in other people's affairs because they consider it to be the right thing to do that they whatever they decide is going to be the best for everyone but this sort of goes back to the free market principles i do generally believe that [00:54:31] looking out for yourself and not trying to trample on other people for what you consider to be their own good is just the clearest way to go forward and how long is your beard at the moment that's a good question i don't really regularly measure it's definitely at least seven or eight inches long it's it's been growing pretty well during the pandemic i have not been taking quite Jameson: [00:54:59] as good care of it because i haven't really have it to go out and be that presentable any beard products that you use when you want to be presentable with your 12 inch beard that you would suggest our listeners check out i have to use the products on a regular basis otherwise it'll get all tangle and whatever i'm a daily user of beardsly conditioner i'm like a weekly user of their shampoo and then [00:55:25] i use the oil a couple times a week too though i don't have really a preference for either one and then when you're really going out and need to keep everything manageable you got to have a nice firm hold wax to to use as well and i think i use it's called like amish something beard balm for that honest i think it's honest amish beard balm i love it so the last question i have for Jameson: [00:55:49] you today is what problem do you face every day that nobody has solved yet and i think is possible to solve i'm sure there's a multitude of them but i'm all over the place these days it's i would say one of one of the most like fundamental problems comes down to simple communication issues and i think this really manifests itself well on social media i get to see this because i have [00:56:23] this outsized following and basically what i the phenomenon that i get to observe is that when you have enough followers you start to realize that no matter what you say it's practically impossible and i don't know if this is a limitation of our english language or something more fundamental but it seems to be practically impossible to say something even if it's just like a very simple Jameson: [00:56:53] like one sentence opinion or statement or whatever and not have that be misinterpreted it seems like there's always a way that people manage to misinterpret even like the simplest thing that you say and that's a fascinating thing it's one of the things that keeps social media interesting because it results in conflict and strife and then you trying to to hone your craft and be more precise in what [00:57:21] you're saying but i think that this is an interesting this general phenomenon of communication that it is still very challenging to say exactly what you mean and ensure that everyone interprets the way that you mean it i can't agree with you more the social media train that we all live on and that we interact with really breeds that that confrontation or in every free even a simple JohnPaul: [00:57:45] statement like 21 million bitcoins jimison why i appreciate you coming on to the podcast i appreciate Jameson: [00:57:52] everything you've done for the bitcoin community over the years the work you've done the clients JohnPaul: [00:57:57] the work you've done on multi-sig wallets with kasa i appreciate really just being in Jameson: [00:58:03] not an influencer but a someone i could look up to in this space and have looked up to over the past years and you know when you're growing up and meeting in in person and in talking through meetups JohnPaul: [00:58:13] i really relish those moments of building this community and building bitcoin so i appreciate Jameson: [00:58:19] that a lot what can our listeners connect with you online after the show very easy to find me on twitter my handle is just lop and my website lop.net has thousands of different resources that will easily consume a year of your time if you want to dedicate it to diving down the bitcoin rabbit hole the website for kasa is just keys.kasa k-e-y-s dot c-a-s-a and we've got a ton of educational [00:58:52] resources on there as to why we believe that we've built a superior security and usable self-costity [00:58:59] product thanks again jameson for that appreciate it and remember to 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 Jameson: [00:59:45] so ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Selling Digital Art on TikTok with NFTs | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 15 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/josh-terry/ All Episodes Episode 15 # Selling Digital Art on TikTok with NFTs with Josh Terry Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Josh Terry to discuss selling digital art on tiktok with nfts. ### Selling Digital Art on TikTok with NFTs Guest: Josh Terry Episode 15 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:43] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I'm here with Josh Terry, who is a writer and content creator who explores learning theory, crypto, self-improvement and the future. His Josh: [00:00:52] main goal in working with clients is that they both come away from the experience better than they were. He helps people solve problems with a holistic approach, understanding how the individual parts all fit together. I'm looking forward to discussing his thoughts in the future of cryptocurrency and learning some self-improvement tools. JohnPaul: [00:01:06] So Josh, welcome to the show. Josh: [00:01:08] Josh Terry, good to be here. Josh Terry, I want to touch on how the first time I came about your content and just what your unique content style on TikTok. I would say most people, when they think about creating a TikTok video, they think about all this creative work that has to go into it. And your creative [00:01:24] work starts more with the script. So can you start by explaining to the listeners how you got into TikTok and what your content looks like? A friend of mine got me onto TikTok and you got to get on here. You got to do something. He knew that I'm creatively oriented and I was of course, oh god, another social media Josh: [00:01:43] platform, really? And then he tried to convince me for two or three months, I think. And finally, I downloaded it, I got it and like maybe 10 p.m., 11 p.m., and I messaged him at 3 a.m. in the morning and I was like, oh shit. Because it's the most mind-blowing platform. It's a wildly addictive and fascinating. I started just by making random stuff and the way I [00:02:10] ended up succeeding was by giving up. I gave up on my typical approaches and I ended up doing things simply that I could. So I stopped trying to do things that I envisioned and I switched to doing things that I could. I found in the content creation game, the first thing you do when you go to create content is you look at what everybody else has done, which is an obvious Josh: [00:02:32] first step because people learn by imitating, right? So I did that for years. So I imitated other people badly and that was how I did it for a long time. And then I gave up and I realized, okay, this isn't working. I'm just going to try something that is my own. And pretty much as soon as that happened, stuff started taking off. And so when you're referring to your own, JohnPaul: [00:02:55] can you explain to a listener what that looks like and what that style ended up becoming? Josh: [00:02:59] Yeah, a big part of this was what were my weaknesses and inefficiencies. So I was afraid of the camera. I still am. I still have trouble with cameras. And a lot of us assume that means we need to get over camera shyness. That's our job. But sometimes you want to ask the question like, how enlightened should you get? Like how much work do you want to go into figuring out how to [00:03:23] fix all of your weaknesses? So what I did was I asked myself the question, what does content made by a camera shy person look like? Another factor was I couldn't remember words very well when I was in front of a camera because of that camera, because of that camera shyness. So I would come up with something to say and then I'd turn the camera on and I'd blank out. And that's just a waste of Josh: [00:03:46] time. Because once again, how enlightened do you want to get? I can't fix everything about me. What I ended up doing was just one day in frustration, I pulled up just notepad on windows, on a desktop computer, and just wrote out what I wanted to say. Because I was like, I'm sick of this. And in my annoyance, like I looked at the camera like twice and that went viral. So I now basically, [00:04:13] most of my videos are made in that structure because both I like it and its low effort in terms of the structure of what I'm doing. I still put a lot of effort into what I'm creating, but the basic structure of it is easy to set up. And what I do is I just I write my scripts and I set up a camera and I read them off. Occasionally I look at the camera if I feel like it'll be fun. Josh: [00:04:35] I like it. Slowly taking the steps towards the edge there, looking at the camera, making the content. Now Josh, you mentioned your scripts and that's where you put a majority of your effort. JohnPaul: [00:04:43] Can you talk through your writing process and a little bit more about how you dedicate time to Josh: [00:04:48] create those scripts? And then also the type of scripts you're creating. So I would like to say about your content is that it really comes off as someone who is trying to show people that there's another opportunity out there that they can believe in themselves and that if they take this holistic approach to life, to creating content and just through approaching problems in general, [00:05:05] they'll have a much better time than if they're overwhelmed by all the self-help books that you get thrown at during your day to day. When I go into process stuff, I always feel the need established context of what my personality is. Because I think that a lot of us try to imitate other people without factoring in that different personalities work different ways. So I'm an Josh: [00:05:26] extremely open personality. I'm extremely creatively oriented. My brain bounces back and forth all the time and I have a tendency to look like really far into the future like automatically. Like I love to extrapolate ideas. So that's my natural instinct, which means I need to take into account that instinct and maybe temper it a little bit in order to function. Some people have [00:05:50] the totally opposite of that sort of personality. But for me, what has ended up working is I spent a long time working on the strength of trying to explore ideas as far as I can go and planning a lot and doing all these things that were future oriented. And the result of that was I stopped living in the moment and I got stuck in the future and my present self became less and Josh: [00:06:15] less productive. One of the things that really blows people away whenever I mention it, it seems, is I have mostly succeeded by burning to-do lists and getting rid of my idealists. So most of the time for the past several months, if I come up with an idea for a script, if I can't sit down and do it right then, I will force myself to forget about it. Not necessarily force myself to forget [00:06:39] about it. I won't let myself get committed to it by writing it down on an idealist. And the reason why is super specific. It's if you're a creative type, one of the joys of life is that act of creation. And it's one of the things that fuels you and gets you excited. And if you write down idealists and you get a spark in your mind and you write down an idea and you do this all throughout the Josh: [00:07:03] day and you have 20 ideas and then you have time blocked out to get something done, when you go sit down to get those things done, now you're a slave to your past. Now you have to follow the instructions of your past self. And if you're a creative type, you want to create something. That's what you want to do. So what I found was in that system of coming up with ideas early and then jotting them down, [00:07:27] as good of a system as that is, which it is a good system, I would get less dopamine from the process when I went to actually create. So it would make me less likely to create because I wouldn't be as excited about it. Even though writing lists is highly effective in terms of like strategy, it wasn't effective in terms of my psychology. So I stopped keeping idealists and most of the Josh: [00:07:51] past months of content creation have all come from me taking a walk in the morning and coming up with what I wanted to do on my walk and then getting back from my walk sitting down on the computer and writing the script so that I do it right then. And that has been one of the more rewarding processes I've had in the last year or so. And as I've done it, it's given me this [00:08:13] sort of a psychological encouragement to say, no, you're in control of what you're doing. And the more I believe that, actually, the more willing I am to write it down on a list. So now, occasionally, I will come up with five ideas at once and I'll be like, oh crap, I don't have time for all of that right now. And I'll jot them down quickly and I'll get them done within the day. Josh: [00:08:32] But what I've done for me to get to success in terms of like productivity and just flow has been to shorten my time scale. I've been shortening my time scale to the day or half a day or the hour to say, what can you get done right now and think practically instead of in a visionary manner? I definitely see that in my own content creation premise. It's like, it's important when you're [00:08:57] making content that you can ship regularly, ship every day, ship every week and you keep that steady schedule. I think as a visionary and I feel the same way, Josh, is it's very easy to get caught up and what's the future going to look like? Let's extrapolate this idea. Let's understand where this content could go, how we're going to make it hit a million views. But the end of the day, Josh: [00:09:16] the way you start to build any type of traction on a platform is by simply setting time aside and saying, I'm going to focus on creating content that I know is going to be good enough for myself to ship it out to the community. And it's going to be concise. And like you mentioned, I'm not going to think about it all day long. I'm just going to set set 30 minutes or an hour of my time to do [00:09:36] it. And everyone can find 30 minutes or an hour of their day if they prioritize content creation. Another element of this I've found is if somebody is creative, there's a like this constant concern of, is it going to be good? And because somebody that's creative who has been working on their creativity, like it could be anything art, music, whatever, they set higher and higher bars for Josh: [00:09:58] themselves, their imagination of what they should create is the best possible thing they could create. And that's basically soul draining. So I've tried to switch over to what's practical. And as I've switched over to what's practical, instead of what could I create, I think what can I create. And as I switch to that, I start to create things that I would have never imagined, [00:10:22] because I become more capable. And I think that's the route to get to those amazing things that you envision. I like that. What is feasibly possible for me to do today, tomorrow or in the next week, versus what could I do in the next year? Because the small wins compounding are what's going to build real value and real wealth over time. Warren Buffett says it perfectly. It's like you want to Josh: [00:10:44] focus on those compounding things in business and businesses that have compounding processes are going to provide exponential returns. Now, talking about when will you first made aware JohnPaul: [00:10:53] of Bitcoin and how did you extrapolate that idea into the future? And where do you currently sit now Josh: [00:10:58] in your Bitcoin beliefs or what you think about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining? I found out about Bitcoin, maybe 2015-16, something like that. I know it was enough before the Russian crash of 1718 that it wasn't big anywhere. It was just, oh, there's this thing that geeks, that kind of a thing. And I had to explain to me, and one of my first thoughts was, oh my god, [00:11:26] what happens when the stock market is inside of it, instead of outside of it? That one thought, okay, that's an interesting thought. Yeah, it just blew my mind. And it still looks like we're headed in that direction. But yeah, that was my initial reaction to it. What does that even mean? The simplest version is what happens when a stock is traded on the blockchain instead of Josh: [00:11:50] through the New York Stock Exchange. And then you have access to it 24 hours a day. And there's far less control over that, far less oversight. But the rules of the game are actually more clear and more fully understood, because anybody can look up how the blockchain functions. To me, that is just fascinating. Yeah, it is. To me, it's fascinating as well, being able to scale trust, [00:12:14] change the game. And it's interesting hearing people talk about the financial markets and about crypto. It's, oh, it's not on an exchange. That's why you can't invest it in your 401k or, oh, people don't want to custody and take the risks of Bitcoin and all these other cryptos. They're still naive and new. And this actually someone sent me a video of this yesterday talking Josh: [00:12:31] about their 401k with the work plan. And I'm like, wow, the education of what Bitcoin is and what blockchain is from people who are 30 or 40 years old, it's atrocious. It's so sad to see that message is being pushed by anyone. And the versus the reality that we'll see with blockchains and bitcoins, just like eating everything to software eats the world. [00:12:51] Yeah, the arguments against that type of thing happening to me are absurd. The people are still arguing that the New York Stock Exchange needs to trade in the standard hours that it does, because that's the time that most people are awake and working. And maybe people would be more prone to stay up all night because of the odd hours of the stock exchange. Josh: [00:13:16] Like I'm here in arguments like that. It's like nobody cares in terms of the people that drive the world forward. The world is driven forward by the people that are going towards something. And moving the stocks exchanges onto blockchain to me is inevitable because it gives more people that are trying to drive towards something and opportunity to do that. [00:13:40] We're going to switch over to a topic that I want to give you the opportunity to touch on, which is something where you have put that focus in creative energy, Josh. And that's in this new JohnPaul: [00:13:51] book that you're planning on, either self publishing or working with a publisher. Can you talk through Josh: [00:13:56] your ideation process for the book, maybe some of the structures on what's talked about in there, and where the highlights that you want to share with the community, and then when that book's planning on being out, so people will be able to check it out. Yeah, so I've taught music for about 10 years. And through that practice, one of the things that's always been in my mind is [00:14:16] how do you learn better? So learning theory has always been a bit of an obsession of mine. And this book is about an element of learning theory that I've come up with. And it's a pretty simple concept that is we all have a line between boredom and anxiety where we're comfortable. And boredom is not enough. It's the boring stuff, the things that we've already seen. It's too easy. Josh: [00:14:38] All that anxiety is too much. It's new. It's beyond my capability, that kind of a thing. And this line is where we try to sit, which is in between those two things. If things get too easy, it's intolerable. If it didn't get too hard, it's intolerable. So that's our line of comfort. And my argument is that anxiety is addictive. And we default pushing towards it. Even though anxiety [00:15:02] is the thing that we know of as the problem in our current culture, I think it's the thing that we chase because boredom is what we consider truly intolerable because boredom creates pain. And it doesn't create pain. It makes you notice pain. And the reason why is because anxiety is awful as it is, you get dopamine hits from chasing anxiety because you get dopamine from exploring new things. Josh: [00:15:27] And new things are found inside of anxiety. Pushing into boredom, you don't get any dopamine. In fact, your dopamine levels have to drop if you're pushing into boredom. And my argument is that if you really want to level up, the way to do it is to push into boredom. Most of us try to level up by doing something harder, learning a harder skill, a more complex skill, and then leveling [00:15:49] up to that new position. But the weird thing about that is it doesn't increase your quality of life because when you level up by pushing into anxiety, your tolerance for boredom reduces. So your overall tolerance for what you can experience in life stays the same. But if you instead push down into boredom, then your tolerance for boredom increases. Your tolerance for anxiety usually either stays Josh: [00:16:12] the same or increases. You might tolerate it less in the sense of thinking, oh, this is bullshit. But you'll be able to tolerate it more in the sense of being a more capable person. So if you push into boredom to explore skills that you already know, fundamentals, when music this is playing with a song that you already know, or instead of learning a new song at a more difficult [00:16:34] level, you'll learn 20 new songs at the same level in a movement practice. It's sitting with a particular physical movement more times than you think you need to. And what this does, it gives you a more intimate knowledge of your fundamentals. And it's also less work on it's less wear and tear on the human mind and body, which allows you to rest and build strength. And then you can leap Josh: [00:16:57] into anxiety to gain something new. So my argument is that learning is not a process of this linear push into anxiety, but instead a sort of falling into boredom and sitting with the fundamentals, building strength and understanding and then leaping into anxiety much farther than you ever would have pushed, and then fall to learn something new, and then falling back into that boredom [00:17:22] to explore again. And that's the process that I was describing with the 12 year old artist, right? The 12 year old artist that can draw what they can draw. I really like that idea of, and I can see myself in my life, that I've pushed more towards anxiety and almost like keeping myself busy trying to do a lot of things. But I think where I get the most growth, as you mentioned, is when you Josh: [00:17:46] do spend time in refining what you're good at in those boredom moments, in those moments of silence and meditation, and being able to focus on where do I see the world? Where do I see myself? How do I feel? And there is advantages to pushing that boundary, to showing that you can fail, that you can be successful even if you fail, it's not the end of the world. But at the same time, having [00:18:10] that comfort is really the base you need to be able to, I would say, excel. And once you do find the things that you're good at or you want to continue to build at. So that's an amazing explanation. I'm super excited to read the book, Josh. On the publishing side, have you thought any more about self publishing versus using someone else to publish? And when do you expect the book to be out? Josh: [00:18:31] I'm probably going to self publish. If a publisher wants to, so far as I've found, I just haven't found publishers that have much to offer. If a publisher wants to call me up and prove me wrong, I'm open to it. But I just, I haven't seen a lot of what they have to offer in the way their business is structured these days. So I'm leaning towards self publishing. [00:18:51] And I have no clue when it will be out. I've decided to wait a little bit. It's already written. The structure is already there. I've written the first draft. I know who I would work with. It's on its trajectory. It's ready to go. But currently, I've decided to make some courses and stuff to be better set up to support it on the back end. So once I've finished exploring that a Josh: [00:19:15] little bit, then I will pull the trigger and we'll see what happens. Obviously, it'll be a run away success because it's a book about boredom. Aorem provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over seven years of mining experience, 24-7 [00:19:35] management, and directly aligned incentives, Aorem's managed mining program is the simplest way to enter the digital currency mining market. To learn more, please visit www.AoremCapitalFentures.com. So there's a lot of conversation about NFTs as an evolution of fine art collecting, but with digital art. And I know that you're releasing 100 copies of TikTok videos you made Josh: [00:19:56] about choice entitled Anything the Genesis Block TikTok. How's that going? Can you give us some more detail on the process and what are your plans to release these NFTs? Yes, that was super cool. Now, people who don't know what NFTs are non-fungible tokens, guys. Yes, non-fungible token. It's a way to create one of something in the digital world. And it's [00:20:17] a game changer, I think, in a lot of ways. I did that initial thing because one, because I went and looked around and nobody had released a TikTok as an NFT. So I wanted to be the first person. Of course, Dogface got to make the news for it, but that's fine. I'm still proud. I got to it. I got to release the first one. But no, I did that because I wanted to get involved in the Josh: [00:20:38] space because this space is interesting for a bunch of reasons. One is like all the different applications, real estate. If you can create one of something, then you can create a title for a car. You can create a title for a piece of fine art in the real world, or you can just create a piece of digital art that is unique. There's all sorts of different applications. So one is just the [00:21:04] possibilities. I'm very attracted to possibilities. But another one that I find interesting is the type of people that it's going to attract in the long run. I've been thinking about this quite a bit. And the crypto markets are money, right? This is finance. And people that are interested in finance are trying to make money. That's just the basic thing. But what happens when people have Josh: [00:21:28] made money? Where did they go? In the past, you went to the art gallery and the wine tasting. And that was where you went when you collected some money. And then after you collected some money, you went there because you wanted to broaden your understanding of the world and meet new people and explore the world. That was a thing that would happen for a lot of people. [00:21:48] And what happens with the new rich of the crypto markets? Because there's an immense amount of people that are going to come into money from all of this. A bunch of people are going to lose money too, part of the game. But there's going to be a bunch of people that have worked really hard to achieve and they're going to succeed. And it's a really interesting question to think Josh: [00:22:09] where are they going to go? And I think the most obvious answer is they're going to go to the place that is the most connected to the current industry that is a place designed for fun and exploration. And the NFT fine art market is precisely that NFTs are created on the blockchain. They're created with the same technology that the crypto markets are. And I think this is where all the new [00:22:34] hyper successful people and ultimately, I think most of the hyper successful are going to find themselves exploring NFT markets in some ways, whether that's going to a modern holographic NFT gallery and the real world. Or if that's just in online forms, I think that a lot of really high performing people are going to be in this space in the long run. Josh: [00:22:56] And what was the process like making, I guess you have two NFTs, I was just checking out your wearable account. Looks like you've sold 72 of the 100 NFTs, which is a TikTok video. It seems like that is that its own TikTok video? Was that live on TikTok or is that original that wasn't posted on TikTok? I made that one on TikTok and posted on TikTok. And then I uploaded it as [00:23:17] a limited edition on Rareville. And so how did that process work? Yeah, it was incredibly easy. I had somebody walk me through it. But once I was walked through it, I was like, oh, anybody can do this. This is astonishingly easy. The only reason why I didn't do it on my own was I was scared. I was like, ah, it's scary crypto stuff. Let me get some help. But essentially, the process was you had to Josh: [00:23:40] have a wallet and you had to connect it to whatever platform you're using. And from there, it was a process like on any other modern website for selling something where it just walks you right through the process. You just upload the file, update your descriptions, information about it, what percentages you want to receive on the resale and what price you want to sell it for, [00:24:04] and how many editions you want. I think in particular, the part that blew me away was as a musician to see what percentage do you want in perpetuity. To see that option is astonishing. Because one of the great tragedies in the world, I think, are artists create something in their 30s and they've got to feed a baby and pay for an apartment. So they sell all the rights to what they have, Josh: [00:24:28] and then they live poor until they're 60. And then their art finally takes off and they get no benefit from it. And I think NFTs have the possibility of changing that game. That's huge. And I'm actually based on this conversation, I'm going to create my own TikTok NFT challenge. I think it is the future. I think there's a huge opportunity there. And there's a platform [00:24:46] called charge.fi that I've been looking at. It's about called charge particles. It allows you to do more with your NFTs. So you basically can transform your NFT into a basket holding other ERC 20 tokens. You can configure the principal. You can program interest to be paid out on it. And basically, it allows you to add assets underlying ERC 20 assets into NFTs. So trying to connect Josh: [00:25:08] those two with TikTok, maybe even like their ad flow from it or a brand deal and be able to put the actual brand deal of money into the NFT. But seriously, you sold 72 of these at $50 a piece. You almost have and you have up to $5,000 you can sell with this one NFT. As a TikTok creator, I don't think you probably haven't made more than $5,000 from TikTok ads. Like it's ridiculous. [00:25:31] It's astonishing. I think you're reading the number flipped. Oh, okay. But I still have made an astonishing amount of money for what the effort was. You have a hundred NFTs at $50 a piece, right? Josh: [00:25:42] It was $150 a piece. Oh, yeah, there's 72 left. So I sold 28, which is still astonishing, right? Like it's mind boggling. And I did it initially as an experiment because I was trying to plan a big release or anything. It was because I wanted to be involved in the space. And over time, I'm going to be doing more. I really am excited about the idea of collaborating [00:26:03] with some artists. I think that some of the stuff that I create could be turned into really cool digital art. And I'd love to collaborate with digital art artists that are playing in this space already. If anybody wants to reach out to me, do so on my Instagram. Because it's a place where all of the options haven't been invented yet. And that's a great place to be for any creative. Josh: [00:26:26] Because like going back to what I was saying with how I got to success with TikTok is I started doing what I could, right? I started just doing practical things. What can I do? And in the NFT space, right now, you can ask that question of yourself. And nine times out of the 10, I think you'll probably end up doing something that's never been done before. That's not the case [00:26:46] in normal content creation. Because what's going on is it's just a new place to explore. And yeah, it's a bubble. And yeah, the bubble's going to pop. But it doesn't matter if you're playing in that space for the next 10 to 15 years. I think you can mess up and win. I think you can mess up terribly and still be a winner. Well, talking about messing up. Can you share some Josh: [00:27:06] examples in your own life of how limitations or roadblocks have made you more creative? And you've talked to a little bit on that process, but I want to hear if there's anything particular stories that you have in mind. Most of the things that have made life work for me have ended up being some form of limitation. And I think that's partially the personality that I have a tendency to go in [00:27:27] the opposite direction. So I get a lot of benefit from limiting myself. Somebody that's naturally doesn't think of all the options. Maybe they need to jump into the deep end and go try something new. But I want to try something new all the time. That's my instinct. From like diet limitations to scheduling limitations to social limitations, like limiting my social activities, limiting Josh: [00:27:52] my spending, and then setting limits on my art creation have all paid dividends and had compound benefits. Which one of those should I dive into? I could dive into any of those. JohnPaul: [00:28:04] I like the compounding benefits. Let's dive into that. I think that's super important that people Josh: [00:28:07] understand it's about your intention. If you can focus on one thing and do it consistently, you're able to build these massive compounding effects. I'm a musician. I grew up in music. I majored in music. And I always struggled with music. It wasn't that I was like naturally gifted at it. Maybe I had some strength there. But I had to really work to keep up in the music world. [00:28:31] And one of the reasons it's easier to see in hindsight, one of the reasons was I would try to do everything. I would try to do everything in music. I tried to get the best I could at performance and the best I could at composition. And just those two things are more than enough to flatten somebody because generally speaking, we achieve excellence through specialization. Josh: [00:28:52] It's a balance between the two. I am still a generalist. And I don't think I'll ever not be a general. But specialization, the process of honing into one thing, even if it's for a limited amount of time, is what builds up your capabilities. And I wouldn't do that at the beginning. At the beginning, I would be a generalist in the sense of I have to be good at everything. I have to try everything. [00:29:16] And that made me fail at everything. And that sucked. I didn't like it. And I was educated in the classical world. And I never really wanted to make classical music. I was more interested in more mainstream music. That's what I've always enjoyed. But it was just my background. It was my past. It was the thing I was told to learn. So I just kept learning it. And then when I went Josh: [00:29:36] into more mainstream music, I would do the same thing. I tried to learn every aspect of music. And I would get zero results. Over time, I've started to go, okay, I could make music with these three instruments. I can produce in this particular style, I can create this sort of lyric format. And I would start to limit what I was doing, not in the sense of, I know you want [00:30:01] to do all these things, but you have to do these three things. I would limit myself in the sense of I'd start to notice, Hey, I'm not that capable. I can only do so much. I would more just notice my actual capabilities and be more realistic about it. And I started to limit from that perspective, where I would do less and less. And I'd say, no, this is enough. It's enough to take on like this Josh: [00:30:24] one or two styles of production. And as soon as I started to do that, I started to get reps, because I would make more than one song in the same style of production. And once I started getting reps, things started improving. And what's wild is you do this for a while. And pretty soon you have enough capability to try things outside of your skill set that you're exploring. But [00:30:47] honing in on something and just going, I can't do all the things, but I could do this for a while, and just try to find some enjoyment in this simple little thing. It builds your skill level in a way that nothing else does. And it seems to be, for me, one of the keys to making everything else possible. The keys to making everything else possible. I love it. What are those keys? And do Josh: [00:31:10] you have five things you do that maintain your personal self-improvement practices or this like overall growth work that you've been doing? The biggest ones are just finances, diet, and physical activity. I'd say those are the top three. I tend to tell people these days, if you can spend less than you make, if you can eat food that works for your body, it's different [00:31:35] for different people, but you can eat some healthy food and you can exercise regularly, you're actually in the top 1% of Earth. People, they talk about 1%ers as if they're like this mysterious, I don't know, evil oppressors that are like some ultra wealthy folk. Top 1% is one of 100. We have billions of people on Earth. If you can do those three things, you're in the top Josh: [00:31:57] 1% because the vast majority of humanity can't manage to do those three things. So that's where I start is just that. Beyond that, some of the most helpful things I've explored are breathing exercises. I'm practically religious about my morning walks at this point and limiting how much I take on any given day, week, or month. So limiting what you do, and then you mentioned JohnPaul: [00:32:20] breathing exercises for those people who aren't familiar, can you talk a little bit more about Josh: [00:32:23] what that breathing exercise looks like? And then also is that, is that flow into your kind of content creation flow or is that something you utilize to get to those creative spaces? Yeah, it's the cheapest way to get high. Meditation is something that is pretty well known at this point. And meditation is generally the practice. A lot of the way people learn it at the beginning [00:32:45] is to simply focus on your breath. And the idea is to just focus on your breath so that you notice everything else. You're focusing on one thing so you can notice everything else and that kind of calms you down. Breathing exercises are a little bit different because you're generally doing a breathing technique that is getting more oxygen and your bloodstream than it would Josh: [00:33:04] normally have. And this changes your physiology a little bit. And what I've found is that these breathing exercises tend to relax the body enough for you to heal faster. It tends to get your brain and body connected a little bit more like you tend to notice your body a little bit more through doing breathing exercises. And I think that's very important in our modern world because [00:33:29] most of us are overwhelmed day to day and that's an emotional experience. And emotions aren't processed very well inside of the mind. It's very difficult to process emotions in the mind because the mind uses logic to process things. To connect back to your physical body is highly valuable in processing emotions because then you can actually feel them. You can feel the physical Josh: [00:33:50] sensation of the emotion that you have and breathing exercises allow you to tap into that. I definitely the couple of different things resonated with me there with you mentioned how people feel like they're always running always don't have enough time in their day and it comes down to doing too much. Comes down to focusing on just the few things that matter. And I think [00:34:09] you mentioned that with content it's like doing what you do well is a huge portion of the content creation process and not doing too much. So when you're looking for creative inspiration JohnPaul: [00:34:21] and you found that through the breathing and through meditation what advice would you give Josh: [00:34:25] to other creators that are trying to produce daily content. Because I think that's one of the things that I admire about you, Jocelyn most is that you create content consistently every day. Not every day but every day is it every day. I always see the videos coming out so it's very consistent. Yes it's pretty damn close to every day. I post every day unless I'm not posting on purpose because [00:34:45] I'm doing an experiment. Occasionally I want to see what's happening with TikTok if I don't post but other than that no I've been posting every day. So yeah that's an important point and I have been so inconsistent in my past. Like I want to be clear I've been so bad at this consistency has probably been one of my biggest downfalls in the past and most of the reason why is because I Josh: [00:35:08] would pick something that was too visionary. It was too big and then I would feel bad because I wasn't achieving it and then when I did it would take too long so I would feel sad and I wouldn't get a dopamine hit from it. I've been flipping that and I've been switching to okay let's do something kind of small and a little bit pathetic because you're small and a little bit pathetic [00:35:34] and then from that frame anything you do is exciting. So I do something small and pathetic and I get it done and I'm like oh my god look at that. I did something amazing and then I feel excited to do it again. So I'm basically trying to hack my brain chemistry because discipline's great and yes we need it but for a lot of people with dreams and ambitions they have an overabundance of discipline. Josh: [00:36:01] They will tear themselves apart to get to what they want to get to and what happens is as they push to get where they want to get they don't do things that works with their mind and their physiology and they slowly break down and get weaker and less effective. So I'm trying to work now from the premise of okay I do have ambition I do have work ethic I do have discipline. [00:36:29] Let's call those things a given. Let's even say it's a given that I have some skill that I have some intelligence. These are like let's make these baseline assumptions and with that now let's do something small and simple and assume that because I have a work ethic because I am fairly intelligent because I have practiced things and I have skills that fairly simple thing will be pretty awesome Josh: [00:36:55] and that turns out to be true a lot of the time. Do you think people just build up this almost like this fear or this expectation of what the content could become in their heads and that what prevents them from actually getting it out effectively or creating it effectively? I think there's a misunderstanding of how effective your content can be at any level and I don't even want [00:37:18] to use the word level because I'm not trying to imply like skill levels. It's more a sideways thing where it's like you can create this is the analogy I always use. A six-year-old can create a beautiful drawing if the six-year-old isn't trying to draw like the 12-year-old. A 12-year-old can create a beautiful drawing if the 12-year-old isn't trying to draw like a 16-year-old because Josh: [00:37:43] if they try to draw like the 16-year-old if the 12-year-old tries to draw like the 16-year-old then what it's going to look like is a poor imitation of a 16-year-old's drawing but if the 12-year-old simply tries to express what the 12-year-old wants to express with the 12-year-old's skills it can be an awesome thing and it's the same at 16 and 20 and 25 and 30 and it's okay so you [00:38:07] turn 16 now you should probably take a class and draw so what you want to do is you want to take two classes like two short classes on YouTube and learn some of the fundamentals of drawing and then draw your angsty little 16-year-old heart out. The problem is if the 16-year-old takes a couple classes and then sees what could be sees all the Michelangelo's and the Monet's and Josh: [00:38:32] everything in between and goes oh man I'm not going to be complete until I can match their skill level and if they do that they will suck ass forever because they will never match that skill level because the thing that gets you to match that skill level is engagement in your current activity and trying to match the Michelangelo trying to match the dream takes you away from [00:38:58] your current moment so if instead the 16-year-old trying to learn to draw just takes a couple classes learns a couple things and then explores and tries to create with those skill sets that 16-year-old has doesn't worry about trying to get new skill sets and the child does that for a year or two they will create amazing things and then maybe at 18 they take another class and then they Josh: [00:39:24] do it for another two years and obviously this is an example you can vary this but this concept of learning to absorb a small amount of new material like lessons etc and then iterate on it and explore it and create what you can instead of trying to level up again it's I think it's one of the most compounding elements of skill building that exists because the reality is we have artists that [00:39:50] we adore that can paint and photorealistic style right where it's so flawless that you can't even tell that it's a painting and we pay them thousands millions of dollars and we have people that draw things that look like finger painting that we pay them millions of dollars for their paintings they both succeed and if you were to put them on a scale of skill level it would be very misleading Josh: [00:40:16] as to what's actually creating the value because artists at the beginning try to learn skills so they get distracted by the skill sets and they assume that's what creates their value but it's something much more nuanced than that what is it what is the value where does the value come from in this NFT world that we're about to enter into where anyone can create artwork that [00:40:39] can be bought and sold live and they can earn royalties on it is it all come down to the the story the personal brand behind the meaning behind them art piece if you were to ask that question to a professor in an art school right now I think the answer would be expression I think they're wrong and I think the answer is communication the best answer that I've seen for the definition of Josh: [00:41:04] art is the expression of what it feels like to be alive and I like that expression but for me I'm not sure if that is as much value as you could create I for me my my personal definition of art is the expression and the communication of what it feels like to be a lot so art is language art is symbology it's a bunch of things that mean stuff we look at art and we feel things we look at [00:41:34] art and we intuit messages from it we come up with ideas based on art and it might not be the idea that the original artist intended but it does spark an idea so I'm not saying that to create art you have to communicate the idea that's inside of your head because that's implying that somebody else can't come up with one that's better and have it even more amazing experience with that one but Josh: [00:41:59] you do have to have this sort of creation where you have a spark in your mind and you create something that causes a spark in another mind and I think that is where the value lies because what did Nian cat sell for no idea half a million damn I think yeah the gift of the the little cat with the rainbows and everything like it wasn't because of technical expertise it was because of [00:42:26] a spark that there was a spark in there that that ignited something in another human and it maybe was delight maybe it was meaning it could have been any number of things but I think it's lighting that spark and that's why I say a 12 year old can create an amazing piece of artwork because a 12 year old can create something that has a message that you can read like a 12 year old can create Josh: [00:42:52] something that that is symbolic that you can register what that symbol is and it means something to you just a 15 year old can or a 30 year old can and what that means is that it's not exactly skill level that defines this thing that we value it's something more nuanced which is can you create that spark and I think the only way to get to that spark is by limiting what you do so that you're [00:43:19] not oppressed by how good you should be and then you can explore and say something that you want JohnPaul: [00:43:27] to can you talk a little bit more about the flow of how you're trying to create value either in Josh: [00:43:32] art Bitcoin NFTs and what that looks like for you yeah so right now I'm just finishing up a course on Bitcoin and it's super basic on purpose because I think there's a sort of a divide between the folks who have fallen down the Bitcoin rabbit hole and the folks who have a no idea what this strange digital crypto what in mohooza is I'm trying to bridge the gap a little bit and it's just a [00:43:57] simple course on understanding what it is and how to buy and hodl some after that is finished I'm going to be working on a course on learning theory and I think the other one is going to be something like either productivity or mental performance one or the other productivity or mental performance and how would how are you currently looking at doing the Bitcoin course Josh: [00:44:20] what is that how is that gonna be structured in your eyes that a video is that a weekly email a hundred emails yeah so it's almost done it's it's about 30 videos in tick-tock format I'm actually pretty happy about it I decided to not go with the standard course format of like landscape style video really long form I'm actually it's short and sweet and it's 30 videos that are one [00:44:43] minute long give or take just like I would make on tick-tock so it's a format that a lot of people are familiar with it's super mobile friendly I was just checking it out on mobile last night with a friend and he's oh this makes total sense on a cell phone it's intended to fit our new world I like it I like it the vertical format is taking over I know there's been tons of startups that Josh: [00:45:04] have been trying to film and trying to capture content in that way Josh we're coming up to the end of questions that I have for you do you have anything that you want to talk about with me specifically or anything as you also wanted to touch on but yeah I'm curious what your thoughts are on this idea I have of limitation and how it regards to crypto because what I've seen is that [00:45:28] limitation enables creativity and that's essentially been a part of everything that we've talked about I think in this conversation where it's like it's what's happening when the 12 year old creates what the 12 year old can is they're putting a boundary on it and they're not trying to reach out into this impossible thing that they're not ready for yet and one of the amazing things about Bitcoin Josh: [00:45:49] is that it's limited at almost every point except for the human right the human is the variable it seems like inside of Bitcoin we've made it so that it's a structure that people can bounce off of so like in a painting in the world of fine art we still use the canvas and a canvas is actually the limitation that the reason why people can create great art in a big way I think is because [00:46:17] of the canvas because it's a structure that says all right you have this space now you can do whatever you want and it's a lie right you can't do whatever you want you can paint on this canvas that's what you can do but you are free to do whatever you want within that limitation and the limitations of Bitcoin there will never be more than 21 million right 21 million Bitcoin Josh: [00:46:39] right and the way Bitcoin function is functions is structured in code and it takes a massive amount of social pressure to create any sort of change there and these are I think elements of creating an economic canvas that allows society to experiment with money and I think it will spark innovations that have never been seen before because of them no I would agree with you and I like the idea of a [00:47:10] canvas and money because Bitcoin does create a virtual canvas of only 21 million pieces of Bitcoin land that can be purchased by people compared to the current financial market and system we have where the system is grown is to these derivatives and these contracts that are hope that help hedge risk for companies that do trade across the world the problem that we are experiencing today is when Josh: [00:47:35] that financial industry becomes disconnected from the physical realities the physical world in the movement of trade on the ground and that there's more numbers moving in computers than there is actually value being transferred to the worker to the bottom line of a business moving raw goods and I think what we've seen with without the accountability without the the constraint that [00:47:58] you're referring to the comfort the boredom of money we are set in stone with this place where we move to an area where money is created in an in a limited form like the fiat currency we have today of the dollar there is no repercussions for politicians to say we want to spend more money to get really elected we want to spend more money on these projects we want to put more Josh: [00:48:22] money towards green energy because it's makes us feel good and because it'll help push the conversation forward not necessarily we want to spend money on making energy free for everyone and we want to spend money on actually solving these problems there's a lot of I think issues when it comes to having not having a cap on this monetary supply that we're working on we're working [00:48:43] with every single every 20 years the dollar loses an estimated 20 30 something in that line and the problem there is that people are set in jobs and they very rarely see that salary increase with inflation especially with the amount of money that's been printed with covid and so I agree with you that bitcoin created a digital canvas almost that allowed us to have scarcity built into it that Josh: [00:49:07] allowed us to be bored almost be bored with money and money that's just like simple it even though it seems like very complex it's money that's simple money that can only be extracted from this digital land via the mining process through miners like myself that are going in and buying millions of dollars worth of computers and using real world energy that costs actually has cost for [00:49:28] everyone knowing can cheat that system because we haven't figured out a create energy for free yet and I think that is one of the biggest features in in bitcoin but I think it as you mentioned the anxiety portion of bitcoin and blockchains not bitcoin particularly but the thousands of other currencies out there that are building around it that are trying to smoke in mirrors some of them Josh: [00:49:48] have real values some of them are just marketing scams and trying to get people's money to get more bitcoin so I think that overall joss the more we can focus on the amazing opportunity we have which is just bitcoin itself and understanding that bitcoin will become this world currency with stocks trading on it and envy type of financial transaction floating through the network and the [00:50:13] less we can focus on all the noise and all of the other conversations they are cool to play with and don't get me wrong i'm a big component of other coins doing cool tech working on cool technologies but it's hard to distinguish between the ones that are here to stay and the ones and in the currencies that are really going to scale and work well and the stories even looking at a Josh: [00:50:35] theorem now and looking at buying your nft it was an 80 dollar transaction fee i'm like if they only cost $150 i'm spending half my money on a transaction fee yeah i think with bitcoin with layer 2 it will help us scale much faster and there are already people building outside channels where you don't have those issues and so the more i love the other current the more i go love the [00:50:57] other currencies and love looking at them the more i realize how much i actually need to spend my time focusing just on bitcoin and building out really building out ways to hold your wealth in bitcoin easily education showing people that this isn't something that should be scary this isn't something that should be hard to understand but it's something that should be easy to use you Josh: [00:51:16] should be able to generate interest on your bitcoins through the mining process you should be able to generate interest on your dollars through lending out stable coins in the decentralized marketplaces and you should be able to acquire bitcoin on a daily basis and people like cash happen other people are working on building that bitcoin bank account and i think that's the future [00:51:34] is having an account that allows you to access this digital world of the blockchain technology in bitcoin specifically yes i like i'm more and more i'm getting to this point where i'm like i like bitcoin because it's a board it's a feature not a buck and the yeah the other cryptos that are being built out and i'm invested in some i think some of them are great and it's a great thing to Josh: [00:51:56] explore like you said but a lot of them what they're trying to do is they're trying to transcend the limitations of bitcoin not realizing that the limitations of bitcoin are actually the features of bitcoin and it's not only is it the limitation of the supply it's the limitation of how it functions and there's this weird thing where it's if you have i don't know if you have a ski [00:52:17] slope on a cliff and you have a net right off of the cliff so that skier can try that cliff 500 times without injury that enables the skier to become far more advanced than he ever would otherwise and that net is a limitation it's saying you can't go past here and somebody that's an adrenaline junkie is going to look at that net and be like ah this isn't as exciting i want the full risk of Josh: [00:52:44] i could go over the edge at any moment but in some ways that person's not going to develop the capabilities that they could with the net because the net allows for the iteration and i feel like there's limitations in the speed of bitcoin isn't the fastest who cares we already know it's thousands of times faster than gold so who who cares but also even that i think is a structural limitation [00:53:09] that allows people to go okay this is predictable it's going to be this way now i can experiment based on that premise i like it i like it being able to set those the limitations in life are healthy and especially in finance honestly because the current financial system doesn't have limitations so financially engineered mess with very little limitations people who understand how to play in Josh: [00:53:32] that mess of contracts what problems do you face every day that nobody has solved yet josh i face a lot of problems that everybody's struggling with i face a lot of those the main one at this point for me is learning how to continue doing the thing that worked which is another limitation right it's i i have to learn how to not take on opportunities when i want and that enables me to do way more [00:54:00] things that i would otherwise what what am i working on that other people aren't i i think that there is a gap in learning theory actually i i think that's not talked about enough to me that's the thing that should be taught in grade school every year i i think that learning how to learn is far more important than learning any one particular thing so to me there should be a class Josh: [00:54:27] on learning theory in every grade and if that's not the case for the love of god we should do it when people are in college but but preferably much sooner so i'm very passionate about learning theory or meta learning the idea of learning how to learn and i think that there's not enough people exploring that space so yeah i'd say that's probably the main one and i just i want to explore the fundamental JohnPaul: [00:54:50] concepts of it and how it applies to all the other things i love it where can people connect to these josh you mentioned instagram can you talk through a little bit about your social medias Josh: [00:54:59] and then where's the best place to reach out when people have questions or want to collaborate yeah so i'm mostly on tick tock instagram twitter and linkedin so you can you find me on any of those i'm josh terry plays on all of them and i'm very proud of my brand continuity man it managed to get the same handle and i i post the most content on tick tock but i'm i'm exploring [00:55:22] creating on all the platforms i have a lot of articles that i'm starting to write i'm going to start making longer form youtube stuff but yeah find me on tick tock twitter instagram or linkedin JohnPaul: [00:55:32] that's the place for me awesome josh i appreciate the time today this is great i love talking about Josh: [00:55:36] learning theory going over the nft hearing more about the book and then talking about the overall JohnPaul: [00:55:41] production process of videos so thanks again for jumping on the digital gold podcast and if you Josh: [00:55:46] guys don't follow josh check him out he makes some great tick tock content it's best place to connect with him if you want to see his daily videos and see his beautiful face and mind go to work JohnPaul: [00:55:55] every day thanks again josh for coming on yeah man thanks for having me [00:56:00] 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 Josh: [00:56:10] become the number one crypto podcast thanks so much for listening and until next time mind off yeah ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Bitcoin Mining in South America | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 11 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/juan-jose-pinto/ All Episodes Episode 11 # Bitcoin Mining in South America with Juan Jose Pinto Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Juan Jose Pinto to discuss bitcoin mining in south america. ### Bitcoin Mining in South America Guest: Juan Jose Pinto Episode 11 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] Welcome to the show. Today I'd like to introduce Juan Jose Pinto from Dr. Miner, my guest who has over 10 years experience of leading diverse multinational projects focused on the energy, blockchain and construction industries. Juan, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? I'm Juan. Thanks for the invite. [00:00:59] I'm glad to have you on. Can you talk a little bit more about how you started Dr. Miner and why you decided to name it that? Yeah, it's a funny story because that was the way I actually got introduced to Bitcoin. I started with Bitcoin through mining because I always worked with energy in the past. Before JohnPaul: [00:01:17] I started with crypto, I was working with energy generation, gas turbines and stuff like that. I had a friend who's now the co-founder of the company who showed me a little bit of talk to me about the miners. There was some machine making money. Everybody got introduced this way. To me, I didn't buy it by the beginning. I thought it could be a scam or something [00:01:37] like that. He forced me to dig into it even though he didn't know much about it because he knew I was involved with energy and he knew it had to do something with it. Then by the moment, I realized that the connection between energy and the technology and heart money because it's basically transforming energy into heart money. It's a way to transform JohnPaul: [00:01:56] energy into wealth directly. I fall in love with the technology and that's when we started together. We were three at the beginning. There was a third guy who at the end left the country and didn't continue on the project. He was the one who actually named the project Dr. Miner because at the beginning, our idea was we started with one, two miners. Then because [00:02:17] of the situation in Venezuela was so bad and it's still bad. But at that moment, I think it was the peak around 2016-2015. We wanted to sell miners. We started with ETH mining, with GPU mining. We were selling equipment to house owners. It was a mean for them to Juan: [00:02:35] buy food on their table. The moment we started selling without any brand, then they started asking for help and they have many questions not only for the miners but for the technology. We said, okay, we're the specialist here and we're specialists who also operate the machine, the internal surgery to the machines. Then he came up with his name. He's a marketing [00:02:57] guy and we liked it. We sit together in a table having a beer because we were friends since high school. Then the project started and then we started growing from there to right now. We have already built a row, more than 10 milliwatts in mining farms. We're operating around 50 better hush right now. We have been a lot since that day and we're happy Juan: [00:03:18] about that. That's huge. That progress that you mentioned every single day, coming into the mining facility, building it out, improving the process. I find it so interesting, Juan, that me and you started very similarly. I also started mining store with a GPU company focusing on helping individuals at their houses, going to their houses, setting up the rigs and had the same [00:03:37] problem. People wanted support. They wanted to ask, how do I fix this machine? That's just, I believe, how this whole industry as the roots of it was that individual home miner. Now we are at the size where we're scaling and facilities are building 10, 20, 30, 50 megawatts of power. JohnPaul: [00:03:53] So how do you see miners growing in South America, either the big players or even yourself in your Juan: [00:03:59] own company? It's very interesting the question because we did have some discoveries recently about specifically Venezuela, which is one of the biggest mining countries in the region besides Paraguay, which is the second one, and Argentina. In terms of Venezuela specifically, I will say that even though industry have moved towards industrial operations, larger infrastructures, [00:04:21] there is still a huge amount of domestic miners in Venezuela because it's a way for them to escape the economic situation. So through mining, they found a way to create money from the energy they have at their houses because of the subsidized prices. And I think that's also happening in Iran, but that's in specific places where energy is subsidized to the regular people they found a way Juan: [00:04:45] to transform energy into money. And because it's generalized in this way. But in my opinion, I think when you see the percentage of dominance of Chinese miners decreasing, the same is happening here with the domestic miners, even though there's still a lot, it's following the same trend worldwide. I think most of them are already looking for [00:05:05] hosting infrastructure, larger facilities for industrial miners to host their equipment. And we all know it's not an easy task to run a miner inside a home, all the noise, the heat. But yeah, I see the industry growing into that direction. That's why we're growing that much. The industry has grown the same way that our company's doctor miner has grown. We've been following the Juan: [00:05:26] industry. We've moved from domestic mining towards industrial mining because cryptocurrency mining is becoming one of the basic industries of the world together with oil and gas, communications. This is the direction where I see the industry going. I definitely agree with you there on the fact that energy and wealth and the ability to have all of these Venezuelans run their machines and [00:05:47] their house to generate money. That's a whole nother source of income. So what I've heard is that because the power prices are in dollars, US dollars, or there's something to do with the US dollar exchange rate. And the fact that exchange rate keeps dropping, which then is making the power even cheaper, is that true? Or how does the subsidies work in Venezuela? And because it seems like a Juan: [00:06:07] great way for these people to have an out of the current resume there in the current financial system, just in general. Absolutely. The reason why the prices are so low is because they're fixed or local currency rate, which is falling by the day at 30% daily. It's absolutely crazy. I will say it's worthless. Our local currency isn't being used already. We're using dollars everywhere and [00:06:30] every shop there accepting dollars. Our local currency doesn't exist anymore. And if it doesn't exist and they're charging you the electricity in Bolivars in that currency, basically you get free energy because at the end you don't even need to pay. If you go to pay, it's going to be like less than a penny for one mining farm, which is something that's changing because now the Juan: [00:06:50] energy supplier is come to an agreement with miners because it's not sustainable for miners to mine at zero cost. There's no free launch. There has to be a cost. But for domestic miners that are so small, they're unrejectable for the energy supplier, they're still getting this benefit of the subsidized energy that's being in the country since 20 years ago. The reason is because of a [00:07:12] large and huge natural resources that we have here that are well known by the world. We have the number one oil reserves and number eight gas reserves. We also have one of the strongest rivers in the world. So we have the third hydro power dam, the third largest hydro power dam in the world running in the country. So we are a very resourceful country in terms of energy. Juan: [00:07:36] So that's the reason why it has been subsidized. There's another story now that of course the infrastructure isn't working properly and there's a lot of maintenance to be done. And the reason is also because of the energy is cheap. Who wants to fix a gas turbine if it doesn't generate its money if you're just giving away the energy. But that's what things are changing now here. [00:07:56] Now that we are, we miners are showing a new value for energy. The government is realizing that there's a sector, there's an industry that's adding value or giving value in exchange of that energy. And we are trying to motivate the recovery of all the electric infrastructure here in the country through mine. No, that is huge. I want to touch on that farther about rejuvenating the Juan: [00:08:17] electrical infrastructure in Venezuela. Before I talk on that, how has this devaluation of the currency affected either your day to day life or others day to day lives in Venezuela? Because I think people in the United States where most of our listeners are, they don't necessarily have that problem and they don't can't really fathom what it looks like to lose 30% on the currency either in [00:08:37] a week or day or a month. Yeah, man, it's really sad. I will say it's really sad at the beginning. It's crazy. You're even laughing at the screen when you see the price changing by the day. Like you are 30% poorer than the day before. What do you do? You try to find alternatives and that's basically why Bitcoin has been so popular here in Venezuela because we were forced to try it. There was no Juan: [00:08:57] other way. Anything that they will offer you will accept it because you needed a way to escape from the inflation that was eating your money, eating your savings by the day. That's one of the main reasons why government intervention over money is so catastrophic for the economy. I'm all towards libertarian economy. Venezuela is a great case for how extreme government control over money. [00:09:22] It's catastrophic for the economy and it can really hurt the population. After all this crisis right now, there's around 94% of the population is already living in poor conditions and I don't see the situation improving. Maybe a little bit right now that we are already not officially, but we can say we're dollarized. The only reason why we're not dollarized is because Juan: [00:09:47] of the problems between the US government and the Venezuelan government that are well known. I don't know if that's going to change with the new president there, but for now I can say we're dollarized and that's opening up the economy together with Bitcoin again and try to lift it up. It's starting to lift up the consequences of all the inflation that we're still years away to get [00:10:08] away from it. It's a huge injury you will have for the rest of the years in the economy. And so I did read an article that USDC, which is Coinbase's stablecoin, got approval from the US government because there are sanctions in place for US companies to give money, give USDC to people that were in the resume that the US government supports. Juan: [00:10:33] Did you hear about that at all? And then if you didn't, how is the Bitcoin conversation right now in Venezuela with the price hitting $19,000? Is this an active conversation where everyone's talking about it? Or is it similar to the US how it's not really having much of a conversation at all? I did hear about those news. I think it didn't work out because people are already used to [00:10:51] it every day. Not everybody, not 100% of the Venezuelans are using Bitcoin every day. But I will say a larger amount. I will say there's a huge discussion. There was a podcast actually that I was in like two weeks ago specifically talking about if Venezuela is already Bitcoin is or not. And there's debate around it. But I will say between 10% which is huge, 10% to 15% of Juan: [00:11:16] the population has already got involved with Bitcoin in a certain way. They already have savings in Bitcoin and they were using it every day for buying normal goods, basic goods, all the people that work with us in our company and our suppliers and everybody who is involved in the industry, in the mining industry that's growing very fast here are already involved with Bitcoin. [00:11:35] I would say that this proposal that happened with the USDC on Binance didn't really work out because we were already using it. There's people using Binance to exchange Ether. There's people saving Ether to exchange for Bolivars directly in the Binance platform so it's already happening. That's great to hear that there's already progress being made in that Juan: [00:11:55] this whole community of Venezuelans are starting to not only store their wealth in Bitcoin but are now using it on those day-to-day transactions which a lot of people say Bitcoin can't be used on because it's too volatile. But what we're seeing is that it's actually less volatile than some of these major state-backed currencies that Venezuelan, Bolivia are being one of them. You mentioned the [00:12:14] energy grid. And I also agree that Bitcoin miners can improve the energy grid. And here in Iowa in the United States, we're at one of our facilities. We do something called demand response and what that is for people who don't know. It's where we turn off our mining facility when the price of power becomes very expensive on the grid. And it makes more sense for that energy company to Juan: [00:12:34] sell the power back to the consumers or more appropriately to not have to go back and buy expensive power on the grid. It's easier and cheaper for them just to tell us to turn off. JohnPaul: [00:12:42] That allowed us to get a really low power price. So Juan, how do you see this interaction Juan: [00:12:47] happening on a grid where it's struggling? And it really needs this type of innovation that Bitcoin mining can bring? That's a great tool that you use there. And I think that's what mining is for. Mining is like a tool or a solution for the energy industry and for energy suppliers, for energy generators. We're doing kind of the same. But the difference here is not that we're [00:13:06] using the power that isn't being used. But we are going to the places where there's energy infrastructure and energy generation infrastructure that needs to be maintained, that it's damaged in a way because of lack of maintenance. We show an incentive for the government to fix the turbine in exchange of energy generation of the mines. So we build mines near the gas turbines that need Juan: [00:13:30] to be maintained. And with the money that's made from the mine, we improve all the other turbines in the infrastructure, in the power generator. So to give you an example, there was a gas turbine infrastructure in one city in Venezuela that had in theory 80 milliwatts of capacity. And at the time we arrived there, that was like one year ago, it was running only at 10 milliwatts capacity [00:13:53] because there was four turbines of 20 milliwatts each. Three of them turbines were turned off. And one of the turbines that was running was running running at half capacity. So what we did was we asked the government to, or we asked the power generator to give us two milliwatts for us to build a two milliwatt farm. And with the money we were making from that two milliwatt farm, we were Juan: [00:14:13] able to repair two of the turbines that were turned off beside the one that was running. And to do maintenance to the one that was running and lifted up to 20 milliwatts. So we went from 10 milliwatts, we transformed a gas turbine infrastructure that was running at 10 milliwatt to 60 milliwatt. And we were still running at two. So the government had 50 milliwatts plus of energy to distribute [00:14:37] to the country and to the population that was desperate asking for it because there's huge blackouts of energy here. So we prove how mining can be a solution for the energy industry to start rebuilding itself. Specifically in places where energy isn't being paid as the one that you're saying in Iowa, that isn't being paid that much. In Venezuela it's been paid zero. So we are paying Juan: [00:14:59] something and for them it's an incentive to grow and to improve infrastructure they have there. And so these natural gas turbines, you're not using stranded natural gas like flare mining like they're trying to do in Texas. You're physically going to the power company and saying these turbines are in this generation of facility. Let's get them to work. Let's get them making money. So what was [00:15:19] the problem before though? Because in the US when we generate power these turbines are selling to the grid and there's a buyer. Was it just not enough buyers? Were they not consistent enough? Was the grid not good enough to get the power to the end customer? Do you know why they end up turning off? Because there are buyers but as I said the electricity is so cheap that buyers are Juan: [00:15:36] paying zero. So there are buyers that are getting the energy for free. So at the end they are buyers. They're just users. That's the crazy thing that's happening here. And that's been going on for 20 years you said. So what is the government going to realize that the energy sector is the biggest sector for most countries in the world and it is for Venezuela as well. But how do you [00:15:53] support them if they have this subsidized rate? It's crazy. It's been subsidized for 20 years and in 2010 when they realized it wasn't sustainable instead of changing the electricity rate they just built or installed around. We were running only on hydro on 15 gigawatt of hydro and then they installed 15 gigawatt of gas turbines all at like backup generation for every state in total in Juan: [00:16:17] 15 gigawatts extra of gas turbine. So they run the next 10 years with this backup and now they collapse. So the only way and I'm not when I offer this solution for the energy sector I'm not trying to help the government. I'm trying to help the people because there's people here that lives every day with 10 hours of blackout. They forget it's bad. They don't have access to internet. There's [00:16:39] this huge crisis that's happening here for the people. And I don't think that it's going to help the government to get out of the way or to live power. It's just hurting people. The government doesn't care if people it's hard or not. So our idea is to try to fix the energy system to give energy to the people, to the people to have energy at their houses. No, you're exactly right. Bitcoin Juan: [00:16:58] mining is a tool for the individual, for the people who have access to any type of energy and who are willing to take the knowledge and the willingness to learn to free themselves of this repressive financial system. If you're in Venezuela or multiple other states across the US in the world, that's why I think mining at home is still going to be around. Even though we're talking about the [00:17:19] institutionalization of mining and it growing, working hand in hand with these electric companies is important. And it's how you rebuild the grid. I think it's how you rebuild the grid in these countries, which eight hour blackouts, 10 hour blackouts, that's horrible. That's really bad for people. They can't plan their life. They don't know if they're going to be able to charge their Juan: [00:17:37] phone, do work. There's a lot of issues there. So I'm glad to hear that you are making this a reality one showing that Bitcoin mining isn't just an energy sucking mechanism. And it's not bad. It just uses the stranded power around the world and provides a way to be valued. The worst thing in many is specifically in that area that I was sending you where we fixed, [00:17:57] we lift up like 50 milliwatts of energy through mining. We fixed 50 milliwatts of energy thanks to mining. Before that, the people in that specific area were thinking like we were going to destroy the grid. Like they were saying, there's no energy for us. Now you're going to come here and destroy and take the energy that's available. Now you're going to destroy the grid and it's going to be worse. Juan: [00:18:17] And after two, three months and we started lifting up the energy and they started receiving the energy they realized and they were like, I can't believe it's exactly the opposite of the idea that I had with this industry. I thought it was a sucking as you're saying, it's a sucking machine of energy. And at the end, it's actually creating and executing wealth. It's a tool for the industry. [00:18:35] I'm glad you were able to show that as a case study. And I hope we can get that message out to more people because it is so important. These energy companies, they have just an organ up in actually in Washington state. They said, no, no more energy, no more Bitcoin miners in Grant County, because we don't want you taking our all of our hydropower. But they have massive data centers Juan: [00:18:55] up there with Microsoft, Facebook, but in their eyes, Bitcoin mining doesn't help anyone. It's not worth it. But we're seeing that complete opposite in Venezuela. And that's that makes me really excited just just the future of this whole industry. Yeah, and it's not even including. I didn't even have to explain to them the importance of mining for Bitcoin and important of Bitcoin for the world. [00:19:14] I didn't even need to explain this to them. And they already realized the value of the industry. Now imagine if you add all the impact that this industry and importantly that this industry has in the trust of this new financial system that's overtaking the dollar and all the other fiat currencies. I think slowly people is going to realize it's easier. It's always easier to show Juan: [00:19:35] it in places that needed like Venezuela, like Venezuelans got involved with Bitcoin like earlier than anywhere because we were forced to we didn't have any choice. And same is happening with mining. And I think it's going to happen with the rest of the world slowly, but it's going to happen at the end. And I agree with you because Bitcoin mining is a hundred year game. It's a game [00:19:53] that people were playing and using energy for the next 100 years. I don't think many people realize that. Are you an investor looking for Bitcoin exposure? If so, Bitcoin mining provides daily payouts and lets you dollar cost average your way into a Bitcoin position. [00:20:08] Orm Capital Ventures provides the bridge to the Bitcoin mining industry for institutional Juan: [00:20:13] investors and energy companies through 24-7 management, directly line incentives, and over seven years of mining experience. Orm's managed mining program is the most secure way to enter the mining industry. Reach out to us at ormcapitalvengers.com to learn more about the program and talk to the team. So Dr. Miner was created with this goal to help Venezuelans, to help people in South America [00:20:36] into mining, educate them, answer their questions. What are you working on the future and what are you excited about one coming up? Yeah, one month ago we launched the first Latin America mining pool in partnership with Luxor. It was an idea that we had since the beginning of this year because it has higher efficiency to connect to a closer server or closer stratum, you're graphically Juan: [00:20:56] talking. And also because I think the industry needs to be decentralized. Not only the Latin American region, the Latin American industry of mining needs to be independent from China. At the end, we should be following the philosophy of the technology, which is the centralization. We cannot concentrate all the power of the hashrate power into one country. Most miners were [00:21:18] located at the beginning in China because of the obsolescence of the mining equipment that miners were forced to mine at the places where the miners were fabricated or were manufactured. And that was in China. So that was most of miners were in China. But now that the technology has stabilized a little bit and equipment can last longer. For example, the S9s have been four years Juan: [00:21:38] and we're still running them like crazy here in Venezuela. Most of the S9s have come here. And now that this happened, miners have started to grow in areas far away from the manufacturing place like China. That's why China is losing stake in the mining industry. But in terms of the pools, we're still giving them too much power. And I think that's not positive. Most of the reasons are [00:22:01] that they are offering lower fees that we don't really know if they are true or not because nobody really checks if they are charging you 0.5%, 0.2% in the mining pools. So because of the idea that it was running in our heads in the beginning of the year, we decided to do a mining pool here in Latin America. Let's give the example because we don't want to be the only one. We want other Juan: [00:22:22] pools to develop here. And I assure you, we're in the future. The industry here, the local industry in Latin America keeps growing as it's growing in Paraguay and Argentina. I think they're going to be other pools launching to offer better services to compete with us. And the idea is that the idea behind all this is to help the centralization of the industry, which is at the end good for [00:22:42] Bitcoin and good for the users. And it's better for everyone. And so I want to hit on a key component that you mentioned, the S9 miners. So for people that don't know, these miners came out in 2016. They are 13 and a half terra hashes, which the new ones that are about 110 terra hashes. They run about 1,350 watts without any overclocking. That's 100 watts per joules or per terra hash. JohnPaul: [00:23:06] So can you explain why you're able to still run them? So I think there's a false premise that Juan: [00:23:11] Bitcoin miners go obsolete very quickly. The hardware is only last a year or two. I would say that the cheaper the energy, the lower generation equipment you should be running, because it makes more economic sense. Because even if it's true that the newer generation has better efficiency in terms of energy, it also has a very high price in terms of terra hash. [00:23:30] An S19 has 10 times more expensive than an S9 in terms of terra hash in the price per terra hash. So for us that the energy isn't that expensive. The percentage in the operational cost of energy isn't that high. It makes a better ROI to use older equipment by far. But I will recover the investment in six months or five months for larger infrastructure with S9s. And it can take me a year Juan: [00:23:53] for S19s because it's too expensive the equipment. Even though it consumes less energy for places with cheaper energy, it doesn't make economic sense. We're still hungry for S9s and there's actually an outage of it. We're just fine in China. There's no more in the United States. There's no more in Canada. We used to source them, but we're still not interested in new generation [00:24:16] on last month because I know Bitman is stopping them manufacturing them because they want people to buy their new equipment so they can make more money. That's the only reason I can think of because for us it's more profitable to keep running S9s and E9s, lower generation equipment. It's the price per terra hash. It's all about it. Steve Barbour says that the Juan: [00:24:36] end efficiency isn't only about energy consumption. It's also about how much money you spend. The more money you spend, the less efficient the investment is. Also, the less efficient is a project. You're exactly right. That's why we see the cost per terra hash being such an important metric to track when you're getting into mining. One, here's a question for you as you just hit on. [00:24:55] Do you think it's more important to have a low cost power or to time the market and get in at a right the right time or a time where maybe that cost per terra hash to buy new equipment is lower? JohnPaul: [00:25:06] What do you think is more important? For me, I will say low power because I'm used to it. Juan: [00:25:10] If you have a low waste operational cost in the whole mining industry, you're already winning because this is a mathematical game theory where as long as you have lower operational costs, you will always be competitive. You will always make money. That's from the start. It's more valuable to have lower energy. It's also very important because there are people in Venezuela [00:25:30] who lost money with mining because they were buying S9s in 2018, in the beginning of 2018, and the end of 2017 when the market got absolutely crazy because of Bitcoin hitting 20k. There was people paying for an S9, around $6,000, $5,000. So I wouldn't say it's only energy. I think timing, the purchase of the equipment is extremely important and people have to be Juan: [00:25:52] careful right now as we enter in the new bull market. I think prices are not going to be that attractive and I think people can follow into them just because Bitcoin is pumping. And at the end, when Bitcoin corrects, the mining will correct stronger than Bitcoin and they could lose money. So I think it's extremely important to know when to buy the miners. So yeah, both things are [00:26:11] important. I definitely agree with you on that. An allocation of capital is super important. JohnPaul: [00:26:16] So one, what advice would you give to any of the 18 year old Venezuelans out there that are Juan: [00:26:21] listening to this podcast or that are interested in improving their life and improving the community? For the Venezuelans that are interested in mining specifically, I will say it's true. It happens. Don't do it only for the money. Even though it's going to make you money, you have to believe in the technology. It's going to be more profitable at the end, long term, if you will live in the [00:26:39] industry. If you think the distant energy actually, it's going to thrive in the future, which I think believe me, this industry is growing. This isn't just a game of guys playing with computers as I thought at the beginning. Most of the people that starts with this business thinks this is just a guy's playing with computers. This is not this technology that in an industry that it's protecting Juan: [00:27:00] one of the largest technologies and discoveries in the world, like this is Bitcoin. So yeah, be careful with the timing. As I said, plan your operation and strategically JohnPaul: [00:27:09] think long term and welcome to the team. Welcome to the team. Juan: [00:27:15] Where can I listen to connect with you online? And where's the best place to stay updated about Dr. Miner and new developments? Yeah, we normally we have a telegram group in Dr. Miner, Ad Dr. Miner in telegram. It's an Spanish group for English speaking conversation. It can be on Twitter mainly, which is Ad Dr. Miner. And on Instagram, we also have a large community on [00:27:37] Instagram, which you see in some a lot. We post a lot of the information there, not selling services or stuff like that, just talking about the industries we're doing here, about where we see the industry going and the new changes. And so that was that's Ad Dr. Miner on Instagram, correct? Yeah. Awesome. I just followed you guys. So there you go. One more follower to the 3000 plus you guys have. Juan: [00:27:56] Do you have any other questions or anything you want to talk about one before heading off today on the podcast? Actually questions about you, basically, about the two companies that you are running. I knew about mining, but I didn't hear about autumn capital ventures. I read that was more about financial products related to mining. And I thought it was really interesting. Yeah, [00:28:14] sure. I'm happy to touch on it. So, Orm Capital Ventures is the company that we created to interact Juan: [00:28:20] with financial partners with larger institutional clients, with people who are looking to get exposure to Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin hashrate through financial vehicles and products. So, it's our parent company, which means it now owns the mining store brand and the mining store website and it owns all of our operations. But it's really the vehicle where we at Orm hope to bring in the [00:28:42] next wave of investors into the space and where we expect to change the energy and the financing world as we know it. Wow, man. I've heard about some tools similar to this one, but I don't think they're following the right path. What I read was very nice because you will get involved institutional money that's coming from Bitcoin in next year. They will maybe be interested in Juan: [00:29:04] mining also without getting involved with all the hustle of building the mining infrastructure and stuff. I don't know if you have already have clients, you have already offered it, which kind of product specifically are you offering? I don't know if that's already going. We do have clients in the more traditional side where we mine with them and we actually joined [00:29:22] together and they're able to mine cryptocurrency and we give them very good rates almost at our cost and we take a fee for our performance and for aligning those incentives, which is the most important thing as you're seeing and making a profitable mining operation, even in Venezuela with the power producers. That's really our main target now. But then as we move on, we are building Juan: [00:29:42] out a retail product for retail investors on the mining store side. And then for institutional level investors, we're looking at bonds, different types of ways to raise debt financing, different types of ways to ensure the product and ensure the mining profitability. I'm working on being able to provide insurance to the debt and to the interest payments for the mining operations, [00:30:02] which will make it so that you can really scale these facilities. Financing is just coming into the mining space today. And as you mentioned, the cost per teras is one of the key components of building a good operation. And so we're working on how do you bring in the massive amounts of capital that are out there that have traditionally financed these large energy projects to finance Juan: [00:30:20] 50 to 250 megawatt mining facilities all across the US where we have tons and tons of stranded energy. And it's very linked with the energy industry and you're connected directly with the energy suppliers. And one last question, and regarding also financial tools, but for the miners specifically, what's your opinion about the hash refutures? They were released like one year ago, I think, [00:30:39] I don't know if you have used them already. I've looked into them and I just can't the different kind of quotes we've gotten from some of these brokers. We just I just couldn't pull the trigger on it because the value that they were willing to pay for that hash wasn't worth the discount. And they don't pay you all the money upfront. So it's okay, I'm going to get Juan: [00:30:57] paid on a day to day basis. But the quotes weren't good enough or weren't enough for us to sell that hash right off or to commit to selling the hash right at a flat rate. But they were paying us all up front. And then we were we got that capital and we could buy new machines. That would be awesome. But if we're only getting the capital as we mine it, then it's okay, this is a great [00:31:14] way to lock in our profits. But there's other ways to do that, which I think are more feasible with like hedges on the option contracts and ensuring you can lock in your Bitcoin price for those potentially newly mined bitcoins. So I'm not using them, but I think someone will build some products. And I think I know a lot of smaller groups are working on some amazing products. I Juan: [00:31:33] love talking to their teams. If you're looking to build hash rate products, reach out and I'd love to talk farther. But yeah, one, I still have not used it. What about you? I was working in a product actually that was very similar to hash rate futures. I don't know if you heard about hash market. It's sealed under development. The idea with hash market was almost [00:31:49] the same as a hash rate features. It was a it was a platform to connect buyers of hash rate or renters of hash rate and sellers. The sellers will be the miners, of course. And the idea was for sellers to secure their profit in dollars to same as the hash rate futures. And as you say, there can be other financial tools that can be used as an alternative like hedging with a Juan: [00:32:08] Bitcoin price and stuff like that. But the idea was that miners could render equipment in the future and get the revenue of the miners at a fixed rate in terms of dollars so that miners could pay for the electricity on the operational cost that they have per month that are linked to the dollar and not to Bitcoin. So they can protect and gain the volatility of Bitcoin long term or at least [00:32:32] in two months or three months. If you're, for example, if you're thinking right now that Bitcoin is at $19 or 500 and you think the Abitun is going down, maybe next month is going to be at 14k. So I'm going to secure my profits for the next six months at this current production revenue that the machines are making. So you go to hash market and you sell it to somebody who Juan: [00:32:51] thinks that Bitcoin is going to 30k. So they're ready to buy the hash rate from you with a discount and at 19k because they think it's going to be to 30k the production of the machine. So it's the same as the hash refutors as you say and the markets will decide on this count. As you say, the hash refutors they decided this count. Here in the hash market, [00:33:09] the buyers and sellers will decide what the discount is, what the best discount is and it's more like an open market. But still there's this advantage that miners are going to be receiving the money before mining as you are demanding with the hash refutors. It's the same. And there was going to be a contract and miners were going to be receiving by the time they were mining. It Juan: [00:33:29] wasn't enough from payment. Exactly. I think there was a lot to be said about how people can work on building these different financial products, just the mining process and how it works and how those funds are distributed and how the cost of new facilities and the cost of that capital. There's a lot of key components to make a mining facility work. But I think for [00:33:49] being solved and I think the financial institutions are realizing there's an opportunity in this space as you mentioned and it's not going away. The more the industry mature, I think it's going to be a time where they will be willing to pay upfront and trust the operation. It's going to be more like a personal contract, a direct contract. It's not easy to develop in a generalized way, Juan: [00:34:06] like in a platform that I was talking about. It's difficult for me to give you money upfront for the hash. Are you going to provide me? If later you can turn off the machine and then don't return on the promise. Of course. And that's one of the hardest things to do in this facility. And I think insurance and financing and all that will lead into making a better hash rate marketplace. [00:34:23] Juan, I wanted to thank you one last time for coming on the podcast Digital Gold. It was an amazing time to have you. And hopefully everyone who listened can get an understanding of how mining in Venezuela and South America is changing and how Bitcoin mining is here to stay and how it's able to work with the electrical industries around the world. Thanks. Thanks, man. Thanks. Thanks Juan: [00:34:40] for inviting us. Hi to everybody. Hello to everybody. I invite you to everybody. [00:34:44] 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. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Bitcoin Incentivizing Renewable Energy | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 19 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/karthik-rammohan/ All Episodes Episode 19 # Bitcoin Incentivizing Renewable Energy with Karthik Rammohan Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Karthik Rammohan to discuss bitcoin incentivizing renewable energy. ### Bitcoin Incentivizing Renewable Energy Guest: Karthik Rammohan Episode 19 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:44] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I'm here with Karthik who is a power and environmental product, market professional with ten years of experience and risk management, fundamental analysis and trading of electricity and renewable energy. He's also been a Bitcoin investor since 2013 and served as an advisor to Orm since early 2020 providing insights and information [00:01:01] based on his deep understanding of the energy market. Karthik, welcome to the show. Glad to have you. Karthik: [00:01:05] Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. JohnPaul: [00:01:07] I'm excited to talk more about the energy business Karthik with you on the podcast. Thanks Karthik: [00:01:11] again for coming on. The first thing I want to talk about is the Texas snowstorm. Can you talk to me about what that did to the markets and how you think it's going to affect them over the next couple of months or years to come? Yeah, absolutely. I should first start off with a little story about the snowstorms here [00:01:26] in Texas before talking about the actual implications on the market. I actually, with the current company that I'm working with, I help manage our risk associated with our power contracts in the Texas market in Urkhat. During the storms, I had no internet, no power, and I was just bundled underneath my blankets, gathering the internet on my laptop to my Karthik: [00:01:51] phone and keeping in contact with my coworkers because we were affected quite a bit on the business side due to those freeze-offs and resulting blackouts and super high power prices that resulted, $9,000 per megawatt hour. It was one of those unforgettable situations where you're freezing your butt off, but you still, this is probably the most important [00:02:14] time in my career that I need to pay attention to work. That little juxtaposition was truly unique and something that I will never forget. The fallout from that event has been pretty substantial. One thing is that politically, you're seeing a lot of blowback against renewables, a specifically wind generation in Texas because of the freezes associated with the turbines Karthik: [00:02:37] at the wind farms in Texas. Basically, there was hardly any wind power that was generated during that time. You had natural gas freeze-offs, but it's become a very political situation to the point where you have some bills in the Texas state legislature that are putting the onus. I don't want to get too deep into what's happening, but they're putting additional [00:02:59] responsibilities on renewable generators and essentially adding to the costs of operating wind generation in Texas. Obviously, you're going to get response on the other side from the environmental side saying, this isn't appropriate. There needs to be something else that's done. The political fallout from what happened has been massive. You combine that Karthik: [00:03:20] with Biden getting elected and taking over office in late January, and then boom, this thing in Texas happening. Biden has big energy ambitions, and I should say clean energy ambitions. The combination of all this stuff has just made for an exciting time in our lives to see what's going to be the true long-term fallout of all this stuff happening. We're in for some [00:03:43] pretty intense political fights associated with both what's happening at the federal level and with what happened in ERCOT back in February for sure. People who aren't as familiar, can you give like a two-minute overview on what played out and what order regarding generation going offline during the cold shortage or during Karthik: [00:04:00] the ice storm? It's pretty straightforward. You had wind turbines that froze and that couldn't spin, even though it was windy. You had wind turbines freezing off and you also had at the same time just gas power plants that were not able to operate either due to pipeline issues or [00:04:15] due to issues at the power plant itself. If you're taking out a good portion of the wind generation and you're also taking out a fossil fuel gas generation at the same time, you can easily understand why there was very little, there was not enough generation available to fulfill the demand requirements, the power demand requirements around the state of Texas. Karthik: [00:04:35] So you had blackouts. Blackouts are merely a way to just, it's the last resort, but that's a way to manage the demand kind of over blow that you saw during this event. And as a result, you saw power prices head up to $9,000 per megawatt hour, which is the kind of the cap that Texas has. Power plants don't just sell power into the market. They also sell what are called ancillary [00:04:59] services. So these are services that maintain grid stability for the most part. So you can sell energy into the grid, but you can also provide ancillary services that maintain grid reliability. And one of those ancillary services went up to as high as $20,000 per megawatt hour. But you had all kinds of issues that started from those high prices. And just to kind of dig Karthik: [00:05:23] one step deeper, because I think this is important with a lot of wind generators, wind generators will hedge their forward power sales into the grid. So they will do forward sales at fixed prices for their generated power. And the assumption is that these hedges are on, but you're going to, you know, you're short on the on the hedge side, but you're going to make it up by generating [00:05:46] electricity during those times. But what ended up happening was that you still you have your hedges, but you don't have the wind generation on the other side to make up for it. So you're just, you just kind of have a naked position of being short. And so if you can imagine, if you're selling power at $40 in a hedge, and it goes up to $9,000, that's a lot of money, that's a loss on your hedges. Karthik: [00:06:05] So you have credit issues with counter parties, wind farms, not being able to pay their counter parties. The widespread effect of this is, I don't think it's necessarily understood by everyone just yet, but yeah, it was, it was a disaster for a lot of parties. Now, on the other end of that, if you're serving load in the state of Texas, and you have one of your customers that is blacked out, [00:06:30] when you're serving load, you're buying hedges. And so if you're long the hedges and your customers are kind of blacked out, well, you get you benefit from that, because you know, you bought those hedges at call it, you know, $30, $40, $50, and they're settling at $9,000. So depending on what your load profile is, you could have very much benefited from what happened also. Karthik: [00:06:50] And for those people that are hedging and didn't actually generate wind, what happened to them? Because I know there's people that made hundreds of millions of dollars have the best three or four days of their lives of the wind generations live. And then there's people that, you know, JohnPaul: [00:07:03] went bankrupt. Can you explain that? Is that the main difference? Is because they had the hedge Karthik: [00:07:07] on or hedge off there? That's exactly right. It depends on your hedge profile. So there, there could have been power plants that weren't hedged at all. So you know, usually your peak or tight power plants that kind of just operate when prices go high and they're kind of able to turn on and off. I don't want to say easily, but easier than other bigger than other power plants. [00:07:25] It depends 100% on the risk management associated with the project and how you structured those hedges. And so it's not necessarily easy to know how every single power plant did that, but there were definitely different profiles of hedging that went on. Now, to talk to your question about when, and this has been publicized, a lot of these when projects have tax equity sponsors that are Karthik: [00:07:48] usually big financial institutions, banks and certain others too. And what's been happening is that these wind farms have been filing force mature claims on what happened, essentially saying that the weather event was quote unquote an active God and these guys have hedges, right? So we shouldn't be liable to fulfill these hedges because of a force mature event. And those are kind of [00:08:10] going back and forth. Now you have lawyers that are involved. And so this is, it's getting ugly. I think it's the main conclusion. We haven't seen the full fallout from this just yet. So I think it's very important to kind of pay attention to what's happening and more importantly see what changes come about in the coming months and years as a result of this. We mentioned still not done Karthik: [00:08:31] yet. And I'm one of those big things that there's a lot of credit swaps out there by Shell and potentially BP. Are you familiar with how those are handled or kind of what's the next steps for there? Shell and BP have separate businesses that provide as kind of a backstop for certain smaller retail electricity providers. And so those retail electricity providers, you know, [00:08:51] essentially went under so they by default at the end of the day are operated by Shell and BP. BP just a few days ago actually magically announced that they're going to start a retail energy business. And so I think part of the reason they're doing that is because they have all these retail contracts that they took over as a result of what happened in Texas and they could decide to sell Karthik: [00:09:13] those off to other retail entities or they could just start their own retail energy business and manage those contracts associated with the contracts that they inherited. So yeah, I think the retail electricity business was hit very hard, especially the residential because residential with your commercial and industrial retail electricity, a lot of those entities were blacked out during [00:09:35] the storm, but your residential, you know, you have people living at home who were trying to turn on their heaters, trying to keep themselves warm. Those were the ones that got hit very badly. And I think the most publicized example of that is Gritty. Gritty essentially provided contracts to residential customers that in which you were priced at a variable rate according to the whole Karthik: [00:09:54] sale price of electricity. You know, they were, they're gone now, but other residential electricity providers that provide fixed price contracts to their customers and maybe didn't hedge as well JohnPaul: [00:10:04] as they should have, they got hit very hard for sure. And how do you see Bitcoin miners coming in Karthik: [00:10:09] and helping improve the role ecosystem in the, especially the Texas markets? As we know, there's, you know, thousands of megawatts looking to come online in generation, but then also in consumption now with Bitcoin miners and ancillary services available. Yeah, now we're getting to the, now we're getting to some creative solutions that I've been thinking about. First, we should [00:10:27] take a small step back and look at how the Texas market operates and how other markets in the US operate. So if you go to the grid operators in the Northeast and the Midwest, so that's, you know, New York, PJM, Neeple, which is the kind of the New England area, and then MISO, which is essentially your Midwest. All of these grid operators have what are called capacity Karthik: [00:10:48] markets. And so what a capacity market is, is it is an incentive built into the grid operator that incentivizes power plants to just be available during times of need, during times of emergencies. So you'll have power plants that participate in these capacity markets. They could not be generating any electricity throughout the year, but they're getting capacity payments because they're [00:11:13] quote unquote available when need be. And so this capacity market has provided an additional level of grid reliability in these markets at the Northeast and in the Midwest. The way that Hurkott operates is that there is no capacity market. It is what's called an energy-only market. So the way Hurkott thinks about things is that, you know, we have Hurkott has a price cap of $9,000. Karthik: [00:11:38] So the potential benefits of participating in the energy market outweigh the additional cost to customers that is required to have a capacity market. Because if you have a capacity market, you essentially have another line item on customers bills that says, you know, you're paying for energy, but you're also paying for capacity. And so at the end of the day, it makes retail electricity [00:11:59] more expensive for customers for a capacity market. So the way Hurkott thought about it was, let's have an energy-only market. Let's try to make power essentially as affordable as possible to the customers within Hurkott. Now, what we found out was that the price you pay for providing that low price of electricity 99% of the time is that 1% of the time or 2% of the time, Karthik: [00:12:21] you have the potential for disaster. I don't want to say it's been a political kind of difference, but it's been a philosophical difference between Hurkott and the other grid operators for a long time now. And this is where I think Bitcoin mining can come in. I actually think that Bitcoin mining in Hurkott and in other, you know, what's happening in the markets that I mentioned before in the [00:12:42] Northeast and the Midwest is that those capacity markets are pretty low. There's the capacity payments that power plants receive are not enough to keep them afloat for the long term. So this can also be utilized in those markets too, but to me Bitcoin mining presents an opportunity to utilize itself as a kind of a proxy capacity market. So the idea is is that you have power plants Karthik: [00:13:06] 95% of the time mining Bitcoin and during times when they are needed during situations like this, or even when power prices are high enough to justify, you can have those power plants sell their power into the grid. And it's as simple as that. In this way, you don't need to implement programs like capacity to implement any changes in a grid operator takes a long time. And for me, [00:13:26] a Bitcoin mining presents kind of an immediate solution to not subsize, but to incentivize power plants to operate by mining Bitcoin, but also if power prices do get to a point where it's economic for them to sell power into the grid as opposed to mining Bitcoin, they have the optionality to do that. And that optionality is only is that's available in Texas, but you think JohnPaul: [00:13:46] that is going to continue to be a large revenue stream or for Bitcoin miners? What do you think Karthik: [00:13:53] that's going to fade out as more miners joining? I think that's a bloated question. It depends on the cost of mining. I think that with where Bitcoin is right now and the profitability profile associated with power prices in Texas, the numbers worked out for sure. Now, if power prices start to go up because essentially Bitcoin mining gets to the point where a lot of power plants are [00:14:19] seeing Bitcoin mining is more profitable than selling power onto the grid, I think you have market mechanisms to fix that. If power prices get high, then that incentivizes more renewable generation to get built, for example. So I think the important aspect of this is that you keep you're not waiting for a central entity like Urkhat to come up with a solution. The solution Karthik: [00:14:39] is already pretty much there. And the solution provides forces that will change power price dynamics, but you can respond to that. You can build more generation. You can build more renewable generation more importantly. And so I think it's a much lower hurdle to present Bitcoin mining as a solution than waiting for the state of Texas, Urkhat to present a solution is kind of the way I look at [00:15:03] it. That is a good way to look at it. The free market is you're saying the structure is already built and now Bitcoin miners are going to come in adopt that structure and use it. And even if JohnPaul: [00:15:11] it's scaling up, you know, gigawatts, it'll go each way. What are your thoughts on some of the, Karthik: [00:15:18] any of them? Will there be new tariffs introduced because of the snowstorm into the markets? You mentioned on renewables, will that increase the price of power or tariffs even for ancillary services? How might those change due to the snowstorm? And we mentioned I'm talking previously about the potential to build a, I believe a supply market or some sort of market that Texas doesn't JohnPaul: [00:15:37] have that other markets have. Can you talk a little more about that? Right now, what's in Texas, Karthik: [00:15:43] the state legislature, are bills to essentially charge renewable facilities with ancillary services are charged to load, meaning to customers, retail customers. And the bill essentially moves those charges from customers to renewable generation, which it's an additional cost for renewable generation. And so if you have an additional cost, they're going to be offering in their power into the grid [00:16:06] at higher prices to pay for that cost. So ultimately, it's going to cause prices to go up for sure, if that's passed. I don't see a capacity market being implemented in Texas only because, but again, this is, this is political. You know, what do I know? I think that that veers a little too far away from how the market has operated historically. I hate to say this because this, it was a tragic Karthik: [00:16:33] event. I mean, there were a lot of lies affected, but before the event, Texas had the lowest power rates of any state by far. And that's a big, it's a big advantage for the state of Texas to have that. So you really have to balance the additional costs associated with the capacity market with trying to maintain low prices within Urquat. And I think to me personally, I think Bitcoin mining [00:16:55] satisfies both. You know, if you have Bitcoin mining, the Bitcoin mining itself is the incentive that power plants need to kind of not sell power into the grid. And to me, it's a perfect solution to this little problem. I think we both would agree that it's a perfect solution, Karthik. But how has your discussions been with power producers and energy companies before Bitcoin's price rise Karthik: [00:17:15] and maybe after the price rise in 2021? Has that changed? Bitcoin mining is a very new concept to most people in the world. And I think generators are slowly kind of coming around to the fact that this is a viable opportunity to monetize on power generation. A lot of power plants have these long term hedges and those hedges are retiring. So they're going to be selling into a merchant market. And [00:17:37] so if you're selling into a merchant market in which prices are low, even after the snowstorm in Urquat, Urquat prices are still, if you look at the forwards and kind of what's happening, they're still relatively low. So I think at the end of the day for your investors and for management, you want to maximize profitability in the operations of these power plants. And Bitcoin mining is the Karthik: [00:17:59] way to do that. There are some hurdles associated with that. There's credit issues with miners and things like that. But I think that slowly but surely, generators are starting to see the light in JohnPaul: [00:18:11] selling their power to miners, for sure. And let's talk about those credit issues. So traditional Karthik: [00:18:15] contract, when you build a power plant, you have a PPA. It's for 10 to 15 years, you're able to go get a finance or on the deal. Bitcoin miners can't provide that level of guarantee, let alone five years, let alone even a month. Right now in the industry, what we do is one or two month deposits, and then you're paying for the power before you use it. So the thought process is the credit risk JohnPaul: [00:18:34] is going to be limited. But you're not able to finance out a new project. Can you talk a little Karthik: [00:18:37] bit more about how that might be changing? To tell you the truth, I think you would know a lot more about this than I would. Once we have a history of Bitcoin mining performance, to which you can evaluate the credit risk, you can evaluate the revenue risk, I think that's when the comfort will increase. But until then, I do think that at the end of the day, unless you have kind of [00:18:58] some good infrastructure to give generators that confidence that the credit risk is worth it, I think it gets easier as we move forward in time is all I guess I'm saying. Because for me, a lot of the Bitcoin mines that I'm seeing build that are pulling electricity from existing generators are pulling from generators that are smaller, that are generating electricity from Karthik: [00:19:18] more expensive fuel feed stock. So something has to give is I guess all I'm saying. And at the end of the day with where Bitcoin prices are trading right now, I don't think there's an issue with Bitcoin miners paying a little bit more than what other offtakers are willing to pay. And so I think that's where the slack kind of gives. I think that's where Bitcoin miners can come in and really make [00:19:38] a mark. I definitely agree with you on that. I think that as the industry matures, hopefully the offtake agreements that'll be able to hedge your Bitcoin out six or 12 months, be able to head stuff like that, it will mature. But I mean, we're still not seeing that in the industry at all in any way. So it's very disappointing that these power companies are like, oh, you know, Karthik: [00:19:55] how do we get 10 years of offtake? Which sadly, you're just not going to be able to get in the [00:19:59] current structure of Bitcoin. But that is, it's a feature in a bug. BORM provides a bridge to the Karthik: [00:20:04] digital currency mining world for individual investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over 70 years of mining experience, 24 seven 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 or on capital ventures.com. [00:20:26] One thing I will say is that I think you're going to start to see entities that are interested in becoming middlemen between the generators and the Bitcoin miners, because the math is very persuasive for the viability of Bitcoin miners. So I think what's going to start to happen is you're going to start to see, I don't want to call them traders, but entities that are willing to Karthik: [00:20:44] take on the risk of the Bitcoin miners, but that also have, can back to back with these generators and that are maybe a bit more quote unquote credit worthy. So I think that's where the opportunities will start to happen. I don't think it's at least in the beginning, it's going to be directly between generators and the miners themselves. I think there's just going to have to be some [00:21:04] middlemen that come in and see the opportunity in providing that service, essentially a credit sleeve between the miners and the generators. 100%. I think that's a huge market opportunity that most people aren't looking at because they don't see it as a market opportunity or even understand the risk associated with it. Do you see Bitcoin mining companies moving into the electric generation Karthik: [00:21:26] space or do you think the electric generation companies are going to come into the Bitcoin space faster? Because there's one Bitcoin mining company up in New York that owns a power plant, the first ones that filed in their S1 with support.com that they own this mission plant and they're one of the first people to do that. But do you see that trend continuing [00:21:42] in the asset acquisition of Bitcoin mining companies or do you see that credit issue holding a lot of problems for them? I think that's actually more possible. You're going to start to see investors become a little creative. Bitcoin mining is not just a crypto plant anymore, it's an electricity play. If you're making plays in electricity, you buy power plants. What I see is more Karthik: [00:22:06] crypto mining companies and people like yourself coming up with creative mechanisms of potentially, if there's an issue with negotiating power purchase agreements with power plants and just buying the power plants of themselves. I think that is more likely than waiting for the comfort level of generators to come to fruition. And are traders trading firms looking at Bitcoin mining as an [00:22:29] opportunity or even Bitcoin and any of these as wasted sell electricity in different markets? I think it's definitely it's nascent. But I do think that trading companies, I was talking about potential middlemen between power generators and Bitcoin miners. I think trading companies are perfect candidate but to be those entities. So absolutely. It is like I said, it is pretty Karthik: [00:22:52] nascent right now. But again, once the comfort level is there and the understanding of how Bitcoin miners operate is there, I think it will accelerate the participation of traders for sure. JohnPaul: [00:23:04] How has your involvement or work in Bitcoin affected your life and how do you see it continuing to Karthik: [00:23:08] affect the energy industry or specifically as a trader? We just kind of touched on firms jumping into this space. But personally, how has it changed how you view the world, how do you view the energy markets? Oh, massively. I mean, it's kind of funny because I got into Bitcoin. I started investing in Bitcoin in 2013. And I was at the time I was involved in the power trading space. But I never [00:23:30] saw the real connection between the two at that point in time. As I've kind of understood talking to people like you, the relative flexibility of Bitcoin mining, for example, the ability to participate in demand response programs, for example. And I think I really see Bitcoin mining as a way to stabilize the intermittency associated with renewable generation. The big issue that Karthik: [00:23:56] comes up and what we saw in Texas recently is that renewable generation is not the most reliable form of electricity generation. And I think you have issues where your renewable generation is overproducing and you have other situations where it's underproducing. One situation where it's overproducing Bitcoin mining is a perfect balancing plate, for sure, for overproduction of [00:24:18] renewable energy. And it works out for Bitcoin mining because usually when you have overgeneration of renewable energy, your power prices are also very low. On the other side of the coin, after what happened in Texas, I started thinking about capacity markets and how they operate and other I couldn't help but think, well, if you have Bitcoin miners as kind of a backstop to reliability Karthik: [00:24:39] to power plants that can provide reliability in situations like this, it's the perfect solution. So I really see Bitcoin as a big participant in the balancing of power generation profile in the world, but especially here in the United States going forward. And so I think that that's the big opportunity with Bitcoin mining is to really be an interplay with the power markets [00:25:03] and to really provide a bit more certainty when evaluating renewable energy generation. So I think you'll read a lot about kind of how Bitcoin mining contributes to, contributes to emissions. I actually see the opposite. I actually see Bitcoin mining as a method of making renewable generation more profitable because of its availability. So I actually think you can see more renewable Karthik: [00:25:26] generation as a result of Bitcoin mining being and just being there. JohnPaul: [00:25:30] When people who aren't familiar with the wind farm process, can you explain the tax equity Karthik: [00:25:34] structure and how those farms currently move off of a tax equity deal? I can talk about the tax credit structure for wind and for other renewables too. But essentially the way it works is right now there is a production tax credit of roughly $24 per megawatt hour for 10 years that wind generators receive. And so when a wind generator starts generating [00:25:56] electricity, it receives this $24 production tax credit for 10 years. And this tax credit, because the developers of wind farms don't really have an appetite, they hardly have any tax liability, this benefit of the production tax credit on the wind side is sold off as a source of financing for the wind project itself. So the tax credits are essentially sold off to mainly financial entities Karthik: [00:26:22] that have use for them, that have tax liability, and that have a use for these tax credits. And in exchange, they become a tax equity investor in the wind project. Now, I think someone's going to have to check me on this, but I believe tax equity provides roughly 50% of the financing needs for wind projects. So it's a big deal of the selling of this tax, this tax benefit is a major contributor [00:26:44] to the financing structure of wind facilities. And that's hence why when you see negative prices on the grid, the reason prices are negative is because you want to maximize the receipt of these tax credits. And in order to do that, you need to be generating. And so even if you're generating at a time when the power really isn't needed, you're still incentivized to pay someone Karthik: [00:27:05] to take that power, because you're receiving $24 in tax credits from the federal government. And so those are the times when you have your over generation of electricity. And when I say, well, if you have Bitcoin mining that kind of takes up that extra generation, then you really balance out the grid. But you also provide, you provide price stability for the renewable projects themselves. [00:27:26] On the solar side, there's what's called an investment tax credit, meaning it's an upfront payment of 30% of the capital cost to the developer themselves, to the developer. And so same thing, the developer will sell that upfront receipt of the investment tax credit to tax equity sponsors. And that'll finance a portion of the build out of the renewable facility. That's kind of how Karthik: [00:27:50] the structure of the tax benefits works. Now, we're going through this real time. President Biden is trying to extend these tax credits. They're not going to be as high as the $24, but they'll probably be at the 60% of that. This kind of incentive structure is likely to exist for a while going forward. And is a big reason why we've had this massive build out of wind here in the [00:28:12] United States. And so once these farms come off their tax credits and they're producing power, the market's going to negative, are they turning these wind farms on and off? Or are they like, because they don't want to have to pay someone if they're not going to need tax credits? So, are the wind farms being controlled or are they just always on? Or they offer into the grid at Karthik: [00:28:29] their cost of operations. So they're not offering at negative prices anymore. Usually what happens is that there's what's called, there's a process called repowering. So you actually have the option, once you get to your 10th year, to basically replace your turbines, upgrade all your equipment, and then qualify for an additional 10 years of production tax credits. So a lot of wind farms [00:28:50] will go through this process of repowering. But if that option is not there, then, yes, they operate like a merchant asset and they're offering into the grid at the economic price. It depends on what wind farm you go to. They're not going to be on all the time, but like other wind farms. So, you are correct in that. There is a bit more planning needed in terms of how to operate Karthik: [00:29:12] wind farms after their production tax credit. Usually a lot of them will still have PPA's, will still have power off-take agreements with other entities that are still going on. So they will still sell power into the grid, but they won't be offering it at the crazy low prices, because of the production tax credits. So there's some gymnastics. And that's what's happening with [00:29:31] a lot of wind farms right now. These are coming off their 10 year production tax credits. Some are coming off their long-term power sale agreements. And it's a conundrum. I don't think there's a straightforward answer in terms of how to manage power wind plants after the PTC and the JohnPaul: [00:29:46] power off-take agreements come off. You mentioned that upgrading the turbines. Can you talk a Karthik: [00:29:51] little bit more about that process? And so as a Bitcoin miner, if I'm plugging into a facility and they have to do that, they're doing that 10 year upgrade, we saw in the past, they're like, okay, we have credit issues now because you can't guarantee the off-take. We can't finance JohnPaul: [00:30:05] a whole project. We want to sell in the next 10 with the PPA for the next 10 years. Can you talk Karthik: [00:30:09] a little bit more about what that process entails and how that could affect mining firms? Absolutely. I mean, yeah, it definitely affects mining firms. And it's something that needs to be looked at obviously before. So essentially, I haven't been too much on the wind development side, but there's definitely a portion of time where your wind farm is not [00:30:29] operating from the, due to the upgrade processes we just talked about. So it is something that needs to be paid attention to. So anytime you're doing an off-take from a wind generator, it's definitely a good idea to know where they are in the timeline of receiving their production tax credit, where they are in the timeline of their PPA off-take, and really understanding Karthik: [00:30:50] like how that affects the mining operations. If you don't have the wind farm, if you're in a regulated grid operator, okay, we're not, there's no wind, okay, so then we're probably going to have to pay more for the time that we're sourcing power from the grid as opposed to the wind farm. So that's definitely something that needs to be taken into account because yeah, you're not going to JohnPaul: [00:31:09] have that wind blowing for a good portion of time. Can you explain a little bit to me, Karthik, Karthik: [00:31:13] as well like PPA agreements and how those work? Because I understand like, does a PPA buy have to be local to the electric, to the wind farm generation, or can they be like in California? JohnPaul: [00:31:24] Like how does that work? Because I know the stranded energy is the whole problem. It's like Karthik: [00:31:27] these wind farms are built all in areas where no one buys the power, and are you telling me they're financing these deals with companies that are saying we're going to use clean energy in JohnPaul: [00:31:35] California because we're Shopify? Like how does that work? That is a very, very loaded question. Karthik: [00:31:40] It wasn't meant to be, I'm just curious. Yeah, yeah, it's a very, it's a cause of quite a bit of debate within the renewable industry. So I think it's appropriate to kind of start with a little timeline to help answer your question. So when companies and different types of offtakers were trying to find quote unquote renewable energy, the first thing they kind of did was just buy [00:32:01] the renewable energy credits, which are the renewable attributes associated with renewable energy generation. So when you had situations like that, you had entities say in New Jersey buying renewable energy credits from renewable generators in Texas, for example. And so there's no power deliverable, there's no power delivered to the entity in New Jersey. It's just you're just buying Karthik: [00:32:23] the renewable attributes from that facility, and then you retire them and you can claim that you are being environmentally responsible, or you can make the ESG claims that you want to make. Now, kind of what's happened is that that practice has been called out a little bit, and now you see more physical offtakes. Now for a physical offtake to work, you do have to be in the same ISO. So if [00:32:47] you're in PJM, you can be you can be a factory in Pennsylvania, and do a physical power renewable purchase from a wind farm in say Indiana or Illinois, which and because they're both in PJM, you do need to be in the same ISO in order to do kind of the underneath the behind the scenes business of scheduling and deliverability and all that good stuff. It is possible to purchase renewable power Karthik: [00:33:13] from a facility in another ISO, but you have to go through the process of actually scheduling that power into the interface of the two ISOs and actually delivering it into the set. It gets more complicated as you kind of deviate away from the ISO that you're in. And so I think the answer to your question is that you really have to read the fine print of these offtakes to truly understand [00:33:37] what level of scrutiny companies are going through to get their renewable energy. Are they just buying renewable energy credits, retiring them, or are they actually going to a facility, scheduling the power, delivering the power to the load? So it's just it's different from agreement to agreement. And I think we're going to see a lot more scrutiny on the claims that are made by entities that Karthik: [00:34:02] are doing these types of deals. And so that's a that's a challenge. Now from a Bitcoin mining perspective, I think with Bitcoin miners saying if you're an ercot, I think having proximity, if you're a Bitcoin miner in West Texas, you're going to be mining most of your electricity using renewable energy because most of the electricity in West Texas just comes from renewable energy. [00:34:23] And so it just depends on the level of comfort you have of making those claims. I think the point of that answer is to really explain the level of grayness in actually making these claims and the different options that are available to to make these claims. But at the end of the day, JohnPaul: [00:34:39] it depends on the fine print. I think is the answer. No, I appreciate you giving me that answer. And Karthik: [00:34:43] do you have you looked at Energy Web Token or any of those other projects that are on the blockchain to try to decentralize energy trading? So I've been hearing about this for a while. There have been a few projects that have come out that are that are kind of doing this. Those are only going to, I think, ironically, the solution to what I just mentioned about sourcing renewable energy and [00:35:04] really quantifying the deliverability of it is going to be a blockchain solution. So I have looked at there have been some projects going. There was a pilot project in Brooklyn that created essentially a peer-to-peer energy training system amongst participants in the blockchain network. This was a few years ago, I think. And so there have been, you know, I have been hearing bits and pieces of Karthik: [00:35:25] how blockchain can really enhance the analysis of how renewable energy is being utilized and where it goes. So I think that in terms of me keeping in touch with kind of what's going on, I wouldn't say that I've been doing that. But having said that, I think the scrutiny of how renewable energy is generated and delivered is only going to get higher moving forward. And [00:35:46] the blockchain solution will only serve to make that happen. I definitely agree there, perfect, on the blockchain solutions. It's like you said, which one's going to scale, who was going to adopt, where's the real use cases, is it in electricity trading or is it in just like the carbon markets and how are organizations going to move forward on this technology? Karthik: [00:36:06] I think, is there anything else you wanted to touch on that we haven't talked about today? I think just one thing is that the next year to two years is going to be very important in how the energy market, the electricity market here in the United States evolves on a looking forward basis. We have legislation both at the state level and at the federal level that's really going to [00:36:28] change quite a bit of how the electricity market works. And as a result, is going to change how Bitcoin mining works too. So the one thing I think I want to say is really pay attention to what happens in the next year to two years, because it may dictate what's going to happen for the next 30, 40 years. So I think we're at a really unique time to where we need to really pay Karthik: [00:36:51] attention to what's happening and glean the results of what's happening. So it's an exciting time. So I can't wait to see how things unfold and see the opportunities that arise from these changes that are occurring. And Karthik, we talked a lot about PPA's, renewable energy, energy production, distribution, different markets. But is anyone talking about grid stability or [00:37:14] building out better grid infrastructure? Or there's just no incentives there? Absolutely. Especially after what happened in Texas and February, that is a bigger and bigger conversation. I can definitely say that at the federal level, it is being talked about quite a bit. And it's a balancing act that's going to have to be taken into account. The more Karthik: [00:37:31] renewables that you have on the grid, pretty much the less stability you have. And you have storage as a solution, hydrogen as a solution. But those aren't going to be solutions in the short term for the stability issue that you're talking about. So I do think that there's going to have to be a balancing act that's played between now and when those other technologies become [00:37:51] more viable. So it's definitely a wrench that's been thrown into the discussion. It was kind of in the discussion before, but it's a much bigger topic of the discussion when asking how do we modernize our grid going forward? So that's what people that are much smarter than me are going to have to figure out quite frankly. So hopefully Bitcoin mining is a part of it. I think it's a very Karthik: [00:38:13] natural solution in the short term. But we'll have to see. We'll have to see. And Karthik, JohnPaul: [00:38:19] where can people connect with you online and just stay up to date on what you're working on or Karthik: [00:38:23] what you're interested in? I think the best place is on LinkedIn. Just search for my name, Karthik Ramohan on LinkedIn. And yeah, that's probably the best place to connect with me and JohnPaul: [00:38:33] engage with me. Well, thanks for sharing that information, Karthik and for sharing everything else today on, like I mentioned, the PPAs and the Bitcoin mining side. I'm excited to see where Karthik: [00:38:41] this space is going to go. It's only growing. It's only maturing. It's only getting bigger. The energy consumption, if a Bitcoin in my opinion is a feature and not a bug. Have you heard any internal communication about the carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining and maybe how that could be perceived as bad or people talking about energy usage of Bitcoin mining as a problem in the energy [00:39:02] sector? Or is it being viewed more of like as a solution to the problems that you're discussing such as good reliability? And maybe that's just more on the news front or the kind of the people that are not necessarily understanding the full implications of the energy markets and how intricate they are and how many how consumption and production really go hand in hand. Karthik: [00:39:20] I will admit, I think most of the public impression that I've heard about Bitcoin mining has been more towards the contributes to more emissions. I think I don't want to I don't want to by no means do I want to toot my own horn. I haven't heard of anyone talking about Bitcoin mining as a solution for grid reliability to tell you the truth. I think it's a very natural solution, but [00:39:41] I haven't heard too many people talk about it. I think that the public opinion seems to be that it contributes more to global warming. Actually, I was just watching I watch Bill Maher on HBO and he just talked about this two weeks ago. And I think it just kind of like you said, it kind of shows there needs to be a bit more understanding of how the electricity markets work. And one Karthik: [00:40:01] thing that I've always talked about is yeah, Bitcoin mining can be used as a balancing entity for renewable generation. It can be used as a solution for grid reliability. Bitcoin mining can also if you're a Bitcoin miner, you have you're going to have some good tax liability. There are advantages for Bitcoin miners to themselves fund renewable generation in the areas that they mine it. And so [00:40:24] one idea I've kind of thrown around is that if you're a Bitcoin miner for every megawatt hour or megawatt of mining capacity that you have invest in two megawatts of renewable generation. And it's only going to help everyone involved. So I think, you know, and renewable investment in renewables is, you know, when you take into account kind of the different cash streams that Karthik: [00:40:45] are available, it's a great investment. So I think there needs to be kind of more thought put into how Bitcoin mining can help in balancing out the grid. And if there's a bit more thought put into kind of how Bitcoin mining can actually enhance renewable generation, I think it'll be easy to see that it's actually it's a great solution to a lot of the issues we see in power markets. [00:41:08] You were the one who sent me the ARK Invest article, correct? JohnPaul: [00:41:11] I think I did. Yes. Yes. Can you talk a little bit more about what, you know, what they got right Karthik: [00:41:15] there and what they potentially might have missed off or can miss calculations if you've got a chance to review it? I think the one thing they got right off of it is the potential for balancing. I think that was the one thing that kind of came out to me. I haven't really been able to scrutinize the numbers that they have in the article too much. But I think the, and you kind of mentioned [00:41:36] this before, the power markets are a very granular market, right? Like you need to match generation and consumption for, you know, every hour or even sub-hourly. So I think at the end of the day, when mining provides the opportunity to make that match impossible. And that article does a great job of highlighting that conclusion, that is what I'll say. 100% agree. And I think we're here Karthik: [00:41:58] for here for the ages until the last Bitcoin mining block is mined in 2140 and I'm super excited. To be working with you, Karthik, on this and excited to see what the energy industry is going to, you know, make of this space in the next 10 years as it grows to consume a lot more power. JohnPaul: [00:42:14] And hash rate only looks like it's going up. So thanks again for the time. And this was a great Karthik: [00:42:19] opportunity to record one of our conversations and jump on. And next time we got out, we'll see how it gets. But this was great, Karthik. I enjoyed it. Absolutely. It's definitely an interesting intersection of two markets with crypto and power. So I'm definitely excited to see where [00:42:35] this comes. Awesome. Well, thanks, Karthik. Again, everyone, mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Social Tokens to Incentivize Followers | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 17 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/lawson-baker/ All Episodes Episode 17 # Social Tokens to Incentivize Followers with Lawson Baker Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Lawson Baker to discuss social tokens to incentivize followers. ### Social Tokens to Incentivize Followers Guest: Lawson Baker Episode 17 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:31] Welcome to the Digital Gold podcast. Today I'm here with Lawson who is a digital nomad internet native in crypto enthusiasts. As the founder of Rau Rau Rau, Lawson's dream is to increase the velocity of money on the internet with crypto, social experience. Rau Rau is a social crypto company creating experiences around the crypto media, AKNFTs [00:01:02] and social money which consists of personal and community tokens. Lawson is also an advisor to Hashflow which is a DeFi bridge between Off-Chame liquidity and AMMs. He is an on-deck founder