Alex Busarov's Heatbit Trio revolutionizes home heating by converting bitcoin mining energy into heat.
Preston Pysh explores the innovative intersection of energy use, bitcoin mining, and home appliances with Alex Busarov, founder of Heatbit, which has developed the Trio—a bitcoin mining rig that also serves as a home heating device. This dual functionality converts mining energy into heat, potentially allowing homeowners to cover their electricity bills while heating their homes. The Trio integrates seamlessly into home environments with a low noise level of 40 decibels and addresses development challenges from supply chain disruptions to securing advanced mining chips. By decentralizing bitcoin mining, Heatbit empowers individuals to contribute to the process, enhancing the network's resilience and security, while its user-friendly software ensures accessibility for those without prior mining experience.
This podcast episode highlights Heatbit's Trio, an innovative device that combines bitcoin mining with home heating, emphasizing efficient energy use and the benefits of decentralizing mining. Alex's insights reveal the entrepreneurial challenges and broader implications of merging technology and energy to create a more resilient financial system.
00:00:00 - Intro
00:01:05 - The journey of creating the world's first Bitcoin-mining heater.
00:06:48 - The challenges faced in developing Heatbit One and Heatbit Trio.
00:10:24 - How the "heating-by-computing" principle works.
00:19:59 - The vision for placing a Bitcoin-mining device in every home.
00:24:42 - The future of decentralized Bitcoin mining.
00:30:57 - The environmental impact of traditional Bitcoin mining.
00:33:58 - Insights into the intersection of Bitcoin mining, home heating, and air purification.
Transcript:
(00:00) (00:00) hey everyone this episode is brought to you by river the place that I personally go to securely invest in Bitcoin with confidence and with zero fees sometimes people think that if it's a heater M and some electricity or some electric energy is going to go into heating and some is going to go into mining that's incorrect whatever goes into mining turns into heat the energy doesn't disappear it changes for so electric energy becomes heat you're using a valuable resource energy put two things at the same (00:36) time boy I'm excited to have this
(00:39) conversation Alex I've seen the hardware I've been around the hardware you and I have had quite a few conversations uh historically and I am thrilled to have this conversation for our audience to hear this so welcome to the show thank you thank you I'm I'm glad to you you said you've seen it uh you've seen it working uh but you didn't say that you've heard it because it was actually quite quiet so please I'm joh it is quiet and uh for anybody that's wanting
(01:04) (01:04) to know uh so first of all this is a mining rig that heats your house and uh you know it looks like a traditional dice almost like a Dyson uh air filter that you'd put in the corner of your room for people that uh haven't seen it or know what we're talking about and you're talking about how loud it was in on the website you have it listed that it's 40 DB which is the equivalent of somebody for people that don't know what 40 deel this is the equivalent of somebody Whispering of how quiet this is (01:37) so I would this is equivalent to what
(01:40) how loud a Dyson is correct uh as far as sound goes uh yeah yeah uh exactly we the way that we've thought about building um our devices like the trio uh which used to be called mini but that's another story um happy to cover at some point uh is it's it's it's going to be a home device a premium home device primarily so it's going to fit all the expectations and people expect that if you heat in your room you kind of need to be able to um sleep in that room sometimes right so
(02:11) (02:12) you need to be able to sleep next to it so it it cannot be loud and actually the whole way that he bit started um it started with with a bit of a noise um it was it was 20120 I was getting bored in my flat in Shanghai we were on on the lockdown the co started right I bought myself a toy uh which happened to be an ant minor s9k um and it's to play it wasn't to mind professionally in any capacity it was just in the toy um for me and I turn it on in my in my bedroom and really loud so they go up to 80 DB um yeah and (02:51) for people who don't know what you know
(02:53) the scale of the decibel 40 and 80 it's not like 80 is double or 40 right it's just number is a double but of the noise 80 is the noise that if you if you expose to 80 to an extended period of time it can actually damage your hearing yeah so you better not so kind of I I got got the ant mine it turn it on it got really loud and then they get it got really hot and then immediately the idea popped out that well if it wasn't that loud it would actually be a brilliant (03:21) heater and then you know the whole thing actually started I love it I love it um
(03:27) I'm just going to if people are watching this on on YouTube I am pulling up the website uh so that they can kind of see what this looks like because it's really slick like I don't know who your designer was when building this thing but I'll tell you what you guys had your act together um and so yeah people on YouTube you can see it's very cylindrical uh pretty much you know if you went and bought an air air filter it (03:53) looks like that it's about the same size
(03:55) as an air filter that you'd put in the corner of your room very Sleek very Sleek um but yeah so you're able to heat so you're looking at this very early days and um you're saying I'm just you know I need to heat this room anyway so I why don't I just turn that into money this basically the premise of the idea right so a lot of people have this misconception I want to clear it on every podcast any public speech that that I do um sometimes people think that (04:29) um if it's a heat M then then some electricity or some electric energy is going
(04:33) to go into heating and some is going to go into mining that's incorrect whatever goes into mining turns into heat right it's the just the law the energy doesn't doesn't uh disappear it changes for so electric energy becomes heat whether you use regular coil whether you use silicon chip doesn't really matter percentage wise is there hearing that Alex not to interrupt you but when they're hearing that they're (04:57) saying okay so the energy is plowed through the 5 nanom chips which is what you're using and it's converted that energy
(05:04) is converted into heat what percentage of that is turned into heat uh 100% 100% overall uh if like the more technically engineering client people would say well it's not technically 100 because there's a fan there's vibration there's light Etc first it's going to be a very tiny amount of that uh but secondly that also becomes heated top Point as well so wow all it's just all gravy then really what (05:33) you're getting at yeah it's it's it's just smart you're using think you're using a valuable resource energy put two things at the
