Rick V joined Marty to discuss 3D printing, Rick's 3D printing company Crypto Cloaks, and how 3D printing can be used to build tools for bitcoiners, especially miners. If you're looking to stay ahead of the curve and get some unique ideas on how you can enhance your mining set up with 3D printing whether you're an at-home miner or mining at industrial scale, this is the rip for you.

Links

CryptoCloaks on Twitter
CryptoCloaks Website

Listen here:

Fountain

Anchor

Spotify

Apple

Podbean

Watch here:

Sponsors

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro, boostagrams, sponsors

5:58 - Coffee rip!
8:23 - Questions on 3D printing
15:35 - CryptoCloaks
19:59 - Story of the space heater
23:36 - Temp limits on 3D printed parts
24:46 - What space heater ASICs can do for hash distribution
27:45 - Rick's Bitcoin story
30:43 - Everyone Bitcoiner should have a 3D printer
35:05 - Where 3D printing is going
38:15 - AI
44:22 - Back to CryptoCloaks
50:07 - UK store
51:01 - Word for entrepreneurs
53:47 - Running a bitcoin based business
1:03:16 - Narrative battle
1:10:05 - Ring drones
1:11:43 - What's next for CryptoCloaks
1:13:48 - Plugs
1:14:45 - Mining tangent
1:18:11 - Outro

Transcript

Marty: Oh, we're live. We're live. But we're Rick v, not Ricky. Rick V from Crypto Cloaks. We're 50 blocks away from a palindrome block here at Block Height 771,127. And we're here to talk about 3D printing and crypto cloaks. Rick v, welcome
Rick: to the show. Hello, . Thanks, Rick. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Finally.
Thanks for coming.
Marty: Thank you for doing in the morning. This is a 9:00 AM rip where I am. 8:00 AM Rip where you are.
Rick: Coffee rip. Yeah, coffee rip. They're the best. Yeah.
Marty: Well, I'm excited to start the week off like this. Obviously Matt and I were talking about drooling into . The the, uh, what was that S nine
Rick: enclosure that you turned?
Yeah, that, yeah. That was hilarious. I was like, you guys, come on now.
Marty: You got
Rick: kids. They drool. I know, I hear it. I hear it. That's why we created a different one. There's like a solid top now that it blows the heat to the sides. You can still technically drool into the side if you really want to, but
Marty: yeah, I can imagine [00:01:00] the kid's a bit better.
The kid's gonna lean on it, push it over, and then start drooling on it. These kids get afraid of with, with where they put their drool. Yeah,
Rick: man, you're gonna be screwed either way with kids. So . It's what? It's .
Marty: Well, before we get into the space heater, which is extremely cool, like I was Tony before we hit record, like I'm pretty ignorant to 3D printing.
I mean, I've been aware that it's been this growing trend and I've seen everything that you guys have been building at Crypto cloaks over the year. We actually have
Rick: one of the grenades, oh, there we go. There we go, baby.
Marty: We have a, a crypto cloaks bitcoin grenade here. Um, what the hell is this? Like what, like how
Rick: cheap is, it's just like a, it's a piece of art, man.
That's all it is now. It's crazy how far that thing has come. We literally built that and designed it for a conference in, uh, Vietnam. I think four years ago now. Was that Eric Val's conference? [00:02:00] Yeah. Yeah. It was in Hanoi, right? It was right before covid. Yeah, it was right before Covid. And he had me send out like 120 to the conference and then nobody showed up because of Covid.
And so he had like 80 left and he just started giving 'em out randomly. But that's where it all started from. And
Marty: so, but Crypto CLS is much
Rick: older than that. Like let's, yeah, we're on like year six. What, what
Marty: drove you to start Crypto cls and before even crypto cls, like what got you into 3D printing? Yeah.
Rick: Uh, I got into 3D printing from senior design and college. So we had a senior project where four of us each kind of had a machine to mess with. Somebody did cnc. I was in charge of running the 3D printer and then other people did, I don't even know, laser engraver and one other machine. And that's kind of where I fell in love with it and started learning on it eventually, like right away.
And.
Marty: So how would you describe 3D printing, where it is now, where it was when you were [00:03:00] in college, taking that class? Cuz it seems like there's been a lot of advancements.
Rick: Uh, it's crazy how fast the space moves. I'm not gonna lie. I just got a new printer and it's blowing all the ones that I've had outta the water just based on speed alone and quality.
I think the technology is going super fast. Yeah.
Marty: And so what is the technology? How, how does this all
Rick: work? So I guess the big thing right now is they're start like this bamboo carbon has lidar on it so it can actually scan your, um, filament passes and then, uh, change the settings of the printer based on that, on like flow.
So that way it can optimize how fast it can print and not look like crap. Yeah.
Marty: Because back in the old days he would like 3D print something and you had to like shave stuff off.
Rick: Yeah. like way olden days. And even when I first started, there wasn't auto bed leveling. . So you had to do it all manually where you had four knobs on either side of the bed and you're kind of trying to get the perfect squish from all four corners and with a piece of [00:04:00] paper tug it underneath the nozzle.
And now even all these peruses that we run in the shop, they have auto bed leveling, but does all that automatically for you. And
Marty: so what does that mean for the time in which it takes to to print this stuff?
Rick: So I would say when I first started a simple little, maybe ledger, nano mount would maybe be five hours to print and I can print 'em in 20 minutes or less now.
Holy shit. No, it's crazy. So it's like really, really crazy.
Marty: So that's one 15th at the time. Yeah, that would've taken
Rick: before. So that's a crazy, yeah, that's printer's insanely fast. I posted a couple videos on Twitter and I was even mind blown when I first got it. Like I didn't believe all the stuff I saw and then I put it in ludicrous mode, which is one of the speeds.
And I was like, holy shit, this thing's insane. So
Marty: what is. , what are the implications of 3D printing on, I mean, obviously you're building stuff particular to Bitcoiners. You mentioned the ledger nano mounts. Yep. You guys have a cold card [00:05:00] mount, bit fo um, you guys are building on all these mining tools as well.
Like how do you see 3D printing disrupting everyday business manufacturing, particularly?
Rick: I would say 3D printing is huge right now in like rapid prototyping because it kind of destroys the whole getting a CNC mold of everything to really prototype parts and stuff. And now you can easily just design it, make a quick change, whip it up on a printer, see if it works, and then go to the molding process so you're not spending tens of thousands of dollars making new molds and all this stuff.
You can just rapid prototype it with plastic, make sure it all works, and then get your final mold. Yeah.
Marty: So what's the CNC or is that what it's called?
Rick: Yeah, cnc. Cnc, yeah. So what's that process typically? So you're pretty much, you're pretty much getting a block of aluminum and then they CNC. Out the parts to make a mold, an inverse mold of that part.
And then they pour resin liquid into it. And then that's how you get your part. And we're 3D printing it just builds it up as a layer and you don't have to [00:06:00] use huge chunks of aluminum to make your molds out of. And so this
Marty: rapidly changes the cost to do research and development. Oh,
Rick: absolutely. And that's why you see all these companies, like even spaceship companies making parts out of 3D printers for spaceships and stuff now, like the technology is so crazy.
I can't even believe it
Marty: half the time. Yeah. I was listening to the All-In podcast over the weekend and Shaboth was mentioning when a SpaceX's, uh, uh, main competitors is about to do a launch, I believe later this month or next month. And all their parts are 3D printed.
Rick: Yeah, it's next level shit. And their printers are all metal, which are sweet.
I can't afford one. They're super expensive, but ,
Marty: I mean, that's a good, in the future. Maybe that's a good segue. Like, so what are the different types of printers out there? Obviously 3D printing guns has become a big, uh, sub theme in the bitcoin space, in the sovereignty space. Like what are, [00:07:00] what are, what's the range in the spectrum
Rick: of Yeah, I would say, I would say your two main types are gonna be kind of like fdm, which is a spool of plastic melts through a hot end to print your part.
And then resin would be the other one, which I think is a huge pain in the ass. It makes beautiful parts, but the post-processing sucks. Uh, it's pretty much a vat of liquid resin and then it has a laser that pretty much solidifies that resin at each layer as it goes up. And that's how you get your part.
So those are the two main 3D printing techniques out there?
Marty: Yeah. And then what is, uh, what's the ghost gunner using that? Cuz that has to shave out metal, correct? Um, or no, they use
Rick: plastic. What is that? Plastic? Yeah. So like if you're printing lowers, you can print that in pla plus ptg. Uh, that's just your regular, regular FDM printer.
