Andrew Myers, a pioneer in the Bitcoin energy sector, explores how Bitcoin can revolutionize energy markets.
In this episode of TFTC, Andrew Myers, a pioneer in the Bitcoin energy sector, discussed his journey from being orange-pilled in 2014 to founding Satoshi Energy, highlighting Bitcoin's potential to revolutionize energy markets. The conversation critiqued the outdated regulated utility model and its stifling of innovation, while providing a historical perspective on the Federal Reserve's and regulatory monopolies' origins. Myers emphasized the need for a deregulated transmission system, envisioning a future with microgrids and decentralized grids, and praised Texas's deregulated ERCOT market for attracting Bitcoin mining operations. The discussion also covered the slow adoption of Bitcoin by energy companies, the role of Bitcoin miners as energy pirates, innovative power purchase agreements, and the rise of ESG narratives and regulatory threats, showcasing the industry's resilience and proactive measures.
Myers provides a nuanced understanding of historical, regulatory, and technological factors shaping these industries, emphasizing optimism and opportunity despite regulatory challenges and slow adoption by traditional energy companies. The episode underscores Bitcoin's potential as a catalyst for a deregulated, decentralized energy future, promoting economic freedom and societal resilience, and highlights the ongoing interplay between Bitcoin, energy, and regulation as a critical area for future discussions.
0:00 - Intro
0:14 - How regulation harms the energy industry
11:31 - River and Bitkey
12:54 - Mining solves the fragility of centralized power
20:23 - Bitcoin strategies for energy companies
26:00 - Direct payment for energy
33:49 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite
35:27 - Determining optimal power mix
43:33 - What miners need to know about power companies
49:36 - Batteries
56:25 - Regulatory attacks
59:55 - Sound leadership
1:06:26- Psyops and lists
1:09:35 - We’re gonna win
1:12:38 - Texit
(00:05) this rip of tftc was brought to you by river it's the best place to buy Bitcoin go to river.com tftc and enjoy this episode Andrew we miss you in miss you in Austin Texas it's good to have you back it's awesome to be here always um I was thinking about the uh I came to the my first bit devs in Austin like early 2021 at the old chained office and just the mental vibration in that room I was like I got to be here yeah so every time coming back to the commons is awesome yeah especially on days like today I'm sure you freaks are hearing
(00:40) some background noise right now we've got the pleb lab Builder day going on Vibes are high South by Southwest in Austin Texas trying to do the Takeover here at the commons it's great to see more people in town you know is is Austin the Bitcoin capital of the world in your mind I think it has to be people should come experience the energy for themselves go to a bit devs go to a um they have like the lightning day the Bitcoin day um this PL lab thing the Takeover tomorrow it's uh it's refreshing it's
(01:14) like a reminder of why you're in this industry yeah like you can read what's on Twitter read what's in the news work on your computer from home but until you're in an environment like this um just like that that's when you realize why you're here yeah why are you here Andrew what brought you here how deep were we going we're going very deep you texted me the other day like what are we going to cover it all we've been planning this for two years now right I remember vividly running into
(01:43) you and I believe it was your brother yeah at Loro Michael Myers yes the uh it was I think two years ago now at this point yeah I was like we got to record yeah we're we're aligned on many things some things I may be missing in the world of energy right particularly around solar let's start like why are you here why Bitcoin why Satoshi energy I think it uh it's good to find something to work on that feels like Destiny so there's just a lot of decisions I made in life that put me in this position but just
(02:20) got really interested in energy uh 2009 uh was studying abroad in Australia studying energy um went to grad school and studied power Market KS data science a bunch of things that are super applicable to what I'm doing now and then moved to San Francisco staying on my friend's couch in 2014 and he uh he orange pilled me got me into Bitcoin and when it clicked at that moment I thought youve got these 247 power markets and a 247 Financial protocol like this this money will be used for financial settlement in power
(02:53) markets and just the wheels kept turning and uh like five and a half years ago started Satoshi energy and uh executing on that Vision now so there's just a lot of coincidences along the way that um kind of helps show you that you're on the right path yeah it's crazy to have that recognition in 2014 cuz that's early to connect the energy Market in Bitcoin because we have this is the S1 up here that was released I 2013 yeah oh yeah maybe I did just yeah just launched like A6 were barely a thing then that intuition that early is
(03:28) pretty pretty impressive that's where yeah so that was about a decade ago that I had that Insight yeah and when I think back on it um it was just some sort of uh like you open yourself up to ideas and then they come in and that was one of those things that I don't know I I feel very grateful to have that have had that Insight at that time yeah and it's like this is something I'm becoming more convinced of every day like understanding power markets grids energy extraction whether it's Upstream
(04:03) oil and gas Wells solar panels wind farms these are foreign Concepts to most people that should be taught like in high school like under like we take for granted or ability to have these lights this mic these cameras the fact that it just works and I guess that's a jumping off point for the question of like what do people commonly misunderstand about power mark markets are just completely gloss over that they should understand well it's complex so there's a lot of things that um people who are novice to it don't understand even
(04:42) people who are in it barely understand um I was thinking yesterday that like Bitcoin is minting money but it's also minting a lot of new energy nerds which is kind of a cool thing because when you're in the industry and like you care a lot about it and you see all these interesting opportunities and this very uh kind of antiquated heavily regulated business and then all these other people start pouring in and actually having interest in it it's kind of it's like really reassuring um I think one of the biggest things
(05:10) that I think a lot of people don't understand is just how regulated the industry is and how those regulations impact the industry so Mo most of the industry um operates under these Monopoly utilities and so 100 years ago they're granted their Monopoly power they're called natural monopolies but there's nothing natural about it and basically the way it works is that you the utility is given a monopoly territory and they work with a Public Utility Commission a government entity government appointed entity uh in order
(05:46) to set the rates for power the way that works it's called a a rate of return regulation so it creates this uh conflict of interests where the utility with the Monopoly on the power power on delivering the power they get their profits as a return on the capital that they deploy so their incentive is to deploy as much Capital as possible and the way they do that is they set a fixed price for Energy doesn't matter what the supply or demand is in the Market at any given time of day um they just set a fixed price so that the demand side is
(06:22) not flexible and that drives up Peak demand and drives up the need to build more power generation and more power transmission so technologically speaking we don't have any sort of a reliability issue we don't have technology issues we don't have issues with like scarcity of energy energy prices anything like that what we have is a giant regulatory Strang hold on how humans consume energy I think that's the biggest biggest thing that people miss and don't really understand it's a it's a government
(06:52) problem at the end of the day yeah so you mentioned this quote unquote natural monopoly was granted 100 years ago what happened 100 years ago um we're going to go deep let's go so a lot of people like to talk about um you know the Federal Reserve and some people have have come across uh Thomas Edison and Henry Ford's plan to create energy backed money about 100 years ago so through my research my understanding um Federal Reserve was created uh you know political media apparatus obviously pushing for the
(07:25) creation of the Federal Reserve and Central Banking despite the founding fathers and many other very intelligent people saying that Central Banking is not a great idea um Ford and Edison were actually initially in favor of the creation of of the FED um just because there was banking volatility banking issues at the time and they they wanted a solution but a few years in it started creating Market volatility boom and bus cycles and they're like wait a second like this is not working so they set out to create this