(05:42) same time that's that's kind of smart so then the argument to the person who's hearing this is well you've got to heat your house for most people that's you know five six months out of the year or whatever it might be um and so if you're going to burn that energy to create heat why not do it and mine uh Bitcoin and and make money while (06:04) you're doing it is the argument correct yeah yeah exactly ways to think about it uh some people well you know less Bitcoin at clients they
(06:14) would think about it as oh I can get some um subsidy or you know cover part of my electric bill and that's fine you know depending on your power rate you'd have somewhere between 30 to Almost 100% of electricity bill covered um but then some more of the um you know more Bitcoin and client people would think well I'm just getting fre sets which is also an okay thing way an (06:40) okay way to think about it so yeah uh it makes sense you know it's just one of those things that just makes sense yeah what was one of the challenge in the early days so you get
(06:51) this idea and then it's like all right now I have to actually start building this thing and talk us through some of the early days of heat bit and some of the challenges that you faced with some of the early prototyping oh um so we actually went through a lot of the prototypes at some point the way that you develop Hardware is that you have a new prototype every (07:12) week or so like with some incremental changes and some of the bigger changes um the first version um that we that worked on it didn't even work as a prototype like it would just
(07:24) overheat uh the second kind of concept which also had like 100 different it um it was based on and I used ant Miner S9 um and we had so many problems with it it's it's unbelievable so starting from uh the fact that it was the co times and things like the supply chain wouldn't really work because some of the ships would not go some of the planes (07:52) would not fly it's just where do we get all the components you know um so and that led to a lot of delays uh Plus uh with Hardware uh even if you find a small problem um the time to fix it can take like
(08:07) three months even if it's small cuz first find out the problem then you fix it then you test it and then you change your molds then you change your production process then you change your Logistics like it's very different from software I tell you um so uh yeah the hardware is hard I think that's why it's called Hardware um and (08:29) you know give the weight of those things and you know I carried it in a lot of places I would call it heavy Weare sometimes as well uh see um yeah but the the other CH in terms of I mean drops aside in terms of the big
(08:42) challenges uh H thing is access to chips yeah that's something that took us quite a long time and that's one of the reasons we would built on and used Hardware at first as kind of a proof of concept we're like wait we're just going to build it we're going to bring something to the world (08:57) you know we if we have to use second hand we'll use second so that's when we we had the S9 so access to chips is a big thing getting access to chips uh a lot of the chip manufacturers would
(09:07) not sell the chips I've spoken to pretty much all of the chip or mining manufacturers uh like 90% of them all the biggest ones um because I lived in China uh I spoken to some that you probably never heard of I don't know if you ever heard of ebang as as a some yeah you know guys like that I spoke to and somehow you know the community is (09:29) actually s side that you can get access to you know the founders and the spos Fairly easily um but still no one would sell the chips but then
(09:37) we found the way and we managed to actually get the the um latest generation uh brand new Chips one the one major supplies and uh that's how we built the trio um I think apart from that it's um the safety right because it's it's not just a minor Min is an industrial device yeah right and you it's it's in the warehouse you have maintenance you have like people (10:02) overlooking it 24/7 um that's one environment when you build a home heza it's a very different environment where you have like cats and dogs you know with pet hair you know you have
(10:12) kids running around and it's very different uh robustness that you need and very different safety requirements that you got so these are the kind of things to to look out for and that's something that we work on lot to one of the things that I'm really Blown Away with is this 5 nanometer chip so this is size-wise for people this is like what (10:31) they have in iPhone 14s um very Advanced uh lithography process in order to create a 5 nanometer chip do you see uh obviously I think
(10:43) your connection like what you just said in China helped you be able to secure and and procure that do you find that with AI and everything that's taking place that be gaining access to these types of advanced chips is going to be difficult for miners moving forward or do you think that the demand is going to drive because there's going to be such a large demand for Bitcoin miners uh in (11:05) the future walk us through some of that Supply demand Dynamic with respect to the chips
(11:09) um so you you've got the structure of the market is that you've got the companies that design the chips and there are quite a few uh you've got the companies that actually manufacture the chips and this kind of lithography 5 n a meter and uh and smaller there's only two places that make them there's a couple more Fabs that are coming online in the US in the next few years but right now there's just one in South (11:35) Korea and and one in Taiwan and uh they have you know they're busy uh they have companies like apple like bitmain like many others
(11:45) competing uh for uh for the production time I imagine I don't know but I imagine when block is developing their 3 nanom chips they are having to compete with guys like bitmain and Apple and you know many others for the same Fab so that's not an easy task and you know thank God block is doing that so that they could you know kind of kind of provide and and sell the chips once once (12:11) they come um come on the market uh to help guys like us buil more devices um I think that's
(12:19) that's going to be wonderful that's that's a big thing that they're doing for for Bitcoin money um when it comes to uh AI I'm not an expert on AI chip actually don't know what what kind of um Tech they use uh but the AI chips are very very different uh in terms of complexity uh compared to AIC chips right a chip is a very small chip like the one that we use is uh about 5x 5 millim it's very small um and it does (12:47) just one thing uh and very very efficiently whereas AI chips are a lot more complex and they do uh they tend to be bigger
(12:55) in size and um I'm I'm not sure the beat for exactly the same thing um um we see some of the miners now going into Ai and they're like oh we have the the power supply and we have the energy contract that we can do AI uh let's see if that works um I tend to be a little skeptical at first um because my belief uh is that right now in AI it's much more about the cost of the chip rather than the energy whereas (13:27) in Bitcoin mining it's the other way around used to be the cost of the hard used to drive the whole cost of mining right now
