Bob Burnett - Hash Wars
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Hey, hey, this is cedric Young woman, your host of the bitcoin matrix podcast. Today's episode with barber nett, the CEO bear fit mining, who has become a good friend and mentor to me, was recorded several weeks ago. But I still think there is a tremendous amount of signal here.

As bob always packs a punch. We talk about wars over a hash rate, bob's most famous pattern, the future block space, how countries could possibly be severely n in a bit coin world. And towards the end of our conversation, we turn to some tough, hard topics like suicide, retirement, quality of life and true happiness. On a side note, since this chat, bobin ive kicked off a number of personal projects that I can't wait to tell you more about when the time comes first announced them to the world. In the meantime, please keep in mind that this podcast is a passion project that could use your support to keep going.

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Also, I want to take a moment to express my heart felt gratitude to all of you for tuning in, supporting the show and contributing your support means the world to me. And I never could have imagined this level of engagement when I started this journey four years ago. And I would love to continue doing this because I feel this is an important information to share with you and the world.

And now let's enter the bitcoin natures with bob burn net. What is read? How do you define .

you can jump into cash. Cash, what do you do to get out? Get out.

Bobber nett is the founder and CEO of barefoot mining, a company focused on the development of horse class mining sites, and he is a vocal proponent for the expansion of diversity, ambiquity mining psychology, phy scale and energy sources.

Bob has spent over thirty five years as a technologist, including thirteen years at gateway ink, a fortune two hundred personal computer company, where he LED the company's product development efforts as chief technical officer. He has found in several companies in the bitcoin mining space and is an adventure alist and educated for bitcoin. And it's important to the world's future. He is a degree in computer engineering from the university was continent and Walker. Bob, welcome back to the biceps matrix at cast.

How are you? I am great. So good to see you.

It's great to see you. As always. I think the last time we've got together in person, maybe at dinner, and then we've seen each other conferences here and there. I think recently I saw you mention something in a tweet about some sort of M N, A transaction that you involved them. Have you ended up working in scope y for a while? Uh, commuting to scope ating for a bit, which is the neck of the woods that I moved from, uh, before, uh, florida.

Yes, yes. Cookie loni, the the genesis of pack. My entrepreneur career was right there actually. So I had been working out of college.

I went to work for zena, which for the older members of the audience would remember as a big T. V brand on the inventor of the remote control, actually. And they had a personal computer division right at the inception of the personal computer. And I went to work for that group when I was on the you know early design teams of some of the world's first laptops and early but we're called at the time, clown and I left there after kind of reaching some philosophical impresses with the management team at the time.

Um I don't say that I was twenty seven years old at the time, of course reaching philosophical impasse so much like me some bick corners um do like and and I was like, K I see the future of more computing and its small light and long battery y lives and the goal is not to make them real cheap. And their direction was key. If we could just make these, what I would call boating angers, you would think of at the time we were developing like lap haps, that we like nine, ten, eleven, twelve pounds.

And their direction was well, if we could just make this cheaper. And so I saw that technology was changing such that you know we can take this past and a couple of other guys and the company did two. So we presented our vision. They didn't like IT.

Um so we were able to ironically convince a couple japanese companies to invest in us and they did one of them as a company called its suites, which those are in the finance world might know, but massive, massive japanese company um roughly the same sizes bank of america. Just to put IT in perspective, they they hold about the same mont of assets and they invested in us. But part of the prerecorded was that beast got had to work in their offices for the first year.

Now they said that was to save money because I got free rent. IT was really to make sure that I think we. They could see they could see what we were doing, right?

They could kind of look over our shoulders and we knew that. But hey, they were at the time, that was about a fifteen million hour investment. So that's a lot of money in nineteen 他们 so .

it's great now yeah so um so I had .

me working in scope e now I grew up just north of there。 So that wasn't a huge stress from a grap and conoco was concerned, which is just I don't know what, thirty five forty miles in north of scope e um but ended up being a phenomenon al experience not just because they need this investment um you know but h and and that investment the product we developed actually into up gating purchased by gateway and IT IT LED to me having my job at gateway um which so little signal I mean that's one thing is you like you never know what's gona happen are we we created this company thinking we were gonna, you know a giant mobile computing and turned out didn't actually turn out that way.

But I ended up with me being part of a gateway and we did become part of you know personal computing history. And one of the giants of personal personal computer industry um just didn't quite go the way that I found what what was also interesting was IT opened my eyes to on the first level, just the japanese workstand le like they they had a different way of organizing companies. The process sees the way they interacted with each other.

Um all all sorts of things were very, very different. And ultimately what IT LED to was was I think kind of interesting as a kid growing up in the midwest. So I was kind of LED to believe, I think that I shouldn't.

I think I was LED to believe that the american way of doing things that that we were smarter, that we work harder, that we produce higher quality goods. And like, there were all of these kind of really dangerous, dangerous, self inflating things that we were teaching people. And then I started working with a japanese, and then I underspending time in japan and going to their factories and seeing their design techniques been out there.

This fallacy that american made is always best, that we have the greatest ingenuity, that we have the greatest quality that bulls shit, you know. And IT IT really opened my eyes in a very positive way. But I realize like how dangerous we are when we raise this.

We are culture. And think he was really prevailed in the seventies and eighties like, you know that like we're the best at everything. That's a really dangerous, dangerous mentality creates a false sense of confidence, right? So yeah.

so I starts with the we think with the best at government, you know which is a dangerous maybe idea ah so you know but one thing that stuck with me, both in your bio and a conversation, what you just laid out there and and the conversation we're having a dinner was, you know you call yourself a technologist and you know not many people. Most people think of themselves as like a plumber and account maybe, but how would you describe you know what a technology is that I don't think we have enough for them right now? Or you know maybe people aren't self identifying because they don't know this definition.

Yeah, I I think it's a great question. I think it's it's somebody that treats the world of science and engineering on one side and social structure and change on the other side. So if you know it's like, hey, these things I thought I think in another way to look at that, things are happening in the science, in in the engineering worlds.

And A I is probably the most prevalent thing right right now like that. That's very in the forefront outside of the bitcoin roth, right? We have this A I thing sitting here.

So what what does IT really mean to the world? Five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now, you have to look deeper than just the technology. What you have to look at is you have to look at the way people live.

You know how? What are their familial structures? What are their their business styles? What are their styles of government? What cultural implications are there for these? And you definitely have to step out.

If you want to be a technologist, you gotta step out of just your western mindset. I had some really interesting experiences kind of learning to do that. I I think one is a Young boy.

First of all, I was capitated by science fiction. And so I think the early technologies were people like jewels firm, few jewels phone wrote twenty thousand legs under the sea, uh, around world and eighty days like those kind of books. And if you think about what he was doing was he was really putting, he was a technologist, and he would put IT into story form, his vision of the future, right? He was.

He was highly accurate, by the way. He was really, really good at IT divine I A did that um asic asm did that after sea Clark did that. Like these are some of you some of the great fingers and you know Steve jobs was pretty good at that.

Elon mosque is pretty good at that. No, I am saying on any of those people, but i'm trying to, and I have, since I was very Young, tried to think that way, like i've been doing up, maybe talk about a later. I've been doing this mental exercise because a friend of mine, we've been talking about the implications of free energy and society.

And what what would you mean in a world where there was free energy? If a ravel, we could go down and a little bit. But you to stay on this topic of, you know, what's a technologist and and then to be a technologist, you have to go step into different ways of living.

And you know, what I learned was this was back in my gateway days, there was a point in time when technology was primarily being developed in the west, primarily in the united states. This would have, let's say, in the eighties and into the early nineties, technology was being developed in the U. S.

And adopted in the U. S. First personal computer being a great example of that. But I I started to notice change.

Now by the time I got to the midnight ties, I was travelling extensively internationally, and I was starting to learn things like, hey, in other markets, even second, third world markets. There are times when very advanced technology is penetrating the culture or society faster, then in the U. S.

Or in unusual ways. So i'll give you a two examples. One was, I remember making a trip to korea, late nineties and late nineties, maybe two thousand, somewhere right in the time here.

What we were seeing was this massive explosion of gaming in south korea, and sounds obvious right now. But at the time, you know where in the early days of the x box in the playstation, people were gaming, but they weren't doing connected gaming. They were, you know you would you you're probably old enough.

Remember this that you would put a game in. You just play yourself, right? You know, you don't play soccer.

You play the machine. You don't play some person on the other side of the world. You just you you know you're doing that. You're trying to get the high score and pack man and something like that.

Maybe play the guy next to you yeah.

yeah or yeah right here you have your bodies is over and you have a game. What korea was started to be different. And what was happening in korea was IT was IT was online gaming. The first market were online gaming exploded. And IT exploded, not just usage, but a at the whole culture.

So what was happening was the best gamers in the world, and they played a lot of like first person shooter conic games in that year, right? The best players were massive celebrities within the country. Like IT wasn't a niche, and they became massive celebrities, in part because IT was so popular that they had dedicated T V shows.

This is like pretty ter anything like that. They just would have A T V show and they would broadcast the games and they would have an analyst in a play by play guy. And they were, they were doing commentary on video games, the best players in korea the same way that you would have listened to somebody doing a basketball game or football game here in the U.

S. Who was being done the same way. And then these people who are the best added or making massive of money, they're doing advertising you're doing.

I became aware of this, so I went to korea, and I spent a little time there just to try to immerse myself what what's going on. You know what's the root of IT? Well, the root of IT really was at the end of the day.

Two things, I think, one was that in korea, people lived in these massive housing structures. So there weren't a lot of single family homes, but there were were massive buildings with with condos or apartments in them. And korea, because they had this massive density of people, was able to bring fiber connectivity to these places.

And so people were getting very high speed broadband a decade ahead of the U. S. Or any other western country. And that facilitated the ability for the gaming you from the technological standpoint. But that wasn't a hundred. I I couldn't knew that a little bit before, but there was a second component to IT, which is just the way that the culture is structured. So in these apartments, there's not a lot of privacy.