You can print those on any of those back there. Um, the ghost gunner, I think is, I believe they're actually milling that out. I think you put like a, what is it, a one eighth lower or whatever the heck they're called into there, and then it [00:08:00] just mills out the last little bits to make it a lower.
Marty: Yeah. And how much, how much are these printers costing these days?
Rick: So, that's a crazy thing too. When I first got into it, some of these printers were, I would say Pero was really expensive and they actually kept cost really good. Um, it can range from like a hundred dollars, which is like your classic ender three if you want to get into the hobby and learn to, I don't know if you wanna get a metal printer, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So it really depends.
Marty: Yeah. And then how much for the materials that go into the printer? Um,
Rick: for pla you can get it for 25 bucks a roll, and that's like one kilogram and it can last you a long time if you don't print 24 7 like I do. Um, and then resin, it all depends. Like, uh, let's see, I can point, oops, wrongly.
This one, that's a resin printer. That's the form three. That is like two, no, 150 bucks for a thousand milliliters of resin. So that one's actually really expensive to print in. It's also closed source, so you [00:09:00] have to like, technically by their resin, but their resin works flawlessly with their printer, so I just do it.
Marty: Yeah. And so how about just stuff, can you produce with $250 with a resin?
Rick: Uh, oh God. Probably, let's see. I'm trying to think of the last time I've done that. You could maybe do, let's, let's think in lower standards. Uh, you could maybe print like three or four lowers. I would. . Okay. But, you know, I wouldn't print 'em in resin.
I don't see anybody print them really in resin. I would, I wouldn't trust that. No. I think they're more brittle than PTG and p a plus.
Marty: Yeah. So obviously you've built crypto cloaks over the last six, seven years. You see an opportunity here using 3D printing to bring products to Bitcoiners, whether maybe art like the grenade or, um, functional products like the, the fan ducts you can put on your mins, the space heater that you [00:10:00] can create for.
It's just an S nine right now, correct?
Rick: Yeah, just an S nine right now.
Marty: Yep. Um, but in like the, the range of of products that you can build using these 3D printers is pretty incredible. What, what opportunity do you see? Is this just the beginning of crypto cloaks? Obviously not just the beginning six years in, but you know what, what, what kind of opportunity are we seeing for you guys?
Rick: I mean, there's the mining, the whole home mining thing is a whole nother level. Like we were just building cases for Bitcoin nodes and fun art things. And now the whole home mining space is a whole nother ballgame. And I really love it. Like I think that's why I've put a lot of time and stuff into home mining because I just fell in love with it myself.
Yeah. And
Marty: what, I mean, obviously you have the space heater, you have the fan ducts. What can you guys build that that makes it easier for a home miner to do what they're trying to do, whether it be to heat their house or simply just run some asics in their basement?
Rick: [00:11:00] Yeah, I would say the fan shrouds alone are really helpful just because you can put, easily put it into a six or eight inch duck and then you just run that right into your, uh, furnace.
Um, I know people don't even need the, like duct work. They just pretty much put the shroud on and then put it right in the side, like cut a hole in the side of their furnace. They're just direct heat that way. I think that's one of our biggest products right now on just helping the home mining space is shrouds, cuz.
It's just an easy way to screw it onto your minor, put a duck on, and then you can duck the heat wherever you want in your house outside very easily. What's the design
Marty: process for that? Like, do you have to do a lidar of the whole asic or you simply do some measurements around where the fan is and then Yeah.
You
Rick: design from there pretty easy. I, so I do have a full model that I designed up of the S 19 just to go off of, uh, that was for fun and modeling. Um, but usually it's just getting a caliper and taking all the individual measurements and then just drawing it up in CAD and figuring out what you wanna do.
Marty: Yeah. [00:12:00] What, uh, beyond like the, the fans that connect to the ducks and the space heater, what else do you think that we can do with these, these Asics that, that hasn't been touched yet?
Rick: I'd really like to do like home heating on like water, so I want to, this really wouldn't be 3D printing. It's more. I wanna do how G P U blocks have the water cooling blocks, and then you can pretty much run that heat through a radiator.
I wanna do that for, uh, bitcoin ASIC boards. So I want to just do a big water block on ASIC board, and that way you can use even GPU radiators to cool this stuff. And then you can take that heated water and do whatever you want with it. I think that's the future from moving forward a little bit. So are you thinking
Marty: like, deconstruct the asic, just take the hash boards out and run those?
Rick: Yeah, run those, uh, may and then pretty much take off all the heat sinks and then put on these separate, uh, water boards just to keep the chips. Cool. And then you have all this heat that you can do, just like the [00:13:00] graphics cards on computers? Yeah, and I, I don't know if anybody's working on it, but I've always wanted to do that.
Marty: So, no. When you think. Decentralizing and distributing ownership of hash rates. Products like these that are gonna make it more possible, more viable. Cause you think of the economics of it, just simply plugging ace again at your house and running it is going to eat up a lot of your electricity bill.
Probably not make, yeah. A lot of money. So you want to make sure that it's doing these ancillary things like heating your house, heating your water, whatever it may be. And that really makes the economics
Rick: palpable. Yeah. For the winter. I mean, having a little space heater, like I said, why I did it in the first place is my wife would run a 1500 watt space heater at night.
And I'm like, what the, what the hell are we doing? We're just burning money for nothing. I have S nine s downstairs. If I can make it quiet, run it in the room and run it at like 650 watts, I'd still heat the room. Why? Why don't we do that? I might as well mind Bitcoin instead of just burning money [00:14:00] on a 1500 watt space heater.
Marty: And so how, how long did it take you to design. and get to the final product of that space heater. I
Rick: think pro I just finished up technically cause I had to make a couple changes to the box messing with printers and stuff. So probably three to four weeks really to finish. Yeah, it was fun. I, I was really in it, so I put a lot of time, even like all my spare time I was putting into it and just, I really wanted to get it to run.
Cause I didn't wanna burn a space heater in my room anymore. I was like, screw this, I'm gonna get this minor to run quiet. So.
Marty: And so what does that look like in the design? How's this box design? What's it connecting to? How's it, how's it making it quiet?
Rick: Okay. So the first thing was we tested a, a whole, or I guess I tested a whole bunch of different fans.
Um, the stock fans are loud as hell, even if you bring it down. Um, the main PSU fan on the S nine s are the loudest thing if you run a low wattage. So swapping that out was the biggest game changer and [00:15:00] I've made a note of that in that whole. writeup I did is if you're run gonna run a low wata, you might as well just change this and see if you even need to change stock fans.
Um, after that I just swapped two Natus, cuz they're usually generally very quiet on gaming PCs. So I tested a whole variety of those. And then I liked the one 40 on there cause I could run 'em at about 50% fan speed and I was getting like 40 decibels on it at like 650 watts. And that was perfect for my setup.
Now everybody's gonna, everybody's setup is gonna change. That's why the guide is kind of like a, a good look to, or how to do it and then fine tune it from there based on everybody's different, uh, situations. Yeah.
Marty: And what, what are your thoughts in regards to like the longevity of this, the, what's the word I'm looking for?
This like particular setup that you have swapping out fans, PSUs, like, are you confident that that will be able to run efficiently [00:16:00] for a long period of time?
Rick: Yeah, I do. I mean, I won't have a, I love taking data and like testing stuff out, so I'll, I just keep running this thing and just to get all those final points and tell people, but I don't see any issue with it.
You're running lower watts. It's not overheating. I think I have my chips set at a, a temp of a d C, uh, and then during the winter, obviously you're not gonna run it during the summer. This, this whole thing is just for winter to heat your house. If you're gonna burn a space heater, why not run a Bitcoin miner instead?
And that was the whole premise. It's not, oh, I wanna run this 24 7. Um, or if you have other ways that are more efficient of heating, then yeah, do those. But this is for the people that run space heaters that are just burning electricity. You might as well mind Bitcoin. Yeah. And if
Marty: you, what are the numbers looking like comparing the, the Bitcoin space heater to the, the fiat space heater that was eating up 1500?
Rick: Yeah, so I run it, I pretty much run that minor now, uh, 24 7. I don't ever turn it off and it keeps that room at like 70 [00:17:00] degrees Fahrenheit now. Um, so I'm running almost the same watts cuz I used to run that for like 10 to 12 hours, but now I'm running this one, uh, a hundred percent of the time. And now I can unplug it and plug it in every night, but I don't know, I might as well just run it.
I'm, it's almost the same wattage, so I just run it now 24 7 and keep that room at 70 degrees throughout the entire day.