(13:33) it's more and more the cost of power MH so yeah these are slightly different Industries yeah my understanding on that front is they're just they just don't have the infrastructure to plug the gpus into once they get their hands on the gpus and so there's an opportunity for some of them to pay uh huge premiums to just get them plugged in and get them turned on and and doing their thing um yeah (13:59) okay on this question I'm really curious so when you look at it holistically from the idea that you had over there in China to do
(14:07) this to now um what were what were a couple of the most surprising lessons when you look back at it that you just had no idea or that was just like oh my God I totally missed this before I took that first step to start working on this super hard or complex problem one thing that actually I think there's one one positive and one one positive surprise one more negative surprise (14:36) positive surprise people started buying um the devices and they're expensive devices they were like $1,000 each uh I'm talking about the older proof concept version even they started
(14:48) buying it and they started kind of spreading the word and supporting us uh very early on way before we had the device um and I was was very surprised like the the amount of trust that people put to us uh the strength of the community that was incredible I thought wow this is amazing like it's the uh obviously the get catching the money so we could use (15:16) the money to develop um the devices was helping but there's something um you you feel some sort of a Duty you know like when people put so much shot to you you're like
(15:30) well we're going to make it work yeah um and then we we had that with the first device then the device didn't work very well now once but now we're like oh we've built the second one with like 20 people on the team instead of five people on the team last time and how it works brilliant so we're like okay now we're kind of (15:50) fulfilling our duty to the community actually bring a good device to the market so this this trust um and support to the community was a
(15:58) surprise and it was an amazing surprise that was super super uh now you know now you know what three four years later we see uh people coming and seeing the trios like you've seen the trio right you've seen you it's it's kind of cool uh we've had people when we were in New York we had people like uh Frank uh Cora coming and posting Alex glin coming like oh you know this (16:24) is so cool you know she tweet about it uh just now one of my colleagues was um in Norway before uh she met ja dorsy and he was like I know about you guys you do cool stuff
(16:35) like and it's it's so cool like the support to the community it's amazing uh and second part which I think was more of a negative surprise is anything that could go wrong will go wrong and then there's going to be even more things that you didn't think that could go wrong and that will still go wrong yeah like um so we were in the the (17:00) trios and uh we were about to start shipping them and we had an early version like an early prototype and we sh shipped it to uh one of the YouTube influencers and uh part of the physical structure um so like the
(17:17) part at the bottom there's kind of a coal that holds most of the structure it was 3D printed uh and in 3D printing because you print in kind of layers the strength of the structure is very very different compared to uh to Extrusion or or any kind of proper industrial process and um as it shipped the the thing broke in half (17:44) right there's the metal part of the case on one side metal part of the case on the other side and this you know plastic in the in the middle it broke in half so the YouTuber and you know thanks to him he didn't go like really
(17:56) really public with this uh because he supports us he was like hey guys I want you to P so he pulls this he started the recording like proper unboxing he opens the Box takes out the device and then you know the top part is okay but the bottom part is kind of hanging on the wi and I go like oh my (18:14) God but how could this happen um it's all like we didn't test it we tested it right we with threw it and it was okay but I guess I guess people at UPS threw it much harder than we did at the fact I don't know what they did so and you're like yeah um that's difficult and
(18:33) then it takes you like I said it takes a long time right you're like you know is it difficult to fix not really you just change the structure slightly make the the the walls a little thicker but then it takes two three months to actually make it (18:47) happen because testing testing again industrial process yeah and then at the end um the engineer the the guy who did all the all the hardware instructure uh I think he obviously got a few kicks from the team for you know this happening uh at the end he was the one testing the devices in China he came
(19:07) to China to the production plan and what he did he he kind of uh stood on his like like like this he kind of stood on his hands on the on the trio and was kind of shaking on it with his feet lifted off the ground so this his whole (19:22) weight was on the device and he was like now it works you see now it's so strong he was so proud yeah I think we even posted it on Twitter like the guy was so proud of those are the stories that like when you're going through it it's just so painful but when you look back at the entire experience like you just can't build something
(19:41) new that's never been done before without going through these trials and tribulations that just test you every moment of the way so thank you so much for showing us that or telling (19:51) us that story and anyone doing Hardware they should know it's going to be hard that's right gonna be ready for this pain yes uh so unlike you know some devices where you're maybe you're just building something that's uh mechanical or physical there's a huge software component to this um and you know if if the software isn't online well then you're not
(20:15) making money it's just that simple I mean it's a huge component of of what you built walk us through uh your thinking from a design standpoint (20:24) of how uh because you know most people they're going to buy this they haven't they've never minded anything before they don't know how to do so you have to make it turn key so talk us through your design process as you thought about software well first of all there's actually quite a few software components um to it
(20:44) because generally for for any app you're going to have two sides you have you know mobile app and you have the server side uh for us there also um the software that runs on the device (20:55) itself and within that there's actually a few places one two three places where software is running the The Miner itself um then you know there's the mining mining software then there's the Control software on uh on an orange pie it's like an Raspberry Pi think just a little smaller