So when you when you're in a typical korean family like that, you know, you might have, you know, these condos might be nine hundred school phy, you know, two or three tiny bedrooms, one living space, you kind of a shared kitchen, everybody's kind of cramp. There's no privacy. And what you realized is that the gaming, the game's, the people were paying massive amounts of games.

IT allowed them like a privacy, like, you know, why do you want to? Is, well, the rest of the stuff can be going on in the apartment. And IT gives them their own little world like, you know, they they can distance themselves from the chaos of arrested the house by being there.

And also they have a second thing they call them, uh P C bang at the time. P C P C meaning um the gaming for the me, the personal computer and the bang was like A B A N G dying a bang. And um what they would do is they have these rooms that you could rent so so you could run out a room for a night kind of like, uh, you know when you you rent a cubana at a pool, it's kind of like that.

So you rent, you read, you you go to this place and you'll have several of these rooms. There's enough space in there for five or six people and they will have the fastest personal computer in the world, the very best internet connection. Um we'll serve drinks and food and that has something you go rent that for four hours or five hours for the night.

And you know that might be for for people on their late teens or early twenty, they would go there and they would do that. So um so I went there. So again, we're kind of talking about the technology.

You know you have to go there and experience that. And why is this happening? Now the the other thing that I we sticks out with me from that era was when I was a gateway. We never got IT to market, but we were working on what you now call a smart phone. This was before the iphone, and I was in the process of developing one.

And we're trying to make this decision about, really are we gonna be more like a blackberry, which was the most popular sexist phone at the time, right? And I was really geared around because if you had detail capability, right, so you could get your email on IT. And I had a hard keyboard.

Yes, corporate no, you you do quickly. Um you know verses like the nokia, which are the like, you only have the ten key pad and but people would get really good at at like sending a text message, you know being able to to do that. Well at the time in the united states, the average person was sending just a tiny bit over one text message per day was probably be hard to even fail out, right, less than one text message per day.

But I found the statistics and the statistic was that in the Philippines, again, like year two thousand people were sending twenty two text messages a day. Well, this is a radical difference, like radical difference, right? Twenty two times more text messages per day.

And this is a country that is leading the world yet. I mean, it's not the poorest of the poor, but it's not a wealthy country. Like how to this happening? Well, you know, go there and and immerse yourself in the culture in the way people are living.

You know, what you realize is that what what we now see in the U. S, right? They they have lead for gas, and they they realize that they didn't need to talk to people.

That was the end of the day and partly IT was economic driven but they were they also forever reason inside their culture was very comfortable to just say, hey um uh you know meet me at the coffee shop, right they could send a text message for that. He was cheaper and faster and IT turned out, I realize this till later like they had a pager penetration, pager market penetration that was like way above the U. S.

So what they were doing was they were completely skipping using the bobber network for voice calls and they were they were replacing the page market um and you know they let the world in text messaging so you know IT IT IT IT helps me think about how I wanted to design this next generation mobile phone because you could see that this was the primary usage model that was emerging right? Um so so I think you're right though you know going back a little bit, I I don't think I think people in our society have a very difficult time stepping back, spending time and thinking two, three, four, ten years in advance. It's just and you could probably say that true whether they're thinking about technology or they're thinking about their family or they're thinking about their finances or whatever, they just, you know, do that.

So so that another way of saying we have a very high time preference society throughout the entire western world, and I think it's getting worse and the number of people willing to step back, take a breath where you know whether it's where do I want to go and what do I want in my future and how do I plan for that or you know the the the technology is doing something, whether that like for since the whether it's the emergence of kind of the emergence of ai, what does that mean? like? And how do I capitalize on IT? right? How do I capitalize on IT? I can see IT before somebody else.

Then I can probably capitalize on IT. And that's an interesting thing because I have a lot of pants. And i've had people asked me before, like, how do you think of that or that, you know, brilliant, you thought of that.

And I say, well, not not really. I don't. I think that what really happened was I was the first person to ask the question. So when something new is happening, when something is evolving, if you say like here IT, here's the example.

Like I think my my most famous paint patent, if you want to call IT, has an interesting story to IT same era, early two thousands. Um we had identified already this is per the ipod as well. We had identified the shift from cds to uh, M, P trees.

K, that transition was happening hard. We could see IT so well. This is how people want to consume their audio.

So he started developing A M P three player that was a use. This happens to be a ledger. But IT was this, for those watching this size, the size of a us, special.

Well, the idea was that, hey, you could put, at that time, you could put a few hundred songs on there, right? You could create a play less than. And you do that on your, you plug that thing in kind of get IT set up on your computer.

And then this device at the time IT had three buttons on IT. IT had one button that would be play pause, one button that would be advanced to the next track, and one button that would be reverse to the previous track, right? So you probably can think of that.

And then I had one headphone check, pre blue. So we have got a product of working, and I was using IT, and what I had done was I had um remember the term ripping A C D. So rippin A C D used to mean you would take A C D and you would create the M P S rapine for IT yourself. K, well, I had done that with an audio book, so i'd taken A C, D, that had an audio of canner, and I had ripped IT. So it's just one big file, huge file.

Give me for few georgio filing. Really long link for the time.

yeah. And not divided into chapters and something nice. And l again, just like one big file, right? I forgot how, what I don't know, eight hours or something like that, right? Just this matter, file OK.

So, uh, i'm out for a run. I was running a lot in those days. So on a little bit, and I have a pair of ear buddy in wired ear buds and they're connected to this device.

And one of the first people in the world, by the way, to have this experience, which is kind of need, right um because at the time all people had work like the disk man or the walkman's right. So this this was I could already feel like this is going to be revolutionary because I don't have this big bulky thing with me. But anyway, I am out there running and i'm listening to the book IT was a good book IT was getting to a really interesting kind of thrilling part of the book.

And my elbow caught the the court at which point IT ripped the ear buds out of my ear. IT ripped the the um headphone out of the jack of the M P three player, the M P P three player flew like ten feet this way. The ear buds flew the other way.

I got all this combined. Later I check. So I I get the thing we assembled and I put IT in my ears, which I took a couple minutes and the book had not stopped playing.

And I was so frustrated because, remember, my choices are reverse all way in at the beginning of the book, which has already several hours in or go to the next audio file, which would have been after the end of the, I had no way to just reverse a short amount. K, which, you know, that innovation of itself ended up being in the the M. P.

Three place. But here's the real problem, or the real thing I realized that had I just stop the audio track at the moment, the headphone jack separated from the M P three player, everything, we've been fine. So I said, I can do that.

That's a simple thing. I can, I can electrically detect this change electrically and stop IT. So advice first, if I plugged IT back in, I can restart IT. So that's my patent.

And today, if you're like listening to your iphone and you know somebody y's talk to you and you know when you taken ear bot out of your ear and that stops, that's my pant being implemented and you know putting IT back in. So the reason that whole thing happened, though, was because I was the first person to see the problem, right? So solving the problem was fairly easy.

But IT was identifying the problem. That was the hard part. And I had the benefit of being one of the first people in the world to use in a peace replay.

So um that allowed that invention to take place. And I think you know that kind of maybe exemplifies what that means to be a technologist to a certain degree like you know you you put yourself in these situations. Now that was a real one.

The other thing you can do is sit there and try to think about IT, like you have to imagine that much like jewels burned IT right to say, well, what you know, what can I? Can I make a sub? basically? Can I make a submarine? And if I could make a submarine, then what would happen next? You know those are yeah ah I love because .

h it's great that you I love this story because that shows that the power of usage and thinking and and keep going meaning, you know, while you solving that problem, I was in a parallel universe that same like time running with a disk man, because I wanted to run with music with a stupidity long cord because you couldn't find the right length cord to accomplish this. And you know, my a iar elbow ably caught the court.

I probably went tripping and falling cripe my nee the disk mangoes flying yeah. Then we will track the disk, man and fine, make sure it's not broken, buttons didn't fall off. And we need to go get the CD and make sure the world scratches.

And that was before all you did that all before you put IT in and then had to go look for track you're on and you couldn't get to where you were in the the track that you are on anyway, even of those music, you had to go the beginning of the track. And you know, we're in the whole experience and you look like an idiot in front of everyone around. So uh, just having the M P three player solved all that, but you kept going and solved more problems.

You know now the court comes loose and we can do more with IT than just prevent the fall because we just eliminate the disk. Man, um you know you kept solving problems and iterating and and that brings me to sort of where we are, you know where do you think we are with bitcoin and technology adoption? You know i'd argue that very few people are using bitcoin in the way that you're running around with the M P.

Three player. And i'm running around this man. I think you know a small subset of you know larger subset of users are probably just looking for Price exposure, whether it's through bitcoin and exchange, whether even they take himself custody or U T, F. But like where would you categorize so how do you describe where we are .

with technology adoption between yeah I like the way you phrase the question because I think it's a different answer than where are we in the in adaption a bit coin adoption, meaning people that are interested and invested in IT is at one place but the use of the technology is like way for can behind that that place.

Ck, archaic yeah you argo, we're just not a lot of active too.

Yeah so we are you know we are using personal computer analogies is easy for me, but where we have we have not reached the stage of windows like where we are in the personal computer era staring at a dose front, right. We are still in that stage in terms of where the cause of technology adoption is in certain in a certain sense, often the result of the people developing the technology, making IT easy, inaccessible. And we are not there yet.

You know whether that know all the point of these with the you know, cold storage is hugely intimidating even even soft walls are very intimidating. Um if you're talking about like real stuff, like running a node, running a bitcoin now, running a lightning, know those sort of things like we are mountains, we have a whole mountain range cross before we get to that point and by the way, we we may not get there. Um that doesn't mean bitcoin fails by the way IT just means that IT may never be adopted in the masses from a technological standpoint, in part because there are just a enough people motivated to go down that half.

So um so that even if the technology is made much easier to use and not one hundred percent sure that we get massive adoption now what's what's one side of IT say, well, is what paramount is that the option always be there for people to run a node to do base layer transactions and use lightning in a non custodial form. And like those sort of things. But um you know maybe maybe we don't get there.