(07:55) commodity backed money this energy backed money and at that same time that same sort of political media apparatus said hey actually we need to uh like these energy companies are getting out of control we need to create these monopolies and start to regulate this business so it was really the same set of kind of politicians and and media people who were pushing for the Federal Reserve ended up uh creating what was called the public utility holding company act that created all the Monopoly utilities a few years after the FED
(08:28) fascinating and was it like fear mongering around energy same way fear Monger around money like we need somebody to control this to create stability with electricity obviously it is a dangerous uh thing to handle in some regards if you don't do it correctly was that it just a big fearmongering like we need to regulate this because people could die it was meme Warfare 100 years ago yeah so there's a really uh famous picture of all these crisscrossed power lines and like people like getting shocked and
(08:56) dying and like a skeleton laying on the power line um and yeah it scared people that oh yeah you can't have uh you know all these criss-crossing power lines and like duplicative investment in in the infrastructure like you need to just have a nice clean single power line from a centrally managed utility um and everything will work better that way so it just it killed competition in the industry so in your mind is there like a more efficient ideal way to do power transmission the best example is Texas um and not necessarily for power
(09:28) transmission so Texas is a great example of deregulated uh supply and demand but the transmission is still heavily regulated there are some pockets of private transmission lines it's like the the the whole idea of um if there's no government who's going to build the roads yes well we just had a long discussion about that with the Bitcoin urbanist like it's insane who's going to build the roads right and so if there's no government or no centrally managed utility who's going to manage the power
(09:54) lines or if it's open to competition then people are going to build two power lines next to each other and that's not going to look good or whatever but um by not allowing that you you create this sort of uh regulatory bottleneck especially on the transmission side so despite the open free market in Texas which is great it's um you know invited a lot of new energy investment so there L A really lowcost wind lowcost solar in the market um there's competition amongst retailers so they to drive drive
(10:22) prices down for the End customer but you still have that transmission aspect that's heavily regulated um where if you could unlock that you would even see a greater abundance of of energy and and more resilience in my opinion so if you can if you can deregulate the transmission then you have people starting to build private transmission lines uh and start to create these micro grids and local grids that connect to Regional grids and ultimately to the the um marketto Market grids and the the international grids um the the best
(10:53) example of this that I've been thinking about lately is I can't build a power I can't build just a small distribution line from my house to my neighbor's house and sell them energy it's illegal to do that to put a wire between my my house my neighbor's house meter it and sell them energy what's what's immoral about that what's wrong about that what's dangerous about that nothing yeah govern the government's not in control you they need to control this it's uh they can't trust you that's the
(11:26) thing you're going to electrocute your neighbor yeah who are you to make money might happen this episode was presented by river river is the best most secure place to buy Bitcoin in the United States go to river.com tftc set up an account today you'll be able to DCA into Bitcoin without paying any fees you'll be able to give people Bitcoin via river links you'll be able to send and receive Bitcoin over the lightning Network and you'll be able to set limit orders if you want to buy Bitcoin at a particular
(11:53) price below or above where it is now you can set orders to buy Bitcoin when it hits that price go to river.com TFT PC set up your account today this rep was also brought to you by our good friends at Unchained Unchained is building a financial services platform for a Bitcoin standard they have over 7,000 clients that are securing over 990,000 Bitcoin with 12,000 keys on their platform their platform leverages bitcoin's native multisig properties their Cornerstone product is their vault product a two or three multisig volt
(12:24) which allows you to hold two of three keys in a multisig quorum that gives you full control over your Bitcoin they also have an IRA product a lending desk and they're rolling out a bunch of other products including inheritance protocol and sound advisory so go to unchain domcom set up a call with our concierge onboarding team today tell them that tftc sent you and use the promo code tftc at checkout unchain docomo many things whether it's the money electricity we were just talking about Urban environments and suburban
(12:57) sprawl like when it comes to energy again going anchoring to the fact I think the two most important tools we leverage as humans today are energy and money and it's been corrupted beyond belief and what you just mentioned there these little micro grids falling back to like information Theory and complex systems like that's the beauty of Bitcoin it is this complex system that's distributed in nature and the fact that it's distributed in modular creates this extremely robust and resilient system
(13:29) system that any human can anchor into um and we need to apply that design thinking distributed design thinking to other areas of Life Energy probably being one of the most important is like how fragile does the centralization of the power markets leave Society at the end of the day yeah we're seeing it now and I mean you can even take that back to markets themselves right so there's capitalism the voluntary exchange of goods and Services that's what that's what a market is um the power Market should
(14:04) work that way money should work that way through competition and cooperation um and it like you don't necessarily need a central party to tell you what to do and to to keep it and make it safe but in terms of you know what's going on in the world right now there's headlines all over the place even Netflix movies saying that the grid is going to come down from a Cyber attack well if you create these Central points of failure from a centrally managed Grid in a very top down structure that's not
(14:36) very resilient to cyber attacks it's not resilient to uh bad weather it's not resilient to an earthquake forest fire anything that could could cause outages um and it's in these centralized entities one they're not incentivized um to build that more resilient Grid or to build these micro grids or to distribute the power generation and the consumption and transmission and distribution so if you open up that market you know individual economic actors can make can make those choices and start to do that so I think
(15:09) that's that's how we ultimately get to that more resilient grid and um get past where we're at today where everybody in the back of their mind is like what do I do if the power goes out yeah do you think the Bitcoin mining industry is providing a path to that more free market um design because you got to think the economics of Bitcoin mining are so like the energy pirates of the world the Bitcoin miners are really going and finding these inefficiencies doing this price Arbitrage play essentially at the end of
(15:40) the day and soaking up wasted excess energy to make a profit and turn it into the hardest money has ever existed do you think energy companies are seeing what miners are doing me like holy [ __ ] like if only we could do this everywhere else it would really open up things and there that pure economic incentive is that enough of a catalyst to be like all right let's push to open up these markets a bit more yeah I think it's it's happening in a lot of different ways and I think in the future it's going to be even bigger
(16:14) so right now Bitcoin mining is it's improving the financial sustainability of power generation Investments and power transmission Investments so what what we're doing as a company we're uh helping wind farms solar Farms utility scale power production to monetize their excess energy their riskiest lowest value energy and sell that to bitcoin data centers while still getting the optionality and the value of selling power into the market so we're improving the the financial resiliency sustainability of those Investments
(16:47) which means that they'll be able to continue to maintain that equipment provide power to the market with that equipment invest a new power generation and that's all great that's like a very clear cut and dry uh value proposition that's happening today for sure um there's also the um sort of the location agnostic nature of Bitcoin data centers and so they're able to go anywhere consume that Surplus power but part of it is like at least in the structures that we do where we're collocating the power generation or the
(17:18) data center with the power generation we're effectively creating these small two-party markets and in the future I think more parties involved at these like substation locations with high power capacity where you're starting to create these little micro grids uh these little you know two- party or three-party or more party marketplaces and working towards that um kind of micro grid micro grid type of future or or just like decentralized grid type of future but I think the bigger opportunity and part of this is