(21:15) all the connectivity and all the main controls I'm talk talking to the mobile app um and then there is the special um uh software that that runs that controls the energy use not of the minor but of the device itself so there's (21:32) there's a lot of different kind of software that needs to talk to each other uh but into from the user side if you look at it from the user side we thought well um let's make it plug-and playay uh let's make it so we thought well if there's someone uh who who is the miner and you know has a miner and wants to
(21:51) do a DIY heater they probably know what to do they probably don't need us um and you know hopefully do they do know what they doing um so we thought well let's let's make it PL in place so (22:04) someone could plug it in you know connect just like any other smart device and just start using it um why not um and that's that's how we built it people kind of plug it into the the power socket then connect it um to connect the device to to Wi-Fi and then they press the button it can start mining um so that's that's how we built it then um we you know showed to
(22:29) the community who started getting feedback and they're like uh I think about half of the people asked can I use my own pool and at first (22:38) I didn't I didn't quite even understand like why is it so important it was it was in in the early days I think you know I didn't educate myself enough and I didn't quite understand yet why that was so important and uh one of the people and I asked and one of the people very generally said well there's kind of a political
(22:57) aspect to it right if you if you choose your own pool then in a way you can you can vote for how Bitcoin is developing right um and we're like well then yeah it makes sense uh and we're (23:13) going to build it right now it's not implemented yet uh but we have it on the product road map so that people could you know they could start with you know automatic plug and play and you don't even need to choose the pool but once you learn more about what the pool is maybe create your own pull account and you'll be able to switch to whichever pool you
(23:31) like and mine to any pool that you want or solo mine for for the meod so um that that's going to happen that's how um how the process actually (23:41) looked uh on that on that kind of voting and political uh Power piece uh we realize that we're actually doing something bigger than just smart energy use but at first for me the way it was it it started was from the angle of energy I had quite a bit of background and energy and I'm like wow you know it's a valuable resource and we're saving so much of it right essentially we're making Zero Energy mining
(24:10) like this Mining and you know how Bitcoin was if Bitcoin was criticized it's either (24:15) because the price has dropped and someone is unhappy or um because it uses energy and someone is unhappy about that and we're like well but we're kind of taken that away and it doesn't use any extra energy in this way it's still as secure because it's by the same energy but no martially no extra energy that the Bitcoin mining uses and kind of application of building so like well great but then kind of educating myself more talking to more people um
(24:43) learned a lot more about the decentralization (24:45) aspect of it um and in a way or at some point this could be even more important actually so if you think of um you know Bitcoin as a system um is that valuable because it's that decentralized there's no central control property and it needs to be decentralized in many layers there's layers like uh the mining pools but then you know people are doing that uh I've seen the the ocean pool the demand pool there just you know
(25:14) few few others that are um coming out with great solutions for that but then there's the physical (25:20) centralization that's happening around the big minus um and it can kind of become a problem right especially as the the large mining operations they tend to get bigger because of the economies of scale right the bigger you are the easier it is to raise money on the on NASDAQ more money you have the better price you can get from bit man or whoever else and then you just become a bigger and bigger and bigger mining operation and they understand that uh I I recently
(25:50) saw uh frat teal talking about this and you (25:53) know thre of the CE Marathon he he did talk about like well yeah the centralization minus is is not good industry and we need to do something about s to little long but what we realize is um uh we can make mining uh physically distributed right when it's when it's big industrial mining operation by default the more centralized it is the better economies of scale they get like the bigger Warehouse energy energy price um and energy contract Etc um but we you you don't need like a me
(26:30) of heat you need a kilow of heat for a room you (26:33) don't need more so by default it's going to be physically distributed yeah um and that becomes very very important because if you have the physically distributed Hardware then you can have truly physically distributed system and then you know whatever layers you have from the hardware all the way to how the system operates overall uh you know the the the hardware is kind of the base for it and the mining is the base for it um and with centralized mining there's just so many issues that you could have from
(27:03) (27:04) things like the the government crackdowns we all in you know 2021 and the mining in China just you know disappeared in in the matter of few weeks um then um you could have things like control and censorship of transactions someone doesn't like some of the transactions and well Bitcoin transactions get sensored um and then there are things like and actually what people don't talk about that much is um the the miners tend to get very leveraged maybe not all of them um yes what they open do is like they they have they take the uh the sell
(27:42) (27:42) Equity get some of the money then to buy the equipments they take a loan which is done in US Dollars and that loan kind of depends on on on on bitcoin price now if the Bitcoin price goes down some the miners could go bankrupt we've seen what happened to to coren tiffi a couple years ago um and uh then then what the the thing that secures the Bitcoin Network could just disappear like that doesn't doesn't sound very comfortable right for for someone who believes in the network
(28:14) so this leverage and this centralization of (28:17) the mining becomes a single point of failure from many angles but then you split this and you know people people going to hit their homes they're going to send it off um the irrespective like bitcoin price goes to um $1,000 tomorrow people will still hit the home right they they they will still support the network the network will still be there whereas at you know not thousand but even at $10,000 per Bitcoin I would guess most of the miners will be out of business pretty quickly