That doing mean that's what I desire, but I try to be realistic about some of these things too, you know. And part of that, well, i'm sure we'll talk about that later, is the base layer is really a scarce commodity. And so as time goes by, if personal adoption doesn't come fast enough.

The corporate adoption will crowd out and use up most of the black space and individuals won't ever have had their chance now. We have their chance now, but we, we, we may not in the future. And you there's something I say and I don't want to go too far off your adoption question, but i'll say this and then maybe we can come back to IT.

Most people are in the bitcoin community and I was they are listening to hear show. They're in the city. They've heard the world sub city before and they have think of the sub city I take on the hall as the reward paid to minors for doing their work and the method by which new issuance occurs.

true. Those are true statements. However, that's not holistically true. And I think this is the part that people miss.

The sub city is also for users of bitcoin to give them a period of time in which they can have unlimited access for free. And many use those terms loosely, unlimited access for free to the base layer. But those days are ending.

Maybe they are over already. We're definitely in the sunset period of that. And and so to the degree people don't take advantage of that, it's their own fault.

But the network. Does not all users unlimited access for free to the base layer, which is what they've helped. The network doesn't owe that to anybody.

And it's a it's a great privilege to have this period that we've experiences for the last fifteen years. But IT is just that and there's a there's a danger. I think I know I wish I could attribute the quote to the right person, but the quote is a luxury once enjoy becomes a necessity. And I think that you could also extend that to say a luxury once enjoyed becomes an entitlement and um or you know you have this expected that you will always get IT. Well, that's that's not the way the world works.

And as the rest of the world, whether that's the corporate world, whether that's nation states, uh you know whatever, as they adopt a bitcoin and they value bitcoin, I promise you, they are gonna value the block space properly and they are gonna realize the finite nature of IT and they're going to use a whole bunch of IT. And and because there's there's only fifty three thousand blocks a year, there's nothing we're gonna ever do in my opinion that will change that number. The battle for those fifty three thousand blocks and who controls those blocks and who controls works in those blocks, it's gonna be a big for a good deal.

So um I think that you know i'll go back to your question, you like where are we on adoption in article? We're at a very poor state. I mean, we're increasing bitcoin adoption, but the technological adoption of bitcoin is really lagging hard.

And like I said, you know like the personal computer, there was an era in the late late eighties. Until the early nineties win, we were still staring at a dose prompt and microsoft dos prompt in. And you know, you wanted to copy a file.

You had to, you had to go into the command line and you, you know, identify the disk drive that the source file was on and type the name of the source file and then copied to this fob does know copy does be i'm sure you did that at some point um said, uh, some of the Younger crowd probably never has but you know you did that we live in a world you just dragged and dropped to find you on into the food. There was a long path from from between those two points. But this you're talking about adaption and I think it's an interesting not necessarily technological adoption, but we look at bitcoin adoption.

I had I had an interesting, I think at least interesting observation at a national unite. Little for the show talking about national. We are both in national for the coin twenty four and IT was a big show.

I i've heard the number around twenty five thousand people. I believe that approximately right. So big event, probably the biggest event in history of bitcoin. So that's core.

But i'll make this statement in all our reversal, the day will come when bitcoin adoption is so pervasive that nobody goes to the bitcoin conflicts anymore. Sounds I can actually more honor a thing that doesn't make sense, right? You think no um IT should get bigger and bigger and bigger as adoption gets stronger, but IT actually is the opposite.

So like i'll tell you the way this played out in personal computer industry in one thousand nine hundred and seventy nine, which would be even before the introduction of the I D M. P. C.

But IT was coming. IT was close. right? There was a show called conduct that was held them. Last figures .

actually was held in a couple of different cities, but premier of before and gaming business in vegas.

man. And he came .

out that he was a camp driver at a boston before that.

I don't know that that is.

I don't know, but he was a hard scrapple guy before all the, but I think he got to go with.

come back here. And I I believe I went to my first conduct in one thousand nine hundred eighty seven, and by then I was in lost figures. And I believe at the time, IT was on the war of maybe fifteen or twenty thousand people.

So big show, not unlike the bitcoin show in in nashville. Here's in a standing number though by nineteen nineteen ninety eight, the show attracted two hundred and twenty five thousand people, two hundred twenty five thousand and ten days for one conference. So nine times bigger than bitcoin national show, which if you were in, if you are out there listening and you are bitcoin, nah, it's probably a little bit difficult to find them what that means.

And IT takes a city like last vegas put off to pull that off, because then this was not only the lost biggest convention center, which is massive, and every square range of IT filled with exhibitors and presenters and seminars, but also the ballrooms of the sands hotel and the N. G M. And the scissors.

And like everything like that, there was not a hotel room within sixty miles. And IT was unbelievable. But so I remember that nineteen, nineteen ninety eight, this is the fascinating part. By two thousand four, the show was dead, being a bitterly, they can hold them anymore.

So what happened between one thousand nine hundred and ninety eight and two thousand and four? Well, what happened was in one thousand nine and ninety eight, IT was kind of the pinacle of the personal computer. Microsoft came out with a new Operating system that you're called windows ninety eight.

You might remember that in subway, where we are now with a year and half of y two k which was this, you know, everybody's already freaking out about y two k of the world's going to end um l is now cracking out new processors at a great right. Um we're now creating pcs that have like D V D players and writable D V D and this whole world of you know video production and all that is starting to happen. So all these things are happening like the exciting is just, uh, still amazing.

And the technology adoption, the part we were talking up before is through the roof. We went from probably in the early nineties, every middle class home in america, probably having one PC to the end of the decade, to basically every adult handing their own. And most teenagers even, and like we were in A A middle class family, you know, you covered together the money and each person one of their own P.

C. And we've also gone from a well and in world garden type stuff to know, you know, that these online things starting to happen. So all of this happened, but amazingly, this is the amazing part.

By two thousand for r it's dead. Well, what what happened was, well, obviously, personal computer industry was still massive, but I just had lost all of its excitement. IT was like, um IT was like a there's nothing new like like it's like a rock star rock, then they've run on a gas and like nobody nobody wanted to go anymore, right?

They won't put out any more great music anymore and and the world wasn't ready for the reunion tour like the, just like nothing exciting going on. And so nobody wanted to, nobody wanted to go to vegas anymore. So my, my, my thought about IT is that we we might realize that one of the indicators of bitcoin kind of making IT and kind of reaching critical mass within society is when we really save less of things like bitcoin need ups and bitcoin conferences in between.

And the podcast r IT maybe has waved not don't think this is short term, right? This is kind of, again, really projecting some of my technology stuff, but that this point will happen and that means we want right we the goal of being the base lair of money of being pervasive in society. Um and that doesn't mean there won't be little as you said there, there may be a little salmon are on like you are talking about the bands or like be iterations of technology that .

come off hardware. While might be a thing, a conference around the matter, you know privacy or you know how personal servers or something they'll be niece things, of course.

Yeah yeah. So I think it's kind .

of where become supply because we just be money also. So people just be using IT and they won't need to go to conference to understand IT is like we don't have a conference for microwave es. And you know sure, when they rolled out, people got really excited about a trade. Yeah now we just use them you don't to convince the whole seller in the retail and distributed why they need to put mike waves in the store .

and get them into consumers yeah and so um so that's not a bad thing. And so I say that people to like, enjoy this time, like I had such a phenomenon of time in the nineties, especially like the late eighties and the nineties in the personal computer market. IT was exciting for me personally.

The community was exciting. The technology was exciting. Honestly, never thought I would find that again in my life. I feel like greatly, greatly best to have found bitcoin to get a second ride like that um but IT won't last forever like I I look back at my PC days with great fondness and feel and proud of the contributions I made. And I think in small ways, they still automate people and everybody that has an iphone or an android phone or a device like one of the inventions I have. You know the billions of devices out there that have a little piece of me and my idea and them because that is head something and that that's something I I take, uh, I don't want to sound, I don't want to be prideful, but I I know I know a different word, right?

You know there is a lot of satisfaction like that that that occurred and and just the fact of you know being in the early days of the personal computer and helping them think and and and and I think i'll look back at the kind of the same way like, you know, regardless of what my financial reward is, that I played a part and you know, you play a part here with, you know, education and your show. And I think there's a lot of people out there looking for a way to make a mark, and there's a lot of ways to make a mark and be part of IT. But this is really like, really blessed anybody that's here to be part of IT.

And I always find IT interesting that there's a lot of this. I hope this doesn't come off critical, but it's something I don't completely understand. I think there are some really bright people out there that are what's a part of the bitcoin twitter community, but they're completely anonymous and they they really hide in this anonymity and they go out, you know that kind of prevents you from, uh, really making the big mark like you know and I respect your right to be private if you're out there and that's you, you know but like I want to make a mark on the world.

Like I want to make the world Better. I want, I want my grandkids um thirteen no, I am really happy much like i'd say, like you know maybe a ball player, a baseball player or something. I'm so happy that my kids are old enough to see me play in the big leagues. Well, you know I I have a version of that like, hey, i'm really happy that my grandkids and then my kids who are in the twenty and thirties now, like they get to see me do something because when I was in the PC market, they were all too small t they didn't get to see, mean, make my mark on the world there. But now, uh, if i'm on your show or i'm on I don't Peter mimic show or something like that all that that was my grandfather, that's my dad and you they know that i'm doing something um a meaningful in the world, right that's what what I want for them ultimately too .

right and and now you're running for vice president. I ve been there, but here I think on the privacy side, you know, I was a nin before I sort of the show. I think the obvious retort that I want to get mud throwing her faces and so told he was private.

He made an incredible mark on the world um so and I think privacy plays a big part in uh free speech and and what we hear in in the marketplace of ideas but but sort of what he was saying, I found IT very hard to uh start the show as A M and uh attract guess and sort of uh and so I wanted to contribute I thought that shows the best way for me to doing that in the in the space and so I I changed from a name to uh you know said Young man and went to do IT. But I think it's also interesting ah there you know you mention sort of a personal computing over the years and I remember mom was a public school teacher, but I really lucky SHE. We got up uh uh apple two, sea two in the midi ties.