(17:49) happening right now you have um the the Regulatory and political Lobby of Bitcoin data centers right so in OT as an example always a great example um it's the center of the universe here in Texas um you know you went from say 75 gaw of total power production and and Peak demand in the aop market and then over the last 5 years you know 30 40 gws of new load interconnection requests mostly from Bitcoin data centers and then you know a few gigawatts have been built there's a ton of demand for more of them
(18:27) and all of those companies are now in in the OT Market meetings um you know they're putting through um you know revision requests to the the OT protocols uh they're in the stakeholder meetings they're saying hey this can be done a better way and then they're also lobbying politically to say let's not gum this up with more regulations or or just anything heavy-handed and so I think that that um sort of political backing from Bitcoin miners is really important right now and then the the bigger theme is
(18:58) moving towards a soci with sound money so as these companies the people who have this uh classical liberal capitalist mindset which is by nature a peaceful voluntary exchange of goods and services um they are starting to accumulate capital capital is flowing into those businesses value is going into Bitcoin and ultimately the people um with knowledge and with money are going to be able to make the decisions in the future whether it's politically or or economically so I think we're going to see and I've been kind of on
(19:29) the fence like will power generation companies buy out Bitcoin data centers or will the Bitcoin data centers um ultimately buy out the power generation and make the power generation Investments um despite our best efforts a lot of these energy companies are going way too slow on making the Bitcoin Investments while the Bitcoin miners are just accumulating Bitcoin and ultimately are just going to be like it is not unreasonable to imagine 5 years from now that some of these big public Bitcoin mining companies holding 5,000 10,000
(19:58) Bitcoin are at a higher valuation than Exxon or Chevron or any of the major energy companies and they buy them out yeah why do you think the energy companies are moving so slow right now or why are they I mean you know you're in the room with them yeah um you know this it's a it's a capital intensive business um it's not a business of innovation or hasn't been largely because of the last 100 years of Regulation and they're they're they're just conservative businesses so they're
(20:41) they're trying to make a decent return on Capital basically trying to beat inflation and this idea of Bitcoin and don't get me wrong there's a few energy companies a few big energy companies investing in Bitcoin mining right now holding Bitcoin on their balance sheet it's not public but they're doing it and in you know across the board they're selling power to bitcoin miners but to make a decision to invest in a in a Bitcoin data center um or buy Bitcoin and hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet
(21:07) or accept Bitcoin as a form of payment um there just aren't a ton of courageous leaders at the top of these uh energy companies that are willing to take that risk or like risk their reputation to do that but I think all of that's changing right now I think the some of the updates to the accounting rules last year and then also the the spotty ETF this year um you look at like the investment funds that created a spot ETF and then the ones that didn't like at least one example of the ones that didn't the CEO got outed a few months
(21:40) after was that because of some other reason or was that because he made a bad strategic mistake um so I I tend to think that uh the same thing is going to happen with energy companies like once those big asset managers those big investment funds who invest in all these energy companies start to say hey Energy company like why are you not investing in Bitcoin like we want that Bitcoin you know we the Bitcoin is going to be the only way for this uh investment to actually appreciate and value the money is either going to naturally flow into
(22:10) the energy companies the investment's going to naturally flow into the energy companies that have a strong position in Bitcoin or there's just going to be a top down directive from these investment firms that says hey you need to be accumulating Bitcoin for me start doing it today yeah yeah the career risk is about to flip where exactly historically up to this point first 15 years career risk has been like if I get into Bitcoin and it explodes uh I'm out and now it's like I think we're very very much at the
(22:38) point where it's like if I don't have a Bitcoin strategy for the next like within five years if five years passes and I've not implemented a Bitcoin strategy into our business I am out it was a strategic decision that that was not good in hindsight that's going to be abundantly clear in 5 years so that's something that excites me incredibly and like the bit for energy companies specifically like Bitcoin mining monetizing uh stranded or excess Surplus energy is just one aspect of it like that's like the hard commodity
(23:15) production side of it but then you get to like the network side of it what you guys are working on as well like creating Capital efficiencies from like paying for that electricity in Bitcoin over something like the lightning Network takes us to a whole another level yeah what I what I energy companies um something I've been saying recently is like so the kind of the the major parts of the energy business that we work with so we'll work with the origination teams of these energy companies which is effectively their
(23:42) sales team trying to sell the power and then they have a creditrisk team that you know the origination team they're like oh this is a massive power consumer this is like you know my bonus is going to go up if I sell this much power the profits of the business are going to to go up if I sell this much power and then the credit and risk team they say well hold on that like this is Magic internet money um this is not a creditworthy investment grade off-taker and if we start to increase our exposure to this
(24:12) customer class what could happen it could be really bad for this business so we're starting to see more alignment between the two but there's still these kind of very I think cliche at this point type of uh uh you know objections to bitcoin which is like what if the Bitcoin price goes to zero and so what I've been saying recently is like I think they're starting to understand like it's not going to zero it's not going away but what if Bitcoin goes to Infinity what if the Bitcoin price goes to Infinity what is your
(24:42) entire uh you know value of all of your assets start to look like under that Paradigm um and so that's one part of it but I so I think the way to approach that even if you're a conservative Energy company is you know you're selling power to bit Co data centers now that's a great first step they're starting to make you know small Equity investments into the data centers also a great Next Step um I think you know potentially keeping a revenue share some of that in Bitcoin in those Investments
(25:12) is a really good way to start uh getting exposure and then with the power contracts themselves um like for example we're we're building this real-time invoicing realtime settlement in order to help them minimize uh the risk of an unpaid bill so minimizing accounts receivable risk um and in that you can pay with dollars you can do like a daily dollar payment um but what they can also do is for example say hey how about 1% of our Energy bill we start taking in Bitcoin the other 99% will take in dollars we'll
(25:44) use the dollars for traditional you know operations and expenses associated with that uh but we'll keep the 1% we'll just hold it on the balance sheet and that that'll be a way to accumulate Bitcoin over time yeah and this is something that's enabled uniquely by Bitcoin specifically how how block reward payouts are distributed via mining pools like you actually as the Bitcoin miner your service that you're selling is to the Bitcoin Network and get paid out pretty regularly for doing that whereas
(26:11) another demand source for these like these power purchase agreements they have other businesses where their accounts receivable they may have like n30 n45 n90 whatever it is and then they have to go back and pay their bills eventually which could be n30 n45 n90 as well but like Bitcoin since you're selling the service directly to the network and getting paid almost immediately you find a block in a pool you have to wait 100 blocks for the reward but pools have treasury management where they can do uh fpps and
(26:41) pay out every day a set fee um so you actually have the ability as a Bitcoin miner to pay this on the go and now we have companies like brains enabling the lightning Network for these payouts as well which streamlines a lot of this accounting yeah I mean the whole idea of Bitcoin mining right is that you're you're converting energy nearly instantaneously into money like what better Energy customer is there than that yeah um so we talk to a lot of big Retail Energy companies and they have different uh customer classes that they sell to