(28:48) I mean the big yeah in fact and an interesting (28:54) point recently came up with a with a conversation um uh we were talking about how people get introduced to bitcoin and if you think of it most people get introduced to bitcoin through the price people are like well I can make money on that so I'm going to buy and then you know it grows and I'm going to sell and that's how people start I think yeah it starts with speculation and I think at some people kind of learn like oh this is actually much bigger than I thought and then you know they go down
(29:25) the rabbit hole and then become the (29:27) Maxis and then never saw what I realized is when people get introduced through the price uh there's a pretty big churn speaking the the marketing uh marketing terms so because the price is volatile it goes up people arey stay and maybe they sell and leave um or if it goes down they're like oh Bitcoin is red poison and it's terrible and I lost money on it and they hate it and they talk about it you know um and that's just because the the price the price went down um so in terms of introduction
(29:59) (30:00) price is maybe not the best way um you know it leaves a lot of people who get unhappy and they leave the the community uh what we realize is with the kind of way that we introduce people is a bit of orange ping how many people have uh have a heater there's few billion people who have heaters a lot a lot let me put it this way a lot more people have a home heater than than people who have Bitcoin so far we're probably going to change that um so uh if people get introduced through uh
(30:31) like a home minor uh price doesn't matter right if (30:37) if if they heat with uh with the you know Heats a minor then if they if the the price of Bitcoin goes up well great if it goes down then they make a little less but they still make fre sad so they still cover part of the energy bill so either way it's a positive scenario for them so there much less of this TR MH I would think that uh for you it would be really hard to because I I this is the typical question I would suspect you get from somebody all right so I buy one of these things and I put it into my
(31:08) (31:08) room and uh it's 30 Dees outside like how much money am I making is or some kind type of question like that or like how how much of my house does this heater heat um how do you handle that question like how do you come back because when we're looking at it there's so many variables like the price of Bitcoin right now now it's let's call it 70,000 next week it could be you know $5,000 $10,000 difference so when you're when you're having these conversations
(31:37) there's so many Dynamic variables at (31:39) play here is it 30° outside or is it 50 degrees outside at your house right so like all these things really kind of play into how you would respond to this so how do you handle that question um you know when you um when I studied mathematics uh a lot of the times when there's too much complexity you kind of try to package together and set it aside right and that's how you actually solve it you know something that looks very very complex um so uh in a kind
(32:08) of similar way think of it in terms of the uh (32:11) scenarios and you know having the the scenario which is always better and this this I can I can frame it this comparing it to Dyson so if let's say let's say you thinking of getting a Dyson as a heater then you can get a Dyson you'll pay um about $800 and then you'll use x amount of energy to get x amount of heat M now if you get a heat bit you're going to spend the same amount of money you're going to use this x amount of
(32:41) energy the same amount of energy that ion to get x amount of heat the same amount of energy (32:45) as Dyson uh but you're going to get SS on top right now if you put it this way then uh in this scenario when you think of getting Dyson then the the price of Bitcoin the mining difficulty you know what is what is going to be in 3 years 5 years Etc it doesn't really matter right you're anyway you're better off um now if you're not thinking of getting a Dyson you're thinking of getting a cheap heater like for 50 bucks um then you're probably going
(33:16) to be better off getting a cheap heater for 50 (33:18) bucks and buying some Bitcoin because what people challenge me this way oh I could get a cheap heat and you know I would make more or I would get more Bitcoin this way it's like yeah sure but you're going to have a cheap heater not something that looks good comfortable to use you know Pleasant Etc uh and I think that's that's fair enough yeah yeah no and the framing there is is really important for people to understand the
(33:43) output the size and like all those types of things and yeah I figured you had a very good response (33:49) to that because I didn't even really know how to ask the question I didn't even know how to frame the question because there's so many variables when you're thinking about that so uh one of the things that you guys did was uh put an air purification uh as part of the uh the the trio talk us through the the design decision how you guys came up with the idea to do that as
(34:11) well sure um this is like I think a good lesson as as most of the startups learn that sometimes a problem can become a feature um this uh it was a (34:23) problem we're like well uh there are you know pretty high-end Electronics ins size there's a lot of the air flow get that gets through uh same with you know any industrial mining um and at some point with all the dust and and hair and what not it gets clogged right so then it becomes a problem because the air doesn't flow and then it will overheat now in an industrial setting with big miners you have
(34:47) something called maintenance right someone would come in would open it up and kind of clean it with a brush and it worked again uh now (34:54) it's something that we don't really want to you know make our users do because people don't like doing that I hate cleaning even my uh my vacuum cleaner right I have to so I do but I don't like it so we're like well that kind of sucks we we we need to do it in a different way oh why don't we put an air purifier because then you know it will not get clocked kind of easier and you know the problem with um
(35:21) with uh the the hair and dust is salt and they like wait but then it becomes an air purifier (35:27) as well and there's an additional additional value that we can bring to the user because um you know as long as we put in a good air puy then we're like okay let's use heer filters and you know the proper things um and that's that's how essentially a problem ended up being a major feature of and it's it's I I love these kind of solutions when you have you know
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(37:53) (37:54) com stip to schedule your free consultation call don't delay in securing your generational wealth the right way opt in for security overc convenience and protect your future your family line will thank you when I saw you in New York I I was complimenting you on just uh all the engineering that you took on and and your response to me was really made me smart because you were just like oh yeah I'm not really an engineer and I'm like are you kidding me dude like look at what you've accomplished why why was (38:28) that your response it just didn't make