fellow. Additionally, Lawson has served on a variety of nonprofit board of directors including Chairman of the Monos United International and Nonprofit Bending Special Needs Schools JohnPaul: [00:01:23] in Peru. Lawson, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me. I'm excited to chat today. So just to kind of fully wrap up the intro, I'm Lawson, founder of Rau Rau Social and been in and around the crypto space for it's hard to count the years now. Since probably [00:01:44] like 2014-2015, my background was in investment banking, left investment banking to join Synapse in the U.S. and our first customers in 2014-2015 were crypto exchanges and crypto apps. As a result, I had one foot in the future of banking in FinTech for banking APIs. So APIs are basically tools to allow for FinTech's new tech companies to easily connect to essentially banking infrastructure. JohnPaul: [00:02:09] Anything a bank can do, Synapse essentially turned it into an API. As a result, I had one foot in FinTech and one foot in crypto. And over time, obviously completely fell down the crypto rabbit hole and was essentially observing the innovation in the space. And what it came down to is the FinTech and banking apps were really more of just pretty UIs and [00:02:33] pretty apps on top of banks. Banks aren't great at building apps and so FinTech's are. While the crypto companies, this was still pretty early. This was still predominantly like the Bitcoin tipping days. I think you've been around for a long time, JP, but the Lawson: [00:02:44] consumer like Change Tip and the groups like that, they were doing micro tipping and stuff like that. In addition to lots of exchanges, most exchanges in the 2014-15-16-17 era, if they were in the U.S. Coinbase, Avro, Zepo, Kraken, you name it, they all use us in a warm, full, form or fashion. And over time, the innovation I was seeing on the crypto [00:03:04] side definitely seemed much more novel than they can build a pretty app. It was more critical like infrastructure. They were changing the way money works. And obviously that kind of took me down this path of like, I had to work full time in crypto. And so I actually left early 18 to go full time where I worked at briefly at a company called TokenSoft, where Lawson: [00:03:25] basically building an Emily Financial Assets on blockchains and left there in early 2020 to start working on RIA. So when I left TokenSoft, I felt like a time to go out to consumers. Basically two B2B companies were first, kind of the future of FinTech and banking. Second, TokenSoft is the future of what a financial assets look like on blockchains like Ethereum. [00:03:48] And I left there in March of 2020 and started working on what was MoneyMell at the time, which has since been rebranded to rah-rah.social. And MoneyMell and rah-rah are basically a combination of two narratives. The first is our relationship with money is changing. And the second is we're leaving the information age and entering an age that is based around connections, Lawson: [00:04:12] engagement, and essentially entertainment. And so the narratives are, I'll dive into each of those. First, our relationship with money and what leads to social money. Our relationship with money over the past, you know, thousands of years, everybody's, everybody in crypto's red books on money. But I'll just start with paper money. Paper money, as we [00:04:32] see it today, if you still have some, first, it's got your home team on it, i.e. your government. Second, it has somebody you saw in history class on it. And third, there's a tactile relationship to spending it, right? And so money has utility, but it also has this social signaling thing. For example, if you were to spend $100, Chris, $100 bill, Lawson: [00:04:52] a Benjamin, that has a different social signal than spending a five or even a $20 bill. And there's something about spending that one that says a little bit something different about you. And in the same way, when we moved to debit cards and credit cards, it was that we were doing that as well. First, it was really just marketing and branding. So it [00:05:08] had a Bank of America logo on it or whatever your bank was. But then we started basically creating a class system, silver card, gold card, platinum card, black card. And that black card was heavier than those other cards. And that heaviness. And when you handed that whatever color card that was, black, gold, platinum, whatever, you were trying to pace Lawson: [00:05:25] for something, but you were also signaling something about yourself. You were saying, you know, I'm in a different class than other people, right? And so there was, there was this very signaling nature around money separate from just the utility around it. The problem is when we went online, we lost all essentially social metadata around the utility of money. [00:05:44] We had debit card and credit card, digits, a string of digits, expiration dates, billing addresses. And if it was a banking platform, it was really just like, here's my balance, send and receive purely utilitarian. And that actually fits a whole lot into, you know, kind of what the information age is. The information age is all about it's very transactional in Lawson: [00:06:01] nature. The information age, you know, this is part of the second narrative. The information age has been incredible. The internet opened up and unlocked all of the information in the world to make it easily accessible by anybody and also, frankly, free. And so if you were going to transact for something online, traditionally, it wasn't something that was media based, you [00:06:20] know, music, pictures, things like that. It was normally like for some sort of service, or you were buying something off Amazon. And while everything was really utilitarian with the spending and the money, you know, fast forward to today, I believe we're leaving the information age and we're entering an age of connections and engagement, entertainment, influences are Lawson: [00:06:40] a good signal of this. The corporation is dead. The influencer is live. Start up founders, you know, I believe we're trending away from start founders needing to be technical to start up founders needing to be influencers in a weird way. They can essentially bootstrap the goodwill of a company that doesn't have an exist, it doesn't have a name brand or at all with their social [00:07:00] clout, there are tons of followers on YouTube or influencer Instagram or Twitter or TikTok or whatever. And as we head into this age of entertainment and connections, essentially, what we observed as we were researching and testing ideas for money mail and now rah rah is people don't want to spend money for entertainment and they don't really know how to quantify it. The example I give is Lawson: [00:07:23] like if you were to post an Instagram post, right, like the person who posted it and the person who consumed it really have no way to objectively say what is the value of this. And so right now, the things that are having traction for social platform social social media influencers are kind of sort of tipping solutions. There are things like Patreon is like authoristically giving to [00:07:46] someone, right? There's a portion of the pie of people who will authoriously give to influencers and creators of things they like, but the most people kind of want something extra for it, right? And so that's kind of the nuance we started to understand when we were money mail and essentially what's happening is where society is starting to change that connection and how you connect with Lawson: [00:08:07] those people essentially with digital objects. In video games, we've had social money like things and digital objects for a long time. Most video games have their own currency, Fortnite has Fortnite be bucks, and that currency is meant to buy things to consume in the game. If the game's like a shooter game, it's like bullets and shields and stuff like that. If it's a different game, it's [00:08:27] maybe to build a house or something to like communicate or connect with other people. Taking that over to social, we're effectively entering a very similar type of thing. And NFTs are kind of a good example of that. NFTs are ownership of what would have otherwise been a Instagram post, right? Or social money, i.e. money of the community, could be a combination of a few things. Today in crypto, Lawson: [00:08:52] we have personal tokens, community tokens, and maybe even community money in some cases. Personal tokens are influencers. Community tokens are communities of people around ideas. Good examples of that outside of crypto would be something like Wall Street Bets inside a crypto. A good example of a community token would be something like FWB, Friends with Benefits or RNG, [00:09:13] Random Number Generator, or maybe even Whale Token. Whale Token started off as a great NFT creator who stuck all his NFTs into a DAO and gave or sold away tokens to ownership of the DAO. But there's this community thing that's almost separate from the art. And so some community tokens start off as a DAO and become a community. Some community tokens start off as a community Lawson: [00:09:36] and become a DAO. FWB and RNG are good examples of communities, tokens that are becoming DAOs, while Whale Token is a good example of a DAO that's becoming a community. And what those things represent social tokens, personal money, community tokens, and NFTs is exactly everything that exists in social media today. Individuals, communities, media, content of music, video, gifs, animations, [00:09:57] reactions, whatever. And so at Rara Social, we're essentially trying to lean into that. We say we're a social wallet and crypto experience company. And what we mean by that is crypto for 10 years has also still been pretty transactional. But we're pretty good with memes. And yes, like DeFi is all about making field farming and earning interest on tokens and using DAI Lawson: [00:10:19] to pay for a contractor in UK. I pay a lot of my contractors in USDC or stablecoins. That's very transactional. But as the DeFi yield farming summer of last year, Lewis's huge meme quality was all around farming, yams, sushi, basically every food group that we could find the emoji for. We created a meme for it. I would argue probably Dogecoin was the original meme [00:10:42] cryptocurrency. And I was tweeting about that a year or two ago. And it was true at the time, and people knew it, but we didn't fully understand it until what's happening now. I mean, like, Doge is up. I don't even know how many thousand percent now. But it's a good example of that Doge has a utility. You can use Doge as money. But there's this meme quality to it that Lawson: [00:11:01] is something else, but something very special. And that meme quality effectively aligns people who relate to one idea or one thing and kind of helps them kind of connect. And so Rauraw social is trying to amplify any type of social experiences around personal tokens, community tokens, and NFTs. And so how we're doing that is essentially we're starting with social NFT auctions inside [00:11:21] of telegrams and discords. I'll pause there. You probably have a few questions. Yeah, that was a great representation. I think of the social money space for the listeners. When it comes to personal JohnPaul: [00:11:30] tokens, how do you see those evolving? And what are use cases that people are using to use them Lawson: [00:11:35] right now or to use social tokens to create social tokens to work with social tokens? Yeah. So in the context of social money, the personal tokens, the community tokens, I think the community tokens are the ones that are a little bit more innovative right now. The personal tokens need a little bit more, any more innovation, but it also just needs to marinate. [00:11:51] Like, I don't think we fully understand what we should do yet with personal tokens. There's a lot of great personal tokens that exist right now, but their use cases is very transactional and not very novel yet. And so, you know, what areas that we could innovate in personal tokens and even community tokens is A, how they're distributed and B, how they're used. Today, individual personal Lawson: [00:12:10] tokens are primarily distributed via putting up, you know, LP interest in Uniswap and anybody can go buy it there or somebody like Alex token or a coin artist. Occasionally they give them a way to people who help them do something like find an engineer for Showtime and Alex or are somehow contributing to something they need help with. And so it's kind of like a back and forth. Like, [00:12:30] here's my token for helping with something in the context of many of those, you know, personal tokens. There's another one here's first. Here's first is a DJ who has a discord. He's a good example of one that's a little bit started to innovate. And so he's combining effectively access with use. And so both community tokens today are primarily used to gate access Lawson: [00:12:52] to something. They get access right now to in some cases, maybe media like NFTs, but most of them are primarily being used to gate access to chats. And these chats is essentially like this power communities. So RNG, FWB community tokens, and first are our first personal token all have token curated chats. And these token curated chats are using tools like CoLabland. There's another [00:13:16] group called Alti, Alti does stuff on like WhatsApp primarily at Telegram. And while CoLabland is killing it on discord and and telegram. And what this does is this tool is bought effectively checks your MetaMask or your wallet to see if you have a certain number of a specific token in the context of first. I think it's 300 first tokens or maybe a thousand to get in or something like FWB. Lawson: [00:13:42] FWB. I think it's now 60 FWB tokens that you must hold in your wallet provably to gain access to the chat. And so those are good examples of like use access restrictions at social tokens. In the context of use, you know, back to just to finish up the personal token narrative, Harrison first, he DJ'd our holiday party. So we closed the safe round and so we did a safe fashion show safe [00:14:05] from the money simple. And it was basically a huge party in our discord server. And he was DJing it and I paid him, I forget how many thousand first tokens. So I went and bought them and I paid him to come DJ there. And we did like, it was like a fun fashion show. It's basically best masked, best catwalk and most memeable. It's kind of the idea behind it. But yeah, so so payment, Lawson: [00:14:23] payment was the other use of personal tokens. I think there's a lot more innovation left for personal tokens beyond that, which we can kind of get into separately. I'd like to talk about that farther, Lawson, because like, you know, for myself and the cryptocurrency mining space, I'm always kind of considering, okay, how do you get people into mining easier? And one of the biggest things, [00:14:42] you know, the reason why someone buys a Bitcoin miner or a unit that generates revenue is to get that cash flow from the unit. So for social tokens, how do you connect someone's income stream to their personal token? And do we run into SEC laws there when you start doing that? And how does that work? Because like, is this is this going to be possible? Is this going to happen outside the Lawson: [00:15:02] United States first and just overtake, you know, the communities like that? Like, because that's where I see a huge opportunity for tokens is if you have revenue stream from YouTube, how do you tokenize that? Is that is this become a security or is it still a social money? I know that's a very touchy topic, because there's no right answer, I don't think right now. But I want to hear [00:15:20] your thoughts on that you're willing to share. I went to law school to get into investment banking. So I'm going to turn it, I'm going to license attorney, my general counsel for Synapse and I was general counsel for Microsoft. So I understand this problem deeply. I frankly grew my whole Twitter following basically doing early analysis in like 2017 and 18 on like, Lawson: [00:15:36] how you look at these things for a regulatory standpoint. And what it essentially comes down to is most of its rather gray. In some cases, you know, it may look like a regulated asset. In some cases, it just doesn't. With all that being said, the cat is out of the box and jurisdiction is no longer geographic. It's the internet. You're not going to stop this period, right? [00:15:56] Fraud is illegal with or without securities laws. So with that said, like, what are we doing here? Like, why do we care if you, what do we call it, right? And so fraud is illegal, no matter what, you don't need security laws for that. And so if it is security, it's not like, you know, there are a lot of smart ways to release a token and avoid, you know, control by the creator. And there's a Lawson: [00:16:15] lot of dumb ways to do that and mess it up. And I always encourage people to talk to people and try to learn in the space. We need good actors and we need to effectively self-regulate. If you see a scam, call out the scam. But in the context of like, let's just talk about, let's get to the tech stuff because I left working for other companies and as general counsel because I want [00:16:33] to create stuff, not talk about what we can't do. I want to live. Why are our socials actually working on this problem? Our belief is those three nodes, communities, individuals, content, personal tokens, community tokens, NFTs, there's going to be effectively an entire economy around that. That's, that was essentially the second narrative I was saying. Our whole goal is to throw Lawson: [00:16:50] cash at all of them. And so whether they want to earn cash and maybe a security or not, something like Rob Ross social is essentially going to give them incredible amounts of cash flow opportunities. And so the reality is they're all going to have cash flow associated with it. Does that mean any one of them are security? It's a case by case analysis and it depends on how it's created and [00:17:07] who's in control of it. But you know, kind of moving beyond that, like, I feel like I need to answer your specific question and then talk just broadly your specific question, Bitcoin miner, right? And you create tools for them, correct? I would probably create a community token for that rather than a personal token. And I would probably create it around a loose structure of Lawson: [00:17:24] people can earn it or buy it. And in doing that, they gain access to a community and at different levels of that community, different. So you can, you can think of this as like a sales funnel. People once out of your, your discord server with no tokens are at the top of the funnel. People who get enough tokens to get in the token curated chats are in the middle of the funnel. And then [00:17:39] 80 people down here have enough tokens to vote or propose things for you to do. They're, they're governors. Okay. So maybe it's 50 tokens to get in and 1000 or 10,000 tokens to vote and govern. Right. And so what you're, what you're doing there is you're allowing for your community to effectively self-opt into helping control or guide or carry this project beyond just you. Lawson: [00:18:02] The power of community to always in my opinion, like, you know, the court, again, I wrote forever ago, like 2018, this article about the corporation is dead, the internet is alive. And in the context of that community tokens, a really great example of that, you can motivate and incentivize people to do anything is how your community, if you have a tool to pay them with. And if they have an [00:18:18] ability to effectively self-opt into upside. And that's, that's going by and on the, going by and on the free market while also they could earn it for maybe throwing an event or doing some engineering work for you. And in the context of the governors, people who can vote, once they're controlling who's doing what and why tokens are being thrown out, like you aren't in control. Lawson: [00:18:37] And so at that point, like, you start to have lots of great arguments that this thing's not security. It's like it's controlled by like anybody. I don't know. This is the internet. Who has them? I don't have no idea. Yeah. Anyone could buy the tokens. They don't get that access to control. You vote on the membership, all that stuff. That sounds 100% where I think this is going, [00:18:53] the future of social money. Because I'm thinking about the burn mechanisms. Like, if you have a revenue stream, you can honestly burn your social tokens so that over time they become even more valuable. Have you seen any really cool burn mechanisms that do create stuff value? Burning is interesting. I think that, I think that kind of what happened in the context Lawson: [00:19:07] of like, I want to eventually work on this idea of community money. I keep getting pulled in other directions. This idea of community money is basically stable money that matches the meme of the community. And so in my opinion, most people don't want to spend upside money. We have 10 years of proof of that. Every time a people use a whole lot of a token to spend for something, [00:19:24] they regret it after the token moves. Every Bitcoiner who was using Bitcoin for tipping on change tip in 2016 and 17 probably regret it now. Once ETH pops, which it's trying to right now, we're going to have a whole lot of tweets about how much the value of the gas they were spending on, I don't know, buying a T's or something like that. The reality is, I think for the most part, Lawson: [00:19:42] from a spending standpoint, I think we're going to live in a predominantly a two token world in most communities. And so that's going to be in the context of the personal token, the community token and this like stable type thing. And in that context, I think there's some interesting ideas of how you could create a deposit and burn a deposit, kind of like a maker system where you [00:20:00] deposit and generate out a community token, but then in the context of using the community money, when the community money is used, a portion of that is burned backwards and throws in because when it burns, it would burn part of the community tokens to positive to do that. That's a whole rabbit hole, probably a little too much for this podcast. In the context of things are like easily Lawson: [00:20:17] implemented all day that don't involve something like that. I haven't really seen any burn so much right now. Although I think there's opportunity for that again, the way these are being used right now is very manual. You did something for me or you applied for this grant, the Dow approved it, here's some tokens or come DJ for me, I'll go buy them and here's some tokens. I mean, [00:20:36] it's just kind of passing back and forth a little transactional nature. I think in the future, we're going to be a little bit more problematic nature. When it's programmatic nature, some of those could be burned or we're just throwing a different cash flow at you. And that's what kind of a raw rise working on the second one of those, you know, right now, NFTs and all of crypto Lawson: [00:20:51] are capital assets. Capital assets are things that you can buy or acquire or mine in the context of Bitcoin or most later once. And you generally get those things, they exist forever. And you eventually want to sell those things for a higher price. Bylo, so high, that's capital assets. The reality is though, our economies, like all IRL economies, exist of a whole lot of other stuff. [00:21:16] Today, 20% of the US GDP is capital investments, while the other 80% are things like consumables or other types of assets that exist inside of economies. And so I've been working on this idea of crypto consumables, which is essentially the other end of the spectrum of a capital asset. One is provably ownable and exists forever, while the other is provably, provably ownable, Lawson: [00:21:38] but also provably spendable and usable or, you know, you were mentioning burned, you probably could maybe use the burned concept there as well. Essentially, we are, I think there's an incredible opportunity to allow for more novel income streams for NFT owners or community tokens or personal tokens. So today, NFTs represent ownership as an agreement between the creator and subsequent owner [00:22:06] or owners of a piece of media. Maybe it's a song, maybe it's a video or a movie or some sort of gif, you know, most of the kind of images thing. I think in the future, they're going to be a little bit more programmatic. They'll be stackable and layerable, kind of like the money legos of DeFi or NFTs are going to be like effectively media Legos. But in the context of that, yes, Lawson: [00:22:25] the creator can make money from the sale of it. And that's actually what they do for the vast majority of their media. They sell it off many times or their musician, you know, they enter into agreements to share their royalties with the producers or the whoever is helping them make this thing known and spread throughout the world. Today, that actually doesn't exist inside [00:22:45] of crypto. You can own the asset, but there's not really a way to earn cash flow off of the asset. And so the idea of crypto consumables is basically have approval consumption of an ownable asset in a T's and in the process of that approval consumption throw cash flow at the NFT owner or potentially the personal tokens. And so the idea of a crypto Lawson: [00:23:04] suitable is it's essentially a wrapper around NFTs. And that wrapper essentially introduces a programmatic approval consumption. And that consumption can be an on chain event event or events or a timeframe in reality in the future, it's likely to be a formula of that. I don't know, something is basic is like you can use this thing 50 times within the next 10,000 blocks is an example of a [00:23:28] formula that could be wrapped around it in a T. And in doing that, you start to introduce exactly what you're alluding to like value beyond the meme. The meme is very valuable in a community token and personal token. But you know, most most investable assets today tend to have a balance sheet and cash flow associated with as well. And so crypto consumables are essentially a way to start Lawson: [00:23:48] throwing cash flow first at the NFTs, but with the raw rock social wallet, eventually with the personal tokens and community tokens as well. I love that explanation. It helps people really understand what's the difference here, what's happening and how are these two worlds. And as we [00:24:02] move forward into the NFT. Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual Lawson: [00:24:09] investors, financial institutions and energy companies. By combining over 70 years of mining experience, 24 seven 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 Orm Capital Ventures dot com. What are you most excited about with wal-rah over the next six months? [00:24:33] We did our first kind of public launch with C club at the creator and crypto summit on March 31st with the first ever social NFT auction on mainnet in in their discord server. And actually, as of this Friday, we will be publicly launched and available for anybody to install in their telegram or discord servers to run their own social NFT auctions. So frankly, I'm stoked about the Lawson: [00:24:54] launch and what that means is anybody will be able to go to our website, click on the link and install our rah rah bot and be able to throw auctions at any time inside of their communities. And the reason we're doing that and we can kind of get we can get to the demo in a second is essentially this that the NFT space has been exploding for you know since late last year to early you know [00:25:16] 2021 and they've done that because then you know we just started finding ways to it you know, graders were sick of not making money for their content you know it's definitely a timey thing NFTs have been around for a while and the platform's just gotten better and so OpenSea's been around for a long time a great you know kind of marketplace that is kind of an aggregator of many of them. Lawson: [00:25:32] But we also have things like foundation and Zora and super rare and you know Async are in all these really cool platforms that are kind of going at different angles and different types of artists and innovating on the the NFT design itself. Zora has done some really cool stuff there, rarerables that done some really cool stuff there, creator share, sell-on share and a lot of these [00:25:52] kind of social things you know Zora came up with this idea of basically being able to select who you sell it to and what asset you select i.e. you may not sell it to the to the highest dollar value one you may sell it to somebody who has the ability to make sure the second sale afterwards is higher and in the process they've created these really cool platforms that's attracted basically the best Lawson: [00:26:12] artist of today to the NFT space and and you go to these platforms and they're very beautiful websites and you can see these auctions happening in kind of real time right it feels rather Async in nature you're on this beautiful white website and maybe you see you know JP Barrett just bid you know the one one e-th on it or maybe you just see this string of digits bid some sort of amount [00:26:35] and analogy i give is that it's kind of like going to a gallery an art gallery and not being able to talk and not being able to rub shoulders and not being able to meet the artists and that's where discord and telegram come in basically there there are tons of telegram and discord groups that are doing auctions all the time and they're doing auctions because they want to throw parties and they want Lawson: [00:26:52] this to be a more social experience the white website is not enough it's pretty but that's not where communities exist communities exist in telegram and discord and so these telegram and discord there's one called auga there's 12 hundred people in it and they throw six hours of live auctions every day and that's one of many there there there are some with even more community members [00:27:11] than that i would think auga is probably the most active of stuff being sold and they're doing it completely trust-based and completely manual you basically type in albida eath and the moderators just kind of keeping track and the seller and the buyer just have to mainly settle and if they don't we get booted from the group and and that's kind of how it's being done today but if you want to we Lawson: [00:27:30] could scroll down in the discord server to the alpha rod channel and i can actually show it to you if you'd like basically the raw rod bodice is attempting to both automate the stuff for the monorator make it a little easier for but also lean into that social experience yeah let's jump in there i just got in that channel now if you haven't already typed launch rah rah one word and [00:27:50] pop that up in your browser it's definitely geared towards mobile but it is a web app so you can pull it up on your desktop the idea again you know i use a lot of analogies we like to think of the rah rah social wallet is like a joystick with a wallet while the discord and telegram are for your eyes for a variety of reasons in crypto especially most of us experience crypto on our desktop Lawson: [00:28:12] you know that's that's the combination of apple restrictions on dapps and in-app browsers in addition to it's just faster to build on the web and so as a result most people are interacting with crypto on their desktops and that's true for it also of discord and telegram people are going to parties or events inside of tell your discord's you know for the most part on desktop and so people [00:28:32] are attending you know let's just pretend you're at you're in rah rah house rah rah.house is our community where we basically test out ideas and features for all alpha rah members which eventually make it out towards these other communities and gives them kind of the capacity to get early glimpses of ideas and we're going to launch a token eventually this will give people basically Lawson: [00:28:52] a way to give us feedback in real time on that so you guys are launching house parties on rah rah can jump into that a little bit more about what's what's the plan for that website and that kind of part of the organization. Rah rah house is is our community and so we're gonna we're gonna release a community token in advance of our eventual protocol token and that community token is [00:29:12] going to do the same thing that fwb or rng is trying to do it's just making sure that the people who are the deepest in the funnel of our community actually care to be there there a lot of times when people join communities they come once and never come back and that doesn't that's not really good like total member counts not good what's good is total like active member count and so Lawson: [00:29:29] community tokens essentially allow for you to reward active community members incentivize them to throw events and do things like that in addition to you know we're a little bit different than many community tokens we're building products and services and eventually protocol and so it's essentially a vehicle to you know affect influence what we build and why and so you know us releasing [00:29:51] you know eventually the the afro token is well essentially be doing that primarily just trying to get people who care the most about af about rah rah to stake a little bit and help us but yeah so the rah rah house is basically a place for us to throw parties i love to throw a iRL parties and i believe that the future of of social is is likely to be geared more around experiences and Lawson: [00:30:12] when i say experiences basically something that's ephemeral you must have been there to experience it clubhouse is a good example of this you could record a clubhouse and there's even tools that are made for that now but the reality is kind of like going to boneru these days or or woodstock decades ago there's something very different about saying i was there and so voice and live events in discord [00:30:35] a telegram discord telegram or do a killer at killin on voice as well or clubhouse clubhouse is kind of the twitter sphere of your spirit well i think discord telegram or kind of the the internet spirit and in that context there's this wide open media strategy effectively for internet events and so we're throwing events here to test ideas but but frankly we want to and we're trying to Lawson: [00:30:54] throw a lot of colab events in other people's servers rng tomorrow at four eastern we're gonna be throwing a party in rng when you actually can join rng for free we'll be tweeting out instructions on that later on today i guess it's gonna be a little late for this recording but we're gonna be doing a lot of colab events in other people's other people's communities as well and as we do [00:31:12] that you know leaning into you know making it cool to live life online rara's mission is actually to enhance people's ability to live work and play on internet live on the internet we're kind of doing that now we're literally we're at an event in discord there's a few people that are coming to kind of come in and go in and listening to it twitter we live a lot on twitter as well and Lawson: [00:31:31] in so that's part of the living the work part is where rara comes in to be able to work online you need to be able to make money nft's are a good start but in the future it's going to also include cash flow and then the last thing play it needs to be fun and so rara social you know one of the things we talk about with every feature is is this cool it's like a it's just like thing that's [00:31:50] impossible to define but it's essentially a striving for like this this nuance that the term cool i think some people probably have some negative or positive connotations the current term cool but i'll try to define it as this cool is very contextual it's not something that's definitive and it's contextual to who you are to be cool you must first understand yourself Lawson: [00:32:12] and understand what value you bring and what is unique about you but in the process of understanding what's unique about you you must understand what's unique about your immediate surrounding that's your environment that's rara house and then beyond that the entire the entire community around you right and so the immediate people around us that's the people in this rara [00:32:31] house stage right now but the community itself has a slightly different version of cool and it's always like this community consensus of people with similar ideas and similar desires and so with live events and with what rara house is doing is we're trying to lean into fun things that are cool on the internet things that are picking up speed picking up JohnPaul: [00:32:50] traction and seem to be building that community i mean i love that and i'm excited to jump in to to the demo that we you know you hinted on can you explain for people that was thinking of what Lawson: [00:33:00] we're about to do and then let's jump into that so if you have your rara social wallet up right now you see basically what was the last auction up on the screen you're really kind of this pending state you're waiting for the next auction and so let's do it i'm going to type start start auction and i'm going to link to an open c asset and when we do that both in the discord [00:33:17] server and in the rara social wallet you see the item for sale and when we get into it you're going to start seeing the interaction of the community the social stuff in addition to the actual bidding so today with open c you you need to bid or or bid with e or c 20 assets and so today we're bidding with we've wrapped eath and what's happening on the back end is all of the bidding Lawson: [00:33:38] is actually off chain we do that for speed and scalability purposes with the final winner being the only one that goes on chain and so once you win you actually sign a transaction which we broadcast to open c for the seller to accept and so jp you just came in with 0.01 weath and what are we bidding on here well it looks like we're bidding on a digital gold token like individual [00:34:00] just for this podcast it looks very very cool i like it while it's pulling up now yeah so if you click on the if you're in front of the social wallet you can click on the nft image and it'll pull up the open c asset so mik on our team has been making these he's he's doing an incredible job he does these cool co-op nft's so mik made this one for you it's a combination of figma and spline 3d image Lawson: [00:34:20] tool that's kind of figma like and obviously it's got rah rah and digital gold podcast on it with jp berry and so this is a little bit of our gift to you if you can win it if nobody else in the crowd comes in to win it and speaking of the crowd is rying right now and so let me talk about that a little bit briefly so rah rah phonetically is a cheer and if i say rah rah like that's me kind [00:34:41] of cheering on something if a bunch of people say rah rah that is an entire crowd getting involved and cheering on that they are emoting they like something or they're saying you know weird way that's like them saying something's cool right and so we're called rah rah specifically for that reason and so with the with the rah rah social wallet you can actually earn and spend rah Lawson: [00:35:00] through out the experience and so when you set up your rah rah wallet you got a hundred rahs and if you hit that raw button down at the bottom you hit it real quick yeah you can hit it once oh it's giving or you can hit it giving more rah to the token yeah hit it hit it hit it a bunch of times hit it real fast go boom boom boom boom boom yeah 31 and so what we're doing here is we're [00:35:19] recognizing the reality is most people at an nft auction are not buyers 1% of the crowd are going to own ft's the other percent of the crowd and maybe they're going to buy nft's or bid on other ones but they're not going to bid on everyone right they're there for the experience they're there a party and so rah's get them involved and they let them party that's that's great because i Lawson: [00:35:37] launched when i watched snoop dog launches and ft i was like damn this is great this is cool but like i don't really want to buy any of these they're all really expensive and the whole feeling was still great to to watch the draw up and everything there so this is i love the people can still participate yeah so rah's eventually will be crypto consumables and rah's will throw cash flow [00:35:56] at nft's and community tokens so imagine rah's having a specific sound to it kind of like an emoji where you select emojis that you like or you relate to the raw could be you know my male voice or your male voice or a bare tone or like this robot voice or it could be something like rah or l-o-l sound is a wide open space in the context of social and in the context of of social you Lawson: [00:36:23] basically need ways to react facebook has thumbs likes twitter has hearts medium has claps rah's are are at temped at creating a brand new class of reactions but definitely leaning in towards audio based reactions and in doing that we're again we're playing with crypto experiences when a crowd is is emoting all at once you're going to have crowd effects crowd sounds like [00:36:49] a concert like the sound of a concert has a specific sound because so many people are making so many noises at once yeah no i definitely agree with you i think that's super cool to consider like everything needs something to participate in and you guys are adding in not only this participation you're adding in cash flow tokens and sounds like every like is is worth something that's Lawson: [00:37:11] huge for a social platform because like you know i just got banned from instagram like so i had in person yeah i had impersonators and they banned my account because everyone they reported as a spam and they were like oh you're impersonating someone else i was like what do you mean i'm a person so else here's my idea and then they're like oh sorry your idea isn't valid i was [00:37:28] like what so i would have lost my account if it wasn't for some internal facebook connections that i had that i like you know had them fix it and then they're it was solved but it's just like that's such a huge problem there's no need for i guess proving that it actually it costs something to have this account or that you've actually invested money and capital into it it's very easy for Lawson: [00:37:46] scammers come in duplicate it look really similar and then just take over that brand so i'm glad to hear that these are going to have real value and you are you telling me they'll actually be like a sound when you use them you guys like similar to like an emoji it'll be a sound and the actual picture that's super cool so i don't know if you have your sound on your phone or whatever device [00:38:02] you're listening to the the social wallet it actually makes a sound right now but right now that sounds just for you we have some crazy ideas of how to throw a blended sound of portions of that into discord as well and so so so let me get that let's let's get back to the auction i'm gonna i'm gonna go second i'm a bit second here and so for those of you who are just listening you you use what happens Lawson: [00:38:20] is inside of the social wallet you see now lahson is the current highest bidder at point oh two weath along with inside of the the discord you're seeing i'm also the highest bidder and the reason we're throwing it in both spots is because the community is incredibly important the reality is people do these intelligence and discord because they like to throw jiffs they like emojis they like [00:38:41] they like to to laugh and joke and react to what's happening and especially when an auction is heating up you start to see this a lot right people people are throwing lots of gyps and emojis around the activity of the actual auction and so now let's i'm gonna start the countdown um let me start the countdown we're gonna end this thing so currently i'm the highest bidder and so i just did i just Lawson: [00:39:03] did the command start countdown and it's like going around like the green circle it's going to change colors too and so this is a 30 second countdown and if nobody bids i'll win it but if you bid you should bid hit that button so it adds 30 more seconds and you're now the highest bidder and this is your this is your podcast i'm gonna let you win this bad boy but that's the demo that's ri-rara social wallet [00:39:24] and that the auction but social npt auction bought today and we have lots of crazy ideas of where it goes the future but essentially we're leaning into the crowd in and around social experiences like npt auctions no i love this and how long have you guys been working on this this like future this website this idea of this auction i've had two months we've been dancing around a whole lot Lawson: [00:39:43] of similar right but this one felt the most right this one's this one's got legs and so we're running this one right now i love it yeah i know i really feel like there's a lot of unique interactions here JohnPaul: [00:39:52] i like that it is super fast to use and i like the raw aspect of it i'm excited to see how you Lawson: [00:39:57] guys integrate that into you know ecosystem of a big coin holder as well when she came in the podcast spots and then definitely we'll be buying some ri-rara is it already out can you buy it now it is not what we're kind of looking working on a little bit of a strategy on how to get it out to the wild you know we want to get some attention of some communities that we like and creators that [00:40:14] we like and so we're working on some some novel ideas there but you know that'll be coming out eventually you know at this point we want people who are less so about the financial motivation so much is like are around the space and are excited that what's happening to give us feedback and so the ri-rara house community is very critical for us so the people who are most interested in at least Lawson: [00:40:33] falling along and contributing to go to ri-rara.house you can join our discord you can sign up for public calendar you can also join our telegram so again ri-rara bot works in telegram we'll start throwing more events over there but most of the activity today is in our discord server yeah right now i would just join the server and jump in and start asking where you can help or pop an ideas if [00:40:53] you got me you know that that's great so for people who you know need want to join ri-rara and the and follow loss and loss and where can they follow you online you specifically so i am l ws in baker so it's lost and without the vowels and then baker um ri-rara is ri-rara underscore social and twitter and instagram our community is ri-rara.house that's the actual domain for the Lawson: [00:41:16] for the young people in the crowd you can actually use the derelict house emoji.fm and that'll take you to ri-rara house we also have flying money emoji.fm and the peacock.fm which we're going to do some cool stuff with later as well that's the community if you want to jump into the community for people interested in using or installing the social entity bot in their telegram or discord [00:41:35] go to our our website for ri-rara social which is ri-rara.social so ri-rara.social and ri-rara.house that's how you get to the community and our bot install. no i love it i definitely want to figure out if i can bring that into a discord server that i'm i'd say it's a men's group and be interesting to see if you can connect you know the social money we've been trying to figure out Lawson: [00:41:53] how do you build that community token how do you grow the men's group at the same time incentivize people you know that you can pay member dues to grow the group to keep running the group so this is JohnPaul: [00:42:02] something that i want to integrate more into and follow along and watch and so lost and i appreciate Lawson: [00:42:07] you coming on the show today to talk through this concept of money and how it's changing how we're joining from you know that team money on our on our on our dollars in our pockets to you know whatever virtual team we want to join this is going to change money forever and we're seeing that community based money is i think it is how we maybe we started you know selling she shelves back in the day [00:42:28] using that to trade and now we're getting on the computer and in the same type of fashion that where it's you know very very small very unique very community based non-essential global currency which i like and i think there'll be a lot of use cases so i'm glad you're working in this space and appreciate everything you're doing for the community because i know there's big things JohnPaul: [00:42:46] ahead before we're all in for yourself in this space yeah GP thanks for coming out man make Lawson: [00:42:51] sure you hit confirm transaction on that winning bid and what that's going to do is send that transaction to be accepted by on open c and once it's accepted that that nft will be in your ri-rai social wallet so you can log in at wallet dot ri-rai dot social at any time to to withdraw it or keep it there we're going to be expanding the wallet beyond just experiences but right now JohnPaul: [00:43:10] it's it's really good around experiences but it'll show up in there and it's it's yours man i appreciate Lawson: [00:43:15] i definitely am going to to claim it right now and i did claim it and uh had to log back in but i JohnPaul: [00:43:21] will see so i'm glad i was able to win that i thank thanks again for the auction let's see Lawson: [00:43:26] confirm purchase let me click that button again and it's it's loading but this was great loss and JohnPaul: [00:43:31] i appreciate it that was an amazing experience and a really nice easy to use interface so if you haven't checked it out guys rarar social check them out thanks for talking about the future of money [00:43:40] yeah JP this is great rarar man thanks 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 Lawson: [00:43:51] five star review to support our journey to become the number one crypto podcast thanks so much for listening and until next time mine off so ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Bitcoin Mining Institutionalization | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 12 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/leo-zhang/ All Episodes Episode 12 # Bitcoin Mining Institutionalization with Leo Zhang Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Leo Zhang to discuss bitcoin mining institutionalization. ### Bitcoin Mining Institutionalization Guest: Leo Zhang Episode 12 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 the 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. JohnPaul: [00:00:35] Today I'm joined by Leo Jung, founder of Anitsha Research, which is dedicated to studying the emerging phenomenon of hash power as a new asset class. Leo has been involved in the creation of numerous papers on Bitcoin mining and has a very in-depth understanding of hash power. [00:00:54] Leo received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Stanford University and has worked for various capital groups including Inter-of-Capital, Global Atlantic Financial Group and Morgan Stanley Global Capital Markets. Leo, welcome to the show. Leo: [00:01:05] Leo Jung, thanks for having me. Leo Jung, I want to start with the age old question of why running a mining operation or why run one when you can purchase coins in the open market? Yeah, this is actually the opening question of my latest paper, The Intelligent Bitcoin [00:01:17] Miner. I think there's definitely a historical reasons that people want to do this as your audience probably very familiar with some of the intricacy of mining. But generally, mining is a possible way for investors or mining operators to accumulate coins at a cost that's potentially much cheaper than purchasing via open market. Obviously, this Leo: [00:01:38] is a gross generalization. It depends on the miner's physical condition as well as the expenses that he or she pays. Or in comparison to the open market strategy, this can be very different. But overall, I think this is more of a method but not guaranteed path to accumulating Bitcoin at a much cheaper cost. [00:01:59] People asking that question, as you mentioned, there's not one mine fits all category. There's the electricity cost, the age of the machine, and there's efficiency. You mentioned that those all play roles in the profitability of a miner. But do you expect that the miners that have been in the industry for four or five years, the players that are really starting Leo: [00:02:17] to sell operations, they must be generating coins at a discount if they are gaining traction. Do you think those miners are going to be able to say that they're continuing to mine coins for less? Or do you think that it really we're going to see the industry change a lot over the next couple of years? And that might not be the case. [00:02:33] I think it depends on how active the miner is managing their business. And we've seen some of the older generation miners who got very lucky when they started, started early when the first generations of ASICS came out and they were able to secure access to a cheaper electricity. But as we all know, that's just part of the one side of the equation. The Leo: [00:02:54] method that the miner managed the coins is also very complex. You can't just sit on the coins and just waiting for everything to pump, especially those who have lived through 2018, 2019. I'm well aware that some kind of active management is critical for cash flow. And overall, there's some mitigation of downside risk. So I think as mining becomes more competitive, [00:03:16] it definitely requires a closer paying closer attention in the past. Some mining operator, they simply just purchase the machines. And at the price that I think is reasonable and plug them in at a facility, they hired some technicians to maintain them. And that's a very passive way of managing. I think unless the person had two cents electricity for all year, Leo: [00:03:38] I think it's very difficult to sustain this way. I think the newer players are much more intelligent, much more aggressive and much more methodical. Because when you're mining a large mining operation, you're not just running a physical data center, you're not just doing the day to day maintenance of machines. Obviously, that's a very important part. But at the same time, [00:03:58] you're also managing a liquid portfolio. Every day, this coins come in, you have to figure out what you want to do with them, what kind of risks you want to take. And if you have to liquidate coins to pay for electricity, what's the exact way for you to do that? And if you want to have even more aggressive trading strategy, you can buy low open market and you can sell high, you can Leo: [00:04:20] use a combination of all these tools, you can borrow fiat with your Bitcoin as collateral, when the market is down, you don't want to sell coins. I'd say overall, the kind of tools that available for miners also growing very fast, the kind of mindset of miners also changing as the competition becomes more and more fierce. And you mentioned that liquid portfolio, not only the coins, but [00:04:44] really the miners also are a liquid portfolio that can be bought and sold and are bought and sold across the industry. Can you touch a little bit more, maybe on the value of A6 rising over the past JohnPaul: [00:04:54] two months? And how do you see the financing of miners and steady purchases from large corporate Leo: [00:05:00] players improving the stability and distribution of A6 for the next year? Yeah. So when I said liquid portfolio, definitely meant coins specifically. Obviously, machines can be unplugged and transported and sold to someone else across the globe. But I definitely think that's a relatively illiquid market, just from our experience. I'm sure you have the similar [00:05:23] kind of impression as well. Of course, there are many distributors out there that are connecting buyers and sellers, but overall, it's still the kind of transparency and the efficiency compared to some more liquid assets such as coins, which has a higher level of standardization. These markets tend to be a little slower, tend to be a little bit harder to just engage with. So Leo: [00:05:45] regarding the question of the meteor rise of the value of A6 in the past two months, I think, obviously, that's a direct consequence of coin price rising and demand for hash power skyrockets. I'd seen on social media that people do back and napkin calculations of the static ROI days is two days, if you buy machines today. Of course, the static ROI, static break, even these metrics are [00:06:11] highly misleading, but at the same time, there are popular heuristics for people to think through, okay, where the market is right now, at least today. So I think a lot of people see that, a lot of people realize, okay, especially for people who are already in the mining space, and they realize, okay, this is a great time to deploy machines, especially hash rate has not really fully caught Leo: [00:06:33] up with the growth rate of price yet. I think ultimately, the A6 market is still subject to a very strict supply and demand, especially in the past year due to COVID, many of the manufacturers have a hard time catching up, have a hard time managing your supply chain. It wasn't really until mid to late last year, the manufacturing in China started to recover, and plus the little drama in [00:06:57] Bitmain seems like it's just finally settled and it's going to take some time for me, Cree, who's going to take over the manufacturing side of business to reinstall himself into the what's left of the empire. The Bitmain empire, I love it. On to my next question, which is how is the fair market value of a unit calculated? I know in your research report, Leo: [00:07:19] you mentioned that when volatility is suppressed, the theoretical value of the machine drastically decreases, but when volatility is high, the theoretical value rapidly increases. And I would say we've seen that over the past three months. So I know you're trying to touch on that in the paper, keep on that a little bit more on how that fair market value really comes in the back of the map [00:07:38] can math works and why it necessarily isn't the best way to figure out the value of one of these machines, and maybe how much is going to earn? Yeah, definitely. But before that, I want to emphasize that the fair value of a machine is going to be different for every mining operator. And this is something that's fundamentally different for asset like this compared to, Leo: [00:07:59] say, a call option for equity, right? Because the underlying is fungible, it's the same for everybody. But the same machine produced by minor A with force and electricity versus minor B with the force and electricity, but much better cleaner condition, these are different. So not all computes are created equally, not all hash power is being produced at the same efficiency. [00:08:22] So I'd say the fair value, and I definitely regret using that word because it's just so subjective. But I think it's more of a way to for someone who is aware of the parameters that is using the electricity, all that stuff, to calculate what this value is for him. The method that we introduced in this paper is has very deep roots in options valuation. One thing that's Leo: [00:08:48] very clear is that the much of the return of hash power by hash power really means machines comes from a future production. And this is something not something that you can really price right away. And for something like that, there's definitely this kind of cash flow, there's option valuation framework. A lot of the volatility rate comes from the uncertainty of coin price when you receive [00:09:10] them in the future, as well as the number of coins that you're going to receive on daily basis. So these uncertainties make hash power a far more complex option to value compared to equity or just commodity options. And so we have to really leverage some of the more powerful tools to really understand what's really going on. So the method that we introduced in the talented Bitcoin miner Leo: [00:09:34] is through a numerical simulation. We used a Monte Carlo simulation basically to assume the path of future Bitcoin, at least in 18 months or 24 months, or something like that follows a jump diffusion model. And this is actually something that quite a few academic paper that when it comes to modeling the random process for Bitcoin adopts. So basically we create 10,000 possible [00:09:58] path for Bitcoin's price trajectory following this distribution in the next 24 months. And each path leads to a hash rate growth path. Obviously here, we assume some kind of visible connection between hash rate and price over at least a horizon of two years. So we all know that intuitively, there are some positive correlation between hash rate and price, even though they Leo: [00:10:21] don't necessarily happen in the same timeframe, the demand for hash rate always follows price. So we assume some kind of function and that function is definitely nowhere near perfect. And in each scenario, we build up a similar path for hash rate as well. And then we calculate how much the machine is going to generate following each path and we take an average of the 10,000 JohnPaul: [00:10:42] path. Thanks for explaining that, Sis. And as you mentioned, it's on that blog post, Leo: [00:10:46] people who will be linked in the show notes for anyone who wants to see some of the charts. I read through the whole thing. It was very informative and learned a lot there. Leo, I want to touch on JohnPaul: [00:10:55] one thing you mentioned, which is not all hash powers created equally. How do you see this Leo: [00:10:59] affecting a synthetic marketplace or tokenized marketplace coming about for trading hash power? We've seen a couple of different groups try to do that. And then thoughts on Poland's recent token launch with their their wrapped hash rate. Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts on that. Thanks for for bringing that up. So first of all, you're absolutely right that standardizing all these [00:11:19] parameters is the key of solving this, at least on the south side. There's a whole another side of the problem, which is how to solve for the buyer side, which we'll touch later. But it's complex enough for creating a synthetic hash power for even on the seller side. So the easiest way to do this is obviously just aggregate all these machines and have them managed by a centralized Leo: [00:11:40] host, which is exactly the approach that pooling and this new coin BTC ST, which the launch down finances are these guys are doing. So the benefit of that is it can reduce the physical variance, at least to some extent control the physical variance that issuer understands where the physical variance come from. And at the same time, they can at least guarantee the hash rate [00:12:02] output. So if on some days their facility is down, they can compensate the buyer with appropriate amount of coins. Obviously, these are the risk that the issuer have to take. And so this model is definitely not new. The first time this something like this happened or something similar to this happened was I remember if it was 2014 or 2015, the first person who popularized Leo: [00:12:23] ASICs, this guy called a Fredcat, he's a yellow computer science PhD, took leave of absence to go back to China to help manufacture the first generation of ASICs. He wasn't the first one to come up with ASICs, but he was definitely at one point owned like over 60% of the market share of the ASICs. I actually remember him posting on the Bitcoin Talk form as much back in the day, selling the [00:12:45] wafers when I was waiting for my butterfly arms order, hitting my head against the wall, saying, oh no, what is going on? But not to digress. Those are the real early times of ASICs. So at one point, he was the zihan of mining. And there's like very substantial concern that he alone controls the majority of the hash rate, as well as the market share. And to fund his next generation of machines, Leo: [00:13:09] he pioneered the cloud mining model. Basically, he has his own hosting farm, he has his ASICs there, and he sells the claim to the stream of BTC produced by the farm in the form of a IPO. But it's the exact name of that is not really clear what that really counts. But basically, it gives people dividends in the form of Bitcoin, people pay Bitcoin to purchase shares for that. Of course, [00:13:35] there's no token mechanism involved because at that time tokens are just issuing tokens not nowhere near as easy as on ERC 20. But the operation went wrong for many other reasons, and the Frick had subsequently disappeared from the face of the earth. And even today, he's not found. But after that, there's just so many cloud mining business sprung up. Some of them Leo: [00:13:58] have made it to a very large size, Genesis mining, and BitDear, you name it. And some of them they very quickly have gone out of business and disappeared from people's memory. There's still cloud mining games pop up every day. But in concept, I think there's nothing theoretically wrong with cloud mining, right? It's just people who don't want the kind of hassle of operating machines, [00:14:24] wants the financial exposure, and don't really care about which chain the hash power is building on. They should be able to purchase the financial return of hash power to someone at a premium to the electricity cost. But Leo, as that purchaser, they're not getting any claims to the machine. Do you think that is an important aspect of a Bitcoin mining investment in owning the physical Leo: [00:14:46] hardware? Or do you look at it as just a net zero because the end of the lifespan of these jeans are worth usually nothing? I think it depends on the preference of the investor. I think for some people who do care about that should definitely operate the machines directly or just do that through a special purpose vehicle that makes sure that he or she is the absolute owner of that [00:15:08] entity. And when something goes wrong, he at least have claimed to the assets that's sitting in these entities, which is the machines. What I describe, the cloud mining platforms is a pure financial play. And this is suitable only to people who are strictly looking for a financial return. So I think this is a responsibility for the entity or platform that's issuing this service. Leo: [00:15:32] They have to be very clear what are the things that being offered. And it's definitely the investor's duty to understand what exactly it's paying for. No, that makes perfect sense there on the different type of investor looking for different returns. I think we'll see over the next couple of years facilities providing one off machines. Two clients, which we already are seeing [00:15:51] some companies approaching that model where you can still get ownership and still be a traditional hosting facility or run a traditional machine. But as you mentioned earlier, that does tie you to the lifespan of that individual hardware where you would have the risk spread out over multiple machines if you were in a larger hashrate token, like pool and token or something similar. Leo: [00:16:12] Yeah, definitely. For instance, if you're just someone from Wall Street and really interested in the financial return and you can invest in something like this, and when the whole thing expires, you end up getting a bunch of machines. What are you going to do with them? You don't really know how to operate them. You don't really know where to sell them. So that just creates [00:16:31] additional headache. So in that regard, just buying a pure financial swap is much easier, much cleaner. However, the problem with cloud mining platforms, at least with the format today is it's just a very inefficient business model. These cloud mining platforms, they have to go out there, acquire machines, they have to put a huge risk on their balance sheet. And at the Leo: [00:16:54] same time, they're offering these contracts to the market at a premium to their electricity. They have to shoulder all the risk, all the problems that a typical large miner have to deal with. But at the same time, they're not getting the kind of return that a single standalone mining operation is getting. The big problem is in a bull market, no miner wants to sell their machines. [00:17:16] And in a bear market, nobody's going to want to purchase these cloud mining contracts, right? You can't sell them. You have to sell them at discounts. So it's very reactive. It's a very inefficient play. And at the same time, these contracts, they do lock people into a long period time. Obviously, we're seeing shorter periods now as more as the cloud mining space gets more competitive. Leo: [00:17:37] But it is a problem. You pay something and you get stuck there for six months. And there's no price discovery mechanism. There's no adjustments. And the pricing is really just determined by the cloud mining platforms. And I doubt anyone there really understands what's the rigorous way of pricing these things. So it's not a good business model for the platform, not good business model [00:17:59] for miners who rent their hash rate to these platforms, not good for their buyer as well. But of course, this is a very blanket statement. There are definitely occasions where the buyers can make money from these purchases. But I think those are rare. So you're saying that it's not a good business model. Do you think pooling business model is better? Do you think it's another business JohnPaul: [00:18:19] model that would make more sense to provide hash rate exposure? What are your thoughts, I guess, Leo: [00:18:24] on that? And do you think pools will start offering more of these contracts and purchasing from JohnPaul: [00:18:29] facilities? Where do you see that industry going? Yeah, first of all, I think we should separate Leo: [00:18:34] this pooling's coin offering from pooling the pool because these are an entirely different thing. The reason is because the pooling's coin is not offering with pooling's customers. So the miners on pooling's pool are not issuing their hash power through this vehicle. Those machines are controlled by pooling. It could be some other miners who are willing to sell their hash rate [00:18:57] to this process, but they still need to host your machines at a data center that pooling controls. So effectively, there is no selling mechanism. There's no miners selling to them. There might be, but it's not really a market mechanism. So I do think in that regard, from the seller's perspective, it's very similar to claw mining. Really, there's no difference from claw mining. Leo: [00:19:18] The machines are hosted in centralized spot and these contracts being generated from the centralized database. The only difference, obviously, it's a one step further than claw mining because these contracts in the form of tokens are tradable. So people who have purchased previously earlier have mentioned that a big problem for buyers, that they get locked into [00:19:41] this contract for six months. And if price changes, they don't want it, they want out. There's no good way for them to do that. But now it's possible for you to transfer these tokens. So in that regard, it's definitely an improvement. However, the problem still is that these contracts are incredibly difficult to price. And this is definitely not the first time people have Leo: [00:20:03] thought about this. In the past, we have Hashnast that issue these tokenized machines. There are various experiments that try to do something like this or tokenized claw mining. I think they all failed for various reasons, most of them for operational reasons. But I think if pulling electricity is low enough and if they manage their capital well enough, [00:20:26] they can definitely keep doing this. And they're definitely taking advantage of the fact that the DeFi users are getting more and more used to complex instruments and instruments that have esoteric characteristics. I think that regard their playing something much smarter than traditional claw mining issuers. However, I do think that it sets a funny precedent. If this becomes something Leo: [00:20:50] that's successful, I do think every mining pool is going to or every mining correlation is going to try to replicate this because they all lack imagination. The problem for mining pools who look at this business model and think, oh, maybe I should try something similar is that they immediately subject themselves to the same type of operational risk that all large miners have to deal with. [00:21:15] And of course, they can try to convince the miners on their pool to issue this. But if the token is being created by the pool, then the pool is definitely a security broker from SCC's perspective. So in your eyes, you would say that pool, even that token could be SCC regulated because it is fighting future profits on a machine in an investment-like contract. Leo: [00:21:41] So I'm definitely not an expert on that. But I do think that it makes a difference that they are using their own machines. But I do think mining pools that use customers' machines to issue a coin from the mining pool is more likely to become a security broker. For hash rate, that's been viewed as security for selling it as a contract. What about selling the physical machines? Is that JohnPaul: [00:22:05] in your eyes potentially, could you use it as security by the SCC? How do you see the Leo: [00:22:09] difference between hash rate and the physical sale of a ASIC miner? Yeah, I think it's the distinction actually from a financial perspective, the distinction is very small. If you're someone who buys a hash-power contract versus someone who buys physical machines, of course, operationally, that makes tons of difference. But at the same time, financially, it's the same. You're swapping [00:22:29] USD for future Bitcoin. So I really don't know how that should get categorized. I think it's really unfortunate if for some reason, SCC deemed physical machines as security because that's just funny. Who is going to be the security broker in this case? Are the manufacturers going to be deemed as security brokers now? It would be the first time in my eyes that electronic became a security Leo: [00:22:54] where now, like you mentioned, Dell is now selling computers, which are securities because they could mine Bitcoin. That's a good point. What is the biggest difference between or major differences that you experience mining in the US versus mining in China under the assumption that you've had facilities or you've run machines in both areas? Yeah, speaking of my own personal experience, [00:23:12] I think obviously the Chinese mining community has been growing for much longer. And also, I think that space has just been professionalized much faster. And just simply just because the proximity to manufacturers, proximity to mining pools, distributors, service providers, and did a whole ecosystem really built on proofwork. So that market is definitely getting more saturated. It's Leo: [00:23:36] definitely getting more and more competitive, although there are still facilities that are in Sichuan Yunnan that pop up every year that look for miners. But I do think that the time has given the Chinese mining community a tremendous amount of advantage in thinking through risk management and what's the best way to service the machines. I think a huge disadvantage of US miners, of course, [00:23:57] the percentage of hash rate is definitely growing and would definitely see more interest demands and more serious players entering the space, which I think is a very good thing. But big disadvantages, I think, is really close to machines, as well as the people that you require to maintain these machines. You're saying that experience in China was more professional, fully serviced solution Leo: [00:24:18] versus in the US, where you might have had to have more hands-on on your machines. Is that kind of where you're referring to? First of all, it's just when you want to repair some parts, right? In China, it takes two days to ship to, you probably have less than that. It depends on where it are to ship to the manufacturer and get new components or get them checked up. But whereas here in the US, [00:24:37] and I'm definitely seeing more maintenance service centers and definitely seeing more technicians start getting trained. But the overall amount of time and also resources to require to maintain machines is definitely longer. I did see Core Scientific announce something, I think, late last year. I don't remember time exactly that they're going to become an official service Leo: [00:24:57] center for Inkminer. I think that's definitely an improvement. I think we need to see more service [00:25:01] provider like that. Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual Leo: [00:25:07] investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over 70 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 forumcapitaltenters.com. JohnPaul: [00:25:26] When and how did you first get into mining Bitcoin? Was it in the US? Was it in China? Can you talk Leo: [00:25:30] a little bit farther on that experience? And if you still even have those machines? The first time I really got hands-on experience with mining is after I joined at this fund based in New York. That was 2017. So I started with some GPUs and moved it to A6. So that was a very hands-on experience for me and definitely learned a lot about the little annoying things that miners [00:25:52] experience every day. So before that, I definitely came from a much more finance background before joining crypto full-time. I was, as you introduced at the beginning of the podcast, I did a variety of Wall Street jobs. So my interests definitely do not start with mining necessarily, but start with just Bitcoin as a platform. And it just happened. I had a fund that I joined as it was my Leo: [00:26:13] first full-time job in crypto. They made a killer return with ICO in 2017. I very quickly realized, yeah, that's not sustainable. So started looking and mining started playing with educating capital to mining more seriously. And that's how my journey started. And so that journey, that's how you got access to the space. You do this fund. So you get started [00:26:36] in the facility. Now you're still actively working with them to manage and run the facilities or be taking a more of a research role in your day-to-day. I left the company early last year. So I spent a lot of time researching the industry, not just the operation, but also the industry itself. I spent a lot of time talking to people in China. The huge advantage that I have actually is that I was born Leo: [00:26:59] and raised in Sichuan. For people who are familiar with mining, they know that over 60% of, according to some rough estimate, a 60% of hash rate is situated in that province, because it has a very abundant hydropower in summer, summer, springtime. Obviously, I didn't know that when I first interacted with the crypto community. But as I started to into mining, [00:27:20] I realized, oh, a lot of people actually speak the same dialect or from the same neighborhood. So it definitely helped me connect with some of the older players, some of the more experienced mining industry veterans. So that definitely gave me a lot of insights that otherwise not talked about or written about. So I started thinking about mining as an industry more broadly, Leo: [00:27:41] and what are the problems that it currently experiences, which direction is likely going to evolve in the future. So if people who've read my blog post would probably realize that I actually talk about liquid hash power, liquidity of hash power, very extensively every now and then I will make a reference to it. It's definitely very deliberate. So it's something I realized and [00:28:02] something I start thinking very seriously in 2019. And I definitely think that the natural next step for this industry to evolve is to develop its own version of cap and market, similar to how oil or precious metal or other traditional commodity producers have built around those commodities. I think it's not quite the same, but there's definitely similarity for these kind of digital Leo: [00:28:28] commodities. And once I started thinking about that, I could not stop thinking. And in beginning of last year, I left the old firm to start miniature research. On one hand, I want to push people's understanding of mining to free them from the everyday dirty operation of connecting the wires because that does take a lot of time. And just try to start conversations, how to push the industry [00:28:54] towards that direction. And so when you're talking about pushing the industry in that direction, are there any opportunities or areas that mining operations can focus on today in order to gain financing quickly and easily, or even improve the overall value of hash rate or the economic value of hash rate? Yeah, so I think both financing as well as the ability to increase the yield on a Leo: [00:29:16] hash rate are been actively explored, especially in the recent one to two years. Because before that, these people don't really talk about these, right? Or at least not discussed it very seriously. So on the financing side, I think we're seeing more and more active players focusing on miners. There's this, I want to say, fund. I actually don't know how they categorize themselves, [00:29:35] called Arc does capital run by Trevor Smith. What they do is machine back the lending to help people purchase machines by lending them fiat. And that debt is collateralized by the machines that purchase. So these kind of activities are starting to become more popular because when miners purchase machines, they are taking a lot of risk. Your timing can be wrong. That's just Leo: [00:29:56] so many things can go wrong. So it would be really nice to have an insurance mechanism to transfer at least part of that risk to people who are willing to share that risk, of course, with appropriate compensation. I think some of the bigger desk, I don't know if Galaxy also offers that. DCG Foundry is one of the newer players that's coming to do this. I think the overall trend [00:30:16] is that the financing options are coming more open. Some of the traditional lending desks, such as BlockFi, Celsius, they're also offering these kind of service to miners. In China, this is already a very established business like Babel Finance, a bunch of others. They're all lending desks that have a very strong presence among the mining community. I definitely think that Leo: [00:30:37] machine-backed debt is the way to grow financing options for miners. So that's actively improving. As we speak, I remember in 2018, when we tried to raise funds for mining operation, it was difficult. It was just it takes a lot of effort first to educate people what the hell the mining is and what kind of risk that's associated with it. I think as people's understanding, [00:30:57] become more clear, people's awareness of what kind of risk they're facing, become more understood. They're definitely willing to support a miner more and more. As for enhancing the yield on hash power, I think there are several directions that this is going. One, obviously, for non-BTC stuff, there are these profit switchers, nice hash style or Luxor also does this. I have Leo: [00:31:20] to pull. You don't really know what you're mining actually. The pull decides at that specific time what is the best thing to mine. Of course, assume this is a GPU. At the end of the day, it's just deliver the equivalent amount of ETH or BTC. So it's possible that through services like this, the miner can get higher return compared to figuring out what to mine themselves, especially [00:31:42] for GPU miners. And of course, there's limitation because if let's say some chipcoin that's going to pump and it's very difficult for the service provider to realize that and gamble on that and make that decision. However, I think as a GPU mining also becomes more industrialized, migrating from the hobbyists seeing, I think this kind of service will become more and more popular. And on the other Leo: [00:32:06] hand, you have open source firmware like brains is also improving the efficiency for a miner. Everyone's still eagerly waiting for them to roll out what's miner support. It's according to themselves, it's a soon TM. And so besides the things that to do with the hash rate itself, there's definitely other things that can help mitigate risk such as more financial play, [00:32:28] collateralized lending is definitely one way to do it for miners to not oversell their coins to pay for electricity, especially during a down market. There are also miners who are a little bit more well versed in trading terminology that can hash their price risk with futures, perps, whatever. And obviously for Ethereum miners, the universe is much, much bigger, the kind of stuff that they Leo: [00:32:49] can do with it. Ease is also just things growing. So I think there is definitely a lot of exciting things that's built on what comes after you receive your reward in your wallets and let it sit there. I think that was one of the things that I was thinking about a couple of days ago, which was this idea that capital management in the mining space is one of the most important things you [00:33:11] can do as a miner versus when we're talking to energy companies in this space, they're really looking to liquidate that Bitcoin or Ethereum. Immediately for cash, they view it as a way to go from one megawatt hour price to another megawatt hour price. Whereas a miner who's more crypto-focused is viewing this as a way to collect more coins. And then as you mentioned, utilizing those coins Leo: [00:33:31] to provide additional yield or to increase risk and increase upside through these different mechanisms. Do you see that, as you mentioned, the managed funds being a very core position? JohnPaul: [00:33:42] How do you see energy companies coming into that space? Do you think that they will immediately Leo: [00:33:47] start to start using these vehicles? Or do you think this will be mainly used for the foreseeable future by miners who have a long Bitcoin outlook or long Ethereum outlook? So I think all miners fall on somewhere around the spectrum. On one side of the spectrum, you have these typical energy providers who are really just looking for a way to get more juice. They would sell immediately and [00:34:07] they don't want any of this. Actually, traditional oil producers, traditional depression, metal producers, they also just immediately sell very rarely the whole inventory and take that risk. Just definitely, when we do it, they definitely seem very smart. But in market where coin price continues to increase, their upside is very limited. So this is also Leo: [00:34:26] some scenarios I ran in the last blog post as well. And on the other side of it, the spectrum, you have miners who are really here just to get as many coins as possible. They would not sell. Under any circumstances and just wait for coins to pump. I think older generation of miners, people who started in 2013 who have seen the crazy price that broke their brains [00:34:49] are definitely leaning towards the latter. I think most miners today, they fall somewhere on this spectrum. I think it really depends on where you're coming from, what's your perception of this market and your risk tolerance. I think people who come from energy space, just dipping their toe in Bitcoin, I think it's definitely easier for them to Leo: [00:35:10] lean towards the more conservative side of the spectrum as a start. I see no problem with that. So Leo, talking about those different industry players and where they stand on that spectrum, JohnPaul: [00:35:19] I want to ask you, we'll just jump into it. Are governments mining Bitcoin? And when does the Leo: [00:35:23] first publicly announced that they have started mining Bitcoin? And does that start a cascade from these governments across the world to start using energy resources to acquire Bitcoin? Yeah. So the honest answer is I don't really know. I've seen use such as the Pakistani government recently just announced that they're going to do a government mining operation of Venezuela, [00:35:43] Iran. I think we're all seeing news announcements like this. But it's very difficult to know how substantial they are. I think on grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter because I think it just really depends on the purpose of these guys, right? Are they trying to hold as many bitcoins possible as reserve? Because someone high up that sees the potential of Bitcoin Leo: [00:36:05] and wants to protect their treasuries and something like that. Or they're just simply a way to get rid of the waste of energy. I don't think it's as big a deal as some people are concerned, because ultimately Bitcoin is a Bitcoin. I guess on that note, have you seen the industry consolidating in 2021? Is it at the mining facility level or are you predicting that JohnPaul: [00:36:25] mining companies will begin to merge? How do you see this landscape playing out? And then on another Leo: [00:36:30] note, the value of the mining and mining facility, do you see that increased a year from now? Or JohnPaul: [00:36:35] where do you see the overall market cap of Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin miners and daily revenue going? Leo: [00:36:42] Yeah. So I think this comes in faces or somewhat cyclic. So during an explosion when coins just goes crazy, right? Like we saw just now, I think it definitely opens up a lot of opportunities for new players to come into the space, whether it's facility owners or energy providers or just manufacturers. Everyone's a little bit more capitalized than before, and everyone's a little bit more [00:37:04] incentivized to break the current paradigm of control or market share. So I think every time there's an explosion of coin price upward, I definitely think we would see more new players entering the field. I think for facilities, this is a longer process because it involves the conversion of a lot of the stranded energy asset holders to turn into Bitcoin mining facility providers. Leo: [00:37:26] And I'm sure if you talk to tons of them as well, just in my experience in the past few years, there are a lot of these stranded energy asset owners that are looking to get Bitcoin miners into their space. But the problem is they always take a lot of time or a lot of upfront capital in order to get the warehousing in the proper shape. I think the increase in demand for mining in [00:37:47] North America definitely facilitates that. But the question remains, what kind of player has the most advantage in games like this? So that's on the facility side. And as for the places that we see the fastest expansion will be financial service providers to miners. Imagine if you're a public company like Marathon, and you're placing order for a lot of S19, and they are delivered seven Leo: [00:38:11] months from now, there's definitely something you have to do between this period of time. You definitely need to try to find some way to hedge or try to, I wouldn't be surprised that they raised debt to, I'm not Tom American specifically, but players like that would raise debt to fund that or convertible notes to with some kind of conditions. If the whole deal falls apart, [00:38:30] something gets returned to do that kind of funding. Because when I saw the news and I was thinking, if I were a very conservative traditional player who has a public company and just getting monitored all the time, I wouldn't want to take that kind of risk. So how I would do that, and if it's the only option that's available, and I have to do it, the way I would do it is by selling someone some Leo: [00:38:50] kind of convertible note that if by the time we receive machines, something goes wrong or the market goes sour in certain direction, there definitely pre-built conditions, I'll have to do something about that. In your eyes, how many machines a month are the major manufacturers producing either in aggregate or individually? That's a tough question. I don't really have the [00:39:12] number on top of my head, and I think it's really difficult to estimate. The way that from my experience of interacting with the manufacturers, it's very demand-based. It's because a lot of these guys are deeply scarred by 2018. The context is that in the 2017, everyone was a little shocked by the Buran, and everyone's really misjudged how high the market was going to go in the first half of 2018. Leo: [00:39:36] So a lot of the manufacturers bit me. What's the matter? They all ordered tons of components, and throughout 2018, it was just basically a process of painful liquidation, painful process, clearing, and inventory at a discount. And the same thing happened with NVIDIA as well. We all know that 2018 was a time of inventory flush for a media, and you absolutely hated crypto after that. [00:39:58] Do you believe that large tech companies, such as NVIDIA, AMD, Google, Samsung will start building ASICs? Now that we're past that maybe 2017, oh, Bitcoin's a bubble. It's not going to go anywhere after this. Now to 2021, oh, Bitcoin is still here. This industry is still massive, and it's growing even at a faster pace. First of all, I don't think NVIDIA is probably going to make ASICs, but Leo: [00:40:19] for Intel, Samsung would definitely hurt rumors like this, and that definitely hurt rumors that sound a little more real than just average rumors. I think the question comes down to how sustainable the demand is. So in order for these older guys to really play with this market, they'll want to make sure that there is consistent demand, that not like one-off thing, [00:40:39] means that I think that's something that really scares them if there's huge demand one year, and there's no demand the next year after. I think that's just like very devastating for someone who to have to be really careful in managing supply chain. I do think that there's always, especially with given the recent price rally, it definitely incentivized new players to come Leo: [00:40:59] to play. Are they more startups, IC designers, or big players who already have a lot of expertise in IC designers? I'd say it wouldn't be surprised players from both backgrounds are looking at this very closely. And I would agree with you on that, that players from a wide range of backgrounds are looking at it closely. But the question is, are they going to pull the trigger in these [00:41:21] manufacturers? They have a pretty big IP moat. Of course, the companies we're talking about do have enough engineers and very smart people to build the ASICS. It will take a while. And on that note, I've heard that fab vocation of chips is really the biggest delay on getting those wafers. It takes about four months to get a wafer order into a machine. Can you touch a little bit more on Leo: [00:41:43] maybe the overall wafer capacity of these facilities and anything you've heard on that end? Yeah, definitely. So I think the game is still relatively early on the grand scheme of semiconductor space. So even though Bitmain seems like very well established, very powerful, it's like I have a lot of market share, but we've seen how market share in the space come and go. And especially [00:42:06] not Bitmain is experiencing such a damaging, such a painful internal struggle. They're definitely very delayed. I think that opens up space for new players. And what's minor has really is what people consider the top contender, but they haven't really fully get their supply chain management up to speed. And the reason this is so hard for these smaller manufacturers, Leo: [00:42:29] by small compared to Apple, Qualcomm, Kuplace, massive order at the Foundry, compared to these guys, they don't have that much negotiation ability compared to these bigger guys, especially now that the back end process is events to a seven nanometer, eight nanometer. That means they have to compete with much more powerful players. Unlike back in the days when the mining was to rely on [00:42:51] 16 nanometer, there's much easier to get wafers from when apples of the world are not looking for those, or you're not competing with those. So I definitely think as mining becomes more competitive in the Foundry process, I think the for-afer management for manufacturers also becoming harder and harder. But I do think that a lot of these manufacturers, in order to keep Leo: [00:43:12] momentum, they're going to shift their focus from simply racing to build a role models on the more and more advanced back end, keep pursuing seven five nanometer instead of that, they're going to shift their focus on heat dissipation, some more interesting ways to structure and stack these machines. Several years ago, I've seen these server racks model. I think they're going to come back [00:43:34] again, hopefully with better heat dissipation model and immersion cooling. So basically, the equivalent of Moore's law for hash power production is also slowing down. The focus should more improve the efficiency from an architecture level or just the environment of the facility. Do you see a moment in the future, Leo, where you're buying almost like shipping containers of Leo: [00:43:57] miners going back to early days of computers where they took up buildings, thousands of ASIC boards controlled by one or two controllers and really instead of buying one machine, for $10,000, you're buying one machine for half a million dollars or a million dollars. Do you see an industry moving that direction in any sense or do you see it more of just improvements on the current [00:44:16] box style design we have today? I think that's the direction, but I don't think that's going to happen immediately. I think that's going to happen with one or two players who have the luxury of spending that much CapEx. So the architect who designed Google's data center has this famous quote that says, the data center is the computer. And the idea is that the way that the data center Leo: [00:44:38] is structured, the entire facility is tailored to maximize the function that the machine's in the data center is going to provide. So I think a similar mentor also applies here that in the future that the facility is the minor. We're going to see more efforts on tailoring the data center itself, whether it's how to deal with temperature, how to deal with dust, and or just [00:45:01] how to arrange these machines. I think people are going to be more thoughtful around these things. Obviously, there's no one way to fit all right, because every data center is different. But I do think that facility owners who are a little bit more intelligent on that regard will become popular very soon. I definitely agree. There's going to be a lot of expansion space as we look for more Leo: [00:45:21] term key options. They may try to do that with their main inbox as like a first level, but it's not the level that I expect to see 10 years from now. What does a mining environment look like in your eyes supported only by transaction fees? And do you think we'll still see the level of machines and JohnPaul: [00:45:35] growth? I know that is pretty far out. But what are your thoughts there? I want to say that the Leo: [00:45:40] growth of ashtray, at least the rate of growth of hashtray is slowing down. But we know that kind of if you're a stick, break the moment price 10x, and that's definitely going to happen again and again. I'm definitely hesitant to say that the production of the machine is slowing down. But I do think that the ability for each single manufacturer to respond to price change is slowing down. That [00:46:03] is because the kind of machines that are manufactured S19 is objectively harder to manufacture than S9. It takes much more efforts to get wafer, to get everything in place in ship one of those. But obviously this observation is based on the assumption that everything else states constant, but in your environment where the price constantly 10x, I think it definitely introduces new Leo: [00:46:27] employers that definitely introduce more options for buyers. So it's hard to tell. But I do think having a schedule in the Bitcoin space is sufficient and has shown that it does balance out the system and bring that equilibrium. What are some of the things you're researching the most right now that you're willing to share with the audience? I spend a lot of time thinking about liquid [00:46:46] hashrate. I discussed earlier, I think they're still quite a bit at work. It involves a lot of details and details really matter in designing something like this. It's definitely worth waiting to see what is the right way to do this. And I think it's likely going to take multiple iterations for someone to get it right. Besides that, I'm actually very, I don't know if your audience Leo: [00:47:05] are necessarily maxis, but I'm very interested in Ethereum mining recently. There are rumors about Ethereum A60, despite that the uncertainties around moving to proof of stake. I think Ethereum mining is more interesting to me because one that at this point in time, the fees as percentage of revenue is much higher. So I think it definitely introduces a new type of thinking on revenue model [00:47:31] and definitely introduce a lot of uncertainty to the predictability of mining return. And there all these new games that's being introduced to Ethereum that can potentially leverage for miners makes it more colorful. I was thinking Ethereum was going to be stop mining with this recent upgrade. How long until those block awards stop and will miners still be able to get Leo: [00:47:51] transactions fees or how is that going to work? Yeah, so the consensus on ETH 2.0, first of all, it's going to take a long time. And secondly, the consensus is that the proof of work chain is probably going to happen in parallel with the proof of stake chain. So I think most likely, but of course, this is personal opinion that we're going to see two ecosystem existing parallel. [00:48:11] There's going to be some kind of bridge that allow you to go between one and ETH 2. I think from ETH 2.0's perspective, I think it effectively is really a hybrid proof of work proof of stake. The proof of work really provides the consensus and the proof of stake is the process moving to one point out to ETH 2.0 is equivalent to Decred's purchasing ticket. Leo: [00:48:36] Okay, that makes more sense. So you're saying that this transition, it's not just like immediately, I thought it was like when the upgrade was done, mining awards are going to be done, but you're saying that can continue. And then also, you do believe a chain split will occur like we have with the Ethereum Classic. And that you think Ethereum POW will still be a chain that [00:48:52] people utilize and participate on. So nobody knows what exactly is going to happen at this point, but that's my personal guess. It's kind of crazy. We don't know what's going to happen with this massive network. People are developing and people are asking to buy GPUs all the time, putting more capital into the space. Do you see any other coins really stepping in and taking Leo: [00:49:10] Ethereum's place as one of the most profitable GPU coins for GPU miners? If and when they move completely over to proof of stake? Yeah, that's a hard question. Obviously, I don't have anyone on top of my head and I don't think anybody comes close. But if it were ever to come to the point that proof of a work chain just disappear from the face of the planet immediately, [00:49:29] I think that opens up the game for big people already spent so much money on the GPUs. There's going to be a next wave of GPU launched coin like we saw in the beginning of 2019. Grinn was absolutely failure, but I think that just kind of trigger that wave again. Is it fair to say that miners will be making coins just to have them to be mine as we move Leo: [00:49:52] in the future? Because I feel like GPU money has been on for so long, it's been resilient. For the past eight years, nine years, if not right around that time, it's almost solving a problem. We're creating a problem and solving it with some of these new coins is what I'm hearing you say. Oh, absolutely. It's just like you said, the economics at play and we've seen with crypto [00:50:09] since you're able to just copy, paste and about building community, there'll be the opportunity to paint that picture however you want. If it's Mimblewimble, which was that other algorithm reports or if it's Ethereum. One of the last questions I have for you, Lira is, where can our listeners connect with you online? What's the best way to stay in touch? Leo: [00:50:27] Yeah, so I'm on Twitter and I have a blog called AnishaResearch.tech. I don't write very often, about once a month, but every time I publish it, I definitely make sure it's spent a lot of time on it and also it's polished over. Definitely check out the blog and then is there anything else, Lira, that you wanted to talk about? Yeah, so I think overall mining is at the crossroad. [00:50:48] I think it's moving to a very interesting direction. Like you said earlier, the third having really changes things, whether consciously or subconsciously for people's mental model for revenue. I think two major trends that I'm seeing. One is obviously further industrialization, which has been happening for quite some time. I'm specifically talking about ASICS, Bitcoin specifically, and two is Leo: [00:51:09] financialization, whether it's liquid hash rate or financial services built on servicing miners to help them mitigate risk. I think these are two biggest directions. The former definitely is a little bit harder to play because that requires a lot of CapEx and a lot of convincing people to show up with money and definitely requires smart people to really understand how to design these [00:51:29] data centers. Whereas the second trend, I think it's going to have a lot of players, a lot more fragmentation and it's going to take a long time for people to figure out what exactly is going on. I think that's definitely the trend for ASICS mining, for GPU mining. I think it's also at a very interesting place. Several months ago, most miners were hesitant to deploy, to purchase cards and Leo: [00:51:51] because the East 2 is such a huge uncertainty and overall Ethereum community is not that friendly to miners. But just this DeFi that started this explosion of transaction fees and just the recent prosperity made people change their attitude and decide, okay, we're going to do ASICS. So yeah, I think these are big observations at the moment. In changing the foundational [00:52:17] layers we have here today, anything out of left field regulation? So I think some of the conversation has started to become a little bit concerning and on the emphasis that I'm not a super ideological person. But I do think that regulation placed on the wrong level can be potentially damaging to the industry. There's a lot of talk about mining pools needs to be KYC Leo: [00:52:37] that I think that's probably going to happen. The question is when, but I don't know how they're going to enforce that. There's still a lot of open questions, but what they can possibly do is require all the large mining entities, marathons, and I wouldn't be surprised if that already happened, require them to only go through KYC mining pool or they have to do all sorts of disclosure. [00:53:00] I think there's definitely a lot of wiggle room for individual miners, smaller miners with just a couple of machines because they can't really enforce you to put your hash rate on F2 pool. There's no way to enforce that. But for large players, for large industrialized players, I think that process is definitely happening as we speak. Leo: [00:53:20] And if that's the case, do you see decentralized pools coming with stratum 2.0? Do you see they're being an opportunity to build almost like a DeFi decentralized pool where there isn't no information given or no really central authority? It just is like a protocol? Yeah. So first of all, even without all these things happening, I think stratum V2 is very [00:53:39] exciting. And I think that is absolutely the right direction for mining pool software to move to the stratum. Stratum V1 just have some funny problems, even without this minor delegation problem. So I don't know if that necessarily further incentivized development in that because the regulators can simply just require the large mining players to force them to use centralized Leo: [00:54:02] KYC pool. And they can't say, oh, we're just going to join a decentralized pool. And then they get rested in the middle of the night. But I do think that when stratum V2 becomes more mature, I think new generation of pools, although I don't know why would anyone build a new pool at this point, new generation of pools will start to take advantage of that stratum version one that's been here [00:54:24] since they got introduced and hasn't changed. Now we're trying to push for more privacy, more improvements in big proponent as well for stratum version. Thanks to the guys that slush JohnPaul: [00:54:32] over there for pushing that and everyone else. Leo, thanks again for coming on the show. It was Leo: [00:54:36] great talk. I really appreciate it talking about how not all hash powers created equally. These capital markets based on hash rate. And it was really interesting to hear you say that the facility is the mine. And because as you know, it's not just the miners that going to make the hash JohnPaul: [00:54:50] rate and keep the sustainability, but it all comes down to the overall environment. So thanks again [00:54:54] for coming on. Remember to 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 Leo: [00:55:03] five star review to support our journey to become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much [00:55:08] for listening. And until next time, mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Venture Investing in Hard Tech | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 5 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/nasjaq/ All Episodes Episode 5 # Venture Investing in Hard Tech with Nasjaq Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Nasjaq to discuss venture investing in hard tech. ### Venture Investing in Hard Tech Guest: Nasjaq Episode 5 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 ormcapitalvengers.com. Nasjaq: [00:00:53] Today I'm excited to be joined by Jack Najjak on TikTok, a chemical engineer turned TikTok influencer and venture capital investor. Jack's interests, including going to Mars in 2040, helping new companies navigate the startup life and creating weekly videos for over 700,000 followers to help educate the general public on these topics. JohnPaul: [00:01:11] Jack, welcome to the show. Nasjaq: [00:01:12] Thank you for having me JP. It's great to be here. So Jack, I saw your TikTok and I was like, this guy is constantly making great content, talking about space and this tech industry and hard tech and soft tech startups. Can you go a little bit more into how you even got on the platform and what was that initial [00:01:31] moment you had when you realized, wow, I want to double down on TikToks. I think this is going to be a huge platform. Yeah, for sure. TikTok has been an amazing platform to grow on as a new creator. Originally, I started posting YouTube videos and it was actually, I was just talking about stocks Nasjaq: [00:01:46] that thought were interesting. Then I've always been interested in startups. At one point in the summer of 2019, my friends left their jobs to start a, not necessarily a startup, but just a business. And I started a vlog where I went to Dallas and I started vlogging them and it was called millionaires by 2020. [00:02:04] And essentially, I was just making content about startups, but YouTube is very difficult to grow on. So eventually, I got on TikTok and I was making a few videos and then there was a recap, a video that I made of after Elon presented the Starship presentation in late October or September 2019. And that went viral at the time, 200,000 views. And Nasjaq: [00:02:27] I was like, okay, there's clearly something here. I like TikTok, it's growing as a platform. And so I kind of just doubled down on doing hard tech. And essentially, I chose hard tech because I think that commonly I say that the media is somewhat pessimistic. Engineering content creators are focused on making e-bikes and then public investing content creators [00:02:47] are focused on the public markets. And so I kind of invert that, I talk about private markets, I talk about applications and I talk about optimism. So that's, that all converges into startups. So, so then it kind of became like, okay, I'm going to talk about these cool startups that nobody else is talking about. And at the same time, talk about the Nasjaq: [00:03:04] cool hard tech that is already being talked about like Tesla and space ads. So where do you get that information that you use to create your, you know, your weekly or daily videos on what happened in space and startups? So you're listening to a lot of podcast, you have a certain go to place to like aggregate articles or where you find [00:03:19] this, this information kind of how do you do that research? Yeah. So the weekly videos that you're referring to are every Saturday and Sunday I do on Saturday, I do a video on what happened in hard tech startups this week. And on Sunday, I do what happened in space this week. And it's not necessarily startups in space. But I find Nasjaq: [00:03:38] that information, I have an RSS feed set up for like cool startups that I want to be looking for or like, for example, I have an RSS feed notification for lilac solutions. And they announced, I think it was like a partnership last week. And so that's why they were in the video. But then otherwise, it's kind of just me doing some, some professional [00:03:58] googling and reading about portfolios of funds that I like. And also Twitter is like the most valuable resource out there. So yeah, it's kind of just everywhere. And then I choose the top stories that I like that week. And then during the week, I make videos about more in depth content instead of just like general news. Nasjaq: [00:04:17] So during the week, are you able to talk a little bit more about that content production process that you've put in place? I think what I've seen on your videos is you do a really good job basically pumping out content that does well with the algorithm is engaging and has multiple images that are showing up, you know, just one after the next as you're [00:04:34] talking about the topic, are you able to talk a little bit farther about that? Yeah, so the way that I make these videos, in my opinion, relatively engaging is that I think a lot of science content might talk about like a black hole or something in the edge of space. But to me, that's not really applicable to like my life or anything. So Nasjaq: [00:04:54] when I do these videos, the way that I do it is I try to make fast content and I try to make it as applicable to my daily life as possible. All startups aren't really applicable to daily life, but it's like talking about how a new battery processing method will like increase. Going back to Li-Like solutions, talking about how their lithium extraction [00:05:14] process increases lithium extraction from 40% to around 80 or 90% efficiency. And then we can produce lithium for a much cheaper price. And then that helps Tesla because Tesla can do supply chain contracts with them. I think that's really cool to an audience and not many people are hearing that. And then secondly, with the videos in general, I try to take Nasjaq: [00:05:34] editing tips from like, I'm a huge David Dobrik fan. And essentially the way that he cuts together his vlogs is very fast and it's chopped together and it's quick bits. And I try to take that method of editing. You mentioned applicable in your daily life. I think that's one of the things that I've [00:05:51] noticed on TikTok content a lot is that you have to make it applicable to the viewer. And if you go to niche, those videos aren't going to do as well or that content's not going to resonate as well with the viewer, unless you can really show them like, Hey, this is how your future could be because of this company. So I'm interesting that you are actually Nasjaq: [00:06:06] making that loop and you're seeing that that is important to the success of creating content. When it comes to these other platforms, Instagram, wheels, Twitter, fleets, LinkedIn stories, YouTube shorts, Snapchat stories, Pinterest, you know, stories now, all trying to capture on this 30 second 60 second clip that people can watch on the platform. It's like what I [00:06:27] call the new frontier of TV. Are you using any of those other platforms? Have you seen any other traction of pickup or are you just kind of really focusing on doubling down on TikTok? Because in my opinion, it has the best algorithm. Yeah. Yeah. So TikTok definitely does have the best algorithm. This has been beaten to Nasjaq: [00:06:43] death. But the thing that they did was their video success is not tied to your follower chart. But as for Instagram, it's difficult for me to post on the Instagram reels specifically because the Instagram reels limits you to 15 seconds. And I believe this is due to like music to copyright laws and TikTok. All my videos are almost 60 seconds. So I can't repost my [00:07:03] videos to Instagram reels. Although I have made a few specifically for reels and it's clear that Instagram is trying to promote this new avenue for creators. That said, I think Instagram is not necessarily my favorite platform, especially for the startup community, because my goal is like, yes, to have a general broad like science enthusiast like engineering audience. Nasjaq: [00:07:28] But I also want to be able to find people that are really interested in building the future. And to me, that happens one on like video platforms. So on YouTube, such as with content creators, like real engineering, Scott Manley, like all these people have engineering audiences that are excellent. And then also on Twitter, there's there's a huge VC startup community there. [00:07:49] So I take the video approach by using TikTok. And then I take the Twitter community approach by obviously using Twitter. So those are the two platforms that I focus on. And I haven't gotten a ton of value off of the fleets or the reels or anything like that. So you mentioned, you know, you're looking to build in an audience that has engineers. Why does a Nasjaq: [00:08:12] social media audience matter so much today to you? And why are you doing? Why are you looking to build an audience of engineers? Well, for one, if my end goal is to eventually invest in startups, and I'm actually putting together a deal right now that I'll be announcing pretty soon that I'm really excited about, I will also have [00:08:32] to help these companies that are building hard tech with hiring. So one of the biggest value ads that I can bring to these companies that I'm working with and talking about is that I can help them with hiring. For example, Adam Limbs is building prosthetic limbs. And they're taking like some DARPA funded and Johns Hopkins produce technology and they've licensed it and they're starting to Nasjaq: [00:08:53] bring it to market. And what I did was I made a video with them and they ended up getting like three Java evicans per day from qualified people. And there were countless other like anecdotes they had customers that wanted to start using their prosthetics. And so this was like a huge value ad to the company. And then secondly, if I have a lot of engineers in my audience, and my whole thing is [00:09:17] saying like, Hey, you can actually go build a startup. Like, I'm showing you that these are all the people doing it. Lylak solutions, Adam Limbs, Deep Green, like all these people are people that have gone out that were engineers to start building a startup, you can do it too. Then hopefully, when they want to start a startup, they'll message me and hopefully they'll also like be more inclined to Nasjaq: [00:09:39] start startups as well. So it's mostly just like, you know, this has been commonly said, but we've kind of stagnated in the physical world. And hopefully, I can inspire some people to start changing that. That is a great goal to inspire these engineers. And one of the things I think I've noticed on TikTok is, as you mentioned, the the virality of that content being able to actually send three [00:10:00] people a day to apply to send a resume to a startup based on one TikTok video. That's insane. And they didn't even have job postings. Exactly. It's just like we're showing so much opportunity to push so much demand. I actually was watching a couple of TikToks yesterday about the life 360 trend, which is where you know, one guy who kept posting videos about life 360 about how if you got Nasjaq: [00:10:20] a one star review on it, they could kick it off the app store and they literally took their one star reviews or their five star reviews and dropped it to like, I think one or two stars because hundreds of thousands of people gave it a one star review. And the founder actually ended up connecting with the TikTok and was like, Hey, I'd love to talk to you. Because this is insane what [00:10:36] you're able to do. And kind of one of the things you mentioned on when you were discussing, what is the difference between a hard tech and a soft tech startup for listeners who don't really know? Yeah, for sure. And just to go back to the life 360 CEO, he actually turned around his his brand using TikTok. It was impressive. He is now like a Tiktoker. He has hundreds of thousands of followers. And Nasjaq: [00:10:58] people are like, standing the life 360 CEO and being like, Oh, he's just a guy, he's trying to make an app that like helps us like he's completely turned around that brand by working with the Tiktoker and and doing a really excellent job there. Now Sherman Williams, I'm not sure if you saw the paint company or the Tiktoker, they did not do as good of a job. But that's beside the point. As for soft tech and [00:11:19] hard tech, I think these definitions are pretty malleable and flexible. Some people have different opinions on it. But hard tech to me is essentially you're building a hardware product that is novel, has some aspect of novelty. And then soft tech is it's essentially software only. But then soft tech can also include deep tech, which can be like novel software. And then maybe soft tech also just includes like SAS Nasjaq: [00:11:43] or something like that. I'm not like too ridges on these on these definitions. The way that I think about this is I typically feature hard tech because it's very easy for me to put a camera on that and be like, Hey, this is like separating lithium from brine for Li-Lak solutions example, or Hey, this is a robotic arm. It's a lot more difficult to do that with software. And and it to me, it's just like, [00:12:06] okay, we're improving software. But I'd also like cooler things physically. The one software video that I have really made is like, I guess discuss some crypto stuff. But also I have discussed GPT three, which I thought was really cool. Yeah, that software is insane. I'm I when that was released, everyone was talking about it and how it's going to change writing forever. And I've been able to interact with a little bit, don't Nasjaq: [00:12:29] have a license, but I'm super excited for for for GPL three. One of the things that you keep on mentioning is battery technology. So what do you see as the biggest push of renewable energy in the next five years? And then do you think battery technology has a place in the con going conversation? And in my opinion, obviously, yes, it has a place. But how do you think that's going to evolve? And how do we [00:12:51] get how is it going to improve? Yeah, so how do I think that battery technology will improve over the next five years? Yeah, how do you think it's going to be in, you know, with renewable energy and work with renewables? For sure. Yeah, so one of the biggest things is reducing the duck curve. This is seen in California, in that there's essentially not many people are using energy, maybe in the afternoon, but Nasjaq: [00:13:11] then everybody comes home at four PM. And then all of these AC units get turned on, and then it draws a lot of energy from the grid. And they have to turn on all their coal plants, or whatever. And essentially, you need batteries to store the energy so that when everybody starts increasing the peak load, we don't need to turn on the coal plants. This is one of the biggest things that batteries will be [00:13:31] used for. And then obviously, like the electric vehicle revolution is going to be huge. I think that what Tesla has done is showing showing that you can build a battery supply chain again. And I'm still diving into the data here. But my current thesis is that it used to be extremely difficult to break into the battery supply chain as like a startup, mostly because you'd have to secure like a Nasjaq: [00:13:53] huge contract with Panasonic. But now there are multiple battery verticals that are available, such as like you could maybe build like a battery specifically for an Apple watch or an AirPod or a type of electric vehicle or a type of electric semi truck or any of these battery enabled devices. And what this will do is increase the R&D or the like the potential for R&D to actually be used specifically [00:14:19] because like maybe you need a solid solid state battery for one type of application, but then you need a silicon anode for another application. And you know, we're already and so people can develop multiple types of batteries and really develop out the research and technology. And one leading indicator of this is that Tesla themselves is using three different anodes for their different Nasjaq: [00:14:40] trucks or cars. They have like a high nickel anode, they have a high and like a low nickel anode. And I think one of them has a couple, I'm not exactly sure the details, but they have three, three cathodes and and so yeah, people are producing a multitude of battery types. So do you see batteries as being one of the, I guess, pain points for the renewable energy and [00:14:59] also for the ongoing conversation to going green? I mean, for me, when we did kind of some analysis on Bitcoin miners versus batteries, we found that Bitcoin miners are about 10 times cheaper in storing that energy capacity, of course, with a Bitcoin mining operation, you only can relinquish your power rights or give them back to the grid, which prevents those peak or plants or coal JohnPaul: [00:15:20] plants from turning on, you can actually can provide consistent power. But I guess how do you see Nasjaq: [00:15:26] batteries interacting and are they the most important thing in your eye to this push to renewables? Not necessarily. I think that one, we're going to need a ton of materials to get enough batteries like online. And I think we will need batteries for a while, specifically, not necessarily to like balance the load always on an energy grid, but just to like power all these devices, these [00:15:49] electric cars, because you know, even if we did have say coal plants producing all the energy in the middle of a city, I would still want electric vehicles instead of instead of gas powered vehicles emitting pollution in the middle of the city, right? You'd want to concentrate the pollution in one area. So you'll still need batteries. Then it becomes a question of if you need batteries for Nasjaq: [00:16:08] devices or if you need batteries for devices plus storage. So I think that's the question there. Secondly, I think that what might happen instead of producing a ton of batteries is that nuclear power plants such as, and not necessarily the massive ones such as the 100 megawatt reactors, I think that companies and startups like Oklo and NewScale are really deploying or will be [00:16:34] deploying these soon. And these nuclear reactors can provide base power. And so I've been speaking with Oklo and it seems like they have like some really impressive reasons that they'll get to scale. And if this happens, then, you know, maybe the Bitcoin problem will solve the base load, but if not, then the nuclear will solve the constant base load problem. And maybe we won't have as JohnPaul: [00:16:55] many batteries for storing energy. No, I'm excited to see where the nuclear Nasjaq: [00:16:58] conversation can go as we do see, you know, wind and solar is great, but it does have some some lifespan issues there and it is subsidized. So it isn't necessarily the most efficient where this modular nuclear startup set have been coming out, even though recently some of them got their funding cut. I don't know if you made a video about that, but I definitely saw it somewhere. [00:17:16] And I think that hopefully, you know, we can get to that point where we are able to deploy safe modular nuclear plants and power generation across the US and in the world. One thing I do want to touch on before we move over to another topic is your most recent, one of your most recent videos about the stripe airship and using starlight to provide internet. JohnPaul: [00:17:38] So where did this idea come from? And I'm excited to see, you know, if it actually happens, Nasjaq: [00:17:44] that would be amazing. Where does attraction you've gotten so far on that? It will happen. I will bring this in reality. If I have to beam it into reality, I will make it happen. That's a great question. So it happened because Ryan Orbach from Stripe, he previously led Stripe's like climate pro or he is leading Stripe's climate program or working on it. He [00:18:05] posted a tweet and he was saying, I know that there's a lot going on in the world right now, but it feels like Starlink is kind of under hyped. And then he had a tweet underneath that and he was like, CC at Jack Mass Jack. And so I was like, okay, so I asked him, like, are you asking me to hype it up? Or are you asking for my opinion? Why it's not hyped? And then I started like riffing Nasjaq: [00:18:24] ways we could hype it up. And I was like copying maybe like Mr. Beast thumbnail type things where it was like live streaming a night on a private island with Starlink satellites or whatever. And I went through a few like maybe like live streaming a gaming tournament across country using only Starlink or something like that. And then it was like, oh, I like airships. [00:18:43] It would be cool to use a Starlink receiver on an airship going over the mountains because typically you would never have internet there. And also I just want to see more airships in general. I think that airships are a luxury way of travel. And I don't think that they're necessary for cargo or fast travel. But if we have cruise ships, I think that we should have airships. We can design Nasjaq: [00:19:05] them safely now. We can put hell on gas in the mixed with the hydrogen gas to make it inflammable. Or we could use helium, although there is a helium shortage, although you could say, like, if you really want to be cool about it, we're going to go mine some helium from the moon. And I'm mostly just messing around there. But then there's also like vacuum airships as well. [00:19:28] So you won't even need gases, although then it becomes like more of a structural problem. But the main thing is that I think that airships have typically represented like the time where we used to dream about the future. So there's a lot of cool concept art about airships, maybe from the 1930s being like, hey, the future is going to be massive cruises. And that future never really Nasjaq: [00:19:49] panned out. And that happened also with nuclear future people were going to be living on the moon by 1970 or whatever. And for really 1990s or 2000s. And all of this concept art that used to be part of the future kind of faded away. And I think it's just extremely important that we bring some of that concept art back into reality and say, hey, it actually is possible. Why did we give up on this? [00:20:16] So yeah, I'm currently looking for sponsors. I think what we can do is we already have one of the phase clan members who's one of the biggest gaming Twitch streamers out there. He's on board. He wants to like do a gaming tournament from an airship will obviously be live streaming the travels using Starlink. Casey Handmere said that it is like technically possible. We might have to Nasjaq: [00:20:37] do like some software things with SpaceX to make that happen. I'd love to like put some company's logo. Maybe it'll be striped on the side of it and maybe raise awareness for stripes climate program. Or if anybody else has any ideas of what they want to promote, that would make sense. I think definitely reach out to me. And I want to make this happen. I have engineers who reached out to me. [00:20:57] This is the beauty of the audience that I have is that I have engineers who are already building airships that reach out to me. And like I've been talking with this guy as well. And like he's like, hey, yeah, I can build this. Like we can do this. It all come together. And so yeah, that's where I'm working on. I just think meaming a lost vision of the future and making a reality will be like Nasjaq: [00:21:16] super powerful. I wish you best of luck in that, man. I definitely want to see it happen. Do you have like a budget? And you have any idea how much airship would cost even build and let alone operate, but really build, I guess? Yeah, we can definitely do it for under 10 million. Okay. Like that's that's for sure. And then I would I would be hesitant to say like less than five. [00:21:37] But I do genuinely think we can do it for pretty cheaply, especially if we don't make anything massive. We're not looking to like scale it up a ton. Yeah, I definitely think we can do it. I'm actually discussing with the engineer that I was mentioning. He's also a founder of like a satellite supply chain company, which is really cool, but named Pantheon Orbital. And yeah, Nasjaq: [00:21:56] I'm discussing pricing with him and how we'll actually build this and like what the timelines are. But this is going to happen. So yeah. So stay tuned. And how do people reach out to you? What's the best way I usually relieve that for the end? But do I want to give that information now? Twitter DMS are probably the best, but you can also email me jack at NAS jack.com. [00:22:14] And how do you spell NAS jack for everyone who doesn't know NAS J.A.Q. It's like NASDAQ, but for startups. Awesome. I didn't actually make that realization until you told me over the phone. Makes total sense. Yeah. Yeah. The original phrase was like NAS jack, hijack the NASDAQ, skip the nine to five, take a risk, build the future. And I don't necessarily Nasjaq: [00:22:38] want to be out there saying like hijack the NASDAQ. But yeah, it's definitely like, you know, I'm Jack and I'm building NAS jack and it's like the alternative to NASDAQ, which is the nine to five life. Like if you want to genuinely build the future, work really hard. You know, I'm talking with people who are building cities, building satellite supply chains, [00:22:58] you know, robotic arms, nuclear fission reactors, like all these things are possible. And yeah. So NAS jack is like the alternative reality to NASDAQ. I love it. So talking about building the future. So if you had a chance to go back before you started college, would you choose the same career path of being in biomedical engineering, or would you potentially not even go to school JohnPaul: [00:23:19] altogether and you know, build content and work on a startup? Can you talk a little bit more about, Nasjaq: [00:23:23] you know, how you view college? Yeah. So is your question asking me like 2013 me or 2020? 2020 you looking back and having an opportunity again. Okay. So in 2013, I would still go to college. In 2020, I would not. And that's mostly because the internet has just like taken off since since 2013. Since you know, now it's very viable to be a high schooler without a education and [00:23:53] essentially, you know, even if you're an engineer, just make projects and show people that you can build stuff. And I think you'll get hired by not necessarily like maybe a big prestigious firm. But honestly, if you're the person that's building projects, you don't want to be at this prestigious firm because they might not be getting stuff done. So currently, I would not go to Nasjaq: [00:24:12] college, but you also have to be motivated. You have to be able to promote yourself. You have to be able to put together a project like list of what you've accomplished. You have to be able to do projects on your own. And you also have to be able to like say, find somebody like say if you're mechanical engineer, you have to find somebody at a CNC shop and get a job there and and start like [00:24:31] learning that way. But I totally think it's viable. I think that everybody's going into debt over this thing that's like socially accepted. And you should always be wary of social socially accepted norms, especially when every single person is complaining about having student debt, everyone. Like, so why would you why would you even consider going into it? It blows my mind. I would not. So, Nasjaq: [00:24:52] you know, I can say that kind of stuff. But I also think I exemplify it in terms of after I graduated, I was a chemical engineer, I had I studied chemical engineering. I did biomedical research. I did some computational methods, grad courses. And you know, I could have gotten a job as a chemical engineer. So, so I was in Canada. Sorry. And then I could have gone to Houston or something and [00:25:15] gotten a job and oil and gas or has a as a junior chemical engineer or whatever. But instead, I looked up from Canada or I was in Canada and I looked out and I said, I want to go to the coolest place in America. So what I did was I drove down to the Gigafactory, Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada, and I talked my way into a job. And I literally, I just I just went out there and I talked to Nasjaq: [00:25:34] people and I said, I want to work at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada. I think this is a really cool place. It's like the future manufacturing and let me in. And so, so I was at like a car dealership and his wife turned out to be part of the hiring team at like the Gigafactory. And so, so yeah, I talked to people. And, and you know, that was not like the junior engineer role at all. [00:25:57] But then eventually I left and I was like, okay, this like massive kind of company isn't necessarily for me. It wasn't it wasn't because of extra work or anything. I'm just always attracted to startups. And so I went to Austin. I did my own startup. I started it. It was going going all right. Like I was doing well. I was learning a lot. And then I met a YC team who I ended up joining. Nasjaq: [00:26:19] And I was one of like the first few engineers and I set up like their manufacturing and supply chain. So it was it was like I did not go the standard route after after that. And then I started posting on the internet. And I think the internet just accelerates anything that you're doing, not to keep going beyond the question. But like the way that I think about the internet is the [00:26:39] internet is an artificial general intelligence and AGI. And you talk to it. And you can say, I want, I want good things or I want bad things. And whatever you ask of the internet, it will bring to you. And so if you ask for good things, it will bring that good things. And that's why I think that you don't necessarily need to go to university. I agree with you completely. I myself dropped out Nasjaq: [00:26:59] of school on that. That was a great answer. I have so many follow up questions. The first one I want to ask you is you mentioned mentors. So who would you say your mentor is or the people you most JohnPaul: [00:27:09] follow and you know, can you tell maybe specifically if you have a story where a mentor impacted you Nasjaq: [00:27:14] to kind of take this leap? I mean, most people don't just show up and at Tesla's Gigafactory or you know, in Nevada and say, I want to get a job here. But I think what I'm what I tell my friends and when I realized from running my own startup and company is that that's very feasible. If you have some skills and you have some things you've worked on, you can easily walk into most of these [00:27:31] places and talk to some people in the city in the big town, find out who you need to meet, go to a meetup and then get a job in under a couple of weeks at one of these big companies that is always looking for engineers, people who think outside the box. So as for mentors, I mean, I definitely had like one or two professors that I really learned a lot from in terms of just being diligent, Nasjaq: [00:27:52] working hard and just seeing seeing what they're producing in terms of kind of what I was thinking of when I went to the Gigafactory. You know, this is like a super common idol or whatever, but I was thinking like, like, what would Elon do? Like, Elon, he had a job. I just vaguely remember he had two jobs and like he had one job during the day and then he'd go work at [00:28:13] coding like some mouse or something for an early tech company during the night. And you know, he also moved from Africa to Canada and figured out his way and then he moved to the States and figured out his way. And I was, I've always moved around a lot. I don't have a problem changing my location. Like, it wasn't like I was born in Canada. I was born in Houston, Canada, and then I moved Nasjaq: [00:28:35] to Canada, Calgary, and I moved to the Netherlands. And then I went back to Canada for university and then Nevada, Austin, back in Houston, and I'm currently about to go to San Francisco. But as for the question for mentors, it was kind of like, I, at that moment, I was thinking like, Elon would kind of just do something like this, because he has done stuff like that. [00:28:54] Yeah, that's, I mean, I agree. I definitely agree with you on that. Elon is a crazy guy. And I'm glad to hear, you know, he is one of those mentors. I feel like that a lot of people in the past, you know, 10 years have started looking up to him and he has inspired, I think, you know, hundreds of thousands of engineers to work on problems that are bigger than life like. And hopefully, Nasjaq: [00:29:13] if you mentioned, push this world into the reality of the future that we, you know, we thought we were going to have in 20, 30, 40 years ago. Totally. So I've got this question down. I just, as you were talking, do you fear failure at all? Like, do you fear like you could end up failing? JohnPaul: [00:29:28] Or is it just, can you talk more on that? Like, what does that even look like? Nasjaq: [00:29:31] I've failed so many times. I failed so many times. I've had multiple like YouTube channels. I was bullish on my YouTube channel when my friends quit their business and that, you know, ended up not panning out. Although now I have 8,000 subscribers on YouTube, which is an at time I haven't been posting there. But I've made videos that just have flopped. You know, I started a startup and then [00:29:52] I left that to go to the YC startup. That's technically a failure. You know, I failed at the Gigafactory, I guess, by not becoming like a senior engineer there. I've done so many things where it's like every single time I would rather just fail like, like recently, very concrete example is that in the last two weeks, I've just been running two miles every morning. And Nasjaq: [00:30:14] it wasn't even like a question of if I should try it because I was like, well, if I do one week of it, that's better than doing none. And so yeah, I tried to not consider failure as like losing. It's more learning. And so, you know, if I failed at the Gigafactory, technically I learned what it was like to be there. And then if I failed starting a startup, it was like, well, I learned what it [00:30:35] was like to do that. And then I got the opportunity to go to the YC company and learn a lot more there. And I don't know. I mean, everybody will fail. People fail thousands of times. Steve Jobs failed. Elon, you know, has failed. Like everybody's done things and you should be trying things. You shouldn't be a 4.0 GPA with the perfect resume that has never failed. I think you'll end up, Nasjaq: [00:30:57] I don't want to say, but like a generic kind of thing. So no, I understand. I think that's a great, great response. And as you know, we're saying, failure is really the opportunity to learn. And one of the things I want to touch on, which I think a lot of people have a struggle with, especially when creating content is failing with content creation and understanding that you need [00:31:18] to build consistency in order to fail and pass through those failures in order to get, as you JohnPaul: [00:31:24] mentioned, you know, whatever you're looking for from the internet. Can you talk a little bit more Nasjaq: [00:31:28] about how maybe you've had struggled with creating content consistently or even like that process and if like those failures, what you've learned from them in, you know, content creation specifically, it seems like you have been doing it for a while now. And this is like, you know, one of the most successful avenues, the TikTok channel that you have. But how do you view failure in the sense [00:31:46] of like content creation or even like being a successful content creator? Yeah. So the way that I think about failure, and this is so difficult because I struggle with this every single day. It's like, I'm currently working on setting up a system to make my videos, you know, maybe within like the first three hours of the day, and then forcing myself to do it within Nasjaq: [00:32:07] that time period will make me be less afraid of failure or something instead, like giving myself the entire day to make a video, because then it kind of like builds up in my head. And I struggle with this a ton. The way that I think about it is like when I first started posting TikToks, my first TikToks were just me like running around or doing the classic trends or whatever, [00:32:26] or like riffing on them. And they would get, you know, 200 views or whatever. And then I had a viral video recapping the SpaceX Starship presentation when it was first announced. And then, you know, I kept making videos after that, but it's not like everyone goes viral after that. I did have like a pretty good streak in September, October, November. But then there's just lulls and you have to always Nasjaq: [00:32:49] push through it. I think the way that you can think about it is, is instead of looking like you're externally failing, like everyone's looking at you and being like, wow, what a failure. You should honestly just be like, okay, am I happy that I published that? Like, yeah, okay, next one. Like, okay, I published it. Good. Like the technically the airship one that you mentioned [00:33:10] was was a failure to me because it got 60,000 views. And, you know, to somebody else, that's totally not failure. But to me, it's like, okay, I didn't even crack 100. Are you kidding? And I'm putting out this cool idea. But I am glad that I published it because then it led to your question 10 minutes ago. And now I'm talking about it. And then I'm also happy because somebody from Nasjaq: [00:33:30] Clean Technical wants to make an article on it. So I'm, it's like, I could have been scared to even publish the initial tweet where it was like I quickly mocked up a airship that had the stripe logo on it. And it was like me hanging from the airship with a Starlink satellite receiver on the top. And I could have been scared to publish that. But now I have, you know, I'm talking [00:33:51] about it in this podcast. I'm, I have a Clean Technical article on the way. I'm talking with an engineer, but the video still failed or did it? I don't know. So it's like, it's all how you, how you look at the failure, I think. But I think the way to think about it is don't externally worry too much. Like don't think, Oh, my parents will think of me as a failure. Or like, if I don't Nasjaq: [00:34:12] get a 4.0 GPA, it's more like internally, like, are you happy with the things that you've done? I think that's a great way to look at it. As you mentioned, 60,000 views. So one person on TikTok is a lot. 60,000 views to our content creators getting millions per video is a failure, or is not enough. But even as you mentioned, it's not necessarily everything comes down to views. [00:34:30] There's value that's created outside of that view count. You know, you only need one view from one investor, from one person, the right spot to make that connection, to make an idea like that hostel. Totally. There have been so many edge cases that I'm like shocked that something happened from this like random thing. And it's like, it's insanely powerful, these edge cases. Nasjaq: [00:34:51] And I would agree with you on that completely. One of our, one of our technicians on one of our mining sites actually made a video and then it led to closing a sale of over $400,000 in revenue. And then, you know, profit for the next 24 months from one TikTok video. It's like, wait, what is that? I was like, okay, we need to double down on this platform because it says, you know, [00:35:09] even it's an edge case because it hasn't happened again. But it's like, wow, there's a lot of opportunity here to capture on in these platforms. And kind of like you mentioned, looking at the internet, like really, whatever you want to get out of it. And if you believe that you have a positive, you know, message for the world in that you'll be able to provide value that other people Nasjaq: [00:35:28] are going to see that value in the internet. It's going to reward you or these more appropriate other AIs are going to reward you for creating that type of content. Yeah, totally. How many views did that video get? That video got like 1.2 or 1.3 million, I believe. [00:35:41] So it was one of his, it was actually his first video, which I ended up betting him. I said, you know, he was like, I was making my TikToks and I got a video that got like 3 million views. And then, you know, he was like, I want to do this. This sounds fun. I'm like, yeah, awesome. Let's do it. I'll make you a gentleman's bed of $1. If you can get a video Nasjaq: [00:35:56] over a million views in his first video, I did, you know, kind of million views. It just shows you put out that content. But more importantly, I think the energy behind that content of your intention of like putting together that quality content, but then also like not have like just being like you mentioned, be able to like push it out there and do it consistently helps because [00:36:13] then you're going to get one that might be a home run or might get a higher, you know, higher view ratio. Exactly. If you never put it out, you're never going to get a million views. That's just fact. No way around me against that. So the first time you were exposed to blockchain JohnPaul: [00:36:27] or Bitcoin, can you tell me a little bit about that story and maybe how you kind of came into Nasjaq: [00:36:31] that into the space? Yeah, in high school, one of my friends bought a mining rig. Oh, wow. So it was maybe like 2013. I don't know. It was maybe like 500 or 1000 bucks or something. And he was like, do you want to split it? And then one of my other friends ended up splitting it. At the same time, though, to be fair, I was investing, I was using my money to invest in Netflix and Tesla [00:36:50] at $30 each before the splits. So I think the return on that money was still pretty good, even if it didn't go into a mining rig. But yeah, he started mining it. I'm not sure if he ever, I think he actually ended up selling it at like 700 and was like pretty happy with that. I'm not exactly sure. But that was my first experience with it. And then the second time that I like really, Nasjaq: [00:37:11] I mean, I had always known about it and everything, but I didn't want to deal with having a wallet and like figuring that out. And so then the second like main time was obviously during the 2017 spike. I was like early on that. So I can at least say that I didn't get like burned terribly and buy at the top. But that was the time where it was like, I actually start buying before that I had known [00:37:33] that it was like a good investment. I never, it just makes sense. Yeah, that is the thing. Why is how does it just make sense to you? I'm curious. It's just like a digital currency. And it, yeah, it's like fixed supply gold will be found in mind and diluted and all this stuff. You should just move on into the 21st. But it's not that easy, obviously. And I'm over-simplifying Nasjaq: [00:37:55] it for sure. But I've never been like a full on hater or anything like that. What are your multiple income streams? And are you able to talk further about how you built them and which ones are the most profitable or why it's important that you have passive income growing up? Yeah. So having passive income is super important. I mean, I've owned Apple for a while since $80 [00:38:14] and before the splits. And that paid off dividends. And it's not a ton just because it's just a position from when I was younger. But yeah, it's paid off dividends and you get money from that. And in general, it's not necessarily passive income, but just owning stocks. It has been a bull run for the last few years. And who knows when that will really end. And I've been pretty Nasjaq: [00:38:39] fortunate during my investing time span to have been doing it during a bull run. But yeah, I've done pretty well. It's good to see the money grow over time and actually being put to work. As for my personal revenue streams as a creator, is that what you want me to expand on as well? Yeah, if you could talk about any software revenue streams, you can create our revenue streams. [00:38:59] Yeah. So as for other revenue streams, I think that the most important thing about working online is that you aren't tied to just a nine to five paycheck. So I think in general, everyone should try to make $1 online. I think that's a super important goal. And you can do that as well, like outside of your nine to five. And so for me, now that I've made the $1 online and I've scaled Nasjaq: [00:39:25] up from there, as a creator in 2020, the main sources of revenue are like, you get AdSense from TikTok, creators funds, you get I'm part of the TikTok education fund. So I get paid a cash amount for each educational video. And then I also have merch. I also have a sub stack where people can essentially support me. It's like my Patreon, nazjac.substack.com. And then the big [00:39:50] thing is working with companies that want to promote their hard tech startups that maybe need help hiring or they're looking to generate some media attention, either for upcoming investment raise or just like they announced a new product and they want to get it out. So then working with that, I can do things like affiliate links. So I'm working on a project with Z-beiotics, Nasjaq: [00:40:11] who is working on genetically modified organisms that can process acetyl-outahide. And so when you actually go out drinking acetyl-outahide builds up in your gut, and this is what causes a hangover. So if you drink this drink with bacteria that processes acetyl-outahide, you actually wake up and don't have a hangover. This is mainly because dehydration is not the main cause of a hangover. [00:40:33] So I can obviously work with Z-beiotics and sell their hangover, cure drinks. And that's awesome. You guys should definitely check that out if I have the affiliate link live by this time. But as well, they're working on further revenue streams or further genetically modified organisms that they can create to sequester carbon and all this stuff. So it's Nasjaq: [00:40:53] like an initial revenue stream for them too. And related to that, they're starting with one revenue stream, which is their drink. And then they're going to develop a new revenue stream with the carbon sequestration bacteria I'm doing, like one revenue stream by doing brand deals, working with these companies. And then the big thing that I'm like, the overall goal of NASDAQ is to be an [00:41:15] investor. And so if I have a revenue stream from these brand deals and I take all of that money, this is my thesis. I take everything that I make as a creator and I put it into startups that I'm bullish on that I can work with and that I can help grow through multiple methods. That's where the lion's share of my returns are going to be, really. So yeah, it all starts with the small Nasjaq: [00:41:38] domino of AdSense and maybe your first brand deal and then merge Sub-SAC and then it goes all the way up to investments in world changing companies. So two things I want to touch on there was, one is the brand deal. And how have you had companies approach you and what type of size the deals you're looking at? Is that $1,000 for a video? Is that $5,000? 