Marty: Is it profitable or is you simply paying less for electricity?
Rick: I would say I'm just simply getting rid of the electricity cost. I'm already burning the electricity cost. I might as well try to get some stats out of it.
So I would def I'm definitely gaining money. I mean, any stats that I get from it are a bonus compared to what I was burning and not getting it. Hell yeah.
Marty: And then how does it work? I mean, you mentioned you run it at 80 degrees Celsius. Yeah. What, what are the, like the temperature limits of the materials?
Rick: Okay, so yeah. Yeah. Uh, for p l a, it's, it's right on the line of if you were running that thing at like 90 c you could, you could [00:18:00] kind of tell that you might be hitting the limit on pla where it's gonna start warping over time. That's why the final ones that I'm printing out are in P E T G cuz it can ha with withstand all those higher attempts.
And I just wanted to make sure that if people are buying it, they're not, it's not warping and melting into the mine or anything like that over time. Because if you let your minor get up to 90, 95 C it doesn't shut off and cool. You're gonna start melting p l Yeah.
Marty: And ptg, how, how high can
Rick: that was? Uh, God, I've had, I think we've tested in one of the smaller mining groups and we've been, it never even warped at 95, 98 C so that's good.
I mean, you don't want ever wanna run a minor any hotter than that anyways. So if we don't take those temps , you'll burn out
Marty: the hashtags. Yeah, for sure. , it's, uh, it's fascinating. And so what do you like. In terms of like the water cooling space heater, what do you think this does for the potential of, of hash rate distribution in the long term?
I think it,
Rick: I think it helps [00:19:00] tremendously. You get rid of, if every household could run an even an S nine or even a what's miner or smaller one, I think you're gonna distribute way more than where it is now because you ha you have more, what am I looking for? Um, there's a reason to run a minor instead of just mining Bitcoin.
It actually gives you a benefit instead of just, oh, I wanna mine Bitcoin. Well, now you can use that heat. And I think that'll hit norm's more and get them more interested if they can actually do something with the minor or gain more benefits than just Bitcoin if they can't see how important Bitcoin is.
Yeah.
Marty: Have you thought about going to like HVAC companies and being like, Hey, let's work together. Let me design. I think
Rick: it would be cool. I, that'll definitely be something in the future. I just want to try to get, this thing came out of nowhere cause I just tested the box. I built the box for fun just to hold the minor in, in the room while during testing.
And then everybody kind of wanted one and I was like, oh shit, okay. And then they wanted like built all in one [00:20:00] units where it's plug and play and I was like, oh that's, that's a lot more than what I even wanted to do in the first place. I just wanted to test and write up a guide so everybody could do it for themselves.
So if I get the S nine as a plug and play unit, I would love to go to HVAC companies and start doing different things there. Cuz I think that's a huge market. Yeah.
Marty: When you think of like the players that are gonna help distribute the ownership of Hasher, I think HVAC companies are actually gonna play a big role, especially if asics become an integral part of heating systems.
Yeah. And Weatherby, I mean, I'm sure you saw the example of that hotel. I forget exactly where it was. I think it was in Europe where they were heating their rooms with 86. That's freaking
Rick: nuts. Yeah. That's so cool. I love that , right? If you could get like a plug-in play, like in the commercial space or even like the home space, like a furnace or something like that, I would love that.
That'd be nuts.
Marty: That would, I mean, not only would I love it, I [00:21:00] think we should be pushing for it because I mean, oh, a hundred percent last two weeks. Were a perfect example of, oh, actually may be centralized down here in Texas to 30% of network cash rate coming offline due to demand response systems because yeah, we gotta to blast,
Rick: we gotta spread that out a little
Marty: bit more.
Yeah. Yeah. What are your, what are your, like crypto cloaks is six years old, so obviously you had this, uh, you were enamored with 3D printing. You wanted to make a business out of it, and you decided to make a 3D. Printing business revolving around Bitcoin. Bitcoin products. Yep. Bitcoin art. So obviously you're a Bitcoin at the time too.
You've been around Yeah, for
Rick: six years. Been around for a long time now. Yeah, it doesn't feel like any time at
Marty: all. What, uh, what got you into Bitcoin?
Rick: Man? It was, it came down to one of my buddies showed me some other cryptocurrency. I have the story of where I started out, shit [00:22:00] coining, and then you like lose some money and you're like, well, fuck this
And then you go down there, I don't rabbit hole, but one of my buddies showed me some cryptocurrency. I couldn't even remember what it was. And then I started going down the rabbit hole. And then you go down and learn all about the banks. And then, I don't know, you just, it's the typical rabbit hole story.
And then you're just like, what the fuck are we doing with the money? And then from there I'm just like, well, I don't want the government to have any more control. And then you kind of, you take that orange pill and then it spreads out to your whole entire life. And six years later you're like a hardcore coiner and just want to fix the money and fix the world.
Like it's crazy. Pause. Yeah,
Marty: it is. It is crazy how, how it hooks you if it does.
Rick: Yeah, my wife was initially, now she's completely like orange peeled too, and she's like red pilled when she didn't even wanna deal with like politics and all that other crap. And now she's just like, no, fuck the government. And I'm like, yes.
Yes.
Marty: How long
Rick: have you guys been married? We've been married [00:23:00] for five years now, so Oh,
Marty: very similar. Similar trajectories here. Uh, yeah, we have our six year anniversary this year. Nice. Same here. Just crazy to think. Um, right. Yeah. And um, so you guys open source your designs too, right?
Rick: We try to do as many as possible.
Okay. So some, we just keep closed because we need to gain rev money into business. I can't just open up everything I could. , but I want some money coming in so then I can keep prototyping and bringing out nowhere designs to the file factory. But I really try to put out as many of the home mining designs that we do onto the file factory.
Now, the space heater's not out there yet cause I'm trying to raise funds for a bigger printer with selling those and then eventually I'll put that on the file factory too, where anybody can print their own S nine box. Yeah.
Marty: So what are, what are the economics of running a 3D printing business?
Rick: It's profitable.
Oh yeah. It's pretty good. I mean you're, it all depends [00:24:00] on what your margins want to be. Uh, you just choose, um, I try to make sure that, I don't know how like plastic's cheap, but it's more your time and the print time itself, cuz everybody says, oh, plastic's cheap. Why are you charging so much? Well, yeah, the plastic's cheap, but sometimes the prints take 15, 20 hours.
Well, you have to, you have to put that time in. And then it's all like the design time in it itself. So over the last six years, you kind of learn like where you wanna put your numbers at. You can definitely make money, but during bear markets you definitely feel it because the Bitcoin space in general, nobody wants to spend Bitcoin when it's down like 80%.
But if you don't go in shit, Bitcoins, you're fine. You can withstand bear markets. Yeah. This isn't our
Marty: first one. Yeah. And how do you see this market developing? You see a 3D printer in every house. Do you see specialized companies like crypto cloaks sort of being these hubs where, hey, we'll do [00:25:00] all the design work, we have the printers, we'll produce everything.
A mixture of both.
Rick: Um, yeah. I, I honestly would love everybody to have a printer in their house. I think it's a whole self sovereignty tool on like another level, kind of like how Bitcoin is with money. Here it is where you can do whatever you want. If you, if you wanna, there's millions of files online, you can print whatever you want.
and then have it, uh, the whole gun movement on 3D printing guns, I think is really important. When the government tries to take your guns away, if everybody has a printer, well, they technically can't. Yeah. It's a, it's a freedom tool like Bitcoin and I think everybody should have one in their house. That's what, that's why I try to like show off 3D printing and what it's all about to try to get more and more people interested.
I think I'm doing a pretty good job. I know a lot of people reach out and say, Hey, I'm buying my first printer. And I'm like, hell yes. Every Bitcoiners should have a 3D printer.
Marty: What can you like, so let's try and paint the picture of what's possible with these printers. So if you buy your own [00:26:00] printer at home, like what are the types of things that you could, you could build that would really brand
Rick: value?
So you can always, yeah, you can always do like knickknacks and stuff, toys for kids, and. The big thing is like if something, if a part breaks around your house and they don't manufacture that part, you can design it up yourself. Yes. If you don't have design experience, it'll take a long time, but you can design it yourself and 3D print that part, and now you have a replacement.
Um, the big, uh, a story I always use is all those little Christmas light hooks that stores have so you can hang your lights on gutters. Well, every store I went to was out of 'em, so I just whipped up a design real quick and installed them on all my gutters myself. And now I, now I have Christmas light hooks and I, I couldn't find 'em in any store, so I just printed my own.