(27:21) and for a long time they thought oh the commercial real estate market is a great customer class it's this big customer class of all these businesses that are operating profitably and they're going to keep paying their energy bills well that's taken a downturn and it's actually not a great customer class for them now um same with residential consumers so residential consumers uh are absolutely struggling right now like something like I might be misspeaking but something like 30% of residential energy
(27:49) bills are either late on payment or completely unpaid that creates a massive liability on the books of the energy companies so who's who's going to pay for energy in the future it's going to be Bitcoin Miners and everyday people holding Bitcoin who actually have value to then buy goods and services in the economy um it's not not going to work on a on a dollar standard no 30% yeah something crazy like that ballp yeah that's when you look at it and that's one stat the other stat is you look at like credit card delinquency
(28:27) rates over 90 days they're they're creeping up to 2007 uh 2006 2007 levels like the consumer certainly under stress when you think of the fact that like 30% or in that ballpark are not paying their electricity bills that paints a pretty Stark dark picture because you think when it comes to maso's hierarchy of needs that's like one of the things that you make sure you pay month in and month out what's even uh more interesting about that so if a lot of your customers can't pay their bills somebody still has to pay for that
(29:07) so what does the utility do they raise rates for the rest of the people who can pay their bills so rates go up for the people who can pay it but the higher those power rates go up the more incentivized those people are to just exit the grid allog together so there's a concept of the uh the Bitcoin mining death spiral which I think actually borrowed from what is a real phenomenon called the utility death spiral so people stop paying their bills you raise rates for the people who can pay their bills rates are so high and the cost of
(29:36) solar home storage home energy production is falling uh you you eventually reach a point of parody where those people say okay I'm just going to produce my own power I don't need to buy from the utility so the utility at some point is left with no customers because of the way that they're pricing energy um and the way that they're you know perceiving risk and and not properly accounting for it yeah it says are the alarm BS going off throughout the utility sector right now this has been going on for over a decade mhm um and I
(30:07) think it's like I wouldn't call it alarm Bells I would call it quiet desperation okay why is that it's it's the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about okay yeah it's like it's it's an obvious problem and there's even more kind of crazy things going on in these markets with these companies where they you know they have people have comfortable jobs everything's like going you know steady as it goes now um but they're seeing all these risks start to accumulate and they're all trying to
(30:42) fight over like the remaining customers who can actually pay bills yeah but it's it's not sustainable no does Bitcoin fix this Bitcoin is a great tool to fix everything right but it's gonna take time people time and people and effort and work to actually build up the economy back from uh where it's at now systemically fragile state that we that we find it in yeah fragile yet uh surprisingly resilient and full of opportunity full of potential so yeah and speaking of opportunity we were discussing before we hit
(31:23) record like in the Bitcoin mining industry specifically like do you agree with the thesis that the biggest opportunity is in developing rack space infrastructure um that is definitely a very large opportunity right now so because it takes so long to develop projects and project projects at scale um to sell Power uh and there's so much demand from Bitcoin mining right now that there's just a real shortage of power capacity and that's just Bitcoin mining you now have increased demand from uh you know AI data centers other
(32:02) traditional data centers data itself is just such a a huge part of our economy and a growing part of our economy that that trend is not going to stop so yes there's a a huge shortage of power capacity um and it's kind of interesting because you know you have this influx of wind power solar power very lowcost renewable generation you know mixed with the rest of the the the power production stack um but with and solar in particular you have this correlation risk where if the wind is blowing across all of these wind
(32:33) generators or the sun is shining across all of these solar generators it starts to drive down prices for all of them so they're a little bit on the fence of like do I keep building this generation if it's going to be risky in that way um or do I just hold off and deploy that Capital elsewhere um but that's where Bitcoin mining comes in and it's like okay you can you can still have that correlation risk but you can capture that Surplus to support and back and secure the money Supply now so it's really
(33:00) taking the risk out of power generation Investments I think this is really underappreciated by a lot of power Executives is that you can keep overbuilding wind and solar now and you can monetize that Surplus energy you might not get like the PPA price that you were looking for um you know last year or five years ago but you're going to set basically a floor on any power that you produce and you'll be able to monetize that that lowest value riskiest energy and you still get all the upside in the in the merchant Market or you can
(33:28) also sign a separate PPA uh on that power and have the the investment pencil out yeah if you're wise enough to actually accumulate Bitcoin you can get a lot of value from bitcoin's Price appreciation over time as well that too yeah yeah quick break here freaks this rip is brought to you by gradually then suddenly a framework for understanding Bitcoin is money by Parker Lewis I wrote the forward to the book I'm honored to have done so because it's the best 0o to1 primer if you're looking for a
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(35:16) com tftc to get $40 off their annual subscription zap.com tftc $40 off so what is the optimal energy generation mix this problem not only exists for wind and solar when you have increased production of wind and solar um throughout the day if the wind's blowing and the sun shining that only doesn't drive prices negative for those power producers it drives prices negative for natural gas producers nuclear power plants in the market as well and that has led to a lack of investment in those what are deemed to be more reliable energy sources um in favor of wind and solar
(35:59) um which been highly subsidized via energy renewable energy credits um but I think like so I talked about this with Jamie mcavity from kmit last month and I think there's a way to have it all would you agree I asked him the question I still don't know the answer to it but like what would the price of energy be in Ott without wind and solar my thinking is it would be higher I don't think it would be lower without them um but I think that the answer to like what is the optimal power mix is what does
(36:33) the market decide as the optimal power mix so and I think from a subsidies perspective yes subsidies exist for wind and solar but the entire oil and gas fossil fuel industry has been heavily subsidized for a very long time um so I think I tend to think of those as sort of like a wash like neither side really has that much of an advantage over the other um but my general hypothesis is that we as a society or me as an individual investor I would like to utilize the lowcost nature of wind and solar uh for applications where it makes
(37:15) sense so like for example there's this been a discussion around energy density in the Bitcoin mining space so there's a lot of of bitcoiners who say Okay Bitcoin uses energy and for that reason we need energy density to power their grid and power our Bitcoin data centers that is just a completely like false assumption so the value of energy density um is really for dynamic loads like a car where you need to move from point A to point B um using a small amount of energy when it comes to a stationary load like a
(37:52) data center you don't need reliability and you don't need energy density and there's plenty of land to build wind to build solar and all of that so you you can produce all this very lowcost renewable energy um and it doesn't need to be reliable for for certain applications like Bitcoin data centers um and then for all of the things that need like high up time or energy density that's when you have the rest of the power mix so I mean even taking this to the to the extreme like what are some
(38:21) interesting energy dense applications that you could use like if you think about nuclear power there's been a lot of people in the Bitcoin space want to see more nuclear power for Bitcoin mining and I'm not opposed to that but you can also think of many interesting applications for nuclear energy like uh you know nuclear power Transportation or or you know planes or um I like to think of a future where it's like your Apple watch is just like a one megawatt nuclear generator in there and it can do
(38:48) all kinds of crazy computation and other things um or nuclear power like as we you know explore space use it for those applications um and sure it's great as a as a source of grid power but it's not a necessity so this actually ties back to the idea of the the demand s side elasticity or the lack thereof so most power loads uh do not need 99.