And early nineties we had A I we still want to have a mac or maybe, uh, A P C. But remember, taking those this that I would get the mail and getting into a well and all the with people in and kind of adapt in that technology. And then we're going to college.

Part of my scholarship, I got a computer in our sweet, so wasn't for me, but that was the error of everyone of I max out the colorful computers for college kids. And you say all the teenagers get IT. And then like two thousand and four, I was actually seattle for a small project where we had secret shoppers, uh, go around the world to buy microsoft computers.

And then we brought him back to seattle and we had, you know, testers to test how fast they turned on and and and how fast they booted, how fast the screen came up that screen. And you know, based the result to that, all the we the distributors would get sort of their a rebate and bonuses and sort of back and deals uh, for performance and the way we would validate our performance. But my point here is that you know those over those years um from apple to microsoft now I mean the store were are still around h in in huge ways. So you know my my next questions, like do you think the bit when giants is today or you know they likely to be the bitcoin giants of tomorrow?

no. And obvious ly, those ones survive. So you know their names right right.

But um would you know a name you might but people say when in front is a name like compact C A M P A C, how? No, they were personal. But .

yeah, I .

know. But they were a they they came out on eighty five, eighty six with called logical computers, which were everything of about IT as a suitcase. That's a computer.

So if I didn't have a battery in IT, but you could pick IT up and move IT from place to place, right? And so they were kind of the pioneer of that. I actually became this up by the early nineties.

They were the biggest personal computer company in the world. By the end of the decade, they were dead. Um IBM, which invented the personal computer in one thousand nine hundred eighty four, at least the one we would consider the personal computer apple might have an issue with this.

But um but the the traditional microsoft I D H N til this thing was invented by IBM and eighty four, they were number one in the world through the eighties. By about two thousand, they were dead. They were out of the business in the list of really prominent companies, whether they were personal computer companies or makers of hard desks or software, whatever.

You know they they largely failed because it's I think when you look back at IT, what you see is that surviving in a high growth industry where you have to continually stay at the edge of the innovation curve, where your financial health has to stay impacted, it's really, really hard. So my company, gateway, which we had a great ride, um we ended up not making IT. We were ended up purchased by ASR, but we made IT for a long time.

And so imagine this imagine like when I joined around one thousand nine hundred ninety, but when I started getting involved, what when they bought my roughly the era, when I started working with them, with this personal computer I talked about with the japanese, right? I did that for about a year and a half. And then gateway bought that product, and then I moved in with them.

So I just technically was with gateway starting in ninety two. Anyway, in that year, we will cover a hundred million, our company profitable, all maybe eight hundred employees, and said in that year, eight years later, in two thousand, we went from eight hundred employees to twenty five thousand employees. We went from several hundred million in in your revenue to ten billion.

Um so we had this we had to manage that growth. And managing that growth is really, really difficult, right? Not only reinventing yourself once or twice, you're reinventing your processes, who you hire, what you're hire once, like so many fronts.

and that's the back office, your distribution, your E R P systems, your financing, where you go dead equity, your baLance sheet management, capital raising. I mean, it's really M A activity is a lot of fronts. Your H, R department is quite robbing.

Uh, yeah, yeah. And you you've got you've got new personalities coming in, you trying to preserve a corporate culture and a style. In our case, those twenty five thousand people went from the eight hundred people were all people living in either eye or south dakota at twenty five thousand people were in like fourteen or fifteen countries.

We are manufacturing facilities on four continent. Uh you know so radical radical changes and we made IT through that. Like i'm very proud of that. We made IT that far and you know for me to survive that i'm very proud of IT too because um I the the what would happen is we'll use to see if what you have a financial background, right so you take A A role like CFO.

Well the C F O of the company in one thousand and ninety two was we were pre public or not a public company at and we're doing a few hundred million dollars in revenue a lot. It's a big job. Um we're doing all our transactions in one currency dollars.

Even three years later were public were now a couple billion. We have three kinds, the employee base. We are manufacturing facilities in ireland's malaysia um where you know the complexity of just being the CFO well the truth of the .

matter of the new guy who skills yeah and then.

那 two years later now or you know now instead of being a fortune one thousand company， now were a fortune five hundred company. And you know we've we've got a market cap of several billion now dealing with the wall street analysts and the the the funds that are investing in us. And like all I, it's as a whole different.

So anyway, then end up not be in the guy. And then and then we hit ten dollar, our our fortune hundred company. Like that's how big we got. We got inside the fortune two hundred with candle in revenue.

And we had things like we we created our we bought a bank so we could do our own financing, like to extend credit for people to buy computers, like just an example of giving your background, like the complexity of all of that stuff. And so to keep that ship moving that direction, go through all those changes, it's really hard. It's very rare, by the way, that the CEO, like we had one C E O through that whole thing and we had one president through that whole thing.

Pretty special people you know um to be able to do that. Now the special nature of the people like the president was a guy ricker. And the reason some of you made that name I resonate with you.

He became when he left gateway, he became the two term governor of the state of michigan. So that's the quality of the people, right? You to be able to run that through that transition. You know the president C O personally .

imagine as well.

Yeah and and um you know I was I was very fortunate that at least the survivor so I survived that whole run. I I maintained and moved up through that and and rick was there the the head of procurement and davers who's a good friend he made through the whole transition to the C D. But but H R.

Finance, marketing, sales, all those organizations, they were a role and they were just turning people because we hire people and and you'd hire somebody for the moment, but the job would almost grow them before they've settled into their chair because we were growing so quickly. Well, um kind of going back to the topic, you know when you're in that that world. A setback is almost his fatal.

So and and I think this coin will be similar like if you if you have a setback, if the market loses confidence in you, IT doesn't have time for you to we assemble the troops and get things back together. So you know what I see? I I I don't anna call out specific people. You know what I see is for the most part, we have inside the name companies, most of the name companies in the bickle in space.

We don't have people that have been through this before, and we're going to find a few people who have the skills like ted way and rick niter who were in in my company did to to grow personally to have eagles that allow them to continually hire people that are Better than them at something. But it's pretty rare because what you find is a lot of times the most successful early entrepreneurs that very driven minds that the personality of these these people um that start something and drive IT comes with a certain articles. M and eagle, I don't mean that in a super critical way, but that that makes IT difficult for them to be the guy all the way.

They're good in this early stage. But can they more to be the guy later? Because here's just really a hard, a company finds its successful. That goes from nothing to me, be being worth a few hundred million dollars. And then is that guy ready to, uh, take them to the promise land, whether that's an I P.

O or to a couple of billion evaluation? Well, IT may be that that person who often owns a lot of the company and has a lot of control, the board has to say, you not, i'll step back, i'll become chairman of the board. I'm going to bring somebody and that can can take me through that.

That's really hard. The other thing is, uh, it's kind of the codec scenario where companies are successful at something and IT has a window, right? They're successful with IT, but there's a new technology out there that can absolutely what they're doing.

And will they have the courage to create that new technology and above themselves, which might mean killing the the the golden cow, right? And and um that's the codec story you probably heard you. But you know the story of codec was the the leaders of codec was the a camera company and and they were the largest processors of film and they actually invented digital photography.

But they refuse to bring IT to market because they were they were making so much money in the film and are all like I used to be. If there was a shopping mall, there would be a little hot in the parking lot, and there would be the little one person key ask, and you could drop your film off into the key OK and a little bad, you in a little baggie. And you know, depending on weather night, we you wanted one hour service or twenty four hour service or you know, whatever, drop IT off. But if you want to the one hour service, because like I was, I don't know somebody's birthday party the day before, you're so excited to get these twenty photos back. You know see rop IT off and you pay the the expert fee and you go in and you do the shopping and then you come out and get the photos and you know you sit in the car and look at the photos and you know my you know you get like .

three good ones. They'd i'll be over exposed you you have the lens cap on the yeah I remember twenty four hours or one hour. I was even like later on, I used to be like a week or two weeks, I think, yeah ARM acy.

And those boots came out. I was like the technological bringing a darkroom closer to your house. Yeah, I remember that. I mean, I I grew up in all that. And if you get a digital camera and it's like how many things can just take and I still to this day, I take twenty shots at the same thing because I like these are disposed like I just find the one that we're not blaines in analysis you know photos yeah really is interesting that way ah in terms of um you know .

where .

things are going uh you know we kind of talked a bit about the value of block space and and you know you kind of phrase IT as sort of a commodity in that regards but maybe a way to start kind of getting into this is what is .

the split between fees .

and subsidy for each block on average.

right? Historically, if we take the whole last fifteen years, the average is about ninety eight percent and two percent. So ninety eight percent of the revenue a from the black war has been subsidy in up.

Two percent has been feed in twenty twenty three. That object was more like six percent fees. So IT was a market change. Now interestingly, it's down again.

Um we're running we're running down more posted to the historical norm twenty twenty three different I like you know, certainly because of what happened with ordinal inscriptions and all that, IT drove some of the sea market higher. But even though I met a fan of those things, what I think I did was IT was a precursor. IT shows how quickly the theme market response to the change in demand for block space, and it's a nonlinear response.

So meaning that is because there is no ability for the commodity which is blocked days to respond to the change in demand. IT has the same exponential reaction as bit point us, right? So if if if we if we see adoption move in a positive direction, IT will have a very disproportion effect on the sea market.

We are at a point now where black space is already extremely scarce. So it's been almost eighteen months since the member cleared for those aren't familiar. So what happens is if i'm going to send cedric some bitcoin right now, a true bitcoin transaction I I signed, I signed the transaction I presented or broadcast that to the network and IT goes into the metal is kind of like a check that has been signed but not cleared the bank or a credit card transaction.

The request is at the credit company. We didn't get the approval. Yes, that's the analysis place. okay. So for eighteen months, there's been a backlog.

There is never once cleared and it's typically been about two hundred thousand transactions at any point time waiting before that input. It's over that number right now as of at least earlier today, it's over two hundred dollars that are waiting. Now the reason fees haven't gone by hunkers yet is that a lot of the transactions are non economic transformations.

There are things like it's not me buying a car from you, it's and withdrawing funds from an exchange. I am consolidating U, T, X, O. S.