Uh, that's just like a really simple thing that you can do, but it just starts there. Was it, would it, was it
Marty: cheaper than what it would've been if you were Oh, absolutely.
Rick: Because I was printing hooks at maybe a penny to two pennies. A pop where you're buying [00:27:00] like. , I don't know, 20 for like six bucks or something like that.
So yeah, you're even saving money there. But I just wanted hooks. I don't even care about that. I just wanted to be able to have
Marty: hooks, . No, and it's, no, it is fascinating cause I, we had to replace a part in our washer recently and I'm wondering like what if we could just design up a spec, print
Rick: that out.
Anything's possible. It just depends on how much time you also wanna put into it. Cuz like if the part is pretty complex, you could spend a lot of time trying to prototype and print this part instead of spending like 12 bucks and buying online if they still make it.
Marty: Yeah, no that's crazy cuz I mean, when it comes to like asics too, you're not necessarily printing replacement parts or printing enhancement parts.
Mm-hmm. , which is a whole nother thing. So you could look at everything you have in your house, whether it be an ASIC or a washing machine, maybe you want to, or your dryer, you want to. Put the heat from there somewhere. Yeah. [00:28:00] Like you could build these parts to do that. So that's the cool part
Rick: because even like if you buy a cheap 3D printer, let's say a hundred dollars, the first thing you do is 3D print upgrades for it to make it a three to $400 printer.
Wait, what? That's the, that's the best part. Like when I first bought my maker Select v2, it was a $150 printer, but then I immediately had a list. Uh, I followed a guide, a list of all these parts to upgrade your printer, like making it more stable, uh, bigger knobs and upgrades for it. And then it was like a three to $400 printer.
But you printed all the parts yourself four
Marty: pennies on
Rick: the dollar. Yeah. And that's like, the cool part is you can always upgrade these printers with printer. The, this is getting
Marty: heady cuz you think because this thing can just evolve Yeah. On itself. Like ,
Rick: you were always like, why don't you just print your own printers?
That's like, you can, but you also need like metal rods and stuff. because all the PERA printers, all those plastic parts they use are [00:29:00] open source. So you technically can print all those parts, but then you just have to buy the motors and the rods and stuff like that. Yeah.
Marty: So where's this going? Like it's, it's advanced.
I mean, you, you mentioned like the time to print is one 15th of what it was six years ago. Like, what are you seeing on your end in terms of the trends in the 3D printing space and
Rick: like, are there more? Well, I hate, I hate how they're 3D printing meat. I think that's just disgusting. Yeah, that's disgusting.
the fucking 3D printing food. Uh, I think it's cool where you can, like, they're building houses with 3D printers. I think that's, that's an insane technology. I don't know how valuable it is. I don't know. I, I haven't really went down it. I just think it's really cool as a 3D printer that were 3D printing houses.
Like, that's nuts to me. Yeah. You ever see those?
Marty: Yeah. Yeah. They're like cement. It's like, yeah. Going around. It's nuts. Is that a cheap house though? See that's
Rick: what I, that's what I, it's like, oh, is that just like [00:30:00] a fiat house because it's , shittily made with a 3D printer? Or is that actually cool because it's beneficial, I dunno.
Marty: Yeah. And do you think the materials that you'll be able to use, the 3D print will get more durable,
Rick: more high? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Cuz they're always coming out with new filaments and higher tolerances and stuff like that. I mean, they have the metal printers, they use almost, uh, a box full of like dust and then they weld it together as it goes.
It's crazy. Yeah.
Marty: And so what, what are like the, I mean, obviously we talked about rocket ships. What, what other types of products are these metal 3D printers?
Rick: I know the car industries are using them, uh, for like prototype parts or trying to make super light, like luxury car parts. I think, I think I read something about like Bugatti printing part, or I don't know, Ferrari or something like that.
but there's all these like customizable parts that make it lighter. If you 3D print it and it's almost stronger, [00:31:00]
Marty: that's insane. And you can create these new designs and sort of Yeah, customize on the go. Yeah. So what does it do for like
Rick: aesthetics? So that's the cool part, is you can design all these badass looking things really easily that you maybe couldn't or would take forever.
All the other ways. Like they're coming out with different 3D programs right now with printers that you can literally just print in mid-air because it's using just circular print motions. So it's not technically going straight out right away to print over the air or bridging. It's just using circular patterns to kind of build an outside edge and, and go over like that's the latest thing they're doing right now.
And I was like, that is fucking nuts.
Marty: Yeah. And I've seen things in the past where they've applied AI. To 3D printed designs to make like more durable parts or Yeah. More structurally integral parts.
Rick: Yep. Cuz infusion, you can actually [00:32:00] take your model and then say, Hey, I'm gonna 3D print with it. It's gonna be a 3D printed part.
And then make it more aesthetically pleasing and it will generate like 20 different designs that you can choose. And I was like, what? This is cool. And that's only come up in the last like two years or so. Yeah,
Marty: and that's the other crazy thing too, like when like the AI can run all the math and the physics that would design a part that maybe a human wouldn't, that would be more structurally integral to Yeah.
To what you're trying to build
Rick: AI's insane. Like right now, I, it's hard to even keep up with what it's all doing. Like tried, have you, have you fallen down the
Marty: ai ai
Rick: rabbit hole? I tried that chat G B T and I was like, this is cool, but I don't really have any use for it.
Marty: No, neither. I, I tried it once with.
Literally the only prompt I wrote was sap, plural, Bitcoin . That was it. But no, and yet we, we, but we've uh, [00:33:00] I've been applying it to the newsletter. I've been using Mid Journey to create thumbnails for, for the print? Yeah. Every day. See,
Rick: that's cool. Like the graphics portion of that is insane. Yeah. Like it's come so far from like even two months ago when it was first producing images , it's,
Marty: oh, I've noticed it's time box.
I've noticed in the last week the, it's made significant advances, particularly hands for some reason or another. Like it couldn't do hands produce, produce a human hand, but it have like nine fingers or it would just look like it was crunched up. But the last two weeks particularly I've noticed, I've been creating thumbnails.
I'm like, oh, the hands actually look, look like human hands now. .
Rick: That's crazy. Yeah. See, even with like pictures, they're starting, there's a program that just came out, I think like, three or four weeks ago that does 3D modeling. Now the models look like crap, but it's just started. And I was like, holy shit.
Can you imagine just prompting in some words and it just designs a 3D model for you that you can [00:34:00] print. Like that's what I'm excited for, to be honest. Yeah. How
Marty: do you think this affects the workforce and how we actually produce things? Like what do you, what
Rick: effect? I think it's gonna change it completely, where now people aren't designing it themselves.
They're just getting really good at writing in prompts. Yeah,
Marty: prompters. That's the, uh,
Rick: prompters, that's, it's a term. There's nothing you can do about it. No. Like it's here. Like you're not gonna get rid of it now. So people better just understand like, Hey, you might as well get really good at prompting if this could possibly take your job.
Like that's what sucks. Like as a designer, I design parts. I might as well start getting good at prompting. for this new 3D program. Cuz then I can design really cool shit. Yeah.
Marty: I'm a bad prompter. I uh,
Rick: I'm not good .
Marty: It's, that's, well that's one of the crazy things too. He's gonna be begin combining these, these different AI systems.
I can go to chat b uh, chat or [00:35:00] whatever the GBT three, or four, whatever it is, and be like, Hey, I'm trying to produce a picture. Can you write a prompt for me cuz I'm too dumb to do it. And they'll write a prompt and then you just copy and paste that into the other a Does it actually do that? Yeah.
Rick: Yeah.
See that's insane. You don't even have to write good prompts though. You just have the Yeah. Write the prompt for you. Yeah.
Marty: Are we going? Yeah.
Rick: It just makes me worry cuz we always like see the sci-fi videos where AI and stuff, and you're like, is this the beginning of it all?
Marty: Yeah. Yeah. So this is like, feels like the, the beginning of the movie her or the Terminator.
Like are we, yes. Maybe it all together. Are we just. starting the ball rolling on Skynet. It's
Rick: fun, but it's also pretty scary cause I just saw like a picture the other day that was, was putting VR headsets on old folks and they're like putting them into the virtual reality worlds and I'm like, this is almost like pod living and it's scary as fuck.
Yeah,
Marty: I mean that's, [00:36:00] when you think about how this affects, obviously you don't wanna be a Luddite, you wanna recognize like, hey, this is here. Probably not putting the cat back in the bag, the genie back in the bottle. How do we no implement this into our lives without turning it into a tool to thrust everybody into the pod life?