10,000 for a video? How does [00:42:03] that look like on the side from an engineering company or from a startup? Yeah. So if it's an engineering company, one of the biggest things that I can do is help hiring. Like I mentioned with Adam Limbs, they were getting three job applications from qualified people per day and they're still getting job applications. They're still getting a ton of news. And then I also help Nasjaq: [00:42:19] them. They were running a WeFunder program and WeFunder is essentially like a crowd sourcing fundraising thing. And they've raised like hundreds of thousands of dollars and at least a few thousand of it was from my video. So I'm working on them to get the exact numbers, but they had multiple investor notes saying I'm investing specifically because I saw like this was this [00:42:39] thing that triggered my interest was my video. And so that's huge. I mean, if I can help companies fundraise, if I can help them hire, all I'll say is like it's definitely above the thousand mark but yeah. So I can definitely have all these value ads for sure. No, there's a huge value ad there. And I think one of the things that we've talked about offline that I want to talk about Nasjaq: [00:42:58] now is influencers investing in building startups over the coming years. Who do you see either doing JohnPaul: [00:43:06] this well and how do you see yourself playing into that? As you mentioned, turning this content, Nasjaq: [00:43:10] this ad revenue into equity. Yeah. So hopefully it's more than just an ad revenue, but yeah, the ad revenue, the brand goes. So as for how I think that will play out, I think we have already seen and it kills me that some Tiktokers beat me to the first like TikTok angel investment headlines. But we have seen some Tiktokers do angel investments. I'm specifically thinking of I believe it was [00:43:35] Bryce Hall, Josh Richards, and Griffin Johnson invested in Atmos. I'm not sure if all of them did, but they're investing in some of the YC companies. And so they have some deal flow there mostly because they can promote this to like a broad audience. I think what I'm doing is a little bit different in terms of like my audience is more engineer. So I might have engineers from my Nasjaq: [00:43:55] audience that and this has happened, they start a startup and they're like, who is the first person that I can talk to about starting a startup? And when I was having this conversation with this person that I'm thinking of, specifically they told me, I only know of investors YC and you. And I was like, what? And I was like, you haven't like talked with anybody. And they're like, [00:44:17] we don't even know like who to talk to it. Aside from that, their product is amazing. They're killing it. They have users throwing themselves at them like just because they don't know investors does not mean that they can't build a product. So that's amazing. And so I think what is great about my audience and what I love and what I love interacting with them about is like, hey, Nasjaq: [00:44:37] how can you build this startup? Like, what are you working on? How can I help you? And so I'm the first person that they reach out to when they start building stuff. So I have a lot of excellent deal flow on like new companies. And I think that deal flow is super important as an investor. It's one of the most important things is the quality of the deals that you have access to [00:44:54] and quantity to be able to find those investments, which will have that 10 or 100x return, which is, as we've seen, where all the value comes from in equity investing and especially angel investing. Yeah, it's all about power loss. And I feel like most of the world is this point. Bitcoin and everything's a power law. I'm going to keep looking at the world there. Nasjaq: [00:45:15] So, Jack, we're coming up to the end of the podcast. I want to give you an opportunity to talk, to ask any questions about Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining to myself before we close it out for the JohnPaul: [00:45:24] dress of the day. Yeah. So what do you think about this current run? Well, I think the current run is Nasjaq: [00:45:30] insane. It's always good to see Bitcoin price move up. I'm hoping it was hoping it was going to happen after Christmas. I think we will have a correction of 20 to 30% from the now $20,000 price point. But it's interesting because no one is talking about it who was talking about in 2017. So for me, I was on college campus at NC State and all of my friends were asking about it. [00:45:53] People all over the school were talking about it. Everyone was talking about Bitcoin. Right now, the price is the exact same and no one could care less. It's insane. No one has noticed. People have not educated themselves. I told one of my friends, I was like, hey, you need to buy Bitcoin. It's going to go up as my normal preaching. And then it came to the Nasjaq: [00:46:14] moment and she's like, oh, what's Bitcoin at? I'm like, oh, it's up 70% in the past as I told you. And it's like, what? So I think there is still that conversation of these new investors are all institutions. And they're buying on great scale like crazy. And we're seeing tons of interest in our equity round and in debt financing of mining equipment, [00:46:33] which before there wasn't much interest at all. So I just see this as a real indicator. The space isn't going away. And that 2021, 2022 is going to be life changing for everyone in crypto and hopefully build, help increase the products and increase the amount of users that are using these products in this space. I think everybody's securing positions before being super loud about JohnPaul: [00:46:55] it. That's like super obvious thing that everybody's doing. What do you think like the price will be Nasjaq: [00:47:00] by the end of 2022 or something like, I know it's absurd to do these price things, but I think that all of this institutional buying signals something massive coming. Yeah, the fact that we hit 20K so quickly makes me always saying $100,000 Bitcoin price. And in 2021, I've been saying that on previous podcast for a while now. I think we will blow past that. I think we could be hitting at least [00:47:22] $250,000 per Bitcoin. And that's going to only spike. It's going to be a quick spike. And then after that, it's going to be a crash. Just like we see normal Bitcoin power laws here. It's just as we see this 10X increase. We do have to contract. We do have to let the market figure out where that base price is. But I do at least seeing it hit up close to $250 per coin, which is crazy. Nasjaq: [00:47:41] Because now it's at $19,000. And when I got into the space, it was at $70 a Bitcoin. So the one thing I wish I could have done better was holding more bitcoins. The one thing I device I could have given any of my family and friends was to buy Bitcoin. I did. But at the time, it was still new. And the ideas were still not understood, as you mentioned, the scarcity, [00:48:01] the only one being $21 million. And the fact that it is a really a scarce asset or scarce way to transmit money and trust across the internet. So what are your mining rigs doing right now? I guess it's the time to get into your mining rigs. Yeah. So for mining rigs, I mean, right now we're looking at doing a $42 million debt raise for mining equipment. Nasjaq: [00:48:23] This mining equipment is going to be $15,000 of the new S19 pros machine, which would put us about 1% of the Bitcoin network a little bit over that. And that just came to light over the past couple months is that there's now private lenders who are willing to lend capital to mining companies that have extremely low cost power. So right now we're working on getting all three of those [00:48:46] components, the power, the lender and the equity partners together to hopefully close out of deal before the end of the year. And we're seeing a ton of traction and are getting some term sheets on the table now, which is super exciting. Going back to the institutional buyers, JohnPaul: [00:48:58] do you think what do you think caused their shift in thinking? Like, do you think that they saw the Nasjaq: [00:49:02] 2017 bubble and then got educated and then we're like, okay, we're just going to wait for it to JohnPaul: [00:49:07] kind of die down before starting to buy in? Or what do you think was kind of the shift of like, hey, Nasjaq: [00:49:11] we need to get into this? I personally think microBT and Square putting, we talked to Michael Saylor putting 500 million on the balance sheet of a publicly traded company, showing this isn't going away. We did due diligence on this, and we're going to put our money where our mouth is. And that was huge. Because everyone else in the space was like, oh, it's not going away. One company [00:49:32] dished it. And then all these other companies started saying, yeah, we've already had positions, you know, funds have said we've already, we're allowing our fund to direct and crypto to purchase crypto. That's huge. And now I think with the overall printing from COVID, you know, six months ago, seven months ago, that only compounded the problem. Yeah, so essentially everyone's looking Nasjaq: [00:49:51] out and seeing that the buying power of the dollar might be decreasing a little bit. Exactly. One of the things I heard in the space was, you know, with COVID and with the stimulus package that they put in, in the Federal Reserve issuing, you know, basically buying $1.2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities. What effectively that does to the market is it effectively [00:50:12] effectively makes people build houses for like the next 10 years. They're dropping the interest rate from 3.5% to 2.8%. That means you now have tons of workers in the economy that's now are going to go build houses and it's going to continue to build supply, continue to, you know, keep up with this artificially created demand that we have because of the Federal Reserve coming in and Nasjaq: [00:50:33] buying these $1.2 trillion of asset-backed securities or mortgages. And so what that does is it makes us now have it to compare one price point to the other. And so what I mean by that is basically now we're comparing how many apples does it take to buy a house? How many cars, Teslas, does it take to buy a house? How many bitcoins does it take to buy a house? Instead of [00:50:53] necessarily like how many US dollars does it take to buy an apple or how many US dollars take to buy a car? Because what's happening is the US dollar is losing value relative to everything else in the industry. When you have massive purchases of trillions of dollars of assets, it's making it so that if you don't own an asset, if you don't own something that's scarce, which is land, gold, Nasjaq: [00:51:12] equity to some extent, but Bitcoin really, you don't have the opportunity to capture that upside into protect your wealth. And I think a lot of investors are seeing that and with interest relates being so low on cash, they have access to the capital markets, they have access to these credit facilities. Why not buy this scarce asset in the world? Yeah, that makes sense. [00:51:30] Yeah, and that's what going back to it. It's like what I was saying when it just makes sense. Yeah, it's a scarce asset. It's not going to increase. It's that simple. It's not going to go anywhere. It's digital. And if the internet goes down, we have another big problem to solve. So JohnPaul: [00:51:44] Bitcoin isn't going anywhere. But I appreciate the time, Jack. This was an amazing conversation. Nasjaq: [00:51:50] I hope all of our listeners got out some great tidbits on content creation, on what it means to overcome failure and how to look at it differently. Do you have anything else you want to hit on JohnPaul: [00:52:00] before we close off for the day and then where can people connect with you? Nasjaq: [00:52:04] Yeah, essentially the main thing is if you're working on building the future, if you're building startups, if you're researching cool things, I'm currently interested in terraforming the Sultans Sea. And other cool projects and just general startups. So reach out to me, hit me up. Twitter DMs are probably the best. Email me jackatnasjak.com. Check out my JohnPaul: [00:52:26] TikTok at Nasjak and we'll build the future. Make it happen. Thanks again for coming on, Jack. I appreciate it. It was a great to have you. And subscribe to my sub stack, Nasjak.com. Nasjaq: [00:52:36] Nasjak.substack.com. And you're launching a podcast, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to be writing some short fiction on what I think future things should happen in terms of how we'll terraforming the Sultans Sea, like I just mentioned, or what the stripe airship will look like. So that'll be some short fiction stories. And then yes, I am also releasing a podcast. [00:52:55] Soon I have the first two episodes recorded. It's not released yet, but it'll just be, I haven't come up with a name, but it just search Nasjak in Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast and follow me on Twitter and have post notifications on. So you'll get notified when I JohnPaul: [00:53:10] release it. Awesome. There's so many ways to connect with Jack. He's super busy. I appreciate you coming on, Jack. Thanks again for what a time. Awesome. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Selling Screen-Based Artwork on Blockchain | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 16 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/sarah-zucker/ All Episodes Episode 16 # Selling Screen-Based Artwork on Blockchain with Sarah Zucker Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Sarah Zucker to discuss selling screen-based artwork on blockchain. ### Selling Screen-Based Artwork on Blockchain Guest: Sarah Zucker Episode 16 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm your host JP Berwick 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 [00:00:15] in this space. [00:00:16] JP Berwick 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I'm here with Sarah Zucker who is an artist based in Los Angeles. Her work merges the gorgeous and through humor, mysticism and the inner play of cutting edge plus obsolete technologies. She works across medium specializing in mixing digital and analog video techniques including the use of VHS. Her gift card has been viewed [00:01:00] over 6 billion times on Giffy. She became a Jeopardy champion on September 27, 2013. She writes short form comedy, television, feature scripts and is in art and culture articles. Welcome to the show. I'm excited to hear about this crazy story you have and how you got into NFTs. Sarah: [00:01:16] Hi JP, thanks for having me. I'm excited to tell you all about it. It's been a crazy journey. You just myself learning about the progression of NFTs and seeing this pace explode. I actually listened to Snoop Dogg launch his NFT last week. I wanted to start there which is what got you interested in crypto art and maybe more specifically what [00:01:37] got you interested in art in general and how have you seen crypto art or NFTs allow you to express yourself more fully through this new technological medium? So, art has been a lifelong pursuit of mine which I'm sure is probably true of many artists you'll meet. I got into photography as a teenager and that was my main medium for 10 years. Sarah: [00:01:57] I was very active as a photographer in early social media photography scenes and I transitioned to more of a video art and motion approach around 2011. So, because I started really focusing on video and animated gifts around that time, that was also right alongside the rise of cryptocurrency and I would say it was around 2014, 2014, 2015 with the advent of Ethereum. [00:02:24] There started to be a lot of talk in like new media artists circles about this potential we would have one day with this new blockchain that would let us create what we now have come to call NFTs. So, really it was around that time I was that was primarily what I was doing as an artist. My primary pursuit was animated gifts which sounds like crazy Sarah: [00:02:46] to people. It sounded crazy I'm sure to my parents. That was like what I was focusing on but it really just combined so many of my very specific skills and talents I think. I have played drums since I was 10 so I often think of the kind of work I do. I took my photography practice and then I just added in the drumming like animated gifts have this [00:03:09] rhythm to them. They have the looping effect. There's a musicality. So, yeah, at that time I got really into the idea of cryptocurrency. I doke was my first crypto back then and I would certainly not say it was like a huge crypto enthusiast but I was definitely very excited about the potential of it. And so, really ever since that time I knew this potential Sarah: [00:03:31] existed and I just had my eyes and ears open. I'm not the person who invents non-fungible tokens but I'm definitely the person who knows that's coming and I want to be there when it arrives. And it was then in early 2019 an artist I knew through an event I used to curate. I curated this visual music event in Los Angeles called Prismpipe from 2014 [00:03:53] to 2016 and through that I got to meet and examine the work of so many incredible gift and video artists. Like a lot of people who now I'm very happy to say are big players in the NFT scene. And so, it was an artist I knew through that, a Europe moron who I had shown at this event. I followed a lot of these people on social media and I saw him Sarah: [00:04:15] starting to post about, hey, come by my work. I'm selling an edition of my work on Super Rare. And I was like, whoa, whoa, like what now? Like how does one sell a gift? Is this that thing I've been waiting for? Oh, I think it is. It's here. It's time. And scoping out Super Rare and just being like, oh my God, this is the thing. This is the moment. These [00:04:36] are the people who figured it out. And part of that for me is like I said, having a background in photography, I worked for a time as a curator of fine art photography in 2011. So I actually had gotten this education in the fine art photographic print market learning what editions were, what's, you know, how scarcity affected value, what was desirable, what was less desirable, Sarah: [00:05:00] et cetera. So I think that for me was the perfect storm of this knowledge I had from my experience working in the fine art print market, realizing that is exactly translatable to what NFTs are. It's allowing us to create editions the same way a photographer or any artist could create a print of their work. It's allowing myself and others who do animation, [00:05:25] who do video, who do things that I would call screen based art. It allows us to have that same container of an edition. I applied to Super Rare and I actually just celebrated my two year crypto art anniversary on April 4th. Yeah. So April 4th, 2019 was my first, my Genesis token as we now call them, we didn't have names for any of the stuff back then, Sarah: [00:05:49] which I'm saying this like at the olden days of 2019, but crypto people get it. That is like olden days in crypto terms because so much happens in this space like every single day. Yeah, it's been this incredible journey. I've been, like I said, I think very fortunate that my unique combination of skills and experience just coalesce to make it something that I, [00:06:12] from the second I got into it, was just, I ran with it because it just, it just, it makes sense to my brain. As you mentioned, working for that fine art studio helped you connect those dots of, okay, how can this digital artwork actually have scarcity? I feel like a lot of people are starting to ask that question right now, which is, why does NFT have value? Why is this one selling for Sarah: [00:06:32] $69 million versus only a couple hundred dollars here? Here's this market that I've determined. What type of stats are going to be necessary for to support an NFT, what type of attributes? When it comes to working in the NFT space, what are you most excited for in the next, let's say, three months for just improvements in the space or opportunities that you're working on, either on [00:06:53] a platform level, a feature level, even an art NFT level? Yeah, that's a great question. I think what I'm most excited for is something that it's particular to myself and probably other artists who are in the same sort of place with their work that I am. But I think it's something that will, in time, it's something that ultimately will be good for all artists. I'm always careful when I am, Sarah: [00:07:17] when I'm preaching the virtues of NFTs, to make it very clear to people that I think every artist should get into this, every artist should explore it as part of their practice. But I would never tell people, hey, come on in, it's easy money. Like, it has not, for me, it has not been easy money. I work my ass off on this, and I'm deeply passionate about it. I just qualify that to point [00:07:40] out when I say these things that this is where I am after two years and having put a lot of work JohnPaul: [00:07:45] in. So that's to say that what I'm excited about is that we're going to see, I think, new platforms Sarah: [00:07:51] emerge. I'm already, I'm working with a platform that's called Blank Network. That's, I think, by the time this comes out, will be live and other platforms. I think that we'll see all the platforms lean into this, that we're going to start to see more customizability for artists, because like myself as an artist, having really developed my audience and my following and the excitement around my work, [00:08:14] what works for everyone doesn't necessarily work for each individual artist. And I think the more we see tools being given to artists that lets them really get their own vibe going with their work, get set their own royalty standards, set their own standards of doing things, I think that for certain artists, that will end up becoming a huge catalyst for just a whole next level. And Sarah: [00:08:39] what I mean by that is something that we already have the capability to do, but that I think we're going to see be used more and in more creative ways is artists having their own smart contracts. We're in this position right now where we're all very dependent on the platforms and have to work under their banner and under how they want to do things. And like I said, I certainly am not [00:09:02] complaining that has served me very well. And I think the platforms we have are excellent JohnPaul: [00:09:06] and they each have their own, they each have their own merits that recommend them. But what I'm excited Sarah: [00:09:11] about is as someone who now has developed more of my own universe within crypto art, within NFTs, the ability to hop to my own smart, smart contracts, which other artists have done, John O'Ryan Young is a great example of someone who has always worked with his own smart contracts. I think it's just going to add that extra layer of collectibility and that extra layer of [00:09:33] defineability, which for someone like myself, I am a writer. And I think that plays a huge part into how I meant my work and how I categorize my work. And I'd like to think it's what excites people about my work is that I really put a lot of thought into these different series I'm creating and the different levels of scarcity of each different thing and different price points for Sarah: [00:09:55] different types of art and different types of editions. So I'm just excited about that. I'm personally excited to explore that more. And I'm very excited to see how just this new granularity is going to benefit artists and collectors in the space. And that brings me to my next question, which is I want to hear more about the process of JohnPaul: [00:10:16] launching an NFT. How has that changed over the past two years? And where does it sit now? Is Sarah: [00:10:23] that you're launching one NFT at a time? Are you launching a collection of five of them with different scarcity metrics? And how are you doing that promotion? Is it through Clubhouse? Is it on an email campaign? Is it through Twitter? Where have you seen attraction? What are you seeing working well today? Or what has work all in the past for you? [00:10:41] Yeah, again, I can only speak to myself and in saying that the first the grander answer is that it is absolutely different for every creator. I was just talking to an artist friend of mine, Matt Kane, the other day about it's hard to keep track of all the lines in the sand at this point, because everyone in this space has a very strong opinion about how things should be done. And I Sarah: [00:11:02] think that's great. You should have a really strong sense of how you should do things for yourself. But to start proclaiming that this is the empirical way that all artists should make drops, it just doesn't make sense. For me, my art is it's a digital analog video art hybrid. There's truly, there are other artists I'm now seeing entering the space who also work with analog tools. But [00:11:24] really, I think you could say my work stands completely on its own. It is not really comparable to anything else that is on the market. And that's been both a blessing and a curse for people who get it, for people who like vibe with what I put out there, it's just that excitement of wow, there's nothing else like this. And it's a Sarah Zucker piece. The second you see it. But the down side Sarah: [00:11:46] of that for me has always been questions around pricing questions around exactly what you're saying of how do I do what I do? Because I look at other artists in the space in their art, just the art itself is so different from mine that I can't really model what I do after what they do. I'm often very open on Twitter and such with other artists to go, guys, the way I figured out how [00:12:09] to do what I do is try something and often fail and then figure out, okay, that was not the way to do that. I am going to do it better next time. And the funny part of blockchain, right, is like, you can't exactly sweep those fails under the rug. Everything's public and historical at blockchain. And so I've gotten really good at actually embracing that my mistakes are what have allowed me to Sarah: [00:12:33] develop best practices and being very open and proud of that fact that I am unafraid to just try something because we invented this, right? Like this group of us who came in in those early days, there were no best practices. There were not terms like Genesis token. There was no coldy method, coldy made it up. And now we all get throughout the space. So to speak to your question of what has [00:12:57] changed is obviously we have way more platforms than we used to and way more options of how we do things. And like I said, that's about to be it be exploded once again and to even more options of how to do things in the early days. And when I was only releasing my work on Super Rare for that first, I don't know, year and a half of it, Super Rare didn't have video capability, I think Sarah: [00:13:18] until early 2020, I've lately been seeing this huge uptick of interest in my early tokens from 2019. And not just myself, like really all of us who were on the platform in 2019, those pieces have become really collectible. And part of it, I think is it's funny enough, it's the constraint of it, right? Like that it had to be gifts. And I think back then, I think we had a much smaller [00:13:39] file size like now you can do up to 50 megabytes. And I think back then it was maybe only 25. So when you see some of my earlier pieces, there are a lot lower resolution because I had to play with the constraint I had. And I think that's just an interesting factor of collectability, right? It's not always the thing that is the most high def high quality thing that is the most collectible. Sarah: [00:14:02] Often it is the thing where we recognize that constraint and we recognize therefore the rareness of those early pieces. So that has changed a lot in that regard. I also at the beginning, I think I minted three things on my first day on Super Rare, because I was thinking of it coming to it as someone who had done art sales in the IRL world in the past. I was thinking [00:14:24] of it like, this is my shop, this is my store, and I'm going to put a few items in my store. And then some people bought them and I went, that's so nice. Now I'm going to put new things in my store. And the idea of a drop, we really, I didn't know anyone who was like doing that in those early days. Really, I think a lot of us were doing it that way, where it was just like, here's some nice things. Sarah: [00:14:45] Here are my wares. Would you like to check them out? And then that really, I think by the end of 2019, we saw this fascinating acceleration happen. I specifically remember it being artists like Trevor Jones and Coley, his work, like where all of a sudden by the end of 2019, the amount of money people were making started to get more into the thousands, which now that's even that sounds quaint. [00:15:12] But in those early days, all of I have this massive collection on Super Rare and it's things I picked up for 50 bucks here or there. And I was selling my work for 50 bucks here or there. It was a completely different mindset about what we were doing because it was also like gas fees back then were like a dollar or two. It was not the kind of, you didn't have to agonize over every Sarah: [00:15:34] transaction the way you do now because the gas can be so punishing. And yeah, so then it was really with within 2020, early 2020. And I weirdly enough, it certainly wasn't intentional on anyone's part, but I think the pandemic created this perfect scenario for crypto art to take off. I've said this another podcast where it's like the entire world had to go online and they were terrified [00:15:59] about it. How do we exist online? And they came to internet people like myself and other crypto artists going help us. How do we exist in the metaverse? So I really think that weirdly enough, the story of the rise of crypto art and NFTs is directly correlated to the pandemic. And so yeah, we started Nifty Gateway emerged terrible, really became a thing in 2020. And that's when you started Sarah: [00:16:24] to see more of this idea of limited editions taking off. Known origin was around. And I was on known origin around the same time I started on super rare and I did a few limited editions there. But it just it seemed through all the 2019 limited editions weren't really what people were interested in. So I personally didn't put a lot of attention into that. And then for me in 2020, it was when I [00:16:46] checked out rarerable around the summer, I went, okay, this is really this is an interesting space. Again, they offered us way more tools, way more customizability for how we put out drops for how we released things. And I saw that limited editions were actually selling very well on rarerable. So I came up with an entire game plan. I've been creating analog video art since 2015. And I had Sarah: [00:17:10] all these pieces that were like early works of mine before I'd even upgraded my hardware to have like really nice higher resolution transfers of my work. So I had all these pieces that I thought these are great, but they're earlier you can tell they're earlier they they have just a different different energy to them than my more recent work. But I thought these are fantastic. And again, [00:17:31] my background in the fine art photography market, I recognize the importance of having work available at multiple price points, especially now I'm in the position where my single edition sell for quite large sums. It's not just about wanting that sense of that sense of approachability and that sense of equality of part of it is that for me. I want collectors of every stripe to feel like Sarah: [00:17:53] they can participate in collecting Sarah Zuckers works, right? Like I don't want it to only be for a very small group of whales. So part of it's that and part of it is also just recognizing that a limited edition, if you do it right, can still have a great degree of desirability and collectability around it. And the fact that more collectors can hold it is actually making your work. You're [00:18:16] just building your collector base. I really I think that for me is when my market overall really took off was this series of early works I released as limited editions of 10 on Rareable, a back in like August, September, October of 2020. And these things would just sell out like immediately because I was pricing them very thoughtfully. It was pricing them to move quickly. And really ever since Sarah: [00:18:39] then I've only seen my market accelerate and it put me in this position now to be exploring new models of how I sell my work. So that's been my experience. And again, it's obviously I've always been balancing the fact that my work does not have any other comparable artists that I can compare myself to. So I have to make up my own thing as I go. Well, also I'm very involved in [00:19:01] the community and I'm very I'm always studying what other people are doing, what's working, what isn't working, and figuring out ways to adapt that for my own for my own body of work. That was a great explanation of just how the process has changed of publishing on these platforms. Because most people I feel like in the NFT space just came in the past three months. Sarah: [00:19:20] And they're understanding, okay, rarerable, what's all these different platforms, how wise are so many. So it's great to see that it has been a journey that you're able to share. And not only for yourself, but for the platforms and the features sets and the creating of the art. And you mentioned bringing back the vintage stuffs older pieces of art you created. That's where I want to take [00:19:37] this next question, which is how do you create that vintage look or what technologies do you use when you are creating these pieces of art? I'd love to hear more about maybe the creation process. And as we just touched on like the NFT and the distribution process. Sure. Yeah, I'd love to talk about my particular process. So like I said, I've been making art Sarah: [00:19:56] my whole life, but specifically like in a professional or semi professional capacity since I was a teenager, I got into photography and I was particularly drawn to film photography as a teenager. So even back then I was always accumulating old film cameras and like hacking them doing my own stuff with them. And that's I think really gave way to this practice I have now that is the same [00:20:18] idea, but with video. Like I said, I started in 2015 doing analog video art, meaning the most simple way to put it is like VHS and old, the old type of video before everything went digital. But I'm also not a purist. And that's something I often point out to people that I consider my work a digital analog hybrid. And it's because for me, of course, the aesthetic is retro, right? Sarah: [00:20:40] If you see something that's on VHS, you're instantly like, whoa, that's like the 90s, man. And I like that. I like that people have that response to it. But I specifically bring in a lot of digital techniques and a lot of cutting edge techniques, right? Of like, I use AR and 3D and all these things, because I really for me is less about making things look retro. And it's more [00:21:02] about just taking us out of our present moment. I'm very fascinated by transhumanism and the singularity. So it's actually connected to that for me. We're on this like parabola of technological advancement. So I'm purposefully taking up these tools that are like as old as I am to just make everyone take a step out of the sleek shininess of our current digital experience and kind of just Sarah: [00:21:26] experience my art mediated in this different way in this way that at once you go, whoa, that's familiar, right? That's what things look like when I was a child. But then as you sit with it a little longer, you're like, but things couldn't quite look like that when I was a child. We didn't have the technologies we have now. So it's really about that, right? It's like an aesthetic intervention, [00:21:46] I like to call it. It's a way of bringing the viewer into my dimension, because I often think of everything I make is like this grander kind of story I'm weaving over time. As I myself am exploring my own transhuman experience and what it has been to, I was born the year the internet was switched on and I've been online since I was a child. My screen name I used the Sarah show I came up with Sarah: [00:22:12] when I was nine and I've used it ever since. And now I feel a little funny about it because it sounds like a screen name like a child would come up with. When you've had something that long, you just got to commit to it. You got to stick with it. Yeah, so that's to say that the way I work is that I have built what I call, it's an analog rig. I also sometimes call it my video altar because part [00:22:33] of it is this big like vintage CRT TV that I have bedazzled with gems and I have a whole, it's an altar, right? Which is just funny to me. It's not I'm not I love to play with mystical terminology and just the idea of mysticism, but in the slippery tricky way. I'm not I'm not actually I would say my belief system is not actually that new age exactly. I'm a rational person in many ways Sarah: [00:22:58] and how I approach things, but I love the narrative of it. And I love just taking up the language of mysticism and the language of alchemy, really, because I just feel it is a much more poetic way of explaining what I do and describing what I do. So yeah, the way most of my work works is I create animation on my computer. I use Adobe creative suite, like every other creator working [00:23:23] today, because I often try to make that clear to people if I'm not like, I'm not like an old timey person. I'm not I'm not a purist. I'm not like, oh, it all has to be created as though computers didn't exist. Like I am a computer person for sure. So I do a lot of digital animation. I also do a lot of footage. I have I'm fortunate to have studio space. So I film a lot of stuff live Sarah: [00:23:45] and then I pipe it into this analog system, which is all these vintage devices, things I've rescued from the depths of eBay. And I have devices that let that are like custom built glitch devices that let me add all this these processing effects in within the analog ecosystem and mixers and the style I do called video paintings. I use this video painter from 1991. So I'm actually drawing like [00:24:12] on the VHS tape with this drawing pad that I've gone through like 10 of these things because they love to just die. Again, they're pretty old for a piece of technology. So I'm always having to like rescue these things. And I'm hoarding them because it's like the style I work in now has become so important to my body of work that I'm like, I can't run out of video painters. You never have Sarah: [00:24:33] too many. And then yeah, everything I do get created in that sitting right there. That's the funny thing about an analog technique like this or an analog process is I can save things on my computer. I can work on something over the course of a week on my computer or a month or whatever. When it's time to put it on tape, that has to happen in one sitting. So I have really developed a [00:24:54] symbiosis with my devices. I've been working with them for years at this point. So I know what every little button and knob does. And I really sit there and have had to develop a facility for myself with getting every little adjustment that I'm looking for because otherwise I'd be there all day. And sometimes I am all there all day. And it all flows out, like I said to my big TV, Sarah: [00:25:19] my video alter, and I record it to VHS. And so then the way the work ends up becoming digital again is I either use this little system I built for myself where I upscale it out from VHS digitally. I upscale it to 1080p and I bring it in through HDMI back to my computer. Or another technique I use that again I think is part of the signature look I've developed is that I film my vintage TV [00:25:44] screen in 4K. So I especially for my more textural work, I really want all of that. All you can see all the little diodes of the TV screen. You can see the curve of the TV screen. I want that sense of physicality. I think that is what appeals to my collectors a lot. And that has been very much by design from the beginning for me. Both in creating GIFs and videos before I was making Sarah: [00:26:09] NFTs, but specifically with the advent of NFTs and that technology being available to me, I just thought what is better than that sense of physicality to imbue this notion of this being a virtual object. That's why I think people are so drawn to my digital analog work is you're looking at it on your screen or in your VR headset or wherever you're viewing it, but you're feeling that physical [00:26:35] nature of the TV screen. And it's again an aesthetic intervention, right? It's taking you out of the fact that we are constantly bombarded with just every possible image every second of the day as we scroll through Twitter or wherever we are. And it's giving you a moment to have a slightly [00:26:53] different lens on the art itself. Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world Sarah: [00:26:59] for individual investors, financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over 70 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 Orm CapitalFentures.com. As you were talking, I was checking out the different art pieces and that [00:27:21] you have on variable and no origin and super rare. So those are all we linked in the show notes for people to check out while the conversation is happening, to see the style that you're referring to. I'm intrigued because I want to take a step back and see if your time being a multi-game winner on Jeopardy and can you also share that experience, how that might have affected or how Sarah: [00:27:44] that affected your art style or work if it did it in any way. But yeah, I want to hear more about that experience than also if it's affected your style of art. That's interesting. No one's ever asked me that. What I'll say, I don't know if it's affected my art so much as it exists in relation to my art, right? Like, I wanted to be on Jeopardy since I was a child. I'd watch it with my poppy, [00:28:06] with my grandfather, and I'd sit there as a little kid and I'd say all the answers. And he was always like, you could be on the show. You're going to be on the show one day. That's just, it's a gift of mine, right? Like, I have a semi-photographic memory, so I retain information like a sponge. That's just, that's just my thing. Makes me really good at trivia. I used to be a real hustler at Sarah: [00:28:27] bar trivia when I lived in New York because my whole thing was I would really, I'm just an extravagant person, I think. I love to get where an extravagant, ridiculous outfit and go out for an item on the town. And I don't know why it just always would tickle me that I'd show up in like my tiny flapper hat and a wig and a feather boa and whatever. I would wear some ridiculous outfit [00:28:49] where people would think, who is this drag queen? And then I would just cream everyone at trivia. And like, something about that just always. It just made it extra sweet, right? Because people don't see you coming. Because they think you're this, they think you're one thing and then you turn out to be another. And I just have always delighted in that sort of just surprise. Sarah: [00:29:09] Toss the answers. And that was actually my strategy on Jeopardy too. I wore a very, I wore this like vintage 1960s cocktail dress. I just went in very like, oh little old me. Because with Jeopardy, people probably don't realize that you film like an entire week of episodes in one day. So all the contestants for the entire week, you're held together that morning. Everyone's talking, everyone sizing [00:29:32] each other up. And I just have always known that's my, it's, I don't know, it's like a hustler technique of making people think, Oh, what? Oh, I just, I don't know. I don't have a thought in my head. I don't know why I'm Southern in this, but I'm gonna go with it. And yeah, so I just, the thing about me is so much of my knowledge is gleaned from the fact that I'm an internet Sarah: [00:29:52] person that I've been on the internet since I was a kid and I've gone on many Wikipedia rabbit holes and stuff. And so my knowledge is like self taught. I went to public school and I studied theater in college, not that I don't, not that I didn't learn plenty in school, but it's, I don't have that in depth knowledge of British literature and history and math and the things people are [00:30:15] like supposed to know about. But if you ask me about bluegrass music and bears, as it turns out, I know a lot about those things. That's how I won Jeopardy, as I like apparently knew all the stuff about bluegrass music and bears. I, who knew? I didn't know I knew that much. But, but there's definitely that thing about with Jeopardy, right? And that desire since I was a child to be on the Sarah: [00:30:36] show again, and my screen name, the Sarah show, it's just referencing that that sort of sense I've had since I was little of I want to go inside the TV. And that's like I said, I studied theater in school. And for a time that that was what my wanted my career path to be I wanted to be an actor. And because I'm of a theatrical nature. And it's something still I do use performance a lot in my [00:30:58] art. And I have it's going to always probably be part of my practice and part of what I do in this world is performing. But yeah, like art took me on this different path from that. And yeah, I think there's definitely this correlation between Jeopardy was that chance to jump inside the screen. It was the chance to go and now I'm inside the TV. And that's pretty much what I'm doing with Sarah: [00:31:20] my art all the time and why I continue to work under the Sarah show banner is this idea of like, when you come look at my art, of course, I like to think of it as fine art, right? I like to, like you said, I'm always weaving this ongoing narrative with it. And I'm bringing a breadth of knowledge and just experience to it that I'd like to think gives it gives it more than just that [00:31:43] surface appeal. You can't deny that like every single piece of mine, what you're seeing is a screen. What you're seeing is almost like a new episode of the Sarah show. There is this thing I'm always doing where I'm just playing with mediation and playing with the idea of jumping between channels jumping in and out of the show. So I'd say, yeah, it's that's the correlation. And Sarah: [00:32:03] then of course, just that being a person who is a trivia sponge. I definitely think that shows up in my art, right? Like, I love my art. There are so many artists I love whose work has great consistency to it. And that's what you that's what you admire about them that you're like, oh, yes, every time it's they're always delivering, if not the, I don't mean they're delivering the [00:32:24] same thing, but they're always delivering you exactly what you came for. They're always giving you the greatest hit. And for me, my thing is that I figured out early on, okay, I could force myself to focus and just do this one style of mine. And in many ways, I probably would have been rewarded monetarily, like sooner if I had done that, because that's easier for people to grok. Sarah: [00:32:48] It's easier for people to go up. This is her thing. She does this one thing. And it's that and it's that a variation on that every time. But I know myself and I know that like, my areas of interest are so widespread and so all over the map that I have very purposefully designed my art practice and my NFT art practice to allow for my whole thing to be that Sarah gets into weird [00:33:14] stuff and goes into interesting little nooks and crannies. And if you're down for that journey, you're never going to be disappointed. It's always going to be a good time. Yeah, it's about that bringing all that to the work. I love the concept of like you said, like that journey through the player, through the show, through the Sarah show. It's like there is a individual one player game Sarah: [00:33:35] you're playing as you experience this jeopardy as you're then you're putting it out through the NFTs and the art. I wanted to touch on the Yo-Meryl studio that you run in Los Angeles and how that has played into this whole journey of yours. Can you share how you arrived first of the name and then what significance it holds for you and your partner? Yeah, Yo-Meryl is the animation studio that I've [00:33:57] been running with my now wife, Bronwyn Lundberg since 2014. And it actually, the name comes from an inside joke between us from our very first date where we were walking through West Hollywood. We'd left the bar where we had met and we were walking and sharing a joint. And I was telling her about this incident that actually happened to me when I was 18, where I ran into Meryl Street, Sarah: [00:34:23] like literally, physically, I was working on a show at school that her daughter was in. Her daughter was starring in this play. And I was like the laundry wench because I was a freshman. So I had to do everyone's laundry and wash all their like 19th century petticoats and stuff. And I thought everyone had left the building. And it was our last night of the show. And I was so thrilled to be [00:34:43] leaving that I was like skipping down the hallway because I thought I was completely alone. And there's this blind corner in the theater building where I went to school. And I turned it and I just barreled into Meryl Street, knocked her on her ass. And because she had stayed late when everyone had left so she could come see her daughter. And it was when I realized who it was, I froze Sarah: [00:35:04] like a deer in the headlights because she's a god, like she's an icon. She is someone who I have admired my entire life. And I just fully knocked her on her ass like the biggest cluts in the world. I didn't help her up. I didn't know what to do. I did nothing. And she like picked herself up and brushed herself off and gave me like that classic withering look that she's so good at and [00:35:24] went on her merry way. And it's just this weird anecdote of mine that I told my wife about on our first date. And then because we were maybe like a little stoned, I got paranoid because we were in Los Angeles. I was like, she could be anywhere. She could be. I actually should keep my, I have a really loud voice. I was like, I should keep my voice down. Like, what if she's she could be right Sarah: [00:35:43] there? Yo, Meryl, what's up? Hey, sorry. And so fast forward to a year later, we had this opportunity to do GIF animations for the Brooklyn Museum, which was actually the first time that a major art institution had ever commissioned animated GIFs as art. And it was this opportunity that came to us through through Bronwyn's networks, Bron actually created an artwork that went viral in 2012 called [00:36:08] the lesbian Last Supper, which you can look it up. It's exactly what it sounds like. It's Last Suppers now are quite common these days. But at that time, prior to meeting her, I had so many people share it with me before I met her being like, this is so your sense of humor. You would, oh my god, I saw this and I thought of you. So when we ended up meeting, that was her like claimed to fame at Sarah: [00:36:27] that time. And so right. So in 2014, through kind of webs, she had woven with that artwork, we had this opportunity. And we had already had a few go around. She's this incredible illustrator and animator. She's so gifted. And I'm a writer. So of course, I have my own visual art practice, but there's this whole side of my practice that I don't really bring into the crypto space as much, [00:36:50] which is that I got a master's degree in screenwriting. Like I'm, I write for film and TV. And yeah, so we were like, we're gonna do this, but we need a name. We need a name for what is our partnership. And that's what it came to be. We just remembered that thing. And we're like, that's it because it's totally like our virtues are things that we value together. The yo is a like, punkie, like Sarah: [00:37:10] almost 90s referential, like kid, hey, like Nickelodeon plus Merrill, who is like the height of feminine elegance. And we wanted it to really be that juxtaposition of those two things of like incredible glamour and elegance and refinement with just, Hey, kids, what's up, Kook at. So yeah, so ever since then we have done some really cool projects together. We've done a couple murals for [00:37:38] the city of West Hollywood. We still a mural of ours is up in the parking garage at City Hall of West Hollywood called Business Park. And it's these raptors. We do raptors and wigs. That's really, I would say probably our most potent work and there's stuff in the works there. We did a banner mural for the city West Hollywood that was like 700 feet long covered in the entire city block Sarah: [00:38:02] to wrap this like fence that was around this big hole that's like being dug for years. And they never put anything in this like empty lot. And so the city came up with a commission to be like, we got to cover this this I saw up. So we did a banner mural that was an ode to it was the anniversary of Route 66. So we did this banner mural that was the idea of all the different people of different [00:38:25] walks of life who've traveled route 66. So we made all these anthropomorphic shoes and did the entire length of route 66 as it starts in Chicago and goes all the way to the Santa Monica pier in California. And it was all these like crazy kooky shoes and people thought there was like a shoe store going up there because we were like, no, it's art. It's not an ad for a shoe store. But that's cool that you Sarah: [00:38:49] got really excited that there was going to be a new shoe store. But yeah, so you know, Meryl's still going strong and we Bronwyn and I have actually tokenized a few pieces together. She is also a crypto artist. She is on super rare and rarerable. And we actually tokenized the first narrative short film on the blockchain ever. I've like my research extensively on that. I'm not [00:39:10] one to make claims that I don't have a right to, but I have looked and I really think that is the case. It's a short film we made together called glitch slapped. It's about 48 seconds long. Again, keep in mind the file upload limits are very small for NFTs like relatively, which is why I think we haven't seen narrative film really take off yet in the States. So yeah, that was in March 2020. Sarah: [00:39:32] We tokenized this piece, glitch slapped on my profile on super rare because even still collaborative contracts or collaborative drops haven't really been worked out by most of the platforms yet. And yeah, and we've done a number of other collaborations that are yo-marrel pieces that we've released, I think on her profile. So yeah, it's been this incredible partnership. I'm very fortunate [00:39:53] that to have my partner be someone that I work so well with. It's such a gift. Like we just, we understand each other so well and we plug in together in this way that like the sum of us together is so much more than each of us individually. And we just each bring really specific and unique gifts to the table when we're working together. So I think that people always ask me that, Sarah: [00:40:15] though, I could never work with my spouse. How do you do it? And I'm like, it helps that like, we're not ever stepping on each other's toes. Like what I bring and what she brings are like two very different skill sets. So there's never us like butting heads over. But I wanted to do that thing. We always know who's going to be doing what when we work together. And I, those boundaries [00:40:35] definitely need to be clearly set in creation of, I feel like any type of art or business relationship or relationship. But you mentioned the writing and I actually while you were talking, watch that glitch slap gift. And I was like, wow, that is so cool. Just the story and how you got a perfect JohnPaul: [00:40:51] loop there on how it continues. Can you talk a little bit more about the writing experience and Sarah: [00:40:56] the short form comedy television and the art and culture space and maybe how you've been able to take what you've learned there and add it to the NFTs or even just what you've that creative process that you go through when doing that more longer form writing. Sure. Yeah. Well, yeah. So it's interesting for me, right? I have no education in visual art. Everything I do in visual art, [00:41:17] at least not since the age of 10. I told a story on my super rare spotlight about my art teacher when I was 10 telling me that art made on a computer is an art. And so I quit art because I was like, I want to make art on a computer. And you just told me my art isn't real art. So since the age of 10, I have had no formal art educate visual art education. It's all I've all been self taught. And that has Sarah: [00:41:38] ended up being this gift I gave myself because I'm not precious about my art at all. I do not have that voice in my head that says you can't do that. That's not how things are done because I've been making up how it's all done for myself since the get go. Whereas for me with writing, I studied it. I studied it in undergrad and then I ended up getting a master's degree in it. And [00:41:57] I've taught screenwriting for a while. So I have a very, I don't want to say rigid, but I have a very formal sense of how screenwriting and like narrative writing for the screen is done and how that format works. So right when I'm working with Bronwyn, like we did a number of series for Super Deluxe of people are familiar with the content, the incredible weird content space that is no longer. Sarah: [00:42:21] But for a time there was like paradise for weirdos like us to get these visions out there. And it was basically that thing of the constraint of Instagram that whatever it was, it just had to be under a minute. And I don't know how I come up with what I come up with. It's just how my brain works. I keep running lists. Google Docs helps. I have all these running lists that I've been keeping for [00:42:40] years of just ideas for little shorts, ideas for little series. We had a contain the container of one of our Super Deluxe series was called panic attacks. And it was styled like goosebumps. Like it always looked like a goosebumps cover. But the theme was like a series of horrors of modern adulthood. So it was basically my inspiration for it was always like things I genuinely had Sarah: [00:43:01] panic attacks about or had genuinely experienced anxiety over and then just laughing at that anxiety. Like we had one that's just why is my phone ringing? Like that anxiety of like why is someone calling me without having told me they were going to call me? Well like that feeling when your phone starts ringing and you're like I didn't agree on a phone call with this person. Why are [00:43:20] they calling me? It must be something bad. It must be a bad it must be like an emergency or something you know what I mean? And or like we had one called the post that no one likes. And I was making fun of myself over that feeling when you post something and for whatever reason it feels like it got just no engagement. No no one saw it. And you're like I slaved on. That was my art and I slaved Sarah: [00:43:40] over it. And what do you mean no one's liking it? And it was a cartoon we made of it's me holding my phone looking at it looking around at everyone else on their phones being like why aren't they liking it? And then I like melt like the Wicked Witch of the West. And just having fun with these things that we get anxious about that I find that anxiety is so close to comedy. You just have to [00:44:01] put the right lens on it. We are very funny creatures human beings, especially modern human beings dealing with this technology that has evolved so rapidly when we're barely evolved beyond being monkeys who hopped out of trees. You know what I mean? And now we have all this crazy stuff we have to deal with. It's like a lot to ask of ourselves. So I'd say that that is a big inspiration in my Sarah: [00:44:23] writing. And Bronwyn and I are actually developing a TV show together that deals with a lot of this stuff. And that's a whole part of this. I can't really speak on it but because it's all like in process. But I have this whole other side of what I do outside of the crypto space that I'm very excited. It's like these two lines that kind of of my work that exists separately. But there's [00:44:43] going to be a point where they're going to cross each other. Right? Like the things I'm doing with my art in the crypto space and everything I'm doing in the entertainment industry, they absolutely are going to inform each other. And that nexus point where they meet and where everyone realizes, Oh shit, Sarah has a TV show. That is going to be a really cool moment. I'm just going to say it Sarah: [00:45:05] now. Like I said, it's all very like in process. But I look forward to it certainly. And I look forward to it for my collectors and for just my community, the people who've been my friends in in all of this all this time, people love to see the glow up. But the way I'd put it, like the way the writing really informs how I move in the crypto space. Like I was saying earlier is that [00:45:27] for me, I've studied how narrative works. That is my actual academic background is how one crafts a narrative, how one works with narrative in a weird way that gives you this gift of almost being like of like prophecy almost because you start to see in life, like the point you are in stories and recognizing as people often say in the NFT space, we're still in the first act, right? We're Sarah: [00:45:50] still in the early days of the NFT space, we're approaching that shift into the second act, I think that what you'd call the inciting incident in a story. In fact, maybe people was like the inciting incident. Maybe that's actually we're now in the early second act, screenwriter nerd right here. But like that, the people sale was the inciting incident of NFTs. And now the whole world knows [00:46:09] what NFTs are. And so now we have this whole experience of what is the actual middle of this story going to look like? Because yeah, we set the scene already. And now we're really in the meet of here is what this story is going to be. And in a sense, my writing practice both gives me that perspective. And it also allows me to craft narratives around my work and craft different Sarah: [00:46:31] degrees of almost Boolean nesting dolls of what is my greater body of work? What is each little series? How do my series interconnect? Again, that's my trivia brain. That's how I think everything is a wet, right? Everything is structured like Wikipedia. Every page has links to many other pages. Every piece I create has links to other pieces I've created, which has a link to [00:46:54] the whole the whole kitten kaboodle of it all. So I think for me, that is really my writer's brain is what allows me to contextualize it that way to contextualize it for my collectors, for my audience on Twitter and for myself and to have the sense of where is this all going? What am I? JohnPaul: [00:47:12] What's the driving force behind all this? What's the objective? What advice would you give to someone Sarah: [00:47:18] in the NFT space or looking to enter the NFT space regarding releasing NFTs and building the brand in that storyline? Yeah, the advice I would give that I am giving, because I am, of course, every artist friend I have is like trying to figure out how they can enter this, this scene is be part of the community study the community. Like I said, that's how I have learned my best [00:47:40] practices and figured out how to orient myself. I often say about the space it is self electing, that no one told me, Sarah, congratulations, you're a crypto artist now. I told myself I was a crypto artist. I elected myself to this space. And that is I think one of the founding or foundational principles of crypto and of just a decentralized approach to the world is saying you must be self Sarah: [00:48:08] electing you must say I dub myself this thing. And I have decided I am going to undertake this journey for myself. So part of that is the phrase we often hear in crypto throughout crypto is do your own research that you really you are going to get much further asking people questions. And once you've already started, because if you start asking questions that are based on experiences [00:48:33] you're having, people in the space are more than happy to get into it with you and go, oh, here's what my experience was. And let's compare experiences and let's figure out what's really going on. What we think is really going on here based on our two experiences, but like it's do what I did and start looking up some articles and get on Twitter and scope out what people are talking about. Sarah: [00:48:53] Foundations blog and super rears blog both have excellent articles about how to get started as an artist in the space. And that's often what I point people to go there, learn what metamask is, learn the fundamentals of Ethereum and how you engage with these sites because it's not the same as how you engage with Facebook or Twitter. And I and that's the other advice I give is get [00:49:15] on Twitter, start with look who I'm following, look who I'm if you know me because you trust me. So look at who I'm engaging with because those are people that you probably also want to follow because they're going to be talking about the stuff that's going to help you educate yourself about how this works. And to know that all of us, like I said, we're all learning this space Sarah: [00:49:33] changes every day. So you just have to be an auto-didact. You have to be the kind of person who knows how to teach yourself how to do things. And note when you're presented with new information that you can assimilate that new information and move forward without going, Oh my God, what's going on? I don't know what to do for the first year and three quarters. I would try to [00:49:56] explain NFTs to other people and they would just go, you are speaking Greek to me. Like, I do not know what you're talking about. You're doing that. You're doing some weird Sarah thing that sounds very technical. I'm happy for you, but I don't want to know. I don't want to see that. And now with people being on CNN and SNL, making a skit about NFTs, now it's like the complete Sarah: [00:50:19] inverse, right? Of now everyone I've ever met is like, NFTs, do you know about this? Tell me about this? Help me. And like I've said, I have always from the get go have said, Oh my God, if we can get this to take off, this will change the status of artists in the social structure forever. That artists have always been like the shit heat bottom of the social totem pole for years, [00:50:41] so that we've always been had to struggle and scrape by. And as an artist who's done a fair amount of commissions and commercial work, I know that I was considered one of the lucky ones that I was like barely scraping by on commissions where you were barely paid anything and where you're competing with all these other artists. And it was just a model where you just were not creatives are not Sarah: [00:51:02] treated well in the current capitalist social structure. So that's been really for me, the investment in this from all along is not just for my own art. It's the part of me that is a curator and that is an art lover who is friends with a wide network of artists. I've seen from the get go that it's wow, this can really change everything for people. But because that's how I feel again, [00:51:26] that's why I feel it's important that I say to people, if you're seeing the news and you're seeing what's happening for people and going, it just seems like easy money. Sometimes for some people, it's the right person, the right art, the right place at the right time. And it is and it happens and it flows very smoothly. If not easily, it's something where, you know, like seeing the woman Sarah: [00:51:47] who had the meme of the overly attached girlfriend, she made like a huge sum of money this past week auctioning off that image. And I thought that was such an incredible story because someone who was in a meme that became popular 10 years ago, that affects their life. That can really, I'm sure that makes job interviews and stuff awkward when they're interviewed. And I'm sure it has affected her life [00:52:08] in an untold number of ways. And I think that's such an incredible story to see that now because of NFTs, she was able to be compensated for this image that has become so culturally used and so culturally widespread. So yes, there are those stories, but especially for artists, I go, you need to view this as just an extension of the practice you have that already exists. And if you do not Sarah: [00:52:31] have a practice that already exists, maybe you should develop a practice and develop a little bit of an audience for it before you start releasing NFTs. I think a lot of people think, I'm just, I don't know, maybe I'll just doodle a thing and I'll put it on open C and then everyone will buy it. And I see some belly aching from people when those things don't sell. And I've been a digital artist [00:52:53] for over 10 years. That's why my work is doing well because I have been dedicating myself to my practice, like completely and fully for a long time. And this is now just an extension of that. And that is what's true, I think for a lot of NFT creators and crypto artists is this thing of, right, what you're not seeing is the 10 years of work they put in to get to this place. So I Sarah: [00:53:16] really like more power to you, anyone who wants to get involved. But I would just say be reasonable, be realistic, recognize that I don't like to call it a bubble, but it's definitely a boom. Recognize that you're entering this market at a very saturated point. So be honest with yourself and assess yourself and assess what you're bringing to the market and assess if you are really bringing [00:53:37] something in that is offering a new value proposition than what we already have here to use more of a business terminology for it, which I think is it's uncomfortable for artists to think about it as business. But that is the reality of what we're doing here. This is making art your business. So you have to put on your business woman hat and go to tea and say, yes, thank you very much. Sarah: [00:53:59] Businesswoman special, let's sign it by sell. I love that. Yeah, taking the NFT because I've had people say, Oh, this is like business, you're buying and selling NFTs. It's like, are you just making experience and NFT and trying to explain them that, yes, this is a huge opportunity to take, as you mentioned, artists from that bottom of the poem poll in the capitalist society [00:54:20] and structure to something where now they're able to own that work, have that ownership and sell these amazing gifts and talents that they have and be compensated accurately. The gift was a great example of that. This widespread phenomenon that everyone can recognize that image or majority of people can. And at the end of the day, there there's nothing that ends up in the creator's hands. Sarah: [00:54:38] I think that's one of the things that I'm most interested in NFTs is the financial engineering behind NFTs and some of the scarcity supplies that people are adding, the resale opportunity to give money back to the creator continuously, you're able to add like income streams, royalties to NFTs that I think is going to open up that middle section, a middle phase where, [00:54:59] as you mentioned, if you are innovated, innovative, if you are working with your community, then an NFT can be the right path for you and you actually can make it a feasible opportunity to support your life, basically as an artist without having to just scrape by and enjoy spending more time JohnPaul: [00:55:13] creating art. So I appreciate, Sarah, you jumping on and sharing all of this about NFTs and this Sarah: [00:55:18] was an amazing thing just for me to hear the process that you go through and the dedication of two years. Like I've been on the cryptocurrency side since 2013, been experimenting with different things NFTs, but more in the mining space. And that's more the physical assets of the blockchain infrastructure. So hearing your journey about creating and just consistently putting out a [00:55:36] story and doing the work, it's what's needed in the blockchain spaces. You mentioned like, you're not going to be able to come into this space and say, Oh, I don't understand this. Someone to tell it to me without actually trying and failing and learning. So to end it and wrap it all up, where is the best place that people can connect with you online? And is there anything you wanted Sarah: [00:55:52] to share with them that your community should be aware of over the next 30 days, 90 days, timeframe on stuff you're looking to drop or launch? Yes, definitely follow me on Twitter. That's where all my crypto art dealings are going down. My screen name there is the Sarah Show. And that's pretty much my screen name again. I've had it since 1996. So I'm the Sarah [00:56:15] Show on Instagram as well. And the Sarah show calm is my website. Yeah. And coming up soon, I have a drop that is called the Cassandra complex that is a series I'm very excited about a series of video paintings dealing with this zoomed out lens of the nature of prophecy and the way that we tend to look for easy scapegoats when we're scared about the future. But all told in my sort of Sarah: [00:56:39] humorous mischievous way on videotape, of course, and that is going to be dropping on blank network, which is a new platform that maybe you're aware of by the time you're hearing this. And maybe you're not, I believe it's blank network.com. That's very exciting. Matt Kane is doing the first drop there. And mine will be the second. So I don't actually have an exact date for that at this time. [00:57:04] But I think it's going to be coming up probably in the next week or so from the time this episode comes out, you know, follow me on Twitter and you'll get all the the good details about that, the Cassandra complex. That that sounds like a place to be. And when is, do you know when that drops going to be? Do you have a date yet or time or where's the best place people to find out Sarah: [00:57:20] Twitter when that's going to be happening? Yeah, just follow me on Twitter. Yeah, the date is still TBD right now, but it's definitely this month. It's definitely in April. Awesome. Sarah, thanks for coming on and sharing that your experience. It was an amazing time. I enjoyed it. And thanks again for listening into the digital gold podcast where we learn about cryptocurrency, mining, and [00:57:41] NFTs. Have a great day. 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 Sarah: [00:57:53] support our journey to become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening. [00:57:57] And until next time, mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # On-Chain Inflation Index | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 22 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/stefan-rust/ All Episodes Episode 22 # On-Chain Inflation Index with Stefan Rust — Founder, Laguna Labs Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Stefan Rust to discuss on-chain inflation index. ### On-Chain Inflation Index Guest: Stefan Rust — Founder, Laguna Labs Episode 22 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation Narrator: Welcome to the new season of the Digital Gold Podcast. JP Barrick: This is season two, and I'm sitting here today with Stefan Bruss, the founder of Laguna Labs. Stefan, welcome to the show. Stefan Rust: It's super excited to be here. JP Barrick: I'm excited to launch it again, especially with you, man. It's a great story you have, and I'm excited to dive into it for everyone. So tell me more about Laguna Labs. How did you, when did you have the idea that we needed the products that you guys set out to build? Stefan Rust: So it started off a while back, right? When COVID hit, government shut everything down, what are we going to do? How are we going to live with that? We'll print a lot of money, but it's not going to have any impact on anybody. No impact, no impact whatsoever. We can shut down all the economy. It's not going to have any impact, and we'll just print money anyway. And I just felt something's got to give, right? And ultimately it was inflation, right? And so I was also intrigued by Terra, the stablecoin that they launched. And so how can we build an inflation-protected stablecoin? And then ultimately provide more governance on chain as it relates to quantitative easing, quantitative tightening, and that there's a transparent, not curated, but immutable, visible, participatory, sort of way of supporting the economy and opportunities. And so you mentioned a way that couldn't be obstructed or manipulated, so you had to build your own data source, right? So we looked at how the data source is being aggregated. We noticed that it was more than 100 years old, right? So they built this back in 1920s. Wow. So it was like paper and pencil. Paper and pencil. And now they do the same surveys and they do it with iPads. That's the innovation. And so we just felt, let's take a developer mindset to do this. How do we aggregate some, I think we've sourced from 50 million different sources, 50 different sources. 18 million items that we track on a daily basis. 18 million items that you guys track all via programmatic, all programmatic, all on chain, visible for free to anybody that wants to go look at a dashboard. And you can see across 12 indexes at the moment, but we'll have about 50 in about a week's time. Wow. So these indexes, what are they? What everyday household goods? Household goods, rent, you know, is it rent that you're paying? Is it a mortgage you're paying? The prices of housing? Is it food? Is it food that you eat in at home and you cook, grocery store food? Or is it food you eat out at a restaurant, your utility bills, your, the cost of electricity, because ultimately that's influencing the amount you transport, right, your transportation costs. It's the cost of everything. The cost of everything, right? Electricity. I mean, we got these two building blocks of our lives and we don't realize how much the cost affects. Exactly, everyone. And that's, that's really just, we've just been focused on that and tried to identify all new sources. So just before I kind of, we started this podcast, I had a call with a entity out of Switzerland that are aggregating environmental data. Okay. And so they've hashed it all on the blockchain. And so we're working with them to put that and make that available to smart contract developers. So that smart contract developers then can build products, financial instruments that allow anybody to hedge themselves and protect their purchasing power. So what kind of environmental data you're talking about? Like is this temperature, is this humidity, or is this? So it's less climate data. So we have another partner that we're working with and we're not in that next week as well, where we're actually bringing to market climate data. So all temperature, about hyperbaric pressure, we're bringing historical weather data, floods, warnings, et cetera. So when you start bringing this data to the protocols, that means people can build markets on top of this data that then they can make synthetic purchases or decisions or bets effectively. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. And so if you look at the derivatives market worldwide, it's a quadrillion dollar size industry. You look at the commodities industry. It's another trillion, a couple of trillion dollars. I mean, we can't even fathom those numbers because they're so many different. But I mean, I think realistically, it's just, yeah, everybody's gonna be building off the back of this and we want to allow that creativity to flourish. To flourish. And I think that's one of the important things is you need to have the right data set to understand how you're being impacted by these decisions that are so far out, that are so abstract for most people. Like what does a quarter basis point rate increase look like? What does a one basis point rate mean to you? You have no way to correlate that to your data day life. So you guys are helping bridge the gap. Exactly. And we're not really doing that. So we're also allowing, we're building a personal calculator. Okay. So what is inflation to you? Because your spending might be different to my spending. Might be different to anybody else's spending, like mail spending or whatever, right? And so as a result, how do we deal with that, right? And how do we calculate inflation to me because I'm driving a lot of car, you know, oh man, I have a high cost of transportation. So the inflation to me is 12%, right? But somebody in the UK that's staying at home, working from home has to use air con during the day because it's so hot, heating in the winter at night, they're suffering 88% inflation on utility costs. So for them, inflation is going to be slightly higher. How do you aggregate that number? Do I stay, do I put that into my own spreadsheet? I can upload a CSV file. Do I use Mint to be able to track all my expenditure and my budget? I can import from Mint. Can I have it on MasterCard? I see all my MasterCard expenditure and import that and it then calculates my personal inflation. And that's also going to be for free, is anybody can... That's an amazing tool. Because that's one of the things I think is in part of inflation. How does it affect me versus how does it affect you? As you mentioned, electricity in the UK is going crazy. So that is, that's such a cool tool. So what are the numbers you guys are seeing at your inflation versus the numbers that are being reported or the numbers that have been reported? Is it a small difference? Is it magnitudes of a difference or is it pretty similar? No, I mean, we had a magnitude, a much bigger difference earlier on and it seems to be plateauing at sort of a level of eight to nine percent. We're reporting nine percent on true inflation for the US and the government's reporting eight point two percent. And so there is a bit of a discrepancy about by one percent but it was greater earlier on. We were in double digit, we had recorded double digit inflation at the peak. Wow, up to 13 percent. We were just shy of 13 percent inflation. And so when you're calculating the number and also the government is like a six months of like lagging data, is there like a, is there a string to it or is it just today the present moment? Like how does that work? Stefan Rust: Yeah, so we, we do it on a daily basis. We can't get it right now to have it real time. We want to get it to real time. But in order to do real time, we need to have more predictive capabilities in terms of taking into account future pricing of specific commodities. And that will then ultimately also then have an impact on today's prices that we experience. Yeah. But we do it on a daily basis. In contrast, the government is about 30 days late. So we're 30 times faster than the existing reporting mechanism. And do you guys only do an US dollar inflation or is there other currencies or jobs? Yeah. So people have asked us. So we listen to the community and what they ask us. So they asked us to then go to the UK. So we launched inflation calculator for the UK. Okay. And we let it's the same architecture that we have. And so that was very easy. We're now getting asked to have it in different denominations. So we at the past or so far today, still only do US dollar denomination. And we're looking to sort of see what other, we've been actually been asked, can you put it in BTC and ETH terms, right? Ooh. So I can then see how it rags against that. And so we want to then have a widget that we can then add that you can have it's compare versus Bitcoin versus ETH. And then you can then actually US dollar and see what inflation looks like. I think this idea that we changed the base denominator currency is completely new over the next, it has 20 years like, okay, you know, first year the fourth currency is dollar, sterling, euro. But now it's like, oh, wait, you can add any asset. I mean, they're really, or any type of currency in the Bitcoin, Ethereum. So that's huge for the future. Let's see. So we mentioned, you talked about personalizing inflation data. What type of actions can someone take when they have that personalized information? Let's hear about that. Yeah, so how do I hedge myself, right? If I know I'm experiencing a 10% inflation, how do I hedge myself against that? What do I do? And those are questions that we're now trying to identify products associated with that. And that's what we do at Laguna Labs. We're building and we specialize in tools and protocols that enable inflation protection, inflation-proof economic opportunities, right? And so what do they look like? Now that we know what inflation is, or trueflation, then how do we now build these products? One of the products that we first launched was is a flat coin. Okay. And a flat coin is a stable coin pegged to inflation. Okay. So it actually moves US dollar plus minus inflation, minus when we have deflation, plus when we have inflation. So it sways both ways and it's just that it stays flat to a basket of items that you purchase on a regular basis. So it could some, is it the dollar, like is it a basket of items for the whole world, with the whole US or is it for the stable coin, I guess? Or is it a basket of items per individual? At the moment, it's a basket of items for the US. For the US. So we've just got it for the US. We don't have it for individual yet. So what we're doing is, I mean, we've been on this journey, we've launched the product about maybe five months ago in the level of maturity. We had an MPP, which was people could play around with, we were getting market feedback, and giving independent developers the ability to practice and tell us how to improve it, so that they could get a bit of an advantage of build products ahead of others. We have 40 companies and developers building on top of the trueflation data today. We're able to talk further about what these companies are building on top of your platform, any really cool use cases that you're like, holy crap. Yeah, super cool use cases. I mean, you can always expect, right? So they're building prediction markets, right? So people can gamble on what the inflation is gonna be. So like you could gamble on what their coffee's gonna cost in the future? Yes, yes. So they've taken all the stuff. We don't have coffee right now. We will have the coffee index up there, but you have already, you know, they built out, you know, the cost of food. What's food index? How's that gonna change? And then there's a company in Latin America, they built a lottery ticket. So you're buying lottery, and in the form of an NFT, a dynamic NFT, you're buying a lottery that then shifts based on trueflation data. And at a cutoff time, that data counts, and then you win or you lose, right? So interesting. So they're actually the lottery prize. Yes. It's worth more or less because of inflation. This is opening up a whole nother world, before you weren't able to speculate on inflation. It was like, this is what it is. You can't really stockpile a bunch of food and gas and hold it for five years from now. But you've effectively opened up these financial markets, which are tools we have, you know, derivative markets to hedge coin production for farmers. And you're saying, why don't we hedge the product, our consumption of anything? And when that realization or on that journey, how is that shift, how is that change? Like as you join in, or you jump in this inflation kind of like conversation more, what are you learning about this massive force on people that, you know, we really don't know the full implications. So it has an impact to everybody, right? And now that we're actually aggregating all these different components that all add up to the CBI, and are leading indicators to the CBI, we get a feel for what the sentiment is, but also we get the feel for what the price of oil is today. And if I can create a flat coin based on the price of oil, can we, based on the CPI basket, can I create a flat coin to oil, corn, to sugar, to coffee? So I can buy today a coffee at coffee's price. And I know in a year's time when I really want that coffee, I can actually buy that coffee at today's price, at the same price. I know I'll always get a basket or a bushel of wheat, or I don't know what the terms are, the measurement, but I will always be able to buy that same amount today. So it's ultimately the hedge for anybody, and it's available to everybody, right? Not only airlines that can hedge against oil and have huge treasuries for that. All of a sudden, we've democratized that and made that available to every farmer, every coffee drinker, you know, that we want to find individual. And so the process is that you believe that the price of, let's say, coffee is going to go up in the future or food, your food basket. So you're going to put dollars into a stable coin today to protect against that basket from degrading. Can you use those dollars in any way while they're in the protocol, or do they have to sit there as the liquidity? How is that? Are you guys working on features for that? Yeah, we'll be working on features for that. We don't have those yet today, but I mean, ultimately, you'll be able to trade off that. Okay. We want to get to a point where you can then actually go and spend that in a payment network somehow. Okay. So, I mean, ultimately, this is a journey where we're in the marathon, right? Yes. But I mean, if you think about it, we came, we got into Bitcoin really early. We're very lucky to do that. And if you look at it, you know, what's it now in 12, 13 years? Yes. You know, and we now have, you know, the Federal Reserve Chairman go up there and saying that cryptocurrencies are influencing their decision-making policies, right? That's huge. And that's huge in the kind of course of 10 years, right? So that goal of separating state money is something that is still, I believe, core, an objective of what we should be achieving. I 100% agree. We got to, that's the biggest invention that Bitcoin came and brought to the world. So the question I have to do is electrification. Electricity is what backs Bitcoin in my mind. How does that compare to the advancements in Web3 and what you're seeing there? How are those similar? So... Or they just two massive forces that have been introduced to the world that are going to change everything we know. So my view, Web3 is just a marketing ploy, right? It's a new cool name to shrink-rack all of this stuff that's going on in the blockchain, from cryptocurrencies to blockchain, to the technology, the coins, and to smart contracts. It's just we call it blanket Web3. Blanket Web3, I like it. And it's a new name, right? So it's fresh and people are, it's politically correct to talk about Web3, but if you talk about cryptocurrencies, ooh, one of the regulations or something like that. I'm sure. It's like a Bitcoin energy usage. It's like, chill, it's okay. And I think what a lot of people don't understand is that from the energy, I mean, electricity is the core of what drives the economy. Every economy needs electricity. And if you look, I mean, there's even a book that came out, somebody wrote about it about the right, when the rising tigers in Asia grew, they had air economics. It wasn't economics, it was air economics. Why? Because they built enough electricity supply to maintain cooling in all of their office buildings across Singapore, Hong Kong, et cetera. So that people could work in dire heat and humidity whilst and be productive still, without being able to see us done so hard, I can't work anymore. And in Austin, same thing, right? We've got enough air con to be able to work in an environment that we don't need to be out in the dry heat versus the humid heat. And these problems, effectively, mean, these solutions are gonna make humans way more valuable, but productive. Productive, exactly. And like, better off overall. So Web3, how is it gonna make us better? And I think proof of work has a bad, you know, I mean, the institutions have created a bad reputation for something that is hyper-efficient. And what people don't realize is that every builder in the proof of work industry has to bring down their electricity costs. All they want is. It's all about efficiency. And it's how can I bring that down? And you're tapping in, it's actually an electro-dollar, right? I mean, it's really... It's what they call it, exactly. It's really bad. And then the shift to proof of work, I mean, we just, from proof of work to proof of state, that, for example, Ethereum had just done. Yeah. You know, they claim that it brought down worldwide energy supply by 0.2%. Which is a huge number. I don't know what energy supply is worldwide, but I'm sure you go to that. That's Cambridge has a cool website, where you can go and see how much worldwide supply is. And so they brought that down. But then, you know, the same people that complained about the electricity consumption in a proof of work network, you know, complain about, oh, now it's security. Now you can't have that, right? So yeah. And as you see, it was like, because their Ethereum nodes are all in the US now, we're secure. So we're going, well, the security. Why is it a security? Because all of a sudden, it's supposedly deflationary. And because they're supposed to be burning more coins than they are minting new coins. Yep. And if you actually go, there's a website called ultrastable.money. Yep. And you can actually see how much they're burning and how much they're minting. And in fact, they're not burning. And it's not deflationary. It's still inflationary. Just at a much lower rate than if it were a proof of work network. No, I think thinking the proof of work networks are, like you said, the electrode dollar is what Bitcoin gives it its value. Definitely. And it's interesting, because we're seeing that these energy companies, they don't actually want to mind Bitcoin. And then when you think about it, they don't want to use their own energy companies. They don't want to use their own energy on my Bitcoin because of the potential PR, the bad press of using energy to mind Bitcoin. And like you're multinational conglomerates, but you don't see the value of this energy dollar yet. And so it's going to take more years for that trend. It's a change in education. Yeah. But they have a lot of wastage throughout the production, the transmission. Yep. The extraction, sorry. And then the transmission and then the generation. Well, then that's the problem. There's this one group came in and they said, hey, we have a coal plant. We can't meet demand at the grid. So we can't get the coal plant started fast enough. So we can actually be that last reserved to make sure the grid doesn't go in the blackout or brown, because the coal plant's not running to full capacity. But if they had a Bitcoin miner, it already got running to full capacity, then they could automatically put the power on the grid. But that right there might even be two conf, you know, not a confine to a commercial. And controversial. Exactly. So it's like little things like that. Like even utilizing the energy resources. And is that because they have institutional investors? Are they publicly listed companies? They're publicly listed, but it might be institutional investors. It could be the public about, oh, you're mining Bitcoin. Like that's used as energy. We have this false assumption of society. I think it probably plays into the true inflation next. Well, is that there's not enough energy in the world. There's not enough goods in the world. And we were talking about how earlier, how someone could, you know, how we could use the tools that you guys are building to really extend the, let's say the ability for the world to grow above 70 billion people. What is like, what do you see, what is holding us back from like economic growth, economic prosperity for all? Is it just massive policies? I mean, that's a hard question to answer. It's like, what do you see holding us back the most? Incumbents. Incumbents. Incumbents. These are the incumbents today. And then coming back, one of the ideas that I have is to why they're so reluctant to use and run up in capacity using Bitcoin mining, is because if they did that, that would not comply with ESG criteria under which all these big institutional funds, these legacy incumbent funds, can invest into their stock. And so as a result, they're worried that their stock will go down. They won't have that many shareholders interested in their stock because they've done something that does not comply to this checklist that was put in place by these incumbents. And that's been a big push over the past six, seven years. Like ESG was in a thing in 2010. No. No. As much as it is today, right? It's taken everything, you know, by, by, and the funny thing is Tesla doesn't fit into the ESG criteria. But Shell, BP, you know, all these big Exxon, you know, all of these big oil companies, they're OK. They comply. Yeah. So I don't understand that checklist. It just doesn't compute. It doesn't make any sense. The biggest electric car maker. So we talked about, we're talking about Winfrey. How did you get into Winfrey? Like, in your Bitcoin or? Do you just hear the long, the whole journey? Or was there a Ha-Moulin for you? No, I mean, smart contracts was the Ha-Moulin, right? The fact that I could put more governance on chain and have the chain provide a consensus for smart contracts, to me, for that governance, that was awesome. That was really the aha moment. The real estate. Yeah, the real estate. I mean, I really got into Bitcoin because I loved the peer-to-peer electronic cash system. That's what I loved about it. I could pay. I could send money around the world to anybody I wanted to that had a Bitcoin wallet. And if they didn't have one, I got them to get one. Yeah. Here's everyone. And yeah, and the fact that you could do that seamlessly, instantaneously, at no fees, just that, to me, was just awe-inspiring, right? And it changed how we do commerce. It changed how we think about the world. And so now, Web3 is changing how we move, how we get consensus, and how we run programs on chain. So trueflation, how much of that is what is the data all on chain? Like, how do you guys collect, making these data pools for data sources? So we're not fully decentralized yet, but we're putting it all on chain. And every, it's all hash. Every day, the numbers are all hash, so everybody can go and check it, and it can't get it all to rate it and change. And that's huge. That's the first step, right? We know how the CPI is. We know it's calculated. We know it's weights, right? But we don't know the data behind the weight, or if they're cherry-picking data. You don't even know the weights. You don't know the allocations. Specifically, they really, and it's all curated, right? You don't see, transparently, how they come to those calculations. And so we've tried to make it extremely visible for anybody to see. Visualization is really important. I think a lot of people look with their eyes versus reading in spreadsheets. And so that was just a big set of feedback that we got. And the fact that we're actually aggregating 18 million price items and tracking that versus the 60,000 that other institutions, so there's a million that has to be seen. So one of the things I've heard about. We have multiple price points for a lot of those 18 million items. And what do you mean, like different types of price points? So like one item of one vendors this much, this vendor might be this much. Exactly. So one of the things I've heard is that inflation historically has been low because technology is advancing and the price of televisions are going down. How is that affecting your index? Or how did you guys take that into consideration? Is that, what does that mean for people looking at inflation? If you're waiting a TV, then you only buy one every five years. If you're waiting that, oh, if we buy a TV every year, or a new laptop every year, obviously it's getting cheaper. Like how do you deal with that? So, I mean, we built that into the equation. We then have a data team that go and look at the waiting. And where we're getting to is within the next three to six months, will that be exposing all of that waiting and allowing token holders to then allocate and vote and help us structure the waiting. At the moment, we're working with bigger institutions. We're working with Penn States to help us with the real estate allocation and how we wait with property and how come how we get to a better algorithm that then computes what is the price change across the US for residential, commercial, and estate, things like that. So that is huge. You guys are working with multiple partners to get all this data. I mean, how do you keep up with it? You've got a stable point, you've got a true place. I'm like, come on. We're about 50 people across the Google Labs at the moment. So the true place in teams, about 12 people, the new on team, the flatcoin is also about the same. And then we've got people working on other projects as well that will be coming out soon. But I mean, I found that the other thing actually is the bigger an organization, the less effective it becomes. Because if you're more than eight people at a table, at a conference, or at a diner, didn't dictate that, you can then just be silent or not contribute. Or if you're at one of the action items at this meeting, if your eight people is still pretty productive, if you don't come with a result at the next meeting, I couldn't deliver that. And that impacts me. And we know each other personally because we're still eight people around a table. And that then has a bigger impact. And so how do we deal with that? And so how do you build scalable teams? And to me, it's clusters of teams. Unique clusters. Because if you get too big, you get ineffective. You don't move fast anymore. And people can be like, ah, it's not worth my time. And not worth it. Oh, jack will do it. I won't do it. I'll do it. It's like somebody else will opt sick. I'll just won't tell anybody. And I can push it out another week or something. Whereas in the startup world, you can't afford to do that. Or in rapidly innovating economies, you can't do that anymore. And the event, I mean, a couple of things, right? You mentioned technology. Technology is the savior of inflation. If we would have had technology, so if we don't have innovation, we would have much higher inflation. Yep. Cost of everything. Cost of everything would be much higher. The other thing that brought down inflation is the global economy, right? Globalization has helped bring down cost. Because ultimately, we can leverage more efficient manufacturing of one spot, more distribution of another spot, the sourcing of raw materials from another area. And we could leverage that bringing up economies of scale that allowed us to produce 100,000 TVs at a much slower unit cost so that we could all have better TVs. And I increased the rate of how many TVs we buy and ultimately lead in more trash. But we're recycling those TVs now, too, right? So there's a lot of raw materials inside the television, inside a mobile phone that are being recycled. And we use. And we reuse, right? The life scene, the supply chain is coming. I think when you said the globalization is key. I mean, that's what has led us on this 20-year journey of lower prices, lower costs. And now we've hit the wall of QE. And now it's showing us the poison to that pill effectively and cheap money for everyone. So this dollar-based coin, I want to go back to the stable coin you guys working on. What's the name of it? No one. No one. It's a nuanced stable coin. And I'm talking to me more about use cases of the stable coin today. And then also any type of regulation that might be affecting you guys in the future, what you're seeing. Because it's allowed space right now. Stefan Rust: Yeah, I mean, so look at how money has been distributed. It's always centralized. You have a centralized institution that prints the money and distributes the money through large, centralized, incumbent organizations, private institutions, that then try to redistribute it to other smaller institutions that then are supposedly going to give incentive structures to drive adoption of this money into the marketplace. And they're making investments. And that's like the funds. And they're supposed to hire people, or even seeing with Goodwill, they got $20 million for a senior citizen working program and skill program. It's like, so the government's getting Goodwill money to hire senior citizens. Why don't you get the money straight to them and how they can enjoy their lives. And I guess how many people along the stages keep a portion of it, right? So everybody gets, and the month goes from trillions of dollars to the first layer, then get a percentage of that. Then it goes to billions, and then it goes to millions, and then it goes to 1,000, 100,000, 10,000. So every time there's a percentage that goes along the way. But of course, the defined institutions that get the trillions are much smaller community and are ultimately a key thing and have. That's why, if you go to every city center, you look at what all the logos on top of the buildings in any downtown city center. They're all banks. They're all accountants, or they're all lawyers. And the accountants are working for the banks. Yeah, the lawyers are also working for the banks. And so these are all downtown in every location. Those are the prime real estate owners. So it's a bit funny how that happens. I don't know. The closer you are, the more money you get, the easier it is. And you set them, the more work you have. If you're a lawyer, you'll link $600 an hour. I got a new, it's a great example. This is the IRA. It comes out, makes renewables way more worth way more. That means every renewable law firm's going to make money, more money. Every accounting firm is working on doing the most good new, more money. All the new companies have all these new projects that no one needed the energy before. It's not lowering any minimum cup, but it's now it's like, hey, here's another $800 million. It's like on a taxpayer. It's just $800 million out of the QE rate. What happened? How much of that $800 billion is going into building solar panels, building wind farms, building water, general hydro plants, or whatever it is that we need to meet the demand of energy requirements in a population, or nuclear power plants is now accepted as energy renewables as well. So it should be. It's the best energy we have. But then if we don't build that infrastructure, we're not going to be able to make a system. It's a system. It's going to be lawyers and accountants, and institutions, and consultants, and analysts that are going to tell us, oh, we should build one. We should. We should. We should have a nuclear power plant. You can pay me. Oh, we can't get the regulations. So one of the things that I've seen with financial education is that most people that are in the lower, like poorer, in the lower middle class is because of the they don't understand the forces that are at play. Like they are able to make buy with a salary of, let's say, $50,000, $60,000, which is a great salary even today. How do you educate this group of individuals about the true wealth destruction that inflation has? Because when you think about 8%, it's like, oh, that's a pretty low number. What we don't realize is humans may have really or hard understand. 8% compounding is huge. So what are you seeing with education from? I mean, truthfully, is, I feel like the core product will answer that. And that's why we wanted to do the personal calculator. Will people spend the time to track all of their expenses? How many people actually track their expenditure, number one? How many people? So OK, let's say we now have tools to do that, right? The credit card company provides a breakdown, mints provides a breakdown. How many people that use those tools as well, right? So how can we make it easier and easier to visualize what it actually means to you, and what inflation, how inflation impacts you personally, and what you can do against that? I mean, that's ultimately one of the dashboards we wanted to create. It does require efforts. So people need to invest the time to do so. And if you've got two or three jobs at the same time, it gets really difficult, right? Yeah. Well, it's also, you don't prioritize it, because you don't realize either how it's affecting you or how you could do anything about it. But one thing I found was, I also think there's a role that our educational institutions need to take on. Educate at a much earlier level how if I show a visa card, should I go to a bank and borrow or get a credit to buy a card? Or do I use it on my credit card? Or do I buy a card off my credit card? What is, and how do I calculate? Well, how do I compare? How do I build? What tools are available to do that comparison? I think that would be super helpful. I mean, mortgage. How do you get the best mortgage? How do you count one of the different types of mortgages that you have? Things like that, then a streamline versus going to a loan chart, paying 20% a month, or having an hourly credit card, having 20% 30% a month, right? And who has your best interest in mind? The reality is, is that you don't know as a consumer, you're just, OK, I have my credit card. I might not be able to pay it off this month. Well, I get hit 15% interest. Well, there's another guy down the street, the offer you 10% of this guy know who he is and talk to. Exactly. That's sort of critical mindset. Or I don't know, that we need to educate at high school levels, right? I mean, that can't come at a college level. I mean, you have just earlier that we could, in real world practical examples versus, you know, how does that impact work? So maths, you learn maths around examples. What would it take? That's the mathematics you need to do. Yeah, the real world examples. When you're a math class, you should be figuring out how to use this math to determine your cost of goods or how to get a mortgage. That's all things you can determine. It's all math. It's all math. It's like, what's the price per square foot in this world? Why not correlated to real world purchase decisions? Exactly. So with Lugon Lab, you guys raised money. Let's talk about that journey. Can you explain to me when you started, like how a process was, how many pitches you had to do, people thinking you're crazy, or people were like, I love this idea. Talk through that, because I think it's something that, when we're talking about financial freedom, financial education, raising capital to build a business is one of the, I think, the best things you can do to build wealth. So how is that process for you? It's not easy, well, that's for sure. Nobody believes in the beginning. Everybody's super skeptical, and you need to overcome that. I mean, I had the advantage that for Lugona Labs, when we launched that we had a good team, I had a track record, and I had a lot of experience in being able to prove that I have executions capability. What investors generally look for is they all invest in the team. So it's the people that matter, you matter, if you're going out and raising money. So how do you bring across the energy you have, the passion you have, to sustain and hold through really tough times that you will go through. The 50,000 knows you'll get before you get a yes, right? The skepticism. Everybody's got advice. They tell, oh, everybody tells you how to do this better and that better. But when you're actually, you're the person in the arena, you're the one finding the bull. The bull's going to come out at you, and they might have some other change move to the left. It's like, the bull's coming at me. If I move to the left, there's a big stone there. You need to be the one in charge of restoring it. Exactly. And because people, like you said, they'll say, no, no, no, no. But it's like, you believe this so strongly. So I guess, what is that belief for you in Lugona Labs? That's your inflation. Why do you do what you do? Because I just want to protect people's purchasing power. That's my mission. I believe global economic trade is going to create a happier planet. Because with exchange of goods and services for a certain value drives interaction. Interaction creates communication. Communication creates a better understanding for both parties. A better understanding of the both parties creates a much more consensus-driven environment versus a conflict-oriented environment. And that's what I want to get back to. And I believe the blockchain and what we're doing in Lugona Labs, putting more governance as it relates to economic benefits to everybody, is the way to go about it. Oh, 100%. It's the granular approach, but also has the macro in it. Exactly. And it's what, like you said, these forces that affect us that we don't really know yet. Blockchain is going to help us quantify that. Exactly. I will put so much more. It's going to go onto the blockchain. We have no idea today. I mean, I wrote a white paper way, right? I think it 20, 23 years ago about how we can tokenize the planet. OK. Tell me what that is. So can we tokenize the carbon credits? Can we tokenize the carbon? If you plant a mangrove tree, mangrove trees have been verifying scientifically proven to be a great absorption of carbon dioxide. And so, OK. If you plant one, should you get over the life cycle of that carbon tree? Should you get the life cycle of that mangrove tree? Should you get how do you quantify that? What are some examples? How could you build a marketplace around that? And so build a whole ecosystem around that. Anyway. So the thought process here is that, why do we let the big guys get the carbon credits and build their carbon separation plants? Why doesn't everyone have the same ability to, you know, when they keep, that's their job. They're going to find mango trees. And the reason why you wouldn't do that for a job, per se, is because you don't have the credits, the government credits, or the system in place. But the reality is, it's in place at the financial institution level, but it's not in place at the individual level. So they're forced to go work for another massive institution. And so you look at that industry. There are four or five companies that really matter. And the only ones allowed to verify and certify that you have planted that mangrove tree. And that mangrove tree is doing 10 carbon credits a day, or a year, or whatever it is. And of course, they're big consultants. They're approved by the big institutions, or governments, if you will. And ultimately, you need to pay them gazillions of dollars to come and verify you and I can't afford. Yeah, for that tree tree that we have at home, that we planted to do goods, right? It's not worth it. It doesn't work. So how can you democratize that or consumerize that and make that available to anybody? My bring all this data on chain that were allowed to be authenticated, validated at any moment. And then allow people to take action in incentives. Incentive structures are huge. And that's, I think, what is doing this change in the web three and with crypto is we now have the ability to control incentives. At the very, we all wake up in the morning and we have this plan of action all because we set these incentives up for us of what we're wanting to do and how we're going to spend our time. Actually, in a good example of I've directed two consumers are things like, you know, you call them city, but they are a very clear, experiential manifestation of the incentive program. It's like sweat coin or a second, right? Where I walk, I walk to work, I earn coins because it's my step, my step, my step, I do. So there are all these new ideas that all of a sudden with the phone, you can now earn money without doing anything, right? And yeah, by doing your day to day, by just doing your day to day, how can we gamify more of what we do on a day to day basis? And then it comes down to what is society value, like value creation and then how do we incentivize them? Like we value planning, anger and truth, versus walking. Walking, walking. So this is a beautiful market. So what are the problems with this case, like holding it back? We have three in general or a lagoon allows what constraints you guys see in the marketplace. So it's the resistance to new resistance to innovation. I think full stop, if I would summarize it, that would be it. And the reason I see that is we have today people running the world that have been in their roles for decades and decades and decades and decades, right? So five, six decades run, they're still in charge. They have not been entrepreneurs themselves. They have, you know, not really, you know, by attrition, they've worked their way to get to where they're at, just because they stood around and hung around while longest. And they're the ones deciding on how, and of course they don't want change because they're not a professional one. And they all went to the same schools, by the way. They all went and worked at the same departments or the same offices and the same industries. So they're all together. And so they don't want change. Because it's changed to them doesn't bring any immediate. What's the benefit? And if it's changed, that means I have to work more, I have to understand something new. I don't like lose my job. I think myself also needs. And so that to me is something we really drastically need to change quick. Because we can't become complacent. We need to innovate because otherwise somebody else on the planet will do so. We'll do so. We'll bring more jobs and scaling. When it comes to developers, how are the, how is that availability and all the developers in the world will have three developers? I mean, they're hard to come by. So what can we, what are you seeing like in programs to make more web-free developers? What are you guys doing or seeing in the development world? So a couple of things. One is there are about 26 million developers worldwide. About 18,000 of them are active on a monthly basis in web-free. So that's less than a percent. So there's a big portion. And we're really building out the Guna Labs to attract developers and come up with economic models that incentivize developers to provide value to a blockchain instead of just building, building on the blockchain and getting a grant and running away and doing something else. So how do we do that? And so how do we incentivize developers? And where do we go to find developers that are interested in writing programming, right? So development, software development is complex, right? A lot of people think, no one's just easy. Just build that, right? It's like, yeah, I see no one's just works. I mean, it just works, right? What programming language do I need? What tool sets do I use? Does it have a database? What's the load that I need to manage and maintain the input output associated with that app, the process? So all of those things you need to make decisions on as a software engineer. And there's a reason why they're called engineers, meaning that's why. It's like you build a building. I need to know how many water pipes do I need? What's the toilet ratio to capital? What's the aircon air ducts I need to manage the flow of air? They're solving really technical problems that if you don't solve in the application, it makes it unusable, that space. Those are infrastructural problems, right? And that needs to be solved. And so anyway, where do you go for those? And how do you attract them into the Web3? And the advantage that we have in Web3 is there's innovation happening, and there's creative freedom that these developers can exercise without the framework of legal restrictions, regulatory impediments, right? Lawyers, product managers, marketing guys that are shouting down their neck to get this down going and build this and to build this widget and only incrementally improve it. I don't want to change anything, just improve it incrementally, right? Now, don't change my business model, yeah. They have always developed, perhaps 70,000 need to ask people, they hire them not because they need to do products they're working on cool things, because hey, your job as developers you just always make little changes. And what that means is that you're incentivized to make new changes, to minimize to optimize old systems or to maintain all systems. And I think that's a lot of what happens in the developer, but it's like, how do we build core systems that we can affect people's lives? And Stefan Rust: I think the software is coming, that point in truth relation is one of those tools where it's like, this can really affect the lives of millions of people, because it's fundamentally different than one else, whatever, everything else that's out there and it's verifiable and trustable. And I think you go, I mean, the innovator's dilemma, a book comes to mind, right? So you look at that and I think every tech company or every company that starts up is the innovator. And then you grow to a certain size and then you run the dilemma. If I change too much now, I change my business model, right? And if I change my business model, then ooh, that could impact my investors who are gonna be worried about going back into a new business, right? And so it's definitely a dilemma. And tech companies have been going through that all the time, right? I mean, we've seen a huge transition between all the tech companies. And if you don't innovate, you die, right? You experience that. There's no government bailouts. There's no, you know, you die, you crash and burn and that's the way it goes, right? And that's how it seems to be for everyone in the market, whose small business, you know, when it comes to larger guys, it's almost like the two big to fail. Exactly. And they're the ones that get the bail out. But then, either way, we progress on that. But I think one thing that to me is that, as an innovator, you have to get distribution faster than the incumbents get innovation. Distribution faster than the incumbents get innovation. Exactly. Because the incumbents already have the distribution. Yep. And if they understand how to innovate and then get the distribution, so the incumbents are gonna do everything in their power to slow down any kind of innovation that might threaten their distribution mechanism. Or versus adopt it. And I've been involved in a lot of different, I mean, I've got involved very early on in the mobile industry. And I remember mobile app developers were the disruptors, right? It was like trying to build apps on the phone, right? This was when Nokia was trying to sell, you know, phones that could have play music and have your credit cards and your phone. Really? Nokia had all of that. But then they lost that ability to convert that into reality, right? Because they weren't able to build the user experience that we now use today, which is a full screen. And so everyone was like, yeah, this is cool, but it's not connected. Because they started shifting from an engineering based organization into a more structured financial, analytically driven marketing orientation, organization. And so as a result, what's the spreadsheet? What's the ROI of that innovation of building a flat screen? Yeah. And I'm gonna base the ROI based on the historic, based on the pattern of our traditional phone. I can then calculate that if you're doing a flat screen for, oh, we launched that two years ago and nothing worked. And so if we take the trajectory that we've got now versus actually taking a fresh look and let's try and get something new into market. And I think that's the innovator's dilemma that really happened. So again, it also comes down to how big are you? How do you stay nimble? How do you stay focused? How do you have customer feedback and incorporate that into the product development cycle? And your product used to be amazing. Yes. And I think as it comes into your product is the status quo, what's the de facto? It's not the best, it's not in this world. Someone has a new product, the tech guy, they have to be 10 times better. Or 30 times faster than the government collecting the state up for truthless check. But nobody appreciates tech companies that deal with this all the time. And so how do they go about doing it? They generally do acquisitions. So they let small, innovative companies blossom. Google bought YouTube for a billion dollars. I mean, think of that. I mean, everybody thought they were crazy, right? And they had all these lawsuits that's cleaned it up and they made it now today. But they saw something at the time that nobody else saw. Facebook, bought Instagram. They bought WhatsApp. 2018 billion dollars they paid for WhatsApp. 50 employees, everybody thought they were crazy. But look at WhatsApp now, it's the worldwide messaging platform for everybody, right? And it's mobile. But at the time, everybody on Facebook was crazy. But they saw something that nobody else saw. Instagram is just a picture, you know, it's just a place that's share pictures. And now it's part of their feed, it's part of their product. And then everybody criticized them, oh, now they're too powerful, right? Adobe just bought Figma. Yeah, why are they buying Figma? Because everybody's moving away from that Photoshop framework and nobody's using their cloud service. So everybody's using Figma though. Why are they using Figma? Because we need it in websites. Websites are more important than PowerPoint presentations. Exactly. That's what the real developers are. Exactly. So making the tool set that the future is using. How do you guys look, Blue Knob Labs, you're building two tools for people. How do you view that experience being 10 hours better? Like what, I guess, how do you think about making the experience? It hasn't been 10x better, right? And so we felt that with Truflation, we can already do it 30 times faster. We're already doing it, you know, a million times better because we've got 18 million data point items that we track versus the 60,000 that other institutions track. And so we felt that that's definitely a 10x improvement. And we felt that not many people have tackled that problem. Right. And so we looked at that angle, right? And we had a lot of difficulty coming back to the investor story, convincing investors that this was a more, what you've looked, how are you going to charge people? Right. Still people ask us that question all the time. Yeah. It's like our mode is the big, you know, how did Google build a mode? They started off, you know, with aggregating more websites and crawling more and more websites. And anyone else said anyone else. And so our view was, how do we make a great user experience with the data that we're aggregating? And we had to convince a lot of investors, right? This is core tech. I need core tech, right? What do you mean by core tech though? So they mean sort of, okay, what's the core underlying algorithms that you're going to be building that's going to be unique to your service if you don't open source that? Yeah. What is the infrastructure that you're going to be building in terms of hardware aggregation, software components that are going to plug into those hardware and build a new database on the blockchain, for example, right? But then you know, at least that this investor is not the right investor for you. So you then go and find who and which investor suits you. But if you have a clear vision, you're not going to know some investors will like what you're doing. And it's latching onto that because those people that you can then brainstorm with evolve your product, they'll give you constructive feedback. They'll have faith in you as you go down this path. I think that's the most important thing. Is that clear vision as an entrepreneur, as if someone raising money, anyone, if you don't want to clear a story and vision, I was like, well, you don't know what you're doing either. We're out of Israel, our emperors with no clothes on, and we don't know what we're doing. But you have to be able to have that understanding of, I'm going to wake up every day. I'm going to leave my team to this success, and I'm going to execute. And I have that before, I'm going to continue doing the future. Exactly. That's why you should give me capital. Exactly. And it's all about the guys that give you the money, they're capital allocators. Yep. And so they look for where they can get a return on their capital. Adventure is high risk. So they know that I'm going to make some bets, but they're risking and they're betting on the people. You think when they're making a bet, they're more betting on the people. And they are the technology or the idea, or I guess, you know, it still goes together. I think they go together, yeah. But I mean, it's can the people execute on the idea and the technology, I think? Because actually, I think more of the people, I'd say it's maybe a 60 to 70 cent waiting to the people, and then a 40, 30, 40 percent to the technology. Because the people are the ones who end up building the store around the idea and also declaring around the idea. So they know what the target is. And so it's like the people paying the target, do they think you can hit the target? But if you don't have a target, you don't have the people on your way. Like you may shift, right? The market's shift. All of a sudden, can you pivot? Can you pivot? Can your story grow? Can you grow? And can you grow off the same theme? You know, the other thing is, well, at the time, everybody thought inflation was only going to be transitory when we launched inflation. Oh, more than three months, inflation's going to be gone. So how are you going to be relevant, right? And we heard that a lot too, right? So how many nos did you get? If you had to estimate before you got all your yeses, to fill out the round? Are we talking 10 nos, 100 nos, 1000 nos? No, it's definitely more than 10, less than 100. I mean, it was definitely in the 10s, 20s, 30s, maybe 30 nos. Thanks. But I was very lucky to get a yes very early on, and a super committed yes. So Matt, you think that's a key for me. It just gives you momentum. You have the support, the backing, and the credibility. So was that a yes or a check? We're just a yes. I'm going to commit a term sheet, maybe sign a document. Or how did that yes come about if you don't mind sharing? So the yes came, there were two yeses, right? So the yes for trueflation came about with a term sheet and a commitment and network, right? And so we're opening a lot of doors and helping. And that got us going. And we still got all the nos, but at least we got a lot of doors to the right people really quickly. And that helps. And then with the good of labs, we originally found a investor that had committed a significant check size too, because we just had an extra spreadsheet. And this concept of a flat point, and that was, I said, okay, we'll back you based on your background. We'll back you. And so we got that. And we then had to come up with a story. And we walked them through our every sort of weekly monthly updates. And so we would just update how far we come this month. And this is what we're thinking, this is where we're going. And they saw that progress. And we executed fast, right? And so that's what they liked a lot. That's I think that's a very key portion of your own entrepreneurship. You don't saw a talk. It's not a lot of execution. We ought to use it better to not have any meetings for a week, show what you can do and then have that meeting and know what you want. And the investor is like, hell yeah, let's do it. And it's yeah, so I have a statement that I stole from a really close friend that I worked with in the mobile ecosystem a lot. But code beats, you know, code beats PowerPoint. Code beats PowerPoint. I love it. So if you have code and you can show a demo, it that's much stronger than a business plan on PowerPoint. Exactly. Because the code is like, oh, this is actually the future set. Yeah. It's tangible and media. And I can see you build something. You've invested your ideas to try and conceptualize, take your concept and put it onto. So it's easy to connect the dots. It doesn't specialize, but it's hard to execute and make better experiences. And that's why the incumbents don't do it. Yeah. That's why it's like, give me a plan, show me the exo spreadsheet. What's the ROI? What's the investment going to be? What's the cycle? And so you have to go through this whole rigor reward. Rigoror. I don't know what that word happened. That's not right. But you have to go through this whole process to get to an outcome before you can even start. Right. So it's like so burdensome. You just finished the marathon and now you're actually going to start. You're an ultra-major. But it's also safe, right? There's no pressure on you. If you're in a bigger organization, because you're still earning your salary all this time. And if you're sick tomorrow and you don't turn up, look, he's really going to notice. I mean, if you do it very regularly, people get a bit upset. I don't notice. But ultimately, you're under this sort of safe umbrella of a bubble. Of the corporate. Most of all, what else do you want to share with the community and on the podcast? Well, good. Check out www.Tecautruthlation.com and check out the Goona LAGU.NA. And check out our products. And if you're interested, your developer build will provide you with all the support we can to make your product a success around what we're trying to do. And what can we connect with you personally? What's the best social media? So, Twitter, S-R-S-R-S-99, S-R-U-S-T-99. And then on Telegram, same handle. Hell yeah. Well, thanks again, guys, for listening in to the Digital Goa podcast. This is episode one of season two and we're excited to be back. I'm glad to be pilot. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Not Buying Bitcoin Will Be Your Biggest Regret | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 20 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/teeka-tiwari/ All Episodes Episode 20 # Not Buying Bitcoin Will Be Your Biggest Regret with Teeka Tiwari Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Teeka Tiwari to discuss not buying bitcoin will be your biggest regret. ### Not Buying Bitcoin Will Be Your Biggest Regret Guest: Teeka Tiwari Episode 20 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:43] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today I'm here with Tika Torari who is an executive chairman and strategy board at DeFi Technologies, a company aiming to become the world leader in offering services built upon decentralized finance. Tika's impressive track record of a cryptocurrency market analyst has positioned him as a trusted source for market predictions. [00:01:02] Tika, as an investment analyst, has credited with being one of the first experts to explore cryptocurrencies. He writes the most widely read premium crypto news in the world, Palm Beach Confidential. He was voted the most trusted person in crypto in July 2019. Welcome to the show. I'm excited to have you here today. Teeka: [00:01:17] Thanks JP. It's a pleasure to be here. So get me started and put me, understand when you got into cryptocurrency and how you started this premium newsletter Palm Beach Confidential? Well the first thing to remember is I come from a traditional finance background. So I [00:01:34] started working in Lehman Brothers in the late 1980s. And when I first became exposed to Bitcoin in 2011, I thought the same thing that most people raised in the traditional finance field think when they first come upon Bitcoin. It's a Ponzi, it's magic internet money. It's not based on cash flows. There's no model that I can use to determine whether Teeka: [00:01:58] it has value or not. How can I distinguish it from any other piece of code that can also create these units of supposed value? And so I dismissed Bitcoin. And at the time I think it was about $7 a Bitcoin. And I said okay, this is something that is a Ponzi scheme. It will boom and then it will bust. So in 2014, 2015, of course you had a massive [00:02:22] boom in Bitcoin and then you had a massive bust. Now one thing I've learned JP working in finance in the 80s is that when you have a fraud, every single fraud, when it's discovered, it goes to zero. It might not go to zero immediately, but it's ultimately destined to go to zero. Well Bitcoin, the Bitcoin bubble had blown up for two years and it still had a $6 billion Teeka: [00:02:49] market cap. And so what I realized in that moment was that this was not a fraud. Fords go to zero. And the next thing I realized was that I had made an enormous mistake and that I had not viewed this asset correctly. And the real truth is that I did not take the time to study this asset. I gave it a cursory glance. I read a couple of highly [00:03:15] slanted articles in the popular press and didn't and was intellectually lazy when it came to Bitcoin. And so I rectified that in late 2015, early 2016, I threw myself completely into understanding what this was. And most importantly, what the blockchain is. I think if you ask most people what the blockchain is, they say they know what it is. But if Teeka: [00:03:37] you ask them to describe it, they have no way of describing it. It reminds me of that British show where the lady has to, she's the head of IT for her whole corporation, but she doesn't know what IT stands for. And people are quizzing her on what IT stands for. And she spends 20 minutes avoiding the question. So when I finally understood what a blockchain [00:03:57] was, the ability to move value, store data in a way that did not require a third party, a trusted third party. When I really understood that, I knew that that idea was worth trillions of dollars. It was something that had never existed before. And then when I saw how Bitcoin was designed, but most importantly, how it was being adopted, who was flocking to it, Teeka: [00:04:24] how it was being used, how it was being secured through proof of work. And when I first saw proof of work, I thought, Oh my goodness, what a waste of electricity. And then I realized that no, if you look at what backs the American dollar, the ESG impact of the entire American military complex, a $600 billion a year industry, the petro dollar is what backs up the American [00:04:49] dollar. I then looked at gold, and then I looked at the traditional banking system. Each one of those use far more energy and a far more damaging to the environment than Bitcoin is. And the other thing that I realized was, is that this was a low price to pay in terms of the energy use for what Bitcoin could offer the world. Stateless money that nobody could ever dilute, Teeka: [00:05:13] that us as individuals could hold that nobody could expropriate from us. If you think about all through human history, even from the time of cavemen, a stronger man has always been able to take the resources of a weaker man, always. And Bitcoin, if you were smart and didn't tell people you owned it, this was a way for you to own an asset that no man government, no one could ever take from you. [00:05:41] And again, I realized that this was something that had never existed before in human history. And so it was going to be, it made sense that it was deeply understood. We are creatures that work from a frame of reference. And if we have no frame of reference, we avoid something because it's too scary. But the people that can get in there early and understand it and create a frame of reference Teeka: [00:06:03] for it are the people that obviously make enormous amounts of money because they get into new ideas very early, whether it was the early days of computing or chips or even something as pedestrian now as the VCR of a walkman, right? We had no frame of reference for a music player that we could carry around and listen to hours of music. When that came out in the 1980s, it was, [00:06:25] we were mind blown that that could exist. So when people have this visceral response to Bitcoin, I get it. I understand. I don't vilify them for it. I don't call them stupid for it. It's actually quite rational because this type of asset has never existed before. So what I try to do is take people down the path that I did in a rational way to help them understand just how powerful Teeka: [00:06:51] this asset is and just how valuable I think it can become. But anyway, that's a long story, not made short in terms of how I became a believer in Bitcoin and started really evangelizing Bitcoin in my newsletter business. I love it. And I want to go back to your time in the Lehman Brothers 1980s and then 2011. You mentioned that when we're evaluating Bitcoin, you can't use the [00:07:15] traditional models of cash flow. Is it a stock? What am I owning a piece of? There's no company, there's no CEO. And for me, that was, I think, one of the hardest things to explain to my uncle and to my family. When I was at 13 years old, 14 years old, getting into crypto, I'm like, why is Bitcoin a value? Well, it's this blockchain. It can decentralize trust. What does that mean? Teeka: [00:07:36] So trying to explain this concept, that it's a completely different animal. So I guess my question to you is when people hear about Bitcoin the first time, it's usually from a media report. What questions do they need to ask to get from the traditional finance world of this asset isn't cash flowing, this asset isn't doing, doesn't look like a stock, doesn't look like a bond to, [00:07:55] okay, this asset is going to revolutionize the whole world and how we trade data and trust across the world. How do you help people get over that gap in that bridge? Well, the first thing I do is I say that Bitcoin is not the first asset that doesn't have intrinsic value as laid out by, let's say, Graham and Dodd securities analysis, right, or FASB accounting rules. Diamonds Teeka: [00:08:21] have no inherent value. I mean, they have a limited industrial value that are used on diamond stores, but the diamond market is a multi billion dollar massive market. And they're stones. The only value they have is based upon how sparkly they are. And they're certainly not rare. The idea that something has to have intrinsic value as measured by our traditional sources of measurement, [00:08:48] but I think we've shown as humans that that's not true. You can take a piece of art that is two lines on a paper that sells for $30 million. Why is that 30 worth $30 million? Because enough people believe it is. And so let's tie this to Bitcoin. Bitcoin, to me, it's highest and best use as I see it now. And I reserve the right to evolve my view on Bitcoin. But in the world, Teeka: [00:09:12] in the snapshot of time we're in right now, JP, to me, Bitcoin's highest and best use is a store of value. If you look at all stores of value, they are designed in a way where they degrade in value over time. So if you look at gold, gold has traditionally been a phenomenal store of value. Well, when you create a paper market for gold that is maybe 100 times bigger than gold, and you add [00:09:38] mining on top of that, gold is not as rare as you would imagine it would be, right? It's very easy to dilute gold. Well, then you look at real estate. Well, real estate typically has been a way that the families have been able to pass wealth across generations. But governments have gotten smarter now, right? So governments not only hit you with inheritance tax, but they hit you with Teeka: [00:10:00] ongoing taxes every single year. So we really do not have a peerless source of value that will survive through time. So if I think about my children, their children, and their children's children, I have before Bitcoin no easy way to pass value down 50 years, 60 years, 80 years down the line. But Bitcoin solves that. And so what people then say is, well, what's to stop anybody [00:10:29] else from just doing the same thing? And I will say, they did. We had the Bitcoin wars. And guess what? Bitcoin core one, right? So I say, you've got to look at the amount of people that have come around this to secure this network. You've got to look at the amount of value that's been aggregated around this and say, okay, this thing recently was worth a trillion dollars. It's the fastest asset Teeka: [00:10:51] in the world to a trillion dollars. And it got there without the support of the global financial system. And it got there being the most attacked asset I have ever seen. I'll give you an example, binary options are probably one of the worst financial products the world has ever created. And those got approved like that by this CC Bitcoin is there's only ever going to be 21 million of [00:11:16] them made. It's the most transparent asset ever created in the world. And yet it has received more regulatory pushback than any other asset I have ever seen. And I've been in the financial space since the late 80s, right? I've seen a boom in all different types of exotic derivatives that have been approved and are accepted every single day. Well, I'll tell you this, I'd rather Teeka: [00:11:39] take a one Bitcoin than a credit default swap any day of the week credit default swaps crushed the United States in 2008. But the way that Bitcoin is designed is you can't rehypoticate it. You can't take one Bitcoin and lend it out 500 times. You know why? Because we've got the blockchain. So this asset represents such a threat to the existing status quo because the existing status [00:12:04] quo takes one asset and relends it multiple times. And that's called rehypotication. If you're asking yourself there, why is the traditional financial world have been so negative on Bitcoin? Why a central bank so negative on Bitcoin? The negative on Bitcoin because one, they can't control it. And two, is it brings 100% transparency to the financial system in a way that has never existed Teeka: [00:12:32] before. And that to me, when you're thinking about making a bet on crypto, make a bet on transparency, the Gen Zs, this new generation coming up, in my opinion, are the transparency generation. They will embrace transparency at scale. And if I'm right, and I believe I am, then Bitcoin is the peerless transparency asset the world has ever seen. I love it. I love the conviction that you have. [00:13:00] And the fact that this transparency, I think it's something that we've received in the cryptocurrency mining space in the big thing of like, Oh, Bitcoin's energy usage, as you mentioned earlier, and that conversation actually came up last night. And immediately for me, I started explaining here's the benefits Bitcoin miners provide to the grid. We can shut off down our Teeka: [00:13:17] miners when everyone else needs them. We help build more renewable energy because we have steady demand. But at the end of the day, that stuff doesn't really matter. The goal is to show, look, energy usage is good. Energy usage happens all across the world. It's what builds society, what's moves society forward. The goal is that energy usage, creating more value than it's [00:13:37] using. And not even that is it creating enough more value where people are having the ability to hold real value without having to rely on our nations. Think about it. We can create a monetary system that doesn't rely on guns and missiles and boats. Exactly. It relies on electrons. Like, right. That's something we need to share to the world. And it's so hard because of the media. Teeka: [00:13:56] Like, just the thing you said, it's the most attacked asset out there. Like, it's unreal how much the media comes after Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. And it's crazy to hear that the SEC would approve any of these assets because the ETF like, no, we can't give you access to the most transparent network in the world. The asset that's running without any intermediaries, [00:14:15] the asset that runs 24 seven and has no downtime. We can't sorry, we can't do that. The best store value in the world because it's unsafe, right? It's insane that these messages are being put out. What do you, how do you view the relationship between Bitcoin in the energy industry? Do you have any thoughts there on how Bitcoin is created? And basically for me, my thoughts are, Teeka: [00:14:36] when you own a Bitcoin, you're really owning a portion of time where all this energy was used to protect the Bitcoin network in that block. And you're buying a piece of that energy usage across the whole world. And you're owning that piece. And there was a great article about Bitcoin as time and how Bitcoin is the best way to pass on wealth to your generations. I think, as you JohnPaul: [00:14:53] mentioned, that is the number one reason why we need Bitcoin. But how do you see the energy industry Teeka: [00:14:58] in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining coming to play and interacting over the coming years, especially with the China news? I think 10 years from now, when we look back, we will see the Bitcoin mining did more for the adoption of green energy than any amount of cars that were sold by Tesla. Because think about it, right? For Bitcoin mining to work, you cannot pay [00:15:22] the same rate for electricity that I pay as a consumer, right? So Bitcoin mining is never pulling power away from other consumers, period, because other consumers pay more for it. Exactly. Bitcoin, if you look at where the biggest Bitcoin mines are, or at least were, they were in places that had stranded energy that were creating an abundance of energy that could Teeka: [00:15:44] not be sold to anyone. Anyone. So that energy was going to be generated regardless and thrown out, at least this way, it's being redirected. And here's the second piece of that. If I own a store, and I can only sell 70% of my goods and 30% have to go in the garbage, and all of a sudden, I can find a buyer for that other 30%. What does that do? Maybe it means I can make my store bigger, [00:16:08] I can provide better service to my customers because I have more profits, right? So this is the beauty of what Bitcoin can do for the adoption of renewable energy. Bitcoin miners can go into areas that maybe only have 5,000 people that cannot support a massive grid operation from, they might have an abundance of hydropower, but the dollars and cents just don't make sense. So they say, okay, Teeka: [00:16:34] we'll write the check, we'll build the hydropower, we'll give you our energy for free, and we'll take the balance, right? That's what you can do deals like that and have them make economic sense with Bitcoin mining. You want to talk about helping raise people out of poverty, helping change people's lives, give them cheap energy, and this is what Bitcoin can do. I love it, helping raise [00:16:56] people out of poverty. It's one of those things that for me has been a trend in my life. I went to Honduras and lived there when I was only 16 years old for a month, and I saw that. The reason why these citizens weren't able to live the life that I lived in the United States was came down to one word, and that word was infrastructure. They didn't have the infrastructure because the government Teeka: [00:17:15] was corrupt and their monetary system was corrupt, and they didn't have steady supply of energy, which prevented them from living the life that they should be living. And it all comes down to that and energy usage and availability. So one of the things we're working on now is like a power plant. So if you have a power plant, let's say in India or Pakistan, and they're looking to build [00:17:33] a new one, we go to them and we say, we'd like you guys to add an additional 400 megawatts of power to this power plant. We'll buy it from you 24 seven, so you can build it out, you will pay for it. But the next thing is, is when you need to sell that power to the community, we'll turn everything off for you. And that, like you said, that's going to uplift communities, going to lower the Teeka: [00:17:50] energy costs down, and it's going to help build societies because Bitcoin miners can come into areas where there wasn't a need before. So I'm super excited to hear that you share a similar JohnPaul: [00:17:59] view on that. How do you see Bitcoin playing out in the next three to five years, either in Teeka: [00:18:03] like Lightning Network, either technology adoption, this transparency movement you're talking about, JohnPaul: [00:18:09] can you talk a little bit more about your views in the future? Yeah, I think over the next five Teeka: [00:18:13] years, and I've written about this and I've stated it publicly, I think over the next within five years, you will see significant adoption on Bitcoin. If you look at what's going on with NIDIG, NIDIG is cutting deals with Pfizer, which is one of the biggest financial services company in the United States. They're cutting deals with community banks at scale, where they're going to [00:18:38] be offering the plumbing for these banks to offer Bitcoin services to their customers. We're talking about taking Bitcoin to mom and pop America. So if you think about this from the early days of the telephone, so AT&T, in the very beginning, it was incredibly expensive, very slow, and it was only in very wealthy cities. If you lived anywhere else, you probably thought Teeka: [00:19:01] to yourself, why do I need a telephone? If I need to talk to somebody, I'm just going to go over to my neighbor's house and talk to them. And people thought that way about electricity, too. They had to hire salespeople in order to convince people to put electricity in their house. So in the beginning, these things are quite difficult. But when you make it easy for everybody, which is what NIDIG is [00:19:20] doing, you cross this point where people go from, why would I want to do that to why would I not want to do that? I've seen the same thing occur in my lifetime with cell phones, whereas people were thinking, why do I need a cell phone in the early 90s? By the late 90s, everybody had a cell phone. Then in the early 00s, why do I need a smartphone? And then by 2012, everybody had a Teeka: [00:19:40] smartphone. So I think we'll see the same adoption type curve here in Bitcoin. And of course, it's going to cost the price of Bitcoin to go considerably higher. And so do you think Bitcoin, for being in the space for so long, you see that it doesn't scale linearly? That's how most people look at it as a stock. Oh, it's up 10%, 20%. That's really high, [00:19:58] but you Bitcoin scales logarithmically because of the mining, having a van and the 21 million [00:20:03] aspect of it. Orm provides a bridge to the digital currency mining world for individual investors, Teeka: [00:20:09] financial institutions, and energy companies. By combining over 70 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 OrmCapitalCenchers.com. So you're quoted in February in CS, this Seattle Weekly published an article saying that, [00:20:33] by the end of 2021, Bitcoin could hit $650,000 per Bitcoin. 2021? No, I didn't say that. Okay. Let's clarify it on the record then. What was that statement? And do you still believe Bitcoin can grow to that type of level in the next couple of years? Yeah, I think within five years, Bitcoin could be a half a million dollars of Bitcoin. Okay. Yes. And when you, Teeka: [00:20:53] when someone hears that today, it's like a Bitcoin's $35,000. How is that possible? What is it just the integration of the mom and pop's here mentioning? Is it just time playing out? It's an adoption story. What it is, is as the asset gets more adopted, as people understand how to value the asset, and the way that people have approached this asset [00:21:15] from a valuation standpoint has changed a lot, just over the last five, six years since I've been involved. When I first discovered Bitcoin and recommended it, it was $428. When I first recommended it, it was $428. And what I said to people then, people told me, well, it's really difficult to buy and I want to wait till it's easy to buy. Teeka: [00:21:33] I said, if you wait till it's easy to buy, it's going to cost $40,000 Bitcoin. The fact that it's difficult to buy and not many people loan it, you're going to get a great price. And so I will say that is still true today. Not many people loan it. I think maybe 20% of Americans own it globally. It's a tiny percentage. Maybe 150 million people in the world own some Bitcoin. [00:21:56] There are 7 billion people on the planet, 4 billion smartphones, 5 billion phones in general. To me, this looks like buying Apple computer in 2003. At the very beginning of its adoption cycle. So I think as it gets more adopted, the price will have to go higher. I want to change directions and talk about building on top of Bitcoin or building on top of JohnPaul: [00:22:19] blockchain technology. So DeFi Technologies is a company that you're part of. Can you talk to me Teeka: [00:22:25] more about what your goal is, what the mission is, and how you guys are working today and then in the future and how you're looking to bring this next wave of financial innovation? Well, DeFi.tech is a publicly traded company. It's the first company I've decided to work with. And what I love about what they're doing is that they are making it easier for the everyday person [00:22:47] to get direct exposure to these DeFi protocols. And let me be very clear. I think decentralized finance is after Bitcoin, the killer app. There's just so much money to be made as this trend starts to play out. We're talking about hundreds of trillions of dollars of value long term that will be unlocked. If you think about the way that the traditional financial system is built right Teeka: [00:23:14] now, it's built on technology that's from the 1950s to 1960s and the 1970s. Mainframe, Fortran, Pascal, these ancient languages, the people that know how to program them, they're dying. There's just not many of them left. So what decentralized finance is going to do is disintermediate all of these businesses. So I think the opportunity there is huge. However, here's the problem. [00:23:43] Unless you are technologically savvy, it's difficult to go use my ether wallet and then link with Uniswap and buy this token or buy that token, sell this token, sell that token. So what I love what DeFi.tech is doing is that they are creating securities where people can go out and get direct exposure to DeFi protocols the same way they buy any stock. And they're doing it in this commission Teeka: [00:24:08] free way. And so I think if you pull back the camera and if you look at traditional companies, how value will aggregate around traditional companies that are involved in crypto, I think you've got to look at those companies that are making it easier for the rest of the world to get involved in crypto. So look at Coinbase, a $50 billion market cap. Huge. It's insane. [00:24:29] And what have they done? They've just made it easy to buy Bitcoin. So I think we'll continue to see this type of value aggregation take place across different companies, which is why I'm involved in DeFi.tech because I believe a lot of value will accrue to them as they start rolling out new products, making it easier for people to get direct exposure to different protocols without Teeka: [00:24:52] having to mess around with my ether wallet. That is the future is bringing down the breaking down that barrier to entry. And so I'm glad to hear that you're passionate about it. That people are working on this when you mentioned they're like providing direct exposure. They're going to hold the tokens like when you buy Uniswap share or something, they're going to buy Uniswap tokens. [00:25:09] These are exchange traded products, ETPs. So very similar to way that other exchange change products work. So they have one for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polkadot, Cardano. And so you're essentially got this one to one relationship. You don't have that slippage and you don't have any fees. So it's a very unique product in the marketplace. That makes more sense. That's what we need to get Teeka: [00:25:33] to the institutional and the retail investors to be able to, I think, to access DeFi because it is complicated. If people think Bitcoin is complicated, DeFi, that's a whole other level. And it's JohnPaul: [00:25:45] thankfully getting to a much better spot. So I'm excited to see how you guys can continue to grow. Teeka: [00:25:51] And you guys are usually publicly traded so people can get exposure. Yeah, D-E-F-T-F. And let me be clear. I own shares in the company. I work with the company. Let me be very clear. Anything I say about the company is biased. I love the company, but I'm biased. So you should do your own homework. Trust but verify, guys. And keep on looking into it. And if you haven't [00:26:14] checked out DeFi on the podcast, you definitely need to check out Uniswap and some of these other big platforms. Do you have any DeFi protocols or tokens that you like to point people in that are really disrupting the space or doing unique things? I think what Uniswap is doing is incredible. We first started getting involved in Uniswap. When I say we, I mean my readers, just to be clear, Teeka: [00:26:36] JP, I'm not allowed to invest in anything that I recommend. So yeah, I can only buy Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so anything else, whether it's a stock or whether it's a coin, I'm not allowed to own. And it's to prevent conflicts of interest. And in our business, we only have one source of income. And that is the price that we charge for our newsletters. So we don't sell any advertising. [00:27:00] We don't do listswaps. We don't, and nothing like that. So the only avenue we have is right and great, great research and charging for it. And I love that because if we don't write great research, we don't make money. And how often is that research like published, JohnPaul: [00:27:16] in cadence, what type of conversations are covered? Can you talk about that? Teeka: [00:27:20] I have two cryptocurrency related newsletters. One is called the crypto income, which is predominantly defi oriented income oriented coins, and then Palm Beach confidential. And we put out an issue each month, and generally we'll have at least one idea a month in each of those issues. But to get to Uniswap, I think that Uniswap has just gotten beat up really badly with this pullback. [00:27:43] I mean, think about this. It took 10 years, a half a billion dollars and 1200 employees to build Coinbase. Uniswap was doing the same daily volume as Coinbase within six weeks of launching, but they did it with 11 employees, and I think less than $10 million in the adventure capital. That's the power of DeFi. You cannot compete against that edge. It's the reason Teeka: [00:28:09] why Blockbuster went out of business when Netflix came in. Blockbuster had 1000 stores, and Netflix had zero stores was delivering all their content online. It means that their cost to push a product out was virtually zero, whereas your cost is billions of dollars, just to hold the 1000 locations. When you look at a fight like that, it doesn't matter how much [00:28:35] money Blockbuster had or how much capital they had access to, there was no way they could defeat Netflix. It was impossible just because of the cost structure. If you look at centralized exchanges versus decentralized exchanges, once Ethereum goes to Proof of Stake and those gas fees, go down. These guys all go out of business. I mean, maybe not completely, but they lose 90% Teeka: [00:29:01] of their revenue. That's why I can't buy Coinbase. Yeah, because it's like you said, DeFi is the edge. It makes everything 10 times easier, and those numbers are staggering that Uniswalls putting out. That's one of the most powerful thing about these spaces. It's the permission list. They're growing so fast, and it's allowing anyone to move capital across the [00:29:19] world without any permissions, without any, they need to get your approval. Hey, I need to get this bank's approval. I need to get this intermediary. None of that. It's a frictionless, instantaneous. That's why I'm also very bullish on DeFi. I'm trying to figure out how do you integrate cryptocurrency mining into DeFi? If I had to ask you that question, what comes to mind? Teeka: [00:29:35] Like a physical assets, even like lumber or commodities in the real world, real estate, how do you start integrating that into DeFi technology and providing people exposure to those asset classes through DeFi? I think that I'm going to peek into my crystal bowl here for a second. But I think that question will be answered probably five years from now, because you're going to need [00:30:00] a regulatory framework. Let's think about what you would need for that. You would need a standard where you could take an asset like lumber. Right now, lumber is standardized through future contracts. You would need somebody to approve a standardization where you could create a digital token and then move that onto an exchange that you could actually start trading. Well, that's not Teeka: [00:30:23] going to happen without the traditional financial world getting involved. Then another area that I've thought a lot about is bringing decentralized finance and funding into real estate deals. But again, you need to have at least some element of standards or some players come together and say, okay, we're adopting this standard for different cash flows. And I just think we're not there yet. [00:30:48] That's going to happen in the future. But then it'll be exciting when it happens, but we're not there yet. I definitely agree with you. It's hard to have the standards of cryptocurrency mining is not every machine is critically. One machine might have been running in a dust environment. One machine might have been running in a moist environment. Now, this one has not mowed on up a Teeka: [00:31:06] rust on it. This one isn't working anymore. And so if we're dealing with physical equipment into the blockchain world is a lot, you'd almost have to like, it's like every asset has to be unique, like an NFT. But at the same time, there's a ton of risk to that. And every asset has to be in a bucket now where you diversify that risk across the board of investors. What's a problem that you [00:31:24] face every day that nobody has solved yet or people aren't really thinking about? But you're thinking about it. You just noticed in your day to day life. So a problem as it relates to what? As it relates to your work, your personal life, it could be just anything that comes to mind that's like, dang, I wish I had a solution for this. I would say this, my mission in life is to help Teeka: [00:31:45] people move the needle on their net worth without putting their current life at risk. And so this is why I am so fanatical about crypto and why I have been for the last five years, even when we've been down 80, 90%. I've never lost that vision. I would say the biggest impediment to that, and it's something I've been hearing ever since 2016 is how can I buy it right now? It's gone [00:32:08] up too much. People tell me that at Ethereum at nine. People tell me that at Bitcoin at 400, 600, 700, 1000, 2000, 3000, 3000, 4000, 20,000, 15,000. I would say that's my biggest impediment that I'm trying to solve to try to help people understand that it's not too late. There's still enormous upside ahead and compare to any other asset that I follow, stocks, bonds, commodities, Teeka: [00:32:37] private shares, public shares. There's nothing that has the return potential of Bitcoin. Even now, even at 30,000, even at 60,000, it has phenomenal return potential, more so than any other asset that I'm aware of. And so that's the message that I keep banging on about. I love that message. I have the same issue, right? It's like this thing's way too high price. That's [00:33:00] probably why Dogecoin went up so much because people are like, I can get my Dogecoin, get one Dogecoin for a dollar. But at the end of the day, it's like, is it getting people to think about denominating their life in Bitcoin, in Ethereum, in Dogecoin? Or is it more of just them understanding that their dollar is losing value? So then by them not doing anything, they're hurting their Teeka: [00:33:20] net worth. They're not growing their wealth, where Bitcoin is only going to grow in value because it is scarce. What kind of counter arguments do you have to that? What I have said from the very beginning is put 1% of your money into this. And if you really like what I'm doing, put 3 to 5% in. And if you're under 30, put 10% in and leave it alone. If you lose anywhere from 1 to 3% of your net worth, [00:33:44] it's not pleasant, but it's not the end of the world. And if you're under 30 and you lose 10% of your net worth, it's really not a big deal. You got another 20, 30 years to make it back. So what I tell people is, think about if you're wrong. Forget about the little bit of money that you'd put up. But imagine you're wrong and Bitcoin goes to a half a million, a million dollars a Teeka: [00:34:07] Bitcoin. And you had the opportunity to buy it at 30,000, 15,000, 20,000, 1,400. What's that cost to you? What's that regret going to cost you? And the reason why I speak so passionately about that is I went through that regret in the 80s and 90s. I got scared out of my Microsoft in 1991. I got scared out of Oracle in 1991 when it dropped 85%. I thought that Microsoft had gotten as big as [00:34:38] it was ever going to get in 1995. All these errors that people are making now, I made them. And they cost me personally tens of millions of dollars. And my clients that were relying on me probably lost down on a $100 million or more on profits. Because I advise them, oh, we can't buy Microsoft. It's gone up too much. Oh, we can't buy Oracle. It's way too volatile. Let's go buy some Eastman Kodak. Teeka: [00:35:04] I mean, come on. So that left such a deep impression upon me that I swore when that opportunity came again, when I would see another transformational period of time, like we saw in the late 80s and early 90s in tech, I swore that I would go all in on it and that I would do everything in my power to help my clients or my readers now make the most money they could out of that trend. [00:35:31] The biggest regret, I think, of the world will be not buying Bitcoin soon enough. That's where we are because people are saying that exact same reason. It's too high. It's too much. I'm getting scared because I don't understand the technology. I don't understand where we're going as a society, where we're going as an industry and how disruptive it's going to be. Like you said, JohnPaul: [00:35:48] Microsoft back in the day. What advice would you give to your younger self, your 18 year old self, Teeka: [00:35:54] if you have to sit back and into place, is it that advice of it's not going too high, but that's JohnPaul: [00:35:59] almost like a safety mechanism. That can be helpful. So what advice would you give your Teeka: [00:36:03] younger self now that you've been around the block? What I would tell my 18 year old self is believe in your vision of the world and work like the devil is on your back and work like you're going to die next week. And you've got to get this done now. The other thing I would say is when you're young, you have a tendency to fall into despair very easily when things don't work [00:36:26] out. So I want everybody listening here now, if you're young, it's normal that things don't work out. It's normal that you get smacked in the face by life with failure after failure after failure after failure after failure. That's not the world having its way with you. That's the process that you need to go through in order to learn to be better. I have made so many horrible mistakes Teeka: [00:36:51] through my life as a younger man that I deeply regret that I wish I could take back. So the thing is, is that I can't take them back. And so what I have to do is draw the lesson for them and use them to make me a better man today. And so I will say that to anybody listening right now, embrace failure. Okay, failure is your greatest teacher. Don't let it beat you down. And certainly [00:37:12] don't personalize it. Take the lesson and move on. And that's what I tell my youngest self. That is great. Believe in your vision. Your vision has been great to hear on the podcast. I've I mean, enjoyed it tremendously. These are the advocates I wake up and, you know, every day I'm so glad that are supporting Bitcoin out of their goodness of their heart. Like, Teeka: [00:37:30] when I tell people about Bitcoin, I let them know like, I'm not financially going to make any money from this. You're going to buy into Bitcoin. You're going to have a better lifestyle. But it's not me that's profiting. I'm not I don't own the company. I don't have shares and I own my own coins. And I think that's one of the disconnects people expect you to be getting value from [00:37:46] this. But really, you're just providing this information. You're saying, Hey, check me out. I write a good newsletter. At the same time, here's opportunities that you can take. And you don't even you don't need to pay me a dime. And the map right there is a heartless movement that I JohnPaul: [00:37:58] I'm so glad that people like you out there really pushing it. So thanks again for that. Teeka: [00:38:02] And on that note, you know, where can our listeners connect with you online? Yeah. So I can get Palm Beach group.com. And then if they want to find out more about DeFi technologies, they can go to DeFi.tech, D-E-C-T-E-C-H. And of course, the ticker symbol is D-E-F-T-F for DeFi technologies. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on today on the show for [00:38:25] the listeners to just to kind of jump into? Yeah, I haven't hit on yet. I do. I've spent an enormous amount of time pondering Bitcoin. And what I've really come to the conclusion of is that Bitcoin might be the most elegant series of self-reinforcing incentives I have ever seen. When I think about how Bitcoin has grown, how fast it's grown, how do we go from Jamie Diamond, Teeka: [00:38:54] who is the CEO of arguably the most powerful bank in the world, in 2017, saying Bitcoin is a fraud, a fire, anybody that trades it, to now his analysts have a $300,000 price target. And they're offering Bitcoin to their clients. Think about that, JP. Think about that. The most hated asset in the world from a regulatory standpoint has the most powerful banker in the world going back on what he said [00:39:20] and adopting it. That's how powerful the self-reinforcing these incentives are. So now when you have Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and JP Morgan, Mass Mutual, all buying this asset, what happens now? Will they become defenders of the network? Do you see how the beauty of Bitcoin, how it turns enemies into protectors? Because that's the beauty of Bitcoin. The self-reinforcing Teeka: [00:39:51] incentives have brought into the fold Bitcoin's most severe enemies. You want to talk about the most powerful group of people on the planet? They're bankers. Bankers completely trashed the global economy in 2008, and not one of them went to jail. There's not a mob boss on the planet that has that kind of power. That's the craziness of the financial system. But you're right, [00:40:14] Bitcoin sucks you in and it says, here's an opportunity to make a better system. When that can be beneficial to the world, when that's going to help build society. And it shows you that there is no other way. Bitcoin doesn't care how old you are, what race you are, what you believe in. It's there and it will always be there. And that's one thing that I think the media tries Teeka: [00:40:33] to portray that it tries to make Bitcoin choose the side. And in the day, Bitcoin really doesn't JohnPaul: [00:40:39] care. I think that's very, very powerful. This was amazing. I appreciate the time. Like I said, Teeka: [00:40:43] this got me pumped up. I'm taking notes. I'm going to go back and journal some more and do some JohnPaul: [00:40:48] tweets on Twitter. But this was amazing. So thanks again for jumping on. Is anything else you wanted Teeka: [00:40:53] to mention? The only other thing I would say is, look, Bitcoin is going to be volatile for years. On any given day, you can wake up and your holdings are cut in half. Do not make the mistake of confusing short term action with long term erosion of value. Think about things like Amazon that dropped 90%. I think once 80%, once and then 60% multiple times, 40% more times than I can count, [00:41:22] value creation is not linear. I wish it was. I wish it was. It's not. It's a massive move up, a massive move down, a massive move up, a slightly less massive move down. And that's just the way it works. I don't know why it works that way. But to get mad at it is to get mad at the sun rising in the East and setting in the West. It just is what it is. And the sooner you can accept it, Teeka: [00:41:51] the easier your life will be. And just say, that's just Bitcoin being Bitcoin. And then just carry on with the rest of your day. I love it. And my only other thing I would add to that is the farther you put your Bitcoins away from you, so not being able to just access on your phone, immediately sell them, send them away, the longer you'll be able to hold them. So remove them from your device, [00:42:09] put them aside, get them on a paper wall, get them on cold storage, because then it makes it really hard to go selling it to be intentional about that. That's one of the things that I was in as a young kid getting into Bitcoin wasn't very intentional. It was like, oh, buying, selling, trading, but I didn't get to really have that conviction just a whole, those diamond hands, JohnPaul: [00:42:26] which everyone talks about now. But thanks again, Tika, for coming on the podcast. This was an [00:42:30] amazing time. 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 Teeka: [00:42:41] five star review to support our journey to become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much [00:42:45] for listening. And until next time, mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Insurance for Digital Assets | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 4 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/thomas-shewchuck/ All Episodes Episode 4 # Insurance for Digital Assets with Thomas Shewchuck Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Thomas Shewchuck to discuss insurance for digital assets. ### Insurance for Digital Assets Guest: Thomas Shewchuck Episode 4 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Today our guest is Thomas Schuchuck, Thomas Krup watching and learning from his parents as they tirelessly grew Schuchuck Insurance into the successful and client centric business it is today. After earning his degree in business marketing from the University of Daytona, he tested the insurance water as an insurance [00:00:57] broker where he found his professional passion. Now Thomas is combining his love for insurance and crypto to helping miners ensure their hardware and helping high net worth families and individuals strategically protect their digital assets. Thomas, welcome to the show. How are you doing today? Thomas: [00:01:11] I'm excellent JP. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Of course, I'm glad that you can make it on. So Thomas, the question I like to start off with when I'm bringing people on the show is what do you do slash how do you spend most of your time currently and what are you most excited about over the next three months? [00:01:30] Well professionally, I'm an insurance broker and agent at my family's business just north Chicago. I was a broker for five years and the wholesale markets specialize in professional liability. So it's like anything between emerging markets, directors and officers, tech, security and cyber privacy liability as well as bonds and all that kind of stuff. So I'm pretty familiar Thomas: [00:01:50] with kind of the nascent asset classes as well as hard to place risks and kind of brought that to my parents business and my brother and I are transitioning them out and kind of bringing in not sharing in the new era. And right now I'm spending most of my time helping now our successful individuals and families, you know, high net worth clients kind of protect [00:02:11] their personal assets from an asset sense like homes, autos, properties, that kind of stuff and then their valuables as well. And kind of a new emerging exposure has been kind of the crypto assets, right? So we have a few clients that have seven figures of, you know, whatever digital asset mostly Bitcoin obviously, but you know, there's some other items in Thomas: [00:02:29] there as well. And I have been involved in this space crypto specifically kind of as a passive enthusiast for, you know, starting in 2015, then I got kind of financially vested around 2016 and then kind of jumped in with both feet early 2017. And it's kind of interesting to see the my two passions one being insurance, which most people find out and the other one [00:02:52] being crypto and kind of merging right now given where the thing is in terms of maturation in the space as well as different things that are that are culminating at the moment in both in both areas. So I pretty much work one on one with individual high net worth individuals and families and clients. And then a lot of them have their businesses. And so I help them with Thomas: [00:03:10] that as well. And then I'm carving out a niche for myself in a manner of multiple facets in the crypto space, whether it's mining software development, you know, ICO is white paper, that kind of stuff. I talk to a ton of different individuals and businesses every week. And it just seems like the space is growing faster than any market can hold capacity for it. It's really interesting and [00:03:34] really cool to see where everything has gone over the last five years, especially when I look at it, the prison of risk management. So when you're looking at the blockchain space in risk management, are you focused on like the mining side more or is it on the holding of assets and ensuring those JohnPaul: [00:03:51] crypto assets were meant maybe the software and the token contracts? Can you talk a little bit further Thomas: [00:03:56] on that? Yeah, I don't think I'm keenly focused on one area or another. It just so happens that the easier risks to ensure are the real property aspect of things. So if you think about a miner, they have a basic miners or crypto miners essentially in the steel corrugated box somewhere. That's not an intangible object. And it's from a tech perspective and an underlying risk perspective. It's really [00:04:21] just a computer, right? It's running 24 seven. So insurance companies, there aren't many people or players in that space that are willing to write it. But those that are willing to listen, they have an open mind about it typically. And there is a market for that. And so that's probably the of all the risks in digital assets. That's probably the easiest risk to place the real property of ensuring the Thomas: [00:04:41] machines, the miners themselves, and the facilities that house them. So that's probably been my area of most success only because it's the path of least resistance. And then really what I've been seen in the market right now is there's a ton of companies looking for directors and officers insurance for one reason or another. Most of them have to do with cap raises. They're looking to raise capital and [00:05:05] any new investors that are coming on, they want to make sure that there's a decent amount of mitigation of risk when you think of the decisions directors and officers are going to be making it in a nascent market and asset class, where when things are evolving, that are at a speed of light essentially, there's a lot of missteps and misused people can make. It's kind of the wild west of Thomas: [00:05:26] finance. So a lot of companies are searching for directors and officers protection for their board. But it's really just it's not something that's readily available. The other component that I see a lot of or I get to request a lot of is clients on an individual basis that have six or seven figures of worth it in terms of dollar amounts of digital assets. And they want to make sure that [00:05:47] those assets are protected from theft or loss private keys and all that kind of stuff. And unfortunately, there's really not a commercially viable product in the market right now. There's a couple things that are on the horizon that are going to launch in the next few months that are going to be direct to consumer solutions. But unless you have tens of millions of assets essentially, Thomas: [00:06:09] there are bespoke products out there available that will be A pretty expensive and B really difficult to place. You have to find the right underwriting facility typically at Lloyd's of London or facilities out of Bermuda. But it's just not a viable risk management tool given the cost if you don't have enough assets to justify it. So I would say the area where I would say clients most [00:06:33] want to protect, which is theft and loss of privacy keys of their digital assets, it's just it's not there. And that's probably some low hanging fruit that some companies are going to be able to do and come in. And once they figure out a solution, I'm sure they'll sell a lot of that product. But yeah, it's mostly kind of what I see as the directors and officers, the real property Thomas: [00:06:55] from a mining perspective and then the theft component of digital assets. You know, beyond that, there's a few people that are looking for technology, or as an emissions or network security and privacy liability, specifically from a theft perspective. And that's really what you see people that are custodians of these assets for their clients, whether institutional grade or accredited investor [00:07:15] grade products, as well as wallet developers. Now, those guys usually typically don't custody those wallets, they just provide the back end services and software. But there's always an error omission that can occur on the back end when you're transferring funds or assets in and out of wallets from an exchange or something like that. So there's a concern there, albeit small. But again, Thomas: [00:07:37] that's really a difficult place to find anybody to write that business. Because there's basically a technology knowledge barrier. And also there's just a there's a capacity issue in terms of companies aren't looking to jump into the digital asset space with two feet at this point. But hopefully that's going to change in the next 12 months. So Thomas, talking about the ones that have jumped [00:08:00] into this space with two feet, the insurance companies, and going back to the actual physical miners. One of the questions I have for you today is how do how are insurance companies going about valuing the miners when you have these claims? Because the price of that unit does fluctuate based on the US dollar per terra hash, which is how much money you're going to make on one terra hash Thomas: [00:08:21] on a daily basis. So what do you see or what type of models or how are these companies approaching valuing the inventory as it rises and falls with Bitcoin's price? Yeah, that's a great question. I was just talking about this with someone yesterday. And the real the truthful answer here is, no one really knows how they're valuing these things. I mean, [00:08:40] if you look at an insurance contract, just the verbiage, if you have a few miners out there, I mean, the vast majority of these contracts, if not all, and I haven't seen one that doesn't do this, but they're ensuring these mining rigs specifically on an actual cash value basis. That's just basically market value. Now, the problem with that is, as you said, these machines fluctuate Thomas: [00:09:00] with the market and the price of digital assets, roughly Bitcoin, right? It's very heavily correlated. So if you've got, let's say, 100 machines in, I don't know, I-O or something, and there's a tornado that comes through and wipes them all out. Number one, how are you going to be valued or how those machines value on a lost settlement basis when you have actual cash value? [00:09:21] Well, if the price of Bitcoin's at 40k, it's pretty easy to see that, oh, well, maybe the price of these machines is rather inflated. Now, actual cash value from a lost settlement perspective also factors in depreciation. So the other problem here in this equation is while the market value or the actual cash value based on market conditions could be inflated, there's really no rubric or Thomas: [00:09:43] blueprint for these insurance companies to depreciate these machines. Manufacturers like Bitmain may say, oh, well, average life expectancy is three years. And if you've got these machines for two years, they could say, all right, well, one S17 plus when Bitcoin's trading at 40k might cost you, I don't know, I'll just throw out a number 5k to replace on the secondary market. [00:10:04] And the insurance company might say, well, it's two years old. So really, we're going to depreciate that by 66%. So really, what are you getting? You're getting 33% of the 5,000. I can't do the math and I have that quickly. But you can see, obviously, that the lost settlement isn't as advantageous. Now, that may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on whether or not you've got a line on Thomas: [00:10:24] how to replace these items at a lower cost than what the market is yielding, or maybe you just you take all that cash settlement and then you rolled over to Bitmain and say, hey, I've got an economy of scale here. I'm going to buy 100 machines. What can you do on the price? There's different things you can do. But the reality is that I've never seen a loss in this space and [00:10:43] these products are so new that I'm not aware of any loss in regards to Bitcoin miners themselves. So when the first one inevitably does occur, the first loss that is, it'll be really interesting to see how insurers are able to settle these losses and value these machines. I'm not exactly sure how they're going to do it, but I'm certainly going to help advocate for my clients when they Thomas: [00:11:06] do because I think there's a lot of variables and factors and insurers have not anticipated or considered. And it's just going to be a learning curve for everybody. But that always happens in any new product class or any new market. And that's why there's not as many players in the space because there's so many variables that the people that are willing to play, they're willing to take [00:11:24] the risk to say, well, this seems like an asymmetrical risk and we'll probably get a decent return on this stuff and our loss ratio will be fairly low. And we'll take a gambit, right? And we may charge a little more and we'll make it worth our while in case our estimates conservatively are off. And then the vast majority of the market just says, yeah, we know nothing about this. We're not Thomas: [00:11:44] willing to learn at this point. And we really don't want to take a bath on something that may or may not pan out. So for that reason, we're done and we'll let the first movers kind of walk through the door and get bloodied first and then we'll step over their corpse and figure out exactly what to do and pick up the pieces. And so that's generally what happens in pretty much any new marketplace [00:12:00] when it comes to insurance. But yeah, it's a great question. And again, the truth of the answer is, I'm not exactly sure. I know how the contracts react. And I know how they're litigated and and I know others settled in other property loss situations. But in this particular one, we can only extrapolate what we know and apply to the scenario. And it'll certainly be interesting Thomas: [00:12:23] to see when and if that does occur. No, I definitely agree with you on that. And I think that it is interesting just to understand not only insurance, but when it comes to lawsuits, how that's going to work and in doing machines, there is plenty of people that we know in the space and even ourselves as a company that are suing because of never delivered hardware or hardware that was too hard [00:12:44] to get up. So that's one of the things that I think this space really needs was the insurance JohnPaul: [00:12:49] component. And I appreciate you guys jumping into this space to go to offer this Thomas. Thomas: [00:12:54] And you mentioned a little bit of products, products that you're excited about in this space. And I wanted to touch a little bit farther on that to understand why, what products are you excited about maybe in the insurance world that you want to talk about that are kind of merging the crypto, blockchain being able to authenticate transactions or being able to authenticate things immediately [00:13:14] versus the normal insurance base, how those two are merging in either the mining space or in the traditional custody of crypto. Yeah, I think by end of quarter one 2021, there should be some really viable products from one player in particular that's basically trying to get set up as their own insurance company. Their name is Evertas, they're seeking to be the only insurance company Thomas: [00:13:38] out of that's solely focused on blockchain and digital assets and the players in that space and the businesses that are cultivating solutions and commercially viable options in that space as well. So when you think about just broader opportunities for low hanging fruit like miners, because again, property exposures are really easy for insurers to wrap their head around. Evertas doesn't have [00:13:58] those hurdles, they don't need to wrap their head around them. They're founded by a couple guys that are very bright and they've come up with some proprietary solutions to evaluate risks, whether you're a wallet developer and you're developing your own blockchain and you're looking to issue tokens on it, whether you're a private company and you've got some sort of blockchain Thomas: [00:14:19] solution, you want to go through a saft to raise money, all those kinds of things that they have tons and tons and tons of data as well as their own little funnel to drill down the pain points of each risk and identify the real exposures that would cause an issue. And they're really the only people in the space right now that have done it and the details of that I'm not allowed to disclose [00:14:46] due to an NDA, but I will say that in the next hopefully six to eight months, there'll be much broader product offerings specifically from Evertas and maybe some other players that want to compete with them for the market as a whole. I mean, the biggest pain points I have is really finding anybody to write public risks that are public companies in crypto or getting anybody to really Thomas: [00:15:08] listen to the value proposition and the asymmetrical risk as I see it with a lot of players in these spaces. And so one product I'm really excited about is probably it's not through Evertas is through another company. The name is escaping me at the moment, but they're going to be launching in about six months. And they're going to offer a individual investor product where if you have [00:15:32] coins on a certain exchange and they've, I believe they're contracted with three, it's Gemini, I think, Kraken and Coinbase. And if you have, let's say, funds or digital assets on the exchange that you're trading back and forth or just holding there because you don't have your own private wallet, you'll be able to purchase insurance on those assets while on the exchange. And the reason it's Thomas: [00:15:53] particular to the exchange is because they're able to track in real time because they plug in, I believe with an API to the exchange and figure out exactly who has what and which wallet addresses and how many assets you have and they'll be able to track also against fraud. So like people who have nefarious intent, they won't be able to transfer the funds off of their platform on the exchange [00:16:16] to a private wallet that the exchange is unaware of or the insurance policy is unaware of and then claim that, oh, this was stolen, so I need to be compensated for that. So that should be pretty great in kind of game changing. I think from a retail investor standpoint, I think probably provides more legitimacy, especially when you think of all the negative press that crypto receives, Thomas: [00:16:36] based on exchange thefts and different terrible use cases that most people assign to crypto. I think the big one that's really yet to fall is anybody that's got a private wallet that needs to ensure their assets. And I have clients that have millions upon millions of digital assets, just in a private, you know, cold storage wallet and a save or something. And they're just unable [00:17:00] to ensure those things. And even a standard property policy where you can specifically schedule gold coins, silver, you know, collectibles, all that kind of stuff, they're, you know, admitted carriers and standard markets are just unwilling to ensure those items because they're so fungible and they can be stolen so easily by their own perception. But yeah, those are kind Thomas: [00:17:20] of the ones that I'm pretty excited about over the next year or so. No, those all seem like great offerings that you mentioned, the space really needs a private holding your private keys and ensuring that is interesting. You know, it's an interesting concept because like you mentioned, so fungible Bitcoin, you don't know necessarily who the next address was. You don't know if someone's [00:17:41] trying to be an nefarious actor, you know, and then have a claim on their on their coins that they was really them, you know, they sent it to someone else. It's very, very difficult for an insurance perspective, especially with this persuadio anonymous style of Bitcoin, not having every address tied to a ID. So I understand their, I guess their concerns there. I'm glad to see that JohnPaul: [00:18:02] there's a least improvements in the space. One of my other questions for you was how do you see Thomas: [00:18:06] software and insurance working together, especially the concept of blockchains being able to verify data immediately? If that's physical insurance for the miners, you know, being able to run these miners that are supposed to be running 24 seven and then connecting to a potential insurance database or database where they can the insurer knows that this machine is running and that, [00:18:27] you know, they're ensuring it and it's actively doing the job that, you know, the client is looking to have it do. And then when it falls off, they're able to get alerted. Have you thought any farther on maybe how software can help make this gap easier for some of these things like risk and claims when the insurance industry specifically for Bitcoin miners? Oh, yeah. I mean, that was one of Thomas: [00:18:48] the first things in terms of a commercial application that I thought of when I started learning about blockchain and in crypto as a whole. I mean, there are, so just to give you an example, roughly 10% and that's on the low end that's conservative. It's more like 12 or 15 depending, roughly 10% of all insurance claims in the property and casualty market are fraudulent. So if you think, [00:19:14] now let's just take a round number of, you know, $10 billion are paid out every year on average for property and casualty claims, whether it's personal home and auto or commercial, a billion of that is fraud. I mean, that's that's ridiculous. And there are certain things you're never going to alleviate like, you know, a mob, this is a terrible example, but you know, like you see in Thomas: [00:19:33] the movies, like a mob owns a restaurant and they've burned the kitchen down and it destroys the property because the restaurant's not viable and they're looking to cash out, right? I don't necessarily think you're ever going to be able to alleviate that, but there's tons of applications from the network screening privacy liability where if you were to build an insurance database on a [00:19:51] blockchain, you were able to verify material risk variables that are germane to the underwriting process and you're able to encrypt them and then verifiably say yes or no to certain aspects of them when underwriting or when processing a claim or when going through the discovery period to analyze whether or not coverage would apply. I mean, they're a plethora of situations where Thomas: [00:20:14] that would be viable and applicable. And that was again, one of the first things I thought of when thinking to blockchain because right now, I mean, you just have, I mean, let's say you got a burst pipe in your home. I mean, typically, the one thing I always sell clients that you'll never get back is your time. I mean, all my clients are going to be very well covered from a financial loss [00:20:36] perspective. But at the same time, you're going to have to donate and set aside some time to kind of make sure that you're processing all this stuff and getting all the proper documentation in place, especially with COVID because companies are so risk-averse insurance companies out of it that they don't want to come out and do it themselves because they're fearful that they're going to give you some sort Thomas: [00:20:54] of illness or ailment, whether it's covered or something else. So we've become more decentralized, but we've also become more disjointed. And that has caused a ton of headaches on behalf of my clients because they're not used to processing all this information and compiling it all and then sending it off to a central location, which is the underwriter. It'd be much easier if you had some [00:21:16] some sort of database where A, you could extrapolate statistics of the likelihood and occurrence of a certain situation if there's a lot of correlation between that situation and the loss situation versus what just happened to the client and then you've easily ascertained, okay, we're in line with 13 of the 14 factors that typically occur in this scenario. And so clearly, we believe coverage will Thomas: [00:21:38] be enforced here. And so that's kind of streamlining the determination phase. And then beyond that, if you can have the client upload certain photos or just kind of streamline the claims process for them, I mean, that would be advantageous as well into some sort of clearing house or database for that. And then beyond that, really, the biggest disjointment, I believe, [00:22:03] is the payment and settlement of the claim because a lot of times the clients are shelling out money to the individual contractors or to different contractors in and out of the house, especially if you've got like kind of a nuanced situation where you require, you know, a different plumber than what your GC is offering. Getting reimbursement for all those things requires a Thomas: [00:22:24] client to basically compile a bunch of invoices and then, you know, upload them to, you know, an email to the adjuster. And it's just that whole process of compiling the data and then getting it to where it needs to go is extremely disjointed and tedious. And it's a complaint I hear, you know, fairly regularly. And so especially when you think of payments, [00:22:47] because that's, I think, the low hanging fruit where this occurs. I mean, I'm sure you don't know this, but many independent agencies, they have what's called premium fund trust accounts. Okay. So what that means is if the agency like mine is collecting money from a client, I basically hold, I take the funds, the premium that the client pays, I hold the net of my commission. Thomas: [00:23:10] Okay. So I keep my commission and then I pass on the additional funds over to the insurance company. But typically what happens is I deposit everything into a fund, a premium fund trust account that I have with each one of my companies for commercial insurance. And then that company goes in and will be able to directly deposit and withdraw funds from my account and then leaving my commission [00:23:33] essentially. So there's tons of regulation around that. And the problem with it is, is that that is a huge pain point for the industry as well, from a theft perspective. Because you get a lot of agents that, you know, maybe they, they found hard times and look into kind of cover their shortfalls and maintain their quality of life. There's, I read articles every single week about Thomas: [00:23:52] someone else getting arrested and, you know, having their license taken away because they were, you know, they were committing fraud from premium fund trust account that they had for a certain company. And so if you could, if you could put that all on the blockchain where it's verifiable and easily maintained as well as easily processing payments, because we have the technology to do, [00:24:12] I mean, the throughput for a lot of these blockchains is, you know, on par with Visa. But yeah, hey, there's, there's a ton of viability and different solutions that can be applied. It's just how to execute that would be kind of the biggest difficulty because every company wants to have their hand and they want control over certain aspects of that. And I think probably Thomas: [00:24:31] the place to start is to apply this to some aggregate claims database where every company ties into it's called Clue. And everybody shares claims data with everybody else. And so that's probably the easiest place to start because it's kind of an aggregate pool of information that everyone can pull at any, any given notice. It's probably the best place to start. [00:24:52] So if anyone out there is listening and is looking to start an insurance product on the blockchain space, Clue is your spot to jump into Thomas. So Thomas, you mentioned, you know, both COVID-19 and I want to talk a little bit farther on that because we've had some conversations previously about before COVID-19 insurance companies were writing policies for Bitcoin Thomas: [00:25:12] miners providing that with insurance on their hardware and even potentially insurance on their loss of income insurance. So now today, insurance companies, you know, do not have, at least in my understanding the time and bandwidth to underwrite any really policy that touches Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining, you know, partly due to the lack of understanding of this industry that you've mentioned [00:25:30] previously. And in addition, these insurance companies are now caught up with millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars of lawsuits regarding the commercial liability policies that were originally denied and now potentially are being overturned due to the government mandated shutdowns with COVID-19. We'll be able to touch a little bit farther on that and you want to hear Thomas: [00:25:47] your opinion on where you see this going and maybe how this is going to slow down the regular insurance industry and how maybe crypto might be able to get a leap ahead or the crypto insurance products might be able to step in and, you know, take some of this grunt work out. Yeah, and I'll touch on a lot of that that you just explained. But I think the biggest issue [00:26:05] really is right now, the property and cash insurance industry and the reinsurers that back a lot of these companies and mitigate their risk, they're looking at the horizon, they're seeing a giant shortfall of funds that they're going to have to pay out due to looming court decisions from class action lawsuits, as you said. And so until we weather that storm and until those companies have paid Thomas: [00:26:27] out and we know exactly and we're able to quantify how much of those liabilities those insurers are going to pay out, I don't anticipate anybody new or even mainstays in insurance as a whole getting involved in crypto as a whole in any capacity. And that's probably the biggest frustrating part is because, you know, I'll just highlight this quickly, the, you know, [00:26:50] every property policy for the most part has what's called a business income and eruption component to the policy. And sometimes you can, you can hear that out of the coverage if you want, but most people have it. So if you're running a restaurant and, you know, the virus comes and the government says, Hey, you know, you got to shut down for two months, every restaurant owner, Thomas: [00:27:09] I'm aware of turn around and file a claim that they're insured for business income and eruption. And those claims were immediately denied because on the basis of the virus. And so there's a viral exclusion on most, if not all commercial property policies in all capacities. So I think the insurance companies that they were probably justified in doing that. However, the class action lawsuits, [00:27:34] and I think rightfully so are alleging that those were bad faith claims and they were wrongfully denied because the virus was not the cat, while it was the catalyst for the shutdowns, it was not the reason the businesses had to shut down. The reason they had to shut down was because of the government mandated shutdowns. So that's kind of a gray area on the, you know, on the property policy. Thomas: [00:27:54] There's some intent and language in there that could probably, you know, you could argue in court that, Oh, yeah, well, you know, the intent of the insurance companies was not to cover that, but it's still a fairly ambiguous situation because this sort of things never occurred before. And so because of that, anytime there's class action lawsuits that arise out of, you know, bad faith [00:28:12] claims due to ambiguous language and situations that are not addressed in a contract, generally speaking courts rule in the favor of the insured with the plaintiff in the situation. And so that's really what all these, these standard insurance companies are looking at and saying, Oh, my gosh, if you're writing, you know, restaurants or anything in the, in the food and beverage industry or Thomas: [00:28:34] service industry, I mean, you that was like bread and butter. I mean, that's simple. That's been around for decades, if not centuries, right? You know how to underwrite that. And you know, the pitfalls and the exposures of those risks. Well, this whole event, COVID-19 comes around, and then the governments are doing what they're doing. And this is an unprecedented situation [00:28:51] from a risky situation for the insurance companies. And so they did everything they could because if they, if they didn't deny those claims, you know, you'd see a lot of bankruptcies, I'm assuming. But at the same time, now you're passing the book out of the client themselves and everybody's just in a bad situation due to, I would say, an overreaction in many cases of governments. Thomas: [00:29:13] And you know, it's really, it's really sad to see, but you know, for us selfishly, we're, you know, it's really hindering innovation for new product offerings in crypto as a whole. And we're just, we're not going to see anything on a large scale until, you know, insurance companies are able to wrap their arms around the current problem. And presently they can't even quantify that because [00:29:37] there's really no giant rulings that have given precedent to what these companies are going to be on the hook for these, for these other companies that were their insurers that had to shut down. And it's a really, it's a really difficult and sad situation. No, I mean, it's definitely, you know, hit all these groups. You know, it's for everyone, Thomas: [00:29:54] the insurance companies, as you mentioned, they'll unfund the liabilities, more importantly, in my opinion, the small business owners and the loss of business. And then, you know, they're putting out the premiums and paying those premiums for years on end to be able to be covered, you know, in their eyes from some sort of shutdown or vaccine or even shut down or virus like this, [00:30:10] like with COVID. And so it's a very interesting phenomenon. As you mentioned, how it's both people are arguing the side of, you know, we wish to be able to be fine in business because the virus was moving on going on. But no, we got shut down by the government. I find that just insane to see how many claims there will be because it was a worldwide shutdown of not Thomas: [00:30:30] only just the United States, but we're talking every single country, I believe, had these, you know, had these shutdowns or 90% of them did 99%. Oh, yeah. So when it comes to ensuring a Bitcoin mine, you know, there's a couple of things I guess I look at and you have the operating risks of the mine and the variance between different facilities, which I believe is decreasing [00:30:50] rapidly as the industry matures. But then you also have the network risk. So the price of Bitcoin, Bitcoin difficulty in the US dollar per terra hash value, which we mentioned, you know, JohnPaul: [00:31:00] goes into ensuring the value of those machines. But can you talk a little bit farther on anyone, Thomas: [00:31:05] any companies or any insurance products that you see for actually ensuring the production of Bitcoin or the income coming from those machines? And because I know that's one of the hardest things right now, I think holding finance and groups coming back into the space is that you can only really lock in your Bitcoin mining profits for 30 to maybe 180 days maximum. And [00:31:26] there's not really any products that give you any type of the ability to make any type of financial instruments, which would allow you to capture maybe a lower yield, but have at least to be secured more appropriately. Like, are there any, is there anyone taking out the basically ensuring the production of Bitcoin in the US dollar saying that, you know, this one Thomas: [00:31:47] machine, we're going to, we're going to assume that it's going to ensure we're going to assume that's going to create this many bitcoins over the lifespan or this much in US dollar over the lifespan of the unit, kind of like those loss of business income policies or similar policies there that would then allow the mining operator to, you know, work with financing partners because [00:32:04] they do have some sort of locked in guaranteed profit, even if it's a lower profit. Right now, no, there's no one that I've seen that's willing to offer it. Now, with that being said, 12 months ago, I placed my first account that was a Bitcoin miner company with a syndicate and facility out of Lloyd's London. And I was able to negotiate a business income component Thomas: [00:32:33] to the property policy. And so my client is the only company that I'm aware of that I've even seen, and I've seen a lot of them that even has business income and eruption coverage on their Bitcoin mine. And while that's really unique, you know, 12 months ago, we didn't have COVID. And I think if things had just continued the way they were without the whole COVID interruption, I probably [00:32:57] would have been able to duplicate that contract, you know, many times. But at the moment, given the state of the market where it is, it's just not viable. And really the biggest hurdle for underwriters when they're looking at that is essentially the underlying volatility of the asset, right? So if you say to me, you know, Tommy, I've got $2 million worth of, you know, S19s, Thomas: [00:33:21] and I need $500,000 of business income and eruption coverage, I say, okay, the biggest hurdle for the insurers to say, all right, well, if something were to occur, let's say that tornado comes through and takes out your mind, you know, depending on where the price is Bitcoin, I mean, we can [00:33:35] reasonably assume looking back retroactively what the production was of your mine on a month to month Thomas: [00:33:41] month basis. I mean, we can reasonably assume on average what you would be producing in terms of Bitcoin every month. And if you're out of business for three months until you get those new machines online and you've replaced them, you know, that's three months of income. Well, you know, if you're mining, let's just call it, I don't know, you know, three Bitcoin a day [00:34:00] on a monthly basis, that's 90 Bitcoin a month. I mean, that's if it's trading at 40k, you could easily blow through $500,000, which you're allotted for the year in just a month, maybe even less, I mean, depending on where the price is. So the inherent risk to the insurance company is they're looking at and saying, Oh my God, we're not going to offer this because their Thomas: [00:34:21] revenues derived from this underlying asset, which is extremely volatile. But you know, there could be a parabolic move at any given moment. And they can allege reasonably so that, Oh, well, yeah, I mean, this month, we mine 90 Bitcoin, but you know, last four months, we've only derived, let's just call it, I don't know, I know it 90 times 15,000 is, but you know, if it goes to 40,000, [00:34:42] you're exponentially more profitable and that just one month. And so you can, you can assign certain market indicators to say, all right, we're not going to pay more than, you know, 25% of whatever your average output was in terms of US dollars over the last, you know, four months or a rolling average of three months. But for the most part, you could easily blow Thomas: [00:35:02] out, you can blow that out because still a 25% swing is pretty big from your insurance company's standpoint. Not to mention you've got other concerns with supply chain disruption due to COVID, especially if you're, you're entitled to replace the machines that you had. So if you've got bit main, I mean, you're basically going to have to ship them from China and, you know, who knows [00:35:21] how long that's going to take. I mean, it's better now than it was six months ago. But still, there's a lot of concerns that insurance companies just aren't unwilling to factor. And so I knew that going in. And so I was able to negotiate different terms that they were compromised on both fronts, but it still allowed my client to cover their financing costs from a private lender Thomas: [00:35:41] in the event that their mind did go down. So that I called that a win, but I haven't seen anybody else duplicate that. And I haven't been able to replicate it because the facility I went to said, yeah, we're, we can't write this again because of COVID and everything going on there. They have a lot of other exposures also that they're trying to grasp. But yeah, it's just, it's not readily [00:35:58] available. But I think if you get the right company in there that understands what, what the underlying risk is and what the inherent exposure is with machines running 24 seven computers, essentially, in a climate controlled steel box that are maintained on a daily basis, to me, again, I think the risk is asymmetrical. I just, I don't know why any insurance company wouldn't want to do Thomas: [00:36:22] this. I get their apprehension for the business income and eruption component. But if you look at just ensuring the property, you just get rid of the BI, just say, when I'm going to maintain it right now. I mean, it's really not difficult to ensure just just computers. It's very simple. It's just battle. I think you mentioned it. It's just computers. And Thomas, there's one quick white [00:36:42] paper that actually ARK Invest put out about Bitcoin. And they said if Bitcoin's network value were to appreciate roughly sevenfold from where it is today at 150 billion back in March, 2020 to $1 trillion during the next five years, we would expect the mining equipment industry to approach a $20 billion valuation. Now, today's Bitcoin network, the miner value of miners is probably less than Thomas: [00:37:04] $5 billion. So Bitcoin were to reach that $1 trillion network. Miners would probably generate roughly $15 billion in annual revenue from block rewards and transaction fees. And so, if let's say, they're given a two-year hardware replacement cycle, depreciation would consume about 50% of their revenue per year, suggesting that miners would be willing to pay at least $7.5 billion for [00:37:27] equipment annually. That's a huge insurance premium considering we're looking at 1% to 1.5% of the asset value to ensure, especially in these miners in particular. JohnPaul: [00:37:38] Can you talk a little bit more about the growth of the space and the opportunity that you see Thomas: [00:37:42] that maybe others are missing out on or missing out on even noticing? Yeah. So, first of all, ARK Invest, is that Kathy Wood? I'm not sure who it is. I just pulled it from their white paper a couple months ago. Yeah. I think it's Kathy Wood. Because I think I read the same thing. She's brilliant, by the way. [00:38:00] I hope I'm not wrong. But yeah, I think it's really difficult to, number one, people's brains and want to say people, I mean, underwriters and people in insurance. I mean, think about the people that actually know what Bitcoin is. I mean, you have, this is a broader problem, but I'll drill it down. So, you have the best performing asset of the last 10 years. I'm sure there's some penny sacks Thomas: [00:38:24] that probably outpace it. But in terms of alternative investments, the best performing asset of alternative investments in the last 10 years is Bitcoin. I'm pretty sure that's barn. I don't think it's as arguable. And if you were to ask your average, any wealth advisor, what is Bitcoin, they have no idea. And I do it pretty regularly because I have a lot of clients that are. And [00:38:43] they just, they don't know. And that blows my mind. Because I'm like, I'm sitting there and I'm like, how, and if diversification is the name of the game, how do you know so little about something that is so monumentally profitable over a 10 year period? And in my opinion, you know, this is me much more profitable than the next 10 to 15 years. And it's really interesting to see Thomas: [00:39:08] how apprehensive people are to learn anything new. And then if you just take that from, you know, that's the situation with wealth advisors and they would be making fees and all types of money in terms of commissions from those investment vehicles. But if you look at the insurance aspect, I mean, these underwriters, they're just, they're not even semivized to learn anything about [00:39:27] it. And they're like, why would I take a risk on this when, you know, it could blow up in my face. And my bonuses and my commissions are directly tied to the loss performance of the book of business that I'm underwriting. I mean, they just, as soon as you say crypto or Bitcoin or anything, you know, they immediately shut down. It's an automatic no. And it's really difficult because Thomas: [00:39:48] I do believe a lot of them are missing the boat. All of them are missing the boat. I mean, quite frankly, there is so much opportunity in the space and it's growing rapidly. I mean, rapidly. I talk to people every single day who have investments of north of seven figures. It's just set up their own mining operations or building out their own facilities and co-locate, [00:40:06] you know, more miners. And it's just, it's amazing to me. I mean, take a, take right blockchain, for instance, I mean, they had, I think, you know, I think they based on the analysis I read, they had roughly $19 million in third quarter of 2020 in terms of miners. And then, you know, over the course of the next six months, by the end of quarter one 2021, they'll have Thomas: [00:40:30] tripled their mining fleet, essentially, full of S-19. So even when you think about investing in certain companies, I mean, their, their efficiencies going to go through the roof and their op-ax isn't, is going to go down on a, on a perterra hash basis because, you know, they're getting more efficient miners. It's just all of it just makes so much sense to me that you could easily ensure [00:40:51] this stuff. It really, it goes to the crux of the problem, which is lack of knowledge and lack of desire. That's really the, the big issue, in my opinion. No, I think you hit it right in the head, the lack of knowledge and lack of desire. And then after that, you know, the lack of current capital to come in and want to ensure this space because of that lack of desire and knowledge. Thomas: [00:41:11] But when it does happen, I do agree with you that, you know, one company can build out a software suite that I think, you know, will integrate into the, the mining operation directly, be able to monitor those machines on a live basis, ensure them, you know, and collect those very, very healthy premiums on, you know, this wide range of hardware that, you know, needs insured and, you know, is [00:41:33] starting to get financed and starting to get leveraged and get loaned against. So there's tons of opportunity in this space. Thomas, well, that was so much on insurance. I want to give you the opportunity to talk about anything else that you think, you know, comes to mind using the blockchain space or in, you know, insurance or anything else that you want to discuss. Thomas: [00:41:53] I actually have a few questions for you. I'm just curious, like, I see, based on the people I talk to and it's new people every single week and I'm always astonished at how people find the space, you know, their genesis, if you will. What are you seeing right now in your line of work in terms of adoption and, you know, market demand? Is this ramping up? If so, is it, do you see it plateauing [00:42:18] soon? I'm assuming it probably heavily correlates to Bitcoin price because that's what I've seen over the last five years anyways. But are the people that are getting involved, are they, are they more cautious or are they more cognizant of the inherent risk because of the last bull run and then, you know, imminent crash that occurred? I mean, what are you seeing and what is the sentiment in the Thomas: [00:42:37] market from your consumers? Yeah, so I would say that we are seeing lots in launch of energy companies because of COVID, because of the oil, oil crashing, because of Bitcoin's recent price rise. Coming into the space, not to necessarily mine Bitcoin, they're not there yet, but they're coming in to say, how do I sell power to miners because they buy a lot of power? But they don't necessarily [00:42:59] understand the full economics of that space. So we see those groups coming in, we see there's a lot of issues regarding the ability or a lot of, I would say issues slash clarity regarding funds and energy funds and their ability to invest in energy consumption products such as Bitcoin mining versus an energy production product such as windmill or solar funds. So we see these companies come Thomas: [00:43:23] in the space, but they don't necessarily have the right mandates to put capital into the Bitcoin mining side. We see that starting to change now that private lenders are coming into the Bitcoin mining space and are willing to lend on the value of those Bitcoin miners, assuming that the facility is run by someone who has experience, assuming that the power rate is going to be advantageous [00:43:44] for the financing partner. And as you mentioned, make those numbers work for everyone. So that's another big component there that these financing partners are starting to ensure that your power rates are lower in the low 20s to $30 per megawatt hour range. And I think that on the mining side, we're going to see as Bitcoin price rises, an increase of energy companies coming in the Thomas: [00:44:04] space deploying their own facilities, potentially buying up some expensive hash rate just to get exposure to the space and really hopefully then starting to invest long term in the industry. You know, my opinion after that Bitcoin having a van about 500 days later, Bitcoin usually hits that all time high. So between the first half, between the having event, [00:44:22] which happened back in May and now where we're building and everyone's growing their hash rate portfolio, trying to get new machines, which are sold out till March till April, like to get these new S19 pros, you have to place an order almost four to five months in advance with the factories to get the chips from the semiconductor facility. So even if Bitcoin price goes up by 50% or 100% Thomas: [00:44:44] like it did in October, you can't necessarily get machines fast enough. So what happens is those machines that are currently running become valued and much higher and people don't want to sell them off. They want to continue running them, keep on running those facilities. And they're not necessarily looking to exit the space this early into the bull run. So that's kind of where I see [00:45:01] the space coming from an institutional perspective and from an energy clients, we see a lot of those individuals coming in. And then we always see interest on the consumer side looking to buy $1,000 worth of machines. And so we're working on products there to help those consumers basically come in by a miner, reduce the friction and reduce the friction it requires to maintain Thomas: [00:45:22] and service that customer on a month to month basis. Interesting. Okay. That makes perfect sense. So the lenders that you're seeing, are they more institutional grade like banks? Are they private lenders that you've noticed? They're almost only private lenders for now at the moment. It's interesting that we actually were able to get financing on the miners first before we [00:45:41] were able to get financing on the mining infrastructure. So I know there are some companies out there that have unlocked the infrastructure financing, but that does allow you to basically leverage your equity raise. So going from, for a site, we're working on a local home line, $8 million equity raise leveraging that with about $30 to $40 million of debt in order to build out the miners. Thomas: [00:46:00] But the thing we can't finance are the most traditional components, which is interesting. The transformers, the switch gear, the power distribution units, the building, stuff like that, most industries will be able to release finance or get a loan to build. We actually are having to raise equity capital because we simply touch Bitcoin and our Bitcoin miners deal directly with that. [00:46:18] And there's always that uncertainty of what happens to Bitcoin and where is it going to be in five years, and also the lack of understanding of the business and how profits are made and how difficulty adjusts and how efficiency of machine matters and stuff like that. Right. Yeah. Where do you, oh, so just so you're aware that individual consumer product I was Thomas: [00:46:37] talking about for ensuring your assets on an exchange, it's called breach. It's at breachensure.com. And the exchanges that partner with our finance, Coinbase and Gemini. So it wasn't cracking out. So correct. But anyways, it's pretty fascinating. So I'd encourage anybody of your listeners that has funds on an exchange, take a look at it. They haven't launched yet, but you can join the waiting [00:46:59] list. I already have, but it's, I think they probably have the best viable products out there. It's almost available. And we'll see when it is available. What do you see, geopolitically, I'm always fascinated with kind of the fact that China holds a massive amount of hash rate on the Bitcoin network. And I would say the US is lack of urgency to put regulation on the books to kind of Thomas: [00:47:22] treat this as more of a, I don't know, I don't think it's more of a national defense issue. But certainly, I think China has outpaced the US when it comes to Bitcoin regulation and adopting the currency itself as well as issuing CVECs and integrating it into their overall economy, albeit small right now. But they're just so much further ahead. And it really makes me upset, [00:47:46] because if you look back to the dot-com bubble, the US has always been at the forefront of new technology. And it just seems that we're lacking in that space. What do you consider the state of affairs with the US where they are presently with lack of regulation and how that may affect the overall economy as I think digital assets become more and more adopted? Thomas: [00:48:09] Yeah, I would say, I mean, there's a lot to digest there in that question. I think to start off on the Bitcoin mining side, we are seeing an increase on the geopolitical scale of the importance of semiconductor factories and semiconductor chips, not only for the protection of the Bitcoin network, which is probably not even in their wheelhouse of thought, but really the protection of 5G [00:48:31] and of server communications and networking chips and all of that stuff where chip technology is super important. We're seeing the fight over TSMC in Taiwan and with China in the US and even China, the United States trying to convince semiconductor for staff factories to come over here and build in the United States because they are billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and plants to Thomas: [00:48:55] build out these facilities. I see that race accelerating dramatically regarding countries that are coming into the mining space. We see Kazakhstan jumping in with 100 million dollar plus investments into the mining space. We see Iran setting regulations on power usage for their miners and really promoting the use of mining and using their cheap oil and cheap energy there. [00:49:17] Because what I'm realizing is that a lot of these grids are either subsidized or have these massive plants where the grids aren't even as powerful enough for the plants or redundant enough for the plants to sell the power to the grid 24.7. They're looking at this like, okay, we have these massive infrastructure projects we put together, but our grid project is just we can't get the energy out Thomas: [00:49:37] to everyone. It's not as effective. Let's just mine Bitcoin or let's just use this currency to store our wealth in another asset class. That's as you mentioned, as asymmetric returns outside the US dollar. I think there's a lot to be said about countries and nation states coming into this space over the next five to seven years and seeing that progress and then all the way to the [00:49:56] blockchain regulation and the security laws surrounding the United States. I believe that, in my opinion, that the regulatory framework here in the US isn't necessary advantageous for the movement of smaller capital or smaller investors coming into the space, getting some of that exposure. The SEC is there to protect the investors and to protect people from taking uneducated risks when it comes Thomas: [00:50:19] to investing and losing their money. But I do think that we've seen over the past basically four years that we had been held back compared to China and some of these other places which have some more fungible and some better contracts, especially regarding mining, the ability to buy and sell hashrate directly and actually speculate on that financial instrument or that underlying [00:50:40] instrument. That is the mining rewards. There's a lot of improvement to be made there. Also, when it comes to the issuance of tokens and protocols, we see a lot of these foreign companies really blocking off US users. Just Binance, I believe this week said no more US users. We're going to start actively blocking you guys with even if you're using VPNs, stuff like that, trying to ensure that Thomas: [00:51:01] they don't have to mess with the regulatory bodies as we're seeing the US has a very strong reach, especially with coming after BitNex, who tried to do a good job of not being anywhere close to the United States, not really touching the US, but failed and now they're under criminal prosecution. It's a lot. There are definitely being targeted. There's groups like that, [00:51:21] which didn't really follow the rules as well as they should have. There's groups like Binance JohnPaul: [00:51:26] that I think are cutting people off. My guests will start to see a separation of products that Thomas: [00:51:31] really US-based products versus international products. I think we already are seeing that today. I would say I probably agree with all that. What's interesting though, because I feel like, I don't feel like I believe that mining really controls the whole tokenomics of Bitcoin. Once you understand that the supply demand, the hashrate, the network activity, difficulty, all that kind [00:51:56] of stuff that goes into the mining aspect, it's so much more than just hooking up your ASIC miner and then the way you go. You really have to treat it like a business. That's been a really interesting inflection point learning curve for me when I talk to all these clients JohnPaul: [00:52:10] that mine. Where do you see mining going in the next year, two, three years before the next having? Thomas: [00:52:18] I just feel like there's this arms race to always find the cheapest power and then the most efficient machines. Are there other things that you or perhaps other mining companies are doing to kind of differentiate yourself among the crowd to become the viable option of choice in the space? Yeah. I would say a lot of it comes down to for us differentiation is reducing the friction [00:52:41] in selling hashrate and actually deploying that hashrate. As you know, there's a lot to be said about waiting for months to get the hashrate delivered, get the machines delivered, getting them insured, kind of providing a turnkey solution to our end clients. We see a huge product opportunity there. Also, I think adding liquidity to not only the insurance piece of the product project, as you Thomas: [00:53:02] mentioned, in bringing in a large partner to help that's educated, that is willing to make some, take some risks on the space and ensure these products is a huge opportunity that we're semi- looking at. I would say the third one that we're looking at is really the mining liquidity. So, minor liquidity and making sure that or ensuring that individuals are able to acquire [00:53:23] miners faster, especially when the market starts to shrink up and that there actually is a price you could pay for that minor, even if it does stay on the shelf and is still running in a for hosting facility, but kind of standardizing some of those contracts and that minor liquidity. We see the sites going to bigger scales, 30, 50, 100 megawatts. We see power prices dropping Thomas: [00:53:42] dramatically down into the teens, depending on where you are. But I think a couple of those things still need to be knocked out. As I mentioned, I expect energy companies to come into the space and start actually deploying mining facilities in the next two years because they see the value of Bitcoin and that it's not just going to go away with Bitcoin eating $15,000. I think it [00:54:00] improved to a lot of, hopefully it proved to a lot of people. And I think we've kind of heard this sediment is that Bitcoin isn't dead. You might have been, might have died and back in March with COVID when it hit $3,000, but it's still thriving and it's now not necessarily following the equity market directly. And it has its own kind of path it's taken after the having event. Thomas: [00:54:18] So I'm super bullish on the space for obvious reasons and have been since 2012, 2013, JohnPaul: [00:54:23] but I'm excited to kind of see what this, what we can do with real capital. Because that's been Thomas: [00:54:28] one of the biggest struggles, I think, with everyone building the mining space particularly, is the lack of access to capital to build out these large infrastructure projects, which it's a lot different to say put $50 million into an infrastructure project. That goes really far if you want to invest that into, let's say, blockchain projects that are working on software. [00:54:45] Interesting. Have you, have you looked into any immersion technology? Because that seems to be the new, the new fad that I keep hearing about from different people that I speak to in the space. And that seems to be the new kind of frontier that people are trying to champion. Yes. We have looked at immersion a lot. And I think a lot of people are looking at it, Thomas: [00:55:02] like you said, really what my opinion is with, with immersion is that, you know, as people were working on it the past two years, three years, we saw that it was all about how much power you could put into the mining machines themselves. So now the power supplies in the new S19 pros are close to 3,300 watts. And we realized that as a mining community, I think the manufacturers [00:55:22] realized that as long as the power supplies were super beefy and able to send power to the chips, it's really about how much power can I get into the chip and then exhaust from that chip. And that's going to allow me to get the highest hash rate possible. We found that with, even with air cooling, you're able to maintain a very high hash rate. And with consistent airflow over the Thomas: [00:55:40] machine, you're able to maintain that high hash rate. So when it comes to immersion cooling, the thought processes, okay, I can remove more heat from these machines because it's going through the liquid. It does add another level of complexity, but then you don't have the issues where maybe you have a hundred and a day degree day, and you're running with an air cool facility where you're [00:55:59] going to have some performance drops if your machine, if your facility isn't built correctly. I think it'll be an interesting run up. I haven't seen anyone make the numbers work yet to really say, okay, this really makes sense to do. If financing is given on the on the immersion technology, because it does increase the lifespan of the units and the uptime of them, then I think it would be Thomas: [00:56:20] a home run out of the park. I think the first kind of group people to start unlocking financing of any type of minor infrastructure and a modular sense are going to have a huge leap in front of the competition and big step forward. Interesting. So from a modular sense, are you like exploring different solutions in that front? Because the other thing I always see is that these digital [00:56:43] shovels that come prefabbed, and you know, they're able to put a bunch of different minor machines in them, but it's more of like a plug and play on a larger scale because if you've already got them retrofitted with all the machines and it's all climate controlled and ready to go, as long as you just drop it on a pad on your facility and then you hook it up with the power and the internet, Thomas: [00:57:04] away it goes. Are there any viable solutions out there for people that want to buy like, you know, in mass scale a certain amount of minors where it makes more sense to just buy a container full of them that's already retrofitted with all the climate controls that they would need? I don't think there's a product right now that is as turnkey as you're mentioning, [00:57:21] because there are a lot of different components when you're connecting a power such size of two megawatts, you know, about 4,000 homes worth of power into one area. So there's a lot to be said about making sure you have the right transformers and switch gear connection to make sure that work. But then I do think will happen as the industry progresses Thomas: [00:57:40] Thomas over the next say five to 10 years. I think the price tag right now of a minor is $3,000 per machine and we're seeing that, you know, everyone follows the standard shoebox model. But my opinion is that as more capital gets invested in this space, we might end up moving to some bigger computers. Interesting to say the least, like, you know, how IBM used to build [00:57:59] computers that were full size rooms. We might end up building full size containerized solutions that are full of ASIC chips that are instead of a bunch of machines that are individuals. They might end up being larger boards that are either in immersion or that are, you know, air cooled through a container design where you actually have a massive DC power supplier, Thomas: [00:58:21] a massive power supply that powers, you know, equivalent of 50 miners or 100 miners at once. And those those boards are instead of being small boards, they're built out, you know, like massive boards that would be produced in almost like a Tesla factory of some sort. So I think there's a lot to be said about as the capital comes in the space to develop infrastructure [00:58:42] and to improve the process of us actually going larger compared to the smaller units that we have today of the S19's, you know, individual size units. And that would be in that case, you would buy a full 40-foot shish given shipping container, which might be, you know, one exohash of hashrate by the time a product like that is out. Okay. All right, cool. Well, you clearly know Thomas: [00:59:02] your industry. That's for certain. That's, uh, that's pretty much all I got unless you get JohnPaul: [00:59:08] something else for me. No, I appreciate the time Thomas. This was an amazing opportunity to learn more about the insurance side of the business and just to talk mining. And I appreciate your Thomas: [00:59:17] questions there at the end. Hopefully they provide some guidance and feedback to the listener. So Thomas, where's the best place for people to connect with you after the show? Probably email. It's just Tom, T O M at my last name, shoe truck, S H E W C H U C K dot com shoe truck like the shoe on your foot and you chuck it. But I'm always on my email. And then my Twitter handle, which I don't [00:59:41] really use that much, but I do, I do kind of troll and through their news. I'm not a troll on online. I just, I troll through news. I'm a passive Twitter user. I'm at a cryptic risk. That's my handle. Yeah, that's pretty much where most people can find me. If you can't, then I don't want to JohnPaul: [00:59:59] be in touch with you. Well, thanks again, Thomas for coming on the show at cryptic risk on Twitter [01:00:08] and appreciate everyone listening into this episode of digital gold podcast. And remember, 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. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Forecasting Global Markets with AI | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 1 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/tony-nash/ All Episodes Episode 1 # Forecasting Global Markets with AI with Tony Nash Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Tony Nash to discuss forecasting global markets with ai. ### Forecasting Global Markets with AI Guest: Tony Nash Episode 1 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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 for investment decisions. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] Tony Nash is the CEO and founder of Complete Intelligence. Using advanced AI, Complete Intelligence provides highly accurate market, costs, and revenue forecasts fueled by billions of enterprise and public data points. Previously, Tony built and led the global research business for the economist in the Asia consulting business for IHS. He's also an associate entrepreneur, [00:00:59] media entrepreneur, writer, and consultant. I'd like to welcome Tony Nash to the show. Tony: [00:01:04] Great. Thanks JP. JohnPaul: [00:01:05] Tony, as I mentioned, you're the founder of Complete Intelligence. Can you tell me a Tony: [00:01:09] little bit more about what Complete Intelligence does and how you work with your clients? Sure, yeah. As you mentioned in the intro, I led global research for British firm called The Economist. I led Asia Consulting for an American firm called IHS Market. In that time, over about a decade, I had a bunch of clients come to be saying, we have two problems. [00:01:33] First, forecasts are terrible. That was a comment both on the work of the firms that I worked with as well as just the market generally. They said forecasts are terrible. There's no accountability of the forecasters and nobody tracks their historical data. We have to try to dig it out ourselves. Tony: [00:01:53] Forecast accuracy is a huge issue. The second issue is the appropriateness of a forecast. If you make a chemical or a mobile phone or cake mix, there are specific items within that product that you need to know the cost of, but you may not be able to do that internally. Most companies have, major companies have hundreds of Excel workbooks floating around with their [00:02:20] forecast for sales or for costs or whatever. It's just really confusing. What ends up happening is people manually estimate costs and revenues. What we wanted to do was automate that entire process, company-wide. We wanted to take out the human bias that comes with forecasting industry and internal forecasts and all that stuff. We really wanted to build Tony: [00:02:46] products that allowed the machines to learn how markets move, so that's currencies, commodities, equities, and so on, as well as how company revenue and spend changes over time. When doing some of my initial research on complete intelligence, basically just to paraphrase, you guys are taking the spot of what an analyst would do. Is that correct? [00:03:10] Yeah, but here's what we don't do. We don't put together a report on what's going to happen in industry X or with commodity Y, because what we find is when that stuff is put together, so when an analyst puts a report together on some aspect of an industry, it's really loaded with a house view on something or a personal bias. We do have a weekly newsletter and we do Tony: [00:03:40] video podcasts, that sort of thing, but we don't have industry notes because we don't want our clients to feel like we have bias towards the oil and gas sector or toward industrial metals or that were for or against gold or for or against crypto or something. There's so much of that loaded into forecasting today, and it has been that way for decades, that we just want to let the data [00:04:07] and the sophistication of the data. We're doing billions and billions of calculations every time we run our process. Humans do this, but they're not aware of it. Humans also aren't aware of the amount of bias that they put into their calculation. What we do is we track this and we track it based on error rates and we allow the machines to correct based upon how they've made error over Tony: [00:04:36] time. It's just like an infant learns. You touch a hot stove and you learn not to do that again. It's very similar the way we reinforce the behaviors that we want within our platform. I guess my question to you is when it comes to these machines, they're learning in the background. You don't have a team of a thousand analysts and said you have a team of a thousand [00:04:56] neural networks or machines basically working for you, running these calculations 24 seven on all these different commodities. Are they just making assumptions and then confirming if those assumptions JohnPaul: [00:05:06] are right and then the models that do better end up getting weighted more? How does that work? Tony: [00:05:12] I guess. How do those questions and answers work in those data testing points? Is A.B. testing that you mentioned? It's a good question. We're running tens of thousands of scenarios for everything we forecast, every time we forecast. Then we're looking at which ones best reflect the market as it stands right now. Then we add in the different approaches on a weighted basis to make [00:05:36] sure that they reflect where the market is. It's a multi-layer analysis. It's not just a basic regression correlations driver, that sort of thing. We're also looking at the methodologies themselves. Some of these are very fundamental traditional statistical methodologies. Some of them are more technically driven state decision trees, those sorts of things, types of machine learning Tony: [00:06:00] models. We're looking at how on a proportional basis those different methodologies best understand the market at this point in time. That's a long way of saying yes to your question. I think that was a great answer. You guys are looking at currencies, equities, and in July, JohnPaul: [00:06:20] you discussed gold and silver being nature's Bitcoin. Can you explain to our listeners what Tony: [00:06:25] you mean by that and provide your thoughts on Bitcoin as a store of value and where you see that blockchain space going? I think one of the key aspects of cryptocurrencies is that there should be a fixed amount of it. If it really is immutable, then there's only so much of it. If there really is demand for something that's limited, then the value should rise or fall based [00:06:51] upon the availability of that fixed good. Gold is similar in that I can't necessarily go out and buy a car with gold. I'm sure I could. I can't buy a loaf of bread with gold. I think cryptocurrencies is becoming a bit more spendable than precious metals, a bit more useful depending on which cryptocurrency you're looking at. But yeah, it is similar in that cryptocurrencies to date Tony: [00:07:18] have been more of an asset than a currency. They've behaved more like an asset than a currency, meaning the value goes up and down pretty dramatically based upon the perception of scarcity. Currencies don't necessarily act that way. Currencies act as units of value so that you can buy other stuff. Gold is on some level kind of nature's Bitcoin or nature's cryptocurrency, but I think [00:07:46] we're coming to a point where there's a division between those two, where cryptocurrencies are starting to be used as, and when I say starting, of course they have already been, but more broadly be used as vehicles to buy other stuff, not just stores of value. So the former is a currency, the latter is an asset. Yeah, I definitely agree with you on that point as we move down this line of utilization, Tony: [00:08:11] we saw with PayPal news that we recently came out, Square News. Hopefully people will start using Bitcoin more as a day-to-day currency. It's one of the biggest questions I get is it's too hard to use Bitcoin. When am I going to use that to store less of actually Bitcoin as a store of value, especially from some of the retail clients coming into this space? So regarding Bitcoin [00:08:29] and complete intelligence, are you guys forecasting anything in the digital currency space? Are you forecasting the currencies themselves? Maybe the mining profitability or any of the mining machines, and can you speak a little bit farther on that? We do. We started forecasting limited cryptos about six months ago. And as I'm sure you can imagine, there's been a lot of volatility in Tony: [00:08:51] cryptocurrencies over the last couple of years. And because we're a machine learning platform, it takes a while for the machines to understand how cryptocurrencies trade and move. And so just because we started forecasting cryptocurrencies doesn't necessarily mean that we would recommend people making trades or taking positions based upon what we forecast. It's different for things [00:09:19] like copper or whatever that we've been doing for a long time. And those are also relatively stable markets, say, industrial metals, that sort of thing. But cryptocurrencies, very volatile, very new. And the market is still learning how to value them. This is one of the key things about cryptocurrencies that I think is misunderstood is the market is still learning how to value them. Tony: [00:09:44] That's not a comment on whether I think they're undervalued or overvalued right now. I just think the market isn't really sure how to value them. And so in our platform, we expected to take really another couple months before we're confident in where our platform is saying cryptocurrencies will go. Again, because it's such a complicated asset in the way it moves, [00:10:11] and because there's so little institutional and historical knowledge about it, we have to iterate a couple billion more times for us to really understand where it's going. Are you seeing a lack of data or trading data, network data, in making these decisions, that making it harder than traditional markets? Or have you seen that the data in the Bitcoin Tony: [00:10:31] space is relatively open and well established? I don't really see an issue with data. I think part of the problem with cryptocurrencies is that it doesn't really trade on fundamentals. So what we're utilizing is a configuration of methodologies that balance out fundamentals and technicals. Some months, certain assets lean more toward technicals. Some months, they lean [00:10:54] more toward fundamentals. Cryptocurrencies don't really have fundamentals to lean on. And so then you're looking at a lot of relatively short-term and ultra short-term approaches to understand the value of something. So the memory of the price, it's either sticky or it's not. I know that sounds a little bit silly, but cryptocurrencies move in bursts, Tony: [00:11:20] or they languish. There's really not a lot of in-between. And so understanding which technical approach is to take and within what configurations to take them is what's really kind of confounding our platform right now. And I would say our error rates for cryptocurrency is probably, I think, three times what our average error rate is. So our average error rates for across our assets [00:11:52] on an absolute percent error basis is between five and 7%, something like that, across currencies, commodities, equities. For cryptos, we're looking at probably a 15-ish to 20-ish percent error. And so it might be a little bit lower than that now, but it's settling within the range that we're comfortable with. We're really comfortable when things are, say, Tony: [00:12:14] less than 10% error. And we expect to be there very soon. But part of what's different about what we're doing is that we're not afraid to talk about our error rates. We'll be very transparent with people about what our current and historical error rates are and have been, because our clients are making decisions based upon the data that we bring to them [00:12:40] and the forecast that we bring to them. So when I say to you, look, our error rates for cryptocurrencies is between 15 and 20%. I'm not really sure you can find many other people who would admit that publicly. But if traders are making decisions based upon the forecast that we bring to market, then they need to know that. They need to know how to hedge against that error range. Tony: [00:13:04] So referring to that the cryptocurrencies are much harder to predict. Is that keeping any of your current clients from moving over to the digital currency space? Are they looking at this space for growth opportunities or for potential revenue generating opportunities or even a way to hedge from the current macro environment? I think everyone is either involved and trading, [00:13:28] let's say, even at a small level, or they're very committed. I think the approach that we've tried to take, the number of firms that get very hypey about cryptocurrencies and almost feel like they're trying to push it on to their clients. We're not that way. We don't care if someone invests in iron ore or invests in cryptocurrencies. It's really what is their profile and how well Tony: [00:13:51] can we forecast it? But I think the interest in cryptocurrencies obviously is still very high because nobody really knows what's happening there. Nobody really knows what the future is there. And nobody really wants to miss out. Actually, I know maybe two or three people who want to miss out on that. But very few people want to miss out on it. And so they're keeping an eye on it or [00:14:18] dipping a toe in if they're not already in in a big way. And I think you have to be fair on these sorts of things. It's not as if, say, the main cryptocurrencies have kind of fizzled out, they're still around. They didn't fizzle out after, say, two years. They're still around. People still trade them. We're still trying to figure out how to get them into some sort of monetary system Tony: [00:14:43] or some sort of transmission mechanism. And until that's figured out, I think that unless they fizzle out, the main ones, I think it's still necessary to stay involved. So we're not seeing a massive demand for what we're doing in terms of forecasting. And when I say forecasting, I'm not talking about the next say five to seven days, I'm talking about the next 12 [00:15:05] months, okay, monthly intervals over the next 12 months. So for something like cryptocurrencies that have a relatively short term horizon, because it has been pretty speculative from an investment perspective, it's been pretty hard to look at this stuff over a longer term. But we're getting better at it. And I think as these things become more predictive, there will be a lot more interest. Tony: [00:15:31] And that's largely the market coming to agreement on what the various cryptocurrencies are actually worth. And following up on that, how do you value them as being a common trend? It seems like in the analysis that you guys are doing, as a large Bitcoin miner in this space, we believe the stock to flow ratio is a huge component of giving value to underlying cryptocurrency. And so that is when [00:15:55] the halving occurs, did your models take that into account? Or did they, how do they kind of work with that event? Because I think the halving is an event where you don't really have that in any other industry where you're losing half of your new coins coming in or half a new supply coming in on a daily basis. Well, I think you, you know what, you do see this a bit with say, central bank Tony: [00:16:15] money supply, that sort of thing. So and you do see, let's say with a dollar or the euro, the Japanese yen or something like that, you do see central bank money supply coming in. And the pickup of that money supply is not fundamentally dissimilar from cryptocurrencies. Although I think with cryptocurrencies, it's a it's a fair bit more technical. But I think it's, you know, understanding [00:16:40] both the stock and the flow is critical to understanding where that value is. If there's too much stock, then, you know, it's obviously not not valuable unless there's the demand, the flow going into demand. So so yeah, I think it's it's in but until people can have a normalized discussion around it, whereas it where it's similar to say central banks, then I think it's really hard for Tony: [00:17:09] people to contextualize within their kind of trading and valuation framework. So look, you know, if you look, for example, you know, the Chinese government introduced this this coin into Shenzhen a few weeks ago, right? They effectively gave people the equivalent of $30 in this Chinese crypto currency to spend. And then it was gone. So they're calling that a study on how widespread adoption [00:17:37] of cryptocurrencies will work. And I'm sure it was gone within a day, right? I mean, if I'm given 30 bucks to spend for free, then I'm going to spend it probably today. So, you know, I think until we have a better baseline for widespread adoption. And I think the government endorsement on some level kind of matters, because let's let's look at that $30. It's effectively like a voucher or a Tony: [00:18:04] gift card, right? That they've given people a gave people a $30 gift card for free. It doesn't matter what currency it's in. Okay, it's going to get spent, right? I don't necessarily think that that's a valid test of the adoption of a cryptocurrency. I think you have to have something more widespread and more enduring, because there you have a fixed amount of stock that spent over a very [00:18:29] abbreviated period. It doesn't really mean anything, right? But I think until we have a wider spread adoption for spend, we're not necessarily going to get a fundamental based value. Okay, we'll get that technically based value, meaning looking at the stocks and the flows and trying to understand based on stocks and flows, but not necessarily based on the inherent value that you get with a Tony: [00:18:59] legit currency, not that cryptocurrency is illegitimate. That was probably a bad word choice. But let's say a central bank endorsed currency. We'll say that much. And on the central bank endorsed currency chain of thought, when you see the United States and in Europe and also China adopting these different types of cryptocurrencies, or I guess you could [00:19:22] say ways to distribute capital to individuals for stimulus, how are you seeing China and the US and any other major players deploying these central bank currencies over the next two or three years? As you did mention, China is already doing it. In the US, I'm not aware of us doing any type of central bank currencies or deploying central bank currencies to citizens. But are you seeing, JohnPaul: [00:19:50] I guess, how do you see that playing out over the next two or three years, if not, and maybe longer? Tony: [00:19:55] Sure. China, the China central bank did a first test of a cryptocurrency, I think in January of 2017. So they've been trying to figure this out for some time. And I think China sees it as a potential way to rival the US dollar. The problem is there is no trust in the people's bank, China, nobody else had to try to really trust it. So the immutable aspect of a cryptocurrency [00:20:27] doesn't have validity outside of probably the walls of the central of the people's bank of China building. And without that limited supply, without the immutability of it, then again, it's just a gift card. It's just a voucher. Now, I think the PBOC, the Chinese central bank has had, but with each day, it's kind of passing. I think they've had an opportunity to utilize Tony: [00:20:55] cryptocurrencies for things like trade finance, which is a really opaque aspect of international finance related to trade. And if they had, let's say, gone to some of their trade partners and said, look, in Europe or the Middle East or somewhere, we can get around using the US dollar by utilizing this digital Chinese yuan or something. I think there was a time when people would have been [00:21:22] open to it, especially if it made payments faster and less costly. But I think that window has passed, at least for now. I think it's really hard for China to insert itself. I think if they had done this, say, in 2015-16, I think they would have had a real opportunity and they could have done a lot to displace some US dollar-denominated trade finance and probably displace a lot of Tony: [00:21:52] euro-denominated trade finance, but they didn't do it. They'll keep trying. I'm not sure how successful they'll be outside of those places that have to trade with them, meaning North Korea, Iran, and those sorts of economies, Venezuela, and so on. With Europe and the US, I don't think the central bankers fully understand what a cryptocurrency is. And I don't think that they really have, say, [00:22:23] the patience to understand how to, say, deploy it in a credible way, if that makes sense. And so I think you'll almost have these parallel currency regimes with cryptocurrencies. The problem, though, is I don't necessarily, at least for the next few years, see them displacing a currency like the dollar. They may displace, say, secondary or tertiary currencies within, say, Tony: [00:22:52] international trade, trade finance, cross-border payments, these sorts of things, and even domestic payments where, say, a central bank doesn't really have credibility. That makes a lot of sense. But I'm not necessarily sure that I see it displacing, say, US dollar or euro transactions, let's say, in kind of main, say, kind of day-to-day activities. If you look at a government like [00:23:18] Venezuela or Turkey or something like that where you see a real currency crisis, I think it's possible. I'm not necessarily saying it's probable at a place like Turkey, but I think it's possible that you could see adoption of something like cryptocurrency, especially if the government puts a restriction on US dollar use. Tony, do you see, I mean, it seems like you're saying that the Tony: [00:23:43] Western China will have its own central bank digital currency and maybe the United States will try to deploy theirs as well. Do you think this is going to move the global economy into being a more closed system? Or do you think this will actually open up finance and trade and make it better for everyone? Or do you think, well, I end up having this almost finance war of, you know, [00:24:02] we already do have that, but on the digital currency level now, where it's traceable and trackable by a single entity and the capital or the cost to deploy these systems is much lower? It's a great question. I think the people who accept the digital Chinese yuan are going to have to decide if they want a centralized authority in China tracking all of their activities Tony: [00:24:28] in that digital CNY. You know, I think that's a real decision and a real trade off that those people who trade in that currency are going to have to figure out. Although dollars are traceable, you know, you can kind of transmit them and other currencies, you can kind of transmit them. I wouldn't really say it in an anonymous way, but you can kind of get around tracking of [00:24:53] every single transaction. But with cryptocurrencies, you know, the ledger tracks everything. And so if you have, say, the PBOC in China tracking every single transaction for every single digital CNY that's out there, that's kind of next level of information out there, right? It's not just Google understanding what's in your email. And it's not just Alexa tracking what you're saying. Tony: [00:25:18] It's every single penny you put out there being tracked by a central ledger. And I think you said that perfectly. You know, China will be tracking every transaction. And that will help these central bank digital currencies, if it's China, if it's the US, if it's, you know, somewhere in Europe and as these different currencies are deployed, they'll really be able to build [00:25:37] almost a very well put together social graph of who you're paying. I mean, it's very similar to Venmo when Venmo had the kind of privacy error, where you could see every transaction, if you add your transaction on public, that you sent all your friends. This is almost like that, but the central bank can see that for every single person. Now we know who interacts with who, Tony: [00:25:56] where you go, you know, if you're going to get coffee at Starbucks every morning, where you're going to be, you know, it's very interesting to see the amount of power that, you know, these central banks in my opinion are going to start, are going to gain over deploying a currency where it's traceable, trackable, and it's on a single ledger. [00:26:13] Right. Well, so imagine, you know, right now we have, we have macroeconomic data releases like gross domestic product or industrial production or retail sales, those sorts of things. Imagine, you know, right now, the way that happens is a statistics ministry doesn't estimate of what that economic activity is. And they release it like a month after it actually happens, Tony: [00:26:37] and then they revise it four times before they finally give up and say that this macroeconomic variable is finished. If you do have a centralized kind of ledger for this stuff, you can actually look at national and global economic activity on a real-time basis, right? So you can actually see through, you could actually see through COVID, you could see the US economy [00:27:02] declining on a real-time basis or the Europe economy declining on a real-time basis, which would be pretty scary actually, but that's the reality of it. If you have this centralized ledger, you can see, let's say, the velocity of that currency grinding to a halt as people don't spend money, which from a central bank perspective can help you understand how to Tony: [00:27:24] incentivize people to spend money if they have it. So from a kind of centralized monitoring of the economy perspective, I could see that being beneficial. From a consumer and an individual save or spender perspective, I can see that being a little bit scary. It is a little bit scary, but I agree with you also with the COVID situation. The stimulus, [00:27:47] really in my opinion, didn't get to the people as well as it should have. And central bank digital currencies will allow these central banks to give stimulus to those who are most affected, at least in theory, and to be able to provide potentially different access to credit for different types of individuals. We're taking different types of risks being business owners Tony: [00:28:05] or just employees. On the COVID analysis, and as you guys with CI were doing the analysis on the equity markets and oil and different types of currencies, did you guys see any indicators as COVID was picking up in the analysis of the market and how did it affect your predictions in these broadly over the different markets that you guys predict and watch? [00:28:30] I think what we saw in the wake of COVID was, and this is no surprise to anybody, I don't think, is a move to very short-term thinking. What data points are coming out? What's moving? What are people doing? Let's track day-to-day what's actually happening. Also, an eye on what is the government doing? What stimulus is coming out? When is it coming out? How much is it? Where's Tony: [00:28:53] it going? That sort of thing. I think for the probably three to four months, I would say until July or August, a lot of trading and forecasting was really done on that basis. The news moved the market. It was fear and news that really moved markets. We had to come to a place where the size of the dump truck of stimulus was bigger than the fear that people had of COVID. [00:29:22] When we got to a number big enough, you started to see markets break higher, which was, I guess, a positive thing for people who weren't working, but getting stimulus from government so they could day trade and make some money in markets to shore up some of their bills. Now that the stimulus has gone out, and now that we see at least some markets coming back to, I wouldn't say Tony: [00:29:51] normal, but at least to a significant level, we're starting to see, or we've started to see over the past, say, six to 10 weeks, more fundamental basis put into markets and put into some of those value decisions, whether it's an equity or whether it's a commodity or something. It's still playing out. In a number of ways, a lot of the techs still very sentiment and [00:30:18] stimulus based. We see things like some of the commodities that are still very much based on that, or I would say more than 50% based on that, but we're starting to see markets move back into a direction that's a bit more traditionally based. I use that term very loosely, traditionally based, but with at least a bit of fundamental analysis. Look at something like Tesla, for example, Tony: [00:30:45] the price to earnings ratio is around 1100, I think, something like that. You may love Tesla, but that's a pretty healthy multiple. At some point, and I'm not necessarily predicting Tesla will fall to Earth, but at some point, something will catch up with the valuations of these things, whether they're commodities or whether they're equities, and we'll start to value things [00:31:13] on a more traditional, again, that's a loose application there, but on a more traditional basis. One of the things that I've been noticing in just conversations is it seems like the stock market is almost, I would say, really turning into a casino where you have people just buying stocks, they heard on the news, they're getting the motley fool every week, and they have so many Tony: [00:31:33] decisions to make, so many different options. I've noticed that it seems to be just too complex for, I would say, normal retail, robin hurt traders. They get overwhelmed with so many decisions. I think one of the nice things about value as we talked about value in crypto is at least with Bitcoin, you know what you're getting. You know that this is an asset with a stable monetary supply JohnPaul: [00:31:53] with a stable issuance rate over the next 100 years. What are your thoughts on how Bitcoin mining, Tony: [00:32:02] I'm actually going to change it up and move to a separate topic, a different topic, but what are your thoughts on Bitcoin mining and how it relies on the global supply chain starts in semiconductor factories in China, and you mentioned the supply chain optimization a lot on your website as a function of complete intelligence. Can you walk through a little bit how you guys optimize the [00:32:24] supply chain? And then I'd love to talk with you through potentially how the Bitcoin mining supply chain works on our end and see where optimizations are and how COVID or any of these other things impact supply chains and what you guys are seeing on a worldwide basis. Sure, that's great. I think with any supply chain, you have really three factors. You have cost, Tony: [00:32:46] you have distance, and you have time. And so, I mean, there's quality as well, but if you assume that you can get equal quality in multiple locations, you have cost, distance, and time. And so, we help people initially with cost. We're helping them to arbitrage the best cost locations. We have a client who manufactures confectionary, they make candies and sweets, and they buy sugar, [00:33:13] I think, at eight different places around the world. And so, we help them understand where the sugar prices, because it's not a single global sugar price, right? They're local factors. So, we help them understand where sugar prices will change and at what magnitude they change, so that their factories can be prepared and that they can have the right margin they need, Tony: [00:33:36] so that they can take in the right inventory, so that they can make the right transactions at the right time. So, I think from a pure cost basis with commodities, for example, like sugar, it's possible to do that. When you look at something like semiconductors with a very sophisticated manufacturing process, cost is probably not the only, [00:34:01] well, I can assure you, it's not the only factor associated with the decision. So, then you start looking at things like time and you look at things like distance. And so, when we go back to, say, March, April, May, a lot of semiconductors travel by air and we had air freight rates from Asia to the US that were normally, say, $1.50 a kilogram that had in many cases been jacked up to, say, Tony: [00:34:29] $15 a kilogram, so 10 times or more of the normal price. So, that's where distance becomes, or let's say cost becomes a function of distance, right? And so, that chip set that semiconductor may cost the same X factory, but getting it to the destination is increasingly critical and increasingly costly. So, that's where we help people also to understand what the cost of that distance is and what the [00:35:00] cost of that time is. Because you could put it on a vessel and you could ship it and it could take three weeks to get where it needs to go. But in many cases, the cost of those, the finished goods are high enough that you can absorb some of that transport cost. So, there are a number of ways that we help people understand those transactions, but at the end of the day, it all has to do Tony: [00:35:27] with the cost of that bill of material, meaning the cost of the good that go into that finished item that's ultimately sold to a customer. So, when we look at semiconductors, for example, and you look at what has happened over the last, particularly last year, and if you look at, say, TSMC, Taiwan semiconductor, moving one of their locations to, I think it's Arizona in the US, [00:35:54] we're starting to get more of that high value supply chain in the US, more as a function to de-risk supply chains in the wake of COVID, meaning factories in China closed during COVID, people still had to make stuff and they had to still have their business open, but they couldn't because the factories in China were closed. Once the factories in China opened, there was constrained Tony: [00:36:23] transport capacity, so it would cost them a lot more. So, they had goods that were late and they had goods that were a lot more expensive than normal. And so, I think what a lot of manufacturers have done, especially in the wake of COVID, has said, look, we need to diversify our supply chains and have multiple sources for some of these high value goods. And we, complete intelligence, [00:36:48] have been talking about regionalization of trade since 2017. We wrote about it more formally in, say, starting Feb of 18, when the steel and aluminum tariffs were put on by the current administration. But we've believed for years that we would start to see a re-regionalization of trade, and that cuts out some of the risk associated with supply chains. And some of those costs, Tony: [00:37:20] maybe transport costs that maybe lower are offset by maybe marginally higher, say, labor or taxes or something like that, either in the US or Mexico or something. So, one of the things that many people don't necessarily understand is when China came into the WTO in 2000, the US was in the first decade of the NAFTA agreement, the North American Free Trade Agreement. At the time, there were a lot of [00:37:45] manufactured, there was a lot of manufacturing for the US done in Mexico. Part of the reason a lot of factories moved to China was because electricity in Mexico was really, really expensive at the time. Okay. And the electricity in China was really cheap. So, a lot of these manufacturing, especially energy intensive manufacturing firms moved to China to save on their electricity, which was a Tony: [00:38:13] large factor within their total cost. So, what's happened in Mexico over the last, I think, four years is laws were passed to deregulate the electricity market in Mexico. So, now you have power in Mexico that's a lot cheaper than it was 15, 20 years ago. So, the attractiveness of Mexico as a location, at least from a cost basis, is quite a bit higher than it was in the past, and especially quite a [00:38:43] bit higher than it was when firms were leaving Mexico to go to China. So, Tony, you mentioned the impact of COVID on the supply chains. And I want to talk a little bit about something that we have in Bitcoin mining called the supply gap. And it basically, what that is, is when the price of Bitcoin is skyrocketing and is hitting an all-time high like it did back in 2017, Tony: [00:39:05] the underlying value of these Bitcoin miners really relies on the profitability of those machines. And that is heavily, heavily relies on the price of Bitcoin. So, what we see is that the supply chains, they shrivel up almost. They're being able to order machines over a three-month period and ends up going out to six months. You won't be able to get your machines until six months [00:39:28] later. Do you see this central, not centralization, but going from globalization back to Mexico, back to these localized economies? Do you see that helping these massive supply fluctuations or kind of, I guess, events that occur specifically with Bitcoin price and Bitcoin miners, but I guess also globally with events like COVID that really do shock the system we know of today? Tony: [00:39:51] Yeah, I do. I think that, of course, we're going to have some difficulties in the early days of it. We're going to have some awkward moments where things don't work as people plan that sort of thing. Whenever you have large systemic change, you always have some moments that are a little bit embarrassing and caused you to second guess the decision. We're going to have those. That's normal. [00:40:10] But I think over time, what we're building is a more robust global supply chain. Something like 40% of all manufactured goods are made in Northeast Asia, China, Korea, Japan. And as we have re-regionalization of manufacturing, and that's to North America, that's to Europe, and so on, we have a diversity of manufacturing locations. And so if there is, let's say, COVID in China or in Tony: [00:40:38] Asia, but it hasn't hit the US yet, then it's possible to use additional capacity and say, US or European factories to help meet the needs of Bitcoin miners, right? Depending on what we're doing, depending on the sophistication of those factories and the capacity of those factories. But I believe that as we have regionalization of supply chains, you have much more robustness [00:41:04] in those supply chains. I also think that in the wake of COVID, so I lived in Asia for 15 years. I just moved back to the US in 2017. I lived through probably five or six pandemics in that time. And so we got a little bit used to it. In the US, it's relatively new. And I think people here are trying to figure out how to contend with it. And the calibration of risk in the US Tony: [00:41:27] to pandemics is it's new, so people aren't really sure what it means or doesn't mean. So the global transmission of viruses is not something that's really going away. So will we have more COVID-like viruses coming out of Asia or coming out of Europe or the US? It's likely. And so we're at a point where we have to have regionalization of supply chains. So first, we have robust supply chains [00:41:57] where we can source from the US, Europe, Asia, wherever we want as capacity, as demand, and as costs require. But also, we have the flexibility. If there is one of those events, whether it's a disease event or whether it's, let's say, a war or something like that, we have the flexibility to make stuff in other parts of the world too. So if there was a devastating conflict to Tony: [00:42:24] Northeast Asia today, global supply chains would be paralyzed. That's just a fact. And so the sooner we can get regionalized supply chains, the better we're all off because the risk of a, let's say a conflict to Northeast Asia, if it ever happens, it won't impact everyone on the planet as much as it would today. [00:42:50] We definitely agree are seeing that de-risking and big huge news with the semiconductor and TSMC moving to potentially the United States to build a facility, hopefully reducing on that distance for Bitcoin miners specifically. I found it very interesting that you mentioned about Mexico and the electricity prices there to understand that those manufacturers actually had to leave Tony: [00:43:12] Mexico and went to China because it was too expensive to extract or to complete that manufacturing process. I view Bitcoin mining as a way to almost extracting Bitcoin from the network through a manufacturing process where we're using these Bitcoin miners and large amounts of energy to do just that. And so I wanted to talk farther about how you've worked with clients in either [00:43:36] the natural gas or the energy sectors in the United States specifically and pricing out those JohnPaul: [00:43:42] markets. And where do you see the future of this industry going? The electricity market Tony: [00:43:47] specifically and the cost of power in the United States. Sure. So I'm in Texas. The cost of natural gas is very low and the abundance of natural gas is very high. So electricity prices, to be honest, is not really something we worry about here. I know in other parts of the country and other parts of the world, it is a worry. Electricity is something that has always been very regional [00:44:13] and it has always been very feed stock specific if you're burning oil to make electricity or coal or nuclear or whatever. And you really have to look at that blended cost. But in Texas, we're looking at a lot of natural gas to fuel our electricity. So not that much of a worry for us. And in this region, it's not that much of a worry. I think in places like Europe where Tony: [00:44:38] they're net gas importers, I think it's more of a worry. And there's always a lot of discussion around importing gas from say Russia or from the Middle East or from the US. I think they have an abundance of choice there, but it's relatively more expensive there than it is say here in the US. I think in Asia, you have a lot of imports from the Middle East, particularly places like Qatar, [00:45:03] these sorts of things for natural gas. China uses a lot of coal, something like 70 plus percent of their power generation is from coal. And it's really hard to to wing themselves off of that. Japan is a very large LNG and natural gas importer because they shut off their nuclear power after the incidents in 2010 or 2012, sorry, with the reactors, the Fukushima reactors. So it really Tony: [00:45:33] all depends on the local power generation capacity and feedstocks. But I think generally, we're not necessarily seeing a world where hydrocarbons become all that expensive for quite some time. When we look at what COVID did to demand, the demand destruction that COVID brought about is pretty shocking. That applies to industries and then applies to consumers. So we don't see, say, [00:46:00] oil prices or natural gas prices hitting, let's say, the highs of 2008 for quite some time. And since they are relatively global commodities, although there are differences in certain aspects of them, it also pushes down the prices, let's say, in other parts of the world, say, the Middle East and so on and so forth. So we don't see electricity prices outside of, say, Tony: [00:46:23] regulatory impacts or things like fixed investment requirements. So let's say there's a regulatory requirement that a power station can only be, say, 20 years old. That's a significant cost that would add to electricity prices. But other than that, it seems to us that the feedstocks, although we don't necessarily expect to see kind of negative $37 oil like we saw in April, [00:46:48] we don't necessarily see energy price inflation coming anytime in the next, say, 24 months. And if we look at things like gasoline, I know this is electricity, but things like gasoline, prices are down, say, 30% from where they were a year or so ago. And they're expected to remain that low, at least for the next six to 12 months. So it's not just electricity, it's also gasoline Tony: [00:47:17] or petrol as well, where because of muted demand, prices will remain relatively low. I think that's great news for miners in the United States. And I really cross the world as more and more energy generation comes online. We're seeing that that cost to produce coins is continuing to get cheaper, which allows miners here in the US to compete, if not beat miners in [00:47:43] China on the cost per kilowatt hour. Tony, was there any other trends that you guys are focusing on right now in regards to your investment portfolio analysis that you wanted to highlight on the show today? I think there are hundreds of trends for following. But I think we've cut both of the main ones. I think really it's understanding risk of any asset that we follow or our clients Tony: [00:48:10] follow is really, really important, whether it's cryptocurrencies or whether it's oil and gas or whether it's, I don't know, the SMB 500. Understanding the risk there is really critical. We're always trying to figure out how to balance the risk and opportunity associated with the assets that we forecast. And that's, I would say for any of your listeners, that's the really critical part to [00:48:35] understand. So we could pursue this down any avenue. And I'm sure we can talk for another hour on just about any asset. So I really appreciated the time today. It's been a fantastic discussion. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you, Tony. It was great to have you on. I want to offer you the opportunity to have any questions that you want to ask me about Bitcoin, Tony: [00:48:57] specifically, that you want the audience to make sure that they hear anything that's on your mind. No, I guess what I am curious about Bitcoin is, we saw a bump in 2017, I think largely driven by broad awareness or a more broad awareness of the opportunities in Bitcoin. What will drive the next bump in Bitcoin or crypto value? What do you see driving that next rise, [00:49:27] let's say 30 to 40 to 50% rise in the value of cryptocurrencies? So the way I view the cryptocurrency marketing really Bitcoin specifically is, I'm all about the stock to flow ratio and how that Bitcoin is created. So when that having event occurs, I got into cryptocurrency back in 2013. So I've been through two of these Tony: [00:49:47] having events now. And when that having even occurred in 2016, we see that it kicks off like a real, almost momentum moving into this space where the cost of creating these new coins is exponentially higher, makes it so that all these older machines have to come offline. And it really does a disservice or really degrades the value of these mining machines. It makes the profitability cut in half. [00:50:09] And so when that happens, I think that there are these, the lack of coins, new coins coming into the system creates the momentum, which is needed to push the price up to those 2017 highs you were talking about, or potentially 2021, 2022 highs, simply saying it doesn't happen instantly, because it does take a while to get there. But I expect that to happen in the next coming years, Tony: [00:50:31] not necessarily because of one event, but simply because of the schedule of new coins coming out into the market. So sorry, if I understood you, Craig, are you also saying that the age of the infrastructure that the miners are working on has an impact on the vet? So the replacement cost of that infrastructure also puts upward pressure on the price of Bitcoin? [00:50:52] I would say that exactly. So the fact that we have to replace machines that have less efficiency, so the jewels per terra hash, or how well they can turn one watt of energy into one terra hash of mining power, it needs to be upgraded by 50%. So if you have a machine that was running a hundred jewels per terra hash like the S9, that machine is no longer, and it was just barely Tony: [00:51:12] making money, that machine is no longer going to be even anywhere close to profitable because of this having event. You now now need to go upgrade all of your machines so that they run at the 50 jewels per terra hash level, or you need to find half the cost of electricity. And that is very hard to do, especially because these facilities are massive with hundreds of megawatts of power. [00:51:31] So that's what I drive as the underlying driver to this Bitcoin price push that we see every four years. And if you look back on the chart, it happens every four years, simply because the miners place such the one of the biggest components of the ecosystem, there's about $5 billion in mining awards today, every year. And that's a huge driver in a relatively small market where Bitcoin is Tony: [00:51:52] currently sitting. Interesting. So that replacement cycle, like you said, and this is a question, it's not a statement, that's about every four years, give or take. Every four years, give or take, you either have to replace your equipment with newer machines, which now you're waiting in line, because everyone else in the whole Bitcoin dollar has to do that, or you're moving to power where [00:52:11] it's half as expensive, but all miners are always searching for the cheapest power. So that's something that's always occurring. Okay. So with the kind of the supply chain hiccups that we saw with COVID, does that push that replacement cycle back? Like, is that replacement cycle being pushed back by six to nine months? Or is that, do we have a pent up kind of inflation, meaning, Tony: [00:52:42] do you believe that the value of Bitcoin being driven up will last for longer because of the supply chain issues we saw in COVID? So with this, definitely with the supply chains issues in COVID are shipping rates. As you mentioned, those increased dramatically. It affected how fast machines could get out. It actually caused Bitmain and some of the other major manufacturers to delay their [00:53:06] shipping by two or three months. So if you were to buy a batch to be delivered in November, it still hasn't been delivered. So there is that pushback and we've seen that greatly affect the market regarding the deployment of these machines and kind of scaling with the recent Bitcoin price while it rise. New machines are very hard to get. I would say about maybe 10,000 to 15,000 new Tony: [00:53:28] machines per month are coming to the US and that might be even on the higher range. So that's about 50 megawatts of power per month coming to the US and coming out of these factories, which is only $50 million worth of capital. So we have huge constraints on the semiconductor themselves and making those mining machines. And when the price of Bitcoin even jumps up like it has over [00:53:50] the past couple of days, up to the 13,000 mark, that's going to create even more external pressure, even more interest in mining, which makes it even harder to get those machines and will push out the timeline even farther. So yes, it's a huge issue when it comes to supply chain management because of COVID and the Bitcoin price increasing investors appetite to get exposure to the space. JohnPaul: [00:54:08] Fantastic. That's really interesting. Thanks for that. Of course, Tony. Well, thank you for coming on. I appreciate it. And I'm glad we're able to have you on. Thanks again, Tony. Tony: [00:54:17] Thank you. Hope to speak soon. Have a good day. Thanks, JP. Bye. Bye. [00:54:21] 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 Tony: [00:54:31] become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, mine off. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Bitcoin as Institutional Asset | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 6 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/truthraider/ All Episodes Episode 6 # Bitcoin as Institutional Asset with TruthRaider Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with TruthRaider to discuss bitcoin as institutional asset. ### Bitcoin as Institutional Asset Guest: TruthRaider Episode 6 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # Unbanked — Bitcoin for Everyone | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 34 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/unbanked-bitcoin-film-lauren-sieckmann/ Unbanked — Bitcoin for Everyone | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 34 | MiningStore All Episodes Episode 34 # Unbanked — Bitcoin for Everyone with Lauren Sieckmann Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Lauren Sieckmann to discuss unbanked — bitcoin for everyone. ### Unbanked: Bitcoin’s Story for Everyone Digital Gold Podcast: Bitcoin on the Big Screen with Lauren Sieckmann In this episode of the Digital Gold Podcast, JohnPaul Baric sits down with Lauren Sieckmann, filmmaker and co-director of the Bitcoin documentary Unbanked. Lauren shares her journey from Nebraska to the world of filmmaking, how her father first introduced her to Satoshi Nakamoto’s story, and how that sparked her passion for Bitcoin and financial literacy. Together, they explore the challenges of breaking into film, the creative process behind Unbanked, and her mission to make Bitcoin’s story relatable to everyday people worldwide. Lauren also opens up about her experiences interviewing high-profile figures like Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey, and Ted Cruz, and reflects on the importance of Bitcoin as both a tool for sovereignty and a catalyst for global financial education. Full podcast episode here (https://youtu.be/FEmZHALkDtI?si=I3cupNVOlTspaLYd) ### Key Topics Discussed: - Lauren’s path from Nebraska athlete to filmmaker in Bitcoin - How her father sparked her Bitcoin journey with The Bitcoin Standard - Writing her first script about Satoshi and pivoting into documentary filmmaking - The unique vision behind Unbanked and why Bitcoin is for everyone - Overcoming barriers to entry in the film industry with persistence and creativity - Stories from behind the scenes, including filming around the world - Insights from interviews with Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey, Adam Back, and Ted Cruz - Why financial literacy is one of Bitcoin’s most powerful contributions - The balance of telling Bitcoin’s story without being caught in its echo chamber - Reflections on timing, distribution, and the impact of releasing the film today - The importance of Bitcoin as a tool for financial literacy - How you can support screenings, distribution, and independent creators Watch the full episode here (https://youtu.be/FEmZHALkDtI?si=I3cupNVOlTspaLYd) ### 🔑 Key Insights - ✅ How the Unbanked documentary showcases Bitcoin’s role in financial inclusion - ✅ The intersection of media, storytelling, and Bitcoin adoption - ✅ Why accessibility is the key to Bitcoin’s next growth phase ### Ready to dive deeper? Listen to the full episode to hear Lauren’s insights and analysis. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to understand the complexities of the Bitcoin mining industry. Listen to the full conversation here (https://podcasts.apple.com/es/podcast/bitcoin-on-the-big-screen-with-lauren-sieckmann/id1539971833?i=1000725004412) #### Related Resources Learn About Bitcoin Mining → Bitcoin Mining Case Studies → About the MiningStore Team → More Episodes → ### Can't Listen Now? Read the Full Episode Transcript 📖 Click to Read Full Transcript JohnPaul: Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today’s guest is Lauren Seman. She is a director, writer, and producer . Alongside David Kuhn, she created and directed Unbank a global Bitcoin documentary in her debut future film set for release in 2025. In 2019, her father’s introduction to Satoshi Nakamoto story ignited her fascination with Bitcoin, inspiring her to merge her storytelling craft. With her advocacy for financial literacy, an early adopter of ai, Lauren collaborates with top AI companies as a creative partner, leveraging cutting edge tools to enhance storytelling and streamline production. She’s passionate about AI’s potential to empower creatives and revolutionize the filmmaking process. Lauren, welcome to the show. Lauren: Hi. Thanks for having me. JohnPaul: I’m so excited for you to be here. So back in 2019, that moment when your dad says Satoshi Nakamoto is the man of the future, he should be on Time Magazine. What’s going through your mind? Do you remember that moment? Lauren: Yeah, [00:01:00] or. I think it was right before COVID. I don’t think COVID had quite happened yet. So, , I was back home visiting my parents in Nebraska and around this time I had been studying acting. I lived in la , I didn’t know what I really wanted to do in the film industry, but, , I knew that I wanted to tell stories and I wasn’t sure yet what that was gonna look , so I was in Nebraska and I was trying to figure out, how do I get into the film industry? I have no background in film whatsoever. . What’s so funny is I went to USC for college and that’s actually one of the best film schools in the country. And unfortunately at the time I did not know I wanted to get into film, so I didn’t major in it. That was a really big missed opportunity. But, , , in the film industry, I think one of , the big challenges is finding a way in there’s no one way to break into the film industry. And I think that’s why, , there’s a really big barrier there. So, , I was back home, , in Nebraska. My dad was , well, , you, maybe you should write a script and you should look at Satoshi, [00:02:00] , read this book. And he gave me the Bitcoin standard, , by ine. And so, I read this book, and, I was just blown away and I knew nothing about money. , I studied business, in college and I just had no idea about money and all the ways, , money is manipulated and it just felt, , , and I was never a very political person. And this just woke me up and I just felt I became this. , Libertarian of, , really starting to have a passion about our financial system and how screwed up it is, and I just couldn’t believe that I had never learned any of this until that moment. So between that and then learning about Satoshi’s story, just in general, how we don’t know who this person is and how he could just create this, I was so drawn by. Who is this person and what life experiences did he have to sit down and say, I’m gonna create this money, this form of money that nobody can do base, nobody can control it. And to me, that was the major moment that got me interested in Bitcoin [00:03:00] and , and also from a storytelling perspective. And so I was , what? I don’t know how to get into this film industry. I love Bitcoin. , this is fascinating to me. And so, I think then COVID hit and I actually just stayed in Nebraska. I moved out of la I stayed in Nebraska near my parents. And, my dad’s , you should write a script about Satoshi. So I, started writing a script about Satoshi and my dad and I actually did it together, and , it’s probably a horrible script. I have not visited this script since 2019. But it was really just about, , what life experiences Satoshi could have gone through to get to this point. And that story was meant to make an everyday person understand how they can relate to this technology. . So I wrote this full length feature film. It was 110 pages. It’s probably not very good because this was my first ever script I ever wrote. And then I got to the end of this and I was , well, I have no idea how to get this made. I don’t even know how to revise this script. I knew nobody in the film [00:04:00] industry. I knew nothing about production. , I knew absolutely nothing. So I was , well, , I watched all these Bitcoin documentaries and , I felt , oh, and to rewind, I first got into, when I first started writing the script. Ben Prentice. Start, I don’t know if Ben Prentice, but, I remember I met some people, through Twitter or Clubhouse and he was one of the first people I met just online. And I was , I’m writing a script. Can you help me? , I don’t understand proof of work and all this. And I was sending it back and forth with him and he was so helpful and so kind, and just helped me understand, , the, really, the technical aspects of this, which is very complicated. So shout out to Ben, for all his help. Back then. But, after this process of having this script, I was , I have no idea how I’m gonna get this made. So , I watched a bunch of Bitcoin documentaries and I felt there was an opportunity to tell a story about Bitcoin, but in the form of a documentary. And, I felt a lot of , the documentaries that, we have great documentaries, but they all focus on a different time [00:05:00] period, , the early cyberpunk days. And. That was where the documentary sprung from was I think there’s an opportunity to make a Bitcoin documentary and I think we need to focus on, , what’s happening today and just everyday people. , So first of all, , I said my dad introduced me to Satoshi Nakamoto story, which is pretty crazy. So my dad is, I don’t wanna drop his age, but he’s 70 years old and he got into Bitcoin in 2015, which is pretty early, , for, I hate to call him a boomer, but , he’s a boomer. So, . I think that was really cool. And he had, during the 2008 financial crisis, , that’s the first time in his life that he really looked at the financial system and said, how the hell are these things happening? , how do we have these crisis? And , he was impacted by , that crisis. #### AI and HPC Infrastructure And, , he just saw all the destruction that happened. And that’s the first time he really looked into Bitcoin. I think he got introduced to it through Real Vision. I think back then Real Vision was the World Crypto Network. And then he got into [00:06:00] Bitcoin in 2015, which, to me is pretty cool. , But yeah, so that’s the starting point of the documentary. It was pretty, a wild experience, but I just got to a point where I was , I do not know how to get into this film industry. And I think there’s no one way to do it. If you wanna create something, you just find your own unique path to create it. And, , you don’t let anybody tell you no, even though , they will a thousand times before you get a yes. But, yeah, , that’s the early beginnings of this. JohnPaul: It sounds almost a trial by fire. I dunno how many people think, oh, let me read this Bitcoin book and then , I need to make a documentary about this whole ecosystem. So I think that’s a very, very unique approach to read the book Lauren and be , I’m gonna be a director now. Is that the first . Did you make YouTube videos before? Did you do other creative mediums or was it just straight , let me write 110 page script. Lauren: Yeah, so I was a volleyball player my entire life. I was always an athlete, but I was also had this very big creative [00:07:00] side. I was always very artsy, and my mom is that too. And so I always had a creative side in me, but I was always an athlete for, , until I was probably 23, 24. , I think, I actually don’t even really know what I want to call myself., I’m a director and co-producer and writer of this documentary alongside David, but I consider myself this creative generalist. I love to just find, something that needs to be created and find a way to create it. That’s maybe more of a creator. I, would consider myself that. less of a director, but more of a creator. So, yeah, I think it was that moment I was , I just wanna create this, this is cool and I see an opportunity and I wanna find a way to make this happen. And, it was a massive learning experience for me because I’ve never made a film. So, , yeah, it was crazy. I’m still mind blown that I’ve got this documentary sitting there. , this was. Long process. , 2019, I think David and I started working on it together officially in October of 2021.[00:08:00] And , here we are. It’s available now to watch, but it’s what, four years later? It’s pretty crazy. JohnPaul: then what was the attraction primarily? Was it ideological because of your dad and how it’s different than 2008 and maybe what happened there? Was it just number go up? Or was it more technical interest into Bitcoin? ’cause you don’t see many volleyball players saying Bitcoin film now, this is amazing. So , what drew you to it? Lauren: I don’t know. It’s a good question. I think I’ve always been interested in, , I hate to say nerdy things, but nerdy technical things. I’m not a technical person. I was never a software developer, but, I’m very much interested, I love the movie The Big Short, for example. So I’ve always been interested, maybe I didn’t know at the time when I watched it, what exactly it was completely about , and the significance of that event. But I was always very much interested, in these things. But I don’t think until I got into Bitcoin, I really understood the significance of all of this and, how big it is and how much it affects our everyday lives. But I think for me, I saw a lot of times in [00:09:00] my life. Where, my dad was stressed about money or, I saw, money, , be the demise of families that were around me, and I never really understood, what was behind all of that until. I got into Bitcoin and I think that moment of getting into Bitcoin and seeing how money really works really just clicked for me. And then understanding the pressure and the things my dad of, a dad that is providing for his families had to go through, ? And I think it just made me, I actually made my dad and I bond a lot more. We got really close after I got into Bitcoin and we’re still very close. And I think it was just a. A cool moment that, now I’m very passionate about and I think it’s because I saw my dad go through all of this and yeah, I’m not sure, it’s a good question. I don’t know if I had a perfect answer for it, but I would say that’s probably my best answer. JohnPaul: There’s no perfect answer. I think you mentioned this trend of money and when you’re building a documentary, the first thing you might not think about is [00:10:00] the finances for it. But very quickly after maybe writing the script or thinking about the documentary more, the question comes as, how do I finance this shoot where you guys flew to some amazing destinations all across the globe. So talk to me about. That process and maybe what unlocked momentum for you where you really started to get the capital you needed, plus how do you even budget for that? do you do? Lauren: , Okay, so this goes back all the way back to my club. House days. So when I first got into Bitcoin and I said, I’m making this documentary, I don’t know how yet, but I’m gonna find a way. So I first started off on Clubhouse. I had no Twitter followers yet. My dad was , oh, I think all the Bitcoiners hang out on Clubhouse. #### Capital and Investment Strategy So I’m , okay. So I created an account and I just sat in the audience, , and I was terrified to speak to people and I just knew that I was gonna have to, at some point show people that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Bitcoin and build trust and network. , And so Clubhouse really was my starting place, and I think [00:11:00] that’s where I originally met you. , And, , eventually got connected through to Jason Williams, who is, an executive producer of the documentary and the first person to actually, commit capital to the film. So I owe Jason a lot. He’s been a huge supporter. He. Awesome guy. So, , I first started off on Clubhouse and it was just networking and I had , maybe 20 followers on Twitter and I never tweeted. So I was , what? If I’m gonna get people to respond to my dms, I’m gonna have to not be private. I’m gonna have to tweet things. I’m gonna have to find a way to stand out. And so what I started doing was. I started making these, Twitter threads because I’m , ah, I wanna make a Bitcoin movie. I love film, so I’m gonna make these threads about Bitcoin and movies. And so I found a way and some of those went viral. , , relatively viral, , 2000 likes. And I think that’s the first time people started following me and associating me with film and Bitcoin. And I think that was very helpful. In getting people to respond to my [00:12:00] dms and take me more seriously. I think that was a very important step. . But I got introduced to Jason through a friend, and he was the first person to the idea and say, look, I, if you can find someone to do this with you, , I’ll put in money. So, I had Jason committed and he was a huge supporter. And then, I got connected to David, my current film partner and who we co-directed this together. . Later that year and after that, I was able to then tell investors, I’ve got this great, , director and producer to work with me. And that was massive, , in, helping, my pitch. JohnPaul: How did you meet David? that’s such a crucial inflection point. Lauren: . Yeah. I didn’t know anybody and I just was networking, but every little person that I did know, I was , talking to everybody that I could and I was just getting intros to, everybody. And we ended up getting,. Introduced through Eugene Jarecki, who David has worked with, and Eugene has done incredible documentaries at the highest level. I got connected to Eugene. Eugene was , oh, I’m in Berlin and I won’t be able to be a [00:13:00] part of this, but you need to talk to David. He’s the best. And he connected me to David. And from there we just decided to partner on this. And what was cool is, , \, this was David’s first introduction to Bitcoin. He had never been into Bitcoin or knew much about it. And so I think that’s why the partnership was so great because. I knew too much about Bitcoin and he knew nothing. So we had a really great balance there as co-directors. , But, and now he loves it. It’s been really cool to see his journey getting into Bitcoin from beginning of this production till now. And, , it’s been cool to , , his experience, from beginning to end and, yeah, now he’s very passionate about Bitcoin, so it’s been pretty cool. JohnPaul: Is there anything that came up in that co-directing where you. he had an epiphany about Bitcoin or you were able to cross the chasm with him of why bitcoin’s so important or ’cause the co-directing. It’s you’re both trying to pull the script effectively in the film in one direction, and you both have these ideas of what it is in your head. And so not having. having different beliefs [00:14:00] about Bitcoin or different understandings about it must have made it some ports difficult, but also just because you’re so passionate about your side of the Bitcoin story, and talk to me more about how that interplay works. Lauren: Yeah, no, , you don’t see a lot of co-directors ’cause , it’s very hard, ? But I think we were lucky that we have a great dynamic in the sense of, I am not a documentary expert. He is, he’s a documentary expert and so I think, , I lean on him to help guide me in this process of making the film. But, he leans on me about Bitcoin information and that side of the story because I do know Bitcoin and I, so I think we’ve got a great dynamic where, we’ve got a very strategic division of labor because we both have our strength and, we’re lucky that it worked out really well. JohnPaul: That’s all that matters. , , so , you’re directing this film, you’re sitting down with people Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey, Adam back. Who surprised you the most when you’re having those conversations and who did your team interview versus, , maybe you, I know [00:15:00] some of you guys had a lot of people working on this. You didn’t get to interview every single person, but talk to me more about those conversations and maybe who surprised you? Lauren: I would say, one of my favorite interviews was Sailor and I just remember one, he was really hard to get and I did not know if we were gonna get him in this film. And I’m telling you, I tried. Every way possible to get him in this film. And finally it worked. So, we went to his interview and I wouldn’t say necessarily surprised in his, , , sailor’s brilliant and he’s, you’ve seen him on podcasts, but I was just so surprised with how he can sit there. , he sat there for. Two hours during this interview and just the way that , he can just talk. , he doesn’t even need breaks, he just goes for two hours straight and I just could not believe the stamina and being able to do that. , it was just incredible to watch him in person. , You don’t see the editing cuts you do in a podcast. But, he just, the way he can sit there and just talk about Bitcoin and you can just tell that he’s so genuinely passionate about it. #### Industry Deep Dive I think that was really cool. And I remember just after that interview, David and I [00:16:00] giving each other a giant hug. , oh my gosh, I cannot believe we just got that. , , that was just so cool. , We were both so excited about that interview. Ted Cruz, very generous with his time, very kind. , Which those people are busy. , Scheduling with senators is very hard and , he was surprisingly very generous with his time. Which, , I think is awesome. I think a lot of people, , you expect a lot of, everyone we interviewed, they’re very busy people and they’re very hard to reach people, but they were all so kind and generous and I think genuinely passionate , about the topic. , Yeah, so David, David does all the interviews. We write the questions together and talk about that and David interviews and , we decided that makes the most sense, , when you’re interviewing. , There’s a lot that goes into it and you have to keep the subject’s eye line. You also, , an issue for me is I know so much about Bitcoin that a subject says something, I might not be , oh, well, what do you mean? Or I might just, , it’s a little bit too, I know a little bit too much about Bitcoin , and David does a fantastic job. He knows exactly how to [00:17:00] interview subjects. There’s a lot that goes into it. And we found that system worked the best for us. But yeah,, I’m not sure if I know the most surprising. I think what’s cool though, a lot of things we learned along the way, because if you think about it, documentaries are, you’re documenting life and there is a process where. I would say we planned to some extent, I remember the first time David and I met, we laid out this giant piece of paper and we wrote out an outline. It’s a rough outline, but it’s , this is where we’re gonna start and this is where we’re gonna end. These are the people we want to interview, and this is where they fit. And as you go on in this process, we have to. Go back to that drawing board and change things because as we document life, we get things or we can’t get certain people or somebody gave us something that we didn’t expect to get from them and that we don’t need this other piece and . Things change because you are documenting life and you can’t plan how that’s gonna go. , One of the, a really cool piece of advice that David gave me in the beginning was if we set out and we end up making the film that [00:18:00] we set out to make, then we’re not doing it right. This should change. We should discover new things., And that’s exactly what we did. And I think that’s really cool. And one of my probably favorite aspects about making documentaries. JohnPaul: And so these themes that you’re talking about, I can just imagine a massive whiteboard effectively, but with on paper and you guys just drawing stick figures and little Bitcoin logos and arrows everywhere. What’s the theme that, or themes that go through the film that you want to share with the audience? And then what’s a theme that we’ll never see because it got caught? Lauren: Yeah, man. So we filmed 2200 hours of footage and the film is only an hour and 25 minutes. So JohnPaul: one 20th of everything. Got cut. Lauren: Everything got cut. And that’s just how it works, ? And some films film way more than that and then, , they have to cut way more. So it’s not easy. And we’re lucky. We have the best team. , we have the best editors. So what you see, , when you watch this film is you see the result of incredible people, [00:19:00] many incredible people working on this. It’s not just David and we have the best people working on this. , But I would say, the main message we wanted people to see. I think one thing that I’ve been frustrated about with Bitcoin, not necessarily it’s not Bitcoin’s fault, but it’s just that Bitcoin has become, , I have, I know some people who are , oh, well, Bitcoin is just this conservative, it’s been, this conservative thing. I’m , no, it’s not. , It’s really not. It’s really for any, anybody, on any political spectrum. And I think, , one theme was just to show that it’s very simple, but Bitcoin is for everybody. I think, , you’ll see in the film that, I think there’s things that people will love no matter, , what your politics are. , And that was the goal. , Another thing is, , we tried to explore all the different ways that Bitcoin is being used. And we’re not trying to tell people what Bitcoin’s use case is. It’s more about showing it and what everyday people are using it for. And, letting the message speak for itself. Marker Lauren: And so, , I would say right now I think [00:20:00] Bitcoin is something different depending on where you are. And the film really highlights that. And I think, , it’s gonna depend who knows where, what Bitcoin’s main use case is gonna be in 20 years and 30 years. But I think it’s definitely gonna depend on where you are and what the circumstances are. . But , , I think something that is very cool too, and I’m not sure , how much this is really said in the film, but to me it’s a big takeaway is that I think one of Bitcoin’s most important aspects is not necessarily its number go up or its savings method, it’s just that it’s brought this movement of financial literacy. #### Energy Meets AI Demand And I think that is so important, , there’s a moment that we have, a guy from Harlem that’s. Says, he talks about how he just one day was , I don’t know what’s going on. why is my savings account this? And why do I not have this much money in savings? And, , getting into Bitcoin and just is awakening there. And I think that is so powerful. beyond the number, go up, beyond, obviously number go up is great. I think that’s an important aspect of Bitcoin. I think [00:21:00] being able to save your money and hold its value is important. I think transactions are important. , But I just think the fact that people are more financially literate today and. To me that is an important message from the film, and it’s not as prominent, but I think it’s an important takeaway. JohnPaul: I liked how you definitely interweave different levels of socioeconomic status and. Beliefs in the film because you have these people that are, Michael Saylor, $75 billion of Bitcoin, and you have someone in Harlem,, a hundred dollars of Bitcoin, a thousand dollars of Bitcoin, and be able to show the passion at both levels where it doesn’t matter the amount of Bitcoin you own, but the fact that you can have access to this technology and the benefits it brings you are the same that it brings Michael Saylor. Is an amazing aspect of the film, I think is underappreciated, but also just something that people don’t talk about enough about Bitcoin. The fact that it [00:22:00] is the internet and anyone can access it. So you did a really good job with trying to interweave that, I would say in into the film itself. Lauren: Thank you. Yeah, I think that’s really important because, as I talk to other people that I meet that don’t know much about Bitcoin, and I try and talk to ’em about it, they’re , oh, well, it’s just so expensive. , I’m , ah, it’s not if, , what? I think there is a use case for everybody. I think Bitcoin has so many use cases. It’s so valuable in so many different ways, and I think when people can understand the different ways that it can help you in your life or, depending on your situation, I, I think that’s important. And , I do believe, , some people say , the price doesn’t matter. I do think the price does matter. I think the price going up is important. I think that’s a great aspect of Bitcoin. But I think there are so many great aspects that people can use it in their life and they just don’t know it yet. So that was the goal is for, , I think back to my dad and how he got into Bitcoin because he’s , why am I having such a hard time with this financial system? And then he looked into it and. It changed his mindset and it changed the way he saves money and the way he [00:23:00] spends money. And , my dad has done lightning transactions. My dad has paid as a riffer in Bitcoin. , He’s done everything with Bitcoin, which is really cool. But I think more people need to see how it can relate to them on that level. And so that was really the goal is to show everyday people how you can use this technology. It’s not too early to get into it. , And yeah, there’s a lot of aspects people can appreciate, but I think a lot of the times the story is always about the price and , so I think these other stories get missed. JohnPaul: Why do money stories tug at people’s emotions so much? why is that such a core belief? Is it because money is freedom? And you talk about freedom tech a little bit. Maybe can you explain that in normal English or what that means to you along with that? Why money is the money story? Lauren: Yeah, I think, the money story is hard because look, the more money you make, the more choices, the more opportunities. I think certain things become easier, but I don’t think money solves everything. , , I’m a big believer in that, but,, having more money is always nice and having, , people on Twitter joke, , a lot about [00:24:00] generational wealth with Bitcoin, , and having all this money and being able to retire and having, being able to retire your children and their grandchildren and , I think that’s great. , that’d be awesome. , why not, , be able to do that with Bitcoin. I think making money and striving to make money and profit is a good thing, , sometimes I feel we look at it as a bad thing, but I think it’s a good thing. But I think financial freedom in general is just being financially sovereign and just being able to know that you are in control of your finances and , , your savings and growing your own wealth. And I think, it’s more about feeling we’re in a system where. Some things are out of our control. simple things we don’t think about how our money in our bank, , it’s not technically ours, , I think about, some of these issues we don’t have as much in America, but for example, there’s people in Argentina who have literally had savings in a bank. I know people who have lost their savings multiple time in a bank because they don’t actually own it when they deposit it into the bank. So I think, to me, financial freedom or freedom technology is just sovereignty. F, , financial [00:25:00] sovereignty and being able to make your own choices and have the options. JohnPaul: And you mentioned the counterparty risks of putting money in a bank and you knowing multiple people that have lost that. I personally don’t know anyone that has gone through that. Did you try to show that off in the film? that this does occur or and is that in the US tell me more about that. Lauren: Yeah. So, , you don’t see that happen in the US because we have a lot of regulations and laws around that and protections, in banks. , In Argentina , we do have a character in our film from Argentina. , He’s an act two and he talks about how he lost his, , life savings twice. And, it’s not a massive. Story in our film, I think it would be a story for one film, , a second film. It would be a great story for one of those. But there’s been multiple times in Argentina where don’t know the full story, but I think something happened where the Central Bank just took money outta people’s bank accounts because they had to hold a fill. #### Technical Discussion And when you deposit, you don’t have your right. , It’s not technically yours. , And you can lose it. They don’t have [00:26:00] regulations they do here. , That happens here, you’re gonna get paid up to a certain amount because of insurance. But, in Argentina it’s much different. And this was in the early two thousands, this happened. , But yeah, I think when people understand money and they understand inflation and they understand what’s happening with their money, if they have the tools, they have the options to do something different and do something that they control. To me that is freedom. You don’t have to do it, but just knowing that you have the option to save money somewhere else, to put your value into something else for it to grow, not depreciate. I think to me, that is freedom , to have the knowledge of those tools and to know what the issue is and. I think that is the most important JohnPaul: I definitely agree. The silence, theft, maybe we haven’t heard about people losing money in a bank, but the inflation, the money printing since COVID, the depreciation of the dollar. And it’s something that is at least in way more in the conversation today because of Twitter and the internet and the ability to talk and actually have an [00:27:00] alternative, which is Bitcoin. One Bitcoin always equals one Bitcoin. And , that’s the beauty of it. ’cause sadly, $1. Yes is always $1, but that purchasing power is gonna change. And technically Bitcoin’s purchasing power changes every day compared to dollar. So anyway, that’s a bad example. But , when it comes to deciding when a cut is done, you mentioned a few different, , not scenes, but part act one, act two, act three. , How do ? , ’cause the story is of Bitcoin’s always evolving. , we had FTX, then we have now this if a Bitcoin treasury craze. How do when to say we’re stopping here? This is where our film unbanked is gonna sit in time in the Bitcoin story. Lauren: So that’s, it’s not easy. I can’t tell you how many times \ David and I are . Oh man, do we need to add this? , , are we gonna be outdated if we don’t update this part or, it’s not an easy thing, but I think at the end of the day, we are documenting life and I think at some point, , we are documenting a period [00:28:00] in life and if, , too much time passes, this highlights this period of time , and what’s happening in the stories from that time period. So , I think in a way we were really worried about something getting outdated. , But I think the way that we ended it, you can’t totally prevent that from happening. But I think the way that we ended up being , okay, this is done. We are not adding anymore. I think it’s at a great place where it has that balance of things are obviously gonna change, ? . We ended this around. This was about. End of last year. So I would say, yeah, things change, but I think we were able to end it in a way that it feels balanced enough where people will know that this is from a specific time period and , things will definitely change, but I think we’re getting it out the right time. This is. I think about what if we got this done and put it out, a year and a half ago, even a year ago, , Bitcoin was at a way different place. I don’t think it was as talked about, we were more in a bear market. The timing right now is actually a lot better. So [00:29:00] I think we’re very happy , with how everything turned out. JohnPaul: And so tell me more. , are we doing a, festival circuit? Are you going straight to streaming? Do people pay on demand? , Where do people find the film and what’s the best way to get communities organized or events together for people that wanna do group streamings, let me do that again. What’s the best way of people that wanna do group streamings? Lauren: Yeah, so, oh, we have a lot of ways, so right now you can watch the film on our website. . It’s technically a pre-release. It’s for just a limited window. So from August 15th until October 15th, it is available to rent,, on our website. And after that it’s gonna go to a wider distribution, which we have not been able to announce yet, but we will. So we have a wider distribution plan for the fall. , , we were in, , the Manhattan Film Festival and we won a a best duck award, which we’re really excited about. And we will have another festival coming up, which we can’t announce yet as well. , But yeah, , we will have this [00:30:00] pre-release screening for about two months, and then we have. Some, wider distribution plans that we’re really excited to announce when we’re able to do that. , People can also set up group screening. So on our website you have two options. , You can set up a group screening where, , you can bring people to your home, wherever you want, and, you can screen it that way or, we have , this great, platform that we’re working with called Gather, where if you want to get it into a movie theater, there’s two ways you can do it. , It’s very simple on the website, it explains it very well on how to do it. But, , if you wanna get unbanked into a movie theater and be a host of it, you can book the date and the theater you want, and then all you have to do is just sell enough tickets. And if enough tickets sell, then it moves forward. And if it doesn’t, then , the tickets get reimbursed. And so , it’s a really cool process. It really simplifies it for people. , But yeah, we have many ways, , we’ll also share a lot of updates on our X account and on our website. So if you follow us, really any social media, we’ll have updates on our film and where you can [00:31:00] watch and what’s happening. But we’re definitely more active on x. JohnPaul: Well, that’s amazing. I was just checking out the Gather website. So right now. 1299 for 30 days it seems to pre-order for someone who wants to watch it at their house and , in their nice living room. , That’s interesting. You mentioned , the group filmings at the movie theaters, , do the amount of people you need to get? That’s something that maybe I’ll try. #### Energy Infrastructure Strategy Lauren: Yeah, you should. I think it would be really cool to get something in Austin. So we have a few people doing it right now. One person just went ahead and bought out the movie theater, all the tickets, and then they’re gonna just make it an event. But. Or you just, , it depends on the movie theater. So when you go in and it will give you the choices for theaters, it’ll show you how many tickets out of, how many seats there are need to sell in order for that to move forward. So , it’ll tell you, , there’s many options. I think a lot of a MC theaters are an option, but there’s different theater sizes, so, yeah, , it’s a pretty cool way to, get screenings. JohnPaul: Oh, awesome. I’ll definitely have to check it out. And to your point, maybe put one together Lauren: [00:32:00] Yeah. That would be awesome. Yeah. JohnPaul: So we’ll walk through some, quick lightning questions for you. So your first Bitcoin purchase, do you remember what year it was or month? I. Lauren: Yeah, it was 2019, early 2019. I think I bought, I don’t remember the amount, but I remember it was, I bought on Swan and I remember , , it used to be really cool. You buy on Swan and then it has fireworks and stuff and I thought that was really cool. So, JohnPaul: You did it. Digital money. Lauren: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I felt really JohnPaul: That’s okay. You don’t need to say the amount, just looking for the date, , that Lauren: yeah. Yep. JohnPaul: What about your favorite film for money and power? Money or power? Lauren: the Big short is one of my all time favorite films in general about money. , can I say my film unbanked. JohnPaul: Of course. What’s , one AI tool you are using today that you think other people should check out? Lauren: Oh man. I’m obsessed with ai. I use AI every day. , If you wanna do films, I [00:33:00] would say check out Higgs Field. It’s pretty cool. , Yeah, Higgs Field’s a pretty good one. JohnPaul: And then what would be a dream cameo for a future project? Lauren: Oh man. somebody else I could pick to be in a cameo in my film. JohnPaul: Yeah. Lauren: Oh man. , Bitcoin related or just any film? JohnPaul: Any film? Lauren: Oh, man. I’m a big Christian Bale fan. I’d say I love Christian Bale, in any film that, yeah, that would be a dream. #### Strategic Perspectives JohnPaul: Do you have another film you’re thinking about potentially rolling out or trying , to go through the whole gambit again, or are you gonna go on vacation for a few years Lauren: Yeah. , Dave and I have talked about it. We, I’d love to get a second unbanked two or something. , We’ve been exploring some stories. , And, , other than that I’m making short films with AI and exploring, , what. Tools filmmakers can use with ai, which I think is really cool. So right now just seeing where things go. JohnPaul: Makes sense. last on the lightning round and then we’ll have some closing questions is, which one’s more important to you? The film [00:34:00] Real counter, the view counter or the Bitcoin price. Which one’s more satisfying to Lauren: Oh man. Oh, that’s a really hard question. , I probably, oh man, that’s a hard question. I had to say how many people watch the film? JohnPaul: Yeah, , it’s reasonable. It’s, , more connected. Do you, Lauren: right. Yeah. JohnPaul: so I guess when the credits are rolling and people are sitting in their chair, what’s the feeling that you hope the audience is left with or a mixture of feelings, we talked about the thread, the messaging. What are you looking to leave the audience with? Lauren: , I think I want people to just feel really hopeful and inspired, and I think it should make people feel empowered and good. And , I think it’s also gonna depend, , I think a lot of Bitcoiners will watch this, but my goal is for it to get to people who don’t know much about Bitcoin and are interested in it. And, , one thing that we have at the way enter the film, it says, this is not financial advice. It’s an opportunity or an invitation [00:35:00] to research and do your own research and understand this technology. And, I want people to feel empowered over their own finances and. Really just wanna look into this. , I really want the everyday person to want to be more financially literate and want to take control over their finances. And I really hope that this story, whether they buy Bitcoin or not, I think that’s the most important. JohnPaul: And it’s about the opportunity to know what Bitcoin is, to your point. , it’s up to you to decide if it’s for you to buy some of it, but if you’re listening, we recommend you buy, definitely buy some Bitcoin, ? ’cause pump our Bitcoin bags. No, I’m joking. , When it comes to the last, those scenes you’re shooting, was there any scene you remember particularly that was just maybe outside of an interview but in a natural location? ’cause you guys go to some crazy places. Lauren: To crazy places. Yeah. JohnPaul: That you were , wow, this is beautiful. I never would’ve thought I would. I’m doing this and I’m so blessed Lauren: yeah, I [00:36:00] think, , for me, so this was my first film ever. So for me it was any experience, I, I felt that, , being on set is a really cool thing and, . I would say , so the first shoot that we did, it was in LA and , we filmed, Brian Brooks, who you see in our film. , He’s a fantastic in our film and we got to film this NASCAR race. So this is my first time ever being on set. So I was nervous. . , I learned so much, it was incredible. But the last day of the shoot we filmed a NASCAR race and that was awesome. And I don’t know how our dp, . Those cars are just going by so fast. It’s so loud. And we got up so close to this fence and our DP was filming through the fence. And I don’t know how we did it because it was, , it hurt your ears to be that close. It was incredible. But we got that shot and that shot is in the film and that’s one of my favorites because it also was a memory of one of my first times being on set, and just all the things I learned. And that was a really cool [00:37:00] experience. JohnPaul: I’m doing it this is the cameras, the action, the lights #### Operational Insights Lauren: I JohnPaul: we’re here in the Lauren: And I’ve never been at a NASCAR race either, and that’s a cool experience on its own too. But, , just for my first time, , in this film, it was , wow, this film is actually happening. , this used to just be a dream and a thought , and I think it’s important. If you have an idea, even if you have no experience, just find a way to do it. ? There’s no one way. I think if you just go for it. , I think it’s important. You have an idea, just go for it. JohnPaul: Just trust your vision, put your savings into a monetary asset Bitcoin that’s gonna help you out. And one thing I’ll mention is, ’cause we haven’t mentioned it yet, but ,, I’m interviewed in the. Show, which is amazing. So that’s part of the relationship we’ve been able to build over the years is I got to film in Austin and in Iowa and actually in one of our old facilities that, I dunno if this, but burned down in January. So your film captured some of the last footage that I have of the first Bitcoin mine I ever built. , [00:38:00] So it’s, yeah, it’s sad, but it’s also . It was cool to reminisce and see now that it’s been, eight months from when it happened. So it’s not as emotionally charged as when it, when we first found out the news, but , it was great to just be able to see, , it, it’s always cringey watching yourself on camera, but be able to be, be a part of the story. Lauren: this podcast because I don’t listening to myself talk, but I get it. It was a cool. At the end, one of my favorite parts. , you were a main character in our story. You’re one of the few that are there all the way through, , to beginning and end. And one of my favorite parts is at the end when you’re in Iowa, I just think some of the things you say and it’s just this really powerful moment that ties things together. So I thought Iowa stuff is some of my favorite. JohnPaul: And I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been videoed slack lining. So for people who, there’s some b roll in there of us, doing some fun things in Austin. So. Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s cool. You’re awesome. You’re really, really good in our film. And what’s so funny too is, I think I told you this, but you were one of the first people that I met, well, I think I [00:39:00] met a few other people on Clubhouse, but you’re the first person I met in person. So we met on Clubhouse because I was , you guys, I’m trying to make this documentary. We’re gonna film Bitcoin mining, and this was so early, and I think somebody connected me to you and then. We met, I went to Bitcoin 2021 with my dad because I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t have any friends that knew Bitcoin, so I went with my dad, and then my dad and I met you. Bitcoin 2021 was , it was so hot. That was in Miami. There was no , no air conditioning in some of the other tents. We met you at the food court. , It was outside and there was food trucks. I don’t know if you remember this, but you met my dad. JohnPaul: mean, and that’s just the amazingness of these events. you can meet people that then you’re, we’re able to stay in contact and then able to be a part of each other’s vision Lauren: Project you now you’re in the film. JohnPaul: Exactly. All Lauren: that crazy? Yeah, JohnPaul: of a conference and all because of just you said, random conversations at a food court. Lauren: yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty cool how things work out. Yeah. JohnPaul: Then got to share a little bit of Bitcoin day in [00:40:00] Nebraska and then also back in Austin. So, it’s been a journey and I’m so glad to hear that you’re still so active in the Bitcoin space. ’cause we need more people that are empowered or sharing their voice and especially women in Bitcoin to, and the add to the diversity of just of thought. ’cause we can definitely be an eco chamber of nerds sometimes talking in the Bitcoin space. #### Market Commentary Lauren: I think that’s hard though. It’s , , when we started this film it was , how do we break this away from the echo chamber, , and we get other people to see this. , how do we speak to people that are not already into Bitcoin? I think that’s so important. And I think, , I encourage people in the Bitcoin space to support artists and support people that wanna create stories and reach these people outside of, , just our group on X, , I think it’s really important and I do think it matters. I think art is super important in storytelling, especially for Bitcoin. I think it’s what, how we help relate to the everyday person and it speaks to people. So I’d say , if you’re definitely look to support artists, I think it is so important. [00:41:00] So. JohnPaul: Well, thank you Lauren, for coming on. I really appreciate it. And you remember guys, if you are listening in, there’s a few ways you can support Lauren as an artist. The on x easy follow easy retweet button there. Hosting a show, renting the movie, , or even hosting the movie for other people. , don’t be afraid to say hi to her at a conference the next time you see her , or say digitally hi on Twitter. She loves to connect with people, as you can tell. And, you might be in her next film. You never know. Lauren: You never know. JohnPaul: Well, thanks again guys and mine on. JohnPaul: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Digital Gold Podcast. Today’s guest is Lauren Seman. She is a director, writer, and producer . Alongside David Kuhn, she created and directed Unbank a global Bitcoin documentary in her debut future film set for release in 2025. In 2019, her father’s introduction to Satoshi Nakamoto story ignited her fascination with Bitcoin, inspiring her to merge her storytelling craft. With her advocacy for financial literacy, an early adopter of ai, Lauren collaborates with top AI companies as a creative partner, leveraging cutting edge tools to enhance storytelling and streamline production. She’s passionate about AI’s potential to empower creatives and revolutionize the filmmaking process. Lauren, welcome to the show. Lauren: Hi. Thanks for having me. JohnPaul: I’m so excited for you to be here. So back in 2019, that moment when your dad says Satoshi Nakamoto is the man of the future, he should be on Time Magazine. What’s going through your mind? Do you remember that moment? Lauren: Yeah, [00:01:00] or. I think it was right before COVID. I don’t think COVID had quite happened yet. So, , I was back home visiting my parents in Nebraska and around this time I had been studying acting. I lived in la , I didn’t know what I really wanted to do in the film industry, but, , I knew that I wanted to tell stories and I wasn’t sure yet what that was gonna look , so I was in Nebraska and I was trying to figure out, how do I get into the film industry? I have no background in film whatsoever. . What’s so funny is I went to USC for college and that’s actually one of the best film schools in the country. And unfortunately at the time I did not know I wanted to get into film, so I didn’t major in it. That was a really big missed opportunity. But, , , in the film industry, I think one of , the big challenges is finding a way in there’s no one way to break into the film industry. And I think that’s why, , there’s a really big barrier there. So, , I was back home, , in Nebraska. My dad was , well, , you, maybe you should write a script and you should look at Satoshi, [00:02:00] , read this book. And he gave me the Bitcoin standard, , by ine. And so, I read this book, and, I was just blown away and I knew nothing about money. , I studied business, in college and I just had no idea about money and all the ways, , money is manipulated and it just felt, , , and I was never a very political person. And this just woke me up and I just felt I became this. , Libertarian of, , really starting to have a passion about our financial system and how screwed up it is, and I just couldn’t believe that I had never learned any of this until that moment. So between that and then learning about Satoshi’s story, just in general, how we don’t know who this person is and how he could just create this, I was so drawn by. Who is this person and what life experiences did he have to sit down and say, I’m gonna create this money, this form of money that nobody can do base, nobody can control it. And to me, that was the major moment that got me interested in Bitcoin [00:03:00] and , and also from a storytelling perspective. And so I was , what? I don’t know how to get into this film industry. I love Bitcoin. , this is fascinating to me. And so, I think then COVID hit and I actually just stayed in Nebraska. I moved out of la I stayed in Nebraska near my parents. And, my dad’s , you should write a script about Satoshi. So I, started writing a script about Satoshi and my dad and I actually did it together, and , it’s probably a horrible script. I have not visited this script since 2019. But it was really just about, , what life experiences Satoshi could have gone through to get to this point. #### Innovation and Technology And that story was meant to make an everyday person understand how they can relate to this technology. . So I wrote this full length feature film. It was 110 pages. It’s probably not very good because this was my first ever script I ever wrote. And then I got to the end of this and I was , well, I have no idea how to get this made. I don’t even know how to revise this script. I knew nobody in the film [00:04:00] industry. I knew nothing about production. , I knew absolutely nothing. So I was , well, , I watched all these Bitcoin documentaries and , I felt , oh, and to rewind, I first got into, when I first started writing the script. Ben Prentice. Start, I don’t know if Ben Prentice, but, I remember I met some people, through Twitter or Clubhouse and he was one of the first people I met just online. And I was , I’m writing a script. Can you help me? , I don’t understand proof of work and all this. And I was sending it back and forth with him and he was so helpful and so kind, and just helped me understand, , the, really, the technical aspects of this, which is very complicated. So shout out to Ben, for all his help. Back then. But, after this process of having this script, I was , I have no idea how I’m gonna get this made. So , I watched a bunch of Bitcoin documentaries and I felt there was an opportunity to tell a story about Bitcoin, but in the form of a documentary. And, I felt a lot of , the documentaries that, we have great documentaries, but they all focus on a different time [00:05:00] period, , the early cyberpunk days. And. That was where the documentary sprung from was I think there’s an opportunity to make a Bitcoin documentary and I think we need to focus on, , what’s happening today and just everyday people. , So first of all, , I said my dad introduced me to Satoshi Nakamoto story, which is pretty crazy. So my dad is, I don’t wanna drop his age, but he’s 70 years old and he got into Bitcoin in 2015, which is pretty early, , for, I hate to call him a boomer, but , he’s a boomer. So, . I think that was really cool. And he had, during the 2008 financial crisis, , that’s the first time in his life that he really looked at the financial system and said, how the hell are these things happening? , how do we have these crisis? And , he was impacted by , that crisis. And, , he just saw all the destruction that happened. And that’s the first time he really looked into Bitcoin. I think he got introduced to it through Real Vision. I think back then Real Vision was the World Crypto Network. And then he got into [00:06:00] Bitcoin in 2015, which, to me is pretty cool. , But yeah, so that’s the starting point of the documentary. It was pretty, a wild experience, but I just got to a point where I was , I do not know how to get into this film industry. And I think there’s no one way to do it. If you wanna create something, you just find your own unique path to create it. And, , you don’t let anybody tell you no, even though , they will a thousand times before you get a yes. But, yeah, , that’s the early beginnings of this. JohnPaul: It sounds almost a trial by fire. I dunno how many people think, oh, let me read this Bitcoin book and then , I need to make a documentary about this whole ecosystem. So I think that’s a very, very unique approach to read the book Lauren and be , I’m gonna be a director now. Is that the first . Did you make YouTube videos before? Did you do other creative mediums or was it just straight , let me write 110 page script. Lauren: Yeah, so I was a volleyball player my entire life. I was always an athlete, but I was also had this very big creative [00:07:00] side. I was always very artsy, and my mom is that too. And so I always had a creative side in me, but I was always an athlete for, , until I was probably 23, 24. , I think, I actually don’t even really know what I want to call myself., I’m a director and co-producer and writer of this documentary alongside David, but I consider myself this creative generalist. I love to just find, something that needs to be created and find a way to create it. That’s maybe more of a creator. I, would consider myself that. less of a director, but more of a creator. So, yeah, I think it was that moment I was , I just wanna create this, this is cool and I see an opportunity and I wanna find a way to make this happen. And, it was a massive learning experience for me because I’ve never made a film. So, , yeah, it was crazy. I’m still mind blown that I’ve got this documentary sitting there. , this was. Long process. , 2019, I think David and I started working on it together officially in October of 2021.[00:08:00] And , here we are. It’s available now to watch, but it’s what, four years later? It’s pretty crazy. JohnPaul: then what was the attraction primarily? Was it ideological because of your dad and how it’s different than 2008 and maybe what happened there? Was it just number go up? Or was it more technical interest into Bitcoin? ’cause you don’t see many volleyball players saying Bitcoin film now, this is amazing. So , what drew you to it? Lauren: I don’t know. It’s a good question. I think I’ve always been interested in, , I hate to say nerdy things, but nerdy technical things. I’m not a technical person. I was never a software developer, but, I’m very much interested, I love the movie The Big Short, for example. #### Growth and Vision So I’ve always been interested, maybe I didn’t know at the time when I watched it, what exactly it was completely about , and the significance of that event. But I was always very much interested, in these things. But I don’t think until I got into Bitcoin, I really understood the significance of all of this and, how big it is and how much it affects our everyday lives. But I think for me, I saw a lot of times in [00:09:00] my life. Where, my dad was stressed about money or, I saw, money, , be the demise of families that were around me, and I never really understood, what was behind all of that until. I got into Bitcoin and I think that moment of getting into Bitcoin and seeing how money really works really just clicked for me. And then understanding the pressure and the things my dad of, a dad that is providing for his families had to go through, ? And I think it just made me, I actually made my dad and I bond a lot more. We got really close after I got into Bitcoin and we’re still very close. And I think it was just a. A cool moment that, now I’m very passionate about and I think it’s because I saw my dad go through all of this and yeah, I’m not sure, it’s a good question. I don’t know if I had a perfect answer for it, but I would say that’s probably my best answer. JohnPaul: There’s no perfect answer. I think you mentioned this trend of money and when you’re building a documentary, the first thing you might not think about is [00:10:00] the finances for it. But very quickly after maybe writing the script or thinking about the documentary more, the question comes as, how do I finance this shoot where you guys flew to some amazing destinations all across the globe. So talk to me about. That process and maybe what unlocked momentum for you where you really started to get the capital you needed, plus how do you even budget for that? do you do? Lauren: , Okay, so this goes back all the way back to my club. House days. So when I first got into Bitcoin and I said, I’m making this documentary, I don’t know how yet, but I’m gonna find a way. So I first started off on Clubhouse. I had no Twitter followers yet. My dad was , oh, I think all the Bitcoiners hang out on Clubhouse. So I’m , okay. So I created an account and I just sat in the audience, , and I was terrified to speak to people and I just knew that I was gonna have to, at some point show people that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Bitcoin and build trust and network. , And so Clubhouse really was my starting place, and I think [00:11:00] that’s where I originally met you. , And, , eventually got connected through to Jason Williams, who is, an executive producer of the documentary and the first person to actually, commit capital to the film. So I owe Jason a lot. He’s been a huge supporter. He. Awesome guy. So, , I first started off on Clubhouse and it was just networking and I had , maybe 20 followers on Twitter and I never tweeted. So I was , what? If I’m gonna get people to respond to my dms, I’m gonna have to not be private. I’m gonna have to tweet things. I’m gonna have to find a way to stand out. And so what I started doing was. I started making these, Twitter threads because I’m , ah, I wanna make a Bitcoin movie. I love film, so I’m gonna make these threads about Bitcoin and movies. And so I found a way and some of those went viral. , , relatively viral, , 2000 likes. And I think that’s the first time people started following me and associating me with film and Bitcoin. And I think that was very helpful. In getting people to respond to my [00:12:00] dms and take me more seriously. I think that was a very important step. . But I got introduced to Jason through a friend, and he was the first person to the idea and say, look, I, if you can find someone to do this with you, , I’ll put in money. So, I had Jason committed and he was a huge supporter. And then, I got connected to David, my current film partner and who we co-directed this together. . Later that year and after that, I was able to then tell investors, I’ve got this great, , director and producer to work with me. And that was massive, , in, helping, my pitch. JohnPaul: How did you meet David? that’s such a crucial inflection point. Lauren: . Yeah. I didn’t know anybody and I just was networking, but every little person that I did know, I was , talking to everybody that I could and I was just getting intros to, everybody. And we ended up getting,. Introduced through Eugene Jarecki, who David has worked with, and Eugene has done incredible documentaries at the highest level. I got connected to Eugene. Eugene was , oh, I’m in Berlin and I won’t be able to be a [00:13:00] part of this, but you need to talk to David. He’s the best. And he connected me to David. And from there we just decided to partner on this. And what was cool is, , \, this was David’s first introduction to Bitcoin. He had never been into Bitcoin or knew much about it. And so I think that’s why the partnership was so great because. I knew too much about Bitcoin and he knew nothing. So we had a really great balance there as co-directors. , But, and now he loves it. It’s been really cool to see his journey getting into Bitcoin from beginning of this production till now. And, , it’s been cool to , , his experience, from beginning to end and, yeah, now he’s very passionate about Bitcoin, so it’s been pretty cool. JohnPaul: Is there anything that came up in that co-directing where you. he had an epiphany about Bitcoin or you were able to cross the chasm with him of why bitcoin’s so important or ’cause the co-directing. It’s you’re both trying to pull the script effectively in the film in one direction, and you both have these ideas of what it is in your head. And so not having. having different beliefs [00:14:00] about Bitcoin or different understandings about it must have made it some ports difficult, but also just because you’re so passionate about your side of the Bitcoin story, and talk to me more about how that interplay works. #### Infrastructure Focus Lauren: Yeah, no, , you don’t see a lot of co-directors ’cause , it’s very hard, ? But I think we were lucky that we have a great dynamic in the sense of, I am not a documentary expert. He is, he’s a documentary expert and so I think, , I lean on him to help guide me in this process of making the film. But, he leans on me about Bitcoin information and that side of the story because I do know Bitcoin and I, so I think we’ve got a great dynamic where, we’ve got a very strategic division of labor because we both have our strength and, we’re lucky that it worked out really well. JohnPaul: That’s all that matters. , , so , you’re directing this film, you’re sitting down with people Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey, Adam back. Who surprised you the most when you’re having those conversations and who did your team interview versus, , maybe you, I know [00:15:00] some of you guys had a lot of people working on this. You didn’t get to interview every single person, but talk to me more about those conversations and maybe who surprised you? Lauren: I would say, one of my favorite interviews was Sailor and I just remember one, he was really hard to get and I did not know if we were gonna get him in this film. And I’m telling you, I tried. Every way possible to get him in this film. And finally it worked. So, we went to his interview and I wouldn’t say necessarily surprised in his, , , sailor’s brilliant and he’s, you’ve seen him on podcasts, but I was just so surprised with how he can sit there. , he sat there for. Two hours during this interview and just the way that , he can just talk. , he doesn’t even need breaks, he just goes for two hours straight and I just could not believe the stamina and being able to do that. , it was just incredible to watch him in person. , You don’t see the editing cuts you do in a podcast. But, he just, the way he can sit there and just talk about Bitcoin and you can just tell that he’s so genuinely passionate about it. I think that was really cool. And I remember just after that interview, David and I [00:16:00] giving each other a giant hug. , oh my gosh, I cannot believe we just got that. , , that was just so cool. , We were both so excited about that interview. Ted Cruz, very generous with his time, very kind. , Which those people are busy. , Scheduling with senators is very hard and , he was surprisingly very generous with his time. Which, , I think is awesome. I think a lot of people, , you expect a lot of, everyone we interviewed, they’re very busy people and they’re very hard to reach people, but they were all so kind and generous and I think genuinely passionate , about the topic. , Yeah, so David, David does all the interviews. We write the questions together and talk about that and David interviews and , we decided that makes the most sense, , when you’re interviewing. , There’s a lot that goes into it and you have to keep the subject’s eye line. You also, , an issue for me is I know so much about Bitcoin that a subject says something, I might not be , oh, well, what do you mean? Or I might just, , it’s a little bit too, I know a little bit too much about Bitcoin , and David does a fantastic job. He knows exactly how to [00:17:00] interview subjects. There’s a lot that goes into it. And we found that system worked the best for us. But yeah,, I’m not sure if I know the most surprising. I think what’s cool though, a lot of things we learned along the way, because if you think about it, documentaries are, you’re documenting life and there is a process where. I would say we planned to some extent, I remember the first time David and I met, we laid out this giant piece of paper and we wrote out an outline. It’s a rough outline, but it’s , this is where we’re gonna start and this is where we’re gonna end. These are the people we want to interview, and this is where they fit. And as you go on in this process, we have to. Go back to that drawing board and change things because as we document life, we get things or we can’t get certain people or somebody gave us something that we didn’t expect to get from them and that we don’t need this other piece and . Things change because you are documenting life and you can’t plan how that’s gonna go. , One of the, a really cool piece of advice that David gave me in the beginning was if we set out and we end up making the film that [00:18:00] we set out to make, then we’re not doing it right. This should change. We should discover new things., And that’s exactly what we did. And I think that’s really cool. And one of my probably favorite aspects about making documentaries. JohnPaul: And so these themes that you’re talking about, I can just imagine a massive whiteboard effectively, but with on paper and you guys just drawing stick figures and little Bitcoin logos and arrows everywhere. What’s the theme that, or themes that go through the film that you want to share with the audience? And then what’s a theme that we’ll never see because it got caught? Lauren: Yeah, man. So we filmed 2200 hours of footage and the film is only an hour and 25 minutes. So JohnPaul: one 20th of everything. Got cut. Lauren: Everything got cut. And that’s just how it works, ? And some films film way more than that and then, , they have to cut way more. So it’s not easy. And we’re lucky. We have the best team. #### Economic Realities , we have the best editors. So what you see, , when you watch this film is you see the result of incredible people, [00:19:00] many incredible people working on this. It’s not just David and we have the best people working on this. , But I would say, the main message we wanted people to see. I think one thing that I’ve been frustrated about with Bitcoin, not necessarily it’s not Bitcoin’s fault, but it’s just that Bitcoin has become, , I have, I know some people who are , oh, well, Bitcoin is just this conservative, it’s been, this conservative thing. I’m , no, it’s not. , It’s really not. It’s really for any, anybody, on any political spectrum. And I think, , one theme was just to show that it’s very simple, but Bitcoin is for everybody. I think, , you’ll see in the film that, I think there’s things that people will love no matter, , what your politics are. , And that was the goal. , Another thing is, , we tried to explore all the different ways that Bitcoin is being used. And we’re not trying to tell people what Bitcoin’s use case is. It’s more about showing it and what everyday people are using it for. And, letting the message speak for itself. Marker Lauren: And so, , I would say right now I think [00:20:00] Bitcoin is something different depending on where you are. And the film really highlights that. And I think, , it’s gonna depend who knows where, what Bitcoin’s main use case is gonna be in 20 years and 30 years. But I think it’s definitely gonna depend on where you are and what the circumstances are. . But , , I think something that is very cool too, and I’m not sure , how much this is really said in the film, but to me it’s a big takeaway is that I think one of Bitcoin’s most important aspects is not necessarily its number go up or its savings method, it’s just that it’s brought this movement of financial literacy. And I think that is so important, , there’s a moment that we have, a guy from Harlem that’s. Says, he talks about how he just one day was , I don’t know what’s going on. why is my savings account this? And why do I not have this much money in savings? And, , getting into Bitcoin and just is awakening there. And I think that is so powerful. beyond the number, go up, beyond, obviously number go up is great. I think that’s an important aspect of Bitcoin. I think [00:21:00] being able to save your money and hold its value is important. I think transactions are important. , But I just think the fact that people are more financially literate today and. To me that is an important message from the film, and it’s not as prominent, but I think it’s an important takeaway. JohnPaul: I liked how you definitely interweave different levels of socioeconomic status and. Beliefs in the film because you have these people that are, Michael Saylor, $75 billion of Bitcoin, and you have someone in Harlem,, a hundred dollars of Bitcoin, a thousand dollars of Bitcoin, and be able to show the passion at both levels where it doesn’t matter the amount of Bitcoin you own, but the fact that you can have access to this technology and the benefits it brings you are the same that it brings Michael Saylor. Is an amazing aspect of the film, I think is underappreciated, but also just something that people don’t talk about enough about Bitcoin. The fact that it [00:22:00] is the internet and anyone can access it. So you did a really good job with trying to interweave that, I would say in into the film itself. Lauren: Thank you. Yeah, I think that’s really important because, as I talk to other people that I meet that don’t know much about Bitcoin, and I try and talk to ’em about it, they’re , oh, well, it’s just so expensive. , I’m , ah, it’s not if, , what? I think there is a use case for everybody. I think Bitcoin has so many use cases. It’s so valuable in so many different ways, and I think when people can understand the different ways that it can help you in your life or, depending on your situation, I, I think that’s important. And , I do believe, , some people say , the price doesn’t matter. I do think the price does matter. I think the price going up is important. I think that’s a great aspect of Bitcoin. But I think there are so many great aspects that people can use it in their life and they just don’t know it yet. So that was the goal is for, , I think back to my dad and how he got into Bitcoin because he’s , why am I having such a hard time with this financial system? And then he looked into it and. It changed his mindset and it changed the way he saves money and the way he [00:23:00] spends money. And , my dad has done lightning transactions. My dad has paid as a riffer in Bitcoin. , He’s done everything with Bitcoin, which is really cool. But I think more people need to see how it can relate to them on that level. And so that was really the goal is to show everyday people how you can use this technology. It’s not too early to get into it. , And yeah, there’s a lot of aspects people can appreciate, but I think a lot of the times the story is always about the price and , so I think these other stories get missed. JohnPaul: Why do money stories tug at people’s emotions so much? why is that such a core belief? Is it because money is freedom? And you talk about freedom tech a little bit. Maybe can you explain that in normal English or what that means to you along with that? Why money is the money story? #### Broader Implications Lauren: Yeah, I think, the money story is hard because look, the more money you make, the more choices, the more opportunities. I think certain things become easier, but I don’t think money solves everything. , , I’m a big believer in that, but,, having more money is always nice and having, , people on Twitter joke, , a lot about [00:24:00] generational wealth with Bitcoin, , and having all this money and being able to retire and having, being able to retire your children and their grandchildren and , I think that’s great. , that’d be awesome. , why not, , be able to do that with Bitcoin. I think making money and striving to make money and profit is a good thing, , sometimes I feel we look at it as a bad thing, but I think it’s a good thing. But I think financial freedom in general is just being financially sovereign and just being able to know that you are in control of your finances and , , your savings and growing your own wealth. And I think, it’s more about feeling we’re in a system where. Some things are out of our control. simple things we don’t think about how our money in our bank, , it’s not technically ours, , I think about, some of these issues we don’t have as much in America, but for example, there’s people in Argentina who have literally had savings in a bank. I know people who have lost their savings multiple time in a bank because they don’t actually own it when they deposit it into the bank. So I think, to me, financial freedom or freedom technology is just sovereignty. F, , financial [00:25:00] sovereignty and being able to make your own choices and have the options. JohnPaul: And you mentioned the counterparty risks of putting money in a bank and you knowing multiple people that have lost that. I personally don’t know anyone that has gone through that. Did you try to show that off in the film? that this does occur or and is that in the US tell me more about that. Lauren: Yeah. So, , you don’t see that happen in the US because we have a lot of regulations and laws around that and protections, in banks. , In Argentina , we do have a character in our film from Argentina. , He’s an act two and he talks about how he lost his, , life savings twice. And, it’s not a massive. Story in our film, I think it would be a story for one film, , a second film. It would be a great story for one of those. But there’s been multiple times in Argentina where don’t know the full story, but I think something happened where the Central Bank just took money outta people’s bank accounts because they had to hold a fill. And when you deposit, you don’t have your right. , It’s not technically yours. , And you can lose it. They don’t have [00:26:00] regulations they do here. , That happens here, you’re gonna get paid up to a certain amount because of insurance. But, in Argentina it’s much different. And this was in the early two thousands, this happened. , But yeah, I think when people understand money and they understand inflation and they understand what’s happening with their money, if they have the tools, they have the options to do something different and do something that they control. To me that is freedom. You don’t have to do it, but just knowing that you have the option to save money somewhere else, to put your value into something else for it to grow, not depreciate. I think to me, that is freedom , to have the knowledge of those tools and to know what the issue is and. I think that is the most important JohnPaul: I definitely agree. The silence, theft, maybe we haven’t heard about people losing money in a bank, but the inflation, the money printing since COVID, the depreciation of the dollar. And it’s something that is at least in way more in the conversation today because of Twitter and the internet and the ability to talk and actually have an [00:27:00] alternative, which is Bitcoin. One Bitcoin always equals one Bitcoin. And , that’s the beauty of it. ’cause sadly, $1. Yes is always $1, but that purchasing power is gonna change. And technically Bitcoin’s purchasing power changes every day compared to dollar. So anyway, that’s a bad example. But , when it comes to deciding when a cut is done, you mentioned a few different, , not scenes, but part act one, act two, act three. , How do ? , ’cause the story is of Bitcoin’s always evolving. , we had FTX, then we have now this if a Bitcoin treasury craze. How do when to say we’re stopping here? This is where our film unbanked is gonna sit in time in the Bitcoin story. Lauren: So that’s, it’s not easy. I can’t tell you how many times \ David and I are . Oh man, do we need to add this? , , are we gonna be outdated if we don’t update this part or, it’s not an easy thing, but I think at the end of the day, we are documenting life and I think at some point, , we are documenting a period [00:28:00] in life and if, , too much time passes, this highlights this period of time , and what’s happening in the stories from that time period. So , I think in a way we were really worried about something getting outdated. , But I think the way that we ended it, you can’t totally prevent that from happening. But I think the way that we ended up being , okay, this is done. We are not adding anymore. I think it’s at a great place where it has that balance of things are obviously gonna change, ? . We ended this around. This was about. End of last year. So I would say, yeah, things change, but I think we were able to end it in a way that it feels balanced enough where people will know that this is from a specific time period and , things will definitely change, but I think we’re getting it out the right time. This is. I think about what if we got this done and put it out, a year and a half ago, even a year ago, , Bitcoin was at a way different place. I don’t think it was as talked about, we were more in a bear market. The timing right now is actually a lot better. So [00:29:00] I think we’re very happy , with how everything turned out. JohnPaul: And so tell me more. , are we doing a, festival circuit? Are you going straight to streaming? Do people pay on demand? , Where do people find the film and what’s the best way to get communities organized or events together for people that wanna do group streamings, let me do that again. What’s the best way of people that wanna do group streamings? Lauren: Yeah, so, oh, we have a lot of ways, so right now you can watch the film on our website. . It’s technically a pre-release. It’s for just a limited window. So from August 15th until October 15th, it is available to rent,, on our website. And after that it’s gonna go to a wider distribution, which we have not been able to announce yet, but we will. #### Building the Team So we have a wider distribution plan for the fall. , , we were in, , the Manhattan Film Festival and we won a a best duck award, which we’re really excited about. And we will have another festival coming up, which we can’t announce yet as well. , But yeah, , we will have this [00:30:00] pre-release screening for about two months, and then we have. Some, wider distribution plans that we’re really excited to announce when we’re able to do that. , People can also set up group screening. So on our website you have two options. , You can set up a group screening where, , you can bring people to your home, wherever you want, and, you can screen it that way or, we have , this great, platform that we’re working with called Gather, where if you want to get it into a movie theater, there’s two ways you can do it. , It’s very simple on the website, it explains it very well on how to do it. But, , if you wanna get unbanked into a movie theater and be a host of it, you can book the date and the theater you want, and then all you have to do is just sell enough tickets. And if enough tickets sell, then it moves forward. And if it doesn’t, then , the tickets get reimbursed. And so , it’s a really cool process. It really simplifies it for people. , But yeah, we have many ways, , we’ll also share a lot of updates on our X account and on our website. So if you follow us, really any social media, we’ll have updates on our film and where you can [00:31:00] watch and what’s happening. But we’re definitely more active on x. JohnPaul: Well, that’s amazing. I was just checking out the Gather website. So right now. 1299 for 30 days it seems to pre-order for someone who wants to watch it at their house and , in their nice living room. , That’s interesting. You mentioned , the group filmings at the movie theaters, , do the amount of people you need to get? That’s something that maybe I’ll try. Lauren: Yeah, you should. I think it would be really cool to get something in Austin. So we have a few people doing it right now. One person just went ahead and bought out the movie theater, all the tickets, and then they’re gonna just make it an event. But. Or you just, , it depends on the movie theater. So when you go in and it will give you the choices for theaters, it’ll show you how many tickets out of, how many seats there are need to sell in order for that to move forward. So , it’ll tell you, , there’s many options. I think a lot of a MC theaters are an option, but there’s different theater sizes, so, yeah, , it’s a pretty cool way to, get screenings. JohnPaul: Oh, awesome. I’ll definitely have to check it out. And to your point, maybe put one together Lauren: [00:32:00] Yeah. That would be awesome. Yeah. JohnPaul: So we’ll walk through some, quick lightning questions for you. So your first Bitcoin purchase, do you remember what year it was or month? I. Lauren: Yeah, it was 2019, early 2019. I think I bought, I don’t remember the amount, but I remember it was, I bought on Swan and I remember , , it used to be really cool. You buy on Swan and then it has fireworks and stuff and I thought that was really cool. So, JohnPaul: You did it. Digital money. Lauren: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I felt really JohnPaul: That’s okay. You don’t need to say the amount, just looking for the date, , that Lauren: yeah. Yep. JohnPaul: What about your favorite film for money and power? Money or power? Lauren: the Big short is one of my all time favorite films in general about money. , can I say my film unbanked. JohnPaul: Of course. What’s , one AI tool you are using today that you think other people should check out? #### Bitcoin Price Dynamics Lauren: Oh man. I’m obsessed with ai. I use AI every day. , If you wanna do films, I [00:33:00] would say check out Higgs Field. It’s pretty cool. , Yeah, Higgs Field’s a pretty good one. JohnPaul: And then what would be a dream cameo for a future project? Lauren: Oh man. somebody else I could pick to be in a cameo in my film. JohnPaul: Yeah. Lauren: Oh man. , Bitcoin related or just any film? JohnPaul: Any film? Lauren: Oh, man. I’m a big Christian Bale fan. I’d say I love Christian Bale, in any film that, yeah, that would be a dream. JohnPaul: Do you have another film you’re thinking about potentially rolling out or trying , to go through the whole gambit again, or are you gonna go on vacation for a few years Lauren: Yeah. , Dave and I have talked about it. We, I’d love to get a second unbanked two or something. , We’ve been exploring some stories. , And, , other than that I’m making short films with AI and exploring, , what. Tools filmmakers can use with ai, which I think is really cool. So right now just seeing where things go. JohnPaul: Makes sense. last on the lightning round and then we’ll have some closing questions is, which one’s more important to you? The film [00:34:00] Real counter, the view counter or the Bitcoin price. Which one’s more satisfying to Lauren: Oh man. Oh, that’s a really hard question. , I probably, oh man, that’s a hard question. I had to say how many people watch the film? JohnPaul: Yeah, , it’s reasonable. It’s, , more connected. Do you, Lauren: right. Yeah. JohnPaul: so I guess when the credits are rolling and people are sitting in their chair, what’s the feeling that you hope the audience is left with or a mixture of feelings, we talked about the thread, the messaging. What are you looking to leave the audience with? Lauren: , I think I want people to just feel really hopeful and inspired, and I think it should make people feel empowered and good. And , I think it’s also gonna depend, , I think a lot of Bitcoiners will watch this, but my goal is for it to get to people who don’t know much about Bitcoin and are interested in it. And, , one thing that we have at the way enter the film, it says, this is not financial advice. It’s an opportunity or an invitation [00:35:00] to research and do your own research and understand this technology. And, I want people to feel empowered over their own finances and. Really just wanna look into this. , I really want the everyday person to want to be more financially literate and want to take control over their finances. And I really hope that this story, whether they buy Bitcoin or not, I think that’s the most important. JohnPaul: And it’s about the opportunity to know what Bitcoin is, to your point. , it’s up to you to decide if it’s for you to buy some of it, but if you’re listening, we recommend you buy, definitely buy some Bitcoin, ? ’cause pump our Bitcoin bags. No, I’m joking. , When it comes to the last, those scenes you’re shooting, was there any scene you remember particularly that was just maybe outside of an interview but in a natural location? ’cause you guys go to some crazy places. #### Looking to the Future Lauren: To crazy places. Yeah. JohnPaul: That you were , wow, this is beautiful. I never would’ve thought I would. I’m doing this and I’m so blessed Lauren: yeah, I [00:36:00] think, , for me, so this was my first film ever. So for me it was any experience, I, I felt that, , being on set is a really cool thing and, . I would say , so the first shoot that we did, it was in LA and , we filmed, Brian Brooks, who you see in our film. , He’s a fantastic in our film and we got to film this NASCAR race. So this is my first time ever being on set. So I was nervous. . , I learned so much, it was incredible. But the last day of the shoot we filmed a NASCAR race and that was awesome. And I don’t know how our dp, . Those cars are just going by so fast. It’s so loud. And we got up so close to this fence and our DP was filming through the fence. And I don’t know how we did it because it was, , it hurt your ears to be that close. It was incredible. But we got that shot and that shot is in the film and that’s one of my favorites because it also was a memory of one of my first times being on set, and just all the things I learned. And that was a really cool [00:37:00] experience. JohnPaul: I’m doing it this is the cameras, the action, the lights Lauren: I JohnPaul: we’re here in the Lauren: And I’ve never been at a NASCAR race either, and that’s a cool experience on its own too. But, , just for my first time, , in this film, it was , wow, this film is actually happening. , this used to just be a dream and a thought , and I think it’s important. If you have an idea, even if you have no experience, just find a way to do it. ? There’s no one way. I think if you just go for it. , I think it’s important. You have an idea, just go for it. JohnPaul: Just trust your vision, put your savings into a monetary asset Bitcoin that’s gonna help you out. And one thing I’ll mention is, ’cause we haven’t mentioned it yet, but ,, I’m interviewed in the. Show, which is amazing. So that’s part of the relationship we’ve been able to build over the years is I got to film in Austin and in Iowa and actually in one of our old facilities that, I dunno if this, but burned down in January. So your film captured some of the last footage that I have of the first Bitcoin mine I ever built. , [00:38:00] So it’s, yeah, it’s sad, but it’s also . It was cool to reminisce and see now that it’s been, eight months from when it happened. So it’s not as emotionally charged as when it, when we first found out the news, but , it was great to just be able to see, , it, it’s always cringey watching yourself on camera, but be able to be, be a part of the story. Lauren: this podcast because I don’t listening to myself talk, but I get it. It was a cool. At the end, one of my favorite parts. , you were a main character in our story. You’re one of the few that are there all the way through, , to beginning and end. And one of my favorite parts is at the end when you’re in Iowa, I just think some of the things you say and it’s just this really powerful moment that ties things together. So I thought Iowa stuff is some of my favorite. JohnPaul: And I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been videoed slack lining. So for people who, there’s some b roll in there of us, doing some fun things in Austin. So. Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. No, it’s cool. You’re awesome. You’re really, really good in our film. And what’s so funny too is, I think I told you this, but you were one of the first people that I met, well, I think I [00:39:00] met a few other people on Clubhouse, but you’re the first person I met in person. So we met on Clubhouse because I was , you guys, I’m trying to make this documentary. We’re gonna film Bitcoin mining, and this was so early, and I think somebody connected me to you and then. We met, I went to Bitcoin 2021 with my dad because I didn’t know anybody and I didn’t have any friends that knew Bitcoin, so I went with my dad, and then my dad and I met you. Bitcoin 2021 was , it was so hot. That was in Miami. There was no , no air conditioning in some of the other tents. We met you at the food court. , It was outside and there was food trucks. I don’t know if you remember this, but you met my dad. JohnPaul: mean, and that’s just the amazingness of these events. you can meet people that then you’re, we’re able to stay in contact and then able to be a part of each other’s vision #### Practical Takeaways Lauren: Project you now you’re in the film. JohnPaul: Exactly. All Lauren: that crazy? Yeah, JohnPaul: of a conference and all because of just you said, random conversations at a food court. Lauren: yeah. Yeah. It’s pretty cool how things work out. Yeah. JohnPaul: Then got to share a little bit of Bitcoin day in [00:40:00] Nebraska and then also back in Austin. So, it’s been a journey and I’m so glad to hear that you’re still so active in the Bitcoin space. ’cause we need more people that are empowered or sharing their voice and especially women in Bitcoin to, and the add to the diversity of just of thought. ’cause we can definitely be an eco chamber of nerds sometimes talking in the Bitcoin space. Lauren: I think that’s hard though. It’s , , when we started this film it was , how do we break this away from the echo chamber, , and we get other people to see this. , how do we speak to people that are not already into Bitcoin? I think that’s so important. And I think, , I encourage people in the Bitcoin space to support artists and support people that wanna create stories and reach these people outside of, , just our group on X, , I think it’s really important and I do think it matters. I think art is super important in storytelling, especially for Bitcoin. I think it’s what, how we help relate to the everyday person and it speaks to people. So I’d say , if you’re definitely look to support artists, I think it is so important. [00:41:00] So. JohnPaul: Well, thank you Lauren, for coming on. I really appreciate it. And you remember guys, if you are listening in, there’s a few ways you can support Lauren as an artist. The on x easy follow easy retweet button there. Hosting a show, renting the movie, , or even hosting the movie for other people. , don’t be afraid to say hi to her at a conference the next time you see her , or say digitally hi on Twitter. She loves to connect with people, as you can tell. And, you might be in her next film. You never know. Lauren: You never know. JohnPaul: Well, thanks again guys and mine on. ↑ Back to Top ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Tokenomics to Monetize Social Media | Digital Gold Podcast Ep. 3 Source: https://miningstore.com/digital-gold-podcast/warren-whitlock/ All Episodes Episode 3 # Tokenomics to Monetize Social Media with Warren Whitlock Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube ## About This Episode In this episode of Digital Gold, JP Baric sits down with Warren Whitlock to discuss tokenomics to monetize social media. ### Tokenomics to Monetize Social Media Guest: Warren Whitlock Episode 3 of the Digital Gold Podcast with JohnPaul Baric #### Full Conversation 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. JohnPaul: [00:00:42] My guest today is Warren Rittlock. Warren is a business storyteller with a vast network and a mission to help brands improve the results of their digital marketing. Throughout his career, he has created new strategies to use influence and persuasion to help his clients to achieve their goals. Warren says, I set hard sales goals and measure performance [00:00:58] but never forgot the people hate being sold but loved to buy. Warren Rittlock has been an entrepreneur in the computer publishing and media industries. He looks for collaborations where brands can share resources, extend their reach and give customers an experience they will want to share with others. Warren is currently partnering with IBM Futurists and JohnPaul: [00:01:13] a few brands and startups along with keynotes where he can engage with executives transforming the organizations for abundant future. I'd like to welcome Warren Rittlock to the podcast. Warren: [00:01:22] Warren, how are you doing today? Howdy. I'm glad to be here. Glad to be alive. Ah, I'm great to hear that. It's a beautiful day today, Tuesday Election Day, but we're not going to talk about too much about that. As we jump into the question, the first opener we have here, I'm endlessly fascinated by all the very projects that you're constantly JohnPaul: [00:01:39] working on. It leads me to my first question, which is, when you meet someone who is not Warren: [00:01:43] familiar with your background and they ask you the age-old question of, what do you do? Or how do you spend your time? How do you even begin to answer that, Warren? What's your go-to stock answer? My favorite way to answer that is I try to be an enigma. So, I thought having business cards made, then I realized that I never stay on one thing [00:02:01] long enough to get business cards made. But I like a variety of projects. I started out out of college selling radio advertising, a little bit of newspaper, actually, and then some radio advertising. Oh, the first 10 years of my career was broadcasting. And back then, what I really loved about my job was I was working in a small town and we were the only Warren: [00:02:25] radio station. There were six newspapers. So, that was our competition. And we were very close to major markets in Northern California. And so, we had to do something unique. There were no ad agencies. There was no professional marketing being done other than the stuff we got from outside. And so, we were constantly creating things and helping people. And I [00:02:47] learned to sell. First of all, I learned that what you said about me, that I'd rather find people that want to buy than waste my time trying to talk somebody into something. And especially true now, but we can get into that later. And I was doing that. And what I really loved about the job was I could sit down and talk to anybody about anything. And because Warren: [00:03:09] I worked for the radio station, it was exotic enough in a suburban community that people JohnPaul: [00:03:15] would want to know about that. And then how does that work? How would radio advertising Warren: [00:03:19] help my business? Or what, you know, I told my boss, we should be doing something like this. So, I was constantly helping people talk about their business problem. And it was different every day. I met with a guy once who had co-op money. That's when the manufacturer says, we'll reimburse you if you run ads. And he was in the oil business. [00:03:39] It was actually, I think it was Chevron, was one of the big companies. And he had this fund of money that he could spend. But he was because he was catering to farms. He just wasn't selling come to my gas station or anything. And so, what can we do? We're not the farmers radio station. What can we do with this? And the interesting things I found out about his Warren: [00:04:05] business was much more interesting what the ads we ended up writing. And it was just like that every day. And throughout my career, that's what I've looked for. There have been times when I really got stuck into the rut. I ran one business for what I call the 17 years in the suburbs raising children. And, you know, we pivoted, we changed. It was in [00:04:26] it was in PC. So we were there was always something different we were doing as new things came out. The internet came along during that time, the mid 90s. You know, so it was something new that way. But once I got out of that and realized what I really like to do was help people find the strategy that they needed to get to the next step to be successful to get Warren: [00:04:46] their goals. So today, every time I talk to somebody, which, you know, be the same as, you know, talking to you now is what's your goal? Now, the first thing I ask you when you divide me on the program, what's the goal here? What do you want to talk about? How can I help people? And once we get into that, then it's, you know, pretty easy. So I guess [00:05:06] really goal seeker would be a more a closer title. But that just, you know, that gets really muddied up with the people saying, I'm in the goals business, I'll help you set and meet goals. Now, you know, that's not me. But I do want to know what a goal is and get to that and really, you know, make a difference. Because like, why bother getting up in the Warren: [00:05:28] morning if you're not going to change the world? That's like, great line. Why bother getting up in the morning if you're not going to change the world? Recently, I was actually learned a little bit more about how there was a cycling team in the UK and how they had wanted to try to win some more gold medals. And so they basically said, we're going to [00:05:44] only focus on five of the top things that are going to drive results and improvements. And over the past just two weeks, I've been trying to really understand what those five things are for me to focus on and understanding that if you do focus on just five things and you can bring 1% improvements every day, you'll really see those compounding returns. So you Warren: [00:06:04] probably can talk on that, I bet. You're already talking about the dark side of what my philosophy of life brings because I am working on new and interesting things. And it's normal for us to want to find the novel. It's interesting. We don't want change. We want things to be dependable, consistent. [00:06:23] At the same time, we like to see something novel. That's why you look across the street, the guy seems to be doing better than you. What's he got that I'm missing? But the truth is, if you really want to be successful, that five things rule is just fantastic. I had a friend that did magic. He put himself through college doing magic shows. And he used to love, like, Warren: [00:06:45] I think every magician would dabble a bit in that. You want to learn the new trick. You want to find out something, what's your master's? Something you want to move on to the next one. And he had a very wise mentor tell him that he needed five tricks. And so when I met my friend, it's been nearly 20 years ago, he was way far away from that. In fact, he'd grown that business [00:07:06] into having a lot of magicians work for him and then shut it down and do something completely different. It was in three different careers by the time I met him. But what he taught me about it was once he figured out to have the five tricks that he did well, they could always call him. And he was doing one trick he called the greatest card trick you will ever see. And he used that Warren: [00:07:28] line over and over again in the trick, NLP setting things up. It was just magnificent to watch him. I've watched him do it 50 times. And I can't tell you anything about how the trick is done, just that every time it's just amazing to watch the audience, not the trick itself, the audience about how he does that. And because he can do that so dependably, [00:07:48] it's like driving a car or riding a bike. If you get good at it, your brain takes over and does it subconsciously. And then that's when you really are allowed to be creative. And I don't think most people are taught about how to focus on just five or four things in their day to day and really understand what they want. Because like you said, we're always comparing Warren: [00:08:08] ourselves, like, oh, the guy across the street, he has this, I want that. How am I going to get that? I'm going to do what he's doing. And I think that kind of brings me to my second question, which is, how is your view of the world as a nonconformist helped you get to where you are JohnPaul: [00:08:21] today? And how did you begin to adopt this view? I myself identify as a nonconformist and I guess Warren: [00:08:27] started identifying as one in the early high school days where I was like, Bitcoin's the future. Let's build on top of this. I was, yeah, I was junior high school. And I found a postcard, you know, you can buy a postcard back before we all printed our own things and send them an email. I was at day, it was a swap meet. And I saw somebody selling postcards. The big [00:08:52] thing was the new thing then was a posters that you could use under fluorescent lights under Black Light. That was a big thing brand new. It would have been, you know, late 60s. So, you know, kind of the end of the whole hippie era psychedelic and whatnot. And I remember going there and I couldn't afford a post. The poster was like $3. I couldn't afford that, but they had postcard. So I'm just Warren: [00:09:16] rifling through the postcards. And I found one that said, I tried to be a nonconformist, but they wouldn't have me. And I barely understood what that what it meant. But I bought it, you know, because it was only a nickel and and displayed it in my room for years. And you know, I, you know, I just like amazing that I hit upon that. And it's so close to my philosophy. I don't want to be, [00:09:42] I think Groucho Marx said, I don't want to be a member of any group that would have me as a member. And I get that at the same time, I am somewhat of a joiner. I have been, you know, involved in lots of very, very much normal, traditional kind of things. I'm married for 42 years, you know, I went to, I went to college like I was supposed to. But it's always kind of feeling like I didn't Warren: [00:10:08] quite fit in. They were 10 people for the team. And I was number 11, but number 10 fell out and I got promoted. Yeah, you know, like, that's kind of how I felt about life. And so I get that, I get the non-conformance, but you got to be really careful when you decide to be a non-conformist that you're not going to try to fit in. And so, so certain thing about confidence, [00:10:34] real confidence is walking into a room, not thinking that you're the best, thinking that it just doesn't matter about the rest of the world. Hmm, that's, that's a very strong quote, and a good way to look at it. Because yeah, there's a fine line between being a non-conformist and then being, I think someone who is stuck up and thinks they're the best person in the room, as you kind of hint Warren: [00:10:54] at that. Well, really, it's non-conformance is that, you know, their opinion is they don't really, and I say care, whatever else is opinion about the subject is because they have their own strong convictions that they hold about, you know, for me, it was Bitcoin and money. Sure. Well, there's, there's the idea of resisting, which is popular in politics now. And this is, this is not a position [00:11:13] in politics at all. It's just the word resist. We've got all these non-rules about everything does, we, we form everything by a committee and we do all the, basically, why are you here? What's your goal? Back to my, my original thing, they said that, you know, what I'm looking for in life, what's your goal? What would you like to have done? Are you want to take the 1% out and shoot Warren: [00:11:33] them? You know, whatever it is, we can talk about it. You know, that's an insane goal, but, you know, whatever you think is going to change everything, well, we just like to have all their money distributed to everybody else. Well, you know, live a little, you'll find out why that doesn't work, and you know, find out some easier, better ways to do it. Yeah, there's so many times we just go out really [00:11:52] ready to go out and set the world on fire, and we, we don't really know what we're going to do and get it. It's like the, the dog that likes to chase, chase cars, you know, what you're going to do if you catch one. Talking about setting the world on the fire, I have a question about your first social media platform that you made an account on. And do you remember what drove you to JohnPaul: [00:12:15] get on that platform? And then kind of on that note, where do you see these platforms going? Do Warren: [00:12:20] you see any next big iterations in the marketing space? Well, well, actually, depending on how you look at it, because I can define email as a social media platform. But, you know, let's move aside from in the 80s, I was, I belonged to BBS, bulleted board systems. And I, you know, I, you know, we even ran one for a little while, and copy, serve, and those kinds of things. And it was social. It was [00:12:44] very important to me. I had small children. I had just started in business. I had gotten out of that career. I talked about, you know, being the salesman for the radio station. And I found myself alone a lot. So socially, I needed to do that and copy, sir. That's, that was the motivation that got me on doing that. I would, you'd have to log in with the modem. I'd run a bill of several hundred Warren: [00:13:08] dollars a month doing it. And along the way, I justified it because I could sell things. And I sold just enough to about break even on it. If I didn't count the idea, you know, that I was spending 40, 50 hours a month doing this, but so much feeding my mind of learning things, talking to people. I'd moved into a suburban community where just, I mean, it was back where I'd grown up. And none [00:13:34] of the guys I knew from high school or junior college back then, none of them wanted to take off and go get lunch. They are all very busy in their little business or doing whatever their thing was or taking off and going to some job. Yeah. And I like, but I missed this, because, you know, it's a big thing I did when I sold advertising was to take people to lunch. And half the time Warren: [00:13:57] was just my employees or, you know, whoever, just an idea to get away and do something different in the middle of the day. And we've lost that. I, you know, it's not done the same way today as it was back then. And so I would get on CompuServe and I talked to people. And there was people that have an opinion about a certain amount of kind of technology or whatever. And actually, the people [00:14:20] that were entrepreneur and wanting to trade and some import export people fast forward now to, you know, getting on the internet and doing some of the same things. There was a use net groups very close to that. But then there were people trying to build community. So there was one trying to build a community on your surname. I don't remember where this was, but somebody said, Warren: [00:14:43] you know, your last name is Whitlock, you should join this community. And I did. And about then I started realizing just because somebody wants one of these things to go, doesn't make it work. You have to have some something, enough people that want to bring it together. Either one really overworked forum leader or, you know, a bunch of people that want to come in, [00:15:05] they all are into this enough that they're going to spend the five hours a week it takes to make make the thing work. And that's when I really learned about community building by the time what's called social media came on is on something called rise, RYZE in the early aughts. And a lot of good networking was going on there. It was more like LinkedIn is today. And LinkedIn then Warren: [00:15:28] came out in 2004. And so by that time, I had quite a newsletter list. We mailed newsletters for my company back then. And then as I got into more like consulting kind of thing, I was using some of those same contact to build, you know, the weekly mailer or whatever it was, I would mail out. And so I found that building the community was important. I started a trade [00:15:54] association in the mid 90s. The first thing I did, I didn't want to be running it or doing the work. So I let you know, I said, we should have somebody else do that. They ended up electing me the first president anyway. I found out that's the guy that has to sign everybody up. And so that led me to grow a large mailing list, which got me into, you know, when I got on LinkedIn, Warren: [00:16:14] I just accepted everybody's invitation. And I probably went to three years without much caring about it until I read about Twitter. So I had a my space account by then, Twitter had come out, two things happened. They went to South by Southwest, where people started using it as like a text chain to be able to say, here's where the cool party is going to be tonight. And people would [00:16:38] check and they'd see it on Twitter. And they'd just change the plans for the evening to get to the party where the cool people were. And then Facebook opened up to where the adults could get on, was just colleges for a while. And then they started opening up their API so other, other services could use it. And the and the first that I know of was Twitter. And so Facebook and Twitter became Warren: [00:17:02] my thing to do summer of 2007. And by February of 2008, I was in publishing and promoting books was what I was doing for a living back in it. I looked up Twitter on Amazon and there was no such thing as a book about Twitter. And so I go like, well, that's pretty cool. I know how to get a book written. Let me put together a book and we'll have the first book out on Twitter. We ended up making it [00:17:26] 375 pages long and took six months to put it together. And then I found myself becoming, you know, somewhat famous for that. I could I could have my podcast. We it was block talk radio. So we call online radio program because podcasts hadn't quite cut on this the same way. I've all but I love the word podcast. It wasn't it wasn't something to call things back there. That's like 12 years ago. Warren: [00:17:55] The subtitle of our book was how how social media and mobile marketing are going to change everything about the way we do business and live our lives. And that's what we were saying in mid 2008. And I still don't know. People would have me on on podcast back then and ask me, hey, does it too late to get into social media? Can I say no, not at all? The whole of the [00:18:23] 20th century was us learning about mass marketing, mass production, mass distribution, and then social media is the the culmination of all that. It's two way communication with a brand. Whether that's a person, a company, a a product, Bitcoin, whatever it is, you find birds of a feather all over the place. And certainly we've eliminated the need to find a mass audience and Warren: [00:18:47] push something to it anymore. It's now about individual one to one. Other thing people would JohnPaul: [00:18:53] ask me back then is what? How did you get to have so many followers and I go like, you know, just one Warren: [00:18:59] at a time? I mean, one person at a time. Now, at some point, I have 500,000 followers. At some point, you know, you just know, I'm never going to get to talking to all those people. But a lot of them don't want to. There's a fair minority of them that are lurkers that read what I what I say and never do any kind of action and they may hit a like occasionally. But I can't get a good count [00:19:26] of how many of my followers have ever liked a post or retweeted it. I just don't know. And you know, and then it gets really complicated when you go from channel to channel. So yeah, that's but the big change that we've had is that we're now talking about people with what what could be a one to one conversation. It's interesting that you you kind of hit on a lot of a lot of key points Warren: [00:19:52] that I want to definitely dig into one of those was incentives. And how you mentioned that in the early days of social media, you realize that you could make these social media networks. I think we saw that with blockchains a lot and with ICOs and that you can make these networks. But unless you have the right and proper incentives, not everyone was going to join people, weren't going to [00:20:10] participate in the network actually wouldn't flourish. And so I guess my question to you is, as social media is improving, and now we kind of have this this area where we have dominant players in this space, do you see a blockchain technology coming in and potentially helping change the incentive structure and maybe change how influencers are being paid or being compensated for their Warren: [00:20:33] content in this iteration of digital marketing? Is there anything there that you see with the kind of the two blockchain and digital marketing coming together? Well, you're really asking about two things there. You're talking about incentivizing and you're talking about getting paid. The get impayed part is tricky because the smaller your audience, the less it's worth. But if you have [00:20:57] one follower and it happens to be somebody, if the president follows you and follows nobody else, well, then you've got something. A famous example of that was Conan O'Brien when he was between gigs after the whatever late night words he was in. He just decided to open up a Twitter account and follow one person. And he put it out on whatever videos he was producing or Warren: [00:21:20] he was going to follow as one person. Well, every TV station started looking for that person to go interview and figure out who she was. It's just some rando that he picked. Well, we never know. Maybe somebody's cousin got a pick. But if we know, just a random woman got picked. And she got a little bit of fame for doing that. And I love the example because it isn't about how many have [00:21:47] it's about the quality. Like I know for sure that my 500,000 followers on Twitter were just tiny fraction of what your 500 or 5000 are worth on a per capita. They're just not as productive. But when it's real people, you know, and build a relationship. That's something so imagine as we get into more of doing this, we can track who those people are. If I knew when somebody followed me Warren: [00:22:16] that they had an interest in mining, and I could say something about your show and get them interested over there and make that connection, they're going to remember me. Another popular thing in my view of the world here is Inception. You know, there's a movie about every idea comes from an Inception point. You know, the movie of going dreams within dreams and all that are ridiculous. [00:22:44] Or maybe not. But the philosophy of everything comes from one point. So in networking, now, if I introduce somebody I know to somebody you know, and we're connected and we're the nodes, whether or not that came together because we are doing this podcast, or because we do some business together, or whatever it is, it no longer needs to be that my listeners cousin who finds out about Warren: [00:23:10] your friends mining operation and one of the investors in that, and those two people go off and do whatever. They date and get married or they form a company together or whatever it is. The whole network is uplifted in a way that we've never been able to measure at all. We know society is better off because people connect. We've not been able to measure any of that. And so [00:23:36] working with one company now that's developing something that when you click on a link, a remnant of that link goes back up to where the source is and you can tell what's happened. So if I put out a link and it gets you know, tweeted, retweeted, and shared that we can kind of trace where it's gone to, and there's room for some incentive systems in there, Warren: [00:24:03] but people don't want to be social to get paid. So there's, I've seen this like, oh gosh, it must be 50 times now that somebody's coming to me and say, we've got something better than Facebook, we're going to incentivize everybody. And I'm going to, yeah, and how does your MLM work? You know, it's like some of us just don't want to get that involved in it. [00:24:27] Who's your down line? What's everything you know, and you can get really carried away with those things. The difference is there's now like there's the browser, what's that? The one who pays in bats? Brave Bowser? Yep. Yeah. And I interviewed somebody on my podcast that that was showing a way to accept ethernet for anybody, any podcast you want. I just needed to Warren: [00:24:52] put an Ethereum short address into the description of my shell. And I thought, okay, that sounds interesting. And then I got asked any questions about it. Well, to make it work, the person giving the Ethereum or whatever was the token, it might have just been another ERC. The payment would require somebody to use that guy's player. Well, now you're into the player wars. And yeah, [00:25:17] how are you going to incentivize people to download this? Well, we're going to pay them. We'll give them so many coin. And you know, the tokenomics just don't work out that well for most of you. We're not all as good as Satoshi is coming up with a new way of paying people. So, you know, and some of that, there's some room for some of that. But the biggest thing I learned Warren: [00:25:39] about selling to people and influence persuasion is getting away from the idea that everybody wants another dollar in their pocket. A lot of people, most of what happens in the world, in fact, happens without that. You know, it's like Gary Vaynerchuk says, what's the ROI on mom? You know, you can't figure that out. And I'm as much of a capitalist business person as there is in my way [00:26:02] of thinking in my brain. I'm trying to calculate it all out. And the more I've learned to let go of that and just say, let me do what's right. And everything else is going to be okay. I've learned that the amazing power of reciprocity and reciprocity is often taught as a persuasion technique. And it gets people get into the quid pro quo that I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Warren: [00:26:29] But what real reciprocity is, and at least in the psychological principle of this, is I'm going to scratch your back because it itches. And I'm going to do that because it's the right thing to do and not have that expectation of when you're going to pay me. And the more you learn to give without that expectation, that's what it means when we hear the religious teaching, all philosophies [00:26:53] have it in. It's what they told you about Christmas is better to give than receive. It doesn't matter if you get all the money and be screwed McDuck. If you got nobody to share it. Exactly. I was actually, when you were talking about the connection and how that, those one connection, you can be one person, introduce them. If they're wanting to be interested in Warren: [00:27:13] Bitcoin mining, you can point them over here, if they're interested in food, you can point them to someone else that you know. I think with the advent of the technology we now have in our phone and 5G being able to not only send and upload a live stream video, but to be also able to download someone else's live video as it's coming in and kind of getting those similar interactions, [00:27:34] those interactions you would receive at a party. If you were meeting people just by swiping on your phone, what do you see this with technology coming to the forefront and video technology and streaming JohnPaul: [00:27:47] coming to the forefront? How do you see the ability to send video and receive video in real time Warren: [00:27:53] to really take over social media or build a new type of connection that allows for that more intimate connection that's almost instantaneous with either one user or thousands of fans, JohnPaul: [00:28:04] you know, as COVID has kind of brought everyone together to stay in their houses. How do you see Warren: [00:28:09] that, I guess, working out? I think that's just the natural extension of where we're headed with things. The only reason we haven't used video from the start is that transmitting video in real time was impossible. You know, my first streaming media project was over wires. My new junior high school with cables in 1969. And we immediately wanted to put something into the classrooms, [00:28:34] right? And there was, you know, it was a small place. We could share everything, we do that, and I started envisioning what it would be like to be able to be there. And I think we always want to have that ability to connect and connect on a deeper level. And it really is, you were describing that. I got thinking of one of the things that came up when we were Warren: [00:28:53] talking about social media early on in that, you know, in the heyday of that great decade ago. And they, you know, they go like, yeah, but don't you don't you hate it? How everybody's just staring down at their phones. And so I found a picture of taking in a subway car from the 1930s, everybody was staring down at their newspaper. Things haven't changed that much. But I think of it as a [00:29:18] TED talk. I got about intimate moments. And they told the story of a baker had get up at 2 a.m. to go, you know, bake bread. And his wife would get up at six or seven, get the kids ready for school. He'd be having lunch, and they could have a brief interaction by phone, you know, and again, this old story. So, you know, it's just the fact that they were doing it. Today, it seems like Warren: [00:29:42] nothing though. By the time he got home, she was off at work. And, you know, he probably was going to bed by the time she got home from work at night. So, you know, as they were going through their normal daily routine with kids and jobs at different hours and stuff, what kept what kept things going was this into the sense of intimacy. And video just really brings that out where you [00:30:04] can send a you can say in in China, they're not using SMS and Twitter quite the same. There's a lot more use of short audio messages. And in there's places where there's traffic jams that will last an hour. And you don't know if you can get to the meeting. So, they'll start the meeting and just include the person with these with a bit of audio input, he can listen and then he can Warren: [00:30:29] send a message and zoom, of course, we're seeing just makes that, you know, available to anybody can join a meeting from anywhere. And of course, you know, the silver lining from the pandemic is, we're learning that, yeah, all this remote technology works even better. So, when you see somebody who is, you know, holding up their phone to take a picture at the extreme something at the [00:30:51] concert, it's not because they don't know how to be present. It's because they want their cousin to see it. We're at intimacy more and more. And there's got to be some kind of balance. You know, if you're spending your whole day trying to figure out whether or not your Instagram photo is going to get enough likes, you got a problem. But that problem's bigger than the platform. So, Warren: [00:31:14] I think in the future, what we're going to see is more and more of that. I've got a two-year-old grandchild who phones us regularly on FaceTime. And like, you know, she just stayed with us for three days. We don't tell her how to use the phone. She grabs him and starts using it. That's the future. She just expects that if she wants to talk to grandma, she's going to, you know, [00:31:40] she may need a little bit of help of the dialing part, but you know, she's going to get on and, you know, and my poor wife has to spend 20 minutes at the drop of hat. Just, you know, when the kid gets bored and goes off and does things and comes back and she's waiting on the FaceTime call. By the way, I've seen my poor wife. She never complains about it, you know. She loves that she Warren: [00:32:02] can do that. And I look at it and I go like, oh, gosh, what's this going to become? It's telepresence all the time. So, you don't need to go to a big office if you can be with all the people. The other things that makes it there. Does this replace face-to-face? No. It's just that, you know, until we get the technology to beam ourselves halfway around the world, it'll be more convenient [00:32:24] to do a lot of this stuff by the technologies we do have. So, you know, this year will be the time when people are complaining that they don't get to go to Thanksgiving. And next year, they're going to be looking forward to it in a way they haven't in years. Yeah, you're exactly right. One of the things you mentioned was intimacy. And I found it interesting Warren: [00:32:44] that you know, intimacy is kind of being created by these direct connections with either the creator, the influencer, you know, the child's grandmother. I wanted to jump to another topic, which was about Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. Do you remember when you first heard about Bitcoin or Bitcoin JohnPaul: [00:33:01] mining? And did you end up getting a miner? Can you tell a little bit more about that story? Warren: [00:33:04] I saw the white paper when it came out. So, when I read about that, my interest in blockchain got big. So, you know, one famous big deal friend in it and that interest with those things together, I just had to start looking for it. And that's about the time I started thinking of myself as a futurist, you know, and I got officially that title from IBM in 2014. But even back then, it was [00:33:31] like, how can I use my platform and tweet about this and the new technology? And so, the same goes for 5G for Internet of Things, IoT, for all the technology coming out, especially machine learning and AI. But the nice thing about blockchain is it's one, it's a foundation that goes everywhere. And fortunately, because of the crypto and the startups were needing advice and, you know, Warren: [00:33:58] and I have a large audience there. So, I'll come together that it's a good way to make a living, too. But all of this technology, you've got to look at it. How's it going to really help people in the future? And if not, you know, why are you going to spend all this money you make? I mean, really, think about it. You do really well and you can, you know, set around playing Xbox all day [00:34:21] and meanwhile, you've got a machine going, it's mining coin and you can buy anything you want. Well, if you never, you know, leave the house, how much money do you need? Mom wants you to move out, by the way. And it's not to get land. Yeah, it's not to get lambos and, you know, and make it rain at the club and all the, you know, all of the Hollywood version of what Warren: [00:34:50] wealth is, it's getting, where can I really make a difference? And that's why you see somebody like Bill Gates has been, you know, he's been at it now for over 15 years that he has, you know, focus on giving away his money. And he does a good job that Warren Buffett gave him money to give away, you know, and so, you know, he learned late in life. I learned to give it all away a lot [00:35:19] earlier in life. Here you go, kids. Here you go. Take this funny money. But on a serious note, I actually, you know, it was interesting that you say that because when I was in high school, finding out about Bitcoin, this idea of, you know, why are we all going to school to go to college to get a degree to make start making money was interesting to me. Because at that point, Warren: [00:35:41] I had a robotics camp and I was making, you know, 30 to $40,000 a year running this robotics camp as a 16, 17 year old kid. And I was understanding that maybe there was more to life than making money. And I think that's why Bitcoin, you know, a monetary policy where it would hold its value, it was scarce, just had a much better monetary, I guess, environment to build wealth on top of, [00:36:03] which I feel like is one of the hardest things or one of the biggest problems facing people today, which is basically they can't build their wealth on anything because it's always being printed. Their money is losing value. And if you don't own real estate, if you don't own these hard assets, building that security to be able to fulfill those Maslow hierarchy needs that you mentioned Warren: [00:36:20] is very hard to do. And so one of my last questions to you is, is what problem do you face every day or that you think a lot of people face every day that nobody has solved yet that maybe a technology like blockchain or machine learning or anything else we've been talking about social media could solve or could help solve and move that in the [00:36:38] right direction? Well, it's a great question. You know, I always hate to pick a favor because, you know, I don't conform. You know, one thing I'm thinking about, especially as we've discussed today is trust. Trust is one thing that's really lacking in our world. And, you know, Bitcoin and crypto, it actually is introducing trust. So, you know, sometimes we talk about it Warren: [00:37:02] is I can spend Bitcoin with you and I don't have to trust you, but it is the trust. This has been not only amazing to hear your social media background, but the whole conversation of value and intimacy. And I want to give the listeners an opportunity to connect with you online. So, where is the best place for them to reach out when they're done with anything? [00:37:21] If you find my name and I'm not a former Obama administration employee, I'm the old white guy. The black guy is not me. Warren Whitlock and I'm on Twitter at Warren Whitlock, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, you know, I'm on all those things and you can find me or Warren Whitlock.com. Well, thank you, Warren, for coming on again to the Digital Gold Warren: [00:37:46] podcast. All right, great. I look forward to seeing this get out there and help some people. JohnPaul: [00:37:51] No, I'm excited to get it out there. Well, thanks again, guys, for coming on and Bitcoin [00:37:55] and 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 Warren: [00:38:06] journey to become the number one crypto podcast. Thanks so much for listening and until next time, [00:38:11] mine on. ## MiningStore Recent Articles The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Market Analysis March 2025 ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # FAQ | Frequently Asked Questions Source: https://miningstore.com/faq-frequently-asked-questions/ # Frequently Asked Questions Everything you need to know about our Bitcoin mining services, managed mining programs, and hosting solutions. ## About MiningStore MiningStore is a U.S.