I'm doing a coin join. okay? Those type of activities don't have an urgency to them. Therefore, they can sit there for a while. But as the adoption moves to something with.

A that's part of a real economic transaction in exchange of value between two parties that will change IT because there's almost always an urgency to that, right? And that may be I needed in the next hour or I needed in the next day, but it's not like kate, i'm gonna can wait three and a half weeks through this thing that that won't happen at all. And that's what we haven't seen. So even a small rise in that will have a massive change in the fee market, right?

Where would the split be in like ten years? Like how much of the subsidy much of the black space would be, what the reward be from subsidy verse fees. But where is that going?

We will remember subsidies, right? So we look at ten years, then I would say we'd be at a point where sub city is basically insignificant. Um that is probably eighty twenty at that point.

I shouldn't t in significant, but it's probably eighty twenty. And in fifteen IT is the subsidy would be by fifteen years, the subsidy will be like point one nine or block point one nine that point or block right in that range. So IT is is is so small that so like twenty person of a big coin.

correct? Or block.

But if a big coin is worth a million dollars.

you're still talking about two hundred grand. But mean, we could argue what two hundred grand worth then, but this is that nothing maybe.

Well, remember that. So think this is a this topic has a lot of branches to IT. But let's let's look at at this way. Kk, this year, the bitcoin rewards in dollar terms will be approximately thirteen billion dollars. The subsidy plus the fees that we can .

take that like the security budget or Operating budget of some sort.

right? It's not S G N A, right. Um so IT, it's honestly not that big.

It's not that bigger number, right? You know gate gateway one top five like the five bigelow personal comter in the year two thousand was basically the same size, right? right? So it's not that big, right? And if you compare IT, I did a little study of like how much money does think of amErica spend on I T. It's a little work, but somewhere in the tender in dollar arrange. So one of the larger banking institutions annual spending about the same.

and that doesn't include the electricity bill or the the public delete es .

of the rent of the more whatever the financing of all those are. So it's tiny, right? So even if so, if point if where at point one, um i'm i'm going to do a little math here as we're talking.

If we do point one nine per block and there's fifty three thousand blocks, that's only ten thousand bitcoin per year. K that's that's the new issuance, but it's also the security budget. So even at a million dollars, even at a million doll bitcoin, that is ten billion, correct? So it's not that big, right? The subsidy relative to where we have to eat.

Now if we're going to have a secure network ten years from now, organ need like a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty billion dollar budget and that speaking in twenty twenty four dollar terms, I don't know what dollar terms are out there, right? In net present terms, it's all gonna to come from fees, right? So there are some people I know, I talk a lot about this a publicly, and there are some people that tell me that are full of shit, that fees are never gonna go high.

And that one sad is gonna were so much money that, uh, you know, will will will be doing transactions for one or two sets per v by and a one of the math doesn't play out because if you back into this the way we just did and said, hey, not to say we need a two hundred billion dollar budget to defend that coin in that time period, well, we're going to need one hundred and mail ninety million dollars in fees from the network at that point. Well, i've done the math on at that means we're onna be more like one hundred and fifty sets per vy bite for a transaction. People are morning right now and it's fifteen sets pervy by and i'm telling you it's gonna ten times more.

So yeah, maybe going for that. How's black, black space finite? How that different from being?

okay? Yeah another thing, I think some people have a issue with my of my take this because they'll say no black spaces finally, there's always another blog and say, well, there's some truth to that. However, um all of us are time bound.

I have A I have a finite life left. The year has a certain number of hours or days in IT and in any of those windows. It's finally, kk, it's every ten minutes, right? There's nothing we're gonna that changes how fast the blocks come.

I think that certain stone, I think some people may try to change that. We will talk about that later. But um I I believe that number is probably set in stone and the size of the block or you had the block size wars.

And I think we have an appetite in the community for another one for a long, long time. Um so fifty three thousand blocks a year, that's that's what ten minute of block times will give you, actually slightly less than intended. The block times give you fifty three thousand blocks a year.

There are four million weight units. Um for those that don't know what that means to think about IT is about four thousand transactions about what don't fit in there. See if four thousand transactions fifty three thousand blocks that's just over two hundred million transactions annually.

To me that's fine. Like her yeah that's fine. And it's scares. And there's nothing that the main side can do to force a change in that number. That's the protocols the way that IT sits.

So if you if you believe I am right or even partially right, that. The demand is going up. It's going up on an annual basis against that.

And again, remember this urgency I think I talked about before because again, you you confirm and accounting, so you're force as a business to do your business in time windows, right? There's an urgency to IT like you. You're not gonna sit there.

If a customer is trying to pay you for goods or services, you're not going to just say, oh, well, let's just wait until that transaction clears. No, you want your money right now and you may not even be willing to perform your service or release your goods to your customer until you are paid. And what business here you may have um uh you may have quarters in in calendar and fiscal periods to close.

So I get my belief that for insinuation last week of december, acquiring blocks space in the last week of december will be face meltingly expensive as soon as we get just a tiny bit of corporate adoption because the urgency with with which transactions occur in that period is so, so important. Um whether that's for capital gains reasons, whether that's because like hey, if I if I have a warehouse, if i'm a company and i'm transacting in decline and I have a bunch of wait in my warehouse and it's december twenty seven and I have a bie, um I need that broken in a bitcoin transaction to close before december thirty first. I need you know I need to release the goods.

I need my baLance to show a lower inventory level in a higher and higher cash level. Saving bitcoin is consider a cash covell at the time, right? Like those are gonna super, super important things. And so those that control the block space of that time period will be in a very powerful position. Uh, and there will want to monodist that yeah .

so thinking about that, the finalization of black space, you know I think great way to think about selling black space and and blank space derval tips. So I mean, is this here now? And you know, where do you see this going?

I've been working on this for quite a while, and in fact, with a group called block spaces at a temple and far from where you are physically 嗯， and. This, I believe, is probably the most exciting new commodity hit. The world that I want time are the other than bitcoin, right? So I think if you think of block spaces of commodity, then as you said, it's a natural extension that you need these sort of things.

So i'll put IT this way. Let's kind go to a natural commodity market is easy for people to understand. If I if I am a farmer, i'm sitting there in missouri and I planned a bunch of soybeans.

Now if I do that in April and i'm gonna harvest in october, I might look at the Price of october soybeans and say, hey, that looks like a pretty good Price. I can be profitable selling my soy beans at that Price. So the farmer can say, and let me take twenty percent of my harvest and my projected harvest and i'm going to sell a contract to the market, offer a contract to the market six dollars of bush.

I have no idea if that's a good Price for so it's not bit um six dollars of bush. okay. Now on the other side, there's somebody who uses soybeans and I don't know kick or man soy us needs soybeans to make soy us, okay?

So they go and say, hey, for our october production. It's again, it's April, our october production. We want to start lacking in our cost of production.

Now we want to know one that we can get them in. Number two, we wanted know what the Prices so they buy the contract. Right now, the sodding producer is obligated at the end to produce soybeans to the owner of the contract. Now they have the right to trade that kind quick kick or on my eventually say why we don't we don't want the soy beans or for any reason we get a Better deal, we'll sell this, you know, whatever. But and they'll be traders and speculators who also might buy this.

But the traders and speculators, ultimately, you must sell them to somebody who's gna buy them because their stories about this, right, where if you, if you're trader and you buy apples or read or gold, or, you know, whatever you gotta a, if if you ever sold the contract, you're getting the, you're getting the good very. So given that as a background, what we have is we have a market, we have a seller looking to stabilize revenue streams and know that they can lock in something that they can live with. And you have a buyer who needs to assure availability in a short cost.

So now let's try black space. Block space is exactly the same way you have producers of block space. Those are the, well, today is the polls that will shift to the miners.

We can talk about why, but the producers of the block space. Will want to find future buyers and stabilized revenues, especially as the percent of the revenue of generating is more fee based and less subsidy based. Right now, they can handle IT.

The volatility doesn't have they basically don't count on fees at all. You're a minor today. You kind of say, I I don't, i'm gonna assume there no fees.

Build my business plane around IT. And if they go up really high, wonderful. I make more money, but I gotta learn to survive without IT.

Five years from now, ten years from now, very different like they they can count on the subsidy for sections. They have to um they have to count on the fees, but the fees could be very valuable able. So they want to lock that in. So that's what we are creating, and I think it's a natural maturity point for the industry. fact.

I would go so far as to say bitcoin cannot fulfill its vision without products like this, without this opportunity because as much as probably the average bit corner would be on big banks and big corporations getting into bitcoin, we don't hyper bitcoin eyes without IT like we can't. We can't assume that it's just the eight billion people in the world that are gonna bitcoin. And we're gonna ck out the three hundred and thirty million companies of the world and lock out the the financial institutions.

And we're going to lack out the nation states like that. IT doesn't work that way, right, you know. But you kind of have to live the bitcoin ness for everybody, even your enemy, uh, stance and then say, okay, well, what is IT take for them to get in and this is what this is what they're gna need.

They're gonna need the financial security and know that they have access to IT. Because if not, i'll stay on the fear system because the fiat system serves them decently. Today I I hate IT.

Obviously, i'm here in the bitting world. I hate IT. But from their perspective, IT serves them okay.

They can send a wire. The transaction I talked about before december twenty seven, I got a wear health full of widgets. My financials are gonna look terrible if I don't complete this sale.

My baLance, he is going to look terrible if I don't commit this sale. Well, okay, just why are me some thea and all as well, right? So um they know how to play that game.

There is, by the way, almost no limit on the number of transactions of that system. So that's one one advantage. IT has passes like even on december twenty seven, you might have some of the bank personnel in the wire department working overtime that time a year, but they'll get IT done. We don't have that capability, at least at the base layer.

Interesting thinking about you sick and dicing blocks space. What if you learn sort of from your experienced asia, maybe like japanese group purchasing agreements and how they might deal with black space in sort of a non economic fashioner, not just a maximize return of in on Price?

yeah. Well, I think what you're referring to is like when I worked for mitsui, at least in their offices and they were um they were our investor, I learned about this system called the curator system. And in the curator system, what you have is a large financial service company that creates a community of companies within their own system that creates a many economy.