And I mean, so that's, I guess that's the scary part. I guess that's two directions we have is like pod life or we find a way to make it so we're leveraging this technology to just make our lives easier so that we can go do more worthwhile things in meat space and not get thrust into
Rick: the, to the pod.
Yeah, that's, that's the scary part. Especially how the world's going right now. Yeah. They're gonna push towards pod life . Right. We need people to stand up and not do that. Like real life is way better than pod life.
Marty: Yeah. No, and that's what I mean. I've been trying to stay on top of the AI stuff, particularly in the last six months since it's blown up.
And I've been [00:37:00] talking to somebody who's been following it for years, a friend of mine, um, who's really on top of it. And yeah, basically the way he frames it is we've, we've got two pass forward. You have like the open AI of the world, which is a bit closed, closed source ai, and then you add these open source AA projects and he's very adamant, like, we really need the open source projects to win out cuz if not you'll have this, we're screwed techno, you'll have like the technocratic future that everybody's
Rick: afraid of.
I mean that makes total sense. Yeah. We don't want, we don't want closed source cuz you can't verify anything that these companies are gonna run it all. And you're like, oh shit, now you
Marty: gonna like chat GBT three and it's all woke
We'll, we'll, we'll feed you answers that are, you can tell have been and it's just been fed
Rick: train trained in there.
Marty: Yeah. Yeah. Fed from the, the world capitalist of the world. Yep.
Rick: Yeah. It's crazy times. [00:38:00] It really is. Uh, it's interesting. It's scary and it's also awesome. It's like a combination of all three.
Marty: Yeah. And so how do you, how do you see this evolving with crypto cloaks? Like what, what's next? Obviously you guys have node enclosures, you have the, the space heater. You have the fan, um, the fan stuff to Yep. Go into the ducks. You have the, the wallet stuff. Like what else do you see yourself building for Bitcoiners?
Rick: God, I don't know. As, as it, as time goes on, I guess we'll find something. It's, it usually c ideas come from the community mostly, or something that I'm doing around the house. I'm like, well, I might as well just do something with Bitcoin on this because that's what I want. And then I just say, oh, maybe other people want it.
Um, the big thing we're doing right now is just trying to work with bigger mining farms and trying to help them out in the mining industry with shrouds and stuff. Um, other than that, I don't have anything right now on the docket besides the space heater, just cuz I've [00:39:00] put so much time into it. I haven't even had time to think about anything else.
Yeah.
Marty: I mean, the wallet stuff alone, like being able to get those things that allow you to, to hide your wallet Yeah. In obscure places around your house. That's a, that's a big product in and of itself.
Rick: Yeah. I love the tomb. It says like, caution. Do not ingest insect poison ,
Marty: stay away.
Rick: Yeah, stay away. Don't touch it.
Yeah.
Marty: And then you guys also. allow people who have ideas maybe don't have a 3D printer or design skills come work with you to
Rick: build stuff. Yeah. I think that's the best part is if they, if they don't wanna design it, but they have an idea, we'll absolutely work with them and bring it to life. That's the whole point.
What's that workflow look? Uh, they give us an idea, we'll take it, and then we just start busting out the designs. Uh, right now we're kind of making one, uh, for a guy that wants to put a, a mine in a tub and that it's kind of like the space heater, but they're [00:40:00] using, uh, storage containers, tubs, and then what they want is just a divider to keep the cold and hot sides separate.
Kind of like how the hash have that foam piece. But the, here we're gonna actually design a 3D printed part that can slip in on it to help them out. So it's more just getting dimensions from them or that general idea. I'll take it, we'll model it up and then show it to them, and then we go from there and kind of just go through the process of, ok, what needs to be changed?
What needs to be upgraded? and then we'll print a prototype, see how that is, how it fits, make final changes, and then do the final product.
Marty: That's a massive product. Somebody who has been en entrenched, entrenched, entrenched, entrenched. That's the entrenched, it's a mor entrenched Monday morning rip freaks entrenched in the off grid mining space, particularly in shipping containers that, yeah, creating that, that hot and cold aisle.
Yeah. A lot of it is getting these foam guns and it's very sealing everything off. [00:41:00] Yeah. Yeah. It's very labor intensive. Uh, it's not cut and dry, it's not clean. It's a bit rough around the edges, so Yep. If you're able to 3D print these parts just to create the perfect separator between the hot and cold aisle, that would be massive.
And yeah, like
Rick: the big, the big thing was even for like these huge mining farms, not even storage containers, but maybe on storage containers too. Where that gap is between the S nineteens, it's that L shape or the power supply doesn't quite sit up right against it. You have all that negative back pressure coming back in.
We just, we made a little, we call it the A thong, and it's literally just a little 3D printed part that pretty much closes that gap and stops all that back pressure for coming in. So like even simple things like that are huge. Yeah, we've seen improvements on that. It's just a clip on, right? Yeah, it just pushes right in there and it has a little handle if you ever wanna pull it out, but yeah.
Do you just push it in there and how much is that? I don't even, I don't even know what I have on the website to be honest. . Yeah.
Marty: But it's probably cheaper than [00:42:00] buying that foam or, oh yeah, absolutely. Spending hours of labor trying to seal up each little enclosure if you're running s nineteens in, in your container or whatever it may be.
Yep, for sure. It's fascinating. .
Rick: Yeah. I love it all man. Like having 3D printers and being able to design stuff so quickly in the Bitcoin mining space. I, I love it. That's why I've been really pushing like home mining products or even just mi, bitcoin mining products in general. Lately I've been hooked on that for a long time.
I got away from like enclosures as much and now I'm just all about how can I improve Bitcoin mining and all that stuff. It's fun. Well, it's
Marty: important work because I mean, micro BT and bitmain from model to model, like it's not, each model's different. Yeah. Like massively different. Um, even in within the same models, it's due to the nature of the supply chains over the last couple years, even you can find the same model with different [00:43:00] parts.
Rick: Yeah. And the cool part is if you wanna run like a bigger mining operation or you are hosting people's miners, the one thing we're doing is standardizing the whole cutout. Because you'll have all the foam boards and you're trying to seal each different minor. And if say you swap out an S 19 for a, what's mine M 30?
Well that's a different hole. Well now you have to like cut it in a patch in a new hole foam piece. Well the shrouds that we do, we have everything that lines up to an eight inch hole. So you just put our shroud on, you can slap that in there and then it's ready to go. It's already sealed. Cause you have the same eight inch hole, everything's good to go.
You don't have to cut a patch repatch it cut a new hole for the different miner to work. And I think that's really cool in itself cuz you kind of ease the whole process of hosting or swapping out miners and stuff like that. Yeah.
Marty: So you've gotta a picks and shovels business, which is one of those things that people talk about.
Like yeah. The, uh, like just, just be there for the, the people who [00:44:00] are in the gold rush and provide them with the, the tools that they need to, the tools to be better at, at getting Yeah,
Rick: I love it. I get a design and I make cool shit. So it's a win-win for me. How big's your team? Uh, so we have nine people now and we have a full store now running out of the uk, running out
Marty: of the, like a
Rick: physical store.
Uh, not a physical, but we have an online store. Uh, black Coffee actually runs that. It's Crypto Cloaks uk and he runs everything that we pretty much print in the us He now does out of, uh, UK to save people on shipping. Mm-hmm. .
Marty: And do you plan on, you plan on expanding this to many different parts of the world or is that
Rick: true?
Yeah, I would eventually love to do, like, have one in all the major countries. I think that'd be cool shit. Yeah, because eventually it'd be nice to have a, have a business in every country if you think about it. Cuz with 3D printing you can save on shipping, you can do, oh I'll send you the file, you print it there and now it's distributed to that country for cheap shipping compared to like all the international and flying [00:45:00] overseas and stuff like that.
Yeah. What
Marty: uh, what about building this business? Have you learned over the years? . Oh God. .
Rick: I mean, you're always learning. It's pretty nuts. Uh, the big thing was like underpricing yourself, cuz everybody thinks it's plastic. It needs to be cheap, but it's really, it's not, you're not really pricing your products how the plastic it uses.
It's more the design and the print time and your own personal time to make it worth it. Uh, le there's a lot of lessons that you learn as you go. It's, it's crazy and it's fun. Like, I love being an entrepreneur. I'm really glad I got to quit killing turkeys every day. , that was your job? Yeah, so I worked as an industrial engineer at Geno Turkey and then a year and a half ago I quit and ran this full-time.
Cause I built it up on the side. Hell yeah.