-based Bitcoin mining company operating 62.5 MW across 11 Iowa facilities. Since 2016, the team has developed 14 mining sites and manages 10,000+ ASICs for 180+ institutional clients. Services include hosting, the Managed Mining Program, hardware procurement, and remote hands for self-operated sites. ## Getting Started How do I get started with MiningStore? Book a call with our team. We'll assess your goals, budget, and timeline, then recommend the right program — whether that's managed mining, hosting, or hardware procurement. What's the minimum investment? Our managed mining program starts at $1,000. Hardware purchases and hosting contracts vary by machine type and quantity. Do I need technical knowledge to mine Bitcoin? No. MiningStore handles everything — procurement, deployment, monitoring, maintenance, and reporting. You just track your dashboard. ## Hosting Where are your mining facilities located? We operate 11 facilities across Iowa, strategically positioned in MISO and SPP energy markets with access to low-cost wind and grid power. What's your uptime guarantee? Our facilities maintain 99%+ uptime with 24/7 monitoring, redundant power, and on-site technicians. Can I visit my machines? Yes. We welcome client visits to our Iowa facilities. Contact us to schedule a tour. What are your hosting rates? Rates depend on volume, machine type, and contract length. Contact us for a custom quote. We offer competitive Iowa power rates. ## Hardware What brands of miners do you sell? We source from Bitmain (Antminer), MicroBT (WhatsMiner), and other leading manufacturers. We can procure both new and used machines at competitive prices. Do you offer bulk discounts? Yes. Volume pricing is available on hardware orders. Contact our sales team for a custom quote. ## Managed Mining What is the Managed Mining Program? The Managed Mining Program (MMP) is our flagship service. You buy the mining hardware, we deploy and manage it at our Iowa facilities. You receive monthly BTC payouts and retain full ownership of the machines. What happens if a machine goes down? Our monitoring system alerts within minutes. On-site technicians diagnose and fix the issue. You get notified of the issue and resolution. ## Financial What are the tax benefits of Bitcoin mining? Bitcoin mining hardware qualifies for 100% bonus depreciation in the first year, providing significant tax advantages. Consult your tax advisor for specifics. How are mining profits distributed? Profits depend on your program. Managed mining distributions are made according to your contract terms. Hosted machines generate revenue directly to your mining pool. How do payouts work? We settle power costs and fees monthly, then send your Bitcoin share directly to your wallet. Full accounting provided. ## Explore Our Services → Managed Mining Program → Hosting Services → Schedule a Call → Browse Mining Hardware → How to Start Bitcoin Mining → Mining Profit Calculator → Learn About Bitcoin Mining ## Still Have Questions? Talk to our team about managed mining, hosting, or hardware procurement. Book a Call --- # JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore Source: https://miningstore.com/jp-baric-on-leading-the-rise-of-the-trusted-crypto-miner-miningstore/ ## JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore It is undeniable that Bitcoin is a trendsetter, one that ushered in a wave of virtual currencies built on a decentralized peer-to-peer network. Above anything else, it has grown to become the de facto standard, with the hundreds of spinoffs that followed its wake considered alternatives. Over a decade after it first exploded into the scene, its prominence remains—along with its volatility. A few days after notching its latest all-time high of the year this month, when it traded above $68,000 for the first time, it dropped back down below $56,000. This fluctuation in price, which is nothing new, is one of the reasons behind the ever-increasing number of individuals and companies that have shifted their attention towards mining Bitcoin. Among today’s longest-standing large-scale crypto miners is MiningStore, the brainchild of Bitcoin mining pioneer JP Baric. In trading Bitcoin, not only is it challenging to calculate one’s potential profit, but it also takes a particular set of money management skills and degree of emotional control so as not to lose your investment entirely. Given the risks, interest in mining, the expertise of MiningStore, has picked up. Founded in 2016, this US-based company is reducing friction in the Bitcoin mining space by making it easier for others to purchase crypto miners and operate them at low-cost stranded renewable energy across the United States. At its helm is a go-getter who has served as a key player in the crypto mining space for almost five years now. Deeply passionate about hard assets and driven by the goal to put computers to work for people’s benefit, JP Baric plays an integral role as MiningStore’s CEO. An avid Bitcoin enthusiast, he rose to the forefront of the blockchain industry, thanks to this innovative approach to mining through the use of stranded energy and mobile mining containers. In the years since he first dipped his toes in the digital asset space, he has overseen some of the largest mining operations in the country and is extremely involved with the development of the mining sector. With all the acclaim that MiningStore has received, it doesn’t mean that propelling the venture to great heights didn’t come at an expense. “There was a time back in 2019 where I had to fire all of my employees who were mostly my friends and slowly rebuild the company from scratch. We had to pivot from selling custom-made mining rigs to a hosting business where cashflow was consistent,” recalled JP Baric. “Without recurring capital, we had some really good months and some months where little to no sales were made. During this time, I learned what it means to truly manage a team and the importance of understanding and controlling costs.” Under the leadership of JP Baric, MiningStore continues to make strategic moves in the industry while running and operating multiple facilities. Currently, it boasts two standout products, the first of which is Managed Mining Program , a white-glove solution where clients receive power at a direct cost as well as shares in a profit split arrangement. Bitvault, its other bestseller, is an offering for smaller investors who are looking to invest as low as $1,000 into a mining operation. In the years to come, more can be expected from MiningStore. Spearheaded by a CEO who bears an in-depth understanding of the field, it is set to keep its position at the top. Learn more about JP Baric and MiningStore by visiting their website. ### MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### AIBC Summit | Bitcoin’s 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? MiningStore October 12, 2021 --- # JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible Source: https://miningstore.com/jp-barics-miningstore-making-crypto-mining-more-accessible/ ## JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible The debate surrounding Bitcoin’s environmental impact has been fierce, and for years, critics have criticized this preeminent cryptocurrency for bringing about a considerably high energy consumption. Now that more and more people have seen the appeal of digital assets, in general, apprehension is at an all-time high that climate change’s pace will drastically hasten. However, new data has revealed improvements in terms of Bitcoin’s carbon footprint as the approach toward mining has changed over time. Regardless of the validity of these recent findings, MiningStore is dedicated to setting an example for other companies to follow, powering a majority of its operational uptime with renewable energy to promote environmental sustainability. Founded in 2016, MiningStore was established under the mission to create an open financial system that is not controlled by any one country or company. “We think this will bring about more economic freedom, innovation, efficiency, and equality of opportunity in the world. We have a plan to get there,” shared the strategic minds behind this industry leader. That plan is what this brainchild of JohnPaul Baric has been religiously adhering to for over five years. Today, after securing a coveted spot at the summit, MiningStore stands at the forefront and is set to reach even greater heights in the future. Known for its green approach and commitment to securing the Bitcoin network sustainable for years to come, it has earned acclaim for its purpose-driven efforts. This US-based company, which is going all-out in reducing friction in the bitcoin mining space by making it easier for others to purchase crypto miners and operate them at low-cost stranded renewable energy across the United States, has launched over ten mining facilities profitable even in the face of the volatile market conditions. Currently, MiningStore boasts an impressive selection of offerings, one of which is Managed Mining. This bestselling product is the venture’s white-glove solution specifically for clients who wish to receive power at a direct cost and shares in a profit split arrangement. Although the program costs around $100,000 per investor, it is the easiest way to enter the mining space. For smaller investors, the Bitvault product is up for grabs and is available for those who are looking to invest as low as $1,000 into a mining operation. Right now, MiningStore is undoubtedly enjoying a position at the top, but the journey to get there hasn’t been perfectly smooth sailing. “There was a time back in 2019 where I had to fire all of my employees, who were mostly my friends, and slowly rebuild the company from scratch. We had to pivot from selling custom-made mining rights to a business where recurring capital was available. During this time, I learned what it meant to truly manage a team and the importance of understanding and controlling costs,” said JohnPaul Baric. Despite the impressive portfolio attached to its name, MiningStore and its highly competent leaders show no sign of slowing down. Eyeing expansion, it is working not only on projects located in Oklahoma and Texas to build out 280MWs of mining capacity but also a boatload of other endeavors that promises growth for the powerhouse. ### MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### AIBC Summit | Bitcoin’s 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? MiningStore October 12, 2021 --- # Learn Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/ # Learn Bitcoin Mining Guides, partner research, case studies, and media for people getting serious about mining and Bitcoin infrastructure. ## Explore the Learning Hub Start Here: Beginner's Guide How mining pays, home vs hosted, hardware, and taxes, in one linear read. Read the Guide Mining Profit Calculator Live network data plus every miner in our shop. See the real numbers at your power rate before you buy. Run the Numbers Partners Bitcoin service providers MiningStore recommends for custody, health savings, jurisdictional planning, and more. Browse Partners Digital Gold Podcast 36 episodes with Bitcoin mining leaders, investors, and operators. Listen Now Case Studies Sacramento Kings, BioStar, PRTI, and more. Real results from real clients. View Results Blog Market analysis, mining economics, and operational insights. Read Articles ## Bitcoin Mining Guides 34 in-depth articles on mining hardware, ROI, tax strategy, hosting, and operations. From Hobby to Business | Avoid IRS Pitfalls and Protect Bitcoin Mining Profits From Hobby to Business: How to Protect Bitcoin Mining Profits from IRS Pitfalls Why Compliance Protects Profitability For investors, Bitcoin mining is not just ... Read Guide W-2 vs 1099 Bitcoin Mining Tax Benefits | Maximize After-Tax ROI W-2 vs 1099: Which Investors Unlock Bigger Bitcoin Mining Tax Benefits? Different Investor Profiles, Different Tax Outcomes For high-net-worth individuals, fami... Read Guide How to Reduce Tax Exposure with Bitcoin Mining: Strategies for Investors Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025: How Smart Structuring Maximizes ROI Why Tax Strategy Defines Returns investment In the world of alternative investments, retur... Read Guide Bitcoin Mining: From Environmental Villain to Clean Energy Ally Bitcoin Mining: From Environmental Villain to Clean Energy Ally Why renewable-powered Bitcoin mining is not just cleaner, it’s a profitable investment For... Read Guide Are Bitcoin Mining Profits Too Unpredictable? Are Bitcoin Mining Profits Unpredictable? Predictable Yield in a Volatile Market: How Bitcoin Mining Delivers Institutional-Grade Cash Flow Bitcoin’s price vola... Read Guide Why Bitcoin Mining Is the Most Misunderstood Infrastructure Investment of 2025 Why Bitcoin Mining Is the Most Misunderstood Infrastructure Investment of 2025 Why Institutional Investors Are Rethinking Bitcoin Mining as a Strategic, High-Ef... Read Guide Bitcoin Mining Is No Longer Just for Giants: Institutional Access Starts Here Bitcoin Mining Is No Longer Just for Giants: Institutional Access Starts Here For over a decade, Bitcoin mining has been seen as a domain dominated by industria... Read Guide Bitcoin Mining vs. Banking: Why the Real Energy Problem Isn’t Where You Think Half the Energy, Twice the Scrutiny: Bitcoin vs. Traditional Banking Infrastructure A data-driven analysis that challenges everything institutional investors th... Read Guide Migrate Your Bitcoin Mining Fleet Without Missing a Block Migrating Your Bitcoin Mining Fleet Without Missing a Block Switching hosting providers can feel risky, even when you know your current provider is costing you ... Read Guide How to Identify Underperforming Bitcoin Mining Setups | Boost ROI How to Identify Underperforming Bitcoin Mining Setups A Self-Audit for Higher ROI In Bitcoin mining, performance issues aren’t always obvious. Inefficiencies ca... Read Guide How Poor Hosting Kills Bitcoin Mining Profits (and How to Fix It) How Poor Hosting Kills Your Bitcoin Mining Profits (and How to Fix It) In Bitcoin mining, every inefficiency compounds, every hour of downtime, every cent of in... Read Guide The Bitcoin Miner’s Hosting Guide: 7 Must-Haves for Maximum ROI The Bitcoin Miner’s Hosting Checklist: 7 Must-Have Features for Maximum ROI In Bitcoin mining, every hash matters, and every inefficiency compounds over time. I... Read Guide Why Expert Management Is Critical for Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Success Why Expert Management Is Critical for Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Success Your infrastructure is only as strong as the team behind it. here’s how to ensure perf... Read Guide How Hydro-Cooling Maximizes Bitcoin Mining Profitability Over Time Lower costs, extend hardware life, and scale with confidence using hydro-cooled infrastructure How Upgrading to Hydro-Cooling Maximizes Long-Term Profitability ... Read Guide The Future of Bitcoin Mining: Why Hydro-Cooled Hosting Is the Infrastructure Advantage The Future of Bitcoin Mining: Why Hydro-Cooled Hosting Is the Infrastructure Advantage Unlock unmatched efficiency, uptime, and sustainability with next-gen hyd... Read Guide Maximize Bitcoin Mining ROI with Professional Air-Cooled Hosting How Air-Cooled Hosting Drives Long-Term Profitability in Bitcoin Mining A Proven Strategy for Investors Seeking Scalable Bitcoin Yield Without Operational Burde... Read Guide Why Air-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Hosting Is Still a Smart Investment Reliable, cost-efficient mining with strong long-term upside Unlock Consistent Profits: Why Reliable Air-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Hosting is a Strategic Investment... Read Guide How Air-Cooled Bitcoin Hosting Delivers Passive Returns in 2025 A low-friction way to earn Bitcoin yield through infrastructure ownership Your Path to Passive Bitcoin Returns with Air-Cooled Hosting In today’s high-volatilit... Read Guide The Best Bitcoin Mining Investment in 2025 High-net-worth and institutional investors often try a few familiar routes: buying and hodling BTC, purchasing shares of public mining companies, or buying mini... Read Guide Discover How Much Can You Make Mining Bitcoin in 2025 By MiningStore How Much Can You Make Mining Bitcoin in 2025 Bitcoin mining in 2025 continues to evolve rapidly with new ASIC technologies pushing the boundaries... Read Guide Bitcoin Mining: Maximize Section 179 & 100% Bonus Depreciation Section 179 Expensing: How 100% Bonus Depreciation Transforms Bitcoin Mining An Investment Opportunity to Maximize After-Tax Profitability Tax law rarely offers... Read Guide Oslo Freedom Forum Bitcoin Panelists Push Back on "Anti-Environment" Slant By Adan Kohnhorst Oslo Freedom Forum Bitcoin Panels Headlines in major publications are quick to decry Bitcoin over the industry’s perceived environmental impac... Read Guide Bitcoin and Human Rights: Fireside Chats at the Oslo Freedom Forum By Adan Kohnhorst Oslo Freedom Forum x Bitcoin In Norway last week, the Oslo Freedom Forum gathered to discuss human rights and the fight against tyranny. In a ... Read Guide Cloud Mining vs Colocation Mining: Compare Cost, Control & Profit Potential By Adan Kohnhorst Cryptocurrency Cloud Mining vs Colocation Mining Bitcoin mining has matured into a professional, capital-driven industry. As adoption has grow... Read Guide Bitcoin Mining & Grid Stability: A Strategic Response for Investors By Spencer Sherwood We recently came across an article written in March 2022 by economist Severin Borenstein in the Energy Institute at Haas which made the case... Read Guide Is Bitcoin Harmful to the Environment? Debunking Common Myths in 2022 By Adan Kohnhorst Politicians and major media outlets are quick to sound the alarm. But looking at the data, really, is bitcoin harmful to the environment? It’s... Read Guide Bitcoin Mining Earnings: Realistic ROI, Costs & Strategy By Adan Kohnhorst Bitcoin adoption is more widespread than ever before, and that means more people are becoming curious about Bitcoin mining. But in a volatile ... Read Guide Top 15 Bitcoin Mining Stats & Market Trends – Investor-Ready Mining Insights By Daniel Frumkin The bitcoin mining industry had a year to remember in 2021, with exponential growth in the Western market led by publicly traded mining compan... Read Guide Bitcoin Mining for Beginners: How to Invest, Compare Options & Calculate ROI By Spencer Sherwood Ever since Bitcoin mining was banned in China during 2021, investors have been taking advantage of the opportunity and pouring money into mi... Read Guide Purchasing Bitcoin Mining Hardware? How to Determine if it’s a Good Investment By Spencer Sherwood If you’ve come across this article, you probably have an interest in investing in BTC in some capacity. While participation in the Bitcoin i... Read Guide Why Bitcoin ASIC Prices Can Reach New Highs in 2022 Why Bitcoin ASIC Prices Can Reach New Highs in 2022 By Spencer Sherwood Much like traders and investors speculating on future Bitcoin prices, those in the Bitco... Read Guide Is The Antminer S19 XP Worth It? Part 2 – Risk, Lead Time & Profit Breakdown Is the Antminer S19 XP Worth It? (ASIC Value Analysis) Part 2 Part 1 Recap To briefly recap on Part 1 , we compared the mining profitability of two Antminer S19... Read Guide Is The Antminer S19 XP Worthwhile? Part 1 – Specs, Risks & Investment Analysis Is the Antminer S19 XP Worth It? Part 1 (Mining Profitability Analysis) Introduction In November, 2021, Bitmain announced a new addition to the Antminer S19-ser... Read Guide Antminer S19 Series Guide: Specs, Prices, and Real Mining Profitability By Spencer Sherwood Introduction The Antminer S19 series remains one of the most researched and widely referenced ASIC families in the Bitcoin mining industry. ... Read Guide ## Recent From the Blog View All Jul 2026 The 10 Most Profitable ASIC Miners Right Now (at 7c/kWh) - July 2026 Read Article May 2026 Top ASIC Bitcoin Mining Colocation for Institutional Investors After River.com's Exit Read Article Mar 2025 Market Analysis March 2025 Read Article Mar 2025 The hard truth about solo Bitcoin mining Read Article Feb 2025 MiningStore Expands with a New 2.5MW Facility Read Article Feb 2025 Market Analysis February 2025 Read Article ## Questions About Mining? Our team has been mining since 2016. We'll answer anything. Book a Call --- # MiningStore Partners Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/ Directory # MiningStore Partners A curated directory of Bitcoin-related companies we think complement a long-term mining and ownership strategy. ## Why We Built This Directory Mining often leads people deeper into Bitcoin. Once you are thinking seriously about long-term accumulation, custody, taxes, health savings, family planning, and jurisdictional optionality become real parts of the conversation. This page highlights companies MiningStore believes complement that journey. These are editorial recommendations based on fit for Bitcoin-first operators and investors. We only publish live pages for companies we are comfortable putting in front of our audience. ## Recommended Bitcoin Service Partners Seven companies that can strengthen the infrastructure around a serious Bitcoin strategy. Custody & Bitcoin Financial Services Onramp Onramp is a bitcoin-only financial services platform built around multi-institution custody, combining trading, IRA access, lending, and inheritance planning for serious holders. Read partner page Bitcoin Life Insurance Meanwhile Meanwhile offers bitcoin-denominated life insurance with fixed BTC death benefits, tax-aware growth, and policy loans for long-term holders. Read partner page Self-Custody Hardware Wallet Tangem Tangem is a self-custody hardware wallet built around NFC cards, simple mobile onboarding, optional seed phrases, and everyday usability. Read partner page Jurisdiction & Citizenship Planning CitizenX CitizenX is a citizenship-by-investment platform that combines Swiss privacy, 24/7 concierge support, real-time tracking, and a modern application workflow for globally mobile families. Read partner page Bitcoin-Native HSA SOUND HSA SOUND HSA combines the tax advantages of an HSA with direct bitcoin ownership, year-over-year balance portability, and a product built around health, savings, and sovereignty. Read partner page Collaborative Custody & Bitcoin Financial Services Unchained Unchained offers collaborative custody, trading, lending, inheritance planning, and treasury tools for individuals, businesses, and miners who want to keep control of their keys. Read partner page Sovereign Computing & Private Infrastructure Start9 Start9 Start9 helps people run private internet infrastructure at home with StartOS and StartTunnel, making self-hosting, private remote access, and service control more approachable. Read partner page ## Bitcoin Media & Resources Two Bitcoin films worth knowing if you want better context on mining, energy, financial access, and how Bitcoin shows up in real lives. Resource Dirty Coin A documentary about Bitcoin mining, energy markets, and why miners can turn stranded or wasted power into economic value that most outsiders never see. Open resource Resource Unbanked A documentary about financial exclusion, global access to money, and why Bitcoin matters to people who live outside the traditional banking system. Open resource ## Need Help Building the Rest of Your Bitcoin Stack? MiningStore can help you think through mining, ownership structure, and the supporting services that make a long-term Bitcoin strategy easier to run. Book a Call --- # MiningStore + CitizenX | Citizenship by Investment for Bitcoin Families Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/citizenx/ All partners Jurisdiction & Citizenship Planning # MiningStore + CitizenX CitizenX is a citizenship-by-investment platform that combines Swiss privacy, 24/7 concierge support, real-time tracking, and a modern application workflow for globally mobile families. Visit CitizenX (https://citizenx.com/partners/miningstore) Talk to MiningStore Official reviews and testimonial view ## Key Facts at a Glance In the market CitizenX has been active since 2024 and has grown quickly through 2025 and 2026. Current scale CitizenX has a 100% success rate with 1,000+ citizens and is trusted by 2,780+ people. Global reach High-net-worth individuals from over 170 countries have used the platform. Government proof CitizenX became a partner of El Salvador's Freedom Passport program in March 2026. ## What They Do - CitizenX helps families pursue second citizenship and passport diversification through a secure, concierge-led software platform. - CitizenX replaces slow, opaque advisory workflows with real-time tracking, transparent pricing, and online document handling. - CitizenX is for clients who care about privacy, long-term optionality, and global mobility. ## Problems They Solve - Legacy citizenship firms often operate like black boxes, with slow email chains, unclear pricing, and weak visibility into the application process. - Families with meaningful wealth or public visibility need a safer way to share sensitive identity documents than generic inboxes and spreadsheets. - Families pursuing sovereignty need options beyond one country, one banking system, and one political environment. ## Why They’re Unique - CitizenX combines a software platform with a private advisory model instead of forcing clients into either a purely manual concierge experience or a self-serve portal with no support. - The company leans hard into Swiss privacy, 24/7 concierge service, and real-time tracking, which maps well to Bitcoiners who value optionality and operational clarity. - CitizenX emphasizes no hidden fees, crypto payment options, and a faster application workflow than the traditional market. ## Social Proof & Signals - CitizenX reports a 100% success rate with 1,000+ citizens and clients from over 170 countries. - CitizenX says 2,780+ people trust the platform, and the reviews page includes named testimonials from clients in El Salvador, St. Kitts, and Sao Tome. - CitizenX became a partner of El Salvador's Freedom Passport program in March 2026. ## Best Fit For - High-net-worth Bitcoin families thinking seriously about jurisdictional diversification and mobility. - Investors who want a more modern, software-assisted citizenship process instead of legacy email-and-paper workflows. - People who care about privacy, optionality, and long-term resilience beyond any single system. ## Why MiningStore Recommends CitizenX - MiningStore clients want to acquire more Bitcoin at a better basis, then build a life around that stack. CitizenX helps with the sovereignty side of that journey. - CitizenX fits clients who want mining, custody, tax planning, and jurisdictional options to work together. - For Bitcoin families thinking in decades, a second passport can matter as much as a lower BTC acquisition cost. ## Learn More About CitizenX Official reviews Start with CitizenX's reviews, partner page, and platform overview. Visit CitizenX (https://citizenx.com/partners/miningstore) ## Related MiningStore Reads Start with these internal pages if you want the MiningStore side of the strategy first. A Bitcoin Mining Success Story See how one MiningStore client used infrastructure ownership to accumulate Bitcoin at a lower effective cost. Open page Bitcoin Mining ROI in 2026 See how mining can lower BTC acquisition cost when hardware, hosting, and timing line up. Open page ## Official Sources MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - CitizenX Homepage — CitizenX - CitizenX Reviews & Testimonials — CitizenX - Digital Freedom for a U.S. Family — CitizenX - CitizenX Partners with El Salvador's Freedom Passport Program — CitizenX ## Want Help Connecting Mining With the Rest of Your Bitcoin Strategy? MiningStore can help you think through mining ownership, BTC accumulation, and the support systems that matter after you start stacking. Book a Call --- # MiningStore + Meanwhile | Bitcoin Life Insurance for Long-Term Holders Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/meanwhile/ All partners Bitcoin Life Insurance # MiningStore + Meanwhile Meanwhile offers bitcoin-denominated life insurance with fixed BTC death benefits, tax-aware growth, and policy loans for long-term holders. Visit Meanwhile (https://meanwhile.bm/) Talk to MiningStore Official product and fundraising view ## Key Facts at a Glance In the market Meanwhile launched policies in 2023. Regulated structure Meanwhile operates from Bermuda as the first BMA-licensed innovative life insurer. Product design Fixed bitcoin-denominated death benefits, tax-aware accumulation, and policy loans after year two. Capital raised Meanwhile has raised $82M and highlights backers across Bitcoin, insurance, and AI. ## What They Do - Meanwhile is building life insurance for people who think in Bitcoin rather than defaulting back to fiat-denominated legacy products. - The product is aimed at long-term holders who want beneficiaries paid in BTC, plus access to tax-aware growth and policy borrowing. - Meanwhile turns life insurance into a bitcoin-native wealth-planning tool instead of a dollar wrapper around Bitcoin wealth. ## Problems They Solve - Traditional life insurance does not map well to families whose real balance sheet growth has happened in Bitcoin. - Estate planning gets harder when a family has meaningful BTC exposure but no clean, regulated beneficiary structure around it. - Long-term holders often want liquidity without forcing a taxable sale of their Bitcoin at the wrong time. ## Why They’re Unique - Meanwhile keeps Bitcoin at the center of the contract instead of treating BTC as a sidecar to a dollar policy. - The company combines a regulated insurance structure with a product that explicitly targets Bitcoin growth and inheritance use cases. - Its messaging is unusually direct about Bitcoin-denominated payouts, policy loans, and long-term wealth preservation. ## Social Proof & Signals - Meanwhile highlights an $82M round and names investors from Bitcoin, insurance, and AI. - Meanwhile operates under Bermuda's insurance code as the first BMA-licensed innovative life insurer. - Meanwhile has kept policies in force since 2023 and publishes annual reporting as it scales. ## Best Fit For - Long-term Bitcoin holders who want legacy planning to live alongside the rest of their Bitcoin strategy. - Families who want beneficiaries, policy loans, and estate structure addressed in BTC terms rather than dollar terms. - Investors exploring regulated, long-duration structures around a Bitcoin balance they do not plan to fully liquidate. ## Why MiningStore Recommends Meanwhile - MiningStore clients often become multi-year accumulators, which makes legacy and estate design a real operational need. - Meanwhile is one of the clearest Bitcoin-native answers to the question of how to protect and transfer BTC wealth. - It complements MiningStore well for people who want mining to feed a larger, more durable family balance sheet. ## Learn More About Meanwhile Official homepage Current product positioning, investor proof points, and bitcoin-denominated life insurance overview. See the product page (https://meanwhile.bm/) About Meanwhile Company page covering vision, licensing, annual reporting, and policy launch timeline. Read the company story (https://meanwhile.bm/about-us) Institutional page Official page showing regulated infrastructure for advisors, institutions, and partner channels. See the institutional offering (https://meanwhile.bm/institutions/) ## Related MiningStore Reads Start with these internal pages if you want the MiningStore side of the strategy first. Digital Gold: Bitcoin Life Insurance Listen to MiningStore's conversation on the thesis behind Bitcoin life insurance. Open page Tax Strategy for U.S. Investors See how entity structure and tax planning shape the long-term economics around a serious Bitcoin position. Open page ## Official Sources MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Meanwhile Homepage — Meanwhile - About Meanwhile — Meanwhile - For Institutions — Meanwhile ## Want Help Connecting Mining With the Rest of Your Bitcoin Strategy? MiningStore can help you think through mining ownership, BTC accumulation, and the support systems that matter after you start stacking. Book a Call --- # MiningStore + Onramp | Bitcoin Custody, IRA, Lending & Estate Planning Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/onramp/ All partners Custody & Bitcoin Financial Services # MiningStore + Onramp Onramp is a bitcoin-only financial services platform built around multi-institution custody, combining trading, IRA access, lending, and inheritance planning for serious holders. Visit Onramp (https://onrampbitcoin.com/) Talk to MiningStore Official custody model overview ## Key Facts at a Glance In the market Onramp has shipped product and custody infrastructure since 2023. Custody model A 2-of-3 structure across separate institutions built to remove single-custodian risk from serious bitcoin balances. Core stack Custody, trading, IRA access, lending, research, and inheritance planning in one bitcoin-native workflow. Why it matters Onramp gives larger holders and mining operators a stronger setup than leaving treasury on an exchange account. ## What They Do - Onramp combines multi-institution custody, trading, lending, inheritance planning, and IRA access inside one bitcoin-focused platform. - Onramp serves individuals, businesses, institutions, and advisors who want simpler operations without defaulting to a single exchange or custodian. - Onramp brings security, liquidity, taxes, and estate planning into one workflow once a bitcoin position becomes meaningful. ## Problems They Solve - Single-point-of-failure custody is a weak fit for miners and holders building real treasury size over time. - DIY inheritance plans often break when heirs need access, identity verification, or clear recovery procedures. - Splitting trading, custody, IRA administration, and lending across multiple vendors creates friction and more operational risk. ## Why They’re Unique - Onramp is explicit about multi-institution custody, with independent institutions participating in the key structure instead of asking clients to trust one company end to end. - The platform pairs storage with practical financial services that matter after accumulation starts to compound: trading, lending, and estate planning. - Its messaging and research are built for long-term bitcoin allocators rather than general crypto speculation. ## Social Proof & Signals - Onramp highlights BitGo and Coincover in its custody model and serves individuals, businesses, and institutions. - Onramp tracks vault, trading, and cash balances in one dashboard and keeps inheritance planning inside the same workflow. - Onramp has kept shipping new product and custody infrastructure since 2023. ## Best Fit For - Mining operators and long-term holders who need stronger custody and planning than an exchange account can offer. - Families who want inheritance to be part of the bitcoin plan up front instead of a scramble later. - Investors who want IRA and lending options without abandoning a bitcoin-only approach. ## Why MiningStore Recommends Onramp - MiningStore clients often move from simple accumulation into treasury management, and that is exactly where Onramp fits best. - The company solves a real operational problem for miners: how to hold, borrow against, and eventually pass on a growing bitcoin position. - Its custody-first design is aligned with the same long-term mindset that makes mining attractive in the first place. ## Learn More About Onramp Platform announcement Onramp's official announcement of the platform and multi-institution custody positioning. Read the announcement (https://onrampbitcoin.com/research/announcing-a-bitcoin-asset-management-platform-built-on-multi-institution-custody) What is Onramp? Official support page describing who Onramp serves and how the product stack is organized. Read the explainer (https://support.onrampbitcoin.com/what-is-onramp) Official homepage Current product overview with custody, IRA, lending, and inheritance messaging. Visit Onramp (https://onrampbitcoin.com/) ## Related MiningStore Reads Start with these internal pages if you want the MiningStore side of the strategy first. Managed Mining Program Start mining Bitcoin in a structure built for long-term ownership and BTC payouts. Open page Tax Strategy for U.S. Investors See how entity structure and tax planning can change the economics of a Bitcoin position. Open page ## Official Sources MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Onramp Homepage — Onramp - What is Onramp? — Onramp - Announcing: A Bitcoin Asset Management Platform Built On Multi-Institution Custody — Onramp ## Want Help Connecting Mining With the Rest of Your Bitcoin Strategy? MiningStore can help you think through mining ownership, BTC accumulation, and the support systems that matter after you start stacking. Book a Call --- # MiningStore + SOUND HSA | Bitcoin-Native Health Savings Account Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/sound-hsa/ All partners Bitcoin-Native HSA # MiningStore + SOUND HSA SOUND HSA combines the tax advantages of an HSA with direct bitcoin ownership, year-over-year balance portability, and a product built around health, savings, and sovereignty. Visit SOUND HSA (https://app.soundhsa.com/register?discount=MININGSTORE) Talk to MiningStore Official app screenshot ## Key Facts at a Glance Triple-tax edge SOUND HSA gives users pre-tax contributions, tax-free growth, and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses. Bitcoin exposure SOUND HSA lets users invest HSA funds in bitcoin instead of generic fiat investment menus. Portability The account is designed around HSA rollover rules, so the balance carries forward year to year and stays with the user through employment or plan changes. Behavior layer SOUND HSA also adds Move to Earn bitcoin challenges in the mobile app, tying healthy behavior to stacking sats over time. ## What They Do - SOUND HSA gives eligible users an HSA structure that keeps the normal tax advantages while adding bitcoin as the long-term investment thesis. - The platform is built to make health savings feel like a real wealth-building tool instead of a side account that just sits in cash. - Its app extends the account beyond administration by including Move to Earn bitcoin challenges that connect wellness habits with savings behavior. ## Problems They Solve - Traditional healthcare finance feels broken because costs rise, bureaucracy burns time, and the available investment options rarely align with a sound-money worldview. - A lot of people either underuse their HSA or leave it sitting in low-conviction fiat products that do not match how they think about long-term savings. - Most health accounts do nothing to reinforce healthier behavior, so wellness and wealth-building stay disconnected. ## Why They’re Unique - SOUND HSA frames the account as a sovereignty tool, not just a tax wrapper, which is a very different pitch from mainstream HSA providers. - The Why SOUND HSA page ties together triple-tax savings, bitcoin upside, annual rollover portability, and wellness incentives in one coherent product story. - Move to Earn gives the platform a behavior loop that most HSA providers simply do not have. ## Social Proof & Signals - SOUND HSA lays out a full product case across tax treatment, bitcoin investing, portability, and app incentives. - SOUND HSA runs live account features for contributions, investments, receipts, and account management. - SOUND HSA shows a real app flow and product screenshots instead of a waitlist concept. ## Best Fit For - U.S. individuals and families who already qualify for an HSA and want that account to do more than sit in cash or index funds. - Bitcoiners who want tax-aware savings, real ownership, and a product story that matches their monetary philosophy. - People who want health planning, long-term savings, and daily wellness habits to reinforce each other over time. ## Why MiningStore Recommends SOUND HSA - MiningStore clients usually care about long-duration Bitcoin exposure, and SOUND HSA gives that instinct a tax-advantaged household use case. - The product feels aligned with the broader MiningStore worldview: own more of what matters, reduce dependency on broken fiat defaults, and think in decades. - It is one of the clearest examples on this partner list of Bitcoin-native infrastructure solving an ordinary family finance problem in a practical way. ## Learn More About SOUND HSA Why SOUND HSA The clearest official explanation of the platform’s pitch around triple-tax savings, bitcoin investing, rollover portability, and Move to Earn. Read why SOUND HSA (https://soundhsa.com/why-sound-hsa/) Open the app Live account-opening and application flow for the product experience. Open the app (https://app.soundhsa.com/register?discount=MININGSTORE) Support and FAQ Official support content covering contributions, investments, receipts, reimbursements, and account operations. Read the FAQ (https://soundhsa.com/support/) ## Related MiningStore Reads Start with these internal pages if you want the MiningStore side of the strategy first. Tax Strategy for U.S. Investors A MiningStore guide for investors thinking seriously about Bitcoin, entities, and tax-aware planning. Open page Bitcoin Mining ROI in 2026 See how disciplined mining strategy can help you accumulate Bitcoin over time at a lower effective cost. Open page ## Official Sources MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Why SOUND HSA — SOUND HSA - SOUND HSA Homepage — SOUND HSA - SOUND HSA App — SOUND HSA - SOUND HSA Support & FAQ — SOUND HSA ## Want Help Connecting Mining With the Rest of Your Bitcoin Strategy? MiningStore can help you think through mining ownership, BTC accumulation, and the support systems that matter after you start stacking. Book a Call --- # MiningStore + Start9 | StartOS and StartTunnel for Private Infrastructure Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/start9/ All partners Sovereign Computing & Private Infrastructure Start9 # MiningStore + Start9 Start9 helps people run private internet infrastructure at home with StartOS and StartTunnel, making self-hosting, private remote access, and service control more approachable. Visit Start9 (https://start9.com/) Talk to MiningStore Official StartTunnel docs view ## Key Facts at a Glance In the market Start9 has actively maintained StartOS and StartTunnel across 2023 through 2026. Core products StartOS is the personal-server operating system; StartTunnel is the private remote-access layer built as a virtual private router. What StartTunnel does StartTunnel runs as a minimal self-hosted router on a VPS for private remote access or public exposure without revealing your home IP. Why it matters It gives serious Bitcoiners a cleaner path to private infrastructure than trusting cloud dashboards and third-party routing by default. ## What They Do - Start9 sells the idea of a personal server that normal people can run, not just an enterprise rack or a hacker-only box. - StartOS turns self-hosting into a more approachable operating system for services you want under your own control. - StartTunnel extends that stack with private remote access and public exposure options that do not force users to reveal their home IP address. ## Problems They Solve - Cloud-first software pushes users into someone else's infrastructure, someone else's surveillance model, and someone else's kill switch. - Self-hosting is powerful, but it often breaks down when setup, remote access, networking, and service management are too complex. - Bitcoiners who value privacy still need a way to reach their own infrastructure without casually exposing their household network. ## Why They’re Unique - Start9 is not just selling a box; it is selling a worldview around sovereign computing and making personal infrastructure realistic. - StartTunnel reframes remote access as part of the product, which matters because networking is where many self-hosting projects get abandoned. - The docs and product pages are unusually explicit about privacy, home-IP protection, and reducing dependency on cloud intermediaries. ## Social Proof & Signals - Start9 centers its brand on sovereign computing and features testimonials from the freedom-tech community. - Start9 makes personal servers approachable with StartOS and makes private remote access workable with StartTunnel. - Start9 keeps the product line active across docs, support materials, and release branches. ## Best Fit For - Bitcoiners who care about running more of their own infrastructure instead of outsourcing everything to cloud services. - Users who want a more approachable path into self-hosting, especially for nodes, private services, and family data. - People who need private remote access without casually publishing their home IP address to the internet. ## Why MiningStore Recommends Start9 - MiningStore clients already tend to care about sovereignty, and infrastructure control is a natural extension of that thinking. - Start9 sits adjacent to custody and treasury planning by helping users control the digital environment around those tools. - It is especially relevant for clients who want the stack around their Bitcoin life to be as self-directed as the mining strategy itself. ## Learn More About Start9 Official homepage Start9's public positioning around sovereign computing and personal servers. See Start9 (https://start9.com/) StartTunnel docs Official StartTunnel documentation describing the private router / VPR use case. Read the StartTunnel docs (https://docs.start9.com/start-tunnel/1.0.x/) StartOS docs Official StartOS docs for the self-hosting operating system. Read the StartOS docs (https://docs.start9.com/start-os/0.4.0.x/) ## Related MiningStore Reads Start with these internal pages if you want the MiningStore side of the strategy first. Digital Gold: Securing Your Bitcoins & Data A strong MiningStore episode for anyone thinking about privacy, custody, and operational resilience together. Open page Unbanked Watch MiningStore's featured film page on freedom, financial access, and why sovereign tools matter in real lives. Open page ## Official Sources MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Start9 Homepage — Start9 - StartTunnel Documentation — Start9 - StartOS Documentation — Start9 ## Want Help Connecting Mining With the Rest of Your Bitcoin Strategy? MiningStore can help you think through mining ownership, BTC accumulation, and the support systems that matter after you start stacking. Book a Call --- # MiningStore + Tangem | Bitcoin Self-Custody Hardware Wallet Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/tangem/ All partners Self-Custody Hardware Wallet # MiningStore + Tangem Tangem is a self-custody hardware wallet built around NFC cards, simple mobile onboarding, optional seed phrases, and everyday usability. Visit Tangem (https://tangem.com/en/) Talk to MiningStore Official product and security view ## Key Facts at a Glance In the market Tangem launched in Zug, Switzerland in 2017. Adoption signal Tangem has shipped 6,000,000 cards and reports zero hacked since launch. Security posture Tangem secures the wallet with an EAL6+ chip and independent audits from Kudelski, Riscure, and Cure53. Durability Tangem markets a 25-year limited hardware warranty and a tap-to-use workflow with no cables or batteries. ## What They Do - Tangem provides offline self-custody through NFC cards and a mobile app that lets users manage Bitcoin and other assets from a simple tap-based flow. - Tangem makes hardware custody feel less intimidating by stripping out cables, desktop setup, and extra maintenance. - Its wallet experience supports seedless backup by default, with an optional seed phrase for users who prefer a more traditional recovery model. ## Problems They Solve - Many miners and first-time holders know they should leave exchange custody but delay it because the wallet setup feels too complex. - Traditional hardware wallets can feel slow, cable-heavy, or intimidating for people who want a more mobile-first routine. - Seed phrase management is a real failure point for new users who understand the risks of custody but are not ready for a highly technical workflow. ## Why They’re Unique - Tangem centers the user experience on NFC tap-to-sign interactions, which lowers the friction of actually using self-custody day to day. - The wallet is seedless by design while still letting advanced users enable a seed phrase if they want one. - The product emphasizes portability and durability in a form factor that feels more like a card than a desktop device. ## Social Proof & Signals - Tangem has shipped 6,000,000 cards and reports zero hacked since launch in 2017. - Tangem uses an EAL6+ secure element and has published audits from Kudelski Security, Riscure, and Cure53. - Tangem's companion app passed an independent Cure53 audit in March 2026. ## Best Fit For - Miners and Bitcoin buyers graduating from exchange custody into a hardware wallet. - Users who want a simple mobile-first custody flow with less setup overhead than a traditional device. - People who care about portability and like the idea of a card-based hardware form factor. ## Why MiningStore Recommends Tangem - Mining helps people accumulate BTC, but the strategy is incomplete if the coins stay on someone else's platform. - Tangem lowers the barrier for MiningStore clients who know self-custody matters but have postponed the transition. - It is a practical bridge between convenience and sovereignty for a lot of newer long-term holders. ## Learn More About Tangem Official homepage Current security, adoption, and product-positioning claims from Tangem. See the wallet (https://tangem.com/en/) Wallet overview Official help-center page covering the secure chip, audits, and custody design. Read the security details (https://tangem.com/en/help-center/general/wallet-overview/) Mobile wallet audit Tangem's March 2026 post on the Cure53 mobile wallet audit. Read the audit note (https://tangem.com/en/blog/post/mobile-wallet-audit/) Wallet reviews Tangem's review and market-recognition page with recent Trustpilot excerpts and product framing. Read the review page (https://tangem.com/en/blog/post/why-tangem-is-the-best-cold-wallet/) ## Related MiningStore Reads Start with these internal pages if you want the MiningStore side of the strategy first. Digital Gold: Securing Your Bitcoins & Data A MiningStore podcast episode on why custody and operational security matter. Open page Managed Mining Program Pair long-term Bitcoin accumulation with a plan for where those coins live once you earn them. Open page ## Official Sources MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Tangem Homepage — Tangem - Wallet Overview — Tangem - Tangem Mobile Wallet Passes Independent Security Audit by Cure53 — Tangem ## Want Help Connecting Mining With the Rest of Your Bitcoin Strategy? MiningStore can help you think through mining ownership, BTC accumulation, and the support systems that matter after you start stacking. Book a Call --- # MiningStore + Unchained | Collaborative Custody for Bitcoin Holders and Miners Source: https://miningstore.com/learn/partners/unchained/ All partners Collaborative Custody & Bitcoin Financial Services # MiningStore + Unchained Unchained offers collaborative custody, trading, lending, inheritance planning, and treasury tools for individuals, businesses, and miners who want to keep control of their keys. Visit Unchained (https://www.unchained.com/) Talk to MiningStore Official mobile product visual ## Key Facts at a Glance In the market Unchained has over six years of operational experience securing billions in bitcoin, and its collaborative custody posts go back more than seven years. Mining traction Unchained secures $6 billion+ in bitcoin, serves 50+ mining clients, and has zero lost bitcoin. Custody model Collaborative custody is designed so no single counterparty can move or lose the treasury on its own. Expanded network Unchained works with Bakkt, Coincover, and Kingdom Trust inside its collaborative custody network. ## What They Do - Unchained combines collaborative custody with trading, loans, inheritance support, IRAs, and treasury tools for serious Bitcoin users. - The company has a specific wedge into miners and businesses that want treasury controls without surrendering keys to a standard custodian. - Its platform is built around the idea that financial services should sit on top of key ownership rather than replace it. ## Problems They Solve - Exchange custody and single-provider custody both create unnecessary counterparty risk for treasury-sized Bitcoin balances. - Miners need a secure way to hold treasury, liquidate some BTC, finance operations, and manage team permissions without blowing up custody discipline. - Inheritance and emergency recovery are hard to do safely if the plan depends on one person knowing everything. ## Why They’re Unique - Unchained is explicit that collaborative custody should preserve key ownership while still adding financial services around the edges. - The miners page shows a tailored treasury workflow for batch payouts, team management, segregated accounts, and operational liquidity. - Its inheritance protocol and concierge support solve problems that many DIY multisig setups postpone until it is too late. ## Social Proof & Signals - Unchained secures $6 billion+ in bitcoin, serves 50+ mining clients, and has zero lost bitcoin. - Unchained had already secured over $3 billion for clients by 2023 and had built more than six years of operational experience. - Unchained's collaborative custody network includes Bakkt, Coincover, and Kingdom Trust. ## Best Fit For - Mining operators and treasury teams who want collaborative custody instead of a classic custodial account. - Long-term holders who want lending, inheritance, and trading without surrendering key ownership. - Families and businesses that want bitcoin treasury controls to survive key loss, team changes, or death. ## Why MiningStore Recommends Unchained - Unchained maps directly to the MiningStore audience because it solves custody and treasury problems that miners actually run into. - The miners page makes clear that the company understands treasury operations, not just retail wallet marketing. - For MiningStore clients with growing BTC balances, Unchained is one of the most natural next-step partners on the list. ## Learn More About Unchained Custody for miners Official miners page with current treasury, custody, and client scale metrics. See the miners page (https://www.unchained.com/bitcoin-custody-miners) Inheritance Official inheritance page explaining the protocol and who it is built for. Read the inheritance page (https://www.unchained.com/inheritance) Bakkt partnership Official post on the collaborative custody network and assets secured for clients. Read the partnership note (https://www.unchained.com/blog/unchained-bakkt-partnership) How multisig started One of Unchained's earliest public custody posts, useful for understanding tenure in the space. Read the vault history (https://www.unchained.com/blog/introducing-multisig-vaults/) ## Related MiningStore Reads Start with these internal pages if you want the MiningStore side of the strategy first. Managed Mining Program A MiningStore path for people building a long-term mining treasury. Open page Digital Gold: Securing Your Bitcoins & Data A MiningStore conversation on operational security and self-custody. Open page ## Official Sources MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Unchained Homepage — Unchained - Bitcoin Custody for Miners — Unchained - Unchained partners with Bakkt to expand its custody network — Unchained - Inheritance — Unchained ## Want Help Connecting Mining With the Rest of Your Bitcoin Strategy? MiningStore can help you think through mining ownership, BTC accumulation, and the support systems that matter after you start stacking. Book a Call --- # Mobile Mining Container Project - New York, New York Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-projects/new-york-mobile-mining-container/ Mobile Mining Container BioStar renewable project-One container deployed to BioStar renewables California solar farm #MiningStore ## Bio ## Star Customer purchased to increase capacity factor. 8 weeks from power procurement to container deployment. Remotely operated from our Network Operations Center in Houston. --- # Mining Services Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services-2/ # Mining Services ASIC Hardware, Miner Hosting, Mobile Containers, & More Book a Call ## Our Services ASIC Procurement New and used Bitcoin miners from Bitmain (Antminer), MicroBT (WhatsMiner), and Block (SealMiner). Bulk pricing for fleet buyers. Learn More Hydro-Cooled Mining Higher hashrate, lower noise, better efficiency per kWh. We design and deploy hydro-cooled mining infrastructure end to end. Learn More Mining Containers Mobile mining pods that ship pre-wired and stand up on site in days. Climate-controlled, density-tuned, ready to hash. Learn More Remote Hands Program Our techs handle firmware, repairs, and monitoring on a Bronze, Silver, or Gold support tier. 24/7 coverage available. Learn More BY THE NUMBERS 10K+ Miners Under Management 14 Mining Sites Developed and Counting 62.5 MW Operational Capacity 180+ Institutional Clients ## ASIC Mining Machines We procure Bitcoin mining rigs at scale. New and used units from Bitmain, MicroBT, and the other major manufacturers, with bulk pricing for fleet buyers. Browse Mining Machines ### Antminer S21 Pro Latest Generation ### WhatsMiner M60 High Efficiency ### SealMiner A2 Emerging Platform ### Bulk Orders Volume Pricing ## The MiningStore BitCave A containerized mining build that ships pre-wired and stands up on site in days. Lower OpEx, higher density, faster time to hashrate. ### Density-First Airflow 320,000 CFM of ventilation per BitCave supports up to 1,600 S-series Bitcoin miners in a single container, even in hot climates. ### Plug-and-Hash Install The BitCave ships pre-wired and pre-configured. Connect power and a network drop on site and miners are hashing the same day. ### Container Management Our operations team hosts, supports, and maintains every server on the same per-serial reporting stack used at our owned Iowa sites. View Mining Containers ## Remote Hands Program Uptime is the entire economic story of mining. Our techs keep your rigs online so your BTC cash flow lands monthly without staffing a local crew. ### Bronze - Monthly check-ins - Firmware updates - Basic monitoring - Email support ### Silver - Weekly check-ins - Firmware & software updates - Proactive monitoring - Priority email & phone support - Hardware diagnostics ### Gold - Daily monitoring - All firmware & software updates - 24/7 proactive monitoring - Dedicated support line - On-site repairs - Performance optimization Learn More About Remote Hands ## Deploy Near Cheap Power Our mining infrastructure deploys in regions with surplus grid capacity and low commercial rates, the kind of pricing differential you can verify month to month in the EIA's Electric Power Monthly state-level tables. Lower OpEx, higher margin per terahash. View Our Facilities ## Sources & References MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - Electric Power Monthly — Industrial Electricity Prices by State — U.S. Energy Information Administration ## Need a Custom Solution? Every mining operation is different. Talk to us about your specific requirements and we'll build a plan. Book a Consultation --- # ASIC Miner Procurement Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/asic-bitcoin-miner-procurement/ Hardware Sourcing # ASIC Miner Procurement We source Antminers, WhatsMiner, and SealMiner units. Bulk pricing, tested before shipping, direct to your site or ours. Get a Quote Browse Hardware ## Why Procure Through MiningStore ### Latest-Generation ASICs Antminer S21/S23, WhatsMiner M60/M66, SealMiner A2 — sourced directly from manufacturers and authorized distributors. ### Bulk Pricing We buy for 180+ clients. That volume gets you better per-unit pricing than going direct to the manufacturer. ### Tested Before Shipping Every unit powers on and hashes before it leaves. We ship to your door or rack it at our Iowa facilities the day it arrives. ## Buy + Host = Mine Every miner we sell can go straight into our facilities. Buy the hardware, we rack it, and you start earning Bitcoin within weeks. Managed Mining Program Hosting Services ## Need Miners? Model, quantity, timeline. We quote within 24 hours. Request a Quote --- # Mining Containers Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/bitcoin-miner-hosting-containers/ Infrastructure # Mining Containers Pre-wired pods that ship ready to hash. Plug in power, connect networking, and you're mining in days. Get Container Pricing ## Why Mining Containers ### Rapid Deployment Containers ship pre-wired and pre-configured. Plug into power and networking on-site and start hashing within days of arrival. ### Scalable Start with one pod, scale to dozens. Each container operates independently. Add capacity as your operation grows. ### Climate-Controlled Built-in ventilation, filtration, and optional hydro cooling infrastructure. Designed for Iowa weather extremes. ## Deploy Near Cheap Power Our containers deploy in regions with surplus grid capacity and low commercial rates. Iowa generates 57% of its electricity from wind, keeping costs down and carbon intensity low. View Our Facilities ## Need Containers? Specs, timelines, power requirements. We'll scope it for you. Book a Call --- # Remote Hands Program Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/bitcoin-mining-remote-hands-program/ # Bitcoin MiningRemote Hands On-site technicians at your facility. We fix problems before you notice them. Book A Call Shop Miners ## Three Tiers of Support Pick the level that matches your fleet size and uptime requirements. Scale up anytime. ### Bronze Remote monitoring, firmware updates, and weekly reports. Built for operators running under 500 machines. - Remote monitoring - Weekly status reports - Firmware updates - Email support Get Bronze Quote ### Silver Everything in Bronze, plus on-site hardware repairs, 4-hour priority response, and monthly performance reviews. - Everything in Bronze - On-site hardware repairs - Priority response (4hr) - Monthly performance reviews - Thermal optimization Get Silver Quote Most Popular ### Gold A dedicated technician assigned to your machines. 1-hour response SLA, real-time alerts, custom firmware tuning. - Everything in Silver - Dedicated on-site technician - Real-time alerting - 1hr response SLA - Custom firmware tuning - Quarterly strategy reviews Get Gold Quote ## How It Works From first call to technicians on your machines. 1 ### Tell us your fleet How many machines, what models, what your uptime targets are. 2 ### Pick a tier Bronze, Silver, or Gold, based on your support needs and fleet size. 3 ### We assign your team Dedicated technicians at your facility, bonused on your uptime metrics. 4 ### We monitor & maintain 24/7 monitoring, proactive alerts, firmware updates, and hardware repairs. ## One Technician Per 700 Machines Our techs get a bonus on the uptime of the section they cover. When your machines drop, their take-home shrinks alongside yours. Learn About Hosting ## Tell Us About Your Fleet How many machines, what models, what uptime you need. We'll match you to a tier. Book a Call --- # Bronze Tier Remote Hands Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/bitcoin-mining-remote-hands-program/bronze-tier-remote-hands/ ## Consulting, Staffing, and Project Management Services for Beginners to Bitcoin Mining ## Get all the guidance and hands-on assistance you need from our knowledgable team of bitcoin mining industry veterans. ## The Bronze Package has an upfront retainer of $1000 and is the easiest way to get started in the bitcoin mining business. Below you can find individual rates for all of the bitcoin mining consulting and staffing services we offer. ### Explore Our Services - → Remote hands program - → Silver tier - → Hosting services ## Remote Hands Bronze Tier - Senior Technician $155 / hour Looking for technical support to improve your mining operations performance? Get access to a Senior MiningStore technician with extensive experience working on ASIC and GPU mining servers. Senior technicians can assist in installing key software, remote monitoring systems, ASIC and GPU remote diagnostics, and software images. Senior Technicians are available 9-5 to work on your project needs. - Project Specialist $205 / hour Looking for more advanced support managing your mining operation? MiningStore’s Project Specialists have experience in overseeing mining facility operations and can assist you with driver optimizations, overclocking machines, asset management, site development, and building designs, electrical one-line diagram drawing, sourcing components, and advanced remote support. - Site Operator $225 / hour A Mining Site Operator is responsible for ensuring your hashrate is operational 24/7 this individual will be responsible for correcting events which result in a drop of more than 30% of your mining facility’s hash rate. The site operator is also responsible for ensuring the facility runs smoothly and technicians are completing their tasks in a timely manner ensuring machine uptime is maintained. The site operator can be local to the site and is a part time role in running a mining operation. - Project Manager $300 / hour Looking for more than just operational expertise and implementation? MiningStore’s Project Managers have overseen the successful deployment of multiple mining operations and can ensure your deployment happens on-time and within your budget. Project Manager’s provide assistance in procuring components for your building and mining infrastructure, writing procedures, and processes for your specific site, implementing protocols and procedures for your mining deployment which on-site technicians will follow, running payroll costs, and providing reports. - Mining Expert $750 / hour Need to talk to a mining expert to ensure your project will be profitable and efficient? We offer consultation calls with JohnPaul Baric, a digital currency mining pioneer with over 7-years of full-time participation in the industry. JohnPaul has deployed over ten mining facilities to wind farms, solar fields, and niche stranded energy sources. JohnPaul will review your site plans, provide feedback and guidance on airflow and building construction, analyze your site's profitability & provide insight into possible mining server options, review your financial model, and discuss hashrate and difficulty trends to determine the best time & strategy to exit your operation. --- # Gold Tier Remote Hands Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/bitcoin-mining-remote-hands-program/gold-tier-remote-hands/ ## Services for Larger Bitcoin Mining Operations ## For bitcoin miners with operations larger than 5MW, this package provides all the consulting, staffing, and project management services you need to improve your operational efficiency and maximize mining profitability. ## We can provide services including full site selection and development, electrical purchase agreements, site deployment, at-cost machine and infrastructure procurement, and long-term hands-on management. ### Explore Our Services - → Remote hands program - → Managed mining - → Hosting services ## Remote Hands Gold Tier - General Labor Rate $15 - 30 / hour - Remote Senior Technician $100 / hour Looking for technical support to improve your mining operations performance? Get access to a Senior MiningStore technician with extensive experience working on ASIC and GPU mining servers. Senior technicians can assist in installing key software, remote monitoring systems, ASIC and GPU remote diagnostics, and software images. Senior Technicians are available 9-5 to work on your project needs. - On-site Senior Technician Included in fee Looking for technical support to improve your mining operations performance? Get access to a Senior MiningStore technician with extensive experience working on ASIC and GPU mining servers. Senior technicians can assist in installing key software, remote monitoring systems, ASIC and GPU remote diagnostics, and software images. Senior Technicians are available 9-5 to work on your project needs. - Project Specialist $125 / hour Looking for more advanced support managing your mining operation? MiningStore’s Project Specialists have experience in overseeing mining facility operations and can assist you with driver optimizations, overclocking machines, asset management, site development, and building designs, electrical one-line diagram drawing, sourcing components, and advanced remote support. - Site Operator $200 / hour A Mining Site Operator is responsible for ensuring your hashrate is operational 24/7 this individual will be responsible for correcting events which result in a drop of more than 30% of your mining facility’s hashrate. The site operator is also responsible for ensuring the facility runs smoothly and technicians are completing their tasks in a timely manner ensuring machine uptime is maintained. The site operator can be local to the site and is a part time role in running a mining operation. - Lead Project Manager $185 / hour Looking for more than just operational expertise and implementation? MiningStore’s Project Managers have overseen the successful deployment of multiple mining operations and can ensure your deployment happens on-time and within your budget. Project Manager’s provide assistance in procuring components for your building and mining infrastructure, writing procedures, and processes for your specific site, implementing protocols and procedures for your mining deployment which on-site technicians will follow, running payroll costs, and providing reports. - Mining Expert $750 / hour Need to talk to a mining expert to ensure your project will be profitable and efficient? We offer consultation calls with JohnPaul Baric, a digital currency mining pioneer with over 7-years of full-time participation in the industry. JohnPaul has deployed over ten mining facilities to wind farms, solar fields, and niche stranded energy sources. JohnPaul will review your site plans, provide feedback and guidance on airflow and building construction, analyze your site's profitability & provide insight into possible mining server options, review your financial model, and discuss hashrate and difficulty trends to determine the best time & strategy to exit your operation. --- # Silver Tier Remote Hands Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/bitcoin-mining-remote-hands-program/silver-tier-remote-hands/ ## Consulting, Staffing, and Project Management Services for Beginners to Bitcoin Mining ## For bitcoin miners with operations smaller than 5MW, this package provides all the consulting, staffing, and project management services you need to improve your operational efficiency and maximize mining profitability. ## You’ll have daily access to our team of mining industry veterans who can share knowledge and processes that have made our operations successful. We will also manage your mining operation remotely, with the option to have a specialized technician visit the site twice per month for ASIC deployment and maintenance, as well as any other tasks required to keep your mining farm running optimally. ### Explore Our Services - → Remote hands program - → Gold tier - → Hosting services ## Remote Hands Silver Tier - Remote Senior Technician $100 / hour Looking for technical support to improve your mining operations performance? Get access to a Senior MiningStore technician with extensive experience working on ASIC and GPU mining servers. Senior technicians can assist in installing key software, remote monitoring systems, ASIC and GPU remote diagnostics, and software images. Senior Technicians are available 9-5 to work on your project needs. - On-site Senior Technician $125 / hour Looking for technical support to improve your mining operations performance? Get access to a Senior MiningStore technician with extensive experience working on ASIC and GPU mining servers. Senior technicians can assist in installing key software, remote monitoring systems, ASIC and GPU remote diagnostics, and software images. Senior Technicians are available 9-5 to work on your project needs. - Project Specialist $175 / hour Looking for more advanced support managing your mining operation? MiningStore’s Project Specialists have experience in overseeing mining facility operations and can assist you with driver optimizations, overclocking machines, asset management, site development, and building designs, electrical one-line diagram drawing, sourcing components, and advanced remote support. - Site Operator $225 / hour A Mining Site Operator is responsible for ensuring your hashrate is operational 24/7 this individual will be responsible for correcting events which result in a drop of more than 30% of your mining facility’s hashrate. The site operator is also responsible for ensuring the facility runs smoothly and technicians are completing their tasks in a timely manner ensuring machine uptime is maintained. The site operator can be local to the site and is a part time role in running a mining operation. - Lead Project Manager $275 / hour Looking for more than just operational expertise and implementation? MiningStore’s Project Managers have overseen the successful deployment of multiple mining operations and can ensure your deployment happens on-time and within your budget. Project Manager’s provide assistance in procuring components for your building and mining infrastructure, writing procedures, and processes for your specific site, implementing protocols and procedures for your mining deployment which on-site technicians will follow, running payroll costs, and providing reports. - Mining Expert $750 / hour Need to talk to a mining expert to ensure your project will be profitable and efficient? We offer consultation calls with JohnPaul Baric, a digital currency mining pioneer with over 7-years of full-time participation in the industry. JohnPaul has deployed over ten mining facilities to wind farms, solar fields, and niche stranded energy sources. JohnPaul will review your site plans, provide feedback and guidance on airflow and building construction, analyze your site's profitability & provide insight into possible mining server options, review your financial model, and discuss hashrate and difficulty trends to determine the best time & strategy to exit your operation. --- # Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/ ### Hydro Strategy Understand where hydro makes sense operationally, what it asks of a site, and how it changes fleet economics over time. --- # Antminer S21 XP Hydro Manual Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/antminer-s21-xp-hydro-manual/ The Bitmain Antminer S21 XP Hydro is designed for high-density hydro deployments where poor startup discipline can erase the efficiency advantage you paid for. A clean rollout starts with the right coolant chemistry, a stable three-phase electrical feed, and a technician workflow that verifies environmental limits before the unit ever hashes. ## Key Takeaways - Validate power, coolant flow, and inlet temperature before first energizing the unit. - Treat firmware, filtration, and coolant quality as part of normal operations, not afterthoughts. - Use environmental thresholds and simple fault checks to catch problems before they become hardware damage. Deployment ## Hardware Snapshot The S21 XP Hydro combines flagship SHA-256 performance with a closed-loop hydro interface, making it a fit for disciplined containerized deployments rather than ad hoc retrofits. Parameter Specification Hashrate 473 TH/s Power draw 5,676W @ 35°C Efficiency 12 J/TH Cooling Closed-loop hydro cooling Noise 50 dB Network RJ45 Ethernet (10/100M) Input voltage 380-415V AC, 3-phase Deployment ## Pre-Startup Checklist ### Power and cabling - Confirm a stable 380-415V, 3-phase feed with circuit protection sized for the unit. - Use a certified PDU and C20 power cable, then verify grounding resistance is at or below 0.3 ohms. - Mount the miner in a dust-controlled, vibration-resistant location before connecting coolant lines. ### Cooling system setup - Connect the miner to DN10 / OD10 mm hydro fittings with leak-free terminations. - Use deionized water or approved antifreeze with a pH target between 8.5 and 9.5. - Verify 8.0-10.0 L/min coolant flow with pressure at or below 3.5 bar and inlet temperature between 20°C and 50°C. ### Critical startup rule Do not attempt a cold start with inlet coolant below 20°C. The unit will not start correctly, and repeated attempts create unnecessary commissioning noise. Deployment ## Installation and Pool Configuration - Secure the miner, coolant lines, and power leads before plugging in network connectivity. - Locate the unit on the network through Bitmain's configuration tool or your router interface. - Open the miner web interface and enter pool URL, worker name, and password under Miner Configuration. - Bring miners online in controlled batches so you can watch flow, temperature, and electrical behavior without masking faults. Once the miner is reachable, the first job is not chasing peak output. It is proving that power, coolant, and network behavior are all stable enough to support sustained uptime. Deployment ## Operating and Maintenance Guardrails Task Frequency What to verify Dashboard review Daily Hashrate, board temperature, and power draw remain inside normal variance Filter cleaning Monthly Inlet and outlet filters stay clear enough to maintain target flow Firmware updates Quarterly Known bugs and control improvements are rolled out intentionally Coolant replacement Annually Fluid is flushed and replaced before contamination compounds ### Environmental limits worth logging - Ambient humidity should stay within 10-90% RH without condensation. - Storage temperature can be lower than operating temperature, but recommissioning should follow startup checks again. - Coolant conductivity should remain below 100 μS/cm and ideally under 20 μS/cm at initial fill. Deployment ## Common Faults and First Responses Issue First checks Low hashrate Confirm pool connectivity, coolant flow, and firmware status Overheating Verify inlet temperature, clear filters, and confirm no trapped air remains in the loop Connection instability Restart cleanly, inspect Ethernet, and recheck cabinet-side network configuration ### Best practice Treat the miner and cooling loop as one system. Electrical, network, and thermal checks should be logged together during rollout and after every maintenance intervention. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Deployment Electrical Wiring Manual for Hydro Mining Field-ready wiring guidance for miner plugs, pumps, PLCs, sensors, and emergency-stop circuits. Read next Deployment Power-On Hydro Equipment Guide Safe startup sequence for coolant circulation, staged energizing, and first-72-hour monitoring. Read next Deployment Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Five-phase planning and pre-launch audit for hydro-cooled site buildouts. Read next --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE Container Guides Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-container-guides/ ### Version-specific search intent Each page is tuned to the exact long-tail query people use in the field: container family, version, cooling method, guide, manual, setup, and PDF. --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-hd5-v1-dry-cooling-tower-guide/ The HD5 manual marks another major break in the Bitmain container line. The document describes two A/B liquid-cooling systems that can run independently or together while sharing a main control cabinet. That architecture changes deployment, operations, and maintenance, so crews need to read the manual through planning and service work, not installation alone. PDF Download ## Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide PDF Download the PDF, then use the sections below to review specs, setup steps, power and cooling requirements, maintenance notes, troubleshooting details, and revision history for Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide. V1.0.2 January 2025 100 pages Download PDF View Revisions Comparison ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide: Version Differences - HD5 introduces two A/B liquid-cooling thermal systems that can run separately or together while sharing a main control cabinet. - The container grows to support up to 308 S21/S19 Hydro servers, well above the 210-unit HK3 and HW5 families. - Power scales up sharply: 1512 kW standard, 1665 kW maximum, and 1200A x4 main switching capacity in the distribution layer. - HD5 uses a dry-cooling-tower system with a 1500 kW tower package and DN100 external interfaces instead of HW5's dry-wet branch. Quick Specs ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Specs and Requirements Container dimensions 12196 x 2438 x 2896 mm High-calculation server capacity Up to 308 S21 Hyd. and S19 Hyd. series servers Standard / max power 1512 kW / 1665 kW Main switching capacity 1200A x 4 Dry cooling tower capacity 1500 kW Interfaces / flow DN100 PN16 external interface, rated flow 67.2-73.9 m3/h depending on pump frequency Installation ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Setup Highlights - Level the container, install the dry-cooling towers, lift them into place, and lay out the intermediate connection pipework exactly as the HD5 guide shows. - Treat the A and B cooling systems as a commissioning concern from day one because the manual describes them as separate loops that can run independently. - Use the distribution-work chapter carefully because HD5 has a heavier electrical and switching profile than HK3 or HW5. - Complete the onsite installation summary before power-up so the A/B loop architecture is fully validated. Utilities ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Power and Cooling Requirements - HD5 uses forced-air dry cooling towers only in this manual, not dry-wet or PHE variants. - The container supports 1512 kW standard power and 1665 kW maximum power, with 1200A x4 main switching capacity. - The dry cooling tower package is rated at 1500 kW and <=80 kW operating power. - Rated flow is shown as 67.2-73.9 m3/h depending on pump frequency, which is different from the >=85 m3/h target used in the HK3/HW5 manuals. Operations ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Operation Notes - The manual covers system use, pressurization, rehydration, electrical wiring, power-up/power-down, and touch-screen operation from the perspective of the A/B system split. - Operators can energize loop A, loop B, or both depending on the site's configuration and available server population. - Field builds using dual-loop HD5 architecture should stay on this manual instead of the single-loop HK3 or HW5 guides. - The larger server count and heavier power profile make disciplined startup sequencing even more important on HD5. Maintenance ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Maintenance Notes - The HD5 guide includes dedicated container troubleshooting, dry cooling tower troubleshooting, and maintenance/upkeep sections. - Because the system can run as A, B, or both, maintenance planning needs to account for loop isolation and staged service windows. - HD5 is not the place to improvise with HK3/HW5 service habits; the guide's own architecture differences justify a separate maintenance playbook. - Use the HD5 guide to compare expansion plans against smaller Bitmain container families. Troubleshooting ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Troubleshooting Notes - Use the HD5 manual first when the site has an A/B loop issue, because that architecture does not exist in HK3 or HW5. - The dry cooling tower troubleshooting section is separate from the container troubleshooting section, which helps isolate whether the problem is in the loop or the tower package. - HD5's power scale means distribution and loop-state checks should happen before server-level assumptions are made. Files ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide PDF Download and Revision History Product Manual ### HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Product Manual Covers the HD5 dual-loop A/B architecture and the larger 308-server container footprint. Version V1.0.2 Date January 2025 Pages 100 Download PDF ### Revision Archive - HD5 V1 product manual V1.0.2 · January 2025 Current HD5 dry cooling tower manual with dual-loop A/B architecture and the larger 308-server configuration. Next Steps ## Keep Exploring ANTSPACE and Hydro Content Library Browse the ANTSPACE Manual Library Move between HK3, HW5, and HD5 guide families without losing the version and cooling-method context. Open the manual hub Hydro Hub Return to the Hydro Guide Use the main hydro hub to connect manuals with deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and buying guidance. Open the parent guide ANTSPACE HW5 Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 dry-wet tower manual and review the larger HW5 container specs, installation workflow, and tower requirements. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 dry tower manual and review the updated dry tower specs, higher container power, and added installation features. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 dry tower manual and review the specs, installation, operation, and maintenance details for the split dry-tower variant. Read next --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-hk3-v2-v3-v5-guide/ The HK3 V2/V3/V5 manuals cover the earliest public ANTSPACE HK3 container branch before Bitmain split the line into dry tower, dry-wet tower, and plate heat exchanger manuals. Use these PDFs when you need the original field rules: two 500 kW PDC feeds, 25-ton site-strength requirements, cooling-tower spacing, and the pressure-test sequence before first power-on. PDF Download ## Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide PDF Download the PDF, then use the sections below to review specs, setup steps, power and cooling requirements, maintenance notes, troubleshooting details, and revision history for Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide. V1.2 May 30, 2023 19 pages Download PDF View Revisions Comparison ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide: Version Differences - This is the oldest HK3 manual set in the library, covering V2, V3, and V5 in one grouped release instead of one manual per cooling architecture. - Bitmain published separate installation and operation manuals here; starting in HK3 V6, the content moves into single product manuals tailored to dry tower, dry-wet tower, or PHE layouts. - The grouped HK3 set is tied to a 210-unit S19 Hydro-era platform with mixed voltage support: 415V for V2 and 400V for V3/V5. - The operation manual explicitly allows either evaporative cooling tower or plate heat exchanger heat rejection, which is broader than the later variant-specific manuals. Quick Specs ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Specs and Requirements Container dimensions 6058 x 2438 x 2896 mm High-computing server capacity 210 S19 Hydro series Operating power 1047-1050 kW Input voltage 415V±5%/60Hz (V2) or 400V±5%/60Hz (V3/V5) Operating weight 12 t including miners and coolant Cooling options Cooling tower or plate heat exchanger Installation ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Setup Highlights - Prepare a foundation that can withstand 25 tonnes and hold the container within +/-1 degree of level. - Keep the cooling tower at least 2 meters from the container and route the intermediate pipe set based on that spacing. - Land two three-phase five-wire 500 kW feeds into the container's two PDCs and verify grounding at both the container and the PDC level. - Complete the 11-connection external pipe run with undamaged DN125 gaskets, secure the pipe supports, and verify every flange and chuck connection. - Pressure-test the system to 7 bar for at least 30 minutes before moving into liquid-fill and startup work. Utilities ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Power and Cooling Requirements - The operation manual describes two heat-rejection paths: evaporative cooling tower or water-water heat exchange through a plate heat exchanger. - Internal coolant can be antifreeze or purified water depending on the local ambient temperature plan. - The pump station, electric cabinet, networking/PDC layer, and water separator are all treated as part of the same liquid-cooling system, not separate trades. - The legacy spec set assumes S19 Hydro density and a roughly 1.05 MW container power envelope. Operations ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Operation Notes - Use the valve map and pressurization sequence from the O&M manual before placing miners under load. - Treat coolant temperature, pressure, and flow as the key operating variables coming out of the pump station. - The manual expects technicians to understand both the container-side water distribution and the heat-rejection device on the far end of the loop. - Power-on sequencing is tied to verified coolant flow, clean electrical inputs, and correctly labeled field wiring. Maintenance ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Maintenance Notes - The legacy O&M manual includes preventive maintenance, routine inspections, and cooling-tower service guidance as core operating work. - Bitmain's grouped HK3 maintenance model is more generalized than the later variant-specific manuals, which makes this page useful for mixed older fleets. - Plan maintenance around the pump station, electric cabinet, PDC, water separator, and whichever heat-rejection method the site uses. - Legacy HK3 fleets benefit from documenting which revisions are on 415V versus 400V before field replacements are ordered. Troubleshooting ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Troubleshooting Notes - The O&M manual includes separate common-fault handling for the container and the cooling tower. - Treat this manual set as the baseline reference when older HK3 sites show label mismatches or unclear version lineage. - When a legacy HK3 site has been retrofitted, compare the installed heat-rejection hardware against the manual before assuming later V6/V7 procedures apply. Files ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide PDF Download and Revision History Installation Manual ### HK3 V2/V3/V5 On-Site Installation Manual Earliest available HK3 field-installation document covering V2, V3, and V5 container deployments. Version V1.2 Date May 30, 2023 Pages 19 Download PDF Operation and Maintenance Manual ### HK3 V2/V3/V5 Operation and Maintenance Manual Pairs with the installation manual and captures the legacy HK3 operating profile before the V6 variant split. Version V1.3 Date May 30, 2023 Pages 46 Download PDF ### Revision Archive - Field installation manual V1.2 · May 30, 2023 Covers site install, pipe layout, power feeds, pressurization, and liquid-fill for HK3 V2/V3/V5. - Operation and maintenance manual V1.3 · May 30, 2023 Covers system composition, technical specs, valve functions, common faults, and maintenance routines. Next Steps ## Keep Exploring ANTSPACE and Hydro Content Library Browse the ANTSPACE Manual Library Move between HK3, HW5, and HD5 guide families without losing the version and cooling-method context. Open the manual hub Hydro Hub Return to the Hydro Guide Use the main hydro hub to connect manuals with deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and buying guidance. Open the parent guide ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 dry tower manual and review the specs, installation, operation, and maintenance details for the split dry-tower variant. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 plate heat exchanger manual and review the cold-side water, flow, and maintenance requirements for the PHE branch. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 dry tower manual and review the updated dry tower specs, higher container power, and added installation features. Read next --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-hk3-v6-dry-tower-guide/ The HK3 V6 dry tower manual marks the point where Bitmain stopped using one grouped HK3 document and started publishing cooling-method manuals. Use this guide when you need dry tower placement rules, interface details, and dry-tower-specific troubleshooting. HK3 V7 adds a higher power envelope and an exhaust air-conditioning kit section. PDF Download ## Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide PDF Download the PDF, then use the sections below to review specs, setup steps, power and cooling requirements, maintenance notes, troubleshooting details, and revision history for Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide. V2.0.5 April 2024 105 pages Download PDF View Revisions Comparison ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide: Version Differences - HK3 V6 dry tower is the first branch in the HK3 line to get its own cooling-method-specific product manual. - It keeps the 210-unit HK3 container and roughly 1.05 MW container power profile, but the heat-rejection branch is narrowed to a 500 kW dry tower. - The dry tower product manual stands on its own and includes dry-tower-specific maintenance and fault handling. - HK3 V7 raises dry tower heat dissipation and adds an exhaust air-conditioning kit section that does not appear here. Quick Specs ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Specs and Requirements Container dimensions 6058 x 2438 x 2896 mm High-computing server capacity 210 S21 Hyd. and S19 Hyd. series servers Standard / max power 1047 kW / 1050 kW Dry tower heat dissipation 500 kW Input power AC 400V±5%, 60Hz/50Hz Interfaces / flow DN125 dry-tower interface, DN100 heating/PHE interface, >=85 m3/h flow Installation ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Setup Highlights - Level the container before installation, then remove the dry tower panels and hoist the tower into final position. - Plan for a 25-ton foundation and at least 2 meters of clearance between the container and the dry tower. - Keep the dry tower top unobstructed and align the tower and container pipe-connection surfaces on the same projected line. - Install the middle connecting pipes, exhaust fans, and power distribution hardware in the order the manual lays out. Utilities ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Power and Cooling Requirements - The V6 dry tower branch keeps the HK3 container at 1047-1050 kW while giving the dry tower its own dedicated 500 kW dissipation spec. - The manual still references DN100 heating/PHE interfaces because the underlying container platform can be adapted, but this product manual is written for the dry tower path. - Flow planning remains at >=85 m3/h, matching the container-side pump and manifold expectations. - Use the dry tower placement rules and cable/piping alignment diagram rather than reusing the older grouped-HK3 assumptions blindly. Operations ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Operation Notes - The manual includes dedicated sections for system pressurization, liquid replenishment, electrical wiring, power-on/power-off, and touch-screen operation. - Dry tower operation is framed around forced-air heat rejection rather than wet spray-water or cold-side water loop management. - Commissioning should confirm container and tower behavior together, not as separate subcontractor sign-offs. - The tower-side automatic exhaust and drain valve locations are called out during installation and matter again during operations. Maintenance ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Maintenance Notes - The V6 dry tower manual includes dry-tower-specific preventive maintenance and regular inspection sections. - Sites with forced-air tower equipment and no wet tower water makeup or PHE cold-side loop should stay on this manual. - The troubleshooting and maintenance chapters are narrower than the grouped HK3 manual and more useful for dry-tower-only crews. - Technicians should note the split-manual change history because older service habits from the grouped HK3 docs can miss dry-tower-specific checks. Troubleshooting ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Troubleshooting Notes - The manual separates container faults from dry tower faults, which makes it cleaner than the older grouped HK3 O&M document. - Use the V6 dry tower guide instead of the dry-wet or PHE manuals when diagnosing forced-air tower faults. - The tower fins and exposed valve hardware are called out repeatedly as handling risks during service. Files ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide PDF Download and Revision History Product Manual ### HK3 V6 Dry Tower Product Manual Change history notes the 2024 split into cooling-method-specific manuals. Version V2.0.5 Date April 2024 Pages 105 Download PDF ### Revision Archive - Dry tower product manual V2.0.5 · April 2024 Change history references the move from a shared HK3 manual lineage into cooling-method-specific manuals. Next Steps ## Keep Exploring ANTSPACE and Hydro Content Library Browse the ANTSPACE Manual Library Move between HK3, HW5, and HD5 guide families without losing the version and cooling-method context. Open the manual hub Hydro Hub Return to the Hydro Guide Use the main hydro hub to connect manuals with deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and buying guidance. Open the parent guide ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 dry tower manual and review the updated dry tower specs, higher container power, and added installation features. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 dry-wet tower manual and review the container specs, wet/dry tower interfaces, installation workflow, and maintenance details. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Download the official Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 manuals and review the key installation, power, and maintenance details for legacy HK3 containers. Read next --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-hk3-v6-dry-wet-tower-guide/ The HK3 V6 dry-wet tower manual fits sites that rely on both dry and wet operating modes. It keeps the same HK3 container body, but the tower-side requirements differ from the dry tower and PHE manuals. Crews usually land on this manual to confirm tower interfaces, spray-water requirements, and the correct product branch for HK3 V6 dry-wet builds. PDF Download ## Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide PDF Download the PDF, then use the sections below to review specs, setup steps, power and cooling requirements, maintenance notes, troubleshooting details, and revision history for Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide. V2.0.5 April 2024 89 pages Download PDF View Revisions Comparison ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide: Version Differences - The dry-wet branch keeps the same HK3 V6 container platform but swaps in a 1000 kW dry-wet tower instead of the 500 kW dry tower. - The dry-wet tower manual adds DN40 water-supply and DN65 drainage interfaces that do not appear on the dry tower page. - The dry-wet tower keeps atmospheric heat rejection on-site instead of pushing heat into a cold-side water loop. - V7 adds a broader platform view and a different dry-tower feature set. Quick Specs ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Specs and Requirements Container dimensions 6058 x 2438 x 2896 mm High-computing server capacity 210 S21 Hyd. and S19 Hyd. series servers Standard / max power 1047 kW / 1050 kW Dry-wet tower heat dissipation 1000 kW Tower power / noise 14-28 kW, 70 dBA at 15 m Water interfaces DN125 container, DN40 water supply, DN65 drainage Installation ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Setup Highlights - Start from the same HK3 container leveling and placement baseline, then install the dry-wet tower as the heat-rejection branch for this variant. - Lay out the dry-wet tower pipework with the DN125 container connection plus the dedicated water-supply and drainage interfaces. - Use the manual's relative-position and pipe-routing diagrams rather than the dry tower drawings, because the wet hardware changes the field package. - Complete exhaust fan installation, power distribution, and startup prep before any wet-mode operation is attempted. Utilities ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Power and Cooling Requirements - The container side remains a roughly 1.05 MW HK3 platform, but the dry-wet tower is rated at 1000 kW with 14-28 kW tower operating power. - The dry-wet branch explicitly combines dry and wet working conditions inside the same product family. - The performance table keeps the same >=85 m3/h container flow requirement as other HK3 V6 variants. - Tower-side noise is documented at 70 dBA measured at 15 meters and 25C. Operations ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Operation Notes - The manual explains wet-mode operation around spray water, serpentine coils, the water collection tank, and the float-ball valve. - Dry-mode operation remains forced-air heat rejection, similar in concept to the dry tower branch but not identical in equipment behavior. - Use the manual's pressurization, liquid replenishment, electrical wiring, power-on, and touch-screen steps as one sequence. - The dry-wet branch is the right operating reference whenever water makeup, water loss, or drainage are part of the site's daily reality. Maintenance ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Maintenance Notes - The manual includes dry-wet-tower-specific troubleshooting and maintenance content that the dry tower guide does not need. - Maintenance planning should cover spray-water quality, drift/water loss controls, and drainage hardware in addition to standard HK3 container work. - Because wet-mode components add more service variables, the dry-wet guide is the correct replacement-parts reference for those sites. - The same split-manual lineage applies here: do not default back to the old grouped HK3 document when the site clearly uses a dry-wet tower. Troubleshooting ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Troubleshooting Notes - Dry-wet tower faults belong in this manual instead of the dry tower or PHE branches. - The presence of dedicated supply and drain interfaces usually makes the correct manual branch obvious even if field labels are incomplete. - Tower noise, water handling, and wet-to-dry mode issues are all better handled from this manual than from the older grouped HK3 set. Files ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide PDF Download and Revision History Product Manual ### HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Product Manual Dry-wet-specific variant with spray-water and drainage interfaces called out in the performance table. Version V2.0.5 Date April 2024 Pages 89 Download PDF ### Revision Archive - Dry-wet tower product manual V2.0.5 · April 2024 Published after the HK3 V6 manual split and focused on the 1000 kW dry-wet heat-rejection branch. Next Steps ## Keep Exploring ANTSPACE and Hydro Content Library Browse the ANTSPACE Manual Library Move between HK3, HW5, and HD5 guide families without losing the version and cooling-method context. Open the manual hub Hydro Hub Return to the Hydro Guide Use the main hydro hub to connect manuals with deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and buying guidance. Open the parent guide ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 dry tower manual and review the specs, installation, operation, and maintenance details for the split dry-tower variant. Read next ANTSPACE HW5 Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 dry-wet tower manual and review the larger HW5 container specs, installation workflow, and tower requirements. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 plate heat exchanger manual and review the cold-side water, flow, and maintenance requirements for the PHE branch. Read next --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-hk3-v6-plate-heat-exchanger-guide/ The PHE branch matters because it changes the heat-rejection story completely. Instead of tower fans and wet hardware, the HK3 V6 plate heat exchanger manual is built around an external cold-side water source and the flow conditions needed to make that exchange work. Teams searching HK3 plate heat exchanger guidance usually need cold-side loop requirements and exchanger-specific maintenance notes, not dry tower placement details. PDF Download ## Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide PDF Download the PDF, then use the sections below to review specs, setup steps, power and cooling requirements, maintenance notes, troubleshooting details, and revision history for Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide. V2.0.5 May 2024 84 pages Download PDF View Revisions Comparison ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide: Version Differences - The PHE guide is the HK3 V6 branch that replaces tower heat rejection with water-water heat exchange through a plate heat exchanger. - It keeps the HK3 container at about 1.05 MW, but the external heat-rejection package shifts to a 1200 kW exchanger with cold-side water limits and flow requirements. - The PHE manual drops tower hoisting and spray-water sections and replaces them with PHE installation and exchanger service content. - Use the PHE manual when the site depends on an external water loop instead of atmospheric cooling. Quick Specs ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Specs and Requirements Container dimensions 6058 x 2438 x 2896 mm High-computing server capacity 210 S19 Hyd. series servers Standard / max power 1047 kW / 1050 kW PHE heat dissipation 1200 kW Cold-side water window 0-30C, 33-110 m3/h cold-side flow Hot-side flow / interface 100 m3/h hot-side flow, DN100 PN16 interface Installation ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Setup Highlights - Level the HK3 container before installation and then move directly into plate heat exchanger installation rather than tower placement. - Install the PHE branch, exhaust fans, and power distribution gear in the sequence the manual calls out. - Verify the cold-side loop is available and correctly sized before treating the container as ready for commissioning. - Use the onsite installation summary as the final gate because the missing cold-side loop is the fastest way to stall a PHE deployment. Utilities ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Power and Cooling Requirements - The PHE branch keeps the HK3 container's standard 1047-1050 kW power envelope and >=85 m3/h container flow requirement. - Heat rejection moves into a 1200 kW plate heat exchanger instead of a tower. - The exchanger's cold-side water should stay between 0C and 30C, with 33-110 m3/h flow, while the hot-side flow target is 100 m3/h. - Facility teams should use this manual for procurement when they need cold-side loop specs instead of tower specs. Operations ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Operation Notes - The product manual still includes system pressurization, replenishment, electrical wiring, power-on/power-off, and touch-screen operation. - The exchanger depends on a reliable cold-side water source instead of fan-driven atmospheric rejection. - Use the PHE branch whenever the site's utility or facility design already centers on secondary water loops. - Operators should document whether the field system is tower-based or PHE-based before making service decisions. Maintenance ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Maintenance Notes - The PHE guide includes routine failure handling for the plate heat exchanger and a dedicated exchanger maintenance section. - Maintenance work involving fouling risk, cold-side water quality, or exchanger isolation belongs here instead of in the tower manuals. - Because the PHE branch still shares the HK3 container, container-side maintenance remains familiar even while the heat-rejection branch changes. - The guide also includes an 'other system maintenance' section beyond the exchanger itself. Troubleshooting ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide Troubleshooting Notes - The troubleshooting chapter separates container faults from PHE routine failures. - Send technicians here when the issue sits on the cold-side loop instead of a tower fan bank. - If the site is misidentified as a tower-based HK3 build, compare the field interface sizes and heat-rejection hardware against this manual first. Files ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Guide PDF Download and Revision History Product Manual ### HK3 V6 Plate Heat Exchanger Product Manual Variant-specific PHE guide with cold-side water requirements and exchanger maintenance details. Version V2.0.5 Date May 2024 Pages 84 Download PDF ### Revision Archive - Plate heat exchanger product manual V2.0.5 · May 2024 Current downloadable PHE manual with cold-side loop specs and exchanger-specific maintenance content. Next Steps ## Keep Exploring ANTSPACE and Hydro Content Library Browse the ANTSPACE Manual Library Move between HK3, HW5, and HD5 guide families without losing the version and cooling-method context. Open the manual hub Hydro Hub Return to the Hydro Guide Use the main hydro hub to connect manuals with deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and buying guidance. Open the parent guide ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Download the official Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 manuals and review the key installation, power, and maintenance details for legacy HK3 containers. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 dry tower manual and review the specs, installation, operation, and maintenance details for the split dry-tower variant. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 dry tower manual and review the updated dry tower specs, higher container power, and added installation features. Read next --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-hk3-v7-dry-tower-guide/ The HK3 V7 manual is the current Bitmain guide for the HK3 dry tower branch. V7 raises the container-side power envelope, keeps 210 S21/S19 Hydro servers in the chassis, and adds an exhaust air-conditioning kit installation section missing from the V6 dry tower manual. PDF Download ## Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide PDF Download the PDF, then use the sections below to review specs, setup steps, power and cooling requirements, maintenance notes, troubleshooting details, and revision history for Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide. V7 October 2024 91 pages Download PDF View Revisions Comparison ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide: Version Differences - HK3 V7 raises the container-side operating and maximum power versus HK3 V6 dry tower while keeping the same 6058 x 2438 x 2896 mm chassis footprint. - The dry tower branch is rated at 650 kW here, which is higher than the 500 kW dry tower rating documented in the V6 dry tower manual. - The V7 manual includes a dedicated 'Installing Exhaust Air-conditioning Kit for Container' section that does not appear in the V6 dry tower manual. - V7 treats HK3 as a current platform with dry-wet, dry tower, and PHE options called out in the system overview. Quick Specs ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Specs and Requirements Container dimensions 6058 x 2438 x 2896 mm High-computing server capacity 210 S21 Hyd. and S19 Hyd. series servers Operating / max power 1200 kW / 1300 kW Dry tower heat dissipation 650 kW Dry tower power / noise 20-32 kW, 70 dBA @ 25C and 15 m Interfaces / flow DN125 tower interface, DN100 heating/PHE interface, >=85 m3/h flow Installation ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Setup Highlights - Level the container, install the dry tower, and route the connecting pipes using the V7 placement and installation drawings. - Install the exhaust fans and the exhaust air-conditioning kit for the container if the field build includes that package. - Use the V7 power distribution section rather than back-porting earlier assumptions from V6 or the grouped HK3 manuals. - Close out startup with the onsite installation summary before moving into power-on sequencing. Utilities ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Power and Cooling Requirements - The V7 manual explicitly states that the HK3 platform can work with dry-wet tower, PHE, or dry tower heat-rejection options, even though this document uses the dry tower variant as the example. - Container-side power rises to 1200 kW operating and 1300 kW maximum in the V7 performance table. - The dry tower branch is rated for 650 kW of heat dissipation with 20-32 kW operating power. - Flow remains at >=85 m3/h and the interface strategy still separates DN125 tower piping from the DN100 heating/PHE interface. Operations ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Operation Notes - The V7 manual includes system pressurization, liquid replenishment, electrical wiring, system power-on/power-off, and touch-screen operation sections in one product manual. - Field teams can use the broader V7 overview to understand how the HK3 platform relates to other heat-rejection options, even when the actual build is dry tower. - The onsite installation summary is included in the operations part of the document so commissioning and operation stay connected. - Because V7 is newer, it is the best dry tower reference for current HK3 procurement and launch planning. Maintenance ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Maintenance Notes - V7 retains dedicated dry tower troubleshooting and dry tower maintenance chapters. - Sites running newer HK3 dry tower equipment should stay on this manual when the V6 split manuals no longer match the field labels or options. - The maintenance structure is cleaner than the older grouped HK3 manuals and more current than the V6 dry tower branch. - The air-conditioning kit section is another indicator that V7 is meant for a slightly more feature-complete current generation of HK3 deployments. Troubleshooting ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Troubleshooting Notes - Container faults and dry tower faults are separated into dedicated troubleshooting sections. - The safest way to distinguish V7 from V6 in the field is usually the combination of the higher power table and the added exhaust air-conditioning kit section. - Use the V7 manual before assuming a current HK3 container behaves exactly like the earlier split-manual V6 branch. Files ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide PDF Download and Revision History Product Manual ### HK3 V7 Dry Tower Product Manual Current HK3 V7 dry tower manual covering the higher power profile and exhaust air-conditioning kit section. Version V7 Date October 2024 Pages 91 Download PDF ### Revision Archive - HK3 V7 dry tower manual V7 · October 2024 Current-generation HK3 dry tower guide with the updated power envelope and exhaust air-conditioning kit install section. Next Steps ## Keep Exploring ANTSPACE and Hydro Content Library Browse the ANTSPACE Manual Library Move between HK3, HW5, and HD5 guide families without losing the version and cooling-method context. Open the manual hub Hydro Hub Return to the Hydro Guide Use the main hydro hub to connect manuals with deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and buying guidance. Open the parent guide ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 dry tower manual and review the specs, installation, operation, and maintenance details for the split dry-tower variant. Read next ANTSPACE HW5 Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 dry-wet tower manual and review the larger HW5 container specs, installation workflow, and tower requirements. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 Guide Download the official Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V2/V3/V5 manuals and review the key installation, power, and maintenance details for legacy HK3 containers. Read next --- # Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/bitmain-antspace-hw5-v1-dry-wet-tower-guide/ The HW5 V1 manual covers Bitmain's longer dry-wet tower container, with a different installation sequence and site layout than HK3. Use it when you need HW5-specific chassis dimensions, tower interfaces, and assembly steps instead of HK3 assumptions. PDF Download ## Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide PDF Download the PDF, then use the sections below to review specs, setup steps, power and cooling requirements, maintenance notes, troubleshooting details, and revision history for Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide. V1.0.1 July 2024 107 pages Download PDF View Revisions Comparison ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide: Version Differences - HW5 stretches the container footprint to roughly 12.2 meters long while keeping a 210-unit S21/S19 Hydro density target. - The HW5 manual is built around a dry-wet tower architecture with a 1200 kW tower and dedicated supply/drain connections. - HW5 includes a dedicated installation chapter for cooling tower fans and guardrails instead of folding that work into a generic install sequence. - HD5 runs larger, heavier, and at a higher power level than HW5. Quick Specs ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Specs and Requirements Container dimensions 12192 x 2438 x 2896 mm High-computing server capacity 210 S21 Hyd. and S19 Hyd. series servers Power rating 1062 kW Input power 400V±5% AC, 60Hz/50Hz Dry-wet tower capacity 1200 kW Interfaces / flow DN125 container, DN40 supply, DN65 drain, >=85 m3/h flow Installation ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Setup Highlights - Use the HW5-specific composition and installation chapters rather than copying HK3 field assumptions onto the longer chassis. - The manual includes explicit steps for product inspection, installation environment, hoisting and securing, and product disassembly and assembly. - Cooling tower fans and guardrails are treated as a standalone installation chapter in HW5. - Complete the onsite installation summary before power-up because the HW5 manual expects the full product package to be assembled correctly. Utilities ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Power and Cooling Requirements - The HW5 container is rated at 1062 kW and keeps the dry-wet tower architecture with 1200 kW dissipation capacity. - Tower operating power is 14-28 kW and the measured tower noise is 70 dBA at 25C and 15 meters. - Flow stays at >=85 m3/h, but the larger chassis and dry-wet tower package change how crews should plan field routing and support structures. - Sites using the long HW5 container instead of the shorter HK3 body should stay on this manual. Operations ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Operation Notes - The manual covers system pressurization, replenishment, electrical wiring, power-on/power-off, touch-screen operation, and the onsite installation summary. - The dry-wet tower operating model still relies on dual dry and wet modes, similar in principle to HK3 dry-wet, but the installation hardware package changes. - Use the HW5 manual when the field work includes tower-fan installation or guardrail assembly specific to the HW5 system. - Because HW5 is a different container family, operators should avoid mixing HK3 and HW5 startup paperwork. Maintenance ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Maintenance Notes - The manual includes dedicated conventional faults, troubleshooting, and maintenance chapters for the HW5 branch. - Preventive maintenance and regular inspections are still central, but the guide expects the HW5 product package to stay intact rather than serviced like a retrofitted HK3. - Keep this manual close for spare-parts and service work on containers tagged HW5. - HW5 is a useful bridge family between the HK3 line and the larger HD5 platform. Troubleshooting ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Troubleshooting Notes - Use the HW5 manual when diagnosing dry-wet tower or container issues on the longer HW5 chassis. - Tower-fan and guardrail installation mistakes are more likely on HW5 than on earlier HK3 dry-wet sites because the manual makes them a separate workstream. - If the site team is not sure whether they have HK3 dry-wet or HW5, the longer chassis dimensions usually settle the question immediately. Files ## Bitmain ANTSPACE HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Guide PDF Download and Revision History Product Manual ### HW5 V1 Dry-Wet Tower Product Manual Introduces the longer HW5 container and a dedicated installation chapter for tower fans and guardrails. Version V1.0.1 Date July 2024 Pages 107 Download PDF ### Revision Archive - HW5 V1 product manual V1.0.1 · July 2024 First release of the HW5 dry-wet tower manual, including the dedicated fan and guardrail installation chapter. Next Steps ## Keep Exploring ANTSPACE and Hydro Content Library Browse the ANTSPACE Manual Library Move between HK3, HW5, and HD5 guide families without losing the version and cooling-method context. Open the manual hub Hydro Hub Return to the Hydro Guide Use the main hydro hub to connect manuals with deployment, maintenance, troubleshooting, and buying guidance. Open the parent guide ANTSPACE HD5 Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 Dry Cooling Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HD5 V1 manual and review the dual-loop HD5 architecture, larger server capacity, dry cooling tower specs, and maintenance workflow. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 Dry-Wet Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V6 dry-wet tower manual and review the container specs, wet/dry tower interfaces, installation workflow, and maintenance details. Read next ANTSPACE HK3 Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 Dry Tower Guide Download the Bitmain ANTSPACE HK3 V7 dry tower manual and review the updated dry tower specs, higher container power, and added installation features. Read next --- # Electrical Wiring Manual for Hydro Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/electrical-wiring-manual-hydro/ Hydro-cooled sites succeed or fail on the quality of their electrical integration. Pump control, miner plugs, sensors, relays, and safety chains must all work together from day one. The legacy cabinet notes become a field workflow you can use during wiring, verification, and commissioning. Download File ## Download the Hydro Electrical Wiring Manual Combined PDF with Cabinet A, Cabinet B, and Control Cabinet C wiring drawings from the original field manuals. Download Wiring Manual ## Key Takeaways - De-energize, meter, and label everything before making changes. - Treat pump-control logic, sensor inputs, and emergency-stop loops as commissioning-critical systems. - Keep cabinet labeling accurate enough that the next technician can validate every termination without guesswork. Deployment ## Safety Rules Before Any Wiring Work - Disconnect the main power supply and verify zero voltage with a meter before touching any component. - Use insulated tools, gloves, and eye protection, especially around wet or recently serviced equipment. - Never bypass emergency-stop lines or lockout logic to speed up testing. ### Non-negotiable standard If cabinet labeling is unclear, stop and relabel before energizing. Hydro sites scale too quickly for undocumented wiring assumptions. Deployment ## Miner Plug Distribution and Grounding Each miner plug should be fed through its own three-phase breaker, with L1, L2, L3, and protective earth landed directly to the corresponding plug terminals. Large cabinets often contain more than one hundred plug positions grouped in numbered banks. Accurate #X-Y labeling is part of the electrical safety system and the service workflow. - Terminate all ground conductors back to the cabinet grounding bar and verify bond integrity. - Match phase rotation consistently across plug groups to prevent difficult-to-trace commissioning issues. - Document breaker-to-plug mapping before miner installation begins. Deployment ## Pump, Sensor, and PLC Wiring Subsystem Field rule Why it matters Circulating pump Land motor phases through overload, contactor, and relay logic before startup testing Prevents nuisance trips and confirms the PLC can command the motor cleanly Spray pump Mirror the circulating-pump control pattern and confirm status feedback returns to the PLC Keeps pump control behavior predictable across cabinet variants Flow sensor Use shielded twisted-pair cable into the PLC analog input Reduces noise in the most important cooling-health signal RTD sensors Terminate each sensor cleanly into the correct analog module slot Temperature noise or mis-landing creates false alarms and bad operator decisions The original field notes called for 6 AWG conductors on higher-power motor circuits and lighter-gauge control conductors for signaling. Keep those separation rules intact when cabinet modifications are made later. Deployment ## Communications, IP Plan, and Emergency Stops - Keep PLC, HMI, router, and RS485 devices on a documented address plan before the first technician laptop connects to the system. - Verify that all emergency-stop buttons are wired in series through the proper terminals and that every coil in the stop chain drops correctly during testing. - Test button functionality during commissioning instead of assuming the cabinet was shipped correctly. ### Commissioning shortcut worth keeping After wiring is complete, validate the E-stop chain before live miner installation. It is the fastest way to catch cabinet logic mistakes while the system is still easy to inspect. Deployment ## Commissioning Checklist - Verify every plug termination, including protective earth, against the cabinet map. - Run pump contactors and overload protection through a controlled test sequence. - Confirm PLC input and output states for pumps, sensors, and status feedback points. - Check live sensor values for temperature, pressure, and flow before miners are energized. - Test emergency-stop behavior and phase-voltage readings one final time before go-live. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Deployment Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Five-phase planning and pre-launch audit for hydro-cooled site buildouts. Read next Deployment Antminer S21 XP Hydro Manual Operating limits, startup thresholds, and maintenance notes for S21 XP Hydro deployments. Read next Deployment HK3 Pump Motor Wiring Case Study A field lesson on Delta-vs-Wye motor wiring during an HK3 hydro deployment. Read next --- # HK3 Pump Motor Wiring Case Study Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/hk3-pump-motor-wiring-case-study/ The replacement motor matched the published voltage and power ratings, but the hidden wiring configuration did not match the HK3 container's control logic. That mismatch created startup delays, tripped protection circuits, and forced on-site rewiring work that should have been prevented during procurement. ## Key Takeaways - Do not treat a matching spec sheet as proof of cabinet compatibility. - Ask for internal wiring diagrams, torque curves, and startup behavior before ordering replacement motors. - Use the case study to improve pump and motor procurement checklists for every hydro deployment. Deployment ## What Went Wrong - The incoming motor arrived in Delta configuration while the HK3 cabinet expected Wye / Star. - The cabinet could not start the motor cleanly, and protection logic tripped on phase imbalance. - The shipment did not include a wiring diagram detailed enough to catch the mismatch before installation. In hydro deployment timelines, even a small wiring surprise turns into lost commissioning hours, delayed hashrate, and extra vendor coordination when the site is already under schedule pressure. Deployment ## How to Identify Wiring Configuration in the Field - Open the terminal box and inspect jumper placement. Delta typically bridges the phase pairs, while Wye joins one side of each winding to a common point. - Use continuity testing to map the winding pairs directly instead of trusting stickers or assumptions. - Document U1/U2, V1/V2, and W1/W2 clearly before moving any jumpers. Deployment ## How the Motor Was Rewired - Verify winding pairs with resistance and continuity testing. - Remove the Delta jumpers that bridge the phases. - Join U2, V2, and W2 to create the Wye center point. - Reconnect U1, V1, and W1 back to L1, L2, and L3 from the HK3 power bus. - Confirm phasing and startup torque through a controlled soft-start ramp. ### Field safety note Only a qualified technician should perform this rewrite. A bad reconnection can damage the soft starter, overload protection, or the motor itself. Deployment ## Motor and Pump Pre-Procurement Checklist Question Why it matters What to request Is the motor wired for Wye by default? Prevents cabinet incompatibility Request the internal wiring diagram before ordering Can the supplier share torque and startup behavior? Confirms soft-start compatibility Ask for OEM wiring and torque sheets What is the inrush current and phase feedback behavior? Prevents nuisance trips and alarm storms Request full nameplate electrical parameters Does the motor align with HK3 overload settings? Protects cabinet hardware during startup Share cabinet specs and request written compatibility confirmation Deployment ## Field Takeaways - Never assume wiring configuration just because the replacement is marketed as equivalent. - Request internal schematics early enough to resolve issues before freight is released. - Keep a simple Wye-vs-Delta reference sheet on-site for technicians performing receiving inspections. - Treat every replacement component as a custom integration until the cabinet proves otherwise. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Deployment Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Five-phase planning and pre-launch audit for hydro-cooled site buildouts. Read next Deployment Electrical Wiring Manual for Hydro Mining Field-ready wiring guidance for miner plugs, pumps, PLCs, sensors, and emergency-stop circuits. Read next Operations Troubleshoot Hydro Miners Quick triage for hashrate drops, flow issues, leaks, pump faults, and escalation triggers. Read next --- # Hydro Maintenance Schedule Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/hydro-maintenance-schedule/ Pumps, coolant, filters, seals, and sensors all age in ways that erode efficiency long before a shutdown shows up on the dashboard. The original field checklist becomes an operating cadence technicians and site managers can keep week after week. ## Key Takeaways - Keep daily checks lightweight but consistent enough to catch leaks, pressure drift, and temperature changes early. - Treat weekly and monthly coolant work as reliability maintenance, not housekeeping. - Stock spares and track work history so emergency repairs do not become extended downtime events. Operations ## Daily and Weekly Tasks Cadence Task Why it matters Daily Check coolant level and top up only with approved fluid Prevents cavitation and overheating caused by low reservoir volume Daily Record inlet/outlet temperature and system pressure Establishes a baseline before small issues become trends Daily Inspect hoses, fittings, and cabinet areas for leaks Leaks can damage electronics and corrode hardware quickly Weekly Test coolant pH and conductivity Flags corrosion risk and electrical-shorting risk early Weekly Clean intake filters and tower screens Protects flow rate and keeps heat exchange stable Weekly Audit hashrate and power behavior Confirms the fleet is meeting target performance without hidden efficiency loss Operations ## Monthly Through Annual Tasks Cadence Task What good looks like Monthly Flush or refresh coolant as needed No visible contamination, mineral buildup, or bacterial growth Monthly Inspect pumps, fan motors, and bearings Flow stays inside the 8-10 L/min target with no abnormal noise Quarterly Run a system flush and clean heat-exchange surfaces Scaling and residue are removed before they affect performance Quarterly Apply planned firmware updates Known bugs are removed without introducing uncontrolled change Annually Replace aging hoses, O-rings, and gaskets Wear items are retired before they become leak points Annually Pressure test the full system above operating range The loop holds pressure cleanly before the next operating cycle Operations ## Coolant Management Guardrails Parameter Target Risk if ignored Coolant type Deionized water or approved glycol blend Tap water introduces scale and corrosion pH 7.0-9.5 Low pH accelerates corrosion Conductivity <100 μS/cm Higher conductivity increases electrical fault risk Freeze point <=-20°C when antifreeze is required Frozen coolant can split lines and fittings ### Documentation matters Pair coolant testing with photo logs and maintenance notes. It turns troubleshooting into evidence-based diagnosis instead of memory-driven guesswork. Operations ## Most Common Maintenance Failure Modes - Hydraulic hose wear from abrasion, vibration, and harsh environmental exposure. - Coolant contamination caused by oxidation, debris, or improper fluid selection. - Corrosion and mineral buildup that reduce heat transfer and clog cooling paths. - Pump, fan, and motor degradation from continuous duty cycles and poor lubrication. - Filter clogging that starves the loop of flow and creates avoidable overheating events. - Electrical and sensor issues caused by moisture ingress, grounding failures, or wiring degradation. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Operations Troubleshoot Hydro Miners Quick triage for hashrate drops, flow issues, leaks, pump faults, and escalation triggers. Read next Deployment Power-On Hydro Equipment Guide Safe startup sequence for coolant circulation, staged energizing, and first-72-hour monitoring. Read next Procurement & Risk Used Hydro Bitcoin Mining Problems Due diligence checklist for inspecting pre-owned hydro miners before you commit capital. Read next --- # Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/hydro-mining-deployment-checklist/ Hydro projects fail most often in the gaps between disciplines: the site is selected before utility timelines are clear, the container arrives before drainage is ready, or the fleet is energized before monitoring and spares are in place. Technicians and operators need a shared sequence for planning, commissioning, and optimizing a hydro site around uptime and long-term profitability. Download File ## Download the Hydro Site Implementation Checklist Printable PDF for project managers, vendors, electricians, and commissioning teams. Download Checklist ## Key Takeaways - Treat water, power, network, and permitting as first-order dependencies instead of parallel assumptions. - Commission the cooling system and monitoring stack before you chase full miner density. - Use a formal pre-launch audit so the site goes live with operating discipline, not hope. ## Five Phases at a Glance ### 1. Feasibility Lock water access, power economics, permitting, and network viability before the site becomes construction-committed. ### 2. Facility Prep Prepare transformers, switchgear, drainage, coolant sourcing, security, and fiber before equipment lands. ### 3. Deployment Set the container, pressure test the loop, install miners in batches, and validate thermals before calling the fleet live. ### 4. Monitoring Stand up maintenance routines, spare-part thresholds, and alerting for flow, pressure, temperature, and efficiency. ### 5. Pre-Launch Audit Verify loop health, water quality, staff readiness, and dashboards before the site moves into full production mode. Deployment ## Phase 1: Feasibility and Site Assessment - Confirm access to a stable, high-flow water source and assess seasonal variability or drought risk. - Identify available power capacity, interconnection lead times, and the economics of that power. - Review climate, zoning, noise regulations, discharge rules, and environmental compliance requirements. - Verify internet access and latency to mining pools before the site becomes construction-committed. Deployment ## Phase 2: Infrastructure and Facility Preparation - Secure property with the right zoning and enough room for container placement, tower access, and future expansion. - Install transformers, switchgear, PDUs, fiber, routing equipment, and facility security before container arrival. - Prepare cooling-tower connections and source coolant with the right antifreeze and corrosion-inhibitor profile. - Use UL/CUL-certified components throughout so the system is easier to insure, inspect, and maintain. Deployment ## Phase 3: Container Setup and Equipment Deployment - Place the HK3-class container on a leveled pad and connect it to both electrical and cooling infrastructure. - Prime the loop, fill coolant, pressure test the system, and verify balanced flow across the deployment. - Install miners in batches, configure dashboard access, and validate inlet/outlet temperature behavior before go-live. - Run diagnostics on every ASIC before the fleet is declared production ready. ### Good commissioning behavior Bring the site online with enough spare technician capacity to troubleshoot pressure balance, network configuration, and miner exceptions immediately. That time is cheaper during commissioning than after production starts. Deployment ## Phase 4: Maintenance and Monitoring Setup - Set recurring filter cleaning, coolant testing, quarterly inspections, and replacement-part inventory thresholds before the site reaches steady state. - Stand up IoT or SCADA-style alerting for flow, pressure, temperature, and miner-level efficiency data. - Track uptime and J/TH behavior weekly so maintenance is driven by trend data, not anecdotes. Deployment ## Phase 5: Operational Optimization and Pre-Launch Audit Final audit item Expected outcome Cooling loop Leak and pressure tests pass with stable regulated flow Water quality Fluid is filtered, treated, and pH balanced Miners and container Units are powered, cooled, reachable, and diagnostics are complete Staff readiness Emergency procedures and shutdown logic are understood Monitoring Dashboards and alerts are active before full production starts Once the technical audit is complete, revisit ROI assumptions around BTC price, energy cost, flexible-load contracts, and seasonal operating conditions. That keeps the deployment grounded in the economics it was approved under. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Deployment Electrical Wiring Manual for Hydro Mining Field-ready wiring guidance for miner plugs, pumps, PLCs, sensors, and emergency-stop circuits. Read next Deployment Antminer S21 XP Hydro Manual Operating limits, startup thresholds, and maintenance notes for S21 XP Hydro deployments. Read next Deployment Power-On Hydro Equipment Guide Safe startup sequence for coolant circulation, staged energizing, and first-72-hour monitoring. Read next --- # Power-On Hydro Equipment Guide Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/power-on-hydro-equipment-guide/ Improper startup procedures create avoidable stress on hydro boards, pumps, seals, and electrical infrastructure. The safest rollout is a staged one. The startup sequence stays simple: verify the site, circulate the fluid, energize the electrical system in batches, then stabilize and monitor. ## Key Takeaways - Do not energize ASICs until the cooling loop is circulating and air has been bled from the system. - Power miners in small batches so you can identify abnormalities before they cascade through the site. - Treat the first 72 hours as a monitored stabilization period, not a finished handoff. Deployment ## Step 1: Pre-Power-On Safety Checks - Inspect water hoses, fittings, and electrical cables for secure terminations and visible damage. - Confirm coolant level, pH, and conductivity before the pump ever starts. - Verify environmental conditions are suitable and that service clearances remain accessible during startup. Deployment ## Step 2: Prepare the Water System - Open inlet and outlet valves and confirm bleed points are accessible. - Start the coolant pump without powering the ASICs and watch the pressure rise gradually. - Bleed trapped air until the loop reaches the target 8.0-10.0 L/min flow range with stable pressure. ### What not to do Do not energize miners to 'help diagnose' a coolant issue. Startup faults are easier and safer to isolate while the ASIC load is still offline. Deployment ## Step 3: Energize the Electrical System - Switch on the PDU only after confirming stable 380-415V three-phase supply and proper grounding. - Bring miners online one at a time or in small batches so you can watch startup behavior in real time. - Monitor coolant temperature, pressure, and miner dashboard telemetry as each batch joins the loop. Deployment ## Step 4: Stabilize and Document the Run - Adjust valves as needed so pressure and flow remain balanced across the fleet. - Inspect for leaks, vibration, unusual motor noise, or sensor failures once miners are active. - Log startup pressure, temperature, power draw, and early hashrate behavior for the first 72 hours. Deployment ## Safety Protocols That Travel with Every Restart - Follow the equipment manual and wear insulated PPE around live electrical and pressurized fluid systems. - Keep cords and electrical devices clear of standing water and use GFCI protection where appropriate. - Never leave a startup sequence unattended, and keep fire extinguishers plus emergency shutdown access ready. - Train every operator on hazard recognition, emergency response, and cabinet-level shutdown points. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Deployment Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Five-phase planning and pre-launch audit for hydro-cooled site buildouts. Read next Deployment Antminer S21 XP Hydro Manual Operating limits, startup thresholds, and maintenance notes for S21 XP Hydro deployments. Read next Operations Troubleshoot Hydro Miners Quick triage for hashrate drops, flow issues, leaks, pump faults, and escalation triggers. Read next --- # Troubleshoot Hydro Miners Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/troubleshoot-hydro-miners/ Every hydro site eventually sees flow restrictions, sensor noise, pressure drops, or unexpected miner behavior. Fast troubleshooting protects both uptime and hardware. Start with first-response checks, then move into coolant quality, board faults, and electrical diagnostics when simple fixes do not resolve the issue. ## Key Takeaways - Check the simplest causes first: network, power stability, coolant flow, filters, and trapped air. - Use coolant chemistry and electrical diagnostics to separate loop problems from miner problems. - Know when to stop troubleshooting and escalate before fault conditions damage expensive equipment. Operations ## Common Issues and Quick Fixes Symptom Likely cause First checks Low hashrate or disconnects Network instability, overheating, or power fluctuation Check Ethernet, voltage stability, coolant temperature, and restart cleanly High ASIC temperature Restricted flow, clogged filters, or pump failure Verify flow rate, clean filters, inspect pump behavior, bleed air Coolant leaks or pressure drop Loose fittings, damaged hoses, or failed seals Inspect connectors, tighten hardware, replace damaged components, pressure test Pump not running or low flow Electrical fault, wear, or blockage Check supply, fuses, pump operation, and intake obstructions Operations ## Advanced Diagnostics - Check hydro board status and error codes when miner-side issues persist after loop checks. - Inspect connectors and boards for water ingress, freeze damage, or obvious physical failure. - Run coolant pH and conductivity tests, then flush the loop if contamination exceeds acceptable ranges. - Verify insulation resistance, grounding integrity, and protection-relay behavior on suspect circuits. - Confirm firmware and monitoring software versions if cooling behavior or alerting logic seems off. Operations ## Preventive Actions That Reduce Repeat Incidents - Follow the maintenance schedule for coolant replacement, filter cleaning, and pump inspection. - Keep ambient conditions and enclosure airflow stable so the loop is not fighting preventable external stress. - Train technicians on hydro startup, shutdown, and emergency response procedures. - Log repairs, parts replaced, and recurring symptoms so future troubleshooting starts with evidence. Operations ## When to Escalate Escalate when temperature or pressure instability persists after filters, valves, and pump status have all been confirmed, when electrical protection keeps tripping after inspection, or when board-level faults suggest water ingress or hardware damage. - Contact the manufacturer or a qualified hydro systems partner if the same miner or pump faults repeat after controlled restarts. - Do not continue running faulted equipment just to preserve short-term hashrate. That usually converts a service call into a parts event. ### Good escalation discipline A fast, well-documented handoff beats a heroic but improvised repair. Capture the fault, the readings, the sequence, and the parts already checked before escalating. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Operations Hydro Maintenance Schedule Daily-to-annual maintenance cadence plus coolant guardrails and common failure prevention. Read next Deployment Electrical Wiring Manual for Hydro Mining Field-ready wiring guidance for miner plugs, pumps, PLCs, sensors, and emergency-stop circuits. Read next Deployment Power-On Hydro Equipment Guide Safe startup sequence for coolant circulation, staged energizing, and first-72-hour monitoring. Read next --- # Used Hydro Bitcoin Mining Problems Source: https://miningstore.com/mining-services/hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-guide/used-hydro-bitcoin-mining-problems/ Acquiring used hydro equipment without a disciplined inspection process is one of the fastest ways to convert capex savings into downtime, part shortages, and repair surprises. Confirm the miner powers on, then prove the hydraulic, electrical, and documentation picture is strong enough to support real operations. ## Key Takeaways - Inspect for freeze, corrosion, pump wear, and cord damage before you ever trust the seller's story. - Demand maintenance logs, serial verification, and a real functional run under load. - Budget for near-term remediation even when the unit passes inspection. Procurement & Risk ## Hidden Hydraulic and Mechanical Damage - Freeze damage can leave hairline cracks in hydro boards, brazing points, and connectors after poorly drained storage or transport. - Improper coolant choice creates corrosion, scale, and a measurable cooling-efficiency penalty over time. - Pump impellers, housings, seals, and bearings often reveal abrasive wear long before the seller mentions any maintenance gaps. Procurement & Risk ## Electrical, Warranty, and Support Risks - Damaged power cords, poor repairs, or water ingress around PSU components are common on older hydro fleets. - Unauthorized modifications can void warranties before the unit even reaches your site. - Pre-2023 hardware may rely on discontinued parts or firmware branches that are hard to support operationally. - Spare-part depth varies sharply by OEM and generation, so verify exact support for hydro boards, controllers, pumps, PSUs, and cabling before you buy. Procurement & Risk ## Pre-Purchase Inspection Checklist Inspection area What to verify Hydro boards and fittings No bulging, leakage points, cracked connectors, or obvious repair work Cooling loop Pressure test holds at 4 bar and filters do not show neglected buildup Performance 24-48 hour run shows stable hashrate, no thermal throttling, and clean temperature differential Documentation Maintenance logs, serial verification, and purchase history are available OEM ecosystem Firmware access, controller login, replacement-part sources, and loop compatibility are documented for the exact model Procurement & Risk ## How to Inspect Pre-Owned Units Like Infrastructure, Not Inventory For larger purchases, inspect the unit the same way you would inspect a plant subsystem: look at mechanical condition, hydraulic integrity, electrical protection, control logic, and historical maintenance evidence together. - Review alignment, vibration, lubrication, and bearing condition where applicable. - Check flow, pressure, valves, and water quality instead of assuming the loop is healthy because it is wet. - Run insulation, grounding, relay, and control-system tests to confirm the electrical side is still trustworthy. - Verify factory certificates, manuals, and calibration records when the purchase size justifies it. ### Most expensive shortcut Buying sight unseen is still the fastest way to overpay for used hydro gear. If you cannot inspect it yourself, pay for a third-party inspection before freight is booked. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Deployment Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Five-phase planning and pre-launch audit for hydro-cooled site buildouts. Read next Operations Hydro Maintenance Schedule Daily-to-annual maintenance cadence plus coolant guardrails and common failure prevention. Read next Deployment HK3 Pump Motor Wiring Case Study A field lesson on Delta-vs-Wye motor wiring during an HK3 hydro deployment. Read next --- # MiningStore: 62.5 MW Bitcoin Mining in Iowa Source: https://miningstore.com/miningstore-62-5-mw-bitcoin-mining-in-iowa/ # Institutional Bitcoin MiningInfrastructure 11 fully deployed Iowa facilities. 62.5 MW of operating capacity inside the two deepest wholesale power markets in North America. Book A Call See All Facilities ## Built and Operating, Not Pitched and Promised Our 62.5 MW network is live across 11 facilities inside MISO and SPP, two of the deepest wholesale power markets in North America. Reliable hashrate, transparent operations, tax-optimized returns. ## The Numbers That Matter Bitcoin mining has moved from a speculative venture into institutional-grade digital infrastructure. For an investor in 2026, the operator picking up the phone matters more than the white paper. 62.5 MW Operational capacity across 11 facilities 11 Fully deployed facilities in Iowa 9+ Years of profitable operations ## Infrastructure Built for the Next Decade Each facility takes years of energy market analysis, site selection, and engineering. We deploy miners and we build the long-lived infrastructure behind them. ## Why Iowa Matters for Investors ### Competitive Energy Markets Facilities sit inside the MISO and SPP wholesale power markets. Industrial pricing with deep liquidity and stable grid operations behind it. ### Scalable Infrastructure Facility sizes run from 400 to 3,600+ miner slots, so a fleet can scale across sites without renegotiating the operations contract. ### Tax-Optimized Returns Mining equipment qualifies for bonus depreciation under IRS Publication 946 (§168(k)), which moves a large share of the purchase to year-one expense and lifts the after-tax yield. ### Institutional-Grade Operations 24/7 monitoring, on-site maintenance, transparent reporting, and a Customer Success team that picks up the phone. ## Our Facilities Our Iowa footprint runs inside the two deepest wholesale power markets in the country, with facilities from 2.5 MW to 10 MW. Ten sites are live today; a dedicated immersion-cooled facility goes online in Q2 2026. Iowa Facility 1 7.5 MW -- Grid Power, SPP Market 1,600+ miner slots 5 MW open Iowa Facility 2 5 MW -- Grid Power, MISO Market 1,200+ air and hydro miner slots Full Iowa Facility 3 5 MW -- Grid Power, SPP Market 1,300+ miner slots Full Iowa Facility 4 5.2 MW -- Grid Power, SPP Market 1,300+ miner slots 2.5 MW with 15D notice Iowa Facility 5 8 MW -- Grid Power, SPP Market 2,600+ miner slots Full Iowa Facility 6 2.5 MW -- Grid Power, MISO Market 400+ air, 200+ hydro miner slots 300 air-cooled slots available Iowa Facility 7 10 MW -- Grid Power, MISO Market 3,500+ miner slots 5 MW open Iowa Facility 8 5 MW -- Grid Power, MISO Market 800+ hydro-only miner slots Live & Running Iowa Facility 9 6 MW -- Grid Power, SPP Market 2,100+ miner slots Live & Running Iowa Facility 10 5 MW -- Grid Power, SPP Market 1,700+ miner slots Live & Running Iowa Facility 11 3.5 MW -- Grid Power, MISO Market 1,000+ immersion miner slots Under development Q2 2026 -- Immersion ## Your Ideal Partner At MiningStore, we work with individuals, funds, and institutions to build hosting strategies that scale, perform, and align with your long-term goals. ### Managed Mining Program Best for: Investors seeking turnkey Bitcoin exposure Structure: Full equipment ownership, MiningStore operational management Benefits: Tax depreciation, direct Bitcoin revenue, transparent reporting ### Hosting Services Best for: Bitcoin mining operators needing reliable, scalable infrastructure Structure: Bring your own hardware or procure through us Benefits: Low-cost power, 24/7 monitoring, professional maintenance ## 62.5 MW and Counting From pioneering our first 7.5 MW Iowa facility to our bleeding-edge 10 MW facility, every location is selected for long-term operational excellence and energy market advantage. ## Sources & References MiningStore publishes the third-party data sources behind the claims on this page so operators, investors, and researchers can verify every figure against primary reporting. - MISO Markets & Operations — Integrated Marketplace Overview — Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) - Southwest Power Pool — Markets Operations — Southwest Power Pool (SPP) - Publication 946: How to Depreciate Property (Section 168(k) Bonus Depreciation) — U.S. Internal Revenue Service ## Your Capital. Your Timeline. Your Risk Profile. Let's build a mining strategy tailored to your investment goals. Book a Call --- # MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry Source: https://miningstore.com/miningstore-leading-and-elevating-the-crypto-mining-industry/ ## MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry The debate surrounding Bitcoin’s environmental impact has been fierce, and for years, critics have criticized this preeminent cryptocurrency for bringing about a considerably high energy consumption. Now that more and more people have seen the appeal of digital assets, in general, apprehension is at an all-time high that climate change’s pace will drastically hasten. However, new data has revealed improvements in terms of Bitcoin’s carbon footprint as the approach toward mining has changed over time. Regardless of the validity of these recent findings, MiningStore is dedicated to setting an example for other companies to follow, powering a majority of its operational uptime with renewable energy to promote environmental sustainability. Founded in 2016, MiningStore was established under the mission to create an open financial system that is not controlled by any one country or company. “We think this will bring about more economic freedom, innovation, efficiency, and equality of opportunity in the world. We have a plan to get there,” shared the strategic minds behind this industry leader. That plan is what this brainchild of JohnPaul Baric has been religiously adhering to for over five years. Today, after securing a coveted spot at the summit, MiningStore stands at the forefront and is set to reach even greater heights in the future. Known for its green approach and commitment to securing the Bitcoin network sustainable for years to come, it has earned acclaim for its purpose-driven efforts. This US-based company, which is going all-out in reducing friction in the bitcoin mining space by making it easier for others to purchase crypto miners and operate them at low-cost stranded renewable energy across the United States, has launched over ten mining facilities profitable even in the face of the volatile market conditions. Currently, MiningStore boasts an impressive selection of offerings, one of which is Managed Mining. This bestselling product is the venture’s white-glove solution specifically for clients who wish to receive power at a direct cost and shares in a profit split arrangement. Although the program costs around $100,000 per investor, it is the easiest way to enter the mining space. For smaller investors, the Bitvault product is up for grabs and is available for those who are looking to invest as low as $1,000 into a mining operation. Right now, MiningStore is undoubtedly enjoying a position at the top, but the journey to get there hasn’t been perfectly smooth sailing. “There was a time back in 2019 where I had to fire all of my employees, who were mostly my friends, and slowly rebuild the company from scratch. We had to pivot from selling custom-made mining rights to a business where recurring capital was available. During this time, I learned what it meant to truly manage a team and the importance of understanding and controlling costs,” said JohnPaul Baric. Despite the impressive portfolio attached to its name, MiningStore and its highly competent leaders show no sign of slowing down. Eyeing expansion, it is working not only on projects located in Oklahoma and Texas to build out 280MWs of mining capacity but also a boatload of other endeavors that promises growth for the powerhouse. ### MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### AIBC Summit | Bitcoin’s 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? MiningStore October 12, 2021 --- # Press & Media Source: https://miningstore.com/press/ # Press & Media MiningStore in the news. Coverage, features, and press releases. Book A Call Shop Miners MiningStore Insights ## Press Coverage of our facilities, raises, and operations from 2020 to today. MiningStore Expands Iowa Operations with 10 MW Bitcoin Mining Facility MarketWatch September 8, 2025 (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/miningstore-expands-iowa-operations-with-10-mw-bitcoin-mining-facility-delivering-3-500-asic-slots-to-meet-surging-institutional-demand-302548715.html) MiningStore Secures $3.4M from Millennium Infrastructure Fund MarketWatch October 9, 2025 (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/miningstore-secures-3-4m-from-millennium-infrastructure-fund-fasttracking-path-to-62-5-mw-by-yearend-302568682.html) MiningStore Secures $3.4M to Expand 5 MW Bitcoin Facility MiningStore September 29, 2025 MiningStore Launches 10 MW Bitcoin Mining Facility in Iowa MiningStore September 11, 2025 (https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/miningstore-expands-iowa-operations-with-10-mw-bitcoin-mining-facility-delivering-3-500-asic-slots-to-meet-surging-institutional-demand-302548715.html) MiningStore Featured in Unbanked Bitcoin Documentary Unbanked September 9, 2025 Ep309: Bitcoin Mining and Renewable Integration Norton Rose Fulbright July 31, 2025 (https://www.projectfinance.law/podcasts/2025/july/ep309-bitcoin-mining-and-renewable-integration/) JP Baric Runs a Bitcoin Mining Business, Makes Over $1 Million a Month Market Realist February 14, 2022 This Man Is Bitcoin Mining Over 1 Million Dollars A Month iWonder April 28, 2021 (https://iwonder.com/) Bitcoin Mining Tips Currency.com January 3, 2022 (https://currency.com/crypto-mining-explained) Touring Three 5MW Bitcoin Mining farms with MiningStore Digital Shovel January 25, 2025 (https://www.linkedin.com/company/digital-shovel/) Inside the Passive $20,000,000 Bitcoin Mine Financial Wolf February 7, 2022 (https://www.tiktok.com/@thefinancialwolf) Cypherpunk Announces Agreement with MiningStore Newsfile October 21, 2021 Bitcoin Mining & Owning the Generation Asset Watts & Blocks August 23, 2023 (https://www.ivoox.com/en/ep-27-bitcoin-mining-owning-the-generation-audios-mp3_rf_114779099_1.html) Unleashing Abundance: Bitcoin Mining & the Future of Entrepreneurship with JP Baric The Conor Chepenik Podcast June 20, 2023 (https://open.spotify.com/show/6PIHXUd8l12OJJiecI0YjR) Ethan Vera, JP Baric & Bitcoin Hashrate Derivatives BITVOLT Podcast July 21, 2020 (https://open.spotify.com/show/4GmVZIaOB0HahNcjyeiimr) Cryptocurrency Mining Explained Distilling Venture Capital May 27, 2020 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cryptocurrency-mining-explained-interview-with-jp/id962729761?i=1000476010070) Mining Bitcoin from a Laptop | Simply Bitcoin TTO Simply Bitcoin June 14, 2023 (https://fountain.fm/episode/PbixWmhbhh8RBpvGwUSr) Mining Bitcoin to Make Money with JP Baric The Bitcoin Source January 21, 2024 (https://www.thebtcsource.com/mining-bitcoin-to-make-money-with-jp-baric/) Bitcoin, Scaling, And The Future Purpose Transformation June 17, 2021 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/5-jp-baric-bitcoin-scaling-and-the-future/id1566889830?i=1000525882858) Bitcoin Mining in a Bear Market w/ JP Baric Bitcoin Magazine Podcast July 17, 2022 (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bitcoin-mining-in-a-bear-market-w-jp-baric/id1459884105?i=1000570183244) JP Baric QPOL with Phil Gibson April 12, 2021 (https://open.spotify.com/show/3fLf1NRajwbtwKGpznFClr) ### Press Inquiries For interviews, media kits, or press inquiries: sales@miningstore.com ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call --- # AIBC Summit | Bitcoin's 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? Source: https://miningstore.com/press/aibc-summit-bitcoins-3rd-halving-whats-next-for-bitcoin-mining/ “Bitcoin mining will attract larger institutional players” JP Baric, CEO of Aurum Capital Ventures believes Bitcoin will hit $100,000 by 2021 due to the interest and demand from larger mining operations. Do you agree? ## MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### AIBC Summit | Bitcoin’s 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? MiningStore October 12, 2021 --- # Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto Source: https://miningstore.com/press/crypto-mining-tools-podcast-the-state-of-crypto/ JP Baric is the founder and CEO of MiningStore, a well-established technology company that hosts cryptocurrency miners. JP became interested in cryptocurrency as a freshman in high school and by his junior year was mining on a large-scale. In 2015 he launched MiningStore and quickly built a reputation for manufacturing some of the highest-quality rigs on the market. Today, JP is one of the leading experts on cryptocurrency mining and is a frequent guest and contributor on industry-leading outlets. He regularly consults with Fortune 500 companies on high-value projects and has developed large-scale commercial mining facilities. ## MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### AIBC Summit | Bitcoin’s 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? MiningStore October 12, 2021 --- # Cypherpunk Announces Agreement with MiningStore Source: https://miningstore.com/press/cypherpunk-announces-agreement-with-miningstore/ TORONTO — Cypherpunk Holdings Inc. (CSE: HODL, OTC Pink: KHRIF), a publicly traded investor in cryptocurrency, privacy, and cryptography companies, announced an agreement with MineOn LLC, operating as MiningStore, to move part of its strategy from buying Bitcoin to mining it. ## The Agreement Signed October 18, 2021, the deal had Cypherpunk purchase 25 Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro miners — 100 TH/s each — for US$300,000, and lease the fleet to MiningStore for hosting and operation at its Iowa facilities under a managed-mining, profit-sharing arrangement. Cypherpunk owns the hardware; MiningStore powers it, runs it, and shares the output. “Our focus of investing in cryptocurrency has now broadened to include mining.” Tony Guoga, CEO, Cypherpunk Holdings For Cypherpunk, the release framed the move as diversification: becoming a supplier of Bitcoin rather than only a buyer, while continuing to accumulate the asset. For MiningStore, it was an early example of the structure that became the Managed Mining Program — a public company deploying capital into miners it owns, hosted and operated by MiningStore in Iowa. ## By the Numbers - 25 × Bitmain Antminer S19j Pro, 100 TH/s each (2.5 PH/s total) - US$300,000 hardware purchase, funded by Cypherpunk - Hosted and operated by MiningStore in Iowa on a profit-sharing basis - Agreement signed October 18, 2021; announced October 21, 2021 Read the release: “Cypherpunk Announces Agreement with MiningStore” — Newsfile, October 21, 2021. MiningStore’s market note from that week: Cypherpunk Holdings Enters Agreement With MiningStore. --- # Hashr8 | Paving the Way for Compute Source: https://miningstore.com/press/hashr8-paving-the-way-for-compute/ On this episode of the HASHR8 Podcast I sit down with JP Baric, CEO and Founder of Mining Store. We discuss some exciting new products that JP and his team are getting ready to launch in the next 6-12 months. We also dive deep into hashrate, and discuss some of the similarities between hashrate and compute. JP also talks about some of the solutions that he thinks are viable for the compute market that are not available yet but have been proved out through mining Bitcoin. Hope you enjoy listening to this episode, if you did be sure to leave us a rating and review on your preferred listening platform. ## MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### AIBC Summit | Bitcoin’s 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? MiningStore October 12, 2021 --- # JP Baric Runs a Bitcoin Mining Business, Makes Over $1 Million a Month Source: https://miningstore.com/press/jp-baric-runs-a-bitcoin-mining-business-makes-over-1-million-a-month/ In February 2022, Market Realist profiled MiningStore founder and CEO JohnPaul “JP” Baric — then 24 years old, without a college degree, and running a Bitcoin mining company the article reported was bringing in more than $1 million a month. ## What the Article Covered The piece traces the company back to a high-school business-plan assignment. As Market Realist tells it, JP bought about $1,400 of Bitcoin in 2012, when a coin cost roughly $70, and started building mining rigs in his parents’ basement. He enrolled at North Carolina State University in 2016, left at 17 to run the business full time, and founded MiningStore that year with friends and a $100,000 seed investment, growing it from Austin to Raleigh, North Carolina. The growth numbers the article cited: - About $700,000 in mining-hardware sales in 2017 - More than $2 million in revenue in 2018 - $6.6 million in total revenue in 2019 - A first Iowa mining facility opened in 2019, and the launch of the Managed Mining Program, which lets clients own miners that MiningStore runs for them The profile followed a 2021 iWonder documentary short, This Man Is Bitcoin Mining Over 1 Million Dollars A Month, and both are part of the coverage collected on our press page. Today MiningStore operates 62.5 MW across eleven Iowa facilities. Read the original: “JP Baric Runs a Bitcoin Mining Business, Makes Over $1 Million a Month” — Market Realist, February 14, 2022. --- # MiningStore Featured in Unbanked Bitcoin Documentary Source: https://miningstore.com/press/miningstore-featured-in-unbanked-bitcoin-documentary/ MiningStore and CEO JohnPaul Baric appear in Unbanked, the feature-length documentary written and directed by David Kuhn and Lauren Sieckmann. Its tagline says what the film is about: “Bitcoin: Be Your Own Bank.” The filmmakers shot with JP in Austin and on site in Iowa, inside one of MiningStore’s mining facilities — footage that ends up carrying one of the film’s closing moments. The finished film sets Bitcoin mining alongside interviews with some of the best-known voices in the industry, including Michael Saylor, Jack Dorsey, Adam Back, and Senator Ted Cruz, and makes the case that Bitcoin is a tool for financial literacy and inclusion, not just an asset class. ## What the Film Covers - Why Bitcoin exists, told for people who have never held any — the “unbanked” of the title - Bitcoin mining as real infrastructure: power, hardware, and the people who run it, filmed on the floor at MiningStore - Financial literacy as Bitcoin’s most durable contribution - A global story: the crew filmed around the world, not only in the United States ## How to Watch Unbanked premiered through a pre-release screening window in 2025, with theatrical group screenings bookable through participating cinemas and educational screenings available through Good Docs. Current viewing options are kept up to date on the film’s official site. Official site: unbankedmovie.com · Hear the story behind the film from co-director Lauren Sieckmann on the Digital Gold Podcast: Bitcoin on the Big Screen with Lauren Sieckmann. --- # MiningStore Secures $3.4M from Millennium Infrastructure Fund Source: https://miningstore.com/press/miningstore-secures-3-4m-from-millennium-infrastructure-fund/ WEST BURLINGTON, Iowa — MiningStore has secured a $3.4 million loan from Millennium Infrastructure Fund, a specialized infrastructure debt fund, to accelerate the buildout of its next 5 MW Bitcoin mining facility with a potential expansion to 10 MW. This financing positions MiningStore to reach 62.5 MW of operational capacity by the end of 2025, a 45% increase in just six months. The three-year debt facility will fund the construction of a 5 MW hydro-cooled Bitcoin mining site connected to the MISO grid, initially supporting more than 800 miner slots, with engineering flexibility to expand to 10 MW total capacity. The facility is expected to be online by December 1, 2025, creating new hosting opportunities for institutional and individual clients. ## Institutional Backing for a Maturing Industry “We view Bitcoin mining as infrastructure-grade deployment. Our investment underscores the fund’s commitment to resilient, scalable digital infrastructure.” Bill MacNamara, President, Millennium Infrastructure Fund The partnership highlights the growing institutionalization of Bitcoin mining, with traditional infrastructure lenders financing projects once considered speculative. “We are witnessing Bitcoin mining mature from startup venture to institutional infrastructure play. Millennium’s involvement signals that world-class financial institutions recognize mining’s role in the digital economy.” JohnPaul Baric, CEO, MiningStore ## Strategic Advantage: MISO and SPP Grid Access MiningStore’s dual-grid strategy leverages the strengths of both U.S. power markets: - 5 MW hydro-cooled capacity in MISO, engineered for maximum performance - Expansion potential of 5 MW air-cooled capacity in SPP, optimized for cost efficiency This approach provides operational resilience while aligning with MiningStore’s broader goal of balancing uptime, energy economics, and investor value. By integrating into regulated grids, the facility can also participate in demand-response programs and make use of otherwise wasted or stranded energy, contributing to both profitability and local grid stability. ## Scaling With a Proven Operator With seven facilities already operational and four more coming online by year-end, MiningStore has built a reputation for delivering reliable, institutional-grade hosting capacity. Its product suite — the Managed Mining Program (MMP), Hosting Services, and Remote Hands custom deployments — allows both new entrants and established operators to scale within Bitcoin mining without shouldering the complexity of day-to-day operations. The new Millennium-backed facility further cements MiningStore’s role as a trusted partner bridging traditional finance and digital infrastructure. Hosting capacity is immediately available for qualified investors and operators seeking to secure scalable, U.S.