So they will do things like um you'll have a car company in electronics company and a steel company. They are all sit within decorative. So to take those three companies, all our customers of a company like mati now the car company and the electronics company, by all the steal from the steel company, the steel company, the ultronic s company, by all their vehicles from the car company, they all use the computers of the electronics company to set an example.

Now the reason that they do that is they build a system where the cat to head, like in this case, made to he owns part of all for those companies, and then all three of those companies on fractional percentages, should the fractional percent, that would maybe like five percent or seven percent of material amount, not a controlling interest in each other, to get this very incestuous sort of thing. So they don't have to buy from each other, but they always do. And they do.

All of their banking, all their financial services are provided through myth sui, in this case as part of that. So if I were in charge of mitsui right now, one of the things I would be doing, as I would say, hey, i'm going to create a mining division. And the goal of my mining division is to control a certain number of blocks based on the capacity of my my network needs.

Right now, IT might be a small one. So well, I want to have enough mining that once a week. I I I can um include all the transactions of my network.

And I don't care what's going on in the rest of the network. I don't care how expensive the fees being offered by others are. I'm gonna a put in the transactions of my member companies in at the lowest possible fees.

So it's not about it's not about them making money as a minor. It's them maintaining control of this economy and keeping them vested. And I think what will happen is we're going to see a fillip, groups emerge. And like an example might be american express.

And so another incarnation of this idea would be, think ten years from now, your american express, you've got this highness's th people who are members of your car, maybe they have the the black car is an example. So if you're a american express express black card holder, then one of the benefits of holding that black card could be that you get twenty annual base later transactions processed by free, by american express. So again, american express, they could care less how many sets per vy by you offered those transactions for, but they're gonna say, no, we want you as a customer and so we're gonna give you this preferred access to the network when you need IT.

Um and I think you'll find large banks um a city group um A J P Morgan extra, I think they will become miners and what they will say is, hey, I don't um if mr. Fortune five hundred company, if you do your banking with us, we're going to offer you preferred access to block space. If you believe what i'm saying, what i'm saying is that a lot of people look at the bitcoin mining incentives and they think about IT in a very maya's way.

They think about the minors as being motivated purely from the perspective, earning the black reward. What i'm saying is I don't think that will be the case in the future. I think they will look at IT in a completely different set of perspectives, at least a material part of a money network.

And they're gonna look at IT as I K. If the world economy is running on top of the coin, then access to the block space is existential to them. So they're gona need their partnerships with minors or um they will need their own mining Operations in order to really secure those positions.

And so that changes things dramatically for the way of the coin network will work in the way that individual people will be able to interact with IT. Um some people hate this vision, by the way, and I understand that i'm not saying I like IT. I am not promoting IT. But we talked earlier about, you know, being a technologist, this is what I see. This is how I see the world adopting the coin.

And while I hate IT, because I think what IT will do is IT make IT almost impossible for the average person to interact in any with any regularity with the base layer be the extremely rare of that IT will mean bitcoin is being utilized as a major instrumentation of a major pieces of the world economy running on IT. Now the next piece of that though is now let's talk about the nation's state level. so.

That's kind of the next door effect. So now you say, well, if today we have this monetary system where the you often hear the term in the between world, like the fed, is the single node of the of the monetary system, right? well.

That gives tremendous power to the U. S. And unfortunately the U S. Has exercise that power in my mind in a very bad way. Um even the actions with russia and iran and north korea, I think they by excluding them and using as a weapon, they get a short term benefit for a long term detriment.

Because the message that sends to these other countries is even the ones that were friendly with today is you're just one bad statement or one bad relationship between you know that country in the U S. From either getting your asset seized or or at least being excluded from being able to a move, uh, money around the world. So big coin offers an alternative to that, but only if that company has access to black space.

So one of the things I ve talked about IT, i'd say, you know if I was if I was running bOlivia right now um where an example pluton like button, I think is making a brilliant move. What buttons is doing is, is protecting the long term financial sovereignty of its nation by mining backend. And because they mind, they will be able to control blocks.

And so they'll be able to, for their government, and therefore ally for the citizens, companies of their country, they will always be able to provide access to the base layer of bitcoin and be able to do commerce. So what I would do like if I was, I mentioned Olivia find the head of bOlivia right now, which has almost no mining, but I would be going to the rest of the world, and I would be trying to attract investments in mining. And what I would do is I would say, hey um you come here, you bring your hash rate, you build this, we're going to give you tax breaks um we're gona give you energy at the lowest of possible cost, one caviar.

The caviar is we've created bOlivia pool and you must point your hash rate at bOlivia pool. And the government of bOlivia or the central bank of bOlivia is going to decide what transactions go in blocks for their pool. So when they win blocks, it's always the blocks that they care about that get in and that that's the only way to have suffered in the future.

So these countries, like I just saw, norway, is now pushing some initiative to ban mining. And man, that that is really, really frequent dangerous. That now is the time for countries to build mining infrastructure.

And I think every sovereign ation needs to build some mining infrastructure because without IT in a in a um even if they only believe bitcoin has a one percent chance of becoming the base layer of money, if they don't build that mining infrastructure out right now, they may not have a nation. I mean, you literally could be blocked out of the global economy if you didn't have IT. Or at a minimum, he becomes subservient and dependent to other parties being kind to and including your transactions.

Yeah I mean, this is really interesting. So what IT brings up to me though is like like russia just announced they were getting into big coin mining, and you can to comment to do, or not only are they gone to get a bunch of coins, but they're going to control a bunch of block's space. no.

And IT kind seemed like you were saying, you know, the control of blocks space will give, you know, immense power and I guess responsibility, you know? But like, I don't know what you mean by responsible there. You've been fair and just, but maybe they can build on that. And you think wars will be fought over black spaces while alliance be formed over this outside between countries. I mean, you can mention the sort of an internal lions of citizens and you know uh constituents um you know is that going to be fought over like like the water wars and oil wars, you know other great commodities of the humanity?

I would say yes. And I think that we look at russia, for instance, that the the U. S. Biden specifically in.

Used the monetary system is a weapon against russia, and in my mind, with very limited success, is definitely inflicted some pain. And the asset season and locking them out of the monetary system caused IT. But theyve already largely worked around IT.

And as you said, putin, putin's understanding that he has this massive asset, which is energy. Number one, he's got a heart of energy. And number two, he can utilize IT that only to acquire bit coin, but too to create the sovereign.

So and IT doesn't take a lot right. So if if russia acquires five to ten percent of the world's money, I think it's very reasonable for them to achieve that level. They are going to control five to eight blocks per day. Um and they are absolutely going to set up a system that prioritized the transactions that are beneficial to their country. Now as that happens um and other countries follow suit, I believe that in and of itself is almost the form of warfare.

If you you remember, Jason, our is work in soft m and somewhat building on some of those sort of thoughts here are extending those thoughts a little further to say he talks about the hash for some of those sort of things. What i'm saying, it's really not about the hash rates, about the block control. That's really what it's about is controlling the block space.

And I know acquiring the bitcoin is important, but at initial stake level, it's uni, even so much the bitcoin that's in their treasury, but the block space that they control because that's that allows the economy to run um that's the engine um it's the toll road of of the whole thing. And so owning that and building that I think is in right now and being ahead of the curve is more most more important than stacking the bitcoin itself at the sovereign law, the ancient state law. So um that said.

If in the future you wanted to attack a country like russia that maybe had that, you know, the attack on the remaining facilities would be logical thing, right? You know you if you impair that and you take him out while you empire a whole bunch of their capabilities in the world. Now you can do that electronically.

You could try um you know but you also if you're deciding where to drop a bomb, that that's really the way to inflected the damage because of you. If you do IT in the in the virtual sense, it's pretty hard to imperial for any extended period of time. So I think warfare may move to bombing the mining sites themselves or the infrastructure that supports those.

I find this so fascinating. I didn't add the I don't go down the jy rabbit hole. He he, then I want to talk to me. So I don't put the time to do the work to prop for show. But I on one hand of one mind, I think like game theory, and you say, I think OK.

Well, we wouldn't bomb each other other's mining capabilities because we would be too busy building our own because you would benefit us to to mine instead of to work to bomb. And um or in sort of the Robinson crucial for both mind, if I to know yours and you to but at the same time back to what you would just say. I'm like you ve got a you ve got a country whose mining and they ve got a great hash rate cash power, and they don't have the capability to defend this.

Why wouldn't I bomb this? And maybe I camb this without using a lot of energy through a cyber attack, or maybe I speak some spice and who do not bring huge missile. I don't know what IT is, but that sounds like there's going to like warfare in the physical world over digital, uh, the hash power in the digital world. Or that is where hash power meets the digit world but like where you know yeah just .

going to write a novel like we talked about again being a technologist and i've I was gonna write my future sii novel set in the year twenty sixty, let's say i'm writing a book about, you know, geopolitics in a hyper in world and if we have these countries that we don't like or or that are enemies and you know, yes, that's exactly what i'm attacking because I create this impairment.

Now if I on the other hand and and I think you and I have talked about this before, a lot of this comes full circle. A lot of people have heard we talk about the type of mining sites that you build. So if you build elephants, which are like big, massive congregated places where you have hash rate, now you are subject to that attack, right? right?

If you build horses, which is what you mentioned in the interview, what we do. So if I build, and if I have two hundred mega watts of capacity, and it's all in one place, pretty easy to drop a bomb. And imperial, if I have two hundred sites, each of one mega spread out over six states, right?

I force, you know, when you gotta find them, very much harder to detect where they are. They are and, and even if you get sixty percent of them, I still got some. I can still go right I you know yeah so I I think that um I look at IT as you know secure. I developed that that thought process originally around making bitcoin as strong as possible, right? That was why I came up with rabbit sources, elephants. But I realize now if you take IT at this other level and you want to you you look at IT as a sovereign ool protecting the ability of a country to participate in the global economy, it's pretty tough you know to to if you build elephants, right so um and I think that's all happen you know like you said, it's a have lot easier to drop one bomb on on a two hundred made a lot facility and blow the whole thing up and IT is to go build enough additional hash power to delete them right the point where .

do you have the one facility, facility to blow up the single source of power? I mean, if you get multiple facilities, like you saying you have multiple sources of power as well, you you diversify ying and essential zing. A lot of different things along a lot of different threat factors.