(38:29) any sense to me I'm just like you are such an engineer when I'm looking at many of Engineers I I personally worked with through the years like this is this is off the charts from an engineering standpoint why would you respond that way uh uh I I think I'm maybe kind of an engineer at heart I mean by training I I studied philosophy in economics right it was philosophy of to be fair so we did a lot of science stuff um but I didn't I never had an engineering degree I think
(38:58) (38:58) you know whatever I learn I know I kind of learn by myself mhm but I think it's still fair to say that I'm not an engineer when I compare myself to the the engineers on our team right that there me who can you know think of the concept who can challenge and in thing in ways that kind of make sense or at least I hope to you know I believe that they make sense uh but then on our team we have guys who like they built the power turbines previously it's the same guy who was jumping on the heit he's (39:26) he's the one who build power turbines
(39:28) and you know when I compare you know my engineering capacity to his I'm like I shouldn't really call myself an engineer you know of this guy and and and many of the others on the team so I I think you know again framing you're too humble sir you're too humble there's a lot of people that listen to this that are younger in college um that want to start their own company from an entrepreneurial standpoint um what advice can you give that person that uh (39:59) you've learned through this and just other life experiences as a builder um I think
(40:05) few main ones uh from the personal standpoint try to do something that you actually like um I I was just messaging our team um on some some of the things that we achieved over the over the past few months and I was telling them I I I love to build things and I like to see them work and I was telling them how it's not necessarily it's not all about the money like it's not like growing the the capitalization of the company uh the (40:37) money is necessary and it should be a business model because that can sustain the the business and it can make it grow more
(40:44) people use what you build uh but what I'm you know excited about at heart and our our team is excited about as well is building something that people use um so and that excitement goes a long way so stop with something that you're excited about and it could be anything right maybe it's something about social media maybe it's something about Bitcoin maybe it's something about (41:06) Hardware just if you're genuinely excited about something that's that's really really good
(41:12) um and it's going to drive you a long way um and two I would say and this is where most of the most of the startups fail is when people build something and maybe build something horri and build something wonderful but people don't use it um or or people don't pay for it now if you people don't pay for it maybe it's still okay uh but the problem with that is that if people don't pay for something or you don't (41:40) have a business model to whatever you have built then it's hard to uh scale it it HS it's it's hard to get the resources again
(41:49) you know payment and the money it's it's the resource to to make it work at a bigger scale so you can't get the resources to um to grow it and to get more people to use it and make even the thing even more wonderful because you need to hire the engineers at some point you can just build everything yourself and if you hire people you need to pay them salaries because they need (42:08) to eat something and they have families and so there's going to be a business model to it and the the advice would be to try and test it as early as possible um ideally before you
(42:20) invested much in building when you're reasonably certain that um it's it's going to work and you can build it then start testing it speak to your friends speak to your family go on R it share the idea don't be afraid that someone is going to copy copy you um it's not hard to copy an idea but it's it's hard to execute it quickly so if (42:40) you have a great idea if you start sharing it you're probably going to get uh you're probably going to get more people who kind of trying to
(42:47) support you maybe you'll find some co-founder or you know whoever else and it's going to get easier to build rather than if you're like oh I think it's too valuable I'm not going to share No share it early um we actually uh that's kind of how we how we start working with our CTO our CTO was was never he never had a job interview with us um he was um he actually started as (43:11) someone who was helping conduct the technical interviews both the engineers that were hiring but then he's he's a miner himself he's been mining since like 2010 and he liked
(43:21) you so much he ended up working as a CTO just by default he was like oh oh guys I see you have a problem let me help you with this let me help this and then he ended up being the CTO without ever having a discussion or a contract or uh I was at some point I was I was even getting a little worried I'm like why is this guy (43:40) so helpful you know I I was I was getting cautious and like I'm not sure that's good maybe we shouldn't share all the plans um but then yeah he was just genely very very very helpful and he he like working as CTO for like six months
(43:58) without us even paying him just because he like right wow and then we're like hey you know you've been working so much you know how about you know we we make it official and like yeah sure and he's like if you want to pay me pay me uh i' I'd work for free but if you want pay my (44:14) payment I'm like I love stories like a kid that's when you just know you have a person who's there for all the right reasons like he was there because he loved what you were doing and just brought that expertise and what a I love your advice on uh also on
(44:30) um just getting out there and not being afraid to share your idea because you're so right the execution and the work that it requires to build something like this is If people could peer into your day to day from 2020 to now they wouldn't (44:46) believe they wouldn't believe the amount of work and effort that it took to get here right so yeah Amen to that point that you made um I want to ask you on your philosophy major what if if you had to go back and redo your major would
(45:03) you pick the same major and if you would what was it what was the thing that you gained by majoring in philosophy that that you hold dear with you now so philosophy is a very broad thing um very often people have a misconception that philosophy they mix it with something kind like history of (45:22) philosophy so philosophy is not about studying who said what that what f um right it's um studying different concepts And discussing them trying to see what works what doesn't and then