(39:17) 9% uptime um especially Bitcoin data centers so you utilize the the unreliable but very low cost renewable energy use it for those applications and then for everything else that does require high up time that's where you have you know gas peer plants you have battery storage you have um you know Hydro capacity maybe nuclear maybe maybe other forms of power generation um but for everything else just pump in the wind and solar yeah but how agree there may not be demand like demand obviously Peak demand comes very seldomly two times a year
(39:54) here in Texas specifically and probably similar many other places but that's the problem right is like you need it when you need it and to get it when you need it like you need to have everything built out and producing at that point in time like and then reliability in the Bitcoin minor context it's a spectrum right like depending on the A6 that you have the price that you accumulated them at and plug them in like you have different reliability needs based on those upfront Capital injections into your your business
(40:28) but if we're just talking about base load so like everyday power consumers and you you think about like the summer Peaks and the winter Peaks those Peaks are exacerbated by the fact that most of these customers are under fixed prices so yes you can build more generation to meet those Peaks but you can also do more demand response so Bitcoin data center is obviously doing demand response and reducing those Peaks from their own perspective but the same is true for or I think Jamie talked about this on the podcast with you too he
(41:00) called it like uh um like Family Pool time or something like that or family sauna time yeah where it's like okay if my power price if I'm on a a time of use rate for my uh for my power if the if it's a really hot afternoon and my power prices are going through the roof well okay maybe like we just go outside for for a couple hours and we save money by doing that um and that's an economic decision that everybody can choose to make they can still lock in their power prices but they don't have to so this
(41:29) the this supply side and the demand side balance is really important right now it's just highly skewed on the demand side creating these massive Peaks because the the way I the way I like to frame it is that like the average person's ability to make an economic decision on when to buy Power has been severely atrophied because the last 100 years have just given them one fixed price yeah you wear a crutch you wear a cast on your leg for 100 years your leg's not going to work so people just have to get a little bit
(42:01) more comfortable with the fact that like energy is a dynamic Market um and there are ways to kind of you know buy and sell energy just like you do other goods and services when price goes up maybe you buy less of it when price goes down you buy more of it yeah do you envision a future where we just have such an abundance of of energy and electricity capacity that we don't have to worry about any of this cuz that's like the ideal state in my mind let me know if I'm wrong but like we should just overbuild
(42:28) generation to an extent that's almost obscene mine Bitcoin with the Surplus maybe get to the Nakamoto point that drove bunol down the hall is put out there and just not have to like worry about family time or anything like that yeah I think that's a possibility I think as as we get back to a sound money Society um you know you're going to have natural Innovation and deflation which I think is a good thing the cost of energy will go down and the total um sort of like value and ability to you know use money
(43:08) for other things will go up for the average household so the the portion of their total budget that they're spending on energy should decrease uh to the point where it's like yeah keep consuming more of it like it doesn't make a huge difference yeah it's the world I want to live in me too what do you think uh bring this back to Satoshi energy and your intersection uh of the energy sector and Bitcoin mining we've talked about where the energy um Executives may be missing um what's going on with Bitcoin
(43:43) but where like Bitcoin miners as they begin to interact with these utilities and energy companies what are they doing wrong or what could they be doing better in terms of understanding their counterparties and this this trade that they're making it's it's changed a lot in the last five years um so one of the things that uh kind of Mo motivated me and like helped guide the Strategic vision of Satoshi energy is that you know five years ago as I really started going in fulltime on this um I would see
(44:17) a Bitcoin mining company that's just reaching scale or trying to reach scale and they're hiring for an energy manager so every Bitcoin mining company um ultimately needs some level of energy expertise within their organization to be able to make good investment decisions and sign the right power contracts and and drisk those Investments and ultimately continue to be a profitable business so five years ago that was like virtually non-existent there were a couple that had really strong energy teams and they're succeeding today and
(44:44) they're growing today um more and more um you know Bitcoin mining companies as I said like Bitcoin is minting a bunch of energy nerds so there's a lot more energy people coming into the Bitcoin mining space there's people who are already in Bitcoin that are just getting up to speed on energy I think Corman is an amazing example of that like they're doing super sophisticated financing and and power contracts um without much of a background in in energy um so there's yeah there's just a lot more energy
(45:10) expertise with Within These Bitcoin mining companies now and so yeah I think there I don't think there's a lot of um there's honestly not a lot of shortcomings in terms of Bitcoin mining companies communicating with with energy companies out it's more of the energy companies don't really appreciate or understand the value of of the Bitcoin mining um and and what value that provides to the grid what what value that provides financially um what is the long-term Outlook of of Bitcoin mining
(45:37) and and Bitcoin itself um but the the mining companies they know they know they need lowcost energy um they generally know how to get it um the major point of of friction right now is in negotiating with these with these energy companies is that the energy companies completely misunderstand the value proposition of of Bitcoin mining yeah and like in your mind does Bitcoin does the Bitcoin mining industry prevent an Avenue to create really unique ppas like longer ppas because you know the demand's always going to be there to facilitate
(46:14) block production because that's what I'm thinking as like a Bitcoin miner what what's the average PPA not like five years um PPA um for for power generation with a non-bitcoin offer so like a a large corporate Google data center Amazon data center large industrial big utility um those have typically been in the range of 15 to 20 years MH we've seen shorter durations on the PPA with with Bitcoin data centers um I think one because you know Bitcoin the economics of Bitcoin mining um are certainly getting more
(46:49) competitive and it's hard to look out 20 years and say this is a price I'm willing to pay yeah in 20 years when you have four having in that five having in that in that time frame um but I I I think the next step here um a really important step is going to be investment in New Power Generation where instead of your your primary uh credit worthy off-taker or your anchor tenant being one of these big corporates or being a big utility or big uh traditional data center company it's starting to look at the Bitcoin mining
(47:26) investment as potentially being your anchor tenant where you can build a a power generation asset you put a Bitcoin data center with it and that Bitcoin data center like I said earlier is going to set a a floor on the price so you know this is the minimum amount I'm going to get um and then I can you know make assumptions or or forecast what I think the merchant upside will look like with that investment and from there you can actually make a Sound Investment and and know that like you're going to have
(47:53) kind of a minimum rate of return on that investment by including the the data center yeah and it improves the economics for these power generators while they're waiting for transmission to be buil out too right because hypothetically you can build uh a generation asset and then put a Bitcoin mining operation behind the meter as Transmissions being built out and monetize that asset while you're waiting to connect to the grid I um I certainly think that's an option uh but transmission buildout is not without risk so if if you're going