I I wonder, you know, I mean, that sounds like in the future, people, you know, the way countries vary data lines, you protect them from that thing. We block the northam pipeline, and they try to protect these kinds things. I wonder if countries gonna build nuclear power plants for the sole purpose of mining bitcoin. You know you tell the end that the threat vector could then block the country's nuclear power plant but I would think these are great sources of energy um to increase A A country's hash .

rate yeah um you know it's certainly what IT allows you to do, specially if you're in a country with a growing population and you expect IT to grow. IT allows you to invest in power production ahead of the population being able to use IT and you have an instant consumer of that and you can, whether that's a nuclear or any other form energy. But but I do think that.

You'll probably have countries build at least a certain part of the hash infrastructure of the country in almost like a military fashion, like they might build IT into a mountain, right and and have IT so that like there's always some level of hash available that they they can have access to. Um and you know the other thing is the alliance of contrary. So we have bricks today as an example, and bricks is forming as an alternative monetary system to the one that can run the world today.

I think you'll see those kind of alliances very commonly, right where so when you think about so here's what happens if you're gna build a block temper and we didn't really talk about this. We probably should have. So there's two hundred thousand transactions sitting in the man pool to say right now, right? Let's say a block just got mind.

Now if i'm gonna create a temple, if i'm gonna a be a real minor, which means i'm i'm gonna the hashing but i'm gna i'm going to create the block itself and try to mind IT. I have to have some criteria by which I pick roughly four thousand transactions from the two hundred thousand I think most bit coiner ers. Just assume that, oh, i'm just onna pick the court called ones that have offered the highest set private.

And that's the way it's largely worked today. But I think the algorithm of the future is not that way. And I know I upset people. I've actually published this a little bit. I've actually published a little flow chart of this too long ago. But what I said is I think what what happen is people will say, well, the first thing i'm going to do is if I can sol blocks space, i'm gonna put the transactions for that Price ceiling, then i'm gonna pick my own transactions, whatever those are, then i'm gonna pick the transactions of my affiliate, of my partners.

That could be that american express or current example I gave you then I might have an accelerator service meaning okay um before I just pluck one out of there, I have this service that canada says people willing to pay a massive printing um for specialize service can going and then which is kind of the fifth stage of this, then i'll go pick the most expensive ones. So the thing that people would perceive today as the highest priority typically is becomes the fifth in block construction in the future, especially for nation states and and financial service is companies participating in mining. So now I I hope that some independent miners are still out there um kind of more in the classic sense, whether those are individuals or those are companies like bear foot today that exists and some percentage of the blocks are being created in the traditional way.

But I don't think it's gona be most. I think you're gonna see seventy five percent of the blocks created in this other way in of hyper bin as well. Not I think the argument is only is that in five years or is that in ten years or is that in twenty years? But I think where the only argument is the when, not the if right and speak is .

sort of lack of diversification and block by block temple creation. Now this an existential .

risk to becot. Yeah that is we we sit in a system today. There's only fifteen pool. So this temper creation that we talked about is done by the polls today. So the companies that in the general vacuum of the community we call mining companies by the including barefoot, but this would include riot or clean Spark or anything like all these companies um essentially attached to a pool. And today we differ the creation of the template to the pool.

And so another way to look at IT is that the miners are really hasher and they are subservient to the pools who are simply renting the hash power from the pool to create the blocks. And today, there's only fifteen of those companies. We look at the last couple weeks, the only fifteen different polls that have been created, one and ninety percent of the box come from six of the pools, meaning there's really six companies that create almost all blocks in the world for those are are chinese companies all basically directly or loosely tied a bit main foundry and luxor.

That's that's that's the world today. No, i'm filled with ocean and um no, i'm i'm on the board there of an investor there. So I always want to you don't be honest with people about where i'm coming from.

Um you know I I I don't believe that blows my objects. In fact, my my the releasing for me participating in the ocean thing is because I view this as a really big problem. And I was about a year ago that um I found ocean or they found me.

I want to look at that. We started working together to to to to stop solving the solve this problem and the way oceans gna try to solve IT is by saying, well, the purpose of a cool, he's really to spread risk that that's the purpose of a pool. It's you know, it's no different than a lottery. If if you and me, sid rican, twenty other people all wanted to throw, well, we have thrown in varying amounts money.

There's a big lot of jackpot, right? And we we go, well, he, I, I want to put fifty box and I want to put twenty, and I want to put whatever we call the money and say, okay, well, whatever proportion of the total part you put in, if we win the lot to you get that percentage, it's the same basic concept. That's what a pause supposed to do.

But what's happened is the people within the community that have the hash power have gotten, in my mind, very, very lazy and they haven't stayed through to bitcoin. And what they've done is they've said, hey, we're happy to just produce history. We're gona focus on hash rate and the cost of producing the hashing.

And we're gonna let all this other stuff that really is the bitcoin part, we're gonna the pool make all those decisions. And interestingly, we we're not even going to take a stance about IT. No, the risk that presents is that.

One um if there's only six real points at which transaction selection is taking place IT, and there's those are coming those six pools are coming on the two countries. It's pretty easy for those two countries to four censorship upon those pools. So that's one problem.

Second problem is if you look at the way activations have occurred in the bitcoin world, like sweet or tap route, bring the recent examples, they're activated through the through the blocks. There's a signaling in the in the block and it's essentially the vote right um of and we're usually looking for a certain level like a certain number of blocks, certain percent tage of blocks over a certain period of time. If we hit you know eighty percent of the blocks and ninety percent of the blocks over a certain period of time have happened, then we will consider the software, the software to have been activated.

Well, if there's only six places that, that we'll make that decision, that's a pretty small group. And by the way, roughly half of the world cash rate is coming out of these bit in affiliated on sorts, essentially saying that like if if it's a simple democracy bit main Normal test, i'm not even talking fifty one percent attack. I'm just talking about you know the future and not to say bit min hasn't always cited with the community terms of what he wants.

Um you know whether that was the um the block size itself or second to acts or like these are of things they definitely ban on the other side of the community. So it's very, very important that the template creation go from these will call fifteen points, two hundreds, if not thousands of points, so that if censorship were to be trust upon the community, like all fact compliance, an example, that there still be a larger of group, that a nano fat complaint transaction would still likely get selected by somebody. And I I think a lot of people who don't study this, the the say the the level that I have, and I understand why, because this is my business and it's not most people's business.

But I think there's this perception that, oh, well, we'll just change ports like if the threat comes up, oh well, the big miners will just flip. But again, I don't want to attack specific companies, but let just say i'm a big public minor o and i'm mining with foundry right now, which by the way, foundry I like foundry. Um I think they run a really good and I believe their their intentions, at least to date, have always been very good.

So i'm not being critical of them, but they're in a position as the largest mining tool in the world with thirty percent of the world hash rate being a highly likely target. Let's say, if the election moved a certain way, maybe maybe they could come under a lot of pressure. Maybe, lets say, for all fac compliance, let's imagine in a world where eliza's warn is the treasury secretary as an example.

Now if if we are in that situation and i've got my hash rate pointed to foundry and then the government comes in as foundry, you've must comply. Now I am, I gonna switch from foundry. okay? Well, I got one choice, which is I can and gonna go after foundry and lock sora, let's say, because which is the second biggest U.

S. pool. So if I want to go with a big hole that has the financial standing that I can be comfortable, that leaves me only with bit main related pause as a choice.

Well, that's probably not any Better to to move from the U. S. pool.

If I, if I stick with boundary, do I actually have any financial damage? Probably not. Probably really doesn't affect my mining output in a great degree.

I currently have all of my reporting, uh all my financial reporting, all my auditing, all of my stuff geared toward foundry. So I have to rebuild all of that um on a technical basis. I could in a matter of a handful a minute, probably switched from from foundry to another pool.

But you know we talked about some of this stuff earlier. For a public company, you want to you want your on your auditors, your financial reporting, your legal department, which says what we got to have a set to compliant. cool. So what i'm getting at is you can't flip.

If if found that big public company, I can't flip and I really don't have a lot of motivation to flip other than shareholder pressure, that would be the only thing that, that would motivate me to switch, I think would be if my shareholders say, hey, i'm onna, start selling the shit out of my stock. I owned new if you if you go down this path. But to be honest, they probably that company probably would prefer IT to stick with IT because now they are they don't have to worry about this, they don't have to worry about violating all fac, they don't have to worry about a lawsuit.

They that it's actually easier for them to stay with IT. Then IT is now that's why we need small independent privately held minors with hash rate all over the world because I think we should assume again, it's probably not uh, in if question. I think it's a one question when these things come in and they put their pressure in um that that the bitcoin that we think of, which is border, less censorship, resistance, all those sort of things IT needs twenty thirty percent of the hash rate mathematically for us to preserve that. The bitcoin that we know, it's not an existential risk. The bitcoin but IT is an existential risk to bit coin with all the attributes that we like.

Yeah, I could see that you know things like that till that you know I I hate a kind of I was wonder, like, do people worry about that when they start thinking about how people hear are for Price?

You know.

when they hear extensively to big coin and things like that? I wonder how to impact of that part of their thinking thing. As a few things we're going to uh I want republic a few personal questions based on some tweet you put out, but we're going to skip through um the threat of asic centralization um and I I can't want to q this up because that there's a lot you bring to the table and we're going to talk again. So I maybe the consequences of free energy, but be the hell that minors are going through right now.