(45:37) there's just so many different areas that there's a lot of things to choose from uh the the one way to think about it and uh would be that every major science kind of started as philosophy and then kind of brushed out right so when Adam Smith was writing about economics he didn't really write about economics he would consider (45:56) himself philosopher and then you know because it grew they're like well let's just Branch it out and you people call it eics and started this way um uh I'm not sure the mathematicians would agree but
(46:08) the uh the early mathematicians would also be like well I'm a philosopher and then because mathema got so big kind of it you know it branched out as well um so the this the study that I did was mostly philosophy of science so it's think like how does science develop um does it go this way does it go that way (46:30) uh what do we consider truth um there's different ways to think about this is uh you know what what is true it could be something that you know there's a statement that kind of corresponds to reality but then it kind
(46:41) of begs the question okay but what is reality if you've seen Matrix you're like you know what is reality there um or it could be another theory would be so that would be the correspondence theory of truth then you would have something like the hearing theory of Truth which is like (46:55) well reality doesn't matter because you know who know who knows what reality is but if you have set of statements which is has kind of critical mass of those statements then you have an extra statement if it fits those then it's true if it doesn't fit it's false
(47:09) right and this this the kind of stuff that that you discuss and it's very very conceptual but it teaches you to think from very different angles and slice and dice any situation in in very different ways which helps you to uncover (47:26) interesting thoughts s Solutions um with any kind of problem and the second thing it teaches you to um to think and express yourself uh in a in a more or less clear way I think this is this is what Philosophy degree really really brings you I think as as a it can be stepping stone to an a career in Academia or
(47:51) a lot of people who study philosophy can become very good lawyers I think because again they can take the situation kind slice it in different ways and argue their way through um yeah my My Philosophy was philosophy of (48:03) science would did a lot of things like logic and there's just so many levels of depth to it and my degree was just an undergraduate degree right it wasn't any anything too advanced but even in logic we would think that you know there true and false then there kind of something that gets a little
(48:19) bit more complex with like oh how many objects are there maybe it's put all of them something is true then you know then you have things like oh imagine that there's not just one world where certain logical statements interact but there (48:33) are different worlds and then the sort of set of logical statements here doesn't necessarily correspond to set of logical statements here you know here a is true and B is not true here both A and B are true and that's okay but then you have like we would call it this world can see this world so that means if something's
(48:52) true here it need to be true here as well but it doesn't mean it doesn't work the other way around and then you have all these like logical structures and you think oh but this is (49:02) this is kind of crazy right why is this relevant but then you realize that having all this discussions and logical structures it gives rise to uh so many other things yeah um like you know how Ai and generative AI it kind of really got possible with the mathematical inventions that came out not that long ago right this this iterative learning uh
(49:30) that that yeah it's it's not that long that people came up with so you know on one hand this people who do this very very basic science and you know they kind of look crazy to to to an (49:40) average Joe but then it does give rise to the wonderful PR like chpt that we use now yeah same I you know I found uh interviewing a lot of people on finance some really uh impressive people that have you know like Bill Miller is a perfect example of like this really impressive uh investor with an incredible track record and he was a philosophy major and it was just I've seen
(50:05) this really interesting Dynamic one other thing that I've noticed with people that have this philosophy background they're often just really (50:14) objective and unemotional in the way that they can deal with different points of view a lot of people um just get very emotional if you're pressing on a a counter opinion or a different point of view than maybe one that they hold dear and uh people that I've at least the few people that I've interacted with that have this this background that you speak of they just they're able to deal with it in a very unemotional
(50:41) kind of way and kind of really kind of put themselves in that vantage point to really try to (50:47) under un uncover what the truth is or some maybe different vantage point of the truth uh and not necessarily call it truth but they're just trying to understand and what it is and I just have a lot of admiration and really have learned a lot from people with this background so that's really helpful what you uh what you laid out there um okay uh last question I got for you um in this
(51:14) space with the Bitcoin home mining uh what's one of the biggest misconceptions that you find people have uh or even a frustration that you you (51:24) hear an argument over and over again and you're just like like you just want to hit the top of your head and be like come on man like what is this uh I think there's the small one that I mentioned that sometimes people think like oh uh heating uses energy and then mining uses extra energy that's that's just not right it's it's the same energy but I think we we we talked about that already there's
(51:44) one one kind of interesting discussion that um I had recently uh talking about the the orange (51:51) pillaring and how people get introduced to bitcoin and how they think about the price Etc um kind of CAU caught thinking with in the discussion that people talk about the price and price of Bitcoin and I was thinking well if Bitcoin is money then there's no price of Bitcoin or it shouldn't be price of Bitcoin it should be an fx rate and this the then the the the uh the argument
(52:21) goes well if it's an asset know like gold like um Apple shares like you know real estate then there's a price um because the the value of the (52:32) asset is uh determined and communicated in terms of the price of money right the monetary price you know in dollars and euros and whatever uh but if it's money people don't talk about the price of pounds price of dollars price of un or or or or Euros anything else they talk about the FX rate and and this is just I think an open discussion interesting discussion to have is whether we should be talking about the
(53:00) the Bitcoin uh price or should we really be talking about the uh Bitcoin exchange rate Bitcoin FX rate because if it's money (53:10) then it shouldn't really be the price it should be like well a thousand sat is you know X dollar um the the FX rate you know what I mean and it kind of thinking a lot one of my favorite framings is just when you're comparing it to physical things so like I'm looking at the price of Bitcoin relative to a house over the last call it 48 years or whatever you know frame that you want to look at it and when you're when you