(48:31) to make that type of investment you just want to be sure that it's a very locked in transmission deal okay like they're already cleared from a regulatory perspective uh they have all their land easements and everything squared away um the Investments there and it's on a very clear timeline and maybe that still takes you know two three years to build and so you can take that risk to to energize your your power generation today put a Bitcoin data center there monetize it today um knowing with some
(49:00) high level of certainty that you're going to get that transmission in the future and get that optionality to sell also sell Power into the grid um but doing that in like a completely speculative way where it's like you're out in the middle of the desert and there's no nearby transmission and you're saying okay I'm going to build a wind farm and a solar farm and a um and a Bitcoin mine and then kind of hope that the transmission comes to you uh I think that's a little bit riskier and
(49:23) maybe not not worth doing this is why we have you on the show to point out these nuances not a lot of people talk about this stuff yeah CU that's what makes sense to me like if you're thinking about the energy stability problem in the country and if a lot of these power generation facilities are having problems even getting off the ground because of the economics of the sunk sunk Capital that you put in um the the time between when you deploy the capital get everything built and connected and uh the point at which you begin
(49:59) monetizing that asset to begin paying back all that capital investment um it's just intuitively makes sense of like Bitcoin mining being able to shorten the time between shovel and the ground and actually monetizing the asset like is massively beneficial for the proliferation of new energy capacity buildout ultimately in the power generation investment you want some optionality where you can sell your power so there was some discussion years ago you know we're going to build completely off-grid power generation and
(50:32) Bitcoin mining but you're missing out on optionality by doing that so I think where we're going with power generation especially solar and wind um is that you're going to have some mix of solar production wind production battery storage and the Bitcoin mine and the transmission interconnection so what that means is um you know when there's the most Surplus energy it's either going to go into the Bitcoin mine or it's going to go into the storage and and then when it goes into storage you're storing it there for
(51:07) some period of time on the expectation that you can then sell it back into the Grid or or get other revenue streams from like anary Services uh from that storage asset and then when the value of energy is at its highest when demand is at its highest Bitcoin data center is off not operating at all not consuming any of the energy and then you have energy in the battery you're going to sell that into the market and make that Arbitrage uh or you're going to just put power from the power generation asset
(51:35) into the market and get all that that upside in the market like it's a very it's actually a very simple balance um and I think the the way a lot of energy companies are structured today is you have a lot of uh energy developers who maybe they specialize in you know in the last like 15 years 10 years um they specialized in building out wind farms and that was it they didn't really touch so they didn't touch storage um they didn't do other types of Power Generation Um now you're seeing a lot of
(52:04) new solar developers are coming into the space um and they just kind of focused on on solar buildout but increasingly they're they're starting to build some expertise around battery storage and so that that's becoming part of the investment mix and part of the part of the investment stack and then increasingly they're becoming uh also more knowledgeable about the Bitcoin data center so it's just it takes time for this uh kind of expert to ramp up to where somebody can properly um you know
(52:31) project finance a project that has all of these components and see the True Value and all those components working together and on top of that there's you know Regulatory and Market complexities that um make it challenging to to have all those assets work together in the market but all of that is also being you know discussed and and solved for in the in the changes to the market rules as well yeah you have to imagine with the increased optionality do five options that you presented that the cost of capital has to come down a bit for
(53:02) for these projects because you drisk it to a certain extent if I was a a bank or a major investment firm like I would be pumping money into projects that have Bitcoin data centers on them and have storage and have the power generation and are you know on a good transmission line that can also sell Power into a into a liquid Market yeah is the uh is the B battery capacity solution uh the pipe dream that many people claim it is um I'd say just read what Jesse Pelton puts out he's got the numbers and I think a lot of yeah it's um are they
(53:39) theoretical though no it's it's very real and very economical now okay um like the cost of energy storage has dropped significantly in the last decade or two same is true for wind and solar um no it's very economical and like some of these batter battery companies similar to Bitcoin mining companies that might have a hedge and and they're able to liquidate that hedge in a very volatile market like some of these battery companies are able to you know just in a few hours out of the Year return their investment um by by arbing
(54:07) that energy yeah yeah the technolog is all there too it's not like a you know pipe dream that the technology won't be there it's there there's batteries in everything too right I know we all use phones electric vehicles are are increasing the the battery production um yeah and there's plenty of resources on the planet as we know to to build more of them it's uh you know i' I've gotten uh some strongly worded messages from you in the past for for [ __ ] on wind and solar specifically am I right at all thinking
(54:43) that like we should go for it all we should do nuclear wind solar coal natural gas well I generally say let the market decide but I think the Market's going to decide that yeah do it all yeah I think the problem is you know we get back to like the reliability issue and the resiliency issue there's maybe a certain class of people on this planet if you want to call them that that are trying to push for only wind only solar like in a place like Germany where that's not very sunny and it creat creates reliability issues um and
(55:21) they're just ignoring the fact that like you still need some sort of backup power in the best form of that that backup power might be nuclear might be gas generation and so like at the same time as putting these very unreliable forms of power generation on the grid they're also taking away the thing that's backing that up and and maintaining the resiliency that's a problem you don't want that nobody wants nobody Saye wants that um but that doesn't mean that like putting more wind and sore on the grid
(55:46) is doing anything necessarily bad to it I mean all you have to do is look at OT for for the best example here like lowest power prices globally um um and also the most wind and most solar production in this market out of any other power Market in the world yeah and with that in mind I mean Bitcoin miners this set when it came out a few weeks ago blew my mind or 95 over 95% of the large flexible load within OT I thought I knew it was a lot I didn't think it was like over 95% which is pretty insane to think about but with
(56:20) that in mind like what are your thoughts on the recent attack from Elizabeth Warren Department of energy the eia uh this excise tax that's being uh proposed to be levied on bitcoin miners um and the reaction from the industry which I think was very effective well I don't want to give them any new ideas but I've got I think a different take on this so as a company um you know we're not mining Bitcoin ourselves and so the way I think about it strategically is that you know we keep an eye on these
(56:55) things we want to make sure that our customers are not impacted by these things but if for whatever reason there was some heavy-handed regulation on on bitcoin um or Bitcoin mining in the United States and its energy consumption like we would have to find a way to adapt and and move to different markets which is part of building software that's very scalable to other markets um and same same goes for the services that we provide to develop sites like that can be done in in other markets uh if if Bitcoin mining is pushed to those other