Marty: What, what advice do you have for anybody who is a fiat wage slave? A wage cook Looking to get out? Yeah. And [00:46:00] like
Rick: apply. Uh, I would say find your passion. Find your passion in Bitcoin, and then slowly build it up on the side. You don't have to take the crazy jump.
I. when people are like, oh, just quit it and just go do it. It's like, no, don't do that. Make sure you have, you do it safely where you're not gonna get completely screwed over in case Bitcoin tanks. And now you're like, well, I'm broke and I have no money. Always have, build it up on the fiat life for a little bit.
Find your passion, build that business on the side, and when it's finally a good time swap over. That's what I did. I, I ran that for five years on the side, and then I finally hit the point where I was like, okay, I can do this full-time. Let's do it. What,
Marty: what was that point where you're like, all right, what, what about the business gave you the confidence to, to jump ship?
Rick: Yeah, it was more just income coming in where I could actually get a decent salary. It's nowhere near what industrial engineering was doing, but it was good enough to where I could put all my time and effort into the business to keep growing instead of just kind of sitting idle. Cuz at one point I. . I was doing like 20 [00:47:00] hour days where I was doing the engineering job from like five or seven to five, I'd come home and I'd be in the shop busting out orders and all this other stuff until maybe midnight, one o'clock and then wake up again and do it all over.
And the wife wasn't happy. And at that point I was like, okay, I need to figure out what I'm gonna do. So we kind of sat down and I was like, here's my goal. I think it's time to finally quit. Like that's what I'm gonna do. So it was more you just ran out of hours in the day and you kind of had to make a decision.
Do you want to slow down what you're building your dream or do you want to just take the jump finally? That's what I did.
Marty: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the goal, like when did you set that and how long
Rick: and take you to reach it? Yeah. Uh, so it was probably five years to, to reach it. Everybody thinks, oh, I'm gonna start a business.
It's really easy and then I can quit. Nah, it's not . Like it even took longer than what I thought. I thought I was gonna be r ready to go in like two, three years. But it's not, cuz you, especially in the Bitcoin space, if a bear market hits. , everything slows down. It's just, it's just what it [00:48:00] happens. Um, and then as the bull comes back, then you're like, oh shit, okay, here we go again.
But then you don't wanna overdo it because you know, there's another bear market coming. So it was more just trying to find the happy medium between the bulls and the bears. Figure out how much income you have coming in and then seeing if it's the right time for you and all your expenses and stuff.
Marty: Yeah. And then as a Bitcoin, or do you have like a Bitcoin treasury goal? Like how do you manage revenue? Cause you guys accept Bitcoin too.
Rick: How do you Yeah, so the big thing for me is I never sell any Bitcoin that we get through the business. I will take on debt, Fiat debt before I ever sell Coin to try to pay that off.
And I have been successful so far. So, , what, uh,
Marty: what's the, what's the breakdown revenue split in terms of Fiat versus Bitcoin?
Rick: I would say before this year, 2022. , it was probably 70% Fiat, 30% Bitcoin, [00:49:00] but now it's at least 50 50. Damn. I'm actually surprised. And that's where like 2022 is rough because I was like, okay, I don't have enough fiat coming in now to cover all the costs where I don't wanna sell Bitcoin, but I survived cuz everybody's now paying in Bitcoin, which is awesome.
That's what I want, but I also don't wanna sell it. But now if more of your orders are going in Bitcoin, you're like, shit, I might have to finally sell some to make up for the fiat that we're not getting on the other end.
Marty: Yeah. You could sell some more, convince the people in your supply chain to begin accepting Bitcoin.
Rick: Yeah. . Exactly. No, I've tried, there's, there's places where like if I get filament, I need to order 'em. Like, Hey, you guys should accept Bitcoin. And they're like, what's that? And then I'm like, oh boy, , keep try. I'll keep trying.
Marty: To further educate the freaks out there and maybe you wanna start a Bitcoin business.
What does your stack look like in terms of accepting Bitcoin? What are you using BTC pay server? Are you using open node or something
Rick: else? Yeah, I would [00:50:00] say for me, I started out with, um, God, what were they? Was it open node? No, it was, I don't even remember what that company was called for like six months.
They ran it for me and accepted all the Bitcoin. And then I said, what the hell am I doing? There's BTC pay server. So I swapped to that and now I run it myself. So I do, uh, the back end of my website is WordPress that runs a BTC pay server on there to accept Bitcoin. And I think that's one of the easiest ways that I've found.
I mean, there's other ways where people can run the software for you, but I wanted it myself. I wanna run my own payment processing. So
Marty: yeah, I mean that's what we do here too. And it is possible. It just takes. Bit of a sun cost on the front end, actually build out the logic of Yeah. Pricing things and accepting things.
But that's, that's something I, I've wanted to do. I wanna give a presentation here at the Bitcoin commons, like running a company on the Bitcoin standard, particularly using PTC pay server. Awesome. That's one thing that [00:51:00] I've realized over the years. We've been running ours for like over four years now.
Almost five years come April or May. Uh, awesome. As these, there's still like the, like the business process types of things, particularly like treasury management and U T X O consolidation, uh, revenues on the lightning network versus on chain. Yep. Um, like I, I've told this story before on the podcast, but I had a, like a lump in my throat moment a few years ago where I uploaded an UB onto BTC pay server via hardware wallet, and then I, like I, I could see on my BTC pay server, all this Bitcoin was coming in, and then I plugged my hardware wallet in.
to, um, to a software and the Bitcoin wasn't there and I had no idea what You're like, gap forward, what the fuck? Yeah. So I had to learn about like gap limits and extending those so they could actually The software.
Rick: Yeah. Gap limit. Gap limits. Nobody talks about that. And it's actually scary as shit when you finally hit it.
Yeah. Especially with BT CCP server. I, I did the [00:52:00] same thing. I was like, uh, where are, where's all the stats? Like what the fuck? They're not here. And you had to like slowly read on like gap limits and you're like, oh, thank God. Yeah. You're there. I just technically can't see it. Yeah. And that's,
Marty: I mean, something we, I think people like you, people like me and others running BT space server for their businesses, we should get our heads together cuz there's, and like get all these prs and BTC pay server cuz they're like, especially for us, we're, we're accepting $1 donations, $50 shoutouts.
Yeah. People will send us a couple hundred dollars randomly. And so you have all these different. UT XOs N BTC pay server. I would love a program that would basically look at your UT XOs and say, Hey, the fee market's pretty low right now. I'd be, I'd love to set a threshold like every 10 million sets. Let me know when I have a group of U TXs that would be nice that I can consolidate into one U T X O.
Um, simple things like that.
Rick: No, that'd be really nice cuz I just [00:53:00] did that and I had like 141, I was consolidating, thank God it was one saddle bite. I saw it drop and I was like, yeah, okay. I gotta do it now because 141 .
Marty: So it's crazy. Yeah. But it's like these small things that you don't think about until you start running it and you're running it.
You're like, oh shit, I have all these UT XOs. Yeah. Some of this is definitely gonna be dust at the feed market picks up. Like, what? What the hell do I do?
Rick: Yeah, that's the thing is I always forget about that sometimes and that's why I hit 141. I was like, oh shit, I gotta be careful where you have all these UT XOs and they're all just in different areas.
Yeah. That's gonna be a problem moving forward.
Marty: Yeah. Or like that. And then on the lightning side with like, like a plugin. that cuz we, we have, we don't send obviously a lot from our, our lightning node where we're seeing Yeah. Mostly and then wax out the channels. So I love like a plugin. It's like, Hey, you should rebalance this.
Maybe you should sweep some of these incoming funds on chain. Like, there's so many, there's so many improvements, uh, in terms of [00:54:00] like the, the tools that business owners could have at their fingertips to, to actually run a big, a company on a Bitcoin standard.
Rick: Yeah. Do you run Thunder Hub on your BTC pay server to look at the back end of your lightning?
Uh, yes. Okay. Yeah. I, what was the one before that? Thunder Hub is amazing. I, uh, BTC Pins actually showed me that one and I was like, yes, this is much better than what I was using before.
Marty: Shout out to BTC pins. I confused you too on Rabbit Hole recap .
Rick: He, he said something about that. I was like, that's hilarious.
Take it man. Take it.
Marty: You guys have very similar aesthetics in terms of the uh, you know, the black and white like logo, just in my mind. Cause I remember seeing your tweet and I was like, this is uh, of the space heater. And I was just trying to recall it from memory and for some reason the BTC page.
Rick: Yeah, he, it was funny when he said that.