(53:38) view it through this lens and you just uh take whatever fiat currency that you're used to to (53:43) hearing and talking about and just remove it completely and say well how much corn could I buy four years ago with Bitcoin versus today and what you find is that the price on everything desirable everything physical desirable thing is just collapsing at an exponential rate and um it's you know it's it's something that I think is very difficult for people that are looking at the space very superficially they're just kind of showing up and they're speculators
(54:14) like you were describing earlier and you know (54:17) the dollar is just the dollar the Euro the Yen whatever fiat currency we want to bring up is just it's like water to a fish and it's really hard to get people to kind of look at it through some other type of physical thing that you're comparing it to and you're just looking at it you're like everything just keeps getting cheaper if you're a bitcoiner that truly denominates all of your retained earnings in Bitcoin you're just
(54:39) looking at the world and you're like it just keeps getting cheaper it just keeps (54:42) getting cheaper and cheaper every yeah and this different aspects to it so um there's different drivers you know as ecist would say of of why is getap so right now one of the primary drivers was just the growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem right that there's more people getting into Bitcoin more people buying so uh it's I I I I think it's been more behaving a bit more like like an asset right and just because there's more demand for the asset the price
(55:13) in this case you know call price was growing and (55:16) in that sense you know everything else the a ton of corn or house would be getting much much much cheaper in Bitcoin over the last whatever five five seven 10 5 S 10 years um and at some point there's going to be a plateau of this effect right there you know there is going to reach some sort of a critical mass this more people have Bitcoin there's not new people necessarily coming in so it's going to be less of this speculative growth of um of the asset and kind of becomes more money uh hopefully you know people
(55:47) (55:47) really start thinking money at that point but then uh there's another effect that will play uh a bigger role by then even if they say you know everyone has Bitcoin you know everyone everyone uses Bitcoin as as as money money around the world the price of things will still get cheaper and that's just called uh progress um we uh as as civilization uh we tend to learn and we tend to improve things and and make things better and more efficiently right the productivity of our work in the last what even 300 (56:26) years has gone up many many times just
(56:30) because we have the Machinery we have the electricity right we know how to manage things better and uh if the productivity increases then and if you have stable money you know like like Bitcoin in the in the concept that I'm talking about then the uh the prices should actually be reducing because well you know for for the same pricec the technological efficiency gains yeah exactly and technology efficiency it kind of goes one way it doesn't go the other way yeah so over all even by the time Bitcoin is (57:05) the the money there's still going to
(57:08) be an improvement as an decrease in prices in Bitcoin terms for everything that we consume and it kind of makes sense at that point you know yeah yeah uh I know Dio uh Ray doio talked about uh this productivity efficiency and the the number that he stuck on it was 2% annualized um but who knows what what that reality is if you have a sound hard money that isn't being lost and I think that's what's going to make the the realization of this kind of tricky to to (57:39) fully know what the productivity efficiency gains are um because if the money
(57:44) was never lost then I think you could really stick a number to it over call it 20 30 years once it was fully uh you know M materialized as the the money that the settlement layer that everybody's using um maybe we'd actually figure out what that percent is that growth rate or that efficiency rate I is probably a better way to put it from from early economics courses I think they talked about um 2 3% a year uh in general yeah that's the number I've (58:15) heard uh yeah I think it would depend on the economy right you have more developed
(58:19) economies where it's harder to grow very fast and you have Economist that from like Agricultural Society more industrial society they can move a little fasta yes it's a vector yeah yeah very interesting stuff Alex I've Loved this conversation um for people listening to this the website is called heatbag you to go check this thing out this is one of the neatest things ever having seen it in person uh it is sweet I really hope that uh you guys continue (58:49) to you know really do wonderful things here and I can only imagine what you have on the
(58:54) horizon and what you're dreaming up now next but uh Alex thanks for coming making time and coming on the show did you have anything else that you wanted to highlight well yeah to check out our website check out our Twitter um we we try to answer any any of the questions that that people might have we we really want to um it's it's not just about selling the devices for us I think it was kind of becoming too during the call we do (59:21) want to uh help decentralize um the the
(59:26) network and build the much better system this way right it's there's there's other teams who going to be doing similar things and you know we'll compete in some ways and help each other in others and uh all together I think we'll have a very decentralized you Bas layer on the hardware uh layer that will uh make the the monitor system a lot more valuable for for everyone to use so I'm really looking forward to making that happen and um once they thanks for for your
(59:57) (59:57) invitation to to join the podcast it's it's a pleasure to speak to you and yeah if I if I can build help Greatful you know please please let me know thank you so much and I love your final point there about decentralizing the network and making it you know stronger because of things like this that you're building I think it's such an important point so Alex thank you for making time and uh I'm sure we'll chat here in the future sounds good thank you in my
(1:00:24) experience with friends of mine I obviously try to (1:00:26) orange pill them and some of them get it some of them they don't want to know about it but as soon as I told them that I get paid to shower now because literally every time we take a shower my wife asked me like how many sets did I make now with the showers I can see like people that don't really like Bitcoin now suddenly they like okay wait so this produces money and can I have this in my house as well