(57:22) markets I think you know we're all aware of the the challenge that Bitcoin presents to the authoritarian government that we all live under uh from across most of this planet um but I think ultimately regulation is going to take the form of trying to get a piece of the pie rather than trying to kill it outright so they great analogy great example and this actually ties back to like the the differences of opinions that we've had about renewable energy but 15 20 years ago even 10 years ago the renewable energy industry they
(58:05) were the black sheep of the energy industry they were up against all these regulated utilities saying hey we want to build renewal generation provide this power into your grids um and you guys have to let us do that because it's it's it's supposed to be an open market so like they had to go through all these regulatory hurdles they had to kind of change the public perspective on the industry uh and ultimately they succeeded and and they've gotten a major foothold in the industry but what happened from a regulatory perspective I
(58:34) think is what happened um I think the people that wanted a piece of that pie they saw hey this is a really trending industry massively growing industry how do I get a piece of it so the best way to get a piece of that is to create a a a regulatory incentive that creates a tax credit for production of this energy and then where does that tax credit go it doesn't actually go to the companies that are investing and and building the infrastructure and operating it the tax credits go to the already profitable
(59:03) companies the big Banks and investment firms uh that are able to actually monetize those tax credits so I and here's your like for all the Regulators out there who want a piece of the pie that's what you do don't give them the idea create create a a a Bitcoin production tax credit and get a piece of it I don't think they should I'm not I'm not why you giving them ideas I told you you asked the question why can't we just why can't we just interact as a consenting parties to sell and buy our
(59:35) goods and keep the government out of it I like to operate super transparently like when I'm playing poker I'll like sometimes just tell people what my hand is then don't believe me that's a terrible strategy it's a winning strategy sometimes it's the best Bluff there is I mean on this topic of authoritarianism which I completely agree has come to our Shores we do not live in a free country which is obvious the money is corrupted the money education the water the healthcare the water what else yeah uh the food the
(1:00:05) food the media education did I say education yeah you said education education's [ __ ] do you think we're at an inflection point where people are getting enough pissed off at the government to have a pendulum swing back towards Freedom it's heating up I think there's not enough overlap between um Bitcoin poers and other conspiracy connoisseurs mhm we're trying to get them in on the show we've got Whitney yeah you're doing awesome job we've got others coming in but like no honestly like you've spent a
(1:00:40) lot of time in El Salvador over the last year what have you seen down there like in bu they just announced they're dropping the income tax from 30% to 0% it seems like despite um what people would deem to be wrongdoing things uh that Bic has has basically put forth over the last few years as he's made these drastic changes within El Salvador I do think a lot of positive has come to it in terms of an example of a country just going tabula rasa like we're going to build up from the ground up and try to allow a
(1:01:17) free market to flourish here like what have you seen on the ground there in terms of the strategy actually working if at all um I can speak to El Salvador but also just more broadly it it feels like we might be tapping out or kind of maxing out bottom up growth of Bitcoin adoption and there there are a lot of people in this world rightly so who look to leaders to make some decisions for them like if there's something I'm not knowledgeable about I find somebody who is an expert in that and they're my
(1:01:51) leader on that topic so same is true for how the money works and I think El salador was a great example of that where it's a great top down implementation you have a a strong courageous leader who's not afraid to take that risk and promote something that's going to be good for uh his country himself uh society as a whole and is able to kind of educate and uh you know kind of uh build build the support in his in his country for that so I tend to think that we need to see more of that um we need to see more you
(1:02:24) know energy Executives we need see more um political or at least like free market oriented political leaders promoting Bitcoin um more people in the media uh who are who are kind of media leaders promoting Bitcoin and I think that's where the next big wave of adoption is going to come from you always have the the number go up technology which gets a lot of new people into it um you also have a bunch of great businesses that are you know making easier user experiences making it um just better for everyday people to
(1:02:54) adopt it and to use it and that bottom up growth isn't going to stop um but we I I think we also need to to approach it from both sides more more of the top down kind of like hey guys like we we're doing this wrong let's let's fix this yeah I mean just it builds very nicely on the conversation I just had with Austin tanell Kelly Landon and tur deester like applying a Bitcoin standard to uh the world of real estate development and Austin incredible story of what they they've built at building
(1:03:24) culture as company toing bring back um sound durable um homes by using ancient masonary masonry Tech techniques and um they gave a presentation last night here at the commons on bitcoin urbanism and it was really cool to hear Austin's story particularly after meeting tur who's a uh very big Enthusiast of quality Aesthetics and dorable architecture and he sort of told Austin like hey you should uh you should read the Bitcoin stand like what you're doing and your approach and your philosophy behind building the houses that you do
(1:04:03) um is really aligned with what bitcoiners are striving for in terms of sound money and bringing back low time preference to the world and I agree like maybe this is like the the middle middle layer of what you're describing between ground up and top down but like finding these leaders and other tangental movements or verticals that have recog recn that there's a very big problem in the world it affects what they do um very acutely and just getting in there and saying like hey Bitcoin may be able to help you out
(1:04:38) here I had a uh energy executive tell me last week that um he looks at Bitcoin as uh nerd prepper money so it's not too far off it's it's not but I think it is part of the uh the current um General outlook on bitcoin I think from like from most people who are not in it is they say well if if the money doesn't work if if the dollar fails I need guns and food and land and I need to go off- grid um I think that's the wrong assumption it's like Bitcoin is already filling cracks in society and like what
(1:05:17) you said with um you know Austin and Kelly and others like they're already using the wealth that they're accumulating with Bitcoin and using the ability to store value in Bitcoin as a way to build up Society um back to where it once was and then beyond there so it's it's like people get so accustomed to their day-to-day lives that they forget to look at history and what the world looked like back on a sound money standard the architecture the quality of the food the way humans actually treated
(1:05:48) each other and that's just slowly dissolved through Fiat money but if we go back to sound money we don't have to go through some Mad Max scenario necessarily might happen I'm ready for it bandables but we can just build up from here it'll be great yeah no it's it's funny that he called it uh nerd prepper money again this is something we've talked about behind the scenes too it's like the propaganda strong like you're you're a prepper if you believe in sound money right and are pushing it forward
(1:06:19) and that's uh a great shame and very frustrating but again I do think the inflation pressures that people are feeling in their everyday lives right now are beginning to weaken the control the propaganda has had over their lives up to this point where it's like all right you're telling me that everything's good that the economy is growing that inflation's coming down but I'm literally not seeing that when I go to the grocery store when I go to the gas station like you may be lying to me