I was like, Hey, at least we got shouted out kind of. That's cool. ,
Marty: we corrected it, we correct it, we found it. Yeah, there we go. Uh, yeah, there's, what else? As somebody running a [00:55:00] company on a Bitcoin standard, what else would you like to see in terms of
Rick: tools and, yeah, I mean BTC pay server is awesome. I don't really have any, I don't really have any concerns with that.
Your ideas are great. I like the whole U T XL thing cuz I would be handy to get reminders cuz I forget on the business side, I think point of sale terminals would be cool. I know there's a couple that are out there. I don't know if is BTC pay integrated on one yet? Cuz I think that would be nuts. I know you could do like the web browsers or I think you can.
Yeah. .
Marty: Yeah. It's similar to what, what IEX is doing too. They just do Okay. The web browser po os
Rick: system. It's hard to know everything that's happening in the space cuz it does move so fast. Yeah. like no matter how hard you try to keep up with it, you can't. Yeah.
Marty: Yeah. It's um, but it's fun though. Feels like oh I love it.
Pleasing trails. That's like, yeah, that's one thing I would like to get out. I mean, going back to like BTC Space Server is, I'd like to get [00:56:00] out, I don't know if it's a course or just another podcast where we talk about like running a company on a Bitcoin standard using BTC space server. Cuz there are, I mean it is easy.
Uh, they do make it very easy. It's really not that
Rick: hard. No, it's really not that hard. And it's awesome cuz you're your own payment processor. You don't have to give one to 2% away to somebody else running your backend for Bitcoin. Like there's no point to be honest.
Marty: No, no. For podcasting 2.0 cuz we're, we're receiving like, People are streaming of sets literally every minute of every day
Rick: and yeah.
See that's so cool. Yeah, that's a pretty cool
Marty: technology. That's another thing too, fountain one of these podcasting 2.0 apps or just Podcasting 2.0, the project in general. I'd love per episode splits. I'd really like to get to a point where we record an episode and once we publish it, I can get your Lightning Network public address [00:57:00] and put you into the splits and really that'd be
Rick: cool as shit.
Marty: Right? That'd be nuts. Yeah. There's so much that can happen. so early, so early. I know, I know. Outside of the mining, the 3D PRO and a BDC pace, everyone else are, are you excited about in the space? Oh
Rick: God. I don't know. I just don't want the government to take control or do anything . I just hate the government even touching anything with Bitcoin or doing like regulations.
People trying to push like Bitcoin being regulated pisses me off. Same. They're like, oh, we need to, we need, we need regulation to go to a million. I was like, I don't give a fuck about going to a million personally. I gotta, I don't care. I want, I want the freedom money. I don't want regulations. No. So I, I'm not, it's not more excited, it's more worried about that aspect than anything.
I just, as you, as you become more and more a coiner and go down the journey, you're just like, I don't want the government to go in anything. Like I, it worries me the most.
Marty: Well, what's your path to success to [00:58:00] defend against these government
Rick: attacks? I don't even know, man. Just try to stay out of it as much as possible.
I, or speak up and call it out when it happens. I, it's a tough one. Like, what can we do? Yeah. Besides, that's the tough thing is like, what can we do? I don't, I don't really know. I'm not crazily involved with it all, but I don't
Marty: how do it near, I mean, I obviously, I think about a lot. Running this show and talking about this shit week and and week out.
But I really do think we just need to win the narrative battle. And maybe I'm naive, but I do think we're hitting a point globally. There's still a lot of sheep out there, but there are more and more people waking up being like, Hey, you guys are just fucking, I know up. And like how, that's what I'm trying to think.
Like how do we lean into, like the governments are obviously incompetent, potentially nefarious, and you
Rick: should, I would say potentially . Yeah, right. , that's being too [00:59:00] nice.
Marty: Yes. Uh, you have to put it in there though. Hawk's razor, which trying to think is a si up of a term. Uh, I think , but that's a, uh, how do, because I think, and again, maybe I'm naive, but there has to be a crisis of confidence in governments.
I mean, obviously approval ratings are at all time lows. They're spending so much money, they're printing so much money. Covid vaccine mandates, they're proving to be unwise, lockdowns. , but then you have that subset of the population that for whatever reason, still believes they're so brainwashed.
Rick: It's a
How, how do you, you can't, but so the problem is we say, oh, we got odd brainwashed. You can't, they're so far gone that no matter what, even if they say you have people posting, oh, I'm, I'm still glad I took it. Even if it kills me. You're like, what? what? What? Like what? That's how far away we are and I don't think it's gonna get any better for a while.
I think more and more people are waking up. Don't get me wrong on that. I think [01:00:00] we need that a lot more to get anywhere. But there's so many sheep. Yeah, it's, and when you're a coiner, you can see it and it sucks. It's demo. Boy shit.
Marty: It's demoralizing to a point.
Rick: It is. But you have to stay positive cuz like the only hope for me in the future is Bitcoin.
Like if we didn't have Bitcoin, I'd be pretty depressed. Of the whole future of the world, to be honest. Were you always
Marty: this way or
Rick: no? No. I was naive man. I didn't care about any of this shit. But then when you get in Bitcoin, you go down that rabbit hole and now you're like, I hate it all. We need to change everything.
The government is corrupt as fuck and stuff like that. Yeah.
Marty: Speaking of narratives, I think we just really need to lean into the creativity that, that Bitcoin provides to the world. Like what you're building is extremely, yeah, creative. Like it get excitement around it in terms of like what you can build, like just talking about the BTC based service stuff.
Like [01:01:00] we're building this new financial system, this new monetary network, we need all these tools. And it's somewhat, it's not a completely blank sleep, but it's still uh, rather blank and there's so much to build. There's so much to do and it's like reinventing
Rick: the wheel button in the Bitcoin space. And I think that's pretty important cuz if you can do all the cool stuff with Bitcoiners or Bitcoin itself, I think Normy is a.
look into it a little bit more.
Marty: Yeah. And just, yeah, and everybody talks about like, oh, we need more developers. We need more designers. On the designing side of things too, I really try to beat that drum, which is like, Hey, we need a lot of designers. There're a lot of ui ux flows that need to be built, particularly on Bitcoin.
It's unlike anything we've ever interacted with. Like if you want to leave your mark on the design world, like you have this, this wide open field to come play in, um, and leave your mark.
Rick: Yeah, I agree. UI and UX of Bitcoin is not the greatest. No. You [01:02:00] learn to deal with it and get it as you go down the rabbit hole, but for like a regular person, luckily it's getting better over the six years that I've been in it now, it's not great.
I'm not gonna say it's perfect, but it's definitely better than where it was.
Marty: No, that should be it. I mean, that's a silver lining too, despite the fact that it's not great. , we're still passionate about it and finding ways to, to implement it into our businesses and to our lives. And I think that's a testament to the power of Bitcoin is we're working with this somewhat rudimentary ui ux across all these different softwares.
Um, but it's worth it to go through all the struggle because his bitcoin's that powerful.
Rick: Yeah, I agree. The struggle is worth it cuz you get the freedom. Yeah. So
Marty: I'm happy we, uh, I'm happy we did this. I'm happy you're, you're building happy. You reached out happy. We, uh, we pumped the, uh, the space heater on Rabbit Hole recap the other week because I think what you're building is extremely cool. And what do you think about the [01:03:00] possibilities of the future and as it, particularly as it pertains to 3D printing?
I don't, I don't think you've even tapped anywhere near it's full potential. Not
Rick: even close. There's so much you can do. It's crazy. And I think mining for heat is like the start of where. builders can really start changing stuff even more in the normy space. I say, yeah.
Marty: Yeah. Maybe that's how we just get Bitcoin mining.
Uh, cause really everybody cares about their, their, their wallets. At the end of the day, if you really Yeah, that's the thing. Narrative. Like, Hey, we'll give you, don't even call 'em asic. Don't even say you're mining to say we're gonna give you this space heater. It's gonna either make you money or make you spend less money on heat every, every month.
Rick: Yeah. That's why you got it. It all comes down to money for Normies. So you gotta kind of try to speak in their terms. Yeah. They're not gonna understand the tech right away. Yeah. We're just selling space heaters. It's just a space heater that needs an internet connection. You'll be all right. It's just a smart space heater.
Marty: Yeah. But it's not like, [01:04:00] it's not like a Roomba, it's not gonna map out your house and Yeah. And send it back to the fbi. . It just sends hashes to a mining pool and you get bitcoin. Yeah.
Rick: Speaking of that, do you see the drone one now that Ring has, they're coming out with an inside your house drone that flies around and patrols your house.