-based mining infrastructure. ## About MiningStore MiningStore is a Bitcoin mining infrastructure company headquartered in Iowa, operating more than 10,000 miners across seven active facilities. The company specializes in infrastructure-first solutions for institutional and individual investors, offering turnkey hosting through its Managed Mining Program (MMP), fully tailored Remote Hands deployments, and flexible Hosting Services. With a strong operational track record and projects spanning both air and hydro-cooled technologies, MiningStore prioritizes operational excellence, energy efficiency, and long-term value creation. ## About Millennium Infrastructure Fund Millennium Infrastructure Fund is a specialty infrastructure debt fund providing upfront construction and bridge financing to regional and rural broadband infrastructure developers, including data centers, offering institutional-grade capital, engineering expertise, materials sourcing, and project logistics. ## Media Contact MiningStore — (877) 467-7780 · sales@miningstore.com To reserve capacity or discuss opportunities, book a call. Distributed via PR Newswire on September 29, 2025. See also: MiningStore’s 62.5 MW Iowa footprint. --- # Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/real-vision-the-economics-of-crypto-mining/ Unpacking Bitcoin Mining Profitability In this discussion, MiningStore CEO JohnPaul Baric joins Real Vision’s crypto editor Ash Bennington to dissect the evolving landscape of Bitcoin mining profitability. Recorded on June 14, 2022, this video addresses the pressing question: Is Bitcoin mining still profitable amidst a significant drop in BTC price? As one of the longest-standing large-scale crypto miners, MiningStore has been a steadfast supporter of the Bitcoin ecosystem, committed to making mining accessible to everyone. This conversation offers an unparalleled look into how market shifts impact the mining industry, directly from the insights of a proven industry leader. What you’ll gain from watching: - Expert analysis on the profitability of Bitcoin mining during volatile market conditions. - Inside perspectives from MiningStore, a company with deep roots and extensive experience in the crypto mining space. - Clear answers to common questions about the complexities of Bitcoin mining, presented in an easy-to-understand format. Whether you are an aspiring miner, an investor, or simply curious about the economics behind cryptocurrency, this video provides invaluable insights into navigating the challenges and opportunities within the Bitcoin mining industry. ## MiningStore: Leading and Elevating the Crypto Mining Industry MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric’s MiningStore Making Crypto Mining More Accessible MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### JP Baric on Leading the Rise of the Trusted Crypto Miner MiningStore MiningStore January 3, 2022 ### Real Vision | The Economics of Crypto Mining MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### Crypto Mining Tools Podcast | The State of Crypto MiningStore October 12, 2021 ### AIBC Summit | Bitcoin’s 3rd Halving. What’s Next for Bitcoin Mining? MiningStore October 12, 2021 --- # Understanding the Bitcoin Mining Rig Market Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/ Guide # Bitcoin Mining Rig Market Guide Everything you need to know about ASIC hardware selection, ROI modeling, power efficiency, and market trends. ## What to Know Before Buying a Miner The Bitcoin mining hardware market moves fast. New models launch every quarter with better hashrate and efficiency. Understanding the key metrics — terahash per second (TH/s), joules per terahash (J/TH), and total cost of ownership — is critical to making a profitable hardware decision. ### Key Metrics - Hashrate (TH/s): How much computing power the miner produces. Higher = more Bitcoin earned. - Efficiency (J/TH): How much power it consumes per unit of hashrate. Lower = cheaper to run. - Cost per TH: Purchase price divided by hashrate. Determines your capital efficiency. - Break-even timeline: How long until mining revenue covers the hardware cost. ### Current Market Landscape The latest-generation miners (Antminer S23, S21 XP, WhatsMiner M66) deliver 270-580+ TH/s with efficiency under 20 J/TH. Previous-gen models (S19 series) remain viable for operators with very low power costs. Browse Current Hardware Talk to Our Hardware Team ## Need Help Choosing Hardware? Our team has procured thousands of machines. We'll help you find the right model for your budget and power costs. Get a Recommendation --- # Bitcoin Mining for Beginners: How to Invest, Compare Options & Calculate ROI Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/a-beginners-guide-to-investing-in-bitcoin-mining/ Bitcoin Mining for Beginners: How to Invest, Compare Options & Calculate ROI | MiningStore ## By Spencer Sherwood Ever since Bitcoin mining was banned in China during 2021, investors have been taking advantage of the opportunity and pouring money into mining operations elsewhere in the world, especially in the US. Bitcoin mining isn’t the easiest business model to understand and it has a lot of moving parts, but it can be extremely lucrative and a great way to accumulate BTC for Bitcoin bulls. In this article we’ll discuss all of those moving parts to help you decide whether an investment in Bitcoin mining is ultimately a good idea or not. We’ll also touch on some ways to mitigate the risks that can be involved. ## Crypto Miner MiningStore shut down most mining operations in order to conserve electricity Crypto Miner MiningStore shut down most mining operations in order to conserve electricity as a wave of cold and ice is set to wreak havoc on the Midwest power grid. On Wednesday morning MiningStore began load-shedding to reduce power to Bitcoin mining servers at the MiningStore mining facility located in Grundy County Iowa. MiningStore shut down most of their Bitcoin mining operations for over 8 hours and intends to reduce power consumption to their mining operations throughout the winter freeze. Iowa electric cooperative is a group of not-for-profit, member-owned electric co-ops which powers the lives of 650,000 Iowans throughout the State and is committed to delivering power that is safe, affordable, reliable, and environmentally responsible. The majority of cooperatives in Iowa were established in the 1930s and 1940s when farmers united as cohorts to gain access to affordable electricity. Since inception, electric co-ops have been member-owned and locally governed. “MiningStore as a member of the Grundy County Cooperative has volunteered to reduce its power consumption in order to support the initiative for responsible environmentally friendly use of energy”, said JP Baric, CEO of MiningStore. In February of 2021 blizzard like conditions in the state of Iowa caused blackouts in Electric Cooperatives across the state, leaving 1000’s of homes without power. In order to save the whole system from losing power, rolling blackouts were implemented to cut load and demand purposely. The MiningStore 5.4 MegaWatt mining facility utilizes stranded energy to power bitcoin mining servers. Stranded energy is surplus energy that doesn’t have a destination on the power grid where it can be deployed or stored. Normally this energy goes to waste, instead is utilized to power the mining facility, in Grundy County. “We understand with extremely cold temperatures, the grid will demand more supply and we are committed to responsible use of energy in these types of situations. We are capable of cutting our load in under 30 minutes and we will scale down our load in its entirety if needed. ” stated JP Baric. “Bitcoin miners are often portrayed as bad actors without any concern for the massive amounts of power mining operations consume. In the case of the MiningStore mining facility here in Iowa, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Our mining operation is powered by stranded surplus wind energy and we ultimately convert wasted energy into economic freedom for our clients and partners.” Baric Also added. ### Difficulty One of the most influential components to the profitability of your Bitcoin mining rig would be the network difficulty. Difficulty is basically a measurement of how hard it is to mine Bitcoin as everyone else is trying to mine at the same time. In short, difficulty goes up when the total network hashrate increases. As more people start mining and/or as existing miners scale up, that causes an increase in hashrate, and the pre-existing mining machines will then have a smaller “share” in the network. Higher difficulty = less profitability per mining rig. As a miner, it’s safe to assume that difficulty will increase significantly over long time periods as mining continues to be adopted. With manufacturers like Bitmain (makes the Antminer S19 series) and MicroBT (WhatsMiner machines) innovating to make better, more efficient mining machines, and with semiconductor chip factories popping up in the US, there could certainly be more availability to mining machines in the coming years. All of this spells a high potential for existing miners to scale and/or mine more efficiently. Without modeling for mining difficulty to increase over time, you’re likely to overestimate your profitability. Thus, in the long run, it’s better to mine as early as possible. Not only do you beat others to coins, you mine them at a discount compared to later participants. However, there are also times when difficulty decreases. In the Summer of 2021 when China banned Bitcoin mining, Chinese miners were forced to either relocate or liquidate. While their machines were offline, the network hashrate and difficulty decreased significantly, making all the remaining miners more profitable as a result. ### BTC Price Another key component Bitcoin miners must be aware of is Bitcoin’s price. It’s likely true that if you are a miner, you’re going to be bullish on BTC price, and expect “Number go up!” over time. While Bitcoin’s historical numbers show a compounded average growth rate of 197% per year, the price can be unpredictable, especially in the short term. BTC price can be volatile with large swings in either direction at any point. That’s why it’s good practice to first be conservative and model your mining business as if BTC price will not increase over time while difficulty does. Modeling like this helps you decide if you would be comfortable during a “bearish” scenario. Other useful perspectives to consider can be found when analyzing events where price and difficulty increase roughly proportionately, or when price increases faster than difficulty does. How do these scenarios affect your outlook on mining in the long term? In our article Why Bitcoin ASIC Prices Can Reach New Highs In 2022, we took a deep look at why difficulty and BTC price not only affects profitability but also ASIC (mining hardware) pricing. For a more straightforward approach, a great tool is the Bitcoin Mining Profitability Calculator from Braiins. With this calculator, you’re able to adjust the difficulty, BTC price, ASIC pricing, electricity prices and more to predict profitability over time. Which brings us to the next factor in Bitcoin mining. ### The Price of Electricity One of the top priorities new miners have is to find and utilize a cheap source of energy. This is because Bitcoin mining machines tend to soak up lots and lots of power, making energy costs the majority of a miner’s operational expenses. To minimize energy expenses, miners try to find the cheapest energy source possible to allow them to be more competitive in the long-term. The average cost of electricity (residential) in the United States is $0.14/kWh. The cost per kWh most miners feel competitive at is about $0.06/kWh or less. Of course, mining can still work at higher electricity prices, but a greater energy cost means more risk. Our Managed Mining services operate at roughly $0.042/kWh, thanks to our green and renewable energy sources. But to better understand the impact of energy costs, let’s take an example. One of the best selling mining machines, the Antminer S19, has a maximum hashrate of 100 Th/s, power consumption of 3230W±10%, and power efficiency of 32.5 W/Th. Using the Profitability Calculator mentioned above, we’ll calculate the differences in operating expenses for one year for residential and industry standard electricity prices. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll calculate using a constant network difficulty of 25T, and BTC price of $45K. Electricity Price : $0.14/kWh Electricity Price : $0.06/kWh Clearly, the price of electricity has a massive effect on the risk a miner takes on, even when running just one machine! Despite the unrealistically frozen difficulty and BTC price inputs, the average cost of production for 1 BTC is reduced by $12k, leading to over $2k higher-end profit for the operation with $0.06/kWh electricity. The other common source of OpEx for mining operations is labor. However, on a per-machine basis, labor is likely an insignificant expense compared to electricity costs. ## Capital Expenditures Involved With Bitcoin Mining Operations When it comes to upfront costs, a good chunk of expenditures should be reserved for the infrastructure required to house your Bitcoin mining rig. Mining facilities must be robust enough to protect your mining machines, and also need to be capable of meeting the demands of ASICs. ### Infrastructure Modern bitcoin mining machines such as Antminer S19’s, WhatsMiner M30S’s, and Avalon 1246’s, all consume upwards of 3000W per unit. As a result, they have extremely high heat output and need to be cooled constantly to maintain optimized performance. Aside from the demanding air flow requirements, the electrical engineering needed to deliver large amounts of power reliably to all of your machines can be complicated. The good news is once you’ve sufficiently constructed your facility to meet your ASIC’s demands, the output from your mining machines should reward you. Another bonus of investing in proper infrastructure is it retains long-term value and can (hopefully) be used for many generations of Bitcoin machines. ### ASICs Although infrastructure costs shouldn’t be dismissed, the purchasing of mining hardware is where most of a miner’s risk is placed. Miners generally take 1-2 years to break-even after purchasing ASIC hardware. But being bullish about BTC price over time is what drives investment in mining. If BTC price goes up faster than difficulty, it’s much easier for a miner to be profitable. These mining machines do well at retaining their value or even appreciate significantly in short time periods. The key is creating sufficient infrastructure to keep these machines running efficiently and optimally.But which mining machine will be best suited for your mining operation? We’ve created a few guides to shed some light on Bitmain’s Antminer S19 series, and have also discussed other popular options like the newest-generation Antminer S19 XP, the Antminer S19J, and several others. Our Learn section also has several other articles that can help you decide how you’d like to mine! ### DIY or Leave it to the Pros While it is entirely possible to invest in Bitcoin mining, running a physical operation yourself is an entirely separate endeavor. Between the physical components of Bitcoin mining (purchasing and maintaining ASICs mining machines, obtaining an inexpensive and reliable energy source, and constructing and maintaining the infrastructure) and the psychological requirements needed to monitor BTC price and mining difficulty, mining is definitely a full-time job if done at scale. But the rewards for sticking around can easily be just as sweet. For those who want exposure to this lucrative industry without all the hassles of building out infrastructure and maintaining a whole mining operation, our Managed Mining program is for you. With Managed Mining, we work for you to take all the stress and hassles out of the equation. We mine with clean, low-cost energys, constant machine monitoring, and we utilize in-house infrastructure to host your machines. All you need to do after you invest is sit back and reap the returns.For more information on Managed Mining, visit our site or speak with a representative. Spencer Sherwood Spencer works a copywriter and has been involved in the crypto community since 2019.He is passionate about the evolution of Bitcoin and Bitcoin technologies. Spencer is also a musician and founder of Production Madness, an artist based talent accelerator which looks to work with and promote artists of various skill sets. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Mining & Grid Stability: A Strategic Response for Investors Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/a-response-to-crypto-mining-for-a-more-stable-grid/ Bitcoin Mining & Grid Stability: A Strategic Response for Investors | MiningStore ## By Spencer Sherwood We recently came across an article written in March 2022 by economist Severin Borenstein in the Energy Institute at Haas which made the case that crypto mining does not help stabilize energy grids. It argues against the validity of two of the most commonly cited potential benefits of bitcoin mining to the grid: (1) that it will incentivize new energy generation projects to be built and (2) that miners will help stabilize energy grids by participating in demand response programs which incentivize them to shut off during peak demand periods when there are other sources of demand for most or all of the energy being produced. According to his bio, Borenstein’s research “focuses on the economics of renewable energy, economic policies for reducing greenhouse gases, and alternative models of retail electricity pricing.” Indeed, one can see that he has a good understanding of these things from the energy side of the equation by reading the article. However, there are a few large gaps in knowledge about the other side of the equation, bitcoin mining, which make his arguments less compelling when corrected. In this article, we will address what Borenstein gets wrong in his piece and why he (and you) shouldn’t be so quick to write off the claims that crypto / bitcoin mining can help improve the capacity and reliability of our power grids. We recently came across an article written in March 2022 by economist Severin Borenstein in the Energy Institute at Haas which made the case that crypto mining does not help stabilize energy grids. It argues against the validity of two of the most commonly cited potential benefits of bitcoin mining to the grid: (1) that it will incentivize new energy generation projects to be built and (2) that miners will help stabilize energy grids by participating in demand response programs which incentivize them to shut off during peak demand periods when there are other sources of demand for most or all of the energy being produced. According to his bio, Borenstein’s research “focuses on the economics of renewable energy, economic policies for reducing greenhouse gases, and alternative models of retail electricity pricing.” Indeed, one can see that he has a good understanding of these things from the energy side of the equation by reading the article. However, there are a few large gaps in knowledge about the other side of the equation, bitcoin mining, which make his arguments less compelling when corrected. In this article, we will address what Borenstein gets wrong in his piece and why he (and you) shouldn’t be so quick to write off the claims that crypto / bitcoin mining can help improve the capacity and reliability of our power grids. ## Improving Efficiency of “Peaker Plants” In order to understand another important impact of bitcoin miners on energy grids and the environment, we should consider grids from a holistic perspective. Since it’s a grid operator’s job to match energy supply with demand for the entire system, all of the different sources of generation in a grid will be impacted by each other. In a paper from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Impacts of Wind and Solar on Fossil Fuel Generators, the authors summarize: “Regional integration studies have shown that wind and solar may cause fossil-fueled generators to cycle on and off and ramp down to part load more frequently and potentially more rapidly. Increased cycling, deeper load following, and rapid ramping may result in wear and tear impacts on fossil-fueled generators that lead to increased capital and maintenance costs, increased equivalent forced outage rates, and degraded performance over time. Heat rates and emissions from fossil fueled generators may be higher during cycling and ramping than during steady-state operation.” As the proportion of intermittent renewables increases in our energy grids, so does the variability of supply needed from more reliable and stable energy sources like natural gas. These generators that turn on or ramp up their supply during high-demand periods are often called peaker plants, and they have different emission profiles per Watt of energy produced than an equivalent generator that runs steady, 24/7. Bitcoin miners who collocate with these would-be peaker plants and purchase electricity during off-peak times can improve the energy efficiency and lifespan of the plants by reducing the variability in the amount of energy they generate. This too is an important role to play in the transition to a more renewable-heavy energy mix, as described in a recent report from Goldman Sachs in which they say, “In our view, there needs to be an appropriate balance between renewable and fossil fuel energy sources in order to ensure safe, reliable, and affordable energy for decades to come. We believe the recent global energy crisis may have shed light on this reality.” Just as bitcoin miners can set up next to renewables sites and make them less risky investments, they can also improve the efficiency, lifespan, and economics for fossil fuel plants, leading to more reliable and cheap energy for everybody. ## Bitcoin Miners Can “Game” Demand Response Payments In the latter half of his article, Borenstein turns his attention towards critiquing the argument that bitcoin miners improve grid stability by acting as demand response resources, also known as controllable load resources. For those who aren’t familiar, “demand response” refers to an energy consumer who adjusts the amount that they consume based on the amount of demand elsewhere in the power grid. For example, during a peak demand period, a miner who acts as a demand response resource would reduce or fully power off their operations so that the energy they would have consumed can be used to meet demand elsewhere in the grid. In a 2021 report, the International Energy Agency (IEA) stated: “…faster progress is needed: 500 GW of demand response should be brought onto the market by 2030 to meet the pace of expansion required in the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (NZE), a tenfold increase on deployment levels in 2020.” Miners are particularly well suited to being demand response resources because they are location independent (you can set up miners right next to generators in remote locations), can rapidly adjust their power consumption (powering fully on/off in ~15 seconds), and electricity is the main operating expense for miners so they are naturally incentivized to reduce load when electricity gets more expensive during peak demand periods. Borenstein doesn’t directly refute these ideas, but he takes issue with miners receiving payments for the times when they turn off because he believes that miners will game the system to receive larger payments by artificially increasing their baseline energy consumption leading up to demand response events in order to receive larger payments when they shut off. He sees these payments as unnecessary given that miners don’t want to be online when electricity prices are high anyway. However, the stat that Borenstein cites to justify this position is outdated and extremely inaccurate. He states, “30% to 40% of crypto mining electricity usage is for fans and other cooling technologies that can suck up power on demand,” a stat which he pulled from a 2017 article by Digiconomist. In reality, mining data centers are optimized to use as little energy as possible for cooling, as electricity costs typically account for the majority of their operating expenses. The best metric for measuring this is Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), which measures the ratio of energy used to power actual servers (in this case, mining machines) relative to all other sources of electricity consumption in the data center. According to the University of Cambridge, “Conversations with miners support the hypothesis that mining facilities generally have significantly lower PUE than traditional data centres. In a best-case scenario, mining facilities have optimised data centre operations to a point where there is nearly zero overhead. This scenario is represented by assuming a PUE of 1.01.” We can isolate the energy consumption for non-mining loads from the PUE value with the equation: Cooling Power = (PUE – 1) * Power Consumed. In other words, a PUE of 1.01 indicates that the power consumption of cooling technologies would account for only 1% of total consumption. Even if we are extremely conservative and assume that the PUE of 1.01 is an entire order of magnitude off and the true amount of consumption for cooling is 10% (a very inefficient and likely uncompetitive mining operation), it’s still 3-4x lower than the figure cited by Borenstein via Digiconimist. On top of that, we would be remiss not to mention that Digiconimist is not a credible source of information. The site is run by Alex de Vreis, an employee of the Dutch Central Bank whose methodologies for estimating bitcoin’s energy consumption have been thoroughly discredited and whose original focus for the site was actually to blog about Dogecoin, an alternative cryptocurrency to bitcoin which ironically also uses proof of work. In summary, Borenstein’s point that miners will manipulate their energy consumption to maximize demand response payments is based on an extremely flawed statistic from an unobjective source. However, he didn’t get everything wrong. Borenstein finishes by saying that “paying crypto mining for demand response is likely to encourage more crypto mining,” and that part does make sense. Considering the IEA’s report that we need 500 GW of additional demand response brought to market by 2030 (34.5x the total estimated consumption of the bitcoin network today), we don’t think that encouraging more crypto mining is such a bad idea. ### Is This Really About the Energy Consumption? Bitcoin mining’s energy consumption has been the focus of great criticism for most of the cryptocurrency’s existence. Whether it’s central banker and Dogecoin enthusiast Alex de Vreis or the supposedly undergraduate-written and oft-cited Mora et. all paper in Nature claiming that bitcoin mining alone would lead to 2oC of global warming (which has also been discredited), it seems that bitcoin mining detractors care more about painting the cryptocurrency in a negative light than getting the facts straight about its energy consumption, environmental impact, and usefulness in building out generation and stabilizing grids. When large corporatist organizations like the World Economic Forum put out (already disproven) fear mongering pieces claiming bitcoin mining will eventually consume all the world’s energy, it’s hard to give them the benefit of the doubt that they have good intentions. But for those who have taken the time to read this, we can say a few things. Bitcoin is not easy to understand, nor is bitcoin mining. It takes a lot of patience and countless hours of study to start grasping the importance of proof of work to having a decentralized monetary network, as well as the benefits of that decentralized network to society at large. But it is worth it to make the effort and to learn with an open mind. You might just find that bitcoin is about much more than money. Source: Antminer S9 Profitability Even with $0.06/kWh—a very cheap electricity rate—the S9 daily profit is still just $1/day as shown above*. And if your electricity price is $0.10/kWh or higher, you’ll be in the red due to the S9’s poor efficiency. So, if you want to mine at home and learn the ropes without breaking the bank, the S9 from Bitmain is probably the way to go. But if you want to really make money mining bitcoin in 2022, you should look to more efficient hardware. Spencer Sherwood Spencer works a copywriter and has been involved in the crypto community since 2019.He is passionate about the evolution of Bitcoin and Bitcoin technologies. Spencer is also a musician and founder of Production Madness, an artist based talent accelerator which looks to work with and promote artists of various skill sets. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # From Hobby to Business | Avoid IRS Pitfalls and Protect Bitcoin Mining Profits Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/avoid-irs-pitfalls-and-protect-bitcoin-mining-profits/ From Hobby to Business | Avoid IRS Pitfalls and Protect Bitcoin Mining Profits | MiningStore ## From Hobby to Business: How to Protect Bitcoin Mining Profits from IRS Pitfalls ### Why Compliance Protects Profitability For investors, Bitcoin mining is not just about hashrate or uptime, it’s about after-tax yield. But there’s a catch: the IRS closely scrutinizes whether mining activity qualifies as a business or a hobby. If the IRS classifies mining as a hobby, deductions for electricity, hosting, and depreciation vanish, erasing profitability. The difference between success and disappointment comes down to documentation, structure, and active participation. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 to learn how to maximize deductions while staying IRS-compliant. Download the Investor's Guide ## The Hobby vs. Business Test The IRS uses material participation tests to determine if an activity is a bona fide business. Without clear evidence of active involvement, a Bitcoin mining operation risks being deemed a hobby, which severely limits tax benefits. IRS red flags for hobby classification: - No formal entity (LLC, S-Corp, C-Corp) established. - Lack of separate accounting or records. - Limited or no evidence of investor decision-making. - Sporadic or irregular activity. Result of hobby classification: - No deduction for electricity or hosting expenses. - No depreciation write-offs under Section 179 or Bonus Depreciation. - Income is still taxed, but losses cannot offset other income. For high earners, this outcome can transform a profitable mining investment into a costly tax liability. ## The Cost of Passive Classification Even if mining is structured as a business, the IRS can still classify it as a passive activity if the investor does not demonstrate material participation. What passive classification means: - Expenses cannot offset W-2 salary or 1099 business income. - Deductions are capped or disallowed. - Audit risk increases significantly. Without active participation, tax benefits that drive profitability are lost. ## How to Prove Active Business Status To secure tax advantages, investors must show the IRS that mining is an active trade or business. Key steps include: - Form an EntityEstablish an LLC or corporation to formalize mining as a business.Maintain separate accounting and dedicated bank accounts. - Maintain DocumentationRecord hours and activities (typically 500+ annually).Keep contracts, invoices, and communication logs. - Engage in Decision-MakingEquipment purchases, hosting agreements, maintenance, and upgrades.Active oversight distinguishes business from passive investment. ## MiningStore: Compliance Built Into the Infrastructure MiningStore provides institutional investors with the tools and reporting needed to prove material participation and defend deductions. How we help protect profitability: - Transparent Dashboards: Real-time performance data and expense tracking. - Ticket Logs: Document investor communications with technicians. - Lifecycle Records: Proof of ownership, installation, and maintenance. - Audit-Ready Reporting: Data packages aligned with IRS compliance. By delivering continuous documentation, MiningStore enables investors to confidently classify mining as an active business, ensuring deductions are preserved and profits protected. ## Case Example: Protecting ROI with Documentation - Scenario A (Hobby): An HNWI mines casually, no LLC, no documentation. IRS disallows the investment made in deductions, wiping out profitability. - Scenario B (Business): Another investor forms an LLC, owns rigs directly, and leverages MiningStore dashboards and ticket logs to prove active participation. IRS accepts the investment made in deductions, significant reduction in taxable income. The difference between Scenario A and B is not equipment, it’s structure and documentation. ## Why Now Is the Optimal Year to Invest for Tax Efficiency Permanent 100% bonus depreciation means year-one deductions won’t vanish, but the sooner rigs are placed in service, the sooner investors reap cash flow benefits. Expanded Section 179 expensing enables greater mid-market participation. Improved financing rules make leveraged mining more efficient. With institutional-grade infrastructure and compliance-first support, MiningStore helps investors translate the benefits of Section 179 and Bonus Depreciation into measurable tax savings. ## Maximizing After-Tax Profitability Bitcoin mining’s profitability hinges on more than electricity rates or hardware efficiency. IRS classification can make or break returns, especially concerning the Hobby vs. Business Test. By treating mining as a business, documenting active participation, and leveraging MiningStore’s compliance-ready infrastructure, investors unlock the full tax benefits of Section 179 and 100% Bonus Depreciation and protect their after-tax ROI. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 for a detailed compliance playbook. Download The Guide Book Your Private Consultation with MiningStore to secure hosting capacity and align your investment with IRS standards. Book Your Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Every investor’s situation is unique. Consult a qualified tax advisor, CPA, or legal professional before making tax-related decisions. Bitcoin mining involves financial, operational, and regulatory risks, and MiningStore makes no guarantees regarding specific outcomes. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin and Human Rights: Fireside Chats at the Oslo Freedom Forum Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-human-rights/ Bitcoin and Human Rights: Fireside Chats at the Oslo Freedom Forum | MiningStore ## By Adan Kohnhorst ## Oslo Freedom Forum x Bitcoin In Norway last week, the Oslo Freedom Forum gathered to discuss human rights and the fight against tyranny. In a series of revealing fireside chats, speakers touched on a range of exciting ideas, including the role of Bitcoin in the future of human rights around the globe. On stage for the Forum’s talk “Bitcoin, the Environment, and Human Rights,” Troy Cross mediated a discussion with Lyn Alden, Nic Carter, and Darin Feinstein, breaking down the wider ecology of the relationship between human rights and financial systems. Oftentimes, people get caught up in the flurry of talking points around Bitcoin – cashless payments and lamborghinis, the nature of society’s slow, ongoing breakup with fiat currency, or the grossly-uninformed idea of Bitcoin as an energy-sucking, anti-environmental behemoth. But for many around the world, Bitcoin is a route to freedom, financial and otherwise. “Proof of stake, stablecoins, and Bitcoin proof-of-work networks; there’s only one of those items that is uncorruptible,” explained Darin Feinstein, CEO of Core Scientific. “It’s an immutable ledger, and that’s Bitcoin.” “We have the first unhackable network in human history,” he went on to say. “What that means is, the government can’t hack it, the hackers can’t hack it, so if you have a Bitcoin in your digital wallet and you hold your keys to it, no one can take it from you. And for human rights people, that’s the first time in human history we’ve given private property to 8 billion people on the planet, despite what their government says.” As Feinstein points out, immutability is a key aspect of Bitcoin’s value proposition – transactions are final and can’t be changed. But beyond that, Bitcoin is also permissionless. Anyone around the world can access it without needing to identify themselves or be granted access by a central authority like a government or bank. This trait is of key importance in the fight against global tyranny and authoritarianism, according to Nic Carter. “By default, monetary and payment systems are completely politicized,” explained Carter. “And we’ve heard a lot of activists telling us this week how their bank accounts have been frozen…it’s not just an authoritarian thing, it happens in the US.” Beyond that, Bitcoin is also completely digital and borderless. You can transfer money anywhere in the world quickly and easily, and the final settlement can’t be changed after the fact. Compared to current systems like Western Union, Bitcoin is orders of magnitude more effective. In a rapidly-globalizing world that’s becoming more connected each day, the ability to easily exchange money and services across borders is a necessary step on the path to worldwide human rights and equality — and conversations like these are helping us get there. firehousenow ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # The Bitcoin Miner’s Hosting Guide: 7 Must-Haves for Maximum ROI Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-miners-hosting-guide/ The Bitcoin Miner’s Hosting Guide: 7 Must-Haves for Maximum ROI | MiningStore The Bitcoin Miner’s Hosting Checklist: 7 Must-Have Features for Maximum ROI In Bitcoin mining, every hash matters, and every inefficiency compounds over time. If your mining machines are hosted with a provider that isn’t optimized for cost, uptime, and performance, you are not just leaving money on the table, you are handing it to your competitors. For miners with hosted fleets, the right partner isn’t a “nice-to-have.” It’s the difference between consistent, predictable ROI and underperforming assets that quietly erode margins. Yet too many miners settle for hosting contracts that look fine on paper but fail to deliver where it counts, in real-world uptime, transparency, scalability, and support. The result? Higher costs, lower hashrates, and missed opportunities. This guide outlines the 7 essential factors every professional Bitcoin miner should use to evaluate their hosting provider. Think of it as an institutional-grade checklist for infrastructure ROI. And here’s the reality: MiningStore delivers on all seven, consistently, while helping clients unlock higher profitability and operational resilience. If your current provider can’t match that, it may be time to consider a move. Stop Leaving Money on the Table Every day your machines are with an underperforming host, you are giving up hashpower and profit you could be capturing. We have created the “Top 10 Things to Look For in a Bitcoin Hosting Provider” checklist to help you avoid costly mistakes and unlock higher returns. Get the Full Checklist (https://zc.vg/sf/dCi9b) ## Strategic Location and Data Center Infrastructure Location determines more than just your power bill, it shapes operational resilience and long-term cost stability. Must-Haves: - Region with historically low, stable electricity rates - Purpose-built cooling infrastructure for ASIC density - Redundant power systems (UPS, generators) for continuity - Favorable regulatory environment for mining Why It Matters for ROI: Infrastructure downtime doesn’t just pause revenue, it accelerates hardware depreciation without return. Strategic siting mitigates both risks. ## Energy Costs and Efficiency Power is the largest line item on any mining P&L. Every cent saved per kWh can translate into significant annual savings per megawatt deployed. Must-Haves: - Competitive, transparent power pricing - Detailed consumption billing - Preference for renewable or low-cost energy sources ROI Implication: Renewable-heavy grids often offer more stable pricing and qualify for ESG-driven capital, lowering volatility and increasing investor appeal. ## Security: Physical and Digital Mining equipment is high-value, high-theft, and high-target. A breach, physical or cyber, can permanently impair operations. Must-Haves: - Surveillance and restricted-access facilities - Cybersecurity protocols for miner firmware and network - Incident response protocols ROI Implication: Asset loss isn’t just hardware, it’s lost revenue days or weeks before replacement, compounding losses. ## Customer Support and On-Site Expertise Your hosting partner should scale with you, not hold you back. Must-Haves: - Compatibility with your current ASIC fleet - Flexible rack space for expansion - Remote monitoring and control capabilities ROI Implication: Scalability ensures operational leverage, your cost per TH drops as you grow without duplicating overhead. ## Cost Transparency Hidden fees are ROI killers. Must-Haves: - Clear separation of hosting, power, maintenance, and other charges - TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) modeling ROI Implication: Transparent pricing allows for accurate profitability forecasting and strategic decision-making. ## Compliance and ESG Alignment Institutional capital increasingly demands ESG-conscious infrastructure partners. Must-Haves: - Regulatory compliance and proper licensing - Participation in renewable energy or carbon-offset programs ROI Implication: ESG alignment opens new funding channels, reduces regulatory risk, and strengthens brand equity. ## Bottom Line: Hosting is an Investment Decision. Choose the Partner That Delivers on All 7 Points If your hosting provider cannot demonstrate strength across these seven criteria, they are leaving ROI on the table, and that loss compounds with every block mined. The difference between average hosting and best-in-class hosting can mean double-digit percentage gains in net profitability. MiningStore is built to deliver on every one of these must-haves: - Strategic Locations and Infrastructure: Facilities in Iowa, an energy-advantaged region with robust cooling, backup power, and optimal climate conditions. - Competitive Energy Pricing: Transparent, stable power rates with renewable-heavy sourcing to lower volatility. - Uncompromising Security: Surveillance, restricted access, and advanced cybersecurity. - Responsive Support: Technical assistance with on-site experts to minimize downtime. - Scalable Solutions: Infrastructure designed for both current fleet optimization and future expansion. - Cost Transparency: Clear, predictable billing, no hidden fees. - Compliance and ESG Alignment: Fully licensed, regulatory-compliant, and committed to sustainability initiatives that attract capital. We don’t just check boxes, we maximize your mining operation’s performance, resilience, and profitability. Stop settling for “good enough” hosting. Every day your machines are with an underperforming host, you are giving up hashpower, uptime, and profit you could be capturing. Let MiningStore show you exactly how much more your operation could be earning and how easily you can make the switch. Schedule your 1:1 ROI review today and see what best-in-class hosting can do for your bottom line. Book Your Strategic Hosting Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Mining: Maximize Section 179 & 100% Bonus Depreciation Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-mining-bonus-depreciation-tax-advantages/ Bitcoin Mining: Maximize Section 179 & 100% Bonus Depreciation | MiningStore ## Section 179 Expensing: How 100% Bonus Depreciation Transforms Bitcoin Mining ### An Investment Opportunity to Maximize After-Tax Profitability Tax law rarely offers permanent opportunities, but the recent expansion of key first-year deductions in 2025 has created one. For high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and institutions, the reinstatement of 100% bonus depreciation and the expansion of Section 179 expensing are two powerful provisions that dramatically improve the after-tax ROI of Bitcoin mining investments. For investors seeking both yield and tax efficiency, this window of opportunity shouldn’t be ignored. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 to learn how to apply these powerful deductions to your own portfolio. Download the Investor's Guide ## What Is Bonus Depreciation and Why It Matters Now Bonus depreciation allows businesses to immediately expense the cost of qualified assets, rather than depreciating them over several years. For Bitcoin mining investors, these powerful first-year deductions mean: - A $200,000 investment in mining rigs can deliver a $200,000 deduction in Year 1. - Accelerated cost recovery dramatically improves cash flow and reduces taxable income immediately. - Depreciation deductions can effectively offset income from other business activities, when the investment is structured correctly. The power of Section 179 and 100% Bonus Depreciation transforms mining rigs from a standard capital expense into an immediate year-one tax shield. ## Section 179 Expensing: A Boost for Mid-Sized Investors In addition to the benefits of 100% bonus depreciation, the expanded Section 179 expensing is critical for tax-efficient capital deployment: - The annual deduction limit has significantly increased to $2.5 million. - This provision is ideal for mid-sized mining fleets that want to expense their full capital costs without being forced into multi-year depreciation schedules. - The deduction applies to a wide range of qualifying property, including your mining equipment, infrastructure, and certain facility costs. This powerful tax provision levels the playing field, making Bitcoin mining tax-advantaged not just for large institutions, but also for individual High-Net-Worth Investors (HNWIs). ## Improved Interest and R&E Deductions The current tax landscape for Bitcoin mining offers significant benefits that extend well beyond just depreciation: - Interest Deductions: The deduction returns to an EBITDA basis, which is critical for capital-intensive operations, allowing miners using debt financing to deduct more interest expense. - Research & Experimental (R&E) Deductions: This allows for the immediate expensing of U.S. based Research and Development costs, encouraging innovation in efficiency, cooling technology, and automation. For investors, these provisions mean greater leverage efficiency and crucial support for operational optimization. ## The Placed-in-Service Rule: Don’t Miss the Window To qualify for bonus depreciation, assets must be: - Purchased, installed, and operational (placed in service) within the tax year. - Owned by the investor, not just hosted under a provider’s umbrella contract. Failing to meet these requirements means the deduction goes to the hosting provider, not the investor. MiningStore helps investors comply by: - Documenting equipment ownership. - Logging installation and activation dates. - Providing transparent dashboards and lifecycle records to substantiate placed-in-service claims. ## Investor Scenarios: W-2 vs 1099 Paths for Maximizing Tax Benefits Structuring your Bitcoin mining investment correctly is essential for maximizing first-year deductions, including Section 179 expensing and Bonus Depreciation. W-2 Employees - Must form an LLC to capture deductions. - Can offset W-2 salary income with mining business losses. - Eligible for the 20% Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction. 1099 Independent Contractors - Already operating as businesses, allowing for easier integration. - A Mining LLC allows for liability protection and cleaner accounting. - Can combine mining deductions with existing self-employment income. Crucial Compliance: Both investor types must demonstrate active participation to avoid IRS passive classification. MiningStore supports this with ticketing systems, operational reports, and continuous investor communication logs. ## Why Now Is the Optimal Year to Invest Permanent 100% bonus depreciation means year-one deductions won’t vanish, but the sooner rigs are placed in service, the sooner investors reap cash flow benefits. Expanded Section 179 expensing enables greater mid-market participation. Improved financing rules make leveraged mining more efficient. With institutional-grade infrastructure and compliance-first support, MiningStore helps investors translate these powerful tax provisions into measurable tax savings ## Why Investors Choose MiningStore MiningStore combines hosting infrastructure with investor-focused reporting and compliance. - Hydro and Air-Cooled Facilities across Iowa with grid access. - Audit-Ready Dashboards for expense tracking and placed-in-service proof. - 180+ Clients Supported, from HNWIs to private equity firms. - ESG-Aligned Operations leveraging renewable-heavy grids. By partnering with MiningStore, investors gain not only uptime and efficiency, but also the documentation and intelligence needed to maximize tax advantages under current law. Maximizing After-Tax Returns with Bitcoin Mining This current tax regime is a rare opportunity that tilts the playing field toward proactive investors. For Bitcoin mining, it creates a perfect alignment of infrastructure, yield, and tax efficiency. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 to see how these deductions can reshape your after-tax returns. Download The Guide Book Your Private Tax Strategy Consultation with MiningStore to secure hosting capacity and ensure compliance before year-end. Book Your Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Every investor’s situation is unique. Consult a qualified tax advisor, CPA, or legal professional before making tax-related decisions. Bitcoin mining involves financial, operational, and regulatory risks, and MiningStore makes no guarantees regarding specific outcomes. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Mining: From Environmental Villain to Clean Energy Ally Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-mining-environmental-villain-or-ally/ Bitcoin Mining: From Environmental Villain to Clean Energy Ally | MiningStore Bitcoin Mining: From Environmental Villain to Clean Energy Ally Why renewable-powered Bitcoin mining is not just cleaner, it’s a profitable investment For years, Bitcoin mining has been criticized as an environmental villain, blamed for high carbon emissions, excessive energy use, and e-waste. And at face value, the critique isn’t unfounded: older mining models consumed fossil fuels, emitted pollutants, and left a heavy carbon footprint. But today’s reality tells a very different story. Bitcoin mining is evolving fast, and increasingly, sustainability is not just about ethics; it’s about smart economics. For today’s operators, aligning with ESG principles reduces operational risk, lowers power costs, and strengthens investor appeal. What was once an environmental liability is now a strategic advantage. Renewable-powered Bitcoin mining is emerging as one of the most profitable and resilient business models in the energy-meets-finance era. ## Bitcoin Mining: The Environmental Criticism Critics have long pointed to: - High electricity consumption, comparable to mid-sized countries. - Carbon emissions from coal and gas-powered operations. - Air pollution and e-waste from hardware turnover. - Competition with clean energy resources. While these concerns remain valid in certain regions, they ignore the global shift in mining infrastructure and strategy now underway. ## The ESG Evolution: Five Forces Redefining Bitcoin Mining ### Renewables Power Over 50% of Mining According to Cambridge and industry data, more than half of global Bitcoin mining now runs on renewable energy, including hydro, wind, and solar. In some cases, miners co-locate with surplus renewables, monetizing energy that would otherwise be curtailed or stranded. This not only cuts emissions but helps renewable energy projects become more financially viable. #### Methane and Flare Gas Mitigation Pioneering firms now deploy mobile mining units at oil fields to capture and burn methane and flare gas that would otherwise leak or be vented. Methane has over 80x the warming impact of CO2 in the short term, so combusting it for mining dramatically reduces its climate impact. A standout example is the MiningStore-powered project with PRTI, a U.S.-based company converting tire waste into clean energy. Through its demanufacturing process, PRTI generates excess methane, which is burned to create heat that drives a turbine powering a 500kW Ethereum mining operation. The result? A carbon-neutral, energy-efficient solution that turns waste into digital value, and helped PRTI expand its recycling footprint. Explore the full case study #### Grid Balancing and Demand Response Bitcoin miners are uniquely suited to act as an interruptible load. During grid stress (e.g., heat waves or peak demand), miners can shut down in seconds, releasing power back to the grid. This makes mining a powerful grid stability partner, supporting utilities while avoiding blackouts. In Texas (ERCOT), this model is already producing results. To hear a compelling real-world example, listen to Dennis Porter on the Digital Gold Podcast, where he describes how 1,700 megawatts of Bitcoin mining power was shut down instantly during Winter Storm Elliott, a move that helped keep hospitals and homes warm in Texas. This kind of responsiveness shows that Bitcoin mining is not just energy-intensive, it’s grid-intelligent infrastructure. Listen to the episode here (https://podcasts.apple.com/co/podcast/proof-of-work-as-an-esg-positive-asset-class/id1539971833?i=1000709447857) #### Hardware Efficiency and Emission Reductions Next-gen ASIC miners like the S21 XP Hydro are significantly more efficient than earlier models. Combined with immersion cooling and precision load management, firms like CleanSpark and Crusoe Energy report up to 95% lower emissions per BTC mined. #### ESG Reporting and Transparency Many miners are voluntarily adopting carbon tracking, emissions audits, and ESG frameworks to attract institutional capital. Certifications, third-party validation, and sustainability disclosures are making it easier for ESG-aligned investors to participate in the mining economy with confidence. ## Why Renewable Mining Is a Strategic Investment Advantage Sustainability is no longer just ethical, it’s strategic: - Lower energy costs through renewable sourcing - Eligibility for green incentives and tax credits - Reduced regulatory risk and reputational exposure - Increased access to ESG-focused capital - Stronger margins through energy arbitrage and grid incentives Sustainable miners now benefit from both profitability and differentiation, gaining a competitive edge as the market evolves. ## Not All Mining Is Equal: Choosing the Right Partner It’s true: some regions still run on coal-heavy grids and lack environmental oversight. That’s why partner selection is critical. MiningStore with sites in MISO and SPP power markets, specializes in: - Hydro-cooled deployments - Sites with demand-response capability and utility partnerships - Energy-optimized hosting With MiningStore, investors can access the upside of Bitcoin mining without compromising their environmental standards or institutional mandates. ## Final Thoughts: Sustainability Is a Profit Strategy Bitcoin mining has entered a new era, one shaped by sustainability, transparency, and real-world energy impact. What began as an environmental pivot is now one of the most compelling investment strategies in Bitcoin mining, combining cleaner power with more stable margins, reduced risk, and long-term scalability. Investors no longer have to choose between performance and principles. With the right partner, you can achieve both. ### Book a Strategic Call with Our Mining Advisors MiningStore helps institutions and ESG-conscious investors deploy capital into clean, intelligent Bitcoin infrastructure. Schedule your strategy call today to explore how we help convert power into profit, sustainably. Book Your Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Mining Is No Longer Just for Giants: Institutional Access Starts Here Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-mining-institutional-access/ Bitcoin Mining Is No Longer Just for Giants: Institutional Access Starts Here | MiningStore Bitcoin Mining Is No Longer Just for Giants: Institutional Access Starts Here For over a decade, Bitcoin mining has been seen as a domain dominated by industrial-scale operations, massive data centers, cheap electricity deals, and tens of millions in capital outlay. While scale still offers undeniable advantages, this outdated narrative masks a critical shift in the mining landscape: Bitcoin mining has evolved into a strategic, accessible infrastructure investment, now within reach of high-net-worth individuals, private equity funds, and venture capital firms. Thanks to the rise of professionally managed mining services like MiningStore’s Managed Mining Program (MMP) and Hosting solutions, investors can now enter with as little as 5 S21XP Hydro 473Th with MiningStore’s Managed Mining Program, gaining exposure to the same infrastructure, power pricing, and operational leverage once reserved for the largest players. ## Why Industrial Miners Have Historically Dominated Large-scale Bitcoin mining operations do enjoy structural advantages, including: Access to Low-Cost Power Energy typically accounts for 60–75% of a miner’s operating expenses. Industrial farms secure low rates by colocating with energy producers, leveraging off-peak renewables, or participating in demand response programs. Economies of Scale Operators deploying thousands of ASICs can purchase equipment in bulk, negotiate better service terms, and optimize airflow, cooling, and uptime across purpose-built facilities. Financial Sophistication Larger miners hedge with energy contracts, BTC derivatives, or hashprice instruments, tools that help smooth revenue volatility and improve return consistency. These factors historically made Bitcoin mining inaccessible for smaller investors, but that is no longer the case. ## The Rise of Accessible Bitcoin Mining: Real Entry Points, Real Infrastructure Today, institutional-grade mining is no longer limited to energy developers or crypto-native funds. Through MiningStore’s infrastructure, investors can start with as little as: 5 x Bitmain S21 XP Hydro 473Th units - Entry investment: ~$65,000 – $75,000 - All-in package: Miner procurement, deployment at a high-performance hydro-cooled facility, operational monitoring, and monthly BTC payouts - Efficiency: 15 J/TH among the best in class - Power pricing: low-cost power at our MISO and SPP connected facilities This is not retail hobbyist mining. It’s fractional access to enterprise-grade energy, infrastructure, and performance, backed by a partner with deep operational experience and transparent reporting. ## Timing the Cycle: Why Now Is a Strategic Window to Enter The best infrastructure investments are made when conditions align. That time is now. Hashprice Surge According to JPMorgan, July 2025 saw the highest mining profitability since the last halving. Fees per block are rising, and network difficulty has temporarily stabilized, giving new deployments a better starting margin. Energy Arbitrage Opportunities Regions like Iowa and parts of the MISO grid routinely experience negative or near-zero marginal pricing due to oversupply from wind and solar. MiningStore strategically locates facilities to leverage these windows, passing savings to investors. Hardware Supply and Efficiency Unlike prior cycles, high-efficiency ASICs like the S21 XP Hydro are now available without delays or inflated premiums. The cost per TH has stabilized, and depreciation models are predictable over 3–5 years. ESG Alignment and Diversified Yield Bitcoin mining is increasingly recognized as a controllable, dispatchable load that balances renewables, attracting interest from sustainability-minded allocators. With professional management, mining now resembles infrastructure + yield + ESG, all in one. ## MiningStore: Built for Institutional Access at Any Scale MiningStore offers three primary investment pathways: ### 1. Managed Mining Program (MMP) Perfect for passive investors and portfolio allocators. MiningStore procures, hosts, monitors, and optimizes your miners. You receive monthly BTC payouts and full operational transparency. Key benefits: - No operational overhead - Entry as low as ~$65K - Industrial-scale uptime and security - Real-time dashboard + monthly reporting #### 2. Hosting Services For investors who wish to own hardware but prefer not to manage operations. We deploy and maintain your machines in our purpose-built data centers. Ideal for: - HNWIs wanting more direct ownership - Crypto-native funds with their own sourcing - Long-term holders optimizing cost-basis of BTC acquisition #### 3. Custom Infrastructure Buildouts For funds, family offices, and corporate investors deploying 1–20 MW or more, we offer site design, procurement, utility interfacing, and end-to-end facility operation. Used by: - PE firms seeking high-yield alternatives - Energy developers looking to monetize excess capacity - Strategic asset allocators building sovereign-grade BTC exposure ## Conclusion: Infrastructure, Now Fractionalized The myth that Bitcoin mining is only for multi-million dollar investors is obsolete. Today, infrastructure-grade mining can be accessed for $65K, operated by professionals, and aligned with institutional needs for transparency, ESG responsibility, and long-term value creation. As Bitcoin continues its evolution from speculation to macroeconomic relevance, the infrastructure supporting it will only become more critical and more valuable. MiningStore exists to bridge that gap, delivering industrial power to investors of all sizes. ## Ready to explore how Bitcoin mining fits into your portfolio or fund strategy? Whether you are allocating $65K or scaling into megawatt deployments, our team of mining and infrastructure experts will walk you through: - Current ROI models and breakeven analysis - Energy pricing and site selection strategies - Tailored entry plans through MMP or Hosting - Risk mitigation, custody, and exit options Schedule a 30-minute discovery call today and get clarity on how to enter the mining space with institutional confidence. Your Bitcoin mining strategy starts here, with the infrastructure partner trusted by 180+ clients and counting. Book Your Strategic Call with Our Mining Advisors (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # The Best Bitcoin Mining Investment in 2025 Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-mining-investment/ The Best Bitcoin Mining Investment in 2025 | MiningStore High-net-worth and institutional investors often try a few familiar routes: buying and hodling BTC, purchasing shares of public mining companies, or buying mining rigs and paying a hosting service. Yet a small, savvy group of investors, data-driven and long-term focused, are making money on Bitcoin in a way most overlook. They are not just riding Bitcoin’s price; they’re actually earning Bitcoin every day by mining it themselves, with a fundamentally different approach. And the results speak for themselves. If you’re exploring Bitcoin mining vs mining stocks, you are likely considering one (or more) of the following: - Holding BTC directly. (Straightforward exposure to Bitcoin’s price movements.) - Buying public mining stocks like RIOT, MARA, or IREN. (Indirect exposure via equity shares in mining companies.) - Owning mining machines and using a hosting provider. (Trying to mine Bitcoin yourself without running the facility.) At MiningStore, we work with investors across all these paths, and we consistently see the best ROI in our Managed Mining Program (MMP), a fully-managed Bitcoin mining partnership. Let’s break down why. ## What It Really Costs to Produce 1 Bitcoin In theory, Bitcoin mining stocks seem like a convenient way to gain Bitcoin exposure, after all, these companies’ core business is producing BTC. But recent data reveals a harsh reality: many public miners are producing Bitcoin at a higher cost than Bitcoin’s market value. In Q4 2024, several publicly traded Bitcoin mining companies had all-in costs per coin well above the average Bitcoin price of ~$83,000†. In other words, they were mining at a loss. Meanwhile, MiningStore’s own mining program was producing Bitcoin for a fraction of that cost. Source: * Data from @matthew_sigel on Twitter. Retrieved from https://x.com/matthew_sigel/status/1908123263525327163 † StatMuse, Average Bitcoin price in Q4 2024 $83,426. Retrieved from https://www.statmuse.com/money/ask/bitcoin-average-price-q4-2024 ‡ MMP cost per BTC is based on Antminer S21 Pro. Actual costs may vary by machine type and deployment conditions. As shown above, most public miners in late 2024 were underwater on each coin mined, spending more to mine 1 BTC than the market value of that BTC. Riot spent about $148k per coin and Marathon $134k, while Bitcoin averaged ~$83k​. By contrast, MiningStore’s MMP participants mined Bitcoin at roughly $55k all-in, leaving a healthy ~$28k gross profit per BTC. Even the more efficient public miner (Iris Energy) only eked out ~$5k profit per coin, and others lost tens of thousands of dollars per coin. This huge cost disparity translates to vastly different mining margins, and ultimately ROI for investors. Why are the costs for public miners so high? Simply put, publicly traded Bitcoin miners operate like large enterprises, and they carry all the baggage that comes with it: - Bloated overhead: massive SG&A expenses, corporate offices, and layers of management​. - High executive compensation: multi-million dollar CEO and board pay. - Bureaucracy and compliance: costs for legal teams, HR, regulatory compliance and reporting​. - Investor pressures: they often prioritize quarterly stock performance over efficiency, leading to suboptimal decisions and dilution of equity. They don’t just mine Bitcoin; they manage boardrooms and internal politics. As an investor buying their stock, you’re footing the bill for all that overhead. You get whatever’s left after executives, lawyers, and accountants are paid, which lately, as the data shows, has been nothing but red ink. On top of slim (or negative) margins, mining stocks add extreme volatility. These stocks act like high-beta Bitcoin proxies, often swinging more wildly than Bitcoin’s price itself. For example, during the 2022 crypto bear market, Bitcoin fell about 65%, but Marathon’s stock plunged around 80–90% from its highs. Riot’s share price has been about 60% more volatile than Bitcoin’s, and Marathon’s about 40% more. In plain terms, a 10% drop in BTC might trigger a 20%+ drop in those miner stocks. Investors in mining equities take on greater downside risk without any guaranteed Bitcoin yield, a double whammy of risk and inefficiency. And crucially, unlike traditional dividend-paying companies, most public miners do not share the Bitcoin they mine with shareholders. They typically reinvest or hold it on their balance sheet. That means as a stock investor, you receive no direct BTC yield or dividend from the mining operations. Your only hope of profit is the stock price going up, which depends on market hype and those very same inefficient operations improving ## The Tax Advantages That Most Investors Miss There’s another major factor that tilts the scales toward owning miners directly: tax efficiency. This is a benefit that many Bitcoin investors completely overlook. If you simply buy BTC or invest in a mining stock, you’re missing out on significant tax advantages available to actual mining operators. How to mine Bitcoin with tax advantages? The key is to structure your mining as a business. When you own the mining hardware and participate in mining through a program like MiningStore’s MMP, you unlock powerful tax treatments that passive investors can’t access: - Bonus depreciation on hardware: The U.S. tax code (Section 168(k)) has allowed accelerated depreciation, up to 100% of equipment cost in the first year​. In practice, this means you can write off most or all of your mining rig purchases immediately, drastically reducing taxable income from mining. (Even as bonus depreciation phases down in coming years, it remains a huge upfront tax break.) - Deductible expenses: The ongoing operating costs, electricity, hosting fees, maintenance, facility costs, are tax-deductible against mining income. Essentially, all the money spent to produce your BTC can reduce your tax bill. Public stock investors get no such deductions (you can’t deduct a company’s overhead as a stockholder). - Capital gains advantage on BTC holdings: When you mine Bitcoin, you initially recognize income (the BTC mined is income at its fair value). But if you hold that Bitcoin and it appreciates, those gains can qualify for long-term capital gains tax (at a lower tax rate) once held >12 months. You’re effectively able to convert what would be pure ordinary income into an asset that can be taxed at a favorable capital gains rate later. By contrast, with a mining stock, you don’t directly own any BTC, you can only sell the stock (which itself could get capital gains treatment if held long enough, but you’ve had none of the other benefits up to that point). - Strategic control over assets: Because you own the Bitcoin produced, you have control over when to sell or whether to hold it. This means you can strategize around tax timing, for example, selling some BTC in high-price years and holding in low-price years, or using mined BTC to rebalance your broader portfolio in a tax-efficient manner. With a stock, you have no influence on when (or if) the company sells BTC or issues new shares; you’re just along for the ride. These tax benefits can dramatically lower your effective cost per BTC and boost your after-tax return on investment. Every dollar you don’t pay in tax is a dollar added to your net profit. Over a multi-year period, the ability to write off equipment and expenses, while accumulating appreciating BTC at favorable tax rates, creates a compounding advantage for mining investors. But here’s the catch: not all forms of Bitcoin exposure give you these advantages. In fact, the differences come down to what you actually own and how your investment is structured. Let’s compare the key features of investing via MiningStore’s MMP vs. simply hosting your own miners vs. buying a public miner stock. ## Bitcoin Mining Hosting vs. Stock Investing: What You Actually Own The table below breaks down the ownership, tax, and yield differences between three approaches: (1) MiningStore’s Managed Mining Program (MMP), (2) Owning your own ASIC miners and hosting them at the facility of a public company, and (3) Buying stock in a public mining company. In summary: Whether you mine through MMP or on your own hardware, you get the tangible benefits of owning real Bitcoin-producing assets. By contrast, buying a mining stock gives you no ownership of machines or Bitcoin, and none of the tax benefits or direct BTC yield that come with ownership. Even if you choose to buy miners and host them yourself, you may capture similar tax perks, but you’ll be taking on the operational headaches and risk that come with managing a mining setup (and support quality will depend on your hosting provider). Why does this distinction matter? If you opt for public stocks, you’re essentially betting on a company’s efficiency (or lack thereof) without any of the structural advantages on your side. You own a paper asset (stock shares) that could dilute or underperform, and you miss out on owning the hard assets (miners and Bitcoin) that drive real value. As an investor, that means no depreciation write-offs, no direct BTC, and no control. You’re paying full price for a derived exposure, whereas mining ownership lets you acquire Bitcoin at a discount (through lower mining costs) and keep more of each dollar earned (through tax efficiencies). With MiningStore’s MMP, you’re not just gaining “exposure” to Bitcoin; you’re taking ownership of an efficient Bitcoin-producing infrastructure. You get the best of both worlds: the upside of direct Bitcoin production and the downside protection of a lean, optimized operation with tax advantages. Even if you could achieve some of this by hosting miners on your own, most investors don’t have the time or expertise to run a mini mining operation, especially across multiple bull/bear cycles. MMP handles the hard parts for you. ## Why MiningStore’s MMP Outperforms We’ve seen that MMP miners enjoy lower costs per BTC and better tax treatment than other options. But performance is more than just low costs, it’s also about reliable execution and support. MiningStore’s Managed Mining Program is built from the ground up for investors who demand results and a seamless experience. It’s essentially an “infrastructure play” that pays off in Bitcoin yield. Here’s why MMP consistently outperforms typical mining investments: - Lean, efficient operations: MiningStore isn’t a bloated public corporation. We focus purely on mining efficiency, utilizing low-cost, sustainable energy sources and cutting-edge mining rigs for maximum output per dollar. We own and operate our facilities, eliminating layers of middlemen and corporate overhead. The result is an average all-in cost to mine 1 BTC of roughly ~$55,000, giving MMP participants 50%+ mining profit margins in strong market conditions​ (and healthy margins even in weaker markets). By locking in cheap power and running a tight ship, we deliver “discounted Bitcoin” to our partners, often at half the cost per coin that public miners incur. - Real Bitcoin, not paper exposure: When you invest in MMP, you own the ASIC machines and receive real Bitcoin directly to your wallet from mining. This isn’t like owning a stock or fund where you hope for price appreciation; you’re literally accumulating BTC every day. It’s a direct yield paid in Bitcoin. There’s no counterparty risk of a company deciding to cut dividends or divert assets, the Bitcoin your machines mine is yours. Many of our investors view this as a way to steadily stack sats (Bitcoin) at a lower-than-market price, effectively dollar-cost-averaging into BTC with the miners’ output. - Transparency and control: MMP provides full transparency into your mining operation. You can monitor your machines’ performance, uptime, and Bitcoin production. You have the freedom to hold or sell your mined BTC as you see fit (we can assist with custody or conversions, but it’s your asset). This level of control is impossible with mining stocks, you never see the underlying machines, and you have no say in how the company handles the Bitcoin they mine. With MMP, you are effectively the miner (with us managing the process), so you call the shots on the BTC you earn. Beyond the numbers, a huge part of outperformance is the operational partnership you get with MiningStore. We often say it’s not just about the mining rigs, it’s about the relationship. Here’s what that looks like: - White-glove service: From day one, our team handles everything, sourcing latest-generation miners, setting them up in our secure facilities, and managing them 24/7. Our customer success team is known for rapid, transparent communication and proactive problem-solving. If there’s an issue with a machine, we address it before it affects your bottom line. - Flexible and investor-centric: We understand business needs can change. Clients may want to scale up, pause, or adjust strategy. Unlike rigid large hosts, we offer flexibility to adjust deployments and power use as needed. We work with you to meet your investment goals (for instance, shifting to newer hardware when advantageous, or optimizing for higher uptime during certain market conditions). - High uptime and reliability: With MiningStore’s experience, we’ve been mining since 2016, with 31.4MW of Bitcoin mining rackspace owned ​and 18 MW under development, we’ve fine-tuned our facilities for maximum performance. We deliver a smooth mining experience with consistently high uptime and full visibility into operations. You won’t be left in the dark wondering if your machines are online, you’ll know they are, and that they’re performing optimally. - A true partnership: We’re not a faceless hosting company or a helpdesk that closes tickets and moves on. When your infrastructure sits in our care, we treat it like our own. Our success is literally tied to your success, we thrive on long-term relationships, not quick profits. This alignment means you have a partner watching out for your investment around the clock. Many of our MMP investors have stayed with us for years, expanding their mining allocations, because they trust the partnership and see the consistent results. MiningStore has built this program with a long-term view. We’ve deployed 14 mining facilities nationwide over the years and supported 180+ clients, a track record that gives new investors confidence. Not only do we know how to run efficient mines, but we know how to navigate the cycles of the Bitcoin market. That institutional knowledge becomes your asset when you join MMP. ## For the Investor Who’s Done Chasing Inefficient Exposure If you are a high-net-worth or serious investor who is done chasing inefficient exposure, tired of volatile mining stocks and underwhelming returns, it’s time to look at a more strategic approach. Bitcoin mining, done right, can provide the long-term, passive Bitcoin yield that many portfolios are missing. And done right means focusing on cost, structure, control, and tax efficiency, exactly what MiningStore’s MMP is designed to deliver. In summary, with MiningStore’s Managed Mining Program you get: - Direct Bitcoin yield: real BTC deposited to you, providing a steady stream of Bitcoin income (rather than hoping for stock price gains). - Cost-efficient production: industry-low cost per BTC mined, giving you a built-in margin and effectively allowing you to acquire Bitcoin at below-market prices. - Ownership and control: you own tangible assets (miners) and Bitcoin, with full control over how to manage them, rather than holding a paper proxy. - Tax advantages: significant write-offs and tax-minimization strategies that boost after-tax ROI benefits, unavailable to stock or coin investors who aren’t mining. - Institutional-level support: a trusted partner with a proven track record running the operation, ensuring it’s hassle-free and optimized for you. And the numbers prove it: this is currently one of the most profitable ways to invest in bitcoin mining. It’s a path to Bitcoin exposure that actually yields Bitcoin, with far less waste and friction along the way. Ready to compare the ROI for yourself? We’d be happy to run the math side-by-side with your other investment alternatives, no pressure, just a transparent look at the costs and upside. Take the guesswork out of your Bitcoin strategy and see how owning the infrastructure can truly pay off. Book a strategy call now to explore how MiningStore’s Managed Mining Program can fit into your portfolio. Let’s talk numbers, taxes, and long-term Bitcoin growth, and chart a mining investment plan that outperforms the rest. Your future self (and your balance sheet) will thank you. Book a Strategy Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Why Bitcoin Mining Is the Most Misunderstood Infrastructure Investment of 2025 Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-mining-most-misunderstood-investment/ Why Bitcoin Mining Is the Most Misunderstood Infrastructure Investment of 2025 | MiningStore Why Bitcoin Mining Is the Most Misunderstood Infrastructure Investment of 2025 Why Institutional Investors Are Rethinking Bitcoin Mining as a Strategic, High-Efficiency Infrastructure Play The Myth: Bitcoin Mining Is an Energy Black Hole For years, headlines have fixated on a single statistic: Bitcoin consumes more electricity than some countries. That much is true, in 2025, Bitcoin mining is estimated to use roughly 173 TWh per year, about 0.5% of global electricity demand, comparable to nations like the Netherlands. But here is what those headlines rarely explain: Bitcoin mining is getting more efficient, not less. And for investors willing to look beyond the noise, this misunderstood sector is emerging as one of the most compelling infrastructure plays of the decade. ## Total Energy Use vs. Energy Efficiency: A Misunderstood Tradeoff Rising Total Energy Use: Why It Happens - The Bitcoin network’s hashrate (total computational power) has grown over 38% year-over-year, reflecting greater security and global participation. - Mining difficulty adjusts every two weeks to ensure block production remains steady. As more miners join, difficulty increases, requiring more computational work, and thus energy. Improving Energy Efficiency Per Hash - In 2025, the most advanced ASIC miners operate at 46 J/TH, a 12% improvement over 2024 models. - Hydro-cooled models like the Bitmain S21 XP push this even further, enabling efficient performance at industrial scale. - Immersion cooling, power optimization software, and modular container design all contribute to energy-intelligent deployment strategies. The Bottom Line: Rising energy consumption is a result of network growth and competition, not inefficiency. In fact, energy used per unit of value secured or work performed has never been lower. ## How Bitcoin Mining Compares to Data Centers Bitcoin mining’s energy use often sparks public debate, but how does it really compare to other energy-intensive digital infrastructure? In 2025, Bitcoin mining is expected to consume approximately 173 TWh annually, or about 0.5% of global electricity production. Meanwhile, data centers globally are projected to consume between 300 and 485 TWh, 2 to 3 times more electricity than the Bitcoin network. - Data centers account for approximately 1.7% of global electricity demand. - AI, cloud services, and digital expansion are fueling a rapid rise in data center energy use. - The International Energy Agency forecasts global data center consumption could reach 945 TWh by 2030. Yet data center growth is applauded, while Bitcoin is often vilified. This disconnect reveals just how poorly the mining sector is understood. Bitcoin mining consumes less energy than data centers, or the airline industry (246 TWh), and is rapidly becoming cleaner, more efficient, and more investable. ## What This Means for Investors Far from being a speculative niche, Bitcoin mining has matured into a robust infrastructure class that offers: - Tangible, depreciable assets (equipment, containers, power infrastructure) - Predictable monthly revenue from mined Bitcoin - Operational leverage through energy pricing and hardware upgrades - Downside protection through resale value and BTC accumulation Yet institutional capital continues to underweight this space, presenting a first-mover advantage for informed allocators. ## ESG in Bitcoin Mining: A Quiet Revolution - Over 50% of global Bitcoin mining now runs on renewables, including hydro, wind, and solar. - Emerging solutions like methane capture and landfill gas-to-power are pushing sustainability further. - Investors can now opt for certified renewable-powered Bitcoin, supporting ESG mandates. MiningStore and others are helping reposition Bitcoin mining from an environmental liability to an ESG-aligned energy sink, balancing grids, monetizing renewables, and driving innovation. ## Breaking the Barrier: You Don’t Need Millions to Enter Contrary to common belief, with MiningStore, institutional-grade Bitcoin mining is accessible, without needing a $5M data center build. Managed Mining Program (MMP) You can start with 5 x S21 XP Hydro miners (473 TH each) for approximately $65,000–$75,000, including: - Miner procurement - Professional deployment at hydro-cooled facilities - Low-cost power - Real-time monitoring and automated monthly payouts Hosting Services Already own machines? MiningStore’s hosting solutions offer: - Industrial colocation - Power and facility management - Uptime optimization and remote control Custom Infrastructure For institutional scale, MiningStore provides end-to-end site development: - Grid interconnection - EPC (Engineering, Procurement, Construction) support - O&M (Operations & Maintenance) contracts - Long-term management and yield optimization ## Why Now: The Strategic Entry Window for 2025 - Hashprice recovery: Miner revenues hit post-halving highs in July 2025 - Hardware access: S21 XP Hydro units available with no backlogs - Energy arbitrage: Sites in MISO/SPP leveraging on low power cost - Portfolio diversification: Bitcoin mining offers uncorrelated yield with hard asset exposure The next wave of capital will not just chase price speculation, it will flow into the infrastructure layer. Smart capital is already positioning. Will you? ## Final Thoughts: From Misunderstood to Mandatory Allocation Bitcoin mining is no longer the Wild West. It is infrastructure with yield, ESG credibility, and high-efficiency deployment potential. Institutional investors are waking up to a simple truth: Bitcoin mining is not a liability, it’s a strategic asset. Those who act early will benefit most from favorable pricing, superior siting, and long-term revenue leverage. Book a Strategic Call with Our Bitcoin Mining Advisors Whether you’re allocating $65K or scaling to multi-megawatt deployments, our team will guide you through: - Proven ROI benchmarks and real-time energy pricing - Capital structuring strategies for HNWIs, family offices, and funds - Site availability and turnkey options tailored to your goals Don’t wait for the next bull run. Build infrastructure now. Book Your Call Now (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # W-2 vs 1099 Bitcoin Mining Tax Benefits | Maximize After-Tax ROI Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-mining-tax-benefits/ W-2 vs 1099 Bitcoin Mining Tax Benefits | Maximize After-Tax ROI | MiningStore ## W-2 vs 1099: Which Investors Unlock Bigger Bitcoin Mining Tax Benefits? ### Different Investor Profiles, Different Tax Outcomes For high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and institutions, Bitcoin mining is more than infrastructure, it’s an after-tax profitability strategy. But not every investor approaches mining from the same position. W-2 employees and 1099 independent contractors face different tax rules, entity requirements, and compliance risks. Understanding which path applies to you is the key to capturing the full benefit of deductions, bonus depreciation, and IRS-compliant profitability. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 for a full breakdown of tax scenarios and entity structures. Download the Investor's Guide ## W-2 Employees: Turning Salary Into Tax-Efficient Yield W-2 earners often face the highest tax exposure. Without structuring, mining income may be treated as a hobby, eliminating the ability to deduct expenses. How W-2 employees unlock tax advantages: - Form an LLC: Establish mining as a business, not a hobby. - Deduct key expenses: Electricity, hosting fees, hardware depreciation, maintenance. - Claim 100% bonus depreciation: Immediate cost recovery on rigs placed in service. - Access QBI deduction: Up to 20% deduction on net business income. - Offset salary income: Mining losses and depreciation can reduce overall taxable income. Structuring properly can turn Bitcoin mining from a side activity into a powerful tax shield against high W-2 earnings. ## 1099 Contractors: Adding a Profitable Business Line Independent contractors already operate as businesses, which makes Bitcoin mining easier to integrate. How 1099 contractors maximize benefits: - Form a separate LLC: Clear liability separation and dedicated tax accounting. - Deduct ordinary expenses: Electricity, hosting, equipment, and maintenance. - Leverage 100% bonus depreciation: Full expensing of rigs in Year 1. - Pass-through taxation: Profits and losses flow into personal returns, offsetting self-employment income. - QBI deduction: Eligible for the 20% deduction on qualified business income. Investor takeaway: For contractors, mining becomes a natural extension of an already self-employed tax strategy, providing deductions and diversification. ## Active vs. Passive: The IRS Test That Protects Profitability The IRS doesn’t just care about what you invest in, it cares about whether you’re actively involved. Mining income treated as passive cannot offset other income. Material participation requirements: - Regular involvement in decisions, monitoring, and operations. - Documented hours (typically 500+ per year or substantial continuous activity). - Evidence of oversight, not just capital deployment. What happens if mining is passive: - No deduction of electricity or hosting costs. - No depreciation write-offs. - Lost ability to offset W-2 or 1099 income. MiningStore helps investors protect tax status by providing: - Transparent dashboards showing live performance and expenses. - Ticketing logs documenting investor communications with on-site technicians. - Lifecycle records for hardware installation and maintenance. This creates an audit-ready trail of active participation, preserving deductions and maximizing after-tax ROI. Comparison: Both profiles can capture substantial tax benefits, but the path differs. The right entity structure and compliance proof are the difference between IRS challenges and sustainable after-tax yield. ## Why Investors Choose MiningStore MiningStore provides more than infrastructure, we provide the compliance backbone that protects investor tax advantages. - Institutional-Grade Hosting in renewable-heavy Iowa. - Dashboards and Logs to prove active participation. - 180+ Clients Supported from HNWIs to institutional investors. - Audit-Ready Documentation that substantiates your tax position. Whether you are a W-2 employee looking to offset salary or a 1099 contractor expanding your business portfolio, MiningStore ensures your mining activity is both profitable and IRS-compliant. Maximizing After-Tax Returns Through the Right Structure Bitcoin mining is one of the few asset classes where entity structure, IRS compliance, and documentation are as valuable as the machines themselves. By aligning with the right strategy, W-2 employees can transform salary exposure, and 1099 contractors can add a new, tax-advantaged income stream. MiningStore delivers the infrastructure, reporting, and compliance support that protects these advantages. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 for detailed W-2 and 1099 playbooks. Download The Guide Book Your Private Consultation to secure hosting capacity and tailor your tax strategy. Book Your Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Every investor’s situation is unique. Consult a qualified tax advisor, CPA, or legal professional before making tax-related decisions. Bitcoin mining involves financial, operational, and regulatory risks, and MiningStore makes no guarantees regarding specific outcomes. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Bitcoin Mining vs. Banking: Why the Real Energy Problem Isn’t Where You Think Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/bitcoin-mining-vs-banking/ Bitcoin Mining vs. Banking: Why the Real Energy Problem Isn’t Where You Think | MiningStore Half the Energy, Twice the Scrutiny: Bitcoin vs. Traditional Banking Infrastructure A data-driven analysis that challenges everything institutional investors thought they knew about Bitcoin’s energy footprint The Narrative That’s Costing Investors Billions Investors are walking away from an asset class based on a single, unexamined assumption: that Bitcoin mining consumes too much energy. But what if the data tells a completely different story? What if the same energy analysis frameworks used to evaluate data centers, manufacturing facilities, and traditional financial infrastructure reveal that Bitcoin isn’t the villain, it’s actually more efficient than the systems it’s designed to replace? The uncomfortable truth: While family offices and institutional allocators debate Bitcoin’s energy use, early adopters are quietly building positions in what may be the most misunderstood infrastructure play of the decade. ## The Numbers You Should See Here’s the energy consumption reality that rarely makes it into investment committees: Annual Energy Consumption (TWh): - Traditional Banking System: 264 TWh - Gold Mining Industry: 241 TWh - Bitcoin Network: 114 TWh Source: Galaxy Digital Research, 2021 Let that sink in. The global banking system, with its thousands of branch offices, data centers, ATM networks, armored car fleets, and multi-layered settlement infrastructure, consumes 132% more energy than the entire Bitcoin network. Yet which one faces scrutiny in your ESG discussions? ## Why This Energy Comparison Changes Everything for Allocators ### The Efficiency Paradox Traditional banking requires: - Physical branches in prime real estate - 24/7 data center operations across multiple continents - Armored transport vehicles - Card processing networks - Clearing house infrastructure - Regulatory compliance systems - Customer service operations Bitcoin delivers the same core function, transferring and storing value, with a single, globally distributed network that operates 56% more efficiently than traditional banking. #### The Infrastructure Value Proposition For institutional investors evaluating digital asset infrastructure, consider this framework: Bitcoin Mining = Critical Infrastructure Investment Just as you wouldn’t question the energy consumption of: - Cell tower networks enabling telecommunications - Data centers powering cloud computing - Oil pipelines facilitating energy transport Bitcoin mining provides the foundational infrastructure for a digital asset ecosystem that operates 24/7/365 with high rates of uptime. ## The ESG Opportunity Hidden in Plain Sight ### Turning Waste Into Yield Advanced institutional mining operations aren’t competing for grid energy, they are monetizing waste energy that would otherwise be lost: Real-World Applications: - Stranded renewable energy: Remote hydro and solar installations with no grid connectivity - Natural gas flaring: Converting methane waste at oil sites into productive mining operations - Grid stabilization: Using mining as demand response to balance renewable energy intermittency Case Study Spotlight: PRTI, a U.S. tire demanufacturing company, transformed methane emissions from decomposed tires into a 500kW mining operation. Result: carbon-neutral operations with additional revenue streams enabling business expansion. Read the full case study: PRTI: Turning Tire Waste Into Bitcoin #### The Renewable Energy Catalyst Current data indicates over 50% of Bitcoin’s hash rate now comes from renewable or carbon-neutral sources, a percentage that continues climbing as energy costs drive operational efficiency. This isn’t corporate greenwashing. It’s market-driven environmental improvement at scale. ## The Trillion-Dollar Question: Are You Early or Late? ### Market Dynamics Creating Opportunity While institutional capital debates environmental impact, structural shifts are creating compelling entry points: - Hash rate consolidation among efficient, ESG-compliant operators - Energy partnerships with renewable developers seeking revenue optimization - Regulatory clarity emerging in key jurisdictions (particularly U.S. markets) - Technology advancement continuously improving efficiency ratios #### The Competitive Advantage of First Movers Institutional investors who understand these energy dynamics aren’t just positioning for Bitcoin price appreciation, they are building infrastructure positions in the backbone of programmable money. Early institutional adopters gain: - Preferential access to prime hosting facilities and energy partnerships - Operational expertise in a specialized asset class with high barriers to entry - Reputational alpha as ESG narratives evolve toward nuanced energy analysis - Portfolio diversification in truly uncorrelated digital infrastructure ## The Investment Decision That Can't Wait ### Market Timing Considerations Energy-efficient Bitcoin mining infrastructure represents a convergence of several macro trends: - Digital asset institutional adoption accelerating globally - Renewable energy expansion requiring demand response solutions - ESG investment criteria evolving toward nuanced analysis - Regulatory frameworks providing operational clarity The question isn’t whether institutional capital will eventually flow into Bitcoin mining infrastructure that’s already happening, it’s whether your organization will be positioned among the early adopters or paying premium valuations to late-stage entrants. ## Next Steps: Transforming Analysis Into Action Your strategic options: For Family Offices: Direct mining operations offer tax-advantaged wealth preservation with uncorrelated returns and ESG improvement narratives. For Institutional Allocators: Mining infrastructure provides digital asset exposure through tangible, revenue-generating assets with clear depreciation benefits. For Alternative Investment Managers: Bitcoin mining offers a specialized asset class with high barriers to entry and significant alpha generation potential. ## The Conversation That Changes Everything The energy narrative around Bitcoin mining isn’t just misunderstood, it’s backwards. Smart institutional money is recognizing that efficient mining operations don’t just participate in the digital asset ecosystem, they improve environmental outcomes while generating uncorrelated returns. Ready to challenge your assumptions with data? MiningStore specializes in helping institutional investors navigate the complexities of Bitcoin mining infrastructure, from initial due diligence through operational implementation and ongoing optimization. Schedule a confidential consultation to explore: - Tailored investment structuring for your specific objectives - Access to institutional-grade mining infrastructure - Tax optimization strategies maximizing after-tax returns - ESG documentation supporting your investment thesis Book Your Strategic Consultation Don’t let outdated energy narratives cost your portfolio the infrastructure investment opportunity of the decade. Learn how investors are turning Bitcoin mining’s energy “problem” into a competitive advantage. Schedule Your Confidential Call Today (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Cloud Mining vs Colocation Mining: Compare Cost, Control & Profit Potential Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/cloud-mining-vs-colocation-mining-whats-the-difference-and-how-much-will-you-make/ Cloud Mining vs Colocation Mining: Compare Cost, Control & Profit Potential | MiningStore ## By Adan Kohnhorst ## Cryptocurrency Cloud Mining vs Colocation Mining Bitcoin mining has matured into a professional, capital-driven industry. As adoption has grown and the network has become more competitive, new miners can no longer rely on consumer hardware or casual at-home setups. Profitability today requires dedicated ASIC machines and access to reliable, cost-efficient infrastructure. For individuals and small investors, this shift has created two primary entry paths: cloud mining and colocation mining. Both options allow you to participate in Bitcoin mining without building your own facility, but they differ significantly in ownership, control, cost structure, and long-term returns. Before choosing a direction, it’s important to understand what each model actually offers and what you’re giving up. This guide breaks down cloud mining vs. colocation mining in simple terms so you can determine which approach aligns with your goals and what you hope to earn from mining in 2025. ## What is Cloud Mining? Cloud mining is a form of mining where people rent cloud computing power in exchange for a corresponding share of mining profits. Unlike other methods, cloud mining allows you to participate without owning any mining hardware or software. Simply pay for a share of “hash power,” and the rest takes care of itself. While this may be the easiest way to get involved in Bitcoin mining, be careful – it’s also going to put a dent in your profits over the long-term. Pros: - No hardware necessary - Easy to get involved with - No prior knowledge or experience necessary Cons: - Since you don’t own the hardware, those who do will eat into your profits over time - There are many scams and frauds in the cloud mining industry, making it not as beginner-friendly as it seems - Mining hardware retains value for years, so it can be more profitable to actually own the machine(s) yourself - Not scalable ## What is Colocation Mining? In Bitcoin colocation mining (also called hosted mining), miners rent rack space, electricity, and other resources in a shared datacenter operated by a 3rd party, the hosting provider. You must purchase mining hardware yourself, but its operation is managed and maintained by on-site experts. Colocation mining also allows you to tap into the expertise of trained professionals, but as the owner of the hardware, you keep more of the profits. Colocation mining gives you more control, and constitutes a real, scalable mining operation where you own the equipment and enjoy the results. Pros: - Trained experts will manage your mining rigs and ensure they run efficiently - Convenient, offsite management away from your home or office so you don’t have to deal with the heat and noise that miners produce - Access to competitive electricity prices through your mining hosting provider which are likely much cheaper than you could get on your own - More scalable as you can choose how many mining rigs to purchase and host - Gives you the option to sell the ASIC hardware for a profit if there’s a bull market Cons: - Unlike cloud mining, you will need to purchase your own hardware which requires a larger up-front investment - Requires a bit more mining knowledge and expertise than cloud mining, although still suitable for beginners ## Cloud Mining vs. Colocation Mining So when it comes to the question of cloud mining vs. colocation mining, which one is right for you? It’s true that cloud mining offers an easy way to get started on your Bitcoin mining journey, and it’s tempting to consider a service where other miners will take care of all the major responsibilities. Plus, you don’t even need to buy mining equipment! Think carefully, though. With that easy on-ramp comes a downside, and choosing cloud mining means limiting your profits in the long-term. Besides that, the vast majority of cloud mining platforms are outright scams, but can appear legit to beginners. That’s why most people would ultimately be better off just investing in cryptocurrency directly rather than purchasing cloud mining contracts. That said, if Bitcoin mining is really attractive to you, our advice would be to cut to the chase and get started with colocation mining where you own the actual mining hardware and have a relationship with the miner hosting provider. You’ll be involved in a scalable, high-yield mining operation that grows over time and generates real, sustainable revenue. For example, here is a 2-year mining profitability calculation for a single Antminer S19 Pro Bitcoin machine with an initial investment of $10k. The mining machine produces over $11k in Bitcoin profits (assuming you don’t sell the BTC you mine right away) and it’s retained a lot of its resale value thanks to the 5-6 year lifespans of modern mining rigs. ### Getting Bitcoin Mining Exposure On the issue of cloud mining vs colocation mining, there are pros and cons on both sides. However, we recommend colocation mining as the ideal route for miners interested in making a serious profit. If you’re not sure where to start, consider our Managed Mining program for white-glove mining colocation services. We can help you purchase Bitcoin mining machines and we employ industry experts to watch over your mining operation, so you can achieve maximum results with less effort. The mining space is vast and fast-moving, but with an open mind and the right approach, anyone can get involved and find real success. firehousenow ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # How Air-Cooled Bitcoin Hosting Delivers Passive Returns in 2025 Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/how-air-cooled-bitcoin-hosting-delivers-passive-returns-in-2025/ How Air-Cooled Bitcoin Hosting Delivers Passive Returns in 2025 | MiningStore A low-friction way to earn Bitcoin yield through infrastructure ownership Your Path to Passive Bitcoin Returns with Air-Cooled Hosting In today’s high-volatility investment environment, one asset class continues to outperform expectations while offering long-term upside, portfolio diversification, and compelling yield dynamics: Bitcoin. But while most investors focus on ETFs, public equities, or simply holding BTC on an exchange, the most strategic capital is being deployed where the Bitcoin is produced, not merely traded at the infrastructure level. That’s where air-cooled Bitcoin mining comes in. And for investors seeking passive returns with full ownership, clear cost structures, and operational simplicity, air-cooled hosting is proving to be one of the smartest, most accessible mining strategies. ## Why Air-Cooled Hosting Is Still the Backbone of Bitcoin Mining While immersion and hydro cooling have gained traction among institutional miners, air-cooled hosting remains the backbone of global mining operations, delivering a proven model with lower CapEx, faster deployment timelines, and scalable infrastructure. At its core, air cooling is a straightforward approach: fans, louvers, and ventilation systems circulate air to maintain optimal temperatures for ASIC miners. It’s easy to maintain, inexpensive to deploy, and effective in most climates, making it an ideal choice for investors who want to generate Bitcoin yield without the complexity of cutting-edge cooling tech. Whether you’re allocating $50K or $5M, air-cooled hosting allows you to tap into the mining ecosystem without having to build a facility, manage a site, or maintain machines yourself. ## The Passive Return Strategy: Air Hosting + Turnkey Deployment MiningStore’s air-cooled hosting program is designed for one objective: help investors earn passive Bitcoin yield by accessing production infrastructure, without the headaches of building or running a mine. Here’s how it works: ### Infrastructure Access Without the Buildout Our U.S.-based hosting sites, strategically located in the MISO and SPP power markets, offer institutional-grade air-cooled hosting with verified uptime, competitive power pricing, and proven performance SLAs. You deploy capital, we manage the site. ### ASIC Procurement and Installation We assist in sourcing efficient ASICs (like the S21 XP Air or WhatsMiner M66 air units), pre-configure them for optimal performance, and install them in your designated rack space. No hardware headaches. No waiting. ### Uptime, Monitoring and Monthly Payouts You receive monthly Bitcoin payouts directly to your wallet. Our team monitors performance 24/7 and handles all technical support, repairs, and site operations. ### Ownership and Flexibility You retain 100% ownership of your hardware, with the flexibility to upgrade, resell, or relocate as your strategy evolves. ### Why Investors Are Turning to Air-Cooled Hosting in 2025 A perfect storm of macro trends has made air-cooled mining more compelling than ever: - Bitcoin Above $100K: With BTC trading above $100,000 and ETFs driving institutional demand, production economics remain highly favorable, even after the halving. - 100% Bonus Depreciation (Big Beautiful Bill): New tax provisions allow you to write off the full cost of your mining hardware in year one, dramatically improving ROI for U.S.-based investors. - Energy Cost Arbitrage: Our MISO and SPP-based sites offer power rates far below national averages, allowing for strong margins even during market downturns. - Growing Scarcity of Hosting Capacity: As new entrants flood the mining sector, rack space is becoming scarce. Securing hosting now locks in access before ASIC demand spikes again. ### The Real ROI of Passive Mining Air-cooled hosting with MiningStore delivers more than just BTC payouts, it delivers infrastructure ownership, strategic exposure, and long-term yield. Here’s what a deployment with MiningStore might look like: - 10 x S21 XP Air units (270 TH/s, ~12.2 J/TH) - Hosted in MISO at competitive $/kWh pricing - Monthly BTC payouts directly to your wallet - Full write-off of equipment under Section 168(k) - Passive income without operational lift Projected returns will depend on BTC price, network difficulty, and power costs, but even under conservative assumptions, ROI remains compelling when tax advantages and rising demand are factored in. ### Is Air Hosting Right for You? Air-cooled hosting is ideal if you: - Want exposure to Bitcoin production, not just price speculation - Prefer ownership of real digital infrastructure - Value simplicity and low-friction deployment - Need tax-efficient BTC yield with minimal operational complexity - Seek a scalable mining foundation that can grow with your portfolio And with MiningStore, you’re not doing this alone. You gain a partner with over 7 years of experience, more than 30,000 ASICs deployed, and a track record of transparency, uptime, and client success. Ready to Build Passive BTC Yield? Whether you are exploring your first mining investment or looking to expand your footprint, air-cooled hosting offers one of the most direct paths to passive Bitcoin returns with fewer moving parts, faster deployment, and real infrastructure access. Book a Strategy Call to explore your air-hosting deployment ## Air-Cooled Hosting Availability Rack space opens and rates move. Get a note when we have air-cooled capacity. First name Work email Website Send me availability Occasional hosting availability and rate updates. Unsubscribe from any message. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # How Hydro-Cooling Maximizes Bitcoin Mining Profitability Over Time Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/how-hydro-cooling-maximizes-bitcoin-mining-profitability-over-time/ At scale, profitability is no longer a simple function of nameplate hashrate. It is a function of how efficiently a site converts energy, space, and hardware life into dependable output. Hydro-cooled infrastructure improves those economics in ways that compound over time, especially for dense, professionally run fleets. ## Key Takeaways - Hydro lowers cooling overhead and improves power-usage effectiveness relative to fan-heavy facilities. - Higher equipment density turns the same square footage into more productive hashrate. - Stable temperatures and fewer thermal events extend hardware life and reduce replacement cycles. Related Insight ## Energy Efficiency Improves Margins Traditional air-cooled sites spend meaningful energy on fans and HVAC. Hydro uses water's superior heat-transfer properties to remove heat more directly, which lowers the power overhead required to keep miners in-range. - Lower cooling power draw means more of the facility's energy budget goes to hashing. - Reduced dependence on large fan walls and HVAC lowers ongoing operating expense. - Better PUE supports cleaner unit economics when margins compress. Related Insight ## Higher Density Raises Revenue Per Square Foot Hydro deployments support tighter machine density without the same overheating risk found in air-cooled layouts. That lets operators increase total compute inside the same container or facility footprint. - More ASICs per container or square foot. - Higher total output without proportional real-estate expansion. - Stronger returns on facility and utility infrastructure that are already in place. Related Insight ## Longer Hardware Life and Better Uptime - Stable operating temperatures reduce thermal stress on expensive ASIC hardware. - Fewer throttles, shutdowns, and emergency interventions protect both uptime and maintenance labor. - Lower failure rates mean replacement capex stretches farther across the life of the fleet. ### Why this compounds Lower energy overhead is valuable. Lower energy overhead plus higher density plus fewer hardware replacements is what creates the real profitability step-change. Related Insight ## Future-Proofing the Fleet ASICs are trending hotter and denser. Hydro is the thermal architecture most aligned with that direction, which means operators who build around it now are less likely to face expensive retrofits later. That future is not limited to one OEM. Current hydro choices span Bitmain container-oriented deployments, MicroBT's rack-mount WhatsMiner lines, and newer rack-native systems such as Auradine's Teraflux platform. - Hydro supports next-generation hardware more naturally than legacy fan-based facilities. - It can improve ESG positioning when paired with renewable power or heat-recovery strategies. - It makes long-term capital planning easier because the cooling stack is built for higher-performance fleets. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Related Insight Why Hydro-Cooled Hosting Is the Infrastructure Advantage Where hydro-cooled hosting fits in the next phase of Bitcoin mining infrastructure. Read next Deployment Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Five-phase planning and pre-launch audit for hydro-cooled site buildouts. Read next Related Insight Why Expert Management Is Critical for Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Success Why the operating team matters as much as the hardware once hydro systems go live. Read next --- # Bitcoin Mining Earnings: Realistic ROI, Costs & Strategy Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/how-much-can-you-make-mining-bitcoin-in-2022/ Bitcoin Mining Earnings: Realistic ROI, Costs & Strategy | MiningStore ## By Adan Kohnhorst Bitcoin adoption is more widespread than ever before, and that means more people are becoming curious about Bitcoin mining. But in a volatile market, some wonder if they’re too late. Before you purchase your own bitcoin mining rig, really, how much can you make mining Bitcoin in 2022? Generally speaking, if you’re mining Bitcoin at home, you can make anywhere from $30 to $450 per mining machine each month. (Wondering why it’s such a large range? We’ll explain further down.) The amount of money you make mining Bitcoin depends on factors like your hashrate (i.e. computing power), the amount of energy you’re consuming, and your cost of electricity. If you’re unfamiliar with what any of that means, we recommend starting with our Beginner’s Guide to Investing in Bitcoin Mining before coming back here to deepen your knowledge. If you’re looking to get started mining, you’ll need an ASIC miner. Back in the day, you could mine Bitcoin with your laptop. But now that the price of Bitcoin has increased and attracted many more people to mining, the mining difficulty has increased such that you’ll need the computing power of dedicated hardware – Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) miners, which you can buy online from stores like ours. The truth is, your success with Bitcoin mining hinges on many different factors. But if you do your research, you stand a good chance of drawing some solid revenue. ## Is ASIC mining still profitable in 2022? Yes, bitcoin mining with ASICs can still be a source of significant profit in 2022. The amount you make will depend on your hardware and the cost of electricity where you live, but ASIC miners are still your best option to reach Bitcoin mining success. If you mine one Bitcoin today – valued at a price of [46,688] – but it costs you $50,000 in electrical bills to do it, that would not be ideal. Although there are some exceptions around the US and Canada, typical residential electricity rates are simply too expensive to mine profitably. However, this is why we offer services like Managed Mining which allow you to take advantage of our cheap electricity and operational expertise by hosting your bitcoin miners with us. Ultimately, whether you prefer being a DIY home miner or using our white glove hosting service, you’ll need to understand which ASIC miner is right for you to achieve the best ratio of hashrate to electrical cost, ## Best ASIC Miners 2022 Like the greater Bitcoin ecosystem, the mining scene is constantly changing. Well-known companies and new players alike are all seeking to innovate, and what worked last year may not hold up a few months from now. In the world of Bitcoin mining, a few names stand above the rest – here are the best ASIC miners of 2022. - Antminer S9 - Antminer S19 - Whatsminer M30S ### Antminer S9 - The Learner’s Machine Bitmain’s Antminer series is one of the leading names in mining hardware, and for good reason. The Antminer line has been the best in the industry for most of the modern mining era, and the Antminer S9 is perhaps the most popular (and durable) bitcoin mining rig ever made. The Antminer S9 is one of Bitmain’s older models, first launched in 2016 and now on the poor side in terms of efficiency and hashrate compared to more recent releases. However, this is why the S9’s are great for beginner miners and those looking to get started in the field. They are cheap (under $400 each) and there are tons of resources out there for customizing, repairing, and operating them. Unfortunately, with the minimal risk of buying an S9 comes limited upside. Source: Antminer S9 Profitability Even with $0.06/kWh—a very cheap electricity rate—the S9 daily profit is still just $1/day as shown above*. And if your electricity price is $0.10/kWh or higher, you’ll be in the red due to the S9’s poor efficiency. So, if you want to mine at home and learn the ropes without breaking the bank, the S9 from Bitmain is probably the way to go. But if you want to really make money mining bitcoin in 2022, you should look to more efficient hardware. ### Antminer S19 - The New Generation of Bitcoin Mining After a few less than stellar years following the huge success of the S9, Bitmain has rebuilt their reputation with their latest generation of miners in the Antminer S19 family. These machines are about 3x more efficient than the S9’s, meaning that your profit margins are a whole lot more appealing. On top of the efficiency gains, the typical S19 mining machine also has a hashrate 6-8x greater than the S9’s, meaning that you’ll mine 6-8x more BTC per miner. We have a detailed breakdown of all the different hardware models that are part of the Antminer S19 family, but to give you a taste of the possibilities, let’s look at the same metrics as we did for the S9 above. Source: Antminer S19 Pro Profitability With low electricity rates like what we offer with the Managed Mining program, you can earn nearly $17/day in profit with a single Antminer S19*. That’s over $500/month and $6100/year, dwarfing the mining profitability of the older S9. If you want to make mining really profitable in 2022, an ASIC from Bitmain’s S19 generation is one of your best options. ### Whatsminer M30S - True Competition for the Antminer S19 There was a time just a few years ago that Bitmain completely dominated the ASIC hardware market. Then, around 2019, a company called MicroBT made a huge push to gain market share with the release of their M20S series of miners, rivaling and even out-performing the Antminer S9. Nowadays, if your goal is making the most money with bitcoin mining in 2022, the newer-generation M30S series is certainly the way to go. For example, let’s look at the Whatsminer M30S+, a machine which is closest to the Antminer S19 in terms of the ASIC performance. Source: Whatsminer M30S+ Profitability With a hashrate of 100 TH/s at a power consumption of 3400W, the Whatsminer M30S+ can mine about $430/month in profit at our low electricity price*. The MicroBT miners are also well-known for their durability and solid performance even in higher temperatures, making them a solid choice for DIY home miners looking to graduate from S9’s into the big leagues. ## Calculating Long-Term Profitability to Choose Your ASIC In the end, there are many variables to consider in deciding whether or not to mine bitcoin and how to do it profitability. Covering them all in writing would require a novel, but we’d rather guide you through the process step-by-step on a phone call with one of our bitcoin mining experts. And if you want to keep learning in the meantime after you schedule your call, you can dive deeper into the inner workings of the bitcoin hardware market with our Guide to Purchasing Bitcoin Mining Hardware. *Note: profitability calculations based on BTC Price = $41,000 and network difficulty = 28.22 trillion at the time of writing. firehousenow ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Discover How Much Can You Make Mining Bitcoin in 2025 Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/how-much-can-you-make-mining-bitcoin-in-2025/ Discover How Much Can You Make Mining Bitcoin in 2025 | MiningStore ## By MiningStore How Much Can You Make Mining Bitcoin in 2025 Bitcoin mining in 2025 continues to evolve rapidly with new ASIC technologies pushing the boundaries of efficiency and performance. For miners and investors aiming to maximize returns, selecting the right hardware is critical. This article examines the profitability of ASIC mining today, highlights the top three ASIC miners dominating the market in 2025, and explains how to calculate long-term profitability to make well-informed decisions. If you’re unfamiliar with what any of that means, we recommend starting with our Beginner’s Guide to Investing in Bitcoin Mining before coming back here to deepen your knowledge. ## Is ASIC mining still profitable in 2025? ASIC mining remains profitable in 2025, particularly for miners who invest in the latest generation of high-efficiency machines and operate in areas with competitive electricity rates. Innovations like hydro cooling have significantly improved thermal management and power efficiency, reducing operational costs and enabling miners to sustain profitability despite rising network difficulty. However, profitability hinges on factors such as electricity prices, Bitcoin market volatility, and miner efficiency, making careful planning and up-to-date analysis essential. ## Best 3 ASIC Miners 2025 In 2025, the ASIC mining landscape is led by machines that combine high hash rates with advanced cooling technologies and energy efficiency. The top three miners: Antminer S21 XP Hydro, WhatsMiner M66S, and WhatsMiner M63S++, represent the pinnacle of mining hardware, delivering exceptional performance, reliability, and ROI potential. These models are favored by professional miners for their ability to maximize mining output while managing electricity consumption effectively. - Antminer S21 XP Hydro - WhatsMiner M66S (MicroBT) - WhatsMiner M63S++ (MicroBT) ### Antminer S21 XP Hydro (Bitmain) - ​​Hashrate: 473 TH/s - Power Consumption: 5,676 W - Efficiency: ~12 J/TH - Cooling: Hydro cooling - Price: Approximately $12,399 The Antminer S21 XP Hydro is Bitmain’s flagship hydro-cooled ASIC miner, designed for large-scale, high-efficiency Bitcoin mining operations. It delivers a powerful hash rate of 473 TH/s with a power consumption of approximately 5,676 watts, achieving an energy efficiency of around 12 joules per terahash (J/TH). This efficiency is a significant improvement over previous models, thanks to its advanced 4nm chip technology and sophisticated hydro cooling system that ensures optimal temperature control and reduces overheating risks during continuous operation. Weighing about 12.8 kg and operating quietly at 50 dB, the S21 XP Hydro is built for professional miners who demand reliability and longevity. Its water-cooling design not only enhances performance but also lowers noise and extends hardware lifespan, making it a smart investment for maximizing profitability. The miner supports mining cryptocurrencies using the SHA-256 algorithm, including Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Bitcoin SV. With a price point around $12,399, it targets serious miners who prioritize both power and efficiency. ### WhatsMiner M66S (MicroBT) - Hashrate: 298 TH/s - Power Consumption: Approx. 6,000 W (typical for similar models) - Cooling: Air cooling (with high-efficiency fans) The WhatsMiner M66S is a robust mid-range ASIC miner from MicroBT, known for its reliability and stable performance. It offers a hash rate of 298 TH/s, making it suitable for miners seeking a balance between upfront cost and mining power. Although it uses air cooling rather than hydro cooling, the M66S is engineered with high-efficiency fans and optimized chip design to maintain effective thermal management. Its power consumption typically ranges around 6,000 watts, which is competitive for its hashrate class. The M66S is favored by miners who want a proven, durable machine that can operate efficiently in various environments without the complexity of liquid cooling systems. This miner provides a solid ROI for small to medium mining operations, especially where electricity costs are moderate and operational simplicity is valued. ### WhatsMiner M63S++ (MicroBT) - Hashrate: 478 TH/s - Power Consumption: Approx. 8,000 W - Cooling: Air cooling The WhatsMiner M63S++ is MicroBT’s high-performance air-cooled miner, delivering an impressive 478 TH/s hashrate. It consumes approximately 8,000 watts of power, reflecting its position as one of the most powerful air-cooled miners available. The M63S++ is designed for large-scale mining farms that can support its higher power requirements and cooling needs. Despite its higher energy consumption compared to hydro-cooled models, the M63S++ excels in raw mining power and is known for its durability and ease of maintenance. It is ideal for miners who prioritize maximum hash rate and have access to cost-effective electricity and sufficient infrastructure to handle its cooling demands. This miner is popular among operators looking to scale up mining operations without transitioning to liquid cooling systems. ## Calculating Long-Term Profitability to Choose Your ASIC To accurately assess the long-term profitability of an ASIC miner, consider these key factors: - Hash Rate: Higher hash rates increase your share of mining rewards but often come with higher power consumption and cost. - Power Efficiency (J/TH): Lower joules per terahash mean less electricity cost per unit of mining power. Hydro-cooled miners like the Antminer S21 XP Hydro offer superior efficiency (~12 J/TH). - Electricity Costs: This is the largest ongoing expense; miners with access to low-cost electricity gain a significant advantage. - Initial Investment: The purchase price affects your break-even point and return on investment (ROI). - Bitcoin Price and Mining Difficulty: Both fluctuate and impact mining rewards; use real-time profitability calculators to model different scenarios. - Operational Costs: Include cooling infrastructure, maintenance, and potential downtime. By inputting these variables into profitability calculators, miners can forecast earnings and identify which ASIC models offer the best ROI over time. Regularly updating these calculations is vital as market conditions evolve. ## Why MiningStore Is Your Best Partner for Bitcoin Mining in 2025 MiningStore positions itself as an industry leader by providing: - Access to the latest, high-performance ASIC miners from Bitmain and MicroBT, including the Antminer S21 XP Hydro and WhatsMiner series. - Expert advice tailored to your mining goals, helping you select the most profitable equipment and optimize your setup. - Transparent pricing, fast shipping, and reliable after-sales support to ensure smooth mining operations. - Educational resources and real-time market insights to keep you ahead in the rapidly evolving crypto mining landscape. By combining cutting-edge hardware with expert guidance and dedicated support, MiningStore empowers miners to maximize profitability and build trust through proven results. Mining Bitcoin profitably in 2025 requires smart hardware choices and a strategic approach. The Antminer S21 XP Hydro, WhatsMiner M66S, and WhatsMiner M63S++ represent the best options for miners seeking high returns and energy efficiency. ## Ready to Build a Profitable Mining Operation in 2025? At MiningStore, we offer flexible solutions designed to meet you wherever you are on your mining journey. If you’re looking for a hands-off, fully managed experience with consistent Bitcoin payouts and professional oversight, our Managed Mining Program (MMP) is built for long-term investors seeking predictable, infrastructure-backed returns. For those with existing machines or new hardware purchases, our Hosting Program provides secure, low-cost U.S.-based infrastructure with full operational support. And if you’re assembling your own fleet, our Marketplace features top-performing ASICs, including the S21 XP Hydro and WhatsMiner series at competitive, verified prices. Partnering with MiningStore ensures you have access to these top-tier machines and the expertise needed to succeed. Efficiency. Uptime. ROI. With MiningStore, you don’t just mine, you build an advantage. Book a Strategy Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) firehousenow ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # How to Identify Underperforming Bitcoin Mining Setups | Boost ROI Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/identify-underperforming-bitcoin-mining-setups/ How to Identify Underperforming Bitcoin Mining Setups | Boost ROI | MiningStore How to Identify Underperforming Bitcoin Mining Setups A Self-Audit for Higher ROI In Bitcoin mining, performance issues aren’t always obvious. Inefficiencies can quietly erode profitability for months before they show up in your wallet. The good news? By tracking the right metrics and knowing what to look for, you can quickly spot an underperforming setup, and take action before the losses pile up. Is Your Setup Operating at a Loss? A few percentage points of inefficiency can mean thousands in lost revenue. Before you make another investment, get the “Top 10 Things to Look For in a Bitcoin Hosting Provider” guide, the same checklist investors use to choose the right partner and maximize their returns. Get the Checklist (https://zc.vg/sf/dCi9b) ## Hashrate and Hashrate per Watt Your hashrate is your revenue engine. If it’s below manufacturer specs or industry benchmarks for your ASIC model, something’s wrong. Key Metric: Hashrate per Watt = Total Hashrate ÷ Power Consumption Lower-than-expected values signal inefficiency, often caused by hardware, cooling, or configuration issues. ## Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) PUE shows how much of your facility’s power actually reaches your mining hardware. PUE = Total Facility Power ÷ Hardware Power - 1.0–1.2: Excellent - 1.3+: Wasted energy on cooling or infrastructure A high PUE means you are paying for non-mining energy use, cutting into margins. ## Mining Software and Configuration Outdated or misconfigured mining software can quietly reduce performance: - Incorrect pool settings - Suboptimal algorithm parameters - Connection errors, invalid shares, nonce errors Keeping firmware updated and settings optimized is an easy ROI win. ## Hardware Condition and Cooling Signs your hardware is struggling: - Overheating or high fan speeds - Frequent shutdowns or throttling - Visible dust or debris buildup Poor cooling not only lowers efficiency, it shortens ASIC lifespan, increasing CapEx. ## Monitoring Tools and Dashboards If you aren’t tracking your miners in real time, you are flying blind. Use dashboards that monitor: - Uptime - Temperature - Hashrate fluctuations - Share acceptance rates ## Benchmark Against Industry Standards Compare your Joules per Terahash (J/TH) to top-tier models. If you are significantly higher, your hardware is burning more energy for less work. ## Environmental and Network Factors Unstable internet or power interruptions, even for minutes, can result in stale shares and lost revenue. Network reliability is part of mining efficiency. ## The Red Flags That Require Action Your setup may be underperforming if: - Hashrate per Watt is below peer averages - PUE is above 1.3 - Share acceptance is <98% - Frequent hardware or cooling issues occur - Unexplained downtime or rejected shares are common ## From Diagnosis to ROI Recovery Spotting underperformance is only step one, fixing it is where ROI is won. For hosted miners, many of these issues stem from the facility itself: poor cooling, power instability, hidden inefficiencies in infrastructure. This is where MiningStore’s infrastructure advantage comes in: - Iowa-based, energy-stable hosting - Air and hydro-cooled environments to optimize efficiency - Uptime and transparent power usage reporting - On-site support for rapid resolution Want to know exactly how much your current inefficiencies are costing you? Our free ROI and Performance Consultation will benchmark your setup against optimal conditions, and show you what you would gain by hosting with MiningStore. Book Your ROI Consultancy Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Is Bitcoin Harmful to the Environment? Debunking Common Myths in 2022 Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/is-bitcoin-harmful-to-the-environment-debunking-common-myths-in-2022/ Is Bitcoin Harmful to the Environment? Debunking Common Myths in 2022 | MiningStore ## By Adan Kohnhorst Politicians and major media outlets are quick to sound the alarm. But looking at the data, really, is bitcoin harmful to the environment? It’s 2022 and we’re experiencing all the things that “the experts” warned us about. Forces of division and authoritarianism are running wild, and perhaps most worryingly, the Earth itself is at risk, facing mounting climate change and pollution (the word “risk” is being generous — scientists say the effects of global warming became “irreversible” over a decade ago). What does this mean for Bitcoin, and for Bitcoin miners? Brace yourselves for a nightmarish run of statistics that will leave you begging us to stop. Did you know that Bitcoin produces annual carbon emissions comparable to Greece? Or that a single Bitcoin transaction could power an average US household for a month? We’ll bet you haven’t even considered the impact of toxic Bitcoin mining pollution on communites’ waterways. In fact, it gets worse — a few years ago, the World Economic Forum estimated that by 2020, Bitcoin mining would consume as much electricity as the entire world. Indeed, two years on from that fatal prediction, it seems the only thing separating us from a swift, rocky, Bitcoin-induced Armageddon is an ever-thinning thread of pure luck. You, the environmentally conscious reader, may find yourself feeling that all hope is lost. But don’t throw in the towel for planet Earth just yet — we have some good news. The good news is that each piece of information you just read — these common, fear-mongering statistics — are all deeply misleading, if not patently false. So is bitcoin harmful to the environment? We’ll explain. ## Bitcoin Mining’s Actual Energy Consumption in 2022 You may have noticed by now that Bitcoin is a pretty divisive issue. There are people arguing on both sides of it, and some of them are making a real effort to distort the public understanding of Bitcoin’s energy consumption. Take for instance Jared Huffman’s open letter urging the EPA to crack down on Bitcoin mining, signed by 22 members of congress and the source of our doomsday statements comparing Bitcoin’s energy footprint to the power consumption of Greece, or to average US households. Those figures may sound shocking at first, but it’s important to understand that they are being intentionally used to bolster an anti-Bitcoin position, and that the truth is much more nuanced, and much less worrying. The University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School compiled a report with the intent to make Bitcoin’s energy consumption more tangible and meaningful for a diverse, general audience. At the outset, they included a disclaimer that we think sums things up nicely: “Comparisons tend to be subjective — one can make a number appear small or large depending on what it is compared to. Without additional context, unsuspecting readers may be drawn to a specific conclusion that either understates or overstates the real magnitude and scale. For instance, contrasting bitcoin’s electricity expenditure with the yearly footprint of entire countries with millions of inhabitants gives rise to concerns about Bitcoin’s energy hunger spiraling out of control. On the other hand, these concerns may, at least to some extent, be reduced upon learning that certain cities or metropolitan areas in developed countries are operating at similar levels.” It stands to reason that Greece, with its relatively smaller economy and population, wouldn’t emit the highest levels of CO2. Now, New York City or London would be a different story. The point is, individual countries and economies each rely on different sets of resources to achieve success. Bitcoin mining, on the other hand, is a fast-growing global industry which relies on electricity at a foundational level — it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Bitcoin produces more emissions than Greece. You may have noticed by now that Bitcoin is a pretty divisive issue. There are people arguing on both sides of it, and some of them are making a real effort to distort the public understanding of Bitcoin’s energy consumption. Take for instance Jared Huffman’s open letter urging the EPA to crack down on Bitcoin mining, signed by 22 members of congress and the source of our doomsday statements comparing Bitcoin’s energy footprint to the power consumption of Greece, or to average US households. Those figures may sound shocking at first, but it’s important to understand that they are being intentionally used to bolster an anti-Bitcoin position, and that the truth is much more nuanced, and much less worrying. The University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School compiled a report with the intent to make Bitcoin’s energy consumption more tangible and meaningful for a diverse, general audience. At the outset, they included a disclaimer that we think sums things up nicely: “Comparisons tend to be subjective — one can make a number appear small or large depending on what it is compared to. Without additional context, unsuspecting readers may be drawn to a specific conclusion that either understates or overstates the real magnitude and scale. For instance, contrasting bitcoin’s electricity expenditure with the yearly footprint of entire countries with millions of inhabitants gives rise to concerns about Bitcoin’s energy hunger spiraling out of control. On the other hand, these concerns may, at least to some extent, be reduced upon learning that certain cities or metropolitan areas in developed countries are operating at similar levels.” It stands to reason that Greece, with its relatively smaller economy and population, wouldn’t emit the highest levels of CO2. Now, New York City or London would be a different story. The point is, individual countries and economies each rely on different sets of resources to achieve success. Bitcoin mining, on the other hand, is a fast-growing global industry which relies on electricity at a foundational level — it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Bitcoin produces more emissions than Greece. Even so, Bitcoin still consumes just 0.23% of the world’s annual total energy production. The question isn’t as simple as, “is Bitcoin harmful to the environment?” The real question is, how much energy does Bitcoin mining consume compared to other industries? This is where we start to see some meaningful insight take place. According to the University of Cambridge, Bitcoin consumes 147.94 TWh of electricity per year. Compare that to the energy consumption of Bitcoin’s closest real-world analogue, gold mining, which uses 131 TWh of electricity per year. Suddenly, Bitcoin mining isn’t looking quite so scary. Bitcoin’s consumption is outpaced by the copper industry at 167 TWh, doubled by the cement industry at 384 TWh, and totally dwarfed by the iron and steel industry at 1233 TWh. In fact, Bitcoin’s annual rate of energy consumption is nearly rivaled by refrigerators in the United States alone, clocking in at 104 TWh. Clearly, Bitcoin mining’s environmental footprint is rather pedestrian. ## Is Bitcoin Harmful to the Environment, or Are Miners Helping It? To take things even further, let’s ask another question. Could Bitcoin mining somehow help the environment? Funnily enough, yes. This was the case in our work with renewable energy producer BioStar. BioStar Renewables operates solar energy farms in California. When they completed a new farm in 2018, the electrical grid was not ready to accept the power. Without a solution to connect to the local power grid, BioStar was at risk of losing the tax credits that were utilized to build their solar farm. Instead, we helped BioStar avoid the loss by deploying Phase 1 of a mining operation on-site within 4 weeks of our initial conversation. Bitcoin miners want to make a profit. To do that, they need to spend as little as they can on electricity. So for that reason, it’s not ideal to pay top dollar for high-demand energy resources like fossil fuels. In fact, the majority of energy used by commercial and residential consumers is too expensive for Bitcoin miners to make a profit. Instead, Bitcoin miners take advantage of one of the industry’s unique traits — mobility. It’s relatively quick and easy to set up a Bitcoin mining operation. As a result, miners will often choose to access what’s called “stranded energy.” Stranded energy resources are ones that are inaccessible to other industries or residential users; the electricity has already been generated, and instead of going to waste, it’s being used by business-savvy miners. This kind of flexibility is huge for the electrical grid. Stranded energy is a major concern slowing the transition to renewable energy sources like wind and solar. With growing numbers of miners eager to tap into these stranded reserves, renewable energy providers are finding greater freedom to produce, and fewer risks associated with it. The truth is, Bitcoin mining could be an essential key in bridging the transition to alternative forms of energy. ### Is Bitcoin Harmful to the Environment? Major media is awash with hysteria over the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining (actually, major media is awash with hysteria over many things). Hey, we would be too, if all we knew were the misleading stats at the top of this article. We hope that this has served as a slightly deeper dive, one that takes you beyond the surface-level of a buzzy headline. By now you may realize that statistics like these are formulated to mislead, or to outright deceive, the well-intentioned viewing public. There are a lot of big issues in the world today, some of which are worth worrying about. Luckily, Bitcoin mining’s destruction of planet Earth is not one of them. Source: Antminer S9 Profitability Even with $0.06/kWh—a very cheap electricity rate—the S9 daily profit is still just $1/day as shown above*. And if your electricity price is $0.10/kWh or higher, you’ll be in the red due to the S9’s poor efficiency. So, if you want to mine at home and learn the ropes without breaking the bank, the S9 from Bitmain is probably the way to go. But if you want to really make money mining bitcoin in 2022, you should look to more efficient hardware. firehousenow ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Is The Antminer S19 XP Worth It? Part 2 – Risk, Lead Time & Profit Breakdown Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/is-the-antminer-s19-xp-worth-it-2/ Is The Antminer S19 XP Worth It? Part 2 – Risk, Lead Time & Profit Breakdown | MiningStore ## Is the Antminer S19 XP Worth It? ## (ASIC Value Analysis) Part 2 ### Part 1 Recap To briefly recap on Part 1, we compared the mining profitability of two Antminer S19s. Using the Braiins Profitability Calculator, we pitted the Antminer S19 Pro against the Antminer S19 XP. In our calculations we accounted for a consistent increase in difficulty (+100%/year), an increase in BTC price (+50%/year), and the lead time between receiving either machine (would receive the S19 XP about 6 months later than a S19 Pro). Results: - Source: Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH – 2.5 years analysis - Source: Antminer S19 XP 140 TH – 2 years analysis ## ASIC Value Analysis Now we want to focus on understanding how the values of mining rigs change over time with difficulty and BTC price fluctuations. Without factoring in the value of the ASICs on your balance sheet, it’s hard to fully grasp the validity of your bitcoin mining business model. In order to do this, we’ll first take a much less conservative approach towards Bitcoin price and will assume it will continue to grow at its 196.7% compound annual growth rate. Generally, when BTC price is increasing, the value of ASICs will increase as well due to greater demand to mine. As mentioned in Part 1, it’s important to keep in mind that mining in North American is rapidly scaling up. So where we’ll stay conservative is in our 100% yearly increase in difficulty. From here we’ll compare ASIC appreciation values to understand the influence our mining hardware can have in our internal rate of return. ### Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH With an Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH, we break even after 10 months of mining, and mine a total 0.263BTC by the end of our 2.5 years. An important number to note is our 1.6k% IRR (internal return rate). ### Antminer S19 XP 140 TH After two years with the Antminer S19 XP 140 TH, our P/L is roughly $75k behind the S19 Pro. We also mine 0.044 less BTC. We do, however, break even two months faster, and our IRR is also higher at 2.2K%. Lastly, let’s suppose the opposite scenario takes place. How do our two Antminer mining rigs perform when price decreases at rate of 15%/year (to simulate decline into a bear market), the value of our ASICs is depreciating at 15%/year, and difficulty only increases 50%/year instead of our usual 100%? ### Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH Profitability Despite the lower starting difficulty, an S19 Pro won’t help us break even in our incredibly bearish 2.5 year time frame. We’ll bring in 0.344 BTC, but our cost of production overwhelms our P/L. ### Antminer S19 XP 140 TH Profitability Because the S19 XP is much more efficient than the S19 Pro, we break even two months before our two year timeline is complete. Although we bring in less BTC, we can still be profitable by the end of the two years. ### Conclusion We’ve now covered three separate scenarios across our S19 Pro vs S19 XP profitability analysis. If price and ASIC value do not fluctuate, if both price and ASIC value increase, and finally if both decrease. Difficulty and BTC price fluctuations can greatly impact the value of mining rigs over time. Higher efficiency in the XP, and a lower pricetag helped us break even during our worst case scenario. But in our more bullish example, the S19 found us more profit and BTC. Hopefully these simulations can help you decide which Bitcoin mining rig model is the most appropriate for your operations. For more information about mining operations, see our other articles here! Spencer Sherwood Spencer works a copywriter and has been involved in the crypto community since 2019.He is passionate about the evolution of Bitcoin and Bitcoin technologies. Spencer is also a musician and founder of Production Madness, an artist based talent accelerator which looks to work with and promote artists of various skill sets. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Is The Antminer S19 XP Worthwhile? Part 1 – Specs, Risks & Investment Analysis Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/is-the-antminer-s19-xp-worth-it-part-1/ Is The Antminer S19 XP Worthwhile? Part 1 – Specs, Risks & Investment Analysis | MiningStore ## Is the Antminer S19 XP Worth It? Part 1 ## (Mining Profitability Analysis) ### Introduction In November, 2021, Bitmain announced a new addition to the Antminer S19-series at the World Digital Mining Summit in Dubai. The new mining hardware, the Antminer S19 XP, is promising some significant improvements to the mining rig game. In fact, the XP boasts a hasrate of 140TH and a consumption of 3010 W. Naturally, based on these two S19 XP specs alone, it may seem like this new Bitcoin machine will be the best bang for your buck moving forward (see why these specs are important here). But there are a few notable risks to consider that could place the XP in the same realm as preceding Bitmain S19 line. In this article, we’re going to take a look at how the Antminer S19 XP compares to the Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH. ## Bitcoin ASIC Lead Times When Bitmain announced their new mining rig, they stated the first shipments wouldn’t come online until early Q3 of 2022. Although there are plenty of Antminer S19 Pros online, for the sake of this article we’ll assume that lead times between ordering and receiving a new S19 Pro will place our timeline roughly 6 months ahead of the S19 XP. Uptime plays a major factor in Bitcoin mining, and six months is a vast amount of time considering various risks. Aside from potential issues in durability and machine failure that are always slightly higher for the initial batches of a new Bitcoin mining machine, perhaps the most significant opportunity cost will be the difference in starting difficulties for the two ASICs. ### Trends in Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Source: Mining Insights With public mining companies in North America deploying thousands of the newest and best ASICs each month and Chinese miners continuing to redeploy their mining rigs in other countries, the difficulty to mine BTC has increased rapidly in recent months—about 20% in the past quarter. In order to compare the economics of the Antminer S19 Pro and S19 XP, we’ll assume that the starting difficulty will continue its upward trend at this rate, with a 100% annual increase. At the time of this article, and when the S19 Pro will be online, the network difficulty is roughly 23T. Since the new Antminer S19 XP mining hardware will be released early Q3 2022, we’ll assume the starting difficulty will be roughly 35T for the S19 XP (~50% increase from 23T after 6 months). Below is a table that demonstrates the basic spec differences between the two machines. Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH Antminer S19XP 140 TH Hashrate (TH/s) 110 140 Consumption (W) 3250 3010 Efficiency (W/TH) 29.5 21.5 CapEx ($/TH) 136.6 85.7 CapEx ($ Total) 15,026 13,250* *Note: Bitmain has pre-sold the S19XP for $10,500 to institutional mining clients placing large orders. However, retail miners buying <100 ASICs typically pay a higher rig price, and we are seeing the same thing with the S19 XP, with the most common retail list price being $13,250 per ASIC. We’ll use these specs as inputs with the Profitability Calculator from Braiins (with a difficulty of 23T for the S19 Pro and 32T for the S19 XP). We’ll analyze the Antminer S19 Pro for 2.5 years (January 2022 – June 2024), and the S19 XP for 2 (July 2022 – June 2024). Meanwhile, we will increase BTC price by 50%/year to simulate a conservative scenario relative to the 100% difficulty increase. But make no mistake, as Bitcoin miners we believe the price of BTC is going up forever, Laura. Our goal is to measure the tradeoff between lower hashrate and efficiency for the S19 Pro versus the S19 XP which has superior specs but will not come online until much later, presumably with a higher difficulty. ## Mining Profitability Analysis — Antminer S19 Pro vs. S19 XP Now for the good stuff, let’s finally compare the S19 Pro and S19 XP head-to-head and see which one is more profitable. ### Antminer S19 XP Source: Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH – 2.5 years We get an end profit of nearly $20k and an annual IRR (Internal Rate of Return) of 28%, by all accounts a good investment. ### Antminer S19 Pro Source: Antminer S19 XP 140 TH – 2 years Thanks to the 6-month head start with lower difficulty, the Antminer S19 Pro finishes with a slight advantage of $1,610 profit at the end of Q2 2024. Meanwhile, the S19 XP has a faster CapEx Break-Even period and a better annual IRR of 50%. However, the key metric to look at is the Total BTC Mined. Mining with an Antminer S19 Pro 110 TH yields 0.273 BTC in this time frame, and the S19 XP is just 0.208. Even if we increase the S19 XP to 30 months, it still doesn’t come close—finishing at 0.229 BTC mined. This is why accounting for difficulty growth is important when analyzing a bitcoin mining machine investment. The investment may look very different in fiat terms vs. BTC terms. If you want to increase your exposure to BTC through mining, then you probably want to hold your profits in BTC instead of cashing out every week or month. When we factor this in, the S19 Pro’s head start with the lower BTC difficulty is what gives it the edge. ### Antminer S19 PRO - 100% HODL Ratio ### Antminer S19 XP - 100% HODL Ratio Holding the BTC mining rewards that are leftover after paying operating experiences completely changes the mining profitability. Now we see that the S19 Pro produces an end profit of $36,193 compared to $28,863 for the S19 XP at the end of Q2 2024. In summary, the long lead time was costly in BTC terms even though it worked out very well in fiat terms. When it comes to purchasing Bitcoin ASICs, it’s critical to find a trustworthy ASIC broker who can deliver quickly so that you can start hashing and generating discounted bitcoin cash flow before the difficulty climbs. ### Conclusion In the bitcoin mining business, uptime is money. While the Antminer S19 XP has impressive specifications, the 6+ month lead times add a lot of risk. There is also added risk in being an early customer for any new mining rig, as it’s unknown what the durability and failure rates will be. That said, if you have new power capacity coming online in late 2022, it can make sense to lock in pricing on these Antminer S19 XP’s since the long lead time lines up with your infrastructure builds. *Make sure to see our follow up Antminer S19 Pro vs S19 XP (Part 2 – ASIC Value Analysis), where we will help you understand how to factor in the value of your ASICs over time, and explain how Bitcoin rig prices change depending on network difficulty and BTC price over time. Spencer Sherwood Spencer works a copywriter and has been involved in the crypto community since 2019.He is passionate about the evolution of Bitcoin and Bitcoin technologies. Spencer is also a musician and founder of Production Madness, an artist based talent accelerator which looks to work with and promote artists of various skill sets. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Maximize Bitcoin Mining ROI with Professional Air-Cooled Hosting Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/maximize-bitcoin-mining-roi-with-professional-air-cooled-hosting/ Maximize Bitcoin Mining ROI with Professional Air-Cooled Hosting | MiningStore How Air-Cooled Hosting Drives Long-Term Profitability in Bitcoin Mining A Proven Strategy for Investors Seeking Scalable Bitcoin Yield Without Operational Burden For investors looking to turn capital into consistent Bitcoin yield, few approaches offer the operational control and scalability of air-cooled Bitcoin mining hosting, as it allows you to own your ASIC miners while outsourcing the facility, cooling infrastructure, and uptime optimization to a professional team. This approach is ideal for high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and crypto-savvy funds who want exposure to Bitcoin mining returns, without the complexity of managing a physical facility. ## Select a Reliable Hosting Provider Reputation and Track Record: Work with providers that have proven uptime performance, transparent pricing, and a solid track record managing air-cooled infrastructure. Ideally, choose partners with: - 95%+ uptime service level agreements (SLAs) - Positive client case studies and referrals Electricity Rates: Power is your largest operating cost. Choose hosting partners offering low-cost energy (under $0.065/kWh where possible), ideally in deregulated or renewable-friendly markets. Location Matters: Sites in cooler climates or favorable energy jurisdictions (e.g., MISO, SPP) improve ROI through lower cooling requirements and energy costs. Bonus if the facility leverages renewable or stranded energy sources. ## Deploy Modern, Air-Cooled Hardware Why It Matters: Air-cooled hosting works best with efficient ASICs built for airflow-based heat dissipation. Outdated hardware burns more electricity and reduces uptime. Recommended Models (as of 2025): - Bitmain S21 XP Air (270TH/s @ ~12.2 J/TH) - MicroBT Whatsminer M60S (~170-186 TH/s @ 18.5 J/TH) - Bitmain S21 Air (200–250TH/s options) ## Optimize Cooling and Hardware Maintenance Cooling Infrastructure: Reliable hosts manage airflow using advanced ducting systems, filtered intakes, negative/positive pressure strategies, and temperature monitoring. Facilities should minimize dust, debris, and overheating, maximizing uptime. Proactive Maintenance: Providers should perform regular cleaning of intake filters, fan replacements, and firmware updates. This extends ASIC lifespan and ensures optimal hash output. ## Monitor Performance in Real Time Dashboards and Alerts: Professional hosts offer live performance tracking dashboards with: - Hashrate monitoring - Power draw - Unit-level alerts and reporting This transparency helps you evaluate ROI in real time. Automation and Support: Look for automated systems that reboot faulty machines, adjust fan speeds, or report ticket issues. A reliable Customer Success team ensures uptime remains high without manual intervention. ## Review Contracts and SLAs Carefully What to Look For: - Uptime guarantees (95%+ recommended) - Response times for issue resolution - Clear installation, removal, and power pricing terms Bonus: Some hosts offer discounted rates for longer-term commitments or volume deployments. ## Final Takeaway Air-cooled hosting is a strategic path to scalable Bitcoin yield, if you choose the right partner, hardware, and operating model. At MiningStore, we offer: - Uptime-optimized infrastructure in low-cost power zones - Flexible air-cooled deployment options - Institutional-grade service and real-time performance transparency If you are ready to maximize ROI through professional air-cooled hosting, we are ready to help you deploy. Book a Call with a Hosting Advisor (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Air-Cooled Hosting Availability Rack space opens and rates move. Get a note when we have air-cooled capacity. First name Work email Website Send me availability Occasional hosting availability and rate updates. Unsubscribe from any message. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Migrate Your Bitcoin Mining Fleet Without Missing a Block Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/migrate-your-bitcoin-mining-fleet/ Migrate Your Bitcoin Mining Fleet Without Missing a Block | MiningStore Migrating Your Bitcoin Mining Fleet Without Missing a Block Switching hosting providers can feel risky, even when you know your current provider is costing you money. The fear of downtime, logistical headaches, and operational disruption keeps many miners locked into underperforming contracts. The reality? With the right partner, you can relocate your fleet, optimize uptime, and improve ROI, all without missing a block. MiningStore has helped miners transition entire deployments seamlessly, combining operational planning, technical expertise, and infrastructure readiness to make migration a profit-positive decision from day one. Why Miners Hesitate to Switch Even when miners know their hosting provider is underperforming, through inflated costs, poor uptime, or slow support, they often stay put. The top reasons? - Fear of downtime cutting into BTC production - Logistical complexity of moving high-value, sensitive hardware - Compatibility concerns with the new facility - Uncertainty about ROI after the move MiningStore’s migration process addresses all four systematically. Accelerate Your Mining ROI Don’t let the fear of migrating hold you back from higher profits. Our “Top 10 Things to Look For in a Bitcoin Hosting Provider” guide gives you the institutional-grade framework to select a partner who will protect your capital and accelerate your returns. Read the Hosting Guide ## Pre-Move ROI Audit Before a single rig is unplugged, we run a side-by-side ROI projection comparing your current hosting metrics to what you can expect at MiningStore. This includes: - Modeled uptime improvement - Energy cost stability - Cooling efficiency gains - Potential hashrate increases from optimized conditions If the ROI case isn’t clear, we don’t recommend the move. ## Detailed Migration Planning Every migration begins with a custom deployment plan: - Shipping tracking and arrangements for your hardware - Rack and power allocation pre-assigned at our facility - Expert technical team ready to receive your hardware By the time your miners arrive in Iowa, they have a designated, powered, and cooled slot waiting. Book A Free Call With Our Team (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Iowa-Based Hosting Infrastructure All MiningStore facilities are located in Iowa, chosen for its favorable energy profile, grid stability, and pro-mining environment. We currently operate 38.2 MW of active capacity and will expand to 67.2 MW by the end of 2025. Clients can choose between: - Air-cooled deployments for proven reliability - Hydro-cooled deployments for maximum efficiency and reduced wear ## Rapid Deployment and Testing Upon arrival, miners are: - Racked, powered, and networked by trained technicians - Tested for optimal performance - Connected to the pool and monitoring dashboard This process minimizes downtime, often bringing rigs back online within hours of arrival. ## Backed Operations Post-Move Once live, your fleet is protected by: - Uptime exceeding industry benchmarks - On-site support - Transparent billing with no hidden fees The same team that migrated your fleet continues to optimize it. ## The ROI Impact of a Seamless Migration Even a 1% uptime improvement can recover thousands of dollars in annual revenue per MW deployed. Combine that with more competitive power rates, better cooling, and faster issue resolution, and the migration ROI can be measured in weeks, not years. ### Why Wait? Every day with an underperforming host is lost BTC production you can’t recover. MiningStore’s migration process is designed to make switching low-risk and high-return. See what your fleet could earn in Iowa with MiningStore. Book your 1:1 consultancy call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Oslo Freedom Forum Bitcoin Panelists Push Back on "Anti-Environment" Slant Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/oslo-freedom-forum-bitcoin-environment/ Oslo Freedom Forum Bitcoin Panelists Push Back on "Anti-Environment" Slant | MiningStore ## By Adan Kohnhorst ## Oslo Freedom Forum Bitcoin Panels Headlines in major publications are quick to decry Bitcoin over the industry’s perceived environmental impact. But are these concerns well-founded, or are they based on a skewed narrative? This was one of the questions asked at the Oslo Freedom Forum bitcoin and human rights panels, where leading Bitcoiners and activists convened to discuss the future of cryptocurrency in the fight against tyranny. Mediated by Troy Cross, panelists Lyn Alden, Nic Carter, and Darin Feinstein touched on questions such as how Bitcoin can fight oppression, and what makes Bitcoin different from other forms of payment. It’s no surprise that, in a summit for freedom, environmental issues rose as a consistent, recurring theme. “On the energy footprint, we have one of the biggest intellectually dishonest debates, almost in any industry,” said Darin Feinstein, CEO of Core Scientific, about Bitcoin’s oft-misrepresented rates of energy consumption. “Every time you hear about the global Bitcoin network, what do you hear? That it uses more energy than a small planet – New Zealand, the Netherlands, and they toss in some cities too.” This misrepresentation around energy consumption is a longstanding and uninformed anti-Bitcoin talking point – something we’ve addressed ourselves before. “The problem with those references is that they have no frame of reference,” Darin continued. They don’t tell you how much energy is generated globally.” ### “We know those numbers, and the reason you never hear them is because it’s an inconsequential number,” added Feinstein. The truth is, Bitcoin miners are usually consuming energy in far-off, remote locations, where energy is abundant and populations are small. The people in these regions can’t consume all the energy they produce, and with most of the energy’s value lost over long-distance travel or long-term storage, much of it simply goes to waste. Bitcoin mining is consistently profitable and relatively easy to set up. For this reason, miners are incentivized to move with the seasons, in order to capitalize on the cheapest energy – that is, energy that would otherwise go to waste. In this way, Bitcoin mining actually offers an incredibly significant structural arm to the architecture of larger environmental change, as wind and solar producers finally have a long-needed, reliable buyer for the downseason. It’s easy to point out that Bitcoin mining consumes more energy than a small country, or a city, etc. But it’s dishonest if you’re not also pointing out how much energy is used by other major industries, or what percentage it constitutes of global energy production – something that major publications and organizations have continually failed to do. “The World Economic Forum…came out with a paper in 2017 that said by the year 2020, in three years, the global Bitcoin network would consume ALL the world’s energy,” said Feinstein. “How wrong was the World Economic Forum in 2017 on their prediction?” “We’re talking about somewhere in the range of 15 – 20 basis points of the world’s energy. That’s 15 – 20 one-hundredths of a percent of the global world energy.” The Oslo Freedom Forum bitcoin talks, part of this year’s iteration of the annual event in Oslo, Norway, hosted a diverse array of presenters and speakers, zeroing in on questions around Bitcoin, the environment, and the future of human rights worldwide. firehousenow ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # How Poor Hosting Kills Bitcoin Mining Profits (and How to Fix It) Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/poor-hosting-kills-bitcoin-mining-profits/ How Poor Hosting Kills Bitcoin Mining Profits (and How to Fix It) | MiningStore How Poor Hosting Kills Your Bitcoin Mining Profits (and How to Fix It) In Bitcoin mining, every inefficiency compounds, every hour of downtime, every cent of inflated power cost, every day without optimal cooling eats into your return. If your fleet is hosted with the wrong provider, you may be losing far more BTC than you realize. MiningStore was built to solve that problem. All of our facilities are strategically located in Iowa, leveraging the state’s favorable energy profile, grid stability, and pro-mining regulatory climate. We currently operate 38.2 MW of active capacity and are on track to reach 67.2 MW by the end of 2025, scaling with demand while maintaining best-in-class performance. Our network includes specialized air-cooled and hydro-cooled sites, giving clients flexibility to choose the environment that best matches their hardware, efficiency goals, and long-term profitability strategy. This guide will show you how poor hosting erodes profitability, and why making the switch to MiningStore can help you reclaim uptime, reduce costs, and maximize ROI. Don’t Let Poor Hosting Kill Your Profitability The difference between a good and a great hosting provider can mean double-digit gains in your net profitability. The “Top 10 Things to Look For in a Bitcoin Hosting Provider” guide gives you the institutional-grade framework to select a partner who will protect your capital and accelerate your returns. Get the Free Checklist Now (https://zc.vg/sf/dCi9b) ## Downtime: The Silent Profit Killer Even a few hours of downtime per month adds up to significant lost BTC. A 1% drop in uptime for a 100 PH/s deployment can translate to a significant loss in revenue annually. The Risk Factors: - Insufficient backup power or internet redundancy - Slow response times to hardware or network issues The Fix: MiningStore operates with uptime targets that exceed industry norms, supported by redundant power systems and multiple ISP connections, plus on-site technicians, during business hours, who can respond instantly. This combination minimizes downtime risk and keeps your hashrate generating consistent revenue. ## Inflated Power Costs Electricity is the largest recurring expense in mining. If your provider’s rates aren’t competitive or transparent, your profit margin is shrinking without you realizing it. The Risk Factors: - Non-itemized power billing - “Market-adjusted” rates without contractual caps - No renewable integration to stabilize costs The Fix: MiningStore’s contracts are built on transparent, stable pricing structures, with renewable-heavy sourcing to reduce volatility and qualify for ESG-aligned investment mandates. ## Hidden Fees and Cost Creep Some providers lure clients with attractive base rates, then add fees for maintenance, monitoring, or even simple resets. The Risk Factors: - Maintenance billed at inflated hourly rates - Charges for basic troubleshooting - Unclear cost breakdowns in invoices The Fix: MiningStore’s cost structure is fully transparent: one predictable monthly bill covering hosting, power, and standard maintenance, so you can model your expected ROI with confidence. ## Inadequate Cooling and Hardware Wear Poor airflow, substandard cooling, or extreme climates shorten ASIC lifespan and reduce hashrate efficiency, costing you in both performance and replacement CapEx. The Risk Factors: - Overcrowded racks without proper thermal management - Lack of immersion or advanced cooling in high-density setups - Neglect of routine cleaning and dust prevention The Fix: MiningStore facilities are engineered for ASIC density, with advanced airflow and hydro immersion options that keep hardware running at optimal efficiency. ## Slow or Ineffective Support ​​In mining, response times directly impact revenue. The longer it takes to diagnose and resolve an issue, the more BTC production is lost. The Risk Factors: - Delayed response times that extend downtime unnecessarily - Lack of qualified, on-site technicians for immediate troubleshooting - No clear escalation process for critical issues The Fix: MiningStore provides multi-channel support during operating hours with trained on-site staff ready to handle technical issues quickly and effectively. Clear escalation protocols ensure that urgent matters are prioritized and resolved in the shortest possible time, minimizing revenue impact and keeping your fleet running efficiently. ## No Scalability Plan A provider that can’t grow with you is a provider that will eventually hold you back. The Risk Factors: - Limited rack space for expansions - No flexibility for hardware upgrades - Poor planning for increased power or cooling needs The Fix: MiningStore builds scalability into every client relationship, expansion pathways are planned from day one, so growth is seamless. ## The Compounding Effect of Poor Hosting Each of these profit leaks, downtime, inflated power, hidden fees, hardware inefficiency, slow support, and lack of scalability compounds over time. What looks like a “small” issue on a monthly statement can add up to a substantial USD lost over a multi-year contract. ## Why Switching to MiningStore Pays for Itself MiningStore is built to eliminate every one of the bottlenecks that drain miner profitability: - High-uptime infrastructure in energy-advantaged locations - Transparent, competitive cost structure with no hidden fees - Advanced cooling and hardware management to extend ASIC lifespan - Scalable solutions ready for fleet expansion - Support with on-site technicians All of our facilities are located in Iowa, strategically sited to leverage the state’s favorable energy profile and regulatory environment. We currently operate 38.2 MW of active capacity across specialized hosting sites, and by the end of 2025, that capacity will scale to 67.2 MW, all engineered for high density, reliability, and efficiency. Our portfolio includes both air-cooled and hydro-cooled sites, giving clients the ability to select the optimal environment for their hardware and performance objectives. Whether maximizing efficiency with hydro cooling or leveraging the proven durability of air-cooled deployments, we offer the flexibility and infrastructure to match your ROI goals. Don’t wait for your next contract renewal. Every month with a subpar host is lost profit you can’t recover. Let’s run the numbers: our expert consultants will compare your current hosting to a MiningStore deployment, air or hydro, and show you exactly how much more your fleet could be earning. Book your 1:1 Consultancy Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Proven Success at Scale Thinking about what’s possible after making the switch? One MiningStore client started with just 12 hosted machines in 2022. Through strategic expansion, transparent hosting, and expert guidance, they scaled to 1,000+ units and ultimately became a full infrastructure owner, operating their own 1,100-miner custom-built facility in Iowa by March 2024. This transformation didn’t happen by chance, it happened because of a clear ROI-driven roadmap and a partner who could deliver at every step. Read the full success story (https://miningstore.com/case-study/a-bitcoin-mining-success-story/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Purchasing Bitcoin Mining Hardware? How to Determine if it’s a Good Investment Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/purchasing-bitcoin-mining-hardware-and-how-to-dermine-a-good-investment/ Purchasing Bitcoin Mining Hardware? How to Determine if it’s a Good Investment | MiningStore ## By Spencer Sherwood If you’ve come across this article, you probably have an interest in investing in BTC in some capacity. While participation in the Bitcoin industry can take on many forms, regular investors typically gain exposure in one (or both) of two ways. That is, outright buying Bitcoin (spot investment), or building out a Bitcoin mining operation to start mining. Of course, these two options are not mutually exclusive, and there are several approaches to either route. However, because there are so many interesting variables that play into Bitcoin mining, there is no one correct way to invest in bitcoin mining that will be appropriate for everyone. In this article we’re going to explore some Bitcoin mining basics so you can decide if it’s a good opportunity for you. ## Resources: Do You Have Cheap Electricity? Considering every cost that is associated with mining, perhaps the most important is the cost of electricity. While capital expenditures like purchasing mining hardware and building infrastructure can be sizable upfront, energy costs become more significant when added up over time. Because the cost of electricity is the most important operational expense associated with Bitcoin mining, miners must seek out the lowest electricity prices they can to be competitive and profitable. At the time of this article, the price of electricity that small and medium sized miners generally pay is around 5-7 cents/kWh. While many miners run their mining rigs with even cheaper electricity, the trade-off they take to get there usually requires higher capital expenditures in infrastructure. Building out a Bitcoin mining operation that allows for low electricity prices often comes at the cost of building or acquiring an energy asset (wind or solar farm, for example). When you factor these additional infrastructure costs in, the bills usually end up in a similar range to using 5-7 cents/kWh.Mining at home is an entirely different story, however. While it is of course possible to purchase an Antminer S19, set it up, and start mining at home, competing with industrial miners would be difficult in most circumstances. Residential electricity prices are much higher than the competitive target of 5-7 cents/kWh. According to the EIA (US Energy Information Administration) the average residential electricity price in the US is 14.11 cents/kWh. Yet, despite the higher electricity prices, the home miner still has options that could drastically help them mine. An excellent option for anyone seriously interested in Bitcoin mining, from home mining to large scale operations, is to find a bitcoin miner hosting provider, such as our Managed Mining Program. With Managed Mining, we mine using environmentally conscious electricity (surplus wind power + traditional grid power) priced at 4.2 cents/kWh so our clients can enjoy the highest profits possible. Not only do we house your mining rig in our highly advanced mining POD infrastructure, we also monitor and manage it 24/7. Since we are responsible for your machines, we provide free replacement parts should anything go awry with your mining hardware. Our goal is to create a frictionless mining solution accessible to all while maximizing your profits. ### Breaking Even After Capital Expenditures To make Bitcoin mining as worthwhile as possible, most miners set out with the goal to break even on capital investments as soon as possible. However, projecting the profitability of a Bitcoin mining rig is a bit more complicated than simply accounting for upfront and overhead costs. Two major influences on mining profitability are the price of BTC and network difficulty. For differing reasons, both factors are susceptible to fluctuations. Fortunately, we have tools at our disposal that can help us project profitability during growth and decline periods. To further understand the effect BTC price and difficulty can have, let’s look at some basic capital expenditure break-even simulations. We’ll use a Mining Profitability Calculator to estimate when you would break even on an investment given different scenarios. For each calculation, our analyzed mining rig will be an Antminer S19 100Th that we’ll run for 4 years, with a stable electricity price of 6 cents/kWh. Our starting difficulty will be 24.4T, and our starting price will be set to $42K. Also our CapEx will be $12,000 (price of the Antminer S19), but will depreciate at 20%/year. And our HODL ratio will sit at 100%. *[The Antminer S19 100Th has a maximum hash rate of 100 Th/s, power consumption of 3230W±10%, and power efficiency of 32.5 W/Th] Bearish S5cenario: Difficulty increases 100%/year, and BTC only increases 50%/year ### BTC Price Another key component Bitcoin miners must be aware of is Bitcoin’s price. It’s likely true that if you are a miner, you’re going to be bullish on BTC price, and expect “Number go up!” over time. While Bitcoin’s historical numbers show a compounded average growth rate of 197% per year, the price can be unpredictable, especially in the short term. BTC price can be volatile with large swings in either direction at any point. That’s why it’s good practice to first be conservative and model your mining business as if BTC price will not increase over time while difficulty does. Modeling like this helps you decide if you would be comfortable during a “bearish” scenario. Other useful perspectives to consider can be found when analyzing events where price and difficulty increase roughly proportionately, or when price increases faster than difficulty does. How do these scenarios affect your outlook on mining in the long term? In our article Why Bitcoin ASIC Prices Can Reach New Highs In 2022, we took a deep look at why difficulty and BTC price not only affects profitability but also ASIC (mining hardware) pricing. For a more straightforward approach, a great tool is the Bitcoin Mining Profitability Calculator from Braiins. With this calculator, you’re able to adjust the difficulty, BTC price, ASIC pricing, electricity prices and more to predict profitability over time. Which brings us to the next factor in Bitcoin mining. ### The Price of Electricity One of the top priorities new miners have is to find and utilize a cheap source of energy. This is because Bitcoin mining machines tend to soak up lots and lots of power, making energy costs the majority of a miner’s operational expenses. To minimize energy expenses, miners try to find the cheapest energy source possible to allow them to be more competitive in the long-term. The average cost of electricity (residential) in the United States is $0.14/kWh. The cost per kWh most miners feel competitive at is about $0.06/kWh or less. Of course, mining can still work at higher electricity prices, but a greater energy cost means more risk. Our Managed Mining services operate at roughly $0.042/kWh, thanks to our green and renewable energy sources. But to better understand the impact of energy costs, let’s take an example. One of the best selling mining machines, the Antminer S19, has a maximum hashrate of 100 Th/s, power consumption of 3230W±10%, and power efficiency of 32.5 W/Th. Using the Profitability Calculator mentioned above, we’ll calculate the differences in operating expenses for one year for residential and industry standard electricity prices. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll calculate using a constant network difficulty of 25T, and BTC price of $45K. Electricity Price : $0.14/kWh Electricity Price : $0.06/kWh Clearly, the price of electricity has a massive effect on the risk a miner takes on, even when running just one machine! Despite the unrealistically frozen difficulty and BTC price inputs, the average cost of production for 1 BTC is reduced by $12k, leading to over $2k higher-end profit for the operation with $0.06/kWh electricity. The other common source of OpEx for mining operations is labor. However, on a per-machine basis, labor is likely an insignificant expense compared to electricity costs. ## Capital Expenditures Involved With Bitcoin Mining Operations When it comes to upfront costs, a good chunk of expenditures should be reserved for the infrastructure required to house your Bitcoin mining rig. Mining facilities must be robust enough to protect your mining machines, and also need to be capable of meeting the demands of ASICs. ### Infrastructure Modern bitcoin mining machines such as Antminer S19’s, WhatsMiner M30S’s, and Avalon 1246’s, all consume upwards of 3000W per unit. As a result, they have extremely high heat output and need to be cooled constantly to maintain optimized performance. Aside from the demanding air flow requirements, the electrical engineering needed to deliver large amounts of power reliably to all of your machines can be complicated. The good news is once you’ve sufficiently constructed your facility to meet your ASIC’s demands, the output from your mining machines should reward you. Another bonus of investing in proper infrastructure is it retains long-term value and can (hopefully) be used for many generations of Bitcoin machines. ### ASICs Although infrastructure costs shouldn’t be dismissed, the purchasing of mining hardware is where most of a miner’s risk is placed. Miners generally take 1-2 years to break-even after purchasing ASIC hardware. But being bullish about BTC price over time is what drives investment in mining. If BTC price goes up faster than difficulty, it’s much easier for a miner to be profitable. These mining machines do well at retaining their value or even appreciate significantly in short time periods. The key is creating sufficient infrastructure to keep these machines running efficiently and optimally.But which mining machine will be best suited for your mining operation? We’ve created a few guides to shed some light on Bitmain’s Antminer S19 series, and have also discussed other popular options like the newest-generation Antminer S19 XP, the Antminer S19J, and several others. Our Learn section also has several other articles that can help you decide how you’d like to mine! ### DIY or Leave it to the Pros While it is entirely possible to invest in Bitcoin mining, running a physical operation yourself is an entirely separate endeavor. Between the physical components of Bitcoin mining (purchasing and maintaining ASICs mining machines, obtaining an inexpensive and reliable energy source, and constructing and maintaining the infrastructure) and the psychological requirements needed to monitor BTC price and mining difficulty, mining is definitely a full-time job if done at scale. But the rewards for sticking around can easily be just as sweet. For those who want exposure to this lucrative industry without all the hassles of building out infrastructure and maintaining a whole mining operation, our Managed Mining program is for you. With Managed Mining, we work for you to take all the stress and hassles out of the equation. We mine with clean, low-cost energys, constant machine monitoring, and we utilize in-house infrastructure to host your machines. All you need to do after you invest is sit back and reap the returns.For more information on Managed Mining, visit our site or speak with a representative. Spencer Sherwood Spencer works a copywriter and has been involved in the crypto community since 2019.He is passionate about the evolution of Bitcoin and Bitcoin technologies. Spencer is also a musician and founder of Production Madness, an artist based talent accelerator which looks to work with and promote artists of various skill sets. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # How to Reduce Tax Exposure with Bitcoin Mining: Strategies for Investors Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/reduce-tax-exposure-with-bitcoin-mining/ How to Reduce Tax Exposure with Bitcoin Mining: Strategies for Investors | MiningStore ## Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025: How Smart Structuring Maximizes ROI ### Why Tax Strategy Defines Returns investment In the world of alternative investments, returns aren’t defined solely by market performance; they are shaped by the tax code. The difference between an average allocation and an exceptional one often comes down to how efficiently an investment captures available deductions. Bitcoin mining is no exception. For high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and institutional allocators, mining represents more than a bet on digital assets; it’s an infrastructure-backed yield strategy with immediate tax advantages. Through Section 179 expensing and Bonus Depreciation, investors can often deduct the substantial majority, or even the full cost, of mining equipment in the year of purchase, dramatically accelerating cost recovery and reducing current-year tax exposure. This isn’t a loophole, it’s a congressionally mandated incentive for productive business equipment, and mining hardware qualifies. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 to explore these opportunities in greater depth. Download the Investor's Guide ## The Tax Advantage Playbook for Mining Investors When structured correctly as a business, Bitcoin mining allows investors to tap into deductions and accelerated cost recovery not available in traditional digital asset investments. Key advantages include: - Operational Cost Deductibility: The largest recurring costs of mining, electricity and hosting fees, are fully deductible as ordinary business operating expenses. - Accelerated Hardware Expensing (The Section 179 Benefit): This is the game-changer for maximizing investor return. The full cost of new mining hardware can often be immediately expensed in the year of purchase. This powerful deduction is commonly referred to as a Section 179 benefit, which allows for immediate expensing up to a substantial limit, and is often combined with or replaced by Bonus Depreciation for the most aggressive tax write-off possible. - Ordinary Business Deductions: Day-to-day expenses like consulting, software, maintenance, and essential business travel further reduce taxable income. The result is a powerful alignment of infrastructure, yield, and tax efficiency, establishing Bitcoin mining as one of the most tax-advantaged asset classes available today. ## Entity Formation: The ROI Multiplier Entity structure determines whether these tax benefits can be fully realized. - LLC: Flexible pass-through taxation, 100% bonus depreciation, liability protection. - S-Corp: Reduces self-employment tax, still eligible for QBI deduction. - C-Corp: Attractive for institutions reinvesting profits under a flat corporate rate. For W-2 employees, forming an LLC is critical, without it, the IRS may classify mining as a hobby, denying deductions. For 1099 contractors, mining integrates more seamlessly into existing business structures but still benefits from a dedicated LLC for clarity and liability protection. Entity formation isn’t just about legal compliance, it’s the multiplier that transforms deductions into long-term after-tax yield. ## Active vs. Passive: Protecting Your Deductions The IRS draws a firm line between active trade or business activities and passive or hobby income. Passive activities cannot offset other income streams, a costly mistake for high earners. To qualify mining as an active business, investors must demonstrate material participation. This can include: - Regular oversight of mining operations - Decision-making around hosting and equipment purchases - Documented hours spent managing the business Failing this test means deductions for electricity, hosting, and depreciation may be disallowed. MiningStore solves this challenge for investors by providing: - Dashboards showing uptime, hashrate, and costs - Ticket logs documenting investor communications with on-site technicians - Lifecycle records for hardware purchases, installations, and replacements This audit-ready documentation ensures investors can substantiate their active role, keeping deductions intact and IRS challenges at bay. ## Why Investors Choose MiningStore MiningStore isn’t simply a host, it’s a strategic partner for investors. - Institutional Infrastructure: Hydro and air-cooled facilities across Iowa with MISO and SPP grid access. - Investor Intelligence: CapEx planning, tax alignment, and entity structuring support (with your CPA). - ESG-Aligned Operations: Renewable-heavy grid mix supports sustainable mandates. - Proven Track Record: Over 180 HNWIs, family offices, and institutions already rely on MiningStore for compliant, tax-optimized mining. By combining hosting infrastructure with compliance-ready reporting, MiningStore enables investors to maximize both financial returns and tax efficiency. ## The Investor Takeaway Smart structuring doesn’t just improve ROI, it defines it. With 100% Bonus Depreciation and enhanced Section 179 limits now in effect, and institutional hosting capacity available, 2025 presents a strategic window for investors to deploy capital into tax-optimized Bitcoin mining. Download the Investor’s Guide: Bitcoin Mining Tax Strategy 2025 to see how these strategies apply to your portfolio. Download It Here Book a Private Consultation with MiningStore to secure hosting capacity and align your investment before year-end. Book Your Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute tax, legal, or investment advice. Every investor’s situation is unique. Consult a qualified tax advisor, CPA, or legal professional before making tax-related decisions. Bitcoin mining involves financial, operational, and regulatory risks, and MiningStore makes no guarantees regarding specific outcomes. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Antminer S19 Series Guide: Specs, Prices, and Real Mining Profitability Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/the-definitive-guide-to-antminer-s19-series-bitcoin-miners/ Antminer S19 Series Guide: Specs, Prices, and Real Mining Profitability | MiningStore ## By Spencer Sherwood ### Introduction The Antminer S19 series remains one of the most researched and widely referenced ASIC families in the Bitcoin mining industry. First released in 2020, these units powered a large portion of global hashrate through multiple market cycles and became a foundational component of many early industrial-scale operations. Today, more advanced and energy-efficient miners have entered the market, and the S19 series is no longer considered the leading option for new deployments. However, the S19 models still play an important role in understanding ASIC evolution, fleet composition across the network, and the economics of earlier-generation hardware. This guide provides a clear, factual overview of the S19 lineup, its specifications, efficiency profiles, price history, and profitability dynamics, so miners and investors can evaluate the hardware accurately in the context of current market standards. For a more comprehensive overview of all ASIC hardware, see our guide to Understanding the Bitcoin Mining Rig Market. ## Overview of the Antminer S19-series Bitmain’s S19 family includes several well-known models: - Antminer S19 (95TH/s; 3250W; 34W/TH) - Antminer S19 Pro (110TH/s; 3250W; 29.5W/TH) - Antminer S19j (90 TH/s; 3250W; 36W/TH) - Antminer S19j Pro (96 / 100 / 104TH/s; 2832 / 3050 / 3082W; 29.5W/TH) - Antminer T19 (84 / 88TH/s; 3150 / 3344W; 38W/TH) These machines were widely adopted due to their reliability and relatively strong efficiency during 2020–2022. The S19j Pro, in particular, became one of the most common units used by industrial miners. ### Prices of Antminer S19-Series Mining Rigs According to the SHA-256 Mining Rig Index on hashrateindex.com, Antminer S19’s were first launched for pre-sale in Q1 2020 at prices below $3k per unit. BTC price was hovering below $10k at the time, which explains why the USD price of the machines was so low. As BTC price began to increase rapidly at the end of 2020, so too did the prices of Antminer S19’s, at one point reaching 4x their original price in April 2021 when BTC reached new all-time highs above $60k. Mining rig prices corrected sharply across the board when BTC price dropped mid-year, but have since rebounded. Now in Q4 2021, average prices of S19-series miners are back above $10k, with the most efficient and highest hashrate models like the S19 Pro and S19j Pro being more expensive ($11k+). We expect that difficulty will continue to adjust upward at a rapid rate as more of these new-generation mining machines get deployed and as Chinese miners continue to relocate their machines to newly-built infrastructure elsewhere in the world. However, BTC price can outpace difficulty growth and put even more pressure on bitcoin ASIC hardware prices, driving them to new all-time highs. ### Antminer S19-Series Mining Profitability Source: Historical Antminer S19 Profitability The chart above shows the historical performance of the Antminer S19 since it launched in May 2020. You can see the impact of key events such as the price runup in late 2020 and 2021, as well as the China mining ban and subsequent difficulty drop in June 2021. You can also see the hardware appreciating from $5k at the time it launched to now being valued over $10k in the ASIC market. This gives you an idea of how price, difficulty, and transaction fees impact bitcoin mining profitability and the volatility involved in the real world. In order to make decisions about buying bitcoin mining hardware, you should also look at projections of mining rig profitability in the following years. You can do this by using a mining profitability calculator that enables you to adjust BTC price and difficulty over time. For example, the chart below shows the projected 3-year profitability of one Antminer S19 Pro when network difficulty increases by 4% per month and BTC price is constant. Source: Bearish Forward Projections of Antminer S19 Profitability You’ll notice that monthly revenue and profit abruptly drop in Month 31. This is due to the halving which will occur at Block #840,000, decreasing the block reward from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per block. Nonetheless, the Antminer S19 Pro remains profitable for all 36 months even as difficulty is increasing and price is not. While the above projections give us an extremely conservative case, it isn’t all that realistic unless you’re bearish on BTC. For the bitcoin bulls, it’s worth also looking at potential mining profitability for bitcoin machines if BTC price increases over time, as shown below. Source: Bullish Forward Projections of Antminer S19 Profitability The Antminer S19 series played a major role in industrializing Bitcoin mining and remains one of the most researched ASIC families in the world. While no longer the first choice for new deployments, understanding S19 performance, efficiency, and historical market behavior provides valuable context for miners analyzing hardware strategies, second-hand opportunities, or long-term fleet planning. For miners evaluating equipment today, the S19 series serves as a reference point, but modern ASICs provide the efficiency and scalability required for competitive operations moving forward. ### Explore Our Services - → Shop ASIC miners - → Hosting services - → Managed mining program Spencer Sherwood Spencer works a copywriter and has been involved in the crypto community since 2019.He is passionate about the evolution of Bitcoin and Bitcoin technologies. Spencer is also a musician and founder of Production Madness, an artist based talent accelerator which looks to work with and promote artists of various skill sets. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Why Hydro-Cooled Hosting Is the Infrastructure Advantage Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/the-future-of-bitcoin-mining-why-hydro-cooled-hosting-is-the-infrastructure-advantage/ Bitcoin mining is moving toward infrastructure choices that can support hotter, denser, higher-value hardware without wasting operational effort on thermal workarounds. Hydro-cooled hosting stands out because it improves thermals, site flexibility, and long-term scaling in the same move. ## Key Takeaways - Hydro removes heat more efficiently than air and supports higher-performance fleets. - The quieter, denser operating profile changes what kinds of sites are viable. - Hydro is no longer an experiment; it is increasingly the strategic hosting model for serious operators. Related Insight ## What Hydro-Cooling Changes Hydro uses water or water-glycol mixtures to extract heat directly from ASICs through cold plates or integrated flow paths. That creates more consistent thermal behavior than fan-heavy air-cooled designs. - Better heat removal under sustained load. - Less dependence on ambient air conditions. - A quieter operating envelope that opens up more site options. Related Insight ## Why Hosting Operations Benefit Most - Higher density allows more machines per square foot or per container footprint. - Hydro performs more reliably in hot climates where air systems would otherwise struggle. - The infrastructure can align well with waste-heat recovery or renewable-power narratives when that matters to the investor base. Related Insight ## Air vs. Hydro at a Glance Category Air cooling Hydro cooling Cooling efficiency Moderate Extremely high Power overhead Higher fan and HVAC load More targeted thermal management Density More limited Higher-density deployment Noise Loud Near-silent relative profile Climate resilience Best in cooler regions More resilient in hotter zones Long-term ROI Moderate Stronger where utilization stays high Related Insight ## Why the Shift Is Happening Now - Bitmain and MicroBT already offer flagship hydro-ready models, and Auradine shows hydro is expanding into rack-native compute environments too. - Institutional operators are prioritizing consistency, transparency, and lifecycle returns over short-term novelty. - The next generation of compute density makes older thermal assumptions harder to defend economically. ### Infrastructure takeaway Hydro gives operators a stronger hosting architecture when they plan around the next hardware cycle instead of the last one. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Related Insight How Hydro-Cooling Maximizes Bitcoin Mining Profitability Over Time Why hydro changes mining unit economics through density, uptime, hardware life, and energy efficiency. Read next Deployment Hydro Mining Deployment Checklist Five-phase planning and pre-launch audit for hydro-cooled site buildouts. Read next Related Insight Why Expert Management Is Critical for Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Success Why the operating team matters as much as the hardware once hydro systems go live. Read next --- # Top 15 Bitcoin Mining Stats & Market Trends – Investor-Ready Mining Insights Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/top-15-bitcoin-mining-stats-and-market-trends-2022/ Top 15 Bitcoin Mining Stats & Market Trends – Investor-Ready Mining Insights | MiningStore ## By Daniel Frumkin The bitcoin mining industry had a year to remember in 2021, with exponential growth in the Western market led by publicly traded mining companies in Canada and the US, as well as the hashrate exodus from once-dominant China following the ban on cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency mining by the Chinese Communist Party in June. Here are some of the top bitcoin mining trends and stat ## Total network hashrate is up nearly 2.5x (200 EH/s) since the July 2021 bottom (86 EH/s) after China banned bitcoin mining. Source: Bitcoin Hashrate Chart The Chinese Communist Party banned cryptocurrency mining in June 2021, with just over 50% of the total bitcoin network hashrate being in China at the time. The previous all-time high was 180 EH/s, and hashrate dropped as low as 88 EH/s in the weeks following the ban. However, it recovered extremely fast—far faster than most people in the mining industry expected—and has since exceeded 212 EH/s (212 trillion computations per second!) at the new peak. By the time you’re reading this, it will probably already be higher. ## 4 miners are going public via SPACs for a total combined valuation of $13.1 billion 4 large bitcoin mining companies—Core Scientific, Bitdeer, Griid, and Prime Blockchain—are going public via SPACs (Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, essentially mergers) and becoming some of the most valuable mining companies in the world. The combined valuation of over $13 billion really goes to show that investors have a healthy appetite for the indirect exposure to bitcoin that these bitcoin mining stocks can provide. ## Bitcoin mining is consuming approximately 0.14% of the world’s total energy production According to the Q4 2021 report by the Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), the energy consumption of the entire bitcoin network accounts for approximately 0.14% of all the world’s energy consumption. While it’s become common in recent years for bitcoin detractors to cite it’s estimated energy consumption as a reason for fear and outrage, putting it in this context gives a much more realistic overview of the true scale. In the end, it’s still little more than a rounding error and much of the attention placed on it would be better spent elsewhere. ## Bitcoin mining has an estimated 58.5% sustainable energy mix, higher than any other country or major industry in the world. A feature of bitcoin mining that most of the world is yet to realize or understand is that it actually improves the economics for renewable energy production by enabling new renewable projects to immediately monetize before establishing grid connections and by acting as a demand response resource to soak up extra production from sources like solar and wind when the demand from the grid is too low to match the supply. In fact, we at MiningStore focus on this use case of plugging in bitcoin miners next to renewable energy sources to improve their economics. ## Publicly traded bitcoin mining companies purchased over 650,000 new-generation bitcoin mining machines in 2021. The incredible hashrate growth to over 200 EH/s that we mentioned in the #1 mining trend is due in large part to the huge mining machine purchases made by publicly traded mining companies. The likes of Marathon, Riot Blockchain, Bitfarms, Argo, Iris Energy, Genesis Digital Assets, and several others have purchased a total of more than 650,000 new-generation bitcoin mining machines since the beginning of 2021. The most popular ASICs by far were from the Antminer S19 family manufactured by Bitmain, including several hundred thousand Antminer S19j Pro’s. With an average of over 100 TH/s per machine, these 650,000 mining rigs will be producing over 65 EH/s once they’ve all been deployed. ## Aggregate hashrate of public bitcoin mining companies surpassed 30 EH/s in March 2022. With all of those new-generation bitcoin ASIC’s getting delivered and deployed, the total combined hashrate of public bitcoin miners has surpassed 30 EH/s as of March 2022. To put that in context, 30 EH/s was the hashrate of the entire bitcoin network in mid-2018. ## Transaction fees are averaging less than 2% of total mining rewards in the past year. Source: Bitcoin Transaction Fees % of Block Reward One of the least exciting bitcoin mining trends of 2021 and 2022 is that transaction fee revenue for miners has been very low, averaging under 2% of total mining rewards in the past year. The most likely explanation for this is that the popular software wallet offered by blockchain.com was finally upgraded to be SegWit compatible, making transactions lighter weight (i.e. taking up less space on the blockchain) and enabling more transactions to fit in each block. ## Total mining revenue per day is averaging > $40MM in the past year. Source: Bitcoin Mining Daily Revenue A much more positive long-term trend for bitcoin miners is that the total daily revenue for the past year is average around $40 million per day. Daily mining revenue peaked at $78 million as bitcoin first reached all-time highs above $60k in April 2021, but it has since found a steady range between $30-50 million so far in late 2021 and early 2022. ## Hashprice (revenue per terahash) is ranging between $0.17 - $0.49 in the past year. The bitcoin mining industry has certainly matured a lot in the past year, but it’s still one of the more volatile and unpredictable businesses out there. A key metric for mining profitability, hashprice, is a measure of the daily revenue that miners earn per terahash per second ($/TH/s/day) of computing power they operate. When BTC price increases, it increases hashprice. However, increasing network difficulty has the opposite effect, decreasing the BTC mined per terahash and thus the hashprice. Miners are always hoping that BTC price will increase faster than difficulty so that their revenue can increase over time. ## Leading miner efficiency improved from 29.5 J/TH for Antminer S19 Pro released in 2021 to 21.5 J/TH for the Antminer S19 XP, which will begin shipping in Q3 2022. As we detailed in our comparison of the Antminer S19 Pro and Antminer S19 XP, there was a massive efficiency improvement between these two cutting-edge mining machines. Many people expected that efficiency gains would slow drastically after the Antminer S19 Pro was first to achieve sub-30 J/TH efficiency, but it seems that we aren’t going to approach the limits of Moore’s Law for bitcoin ASICs just yet. This 27% efficiency increase also likely means that the trend of rapidly increasing network hashrate isn’t going to slow down anytime soon. ## The United States share of global hashrate increased from an estimated 10% in January 2021 to 35% just 8 months later. According to data from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, the United States increased its market share in bitcoin mining from an estimated 10% of total network hashrate in January 2021 to 35% by September 2021, the most recent update of the data. This data is only collected from a few mining pools and it can be distorted in case miners are masking their IP addresses by running VPNs or other proxies, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, it’s clear that the US has become the preferred destination for bitcoin miners in 2021 and 2022. ## Antminer S19 prices varied between $6000 - $14000 per mining rig over the course of 2021. Source: Bitcoin Rig Prices The fluctuation of bitcoin mining machine prices was wild to experience in 2021, making it very difficult for miners to make confident investments in ASICs. For the popular Antminer S19 series, prices fluctuated from below $3k in late 2020 to a peak of $12k in early 2021, and then briefly back below $7k following the China mining ban when many Chinese miners liquidated their hardware inventories. ## Non-Chinese bitcoin mining pools increased their combined market share from 30% by March 2022. Source: Bitcoin Mining Pools Market Share At the beginning of 2021, over 90% of bitcoin’s total network hashrate was going through Chinese mining pools. Now, as of March 2022, non-Chinese pools including Foundry Pool, Slush Pool, SBI Crypto Pool, Luxor, and MARA Pool have a combined market share of 31.2% based on blocks found in the past 5 weeks. ## Intel became the first non-Chinese company to make a serious entry into bitcoin mining hardware manufacturing with their 2022 release of a new bitcoin ASIC mining chip, the BMZ2. Perhaps the most significant market trend in bitcoin mining for 2022 was the emergence of viable hardware manufacturers outside of China. Block (formerly Square) announced that they would begin the multi-year process of manufacturing their own bitcoin mining rigs, while computing giant Intel made some much more tangible progress with the 2022 release of their new ASIC mining chip, the BMZ2. If it can live up to the announced specs of 135 TH/s and 26 J/TH efficiency, it will be the first competitive mining hardware to be manufactured outside of China since the ASIC era of bitcoin mining began in 2014. ## An S19 Pro plugged in for the entire year of 2021 mined approximately 0.25 BTC at an average marginal cost of production of $4890 per BTC. Source: Bitcoin Transaction Fees % of Block Reward One of the least exciting bitcoin mining trends of 2021 and 2022 is that transaction fee revenue for miners has been very low, averaging under 2% of total mining rewards in the past year. The most likely explanation for this is that the popular software wallet offered by blockchain.com was finally upgraded to be SegWit compatible, making transactions lighter weight (i.e. taking up less space on the blockchain) and enabling more transactions to fit in each block. Daniel Frumpkin Daniel Frumkin is a bitcoiner and mechanical engineer who works as the Director of Research & Mining Insights for Braiins. He has visited bitcoin mining facilities across Europe, Asia, and the Americas and writes about major trends in the mining industry. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Are Bitcoin Mining Profits Too Unpredictable? Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/unpredictable-bitcoin-mining-profits/ Are Bitcoin Mining Profits Too Unpredictable? | MiningStore Are Bitcoin Mining Profits Unpredictable? Predictable Yield in a Volatile Market: How Bitcoin Mining Delivers Institutional-Grade Cash Flow Bitcoin’s price volatility has always attracted attention, and skepticism. For many investors, that volatility fuels a common misconception: that Bitcoin mining profits are just as unpredictable as the asset itself. But that myth doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. In reality, institutional mining operations are now structured around known CapEx, locked-in energy pricing, high-efficiency hardware, and BTC-denominated revenue streams. The result? A forecastable, infrastructure-like yield, backed by real assets and scalable through professional management. At MiningStore, our Hosting and Managed Mining Program (MMP) clients aren’t guessing. They are modeling monthly BTC outputs, pricing in electricity, and projecting breakeven timelines, just like they would with any other infrastructure investment. This post breaks down how smart investors are using Bitcoin mining to generate predictable cash flow in an unpredictable market, and how you can do the same. ## Why Bitcoin Mining Profits Are Often Seen as Unpredictable Bitcoin mining profits are influenced by a variety of variables: - Block Reward Volatility: Every four years, halving events cut the number of BTC awarded per block in half, reducing guaranteed income. As block subsidies fall, miners depend more on volatile transaction fees driven by network usage. - Difficulty Adjustments: The network recalibrates mining difficulty roughly every two weeks. If global hashrate spikes or drops quickly, mining profitability can change just as fast. - BTC Price Swings: Since revenue is denominated in BTC but often compared in USD, price movements heavily impact perceived profitability. - Electricity and Operational Costs: Locations, energy contracts, and hardware efficiency can make or break a miner’s ability to remain profitable during bear markets. The net result? For smaller or home-based miners without scale or strategy, profits can indeed be unstable. ## How Bitcoin Mining Delivers Predictable Cash Flow (Institutional Perspective) Despite inherent market volatility, institutional operators are deploying strategies to create more predictable BTC yield: - Hedging and Derivatives: Larger miners use BTC derivatives or energy price hedges to smooth out cash flow in low-margin periods. - BTC-Denominated Revenue: MiningStore’s MMP and Hosting clients are paid in BTC, allowing for consistent accumulation regardless of market swings. - Stacking and Structured Finance: Many miners hold BTC to sell at higher prices or use it as collateral for loans, smoothing liquidity needs without exiting positions. - Infrastructure Modeling: With fixed hardware, power costs, and transparent pool rewards, monthly projections can be built and monitored in real time. ## CapEx Modeling: Predictable Inputs, Projectable Returns Let’s take a conservative example: - 5 x S21 XP Hydro miners at 473 TH each - Total CapEx: ~$65,000–$75,000 - Hosted in an energy-optimized facility - Estimated BTC production: ~0.035 – 0.045 BTC/month Even with hashprice compression, these units can target sub-24 month break-even and generate BTC at a cost significantly below market value, especially when deployed in facilities with stable long-term power contracts and industrial-grade efficiency. ## The Growing Role of Transaction Fees in Long-Term Cash Flow As block rewards continue to decline with each halving, transaction fees are becoming a critical source of mining revenue. Miners now earn a larger share of income from fees, especially during periods of high demand and congestion. - In future halving cycles, fees could represent the majority of mining compensation. - While this adds some variability, it also ensures that miners who remain efficient and connected to active networks benefit from demand spikes. - Ultimately, this supports a longer-term transition to fee-based network security, aligning miner incentives with network health. ## Institutional-Grade Cash Flow: Reality and Limitations Mining is not without volatility, but institutions are increasingly equipped to manage it: - Financial Tools: From hashprice futures to energy arbitrage models, institutional players are building hedges into operations. - Custodial Integration: BTC payouts are now supported by institutional-grade custody, enabling better capital management. - On-Chain Yield Innovation: Protocols like lstBTC offer yield opportunities that miners can tap into without sacrificing asset control. Predictability in mining isn’t about removing volatility, it’s about managing it with the right tools, partners, and models. ## Final Thoughts: Stability Is a Function of Strategy Bitcoin mining profits remain inherently variable, but the infrastructure, financial tools, and management strategies now available make it a legitimate cash-flow engine for professional investors. Volatility is real, but it is also measurable, modelable, and increasingly manageable. Power + hardware + modeling = a BTC-yielding infrastructure bond. With the right capital, structure, and partner, mining can deliver far more predictability than most investors think. Book a Strategic Call with Our Bitcoin Mining Advisors Let our team walk you through: - Custom ROI modeling based on your capital allocation - Hardware pricing, availability, and hosting options - BTC-denominated payout structures and breakeven forecasting Schedule your infrastructure-backed BTC strategy call today. Book Your 1:1 Consultancy Call (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Why Air-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Hosting Is Still a Smart Investment Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/why-air-cooled-bitcoin-mining-hosting-is-still-a-smart-investment/ Why Air-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Hosting Is Still a Smart Investment | MiningStore Reliable, cost-efficient mining with strong long-term upside Unlock Consistent Profits: Why Reliable Air-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Hosting is a Strategic Investment Bitcoin mining isn’t just about machines and electricity, it’s about access to operational efficiency, infrastructure advantages, and consistent uptime that translates into real, compounding returns. For investors who understand the long-term fundamentals of Bitcoin, reliable air-cooled hosting offers one of the most strategic, cost-efficient ways to generate yield from mining, without building and managing infrastructure themselves. ## Why Air-Cooled Hosting Remains a Strategic Advantage in 2025 With Bitcoin trading well above $100,000 in July 2025 and the global mining industry entering a new era of institutional adoption, air-cooled infrastructure remains a cornerstone for scalable, capital-efficient mining strategies. Here’s why: ### Cost Efficiency with Scalable Entry Air-cooled systems offer significantly lower upfront infrastructure costs compared to immersion or liquid cooling systems. These savings lower the barrier to entry for capital deployment while still delivering strong, consistent uptime, a critical metric for maximizing BTC production. - Lower Setup and Maintenance Costs: No need for dielectric fluids or specialized tank systems. Fans, filters, and ventilation remain simple and proven. - Accessible for Investors of All Sizes: Whether you’re deploying $100K or scaling a multimillion-dollar mining operation, air-cooled infrastructure delivers dependable performance without excessive CapEx. ### Hosting Partner = Uptime Protection Reliable hosting partners are the difference between consistent yield and constant interruptions. At MiningStore, our air-cooled hosting infrastructure is built around institutional-grade reliability. - Redundant Power and Network: Our sites in MISO and SPP are engineered for resilience, including backup power and 24/7 network monitoring. - Physical and Digital Security: Assets are housed in protected facilities with strict access protocols and on-site security monitoring. - Uptime SLAs: We commit to performance, with verified uptime exceeding 97%. This ensures your ASICs work for you around the clock, and your Bitcoin production stays on schedule. ### Geographic Advantages = Power Savings Location matters and so does climate. Our air-cooled hosting facilities are strategically located in Iowa with: - Abundant, affordable electricity - Favorable ambient air temperatures - Proven energy partnerships with utilities in MISO and SPP This region offers access to some of the lowest all-in power rates available in the U.S., with optimized airflow systems that take full advantage of natural cooling. That means lower OpEx and higher BTC margins, even in competitive market conditions. ### Operational Simplicity with Professional Management With MiningStore, you don’t need to manage airflow dynamics, ASIC installation, or firmware updates. We do it all, allowing you to stay focused on ROI, not infrastructure. - Turnkey Setup: We procure, install, and manage your machines. - Proactive Maintenance: Our team handles regular filter cleaning, diagnostics, and performance optimization. - Full Visibility: You’ll receive transparent reporting and real-time insights on performance. Our hosting infrastructure is fully integrated with performance dashboards and BTC payout systems, so you can monitor your returns without worrying about the technical details. ### Reliable Returns Without Operational Complexity When you partner with the right hosting provider, your ASICs generate Bitcoin without draining your time or resources. MiningStore’s air-cooled hosting sites are designed for investors who want: - Hands-off infrastructure ownership - Consistent, scalable cash flow - Access to real-time BTC yield with low volatility risk Air-cooled hosting is a proven model that’s been refined across hundreds of deployments. It delivers the reliability that institutional investors, family offices, and capital allocators demand — with none of the operational drag. ## Why Now Is the Time to Act We are in a window of opportunity where: - New-generation ASICs (like the S21 XP) offer unprecedented efficiency - Infrastructure capacity in proven U.S. markets is tightening - BTC continues trading above $100K, with analysts projecting $150K–$200K in the next cycle The ability to deploy hardware today, with full hosting support, means capturing upside before the next round of pricing surges. With limited capacity available in both MISO and SPP, now is the time to align capital with operational infrastructure that can start producing within weeks. Book Your Strategy Call If you are ready to scale your Bitcoin exposure through reliable, cost-efficient mining infrastructure, MiningStore can help. Schedule a 1:1 call with our Hosting Team (https://miningstore.com/schedule-a-demo/) ## Air-Cooled Hosting Availability Rack space opens and rates move. Get a note when we have air-cooled capacity. First name Work email Website Send me availability Occasional hosting availability and rate updates. Unsubscribe from any message. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Why Bitcoin ASIC Prices Can Reach New Highs in 2022 Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/why-bitcoin-asic-prices-can-reach-new-highs-in-2022/ Why Bitcoin ASIC Prices Can Reach New Highs in 2022 | MiningStore ## Why Bitcoin ASIC Prices Can Reach New Highs in 2022 ## By Spencer Sherwood Much like traders and investors speculating on future Bitcoin prices, those in the Bitcoin mining industry must also make large wagers on the value of ASIC mining hardware over time. For example, one may bet that if BTC prices continue to grow at historical rates in 2022 (about 180%/year), which given the current macro climate is not considered to be all that unlikely, then we might expect the climb in BTC price to translate into a short-term appreciation in ASIC values. But then again, the mining hardware market is not quite as straightforward as this example. In order to operate a successful Bitcoin mining business long-term, it’s vital to understand how and why certain factors can influence the mining rig market in order to plan for various scenarios in your mining profitability analysis. Changes in semiconductor chip manufacturing and distribution, mining difficulty, and BTC price all have specific effects on the price of mining hardware. In this article, we’ll discuss why we think the average cost of building out a Bitcoin mining rig could increase due to ASIC prices finding new highs in 2022. ## Historical ASIC Pricing Before we get started, let’s take a look at the prices of various ASICs over the course of this last year using the Rig Price Index from Hashrate Index. Keep in mind, higher prices are for more efficient rigs. During the summer, we saw a significant drop in ASIC pricing. The drop came after a sizable BTC price crash and China’s ban on Bitcoin mining, which required Chinese miners to either relocate or shut down their operations. From the miners that had to liquidate their operations, we saw a significant but short-lived increase in the supply of ASICs on the market. But at the same time, there was also a slight decrease in demand for mining hardware because BTC price had dropped (more on this later). Since then, the mining rig market has not seen any significant price drops despite BTC price falling significantly. This is most likely due to Bitcoin miners’ efforts to try to scale up their operations right now, demonstrating that not many miners are still profitable at the current price levels. Scaling up, however, may prove to be a challenge at the moment. ### Semiconductor Chips Perhaps the first thing to consider with mining rig prices is the all important semiconductor chip that is responsible for the hashing (i.e. the computing) in ASIC machines. These chips are a vital piece to most electronics as they regulate the flow of electrical current. Not only do Bitcoin mining machines rely upon them, but so do cellphones, TVs, cars, and much more. Thus, the availability (or lack thereof) for semiconductor chips is a key factor influencing the potential supply of new ASICs coming online. Every mining hardware manufacturer, even popular ones such as Bitmain and MicroBT, must compete with large companies across other industries. Companies like Apple and Toyota are dominant players that enjoy a large capacity of chip manufacturing output from TSMC and Samsung. To make acquiring chips more difficult, the world is seeing supply chain issues pile up in every major industry. Since one of the most important global industries affected happens to be semiconductor chips, we’re going to see a lower production of Bitcoin machines. These supply chain issues drive more intense competition to buy ASICs, but they also have an interesting effect on mining difficulty. As there are more significant limits to the amount of ASICs that can be produced, less new mining hardware can enter the mining world. This means difficulty can only grow as fast as MicroBT M30s, Antminer S19s, or any other Bitcoin mining machine can be produced. ### How Does Mining Difficulty Affect the Price of ASICs? Another piece of the puzzle that Bitcoin miners need to be aware of is the network difficulty. In our profitability comparisons between the Antminer S19 Pro and the Antminer S19 XP, we discussed why we believe network difficulty is only going to increase as North American mining scales up and the rest of the Chinese miners finish relocating. Difficulty is important since it directly influences how profitable a mining rig can be. For Bitcoin mining ASICs, an increase in network difficulty results in a decrease in hashvalue. Hashvalue measures the amount of revenue generated by one terahash of hashrate, in BTC terms (Hashvalue = BTC/TH/day). A great example of the importance of hashvalue can be seen in the chart above. Starting July of 2021, we saw a major decrease in difficulty when China banned Bitcoin mining. The Chinese mining industry was responsible for roughly 50% of the hashrate at the time of the ban, and the result was a major pump in hashvalue (as seen on the chart). Now as more miners continue to enter the game and existing players scale, difficulty will continue to ramp up, and everyone’s slices of hashrate pie will slim down. So, in order to maintain steady BTC production from Bitcoin mining rigs, miners must increase their operational hashrate proportionally to the increase in total network hashrate. In other words, they need to maintain their market share as difficulty increases. We can expect that the demand for Bitcoin mining machines will grow as everyone competes to increase their hashrate. Demand that can’t be met by new machines due to limited manufacturing capacity will then result in higher ASIC prices on the secondary market. Hashvalue expresses how much opportunity there is to mine. And although difficulty is important to Bitcoin miners, it is not necessarily the ultimate indicator of mining hardware price. ### What is Hashprice and the Role of BTC’s Price on ASIC Pricing Closely related to and dependent on hashvalue is hashprice. Hashprice is revenue generated by one terahash of hashrate in USD terms (Hashprice = $/TH/day). Multiplying hashvalue by BTC price gives you hashprice. ASIC pricing is largely determined by hashprice since it illustrates the value of the total BTC an ASIC can mine at a given difficulty, each day. To further understand this, let’s take a few examples. First, let’s suppose the network difficulty were to increase 2x from 24T, but the price of BTC were to stay constant at $50K. Since hashvalue is more or less inversely proportional to difficulty (not accounting for transaction fees), Bitcoin miners would see their hashvalue get cut by 50%. Since BTC price has remained constant, the 50% drop in hashvalue ends up slicing our hasprice by 50% as well. Difficulty 24T 48T Hashvalue 1000 SAT/TH/day 500 SAT/TH/day BTC Price $50K $50K Hashprice $0.5/TH/day $0.25/TH/day Next, let’s suppose that network difficulty were to increase 2x from 24T while the price of BTC climbed up 4x (as may be expected during a bull run). Even though our mining rigs will suffer a hahvalue drop of 50%, our hashprice is saved by the bull run and we see an increase of 100%. Difficulty 24T 48T Hashvalue 1000 SAT/TH/day 500 SAT/TH/day BTC Price $50K $200K Hashprice $0.5/TH/day $1.00/TH/day Thus, it is important to note that hashprice can move independently from difficulty. Another example of this can be found in the chart above which shows BTC price and difficulty throughout 2021. You may ask, why didn’t hashprice double when hashvalue doubled in July? Despite the significant decrease in difficulty, the price of BTC also happened to drop by nearly 50% around the same time. ### Conclusion Now that we have a good understanding of some key components that impact ASIC pricing, let’s put it all together. ASIC prices are closely correlated with hashprice. This is because hashprice measures the value of the total Bitcoin an ASIC can mine at a given difficulty, each day. When hashprice goes up, it’s highly probable that ASIC prices will as well. The increase in hashprice means there is either a drop in difficulty, signaling an opportunity to mine more Bitcoin, or an increase in BTC price, making Bitcoin mining more worthwhile, or both. As for difficulty, it’s only going to increase in the long-term (we anticipate 60-110%/year), but growth will be slow and steady compared to the volatile price action for BTC. This is mostly because factors like supply chain issues in ASIC manufacturing and the difficulty of building large scale mining infrastructure put a cap on the difficulty growth rate. However, as we know, the price of BTC can increase much much faster than 100%/year, especially in bull markets. With an ASIC supply chain bottleneck occurring in the midst of a bull market, hashprice will go up, and so will mining hardware prices. All of these factors together spell higher ASIC prices in 2022. The good news is if you are bullish on BTC, then you should expect your Bitcoin mining machines to be appreciating assets. Especially when you consider they also generate discounted BTC cash flow since price continues to grow during the bull market.Also, with BTC mining hardware likely to increase in value in 2022, there’s a good case to be made for purchasing ASICs and generating discounted BTC from appreciating mining rigs rather than just buying spot BTC. This of course assumes you have a place to run a Bitcoin mining rig with decent electricity, like, for example, with our Managed Mining Program. Spencer Sherwood Spencer works a copywriter and has been involved in the crypto community since 2019.He is passionate about the evolution of Bitcoin and Bitcoin technologies. Spencer is also a musician and founder of Production Madness, an artist based talent accelerator which looks to work with and promote artists of various skill sets. ## Start Mining 20-minute call. We'll cover your goals and give you a plan. Book a Call ## Get the guide Tell us where to send it. First name Work email Company (optional) Website Send it to me We'll email you occasional mining insights and you can unsubscribe from any message. We never sell your details. Your download is on its way. If it doesn't start automatically, use this link. --- # Why Expert Management Is Critical for Hydro-Cooled Bitcoin Mining Success Source: https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/why-expert-management-is-critical-for-hydro-cooled-bitcoin-mining-success/ Hydro systems add a new layer of technical complexity to Bitcoin mining. Pumps, sensors, fluid chemistry, PLC logic, and electrical integration all need active stewardship. The operating team often decides whether a fleet delivers average performance or durable profitability. ## Key Takeaways - Management discipline shapes commissioning quality as much as construction work does. - Water quality and preventive maintenance drive miner health as much as the equipment itself. - Fast troubleshooting and skilled optimization prevent small incidents from becoming expensive downtime. Related Insight ## Complex Systems Need Expert Commissioning - Hydro sites combine pumps, flow sensors, pressure regulation, leak detection, and high-voltage integration in one operating environment. - A wiring or plumbing mistake during commissioning can create cascading failures that are expensive to reverse after miners go live. - Experienced operators validate system behavior before they trust the fleet to production conditions. Related Insight ## Water Quality and Preventive Maintenance Are Operating Functions - Poor pH control drives corrosion. - Mineral buildup reduces heat exchange and clogs plates or filters. - Contaminated coolant raises the odds of both performance degradation and emergency service work. Experienced teams make coolant testing, filtration, balancing, and documentation part of routine operations instead of treating them as a maintenance afterthought. Related Insight ## Fast Troubleshooting and Optimization Protect ROI - Trained operators can isolate pump, valve, firmware, and miner-side faults faster because they understand the whole system. - They can also tune flow, thermal behavior, and electrical balance to keep performance stable through seasonal changes. - That combination of faster diagnosis and better optimization is what keeps fleets hashing consistently instead of operating reactively. Related Insight ## Safety, Compliance, and Scaling Need Real Operators Hydro environments introduce additional electrical, environmental, and emergency-response considerations. Scaling from a small cluster to a large fleet multiplies those constraints quickly. - Safety protocols need to account for wet environments, discharge considerations, and shutdown procedures. - Scale requires flow redesign, capacity planning, and synchronized hardware rollout instead of copy-paste assumptions. - Operators who understand both the facility and the financial goals can expand without destabilizing live operations. Next Steps ## Related Hydro Resources Pillar Guide Return to the Hydro Guide Hub The parent page connects deployment, operations, procurement, and strategy resources in one place. Open the guide hub Operations Hydro Maintenance Schedule Daily-to-annual maintenance cadence plus coolant guardrails and common failure prevention. Read next Operations Troubleshoot Hydro Miners Quick triage for hashrate drops, flow issues, leaks, pump faults, and escalation triggers. Read next Related Insight Why Hydro-Cooled Hosting Is the Infrastructure Advantage Where hydro-cooled hosting fits in the next phase of Bitcoin mining infrastructure. Read next --- # What Are The Advantages Of Mining Bitcoin With Renewable Energy? Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/advantages-of-mining-bitcoin-with-renewable-energy/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief ### What Are The Advantages Of Mining Bitcoin With Renewable Energy? An increasing number of bitcoin mining companies are adding renewable energy capacity to their portfolios as they anticipate the global transition towards a carbon-free energy grid. Currently, in the United States, electricity prices range from approximately $0.10 k/Wh to $0.30 k/Wh. MiningStore and other bitcoin mining companies that procure renewable energy can secure much lower electricity prices because much of this energy is generated in remote locations or the grid cannot accommodate the energy produced by a particular renewable energy operation. ### MiningStore’s Competitive Advantage Data from earlier this year shows that MiningStore’s average price of electricity was $0.045 k/Wh. At this price, MiningStore’s electricity is discounted by nearly 50% compared to the state with the lowest average electricity price. Electricity prices have inflated since this data was collected, but MiningStore’s prices remain much more competitive than any state in the U.S. So, how do we get such a good deal on electricity? It is because we power our operations with renewable energy. When wind farms need an alternative source of demand because the grid cannot accommodate the energy produced, we mine with it rather than letting it go to waste. Energy that would otherwise be wasted will naturally come at a lower price because it is a commodity that loses value every second it is not consumed. Other bitcoin mining companies are following suit as they negotiate with renewable energy producers across the United States to scale their operations while remaining carbon-free. ### Griid Goes Public With $3.3 Billion SPAC Offering Griid, an American infrastructure company that procures low-cost, carbon-free energy to build, manage, and operate a growing portfolio of vertically-integrated bitcoin mining facilities, has announced a $3.3 billion SPAC public offering. Griid currently manages three locations for a total of 48 MW of existing capacity. The company intends to form strategic partnerships with owners and operators of 85 hydroelectric facilities across the U.S. in addition to its growing pipeline of identified nuclear, hydro, wind, and solar generation partners. ### The Transition to Renewables Grid would like to power all of its bitcoin mining with “Carbon-Free Energy” and believes that this will enable them to achieve the lowest mining breakeven point on the market, 42% lower than the nearest peer. In other words, Griid is emulating MiningStore’s winning strategy of procuring renewable energy to scale bitcoin mining operations. ### Blockstream Collaborates With El Salvador To Issue USD Tokenized Bonds And Build A Bitcoin City The president of El Salvador has announced the issuance of a $1 billion USD “Bitcoin Bond” that will be facilitated by the Liquid Network. The Bitcoin bond will be used partially (50%) to build El Salvador’s newest plan, a Bitcoin city that features some of the most advantageous tax laws on the planet. The other $500 million USD will be used to buy bitcoin that will remain locked in a smart contract for five years. The locked bitcoin serves as collateral for the bond and will generate a yield. So, why invest in the El Salvador Bitcoin bond rather than just buying Bitcoin? The bond offers indirect exposure, which risk averse investors and large financial institutions would prefer. ### What Happened to the Turkish Lira? The Turkish Lira is rapidly losing value relative to other currencies and goods in the global markets. The country has seen alarming price increases, particularly within energy commodities and services. Some estimates report that the country is experiencing a greater than 20% inflation rate. Turkey’s president restated his position that increasing interest rates in the country will not reduce inflation. Meanwhile, Turkey has quadrupled their M2 money supply since 2015. For comparison, M2 in the United States has doubled during that same time period. ## Network Health & Hashrate ### Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics ### Network Health Report Bitcoin saw its first downward difficulty adjustment since July. The downward readjustment was caused in part by energy price inflation in Kazakhstan, which rendered many miners unprofitable, and in part by the Chinese government’s firewall, which has blocked some mining pool websites in the country. Fortunately, some miners are still operating covertly in China and innovations such as Slush Pool’s Stratum V2 protocol allow miners to circumvent the firewall by encrypting domain name server (DNS) and other data that government-controlled Chinese internet service providers (ISPs) would typically monitor to enforce the country’s bitcoin ban. In other news, there are now 9.3 million bitcoin addresses with a balance of 0.01 bitcoin or more, which is a new all-time high. The Bitcoin Network has transferred $11.813 trillion USD on-chain in 2021 YTD, for an average of $489 billion per quarter. This exceeded PayPal’s processing, which averaged approximately $302 billion per quarter so far in 2021. Additionally, MicroStrategy has purchased an additional 7,002 bitcoin for approximately $414.4 million USD, at an average price of approximately $59,187 per bitcoin. As of 11/29/21, Microstrategy holds more than 121,044 bitcoin which it acquired for approximately $3.57 billion at an average price of $29,534 per bitcoin. --- # Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High As Bitmain Reveals New Antminer S19XP Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/antminer-s19xp/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief ## Bitmain Announces Antminer S19XP Bitmain has announced the pending release of the Antminer S19XP. The original leak stated that the S19XP would operate with 150 TH/s, but the official release materials from the company listed 140 TH/s. One important benefit with the new S19XP is the impressive efficiency gain as compared to the current model S19 Pro, which is best-in-class at the time of this writing. ### How Efficient Is The Antminer S19XP? Bitcoin mining efficiency is calculated by dividing the rig’s energy consumption by the rig’s hash rate (for example, W/TH). The lower a rig’s W/TH, the more efficient that machine is, because that means less energy is used to generate each hash. The current S19 Pro’s efficiency is calculated at 29.5W/TH. The newly announced Antminer S19XP is specified at 21.5W/TH. With those numbers, the new model would be 27% more efficient than the current model, similar to the jump from the Antminer S17-series to the S19-series. ### How Profitable Is The S19XP? The new Antminer S19XP will feature 140TH/s, providing an additional 30TH/s over the current best-in-class model on the market. Its primary competitors are the Whatsminer M30S and M30S+, and the current generation Antminer S19. For comparison, Braiins Insights estimates that the current model Antminer S19 Pro miner operating with an electricity cost of $0.05/kWh could generate 65105 SAT/day. The current S19 Pro has a break-even electricity price of $0.55/kWh and a daily profit of $40.57. The new and improved S19XP operating with an electricity cost of @ $0.05/kWH, could generate 81267 SAT/day. This model would have a break-even electricity price of $0.74/kWh and a daily profit of $49.63. The new model Even in a conservative scenario, where bitcoin’s price does not exceed $100,000 and network mining difficulty nearly doubles form the current 22T to 40T, the AntMiner S19XP has an estimated CAPEX Break Even of 11 months. ### What Semiconductor Does The Antminer S19XP Use? Semiconductors are small electronic switches that control the flow of electricity and thus the computation process of a computer. The semiconductors for these new Antminer rigs are sourced from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Limited (TSMC). The rig will utilize 5nm (N5) Fin Field-Effect Transistor (FinFET) semiconductors, which facilitates the electronic connections and hashing within the ASIC miner. Semiconductors follow Moore’s Law, under which the number of components per integrated circuit doubles each year. Learn More About the Bitcoin Mining And The Rig Markets (https://miningstore.com/understanding-the-bitcoin-mining-rig-market/) ## Apple CEO Owns Bitcoin, Meek Mill Wants Bitcoin Paycheck Like Money Man Apple CEO, Tim Cook, stated that he owns bitcoin and other cryptocurrency assets in a recent interview with the Dealbook online summit. When prompted by the reporter, Mr. Cook responded that he owns some bitcoin and other cryptocurrency and that he felt it could be reasonable for others to invest in bitcoin as part of a diversified portfolio. He did not provide financial advice or speak on behalf of Apple but rather expressed that he personally owned bitcoin. Following the recent news that Empire Records paid Money Man $1M in bitcoin for his advance, Meek Mill has stated that he desires to be paid in bitcoin for his next tour. Rappers join professional athletes, actors, CEOs, members of Congress, prominent investors and traders, and other notable public figures in the quest to acquire bitcoin rather than USD as compensation for labor. ## Bitcoin ETFs Continue to Progress Through the Approval Process Grayscale has filed with the New York Stock Exchange to convert Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And the Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BTF) was approved and is now listed on NASDAQ. As bitcoin-related ETFs progress through the regulatory framework, two important things will happen. First, we will learn important lessons from observing how the federal agencies interact with these new bitcoin financial entities. Second, and more importantly, bitcoin miners and mining companies will benefit from the additional demand created by these large financial institutions. As first recipients of the new money supply, miners may choose to hold and restrict the velocity at which bitcoin reaches funds, banks, exchanges and other institutional buyers. ## Network Health & Hashrate ## Bitcoin Price Hits All-Time High Again This week, bitcoin reached a new ATH of $68,738.57 as funds, banks, pensions, and other institutional players continue to search for a hedge to inflation. Inflation, as measured by the CPI, has exceeded 6%, its highest rate in the last 30 years. The price of the CPI energy index has increased by 30% for the first time since 2005. ## Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics --- # Biden administration has stated its desire to expand and extend clean energy tax credits. Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/biden-administration-has-stated-its-desire-to-expand-and-extend-clean-energy-tax-credits/ ## MiningStore’s Report on Bitcoin Mining and Renewable Energy MiningStore is a Bitcoin mining company powered by Wind and Grid energy. Each week, our VIP newsletter will rehash current events from around the world and how those events affect bitcoin miners and renewable energy producers. Table of Contents - Mining News Brief - Wind And Solar Adoption In The U.S. - What Is Surplus Energy? - What Is Stranded Energy? - Bitcoin Around The World Network Health and Hash Rate - Data Sources - Bitcoin Network Grows Despite - Prohibition - Renewable Energy and Flare-Powered - Mining Mining Media - Article: JP Baric on wealth building - Documentary: “This Machine Greens” ## Mining News Brief This week, we will begin by introducing several recent events that give context to our new email series. Most notably, the Build Back Better agenda, how Bitcoin mining can mitigate the financial risk of losing surplus or stranded energy, and the growth in global Bitcoin adoption despite China’s prohibitions. 1 ## Wind And Solar Adoption In The U.S. As part of its Build Back Better agenda, the Biden administration has stated its desire to “expand and extend” clean energy tax credits. The White House has seen particular promise in wind power following the unprecedented level of wind turbine capacity installed in 2020. 2 The Department of Energy has projected that total wind capacity will exceed 400 GW across 48 states by 2050. 3 In addition to its support for wind power, the Executive has stated that solar energy is our “cheapest and fastest-growing source of clean energy” and that solar energy alone could power “45% or more of the total U.S. electricity use by 2050”. 4 ## Bitcoin Around The World Sovereign nations around the world continue to acquire bitcoin, legalize bitcoin and discuss new bitcoin legislation. ### United States Bitcoin mining companies in the United States continue to profit from China’s prohibition and the resulting increase in network distribution. Genesis Digital Assets, an industrial-scale Bitcoin mining company with a total hash rate exceeding 3.3 Exahashes (EH/s), raised $431 million in “the largest known funding round announced by a bitcoin mining company.” 5 Another announcement came from Blockstream in August, in which the company raised “$210 million as part of Series B financing on a valuation of $3.2 billion” to accelerate its Bitcoin mining efforts, scale the Liquid Network, and continue the development of its enterprise-grade mining technology. 6 ### El Salvador Bitcoin is legal tender in El Salvador and accompanies the U.S. dollar as dual-currencies of the sovereign nation. Citizens may pay taxes in bitcoin. Additionally, companies and businesses in El Salvador must accept bitcoin as payment for goods and services. 7 More than one-third of El Salvador’s citizens actively use Chivo, the government-provided bitcoin wallet. 8 In less than 3 weeks, Chivo’s user base has exceeded 2.1 million people, more than any bank in El Salvador. 9 ### Ukraine Shortly after El Salvador, Ukraine passed a law with nearly unanimous support to legalize bitcoin and establish a regulatory regime to oversee bitcoin businesses activities. Ukrainian government officials plan to make bitcoin legal tender by 2023, recognizing its potential to be “the dominant financial structure.” ### Laos Policymakers in Laos amended language in the country’s cryptocurrency laws to permit several companies to mine and trade Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. Six companies will begin mining and trading using the country’s vast supply of renewable energy. 11 ### United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates’ securities and commodities regulator reached an agreement to permit the trading of cryptocurrencies within the Dubai World Trade Center Authority’s “free zone”. The trade center authority has the power to issue approvals and business licenses for cryptocurrency activities within its jurisdiction. 12 ### China China has issued one of its most comprehensive statements on cryptocurrency regulation to date, continuing the strict prohibition on immutable technologies. 13 The Peoples Bank of China echoed the prohibition on the grounds that cryptocurrency transactions “endanger individual’s assets.” 14 Despite those claims, the Chinese government continues to develop plans for the widespread implementation of a digital yuan. 15 ## What Is Surplus Electricity? Investors and developers will continue to construct government-subsidized wind and solar projects. Some of these newly constructed projects are set to add hundreds or thousands of megawatts of production capacity. Production capacity is defined as “the maximum level of electric power (electricity) that a power plant can supply at a specific point in time under certain conditions.” 16 Additional wind and solar production capacity is certainly promising, but also exacerbates a problem already faced by the grid. A publication from Yale’s School of The Environment frames this problem in the following quote. “For years, the stumbling block for making renewable energy practical and dependable has been how to store electricity for days when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.“ 17 Renewable energy production is dynamic in nature, with peaks and troughs throughout the day and night. 18 At times, the grid can not accommodate renewable energy supply, leaving producers with a surplus. Surplus energy that is not consumed immediately is lost. ## What Is Stranded Electricity? A stranded energy asset is one that the grid cannot accommodate. For example, take large-scale wind and solar projects, which are typically constructed in rural areas with favorable weather conditions. Unfortunately, these locations come with tradeoffs, including insufficient load and transmission capacity near the project. This energy is considered to be a stranded energy asset unless another source of demand is available. Bitcoin miners can solve this problem due to their mobility and rapid deployment time. “Bitcoin miners can locate themselves anywhere and are perfectly positioned to exploit stranded energy assets or feed off of waste energy.” 19 As wind and solar projects achieve funding and production capacity, stranded energy sites can benefit from the implementation of bitcoin mining machines. Michael Saylor described the relationship between Bitcoin mining and stranded energy assets in the following tweet. “#Bitcoin mining converts wasted & stranded energy into digital energy, the natural successor to chemical & electrical energy. It can be managed by any computer, transferred anywhere at the speed of light, and lasts forever, thereby improving our climate, economy & power grid.” 20 ## BioStar Renewables Case Study BioStar Renewables is a solar energy farm in California. The project owners were at risk of losing millions of dollars in tax credits because the local power grid could not accommodate their electricity. Our team installed portable ASIC containers to mine bitcoin with BioStar’s stranded energy. BioStar’s tax credits were secured, additional revenue was generated, and an entire MW of solar energy was saved by routing it to the mining operation. Read The Case Study ## Network Health and Hash Rate In addition to The Miner’s Brief, the following sources help to show the state of the Bitcoin network as it reacts to macroeconomic events week over week. Glassnode’s Core Miner Pulse contains metrics related to hash rate, revenue, and block production on a daily and weekly schedule.21 Clark Moody Bitcoin is a dashboard that monitors mining economics, chain security, and difficulty retargeting in live time. 22 The Bitcoin network has become cleaner and more distributed in 2021 YTD. The total network hash rate has recovered nearly 70% since China’s ban on mining in May 2021. At this point, we know that the network’s recovery has been largely powered by renewable energy sources, but the numbers vary. At the beginning of June 2021, a report estimated that “39% of proof-of-work mining is performed using renewable energy.” 23 That proportion of the network using wind and solar has increased substantially since Chinese miners operating on coal power were forced to cease operations. Flare mining has received additional attention over the past few weeks as a viable source of renewable energy that could be used to power bitcoin miners with otherwise wasted energy. 24 ## Mining Media ### New Article By JP Baric Bitcoin isn’t a get-rich-quick scheme. It’s a wealth-building tool. In his newest article, MiningStore Founder and CEO, JP Baric, identifies how government-controlled currency is a weak store of value and therefore limited in its capacity to help individuals build their wealth. JP notes, in part, that “Money no longer is equal to value created, and most of us trade our valuable time for dollars because we believe that those dollars will continue to have value in the future.” Bitcoin, on the other hand, offers true property rights and the opportunity to save in a manner far superior to that offered by fiat currency. ### New Documentary: This Machine Greens This Machine Greens premiered online this week. The video “dispels many of the misconceptions about Bitcoin mining and “makes a compelling case of Bitcoin as a net positive for the environment” in an attempt to finally end Bitcoin energy consumption FUD. --- # Bitcoin Mining As A Carbon Management System Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/bitcoin-mining-as-a-carbon-management-system/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief ## Bitcoin Mining As A Carbon Management System As we stated last week, bitcoin miners will seek the lowest cost electricity within reason to power their operations. Many miners travel to remote locations to procure competitive electricity rates from stranded wind and solar farms, which often generate electricity that the grid cannot accommodate. Other miners have developed innovative solutions that allow them to convert otherwise wasted electricity into mining capacity. In this sense, bitcoin mining can be thought of as a carbon management system, which the Department of Energy (DOE) plans to subsidize with its newest grant from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. Under the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill, the Department of Energy is granted over $60 billion to “deliver a more equitable clean energy future for the American people by… building the technologies of tomorrow.” According to Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm, that grant of taxpayer money “includes over $10 billion to deploy effective carbon reduction and removal technologies.” Administrative agencies, like the Department of Energy, regularly solicit information and comments from investors, developers, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, NGOs, and potentially affected communities to guide the administrative process. On December 6, the DOE released a request for information regarding “further innovation, demonstration, and large-scale deployment of carbon management solutions are needed to reach the Biden Administration’s goals of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035 and a net-zero-carbon economy by 2050.” Miners are portable and profitable carbon management systems that can assist the U.S. in achieving its goal of carbon-free electricity by 2035 and a net-zero carbon economy by 2025. This is a perfect time for bitcoin miners to respond and explain to the DOE that mining operations can mitigate carbon emissions. For an example of how bitcoin mining can mitigate carbon emissions, consider the following case study. MiningStore built and managed a cryptocurrency mining facility for a company called PRTI, which is on a mission to efficiently demanufacture a portion of the 317-million tires that are disposed of in the United States every year. The demanufacturing process breaks down tires into oil, syngas, carbon, and steel – commodities that can be sold or converted into clean energy. PRTI exists to recycle tires, a purpose that we can all agree is valuable and necessary, but that process has an unfortunate negative externality. Excess methane is also created during the process and has contributed to the facility’s carbon footprint. Luckily, we were able to capture the methane and convert it into electricity, which now powers mining computers. This is a perfect example of how mining operations can serve as a tool for carbon management Read The Full PRTI Case Study Here ## Texas City Adds Bitcoin Mining To The Grid In February 2021, the Texas grid almost failed. Today, more than 130,000 residents of the city of Denton require approximately 275 megawatts of electricity at peak demand. Denton Municipal Electric, the city’s electric utility company, has signed a deal with bitcoin mining company, Core Scientific, to double the entire city’s capacity demand. The general manager of Denton Municipal Electric, Antonio Puente, said the following: “From a Denton Municipal Electric standpoint, we’re in the business of selling energy… [Core Scientific] is bringing a load profile that we felt would be beneficial to our ratepayers overall.” Moreover, the additional demand and consumption from bitcoin miners will not take effect all at one time. Rather, it will be phased in over the course of seven years. Great care has been taken to ensure that the miners can be “interruptible,” meaning that they can be powered down to accommodate residential and commercial energy demand. Core Scientific has also pledged to buy renewable energy credits (RECs), which subsidize the production of renewable energy and disincentivize the production of energy from fossil fuels. RECs have an interesting effect on the price of electricity. During periods of low demand, electricity prices can turn negative in real terms, which has resulted in coal-fired plants being pushed out of business sooner than anticipated. If Denton had not entered into this deal, they probably would have had to increase electricity rates to repay the “$7 million-per-year costs of servicing debts incurred during the outages last February, when the Denton utility was forced to spend more than $100 million excess for electricity.” Interestingly, key pricing sections of the power purchase agreement were redacted, which means that the public and citizens of Denton cannot determine the price of electricity that the municipality offered to bitcoin miners. ## Network Health & Hashrate ## Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics --- # Crypto Market Cap Exceeds 3 Trillion USD Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/crypto-market-cap-exceeds-3-trillion-usd/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief ## New Data From U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Amplifies Inflation Concerns The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its monthly economic news release summarizing the consumer price index. These reports contain several different indexes (Energy Index, CPI and CPI-U) that each measure a particular collection of goods. ### What Is The Energy Index? The Bureau measures price changes in the Energy Index, which is comprised of energy commodities and energy services, to gauge inflation in the energy markets. The energy index has increased by 30% over the last year, its largest yearly increase since September 2005. Energy commodity prices (gasoline and fuel oils) have increased by 49.5% over the last year. And energy utility service prices (electricity and piped gas) have increased by 11.2% over the last year. The rightmost column below depicts the unadjusted annual inflation for period ending in October 2021. ### What Causes Inflated Energy Prices? President Biden has publicly blamed energy price increases on market manipulation, price gouging, supply chain issues, or a combination thereof. In a recent statement, the President requested the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate market manipulation and price gouging in sectors with abnormally high levels of inflation present. He also alleged that some price increases were to be expected because rekindling globally interwoven supply chains following COVID-19 government shutdowns is no simple task. Market manipulation and anti-competitiveness, price gouging, and global supply chain issues exist and contribute to increases in the price of goods. These issues are salient, but inflation can also be caused by increases in the money supply. Accordingly, it is important to also note how federal spending and central bank tools of expansionary monetary policy erode the purchasing power of USDs over time. For example, the Federal Reserve previously required deposit banks to maintain reserves in a vault or in a federal deposit account. But under the new “ample reserves” regime the reserve requirement has dropped to 0%. We can view M1 to visualize how rapidly the supply of money has increased since the new policy was implemented. M1 includes currency outside the Federal Reserve System, demand deposits at commercial banks, and consumer checking and savings accounts. The charts below show M1 over different periods of time. Interestingly, M1 was at $3,7464 billion when the ample reserve regime was effected in March of 2020. Most recently, in September 2021, M1 was $19,862.2 billion. ### The Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) The federal government most commonly references the CPI index and claims that 2% CPI inflation is healthy for the economy. But data from October has revealed that CPI inflation reached a 30-year high, increasing 6.2% over the last year. Annual CPI inflation of 6.2% is the largest yearly increase since the end of November 1990. Moreover, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) – which aggregates and estimates the price of a basket of consumer goods in a hypothetical U.S. city – increased 0.9% in October alone. ### Why Does Inflation Impact Everyone Differently? The CPI and CPI-U only measure the price of a hypothetical market basket. However, the contents of a real market basket will be unique to each consumer. So, an important concept to note is: inflation levels vary by person and geographic location, and will fluctuate based on which goods a particular individual in a particular place chooses to buy. For example, some regions in the U.S. have seen even higher levels of inflation than the already alarming 6.2% increase in the CPI. ## Federal Treasury Bond Yields Decline As Volatility Increases The U.S. Treasury bonds market, which represents more than $22 trillion USD, is experiencing volatility and declining yields. Furthermore, a recent S&P credit rating report graded Florida state government bonds at AAA, a better rating than federal bonds or any other state’s bonds. The S&P justified their findings in the following statement: “Florida’s GO bonds are eligible to be rated above the sovereign because we believe the state can maintain better credit characteristics than the U.S. in a stress scenario.” This comes as no surprise considering that real yields have been trending negative for some time now. ## U.S. Senators Propose Amendment To Infrastructure Bill’s Cryptocurrency Tax Provision U.S. Senators, Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming) and Ron Wyden (Oregon), have delivered on a promise from earlier this year in which Senator Lummis of Wyoming pledged to “responsibly address” digital asset provisions contained in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework (BIF). The Senators desire to alter language in the BIF that would erroneously categorize miners, wallet developers and other software engineers as “brokers” under 26 U.S. Code § 6050I. Section 60501 applies when a business receives $10,000 or more in cash (paper or digital), at which time the recipient must collect the following information: the name, address and tax identification number (TIN) of the cash sender, the amount of cash received and the date and nature of the transaction. Senators Lummis and Wyden believe that this burdensome provision would stifle growth in the U.S. cryptocurrency economy and lead to an exodus of bitcoin miners, talented developers, and innovative companies who would prefer to relocate to a more favorable international jurisdiction. Wyden has said this proposed amendment is designed to clarify that IRS reporting requirements do not apply to “individuals developing blockchain technology and wallets” and it will also protect miners from any additional requirements. ## Network Health & Hashrate ## Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics ## Cryptocurrency Market Cap Hit $3 Trillion USD This past week, the total market capitalization of all cryptocurrencies exceeded $3 trillion at one point. This occurred in part because the President and members of Congress continue to assert that further increasing the money supply through a multi-trillion-dollar spending package is the only way to combat inflation. The absurdity of that notion, coupled with the prospect of negative real yields in the bond markets, has led many corporations to reduce the amount of USD in their treasuries. As more companies seek to add bitcoin to their balance sheets, the surge of capital into bitcoin and other cryptocurrency markets will likely continue. ## What Does Taproot Mean For Bitcoin Miners? Taproot is Bitcoin soft fork that was activated in block #709632. The upgrade increases transaction output privacy and efficiency with the Lightning Network. Taproot introduces a new address type where a simple transaction output is indistinguishable from a multi-signature transaction output. Parties to a bitcoin transaction can not discriminate based on a particular type of output because they all look the same. Taproot also reduces the amount of data required for each block which will allow for more transactions to be included within each block. Bitcoin miners generally support the Taproot upgrade, at least more than they supported SegWit, which received substantial opposition from bitcoin miners. Miners understand that the speed, efficiency and volume of on-chain transactions will increase due to Taproot’s additional privacies and data size reduction. --- # Cypherpunk Holdings Enters Agreement With MiningStore Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/cypherpunk-holdings-enters-agreement-with-miningstore/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief ### Cypherpunk Holdings Enters Agreement With MiningStore Cypherpunk Holdings is a sector leader for cryptocurrency, privacy and cryptography focused investments and now mining. The company recently announced an agreement for a large-scale hosted cryptocurrency mining operation with MiningStore. Under this agreement, Cypherpunk has purchased 25 Bitmain S19J Pro miners for USD $300,000 which produce 100 terahashes per second each. MiningStore will host and operate the machines in Iowa, USA for Cypherpunk pursuant to a managed mining and profit sharing agreement. Tony Guoga, Cypherpunk CEO, stated “This investment in cryptocurrency mining helps Cypherpunk diversify its investment portfolio and is intended to allow Cypherpunk to continue to accumulate cryptocurrency assets. Cypherpunk is in a position to be a supplier of Bitcoin (BTC) and not just a buyer.” (Press Release) ### Houston-Based Retirement Fund Adds Bitcoin To Its Portfolio NYDIG has facilitated the first investment in digital assets by a public pension plan in the United States. The pension fund, for the City of Houston’s firefighters, HHRF, has chosen to purchase bitcoin and ether for its portfolio. (HHRF’s Bitcoin Purchase) ### Bakkt And Mastercard Partner To Increase Virtual Currency Accessibility Bakkt is a leading virtual currency financial institution that seeks to bring transparency and trust to digital assets. Bakkt’s partnership with Mastercard will enable consumers to buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency, deliver unique, crypto-centric loyalty opportunities, and streamline issuance of branded crypto debit and credit cards. (Company Announcement) ### How To Avoid A Bitcoin Mining Noise Complaint A Bitcoin mining operation in Tennessee remains active despite a letter from the county Planning Administrator demanding its shutdown. The facility is the subject of a civil lawsuit filed in August in which the owner of adjacent property claimed that noise from the mine created a nuisance. (Local Coverage of The Case) The law generally states that a property owner has the right to use and enjoy their property without unreasonable interference. Moving forward, this case could serve as a gentle reminder for bitcoin miners to take care in not disturbing nearby property owners. Luckily, many companies have realized this issue could arise and have prepared specially-designed containers that significantly reduce the sound of mining. ## Interested In Bitcoin Mining Containers? ## Network Health and Hash Rate ### Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics ### Public Bitcoin Mining Companies Plan to 4X Hash Rate The world’s largest public mining companies are planning to quadruple their hashrate. Riot and Marathon are planning to aggressively expand their mining capabilities by several multiples. (Compass Mining Memo) ### What Is Bitcoin’s Daily Moving Average? Moving averages can be useful to determine the relative support and resistance levels of a particular asset based on its price history. (Investopedia)To calculate Bitcoin’s Daily Moving Average (DMA), take the arithmetic mean of its closing price over a specific number of days in the past; for example, over the previous 15, 30, 100, or 200 days. Bitcoin is currently trading at more than 100% of its 15-DMA and 138% of its 200-DMA. (BitOda) ## Mining Media ### The Digital Gold Podcast Check out the Digital Gold podcast by JP Baric, which dives into the world of cryptocurrency and explores how digital currency is changing the way the world thinks about money through conversations with thought-leaders in the space. ### New Episode of Barn Talk: How to Run A Successful Bitcoin Mining Farm Bitcoin mining expert, ​Magnus Anderson, recently joined the Barn Talk youtube channel to discuss methods to successfully operate a bitcoin mining farm. --- # El Salvadors Chivo Wallet Offers Fuel Subsidy Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/el-salvadors-chivo-wallet-offers-fuel-subsidy/ Table of Contents Mining News Brief - El Salvador’s Chivo Wallet Offers Fuel Subsidy - Brazilians Set to Vote on Cryptocurrency Bill - DOJ to Launch National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team - SEC Approves One ETF, Delays Others Network Health and Hash Rate - Realized Market Cap Hits ATH - Cryptocurrency Transaction Volume Increases in Europe, Asia, and Oceania Mining Media - Article: Social Tokens and the Future of Brand Equity by JP Baric ## Mining News Brief ### El Salvador’s Chivo Wallet Offers Fuel Subsidy Chivo has offered to subsidize the purchase of fuel made with BTC. (President Bukele’s Tweet) “As part of its efforts, the country offers consumers a discount on fuel purchases of $0.20 per gallon they pay with the country’s Chivo wallet.” (CryptoInfo) ### Brazilians Set To Vote On Crypto Bill Brazil approved a cryptocurrency regulation bill for presentation last week. The nation is preparing to vote on Bill 2.303/15 following the anticipated presentation to the Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies. Brazil’s Federal Deputy, Aureo Ribeiro, made the following statement regarding Bill 2.303/15: “With this asset, you will be able to buy a house, a car, go to McDonald’s to buy a hamburger – it will be a currency in the country as it happened in other countries.” (Yahoo Finance) ### U.S. Department of Justice to Launch the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team U.S. Deputy Attorney General, Lisa Monaco, announced two new Justice Department enforcement initiatives targeting “cryptocurrencies and government contractors who fail to report cyber breaches.” (Reuters) In particular, the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Tram (NCET) will focus on “crimes committed by “virtual currency exchanges and mixing and tumbling services” and assist in recovering “assets lost to fraud and extortion.” (Wall Street Journal) ### SEC Approves One ETF, Delays Others A recently approved ETF provides investors with exposure to public bitcoin mining companies. Several more are pending approval. If approved, these Bitcoin ETFs will flood the public markets for mining and the network itself with capital, benefiting miners and users alike. The SEC Will Not Ban Cryptocurrencies Before we discuss the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s position on ETFs, let’s consider Chairman’s remarks this past week. Chairman Gensler reiterated to Congress this week that the SEC has no plans to ban cryptocurrencies. (News BTC) Gensler’s remarks were similar to statements made by Chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. It should be noted that neither the Fed nor the SEC can ban cryptocurrency. Gensler hinted at this notion in his response to the question of whether he intended to ban cryptocurrencies. “No, that would be up to Congress.” (Newsweek) The Volt Crypto Industry Revolution and Tech ETF The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved The Volt Crypto Industry Revolution and Tech ETF. (Business Insider) Volt Equity will invest its assets in companies that “hold a majority of their net assets in bitcoin on their balance sheet” or “derive a majority of their revenue or profits directly from mining, lending, transacting in bitcoin, or manufacturing bitcoin mining equipment” or a combination thereof. (EDGAR SEC) Volt Equity’s prospectus states that it will invest at least 80% of its net assets in Bitcoin Industry Revolution Companies. (Fox Business) Importantly, the fund will not directly invest in bitcoin, Canadian ETFs, private funds, or GBTC. (EDGAR SEC 2) Bitcoin-Based ETFsThe SEC also pushed back its deadlines for review of the 19b-4 bitcoin-based ETF applications to November 21st-December 24th. At that point, the Commission will either approve or disapprove the proposed rule change for Global X Bitcoin Trust, Kryptoin Bitcoin ETF, Valkyrie XBTO Bitcoin Futures Fund, and WisdomTree Bitcoin Trust. (Business Insider) The following notice was issued to Cboe BZX Exchange, Inc., one of several applicants whose review deadline was postponed by the SEC. It stated in part, “The Commission is extending the time period for approving or disapproving the proposed rule change for an additional 60 days.” (Notice of Designation of a Longer Period for Commission Action) The primary concern with a bitcoin-based ETF is market manipulation. We have already seen that public figures, whales, miners, and market makers can exert considerable influence over bitcoin’s price in the short term. (CBS News) Bitcoin Futures ETFs A bitcoin futures ETF holds contracts that represent bitcoin. Accordingly, futures ETFs are investment funds that must file under the Investment Company Act of 1940. (Yahoo Finance) Gary Gensler has openly supported the notion of bitcoin futures ETFs over bitcoin-based ETFs. (Coindesk) Several bitcoin futures ETF applicants – ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, Invesco Bitcoin Strategy ETF, VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF, and Valkyrie Bitcoin Strategy ETF – could receive a decision on their applications by the end of October 2021. (Bloomberg) Ethereum Futures ETFs No bitcoin-related ETFs were denied by the SEC. On the other hand, Proshares and VanEck requested to rescind their application for Ether futures ETFs a mere two days after filing. It is presumed that the SEC informed the companies that the applications were not likely to be approved. (Blockworks) ## Network Health and Hash Rate ### Realized Market Cap Hits ATH Realized capitalization “values each UTXO based on the price when it was last moved, as opposed to its current value” and is essentially the average cost basis for all bitcoin on the network. (Glassnode Academy) The realized market capitalization of bitcoin just broke another all-time high and surpassed $400 billion. With the realized market capitalization breaking $400 billion, the bitcoin realized price is at $21,250. (Bitcoin Magazine) ### Crypto Transaction Volume Increases in Europe, Asia, and Oceania Central, Northern, & Western Europe has the biggest cryptocurrency economy in the world. In the last year, members of this region have received over $1 trillion worth of cryptocurrency, representing 25% of global activity. (Chainalysis) But also, crypto transaction activity increased by 706% in Central and Southern Asia and Oceania. From July 2020 to June 2021, the value of the transactions in these countries – including India, Pakistan, and Vietnam – amounted to “$572.5 billion, or 14% of the global transaction value.” (Technoyo) ## Mining Media ### Article: Social Tokens and the Future of Brand Equity by JP Baric In his most recent article, JP Baric discusses how his experience in the digital ad tracking and auction space taught him about influencer marketing and content curation. JP believes that Social Tokens are a native application of Web 3 and create a collective pool of liquid capital in software form, which will provide content consumers with intimate access to creators’ lives and financial upside in their intellectual property. --- # Increasing Support For Wind Power And Efficient Bitcoin Mining Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/increasing-support-for-wind-power-and-efficient-bitcoin-mining/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief ## High Levels of Public Support For Wind Power Wind power is supported by a large percentage of the U.S. population. In fact, public sentiment for renewable energy sources exceeds that of legacy energy sources in the U.S., according to research from Canary Media and the Pew Research Center. As more U.S. citizens support renewable energy, and more wind and solar powered farms are constructed, the need for bitcoin miners to serve as a buffer between those sources and the grid will likely increase. ## The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Is Now Operational The world’s largest offshore wind farm, located 89 km (55.3 miles) off the Yorkshire coast in the North Sea, is now operational. The company that manages and operates the farm, Ørsted, is known for its mission to develop, construct, and operate offshore and onshore wind farms, solar farms, energy storage facilities, in order to provide clean energy products to millions of customers. According to a recent company announcement, “When fully operational, Hornsea 2’s 165 8 MW Siemens Gamesa wind turbines will be capable of generating 1.32 GW of clean electricity – taking the title of ‘world’s largest operating offshore wind farm’ from its sibling project Hornsea 1. Together, the two projects will be capable of providing enough power for well over 2.3 million homes.” ## Department of Interior (DOI) Advances Three Solar Projects in California The Department of the Interior (DOI) announced its approval of two solar projects, the Arica and Victory Pass projects, in California this week. A third project, the Oberon project, is expected to be completed soon. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) expects Arica and Victory pass projects will generate a total of up to 465 megawatts of electricity that will power approximately 132,000 homes. The Oberon project is a 500-megawatt photovoltaic solar project that the BLM anticipates will generate up to 500 megawatts of renewable energy that could power approximately 142,000 homes. The BLM also requested information for utility-scale solar energy development on nearly “90,000 acres of public land located across Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.” ## Network Health & Hashrate ## Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics ## Cooling Bitcoin Miners Can Substantially Increase Efficiency The efficiency of a bitcoin mining computer is one of the most important metrics to consider when deploying and running a mining operation. More efficient miners will have a longer lifespan than their less efficient counterparts. This is because efficient miners require less energy to generate each hash. The newest and most powerful miners can exceed 100 terahashes per second, so even slight increases in efficiency really add up. According to Braiins Insights, the temperature of a bitcoin mining machine substantially impacts its efficiency. “… we can say that the efficiency gets much worse as the temperature gets hotter (i.e. the J/TH increases).” J/Th is the measurement that bitcoin miners use to determine how much energy is required to generate each terahash. Again, lower J/Th is preferred because that means less energy is required for each hash. Braiins found that “power consumption starts at 2.5kW in the 20oC and reaches 3.55kW in the 75oC range.” So, higher temperature miners require more electricity, which renders miners less efficient. In terms of efficiency, a miner operating at 20oC will have an efficiency of 24 J/TH whereas a miner operating at 75oC wil have an efficiency of 34 J/TH. That said, immersion and other forms of cooling can help improve the overall efficiency of miners, especially within the Antminer X19 family of miners. “Lower temperatures are directly correlated to lower power consumption and better efficiency to a greater extent than with previous generations of Antminers.” ## What is Bitcoin Sovereign Supply? Glassnode Insights defines Sovereign Supply as the total number of bitcoins held by individuals and entities outside of “exchange reserves.” The metric hit an all-time high this week, exceeding 16.34 million bitcoin held outside of exchanges. This is particularly interesting when coupled with the fact that many bitcoin mining operations and companies have begun to hold more coins and release less into circulation. This “hodl” strategy decreases the number of new bitcoins that miners release to the exchanges. So, less bitcoin flowing into exchanges from miners and more bitcoin is leaving exchanges to be held by sovereign individuals and entities. It will be interesting to see how these numbers fluctuate as private key management becomes less intimidating and more people are willing to withdraw their bitcoin from exchanges. --- # Less Than 10 Percent Of Bitcoin Remain Unmined Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/less-than-10-percent-bitcoin-remain-unmined/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief ## Less Than 10 Percent Of Bitcoin Remain Unmined Less than 10% of all bitcoin remains to be mined. The other 90+% has already been mined and is currently held by miners, exchanges, corporations, financial institutions, countries, and other bitcoin investors. ### What Is An Issuance Schedule? As you may know, Bitcoin is an absolutely scarce asset, like time itself, meaning that the total number of bitcoins will never exceed 21,000,000. In addition to the property of absolute scarcity, Bitcoin is governed by fixed monetary policy and a predictable issuance schedule. But what does that mean? ### What Are The Benefits Of A Fixed Issuance Schedule? To understand the benefits of fixed monetary policy and predictable issuance schedule, let us consider the alternative. Equities, commodities and other assets do not have fixed issuance schedules in the same manner that Bitcoin does. In the equity markets, when the price of a share of stock increases, the issuing corporation will almost certainly issue more stock to meet that increased demand. The same generally holds true for bonds, commodities, and every other asset in the world. It also holds true for money itself. When an asset issuer can freely increase the supply of its asset, the correlation between demand and price for that asset will decline. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has a fixed issuance schedule. No one can make more bitcoin than is allowed for the current reward era and no one can increase the rate at which the reward is released to miners. That means demand and price are much more closely correlated for Bitcoin than other asset classes. With over 90% of bitcoin already mined, and many bitcoin now held at addresses that are considered to be highly illiquid, the correlation between demand and price will likely continue to increase. Some refer to this phenomenon as “supply shock.” ### What Is Reward Halving? We are currently in Reward Era #4 (also known as “subsidy epoch”), under which the reward per block mined is equal to 6.25BTC. Reward halvings occur every 210,000 blocks and the next halving is expected to occur at block number 840,000. At that point, the new reward will be 3.125BTC per block mined. At the time of this writing, the network is currently on block number 715,272. Refer to the chart below to understand bitcoin’s issuance schedule and realize that no other asset issuers abide by such a schedule. Bitcoin is dictated and governed by math, not by the whims of governments, board of directors, commodity producers, or other asset issuers. ## Network Health & Hashrate ## Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics --- # Square CEO, Jack Dorsey, has interest in developing an open and collaborative bitcoin mining system Source: https://miningstore.com/weekly-rehash-report/square-ceo-jack-dorsey-has-interest-in-developing-an-open-and-collaborative-bitcoin-mining-system/ Email subscribe ## Mining News Brief Square CEO, Jack Dorsey, tweeted about his interest in developing an open and collaborative bitcoin mining system. (Jack’s Tweet) “Square holds approximately 8,027 #bitcoin, acquired at an aggregate purchase price of $220,000,000 and an average price per bitcoin of $27,407.” (BTC Magazine) ## The U.S. Federal Government Plans To Lease And Develop Offshore Wind Farms In Executive Order 14008, President Biden authorized the Department of the Interior to partner with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) on a commitment to deploy 30GW of offshore wind by 2030. (Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad) The Biden Administration now looks to jumpstart offshore energy projects by leasing and developing wind offshore wind farms. (White House Fact Sheet) The government plans to lease seven wind farms in the Gulf of Maine, New York Bight, Central Atlantic, and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as offshore the Carolinas, California, and Oregon by 2030. (BOEM Secretary Haaland’s Announcement) This ambitious project would meet the 30GW production capacity criteria contained in Executive Order 14008 and generate enough power for more than 10 million homes. (Forbes Breaking News) According to the BOEM’s offshore wind proposed leasing schedule, the projects will create as many as 80,000 jobs from Q1 2022 – Q3 2024. (BOEM Proposal) ## Putin Acknowledges Crypto As Russia Drops USD From Its Sovereign Wealth Fund Russia has announced that it will drop U.S. dollar assets from its sovereign wealth fund. (CNBC) Vladimir Putin and the Russian government have been considering alternatives to trading in dollars since the U.S. levied sanctions in 2014. (Bloomberg) This past week, Putin stated that cryptocurrency “has the right to exist and can be used as a means of payment” indicating a potential tolerance for bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. (Putin’s Interview) ## Venezuela’s Largest Airport Accepts Bitcoin Russian and European tourists to Venezuela have sought to pay with digital currencies. (Invezz) In response to that demand, Venezuela’s largest airport has revealed plans to allow the purchase of airline tickets using digital assets. (Venezuela News Source) Notably, Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world. (Wikipedia) But the 2014 oil crisis resulted in hyperinflation, supply shortages, and an exodus of human capital from Venezuela. (The GeGaLo Index) Considering Venezuela’s history of monetary instability, it will be interesting to see whether the government will use these vast oil reserves to power bitcoin mining operations in the future. ## Network Health and Hash Rate ### Fundamental Bitcoin Mining Metrics ### Bitcoin Price Nears An All-Time High ### U.S. Topples China As The Top Bitcoin Mining Country China has dominated BTC mining for the majority of the past decade, representing more than 70% of the total network hash rate at some times. However, sources have reported that more than 95% of the mining capacity left mainland China following the series of bitcoin and cryptocurrency bans. (BTC Warrior) According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, the U.S.’s hash rate share has increased from 4.20% to 35.40% from July 2020 to June 2021. (CBEC Index) ## Mining Media ### TikTok: Bitcoin Mining Can Reduce Carbon Emissions Watch how an oil producer in Utah is using otherwise wasted gas to mine bitcoin! Rather than burning the gas like usual, they reduced carbon emissions and increase profits. (TikTok) ### Video: Cruz Discusses Bitcoin Mining In Texas In a recent video, Senator Ted Cruz joined Bitcoiner, Jimmy Song, to discuss ESG concerns and the future of bitcoin mining in Texas. (Bitcoinist) “In five years I expect to see a dramatically different terrain with Bitcoin mining playing a significant role as strengthening and hardening the resistance of the grid.” (Statement by Ted Cruz) ---