(1:06:46) maybe these nerd preppers are on to something here yeah I mean the term prepper similar to like the term conspiracy theorist is just a scop to get people to think that it's it's bad to be thinking about these things so what is a prepper fundamentally it's someone who cares about their own Survival every human should care about their own Survival yeah and be and then once you have that covered then think about thriving how do we pass that down to Future Generations how do we live a more abundant lifestyle how do we live a
(1:07:12) more peaceful lifestyle yeah how do you think we we beat the lizard people or are we going to beat the lizard people um did you see the the CEO of fizer breathing through his uh through his gills I try not to compliment on I try not to comment on any individuals specifically but lizards more generally um I think Bitcoin is is like a Major Tool in doing that I think the internet was actually more powerful even than Bitcoin and it's still underappreciated and like they weren't able to shut down the internet it created some gated
(1:07:46) communities and have blocked some information but like the internet's still winning and the same is going to happen with Bitcoin like we're going to have free flowing information free flowing value transfer across the economy in sound money um and then energy could be one of those next kind of uh dominoes to fall exactly yeah they're I mean as they lose control they try to tighten their grip on control like this Tik Tok bill I mean I haven't done a full dissection of what's going on but from the commentary
(1:08:16) I'm seeing from people I think I trust like it seems like it could be an attempt to attack the internet and like I wouldn't if what I'm reading from people who are commenting on the bill is correct like tftc could eventually the website get like shut down by the government if we put too much wrong think out there I don't know how you survived the last four years so congrats I was thinking about that last night we're n show n show you're just under the cusp there yes yes I officially made
(1:08:44) my first list the uh what's it called Logan the uh the center for countering digital hate put me on a list of 96 congratulations YouTube channels uh spreading new denial uh you get a plaque for that or something I I should I should but yeah I'm I'm a new denier in the realm of climate climate science I thought they were going to get me for covid but um they came at me for climate even better um I yeah I think it's uh there's potential to be a very crazy year when it comes to censorship and elections and
(1:09:21) what happens economically what happens across the board so got to be ready for anything at this point yeah and we need we need people like yourself like others instilling confidence in like the middle 30% or like the silent majority or the silent majority the middle 60% really that are like all right which way do I go do I just be doile and comply with what the government's telling me or is there a critical mass of people that if far we to back them and stand up and say no [ __ ] this I'm mad as hell we're not
(1:09:54) taking this anymore um would that be effective that's why we do the show that's why we we do what we're both doing in the Bitcoin world is like proving like hey you can do good things do virtuous things do it and make money uh not only money the best money that humans have ever come into contact with and get away from these authoritarians that really just want to control you at the end of the day um yeah we're going to win yes you say that I say that and it's not just uh you know it's not a given but to win you
(1:10:32) have to believe that you can win yes and so I think Bitcoin has been really nice it kind of gives a lot of us additional leverage and courage to be thinking that um but even without it like we if we care about life and we care about living we care about Humanity then we have to think we can win and we can do more of that no that's people think we're going to win is like a cocky statement steeped and huous but it's exactly that just trying to instill confidence like you got to believe you can win before even
(1:10:59) get on the field or it's not worth stepping on the field in the first place I think more of that and less dunking on poor people would be nice in the Bitcoin Community we call them poor it's messed up but I was shocked I was shocked I did not think he would uh he would go to that level well here's what it is it it's hard to resist the urge to just be like all right have fun staying poor when uh you when you have the uh the speaking head types and the the High Finance guys saying like bitcoin's bitcoin's going to zero I'm
(1:11:32) never going to adopt this it's like all we have fun stay poor yeah to that audience I can I can see the yeah negging the rich people's fun that's it's better to build though far more rewarding to build than to say things and I think where we are today I mean it's happening right now we're literally at Builder day um here at the commons like the last 3 years that bare market like see what you've done it's t energ what many others have done across the space whether it's mining uh wallet
(1:12:00) software second layer Solutions like people are building just we we have fun telling people to have fun staying poor on the internet but uh there are serious individuals who do not engage in that activity that are actually building valuable stuff right all right what do you think we should wrap up with anything we didn't touch on that uh we covered a lot of bases man I don't know if you have any other questions I'm happy to try and answer them do you think the government successful in their taxs in the Bitcoin
(1:12:35) mining industry over the next two years in any capacity so I add more context I got to believe systems like urot States like Texas systems like the TVA have recognized the the value that Bitcoin miners are providing I find it hard to believe that they're going to be successful I would hope that urot TVA individual utilities energy companies are like well no like you've destroyed our industry enough like we actually need this to be somewhat sustainable moving forward yeah I think it's hard for them
(1:13:14) to do um that said I think the government is capable of doing anything uh through executive order or otherwise as long as they have the support of the mainstream media to keep repeating it as if it's true in reality and the right thing to do but I really do think you know if if like a federal ban or massive tax on Bitcoin mining happened I think that's just another step towards like the secession of Texas or other pockets of of the United States like just saying we're done with this like you can have
(1:13:46) that reality we're going to we're going to have our own tags it baby TS it TS it come and take it come and take it literally like all right have fun come and take it right and like Bitcoin mining I've talked about this for a while like energy rich States like Texas Wyoming Oklahoma like if they because the big reason they don't sued if they don't agree with the federal governments like they're dependent on those federal dollars to a lot of extents but if you're energy rich spin up a Bitcoin
(1:14:19) mining Permanent Fund like yeah what are you going to take some some more printed dollars or 5 gwatt of bit coin mining in your state like what's going to be a better source of capital yeah and again just like we're reaching the inflection point of the career risk I think we're reaching the inflection point of um people straddling themselves to Dollar I mean like there's going to be a point at some point soon um whether that's a year from now or five years from now I think it's within that period
(1:14:46) where it's just abundantly clear that they have lost control the dollars a melting Ice Cube as uh our friend who likes to call their people poor likes to say um yeah and it's he has a lot of great things to say by the way yes I'm just not a fan of that one but I think there's going to be a point where it's like everybody jump Shi they're like all right it's like really like a Mexican standoff right now where it's like uh it's still strong it's still strong and then there's going to
(1:15:09) be a point where it's obviously not strong it's like all right we're in Bitcoin yeah that feels like this year to be honest yeah with all of the other things happening around around the world uh politically in the media um it like the the dam is breaking and it feels like this is the year that I just like bus wide open yeah could take longer you never know I think the Middle East is going to get in a big way and at that point it's going that's right yeah nation state adoption that's a big Trend
(1:15:33) yeah all right thanks for having me man it's been it's been a long time coming I'm happy we were finally able to do this you got to do it more often you got to come back to Austin more often awesome we'll do all right we're going to get back to Builder day peace of Love freaks