What? When you're gone? No, it, I just thought it at c e s, they're like, they just debuted it. It's a little flying drone that flies around your house when you're gone. They're patrol it. I was like, I don't fucking like that. Just scoping out everything in your house. And they're like, oh, what's this now? Sent to the fbi, cia, now they can bust down your doors.
You're like, what the fuck? Yeah.
Marty: Oh, these guys were smoking pot . I mean, how many times we hadn't, I mean, it's, Amazon's already given all this information to the police department. I know. God. They're like, uh, are you really? That's the thing too, like they're gonna sell this to the middle class. It probably doesn't need to be worried about break-ins.
No. As much. Why, why are you gonna add a drone flying around your house? Like what is, [01:05:00] what is the likelihood of that your house is gonna get broken
Rick: into? I just saw like, this is worse than a Roomba driving around and mapping your floor for everybody to have . I was like, now they have videos of everything.
They know every little nook and cranny of your house. I was like, this is the first.
Marty: Yeah. Yeah. The Roomba's the first thing, they get the floor plan and then they get the drone so they can
Rick: lidar. Now they have all out. Yeah. Now they have a 3D model of your house that they know every little nook and cranny and Yeah.
It's nuts. Yes.
Marty: Particularly if you're a B winner, don't ever put this shit in your house. Especially the drone . Yeah. Don't do, if you're securing any intimate information about your, your stack in the house is
Rick: not, you're, you're like hiding your seed phrase and this drone's flying around. It sees where you tuck it.
All of a sudden they know where it is. Like that's, I get
Marty: it. Right. Not ideal. So what's, what's next for crypto
Rick: cloak? Keep building man. Uh, I don't know. I love the mining, mining space, so we're gonna keep pushing that pretty hard. We're gonna work with the big, bigger mining firms and their giant warehouses and try to [01:06:00] either standardize or make 'em more efficient with heat and stop downtime.
Cause I think in the big mining industry, downtime and their miners is the biggest problem they're running into. So we're gonna try to tackle that. We got a couple things in the works. Um, I haven't really even thought about any more cases or anything. It's more just focused on the S nine like space heater and the mining space.
Marty: Yeah. Will you expand that to other models
Rick: eventually? Yeah, absolutely. I know people are already reaching out. They want what's miners and stuff. So once I get the s nine one dialed in, I'll start swapping out to other minors. And I know somebody just came out or designed a board. I kind of can't remember their Twitter handle.
But it's a, it's a board to trick so you can run one s 19 board. Okay. And hash with that and, and spoof your fans so you don't have to run all three. So it's way more efficient. I think that's pretty nuts. So designing cases for stuff like that would be insane.
Marty: That's pretty sweet. And you're just, go ahead.
You're good. I was gonna [01:07:00] say, if any of the freaks listening right now, um, are enthralled and passionate, is there any way they could help crypto cloaks out?
Rick: Yeah. I mean, we'll take any data on mining that you got. Cause I think it's really important. Uh, that's why we did that whole writeup where we tested all the different fans, showed Tara or Tara hashes, uh, the heat, the fan speeds, just so people understand what they want to do or get a better idea of where to start as a baseline.
So if you guys have any ideas on different mins you wanna run or data points on home mining setups that you guys have, I'd love to get the data from you and add it to a spreadsheet. I think it's really important to have a one stop spreadsheet where you can look at a minor. , look at all the different test setups that people have ran and kind of choose which one you want to go to.
Yeah.
Marty: Help out freaks. And where could they learn more about crypto cloaks, your
Rick: designs? Yeah. Uh, go to crypto cloaks.com. Uh, if you're in Europe, you can go to crypto cloaks.u.co.uk. Uh, [01:08:00] find us on Telegram. We have a 3D printing, uh, group there where we help Normies and regular people that want to get into 3D printing or have any questions and learn about it.
You can throw us questions and help solve problems on if you have bad prints, join us there. But yeah, hit us on Twitter. That's our main spot. Uh, then you can find everything from there. Hell yeah.
Marty: Well, Rick, it's been a fascinating conversation. I'm excited about. Yeah, man. What you're building the potential for 3D printing to enhance, uh, Bitcoin in the future, particularly binding.
I mean, I think it's massive. I love that you're working with bigger mining farms and. . I think once we tap into the HVAC industry, the Yes, the future prospects of hash rate distribution are gonna be very
Rick: positive. Yeah. I'm honestly surprised nobody has done one yet. Where you have minors running into hvac or a smaller company has done it.
I haven't seen one. Yeah, you
Marty: figured they'd, there'd be an orange built [01:09:00] freak at one of these HVAC companies is, should be probably pounding the tables. Like, we need to be
Rick: building this. We need to do this. This is the future. Yeah. It'll probably come, I mean, the space moves so fast. I think it's coming.
Yeah.
Marty: I hope so. I, yeah, I, I really appreciate a lot of the, uh, larger mining companies that are spinning up these multi hundred megawatt facilities. But I, I would like to see, uh, smaller, smaller, more gra granular, uh, yeah. Hash rate distribution.
Rick: I completely agree. We need
Marty: more of it. Everything has its place.
That's one thing. Have you ever run the numbers on. , like what it would like, what it would take for at-home miners to begin competing with these big box miners in terms of God, like how many individuals around the country would you need running machines in their house to sort of curb the, the centralization of
Yeah,
Rick: the big box miners.
Well, if they run 30%, I'm trying to even [01:10:00] do the numbers. I can't do it off the top of my head right now. It's still early. Yeah. But if you can get like, what I would like to know what percentage of homes would need to run it. That'd be a cool stat like statistic to have.
Marty: I think you need like a few million Cause you think of an asic, at least an ASIC in each home.
I'm trying to think of how many asics they have. Cause you can you think of, uh,
Rick: marathon, A bigger one is like 40,000, right?
Marty: Yeah. Mar I, I'm sure Marathon Riot and Core Core has hundreds of thousands. Yeah. Yeah. I believe they have like 255,086 that they're prop mining with. So
Rick: get like a couple million home miners and you might have a better.
Dis distribution, I think you do
Marty: globally
Rick: too. Absolutely. A lot of the shit that's happening, like Africa and stuff like that, where they're literally like mining in the middle of nowhere off like water power. That's fucking insane. Yeah. Need more of that?
Marty: Yeah. Shout out to Africa, Kenya with grid list. I believe it's Kenya.
Pretty sure it's um, [01:11:00] Paraguay.
Rick: Yeah. Grid list. That's them. Yeah.
Marty: Paraguay's plugging in a lot of miners now. Argentina as well. I mean, somebody lives in Texas and uh, lives in the United States. It's great that there's a, a burgeoning mining industry here, but it is getting, uh, quite a bit of the apple right now.
And I would, it does as a Bitcoin who, uh, who is, uh, looking at it from a Bitcoin perspective, not an American or a Texan perspective. We do. Need to watch this trend and be like, all right, maybe, maybe we should move some hash rate elsewhere. You have too many.
Rick: Yes. . We need more in other places. Yes. Yeah, I agree.
Well keep printing.
Marty: Thanks, man. I think what you're doing is gonna help make that happen. So thank you for doing what you do. Trying thanks. What, uh, any final thoughts
Rick: for the freaks? Uh, every coiner should own a 3D printer, so start your journey. Do it. [01:12:00] I gotta get on. So sovereignty on another level.
Marty: I gotta get on it.
I'm not on it yet, but now, someday now there's a fire under my ass. So there you go. I, I can reach out to you, get some advice. Yes. So I'll be, I'll be annoying you about that. Perfect. , Rick, this was a pleasure. Appreciate what you're doing. Thank you for, uh, coming on a podcast at 8:00 AM on a
Rick: Monday. Yeah, it wasn't that bad.
The coffee helps. Coffee does help.
Marty: Coffee is, uh, It's inciting some, some movement in the bowels. So I'm gonna go .
Rick: Sounds good. , uh, I gotta go take a shit. So we're, we're done here. See you later. I don't want No,
Marty: I, I can hold the shit. I just think, uh, we've covered a good, good amount here. I wanna save some for the future too.
Cause I think we should, we should probably do like a 3D printing and Bitcoin update, um, pretty regularly. Yes. Cause it seems like they, I'm down for that man. Moving pretty
Rick: quickly. Both of them move quick. So anytime I'll reach out to you. If you don't reach out in tab, [01:13:00] I'll, I'll, I'll
Marty: be better about reaching out
Rick: It's all good man. Go,
Marty: uh, go enjoy your day. Go build some shit and, uh, will do. I'll see you
Rick: on the internet. Yeah, I'll see you on the internet, man. Peace and love freaks later freak.