A public companies that .

are really stressed for people to think about public mining companies, you know really what they're doing here if they're investing in the shares of public mining companies in how that mayor may not line up with the e ethos of bitcoin and maybe to think about these companies, more commodity sing entities and you know what maybe the impact uh of their value is and there you know maybe a negative cash flows and maybe how they're financing their business in this economy or or the you know this landscape and what that means for the long term. A health uh and in the value of your bet, uh, the impact of A I um we didn't really get into but you put out a few uh tweet um that I think might really resonate with people. Um you know these are a bit persons to feel free to skip some boy's questions if you don't want to but I think you know even .

this conversation .

about big going a little may be heaven ier. And we have been gone into like politics and the economy and everything things things are crazy right now. So maybe for anyone who's struggling, you know getting through twenty twenty four, you know maybe even contempt suicide, you have any maybe words of advice .

for people oh um okay well i'll share with you because I i've shared that i've lost a brother to suicide um and sorry, it's. You know, it's something that never leaves you say that.

You know, so the people out there that are struggling out at first, there's a whole bunch of people that, that feel for you, that care about you, and you probably do not understand the impact that you have on people's lives ah and I I can say for my brother that a day doesn't go by that I think about him, but also a day doesn't go by that I don't deal with guilt over what happened because I am, am I asking but he feel sorry for me by, you know, what I deal with is what? What could I have done differently? This was my Younger brother, by the way.

So, you know, I I, as a big brother, say, I know certain things happened in his life. And I look back and saying, I probably wasn't there for him in the way I should have been. I could have done this, or I could have done that. And, you know, were all fallible as human beings. But you know, the guilt that leave behind is huge. And so, you know, I I appreciate for anybody going through that that there's a pain and there's a darkness um but I promise you there's people that love you and that care about you and that when you leave are gonna hurt terribly and their pains never gonna go away you know you you're shifting some of this pain to some other people and and i'll say, you know anybody out there that way i'll talk to anybody if if you don't know me, you can dm, me uh and I will talk to you um i'll do a private zoom with you. I'll do a phone call with you and i'll do my best to help you from my experience. And if you know i'm not a professional, but you know if if you just need somebody to talk to um i'm i'm i'm here because as I think that's what a lot of people need um but you know please please seek help for IT please don't look at IT as the answer please think about the pain that you'll leave behind um and don't don't think anybody's gonna think worse of you by for reaching out to help not that the you know where we're all human we all have dark days. I appreciate that some of you may have darker days than others, but then we need you and we want you and we love .

you yeah I mean, I agree that we said there and definitely reach out I D be available to unavailable. I bring you up. I know it's a tough subject to talk and I appreciate you speaking so honest, honestly and eleven tly about IT um because we talk a lot about fix the money, fixed the world, but the world is the money is broken.

It's really shitty and it's getting shadier, especially this year. I think a lot about like two thousand and eight what we saw the financial crisis, I mean, would like things like made off and there are people who committed suicide there. And and you think about just all the sort of banking crisis, but lot of time people think ah they made bad decisions and they screwed up.

But I think they don't think about the small business owner who borrowed money because they thought tires were pumping this year and they could get money at six percent and then they had a refinanced eight or nine or ten, you know, I work and fiat land a lot, and that I just finished ed up a gig standing up in accounting department for private equity back and tidy. That's trying to go from two hundred million to a billion in sales. You know, they just fired the CFO and insisted controller walked.

And you know, people are skipping wedding to get there work done, but you know their boss is gone. So all that credit you built is gone and people's lives are at stake and know the Price of commodities are going up. And if you're in a commodity producing business where we need those inputs and you know you got revolve val loans for hundreds of millions at x eleven percent, you can get to a bad situation unexpectant tly without maliciousness or you know being the ferrous and and so everyone going to, you know tough times.

I mean that that's ky. I brought IT up. Appreciate you going into that. And then maybe the switch gears a little bit um so you mentioned one of your greatest personal thrills, which was finding first block at ocean yeah and maybe you talk a little bit about that what .

I meant to you well I think we all wonder about we talked about IT to somebody like leaving a mark making a contribution, you know and some of IT is you know but like we were in nashville, you know so and i'm sure this happens to you as well doing what you do.

But somebody somebody maybe come up to me and shake my hand and reduce themselves and say, hey, you you said this or you gave me this insight and I appreciate IT like that means whole lot to me. But what's special about the thing that you mentioned is that now in the history of bitcoin, there have been just over eight hundred and fifty thousand blocks that have been mind, and especially all those blocks mind over the last eight, nine, with all theyve open mind through these pools. And the pools have not identified the minor that mind the block.

So you would see the the information reported from the network would say brain's minded or founded in IT or whatever, right? And that's great. If you're part of that pool, you can get a little things satisfaction.

But what ocean did was ocean changed that so that not only do we know ocean won the block, but we know the exact machine that did the work. They found the block. And we've been blast several times, I admit, public and office on a handful of m, but we've been blast several times within the bare foot family of companies to have found the black.

But we found the very first ocean block. So IT was the first black, really, that we could identify, that the net could identify for almost a decade. That's a that machine right there. Mind this blog and happen to be the first one in mind for ocean. And that just gave me a thrilled the word I used like getting tweet because like I, I, i'd felt.

That for all eternity, at least far as you know, bitcoin runs right that is an eternity but for a long, long time like that that's what we did like I do IT as a real historical mark and it's immutable and IT can be taken away and and um you know me and my team and the investors and like all these people, you know we we've all put a lot into building that and now we can say, you know like we really made this contribution and IT. It's a it's something that the entire network benefits from. So um it's it's a little hard to put into words or I ve done at least a little justice to a put.

And we just found another one within the last week and still is super like super exciting every time ocean minds of block I got check and see, oh, was IT was in one of ours and you know it's it's so thrilling, by the way, the last one i'll tell you some interesting the last one I turned out wasn't me, wasn't one of us, but there's a there's another mining company in the snow billson mining and um there are there are uh a smaller mining company based in northwest style were not too far from where arming headquarters are. And um they they've publicly disclose this. So I think it's fine for me to say IT, they have a minor, they have a customer.

So they do a hosting Operation and they have a customer. The customer has two machines. He just has two machines. And he pointed up to ocean and one of his two machines found a black. So you know, there's a guy made a very small investment in mining and you running in this little place in rural aoa and the Wilson mining guys are a good group guys, and they're very true to the eats of bitcoin. So you know, it's thring for me to see that happen to like, yeah.

yeah I mean, I love what you guys are doing over the ocean. I told this closure on a small time investor there, but I just IT really seems to match the ethos of bitcoin.

SHE ran the transparency of what's happening, I think, a lot about accounting and auditing and just, you know being able to see the transaction and what machine IT is, uh, the exact layout or spects of the subsidy in the transaction fees, what's going in to the next block? One thing I find find I love that they could give a sticker, put a sticker on your machine. So I just imagine why mining farms about one hundred eighty know machines wear ring away in.

One of these are little facilities you put stick on. But then I also wonder, is this now the most, a unlike test machine out there, like I just through this minor out because what the dd you're going to a get two stickers on this one machine can ever win again, you know should you almost like throw IT out uh or sell IT or uh you know my job. But it's like I just wonder what you know, what are the ads um but what have you seen maybe um you know maybe pointing hash rate at different pools uh, from the small sympathy size that we've experience so far, you think miners can make more money at ocean perhaps? Well.

we have I mean, we've we've one of the things we did not just because with ocean, but you know just because with ocean doesn't mean we should point on our hash rated ocean. And so I think I have a responsibility running a mining company part of the service and providing for the the people who invested with me is like i'm gonna a do my best to create the greatest genomic return for this um without harming harming bitcoin and I think all of my investors know where I stay in there.

Well um what we started doing was from the moment we saw ocean come up was we talk we took ten systems, identical systems in the same container, point them to ocean, we point ten more identical to a different pool and then ten more identical to another place to another to try to get a represented a sample. And so we just been running stats. I mean, there's all kinds of fancy algorithms you can put in what's the luck of the pool and what's the blob blob.

But you know what are at the end of the day, like what all is producing the most money? Well, it's a very clear cut that over the nine plus months that we've been in that ocean has had a greater economic return than the other three. And we continue to monitor IT.

Like you know, IT doesn't you know, past performance is not indicative of future performance necessarily. But today, we can say unequivocally, we've made more money by having that hash rate pointed at ocean. We continue to to do that now ocean has because oceans are relatively small pool that's startings ly pick up a little moments, the hash rates climbing a little bit.

Um the payout has more volatility than essentially any of the other polls. We choose a method called F P P S. Do that ravitch le, a different day. But the net is, you know, look at look at the nine months and we made more money with with ocean.

Yeah that's awesome. Yeah I just I I love for .

those listening a sidera is is swallowed wrong and in very large amount of pain. I'll give a play here of stearic um having A A struggle here. So yes stereo stepped away for those uh listening and audio so i'll feel a little time here in casey.

Uh needs a minute. And I will say, you know, there there's a fallacy about ocean that because ocean ocean been accused of censorship, it's been accused of not having the greatest interest. okay.

So let's okay, i'm just so in some time. So finish thought here. I'm just say that ocean may surprise people to hear what i've said. And I think what surprising is ocean took key because when IT does its template selection, the main template, or there are four temples that people can pick from.

If you are minor, you pick what everyone you want, but the main temple let used by most people filters out most inscriptions and a lot of those sort of things. And so there's a perception that IT must therefore pay less money. And there's a lot more to determining the economics of a poor than just what transactions went into the the template.

Go down that rabbit hole another day. Cedric looks like he's returning to living. He was, he was in a lot of pain. C struggling for air. Um so.

Well, I got one more question, right. So uh, I love that you got close to a really close to predicting the last having date.

I know that you .

run numbers like this figure this stuff out. So my final question is, are you ever going to retire? And I don't know, just go and pursue breast relaxation, recreation and pleasure. Is that in the cards for you? What do you think about retirement?

And I don't believe that .

you're retirement age.

just not even to ask. But in general, is a people retire at my age. You've retired before and I did I I retired at at I did well at gateway. I had a great run and thought when I was thirty five that I should retire because I thought that way.

I thought that's what you did, right? You acquire a certain amount of money, and then you kind of look at IT and what lifestyle do I want to have and can I write IT out? And I thought I was there, by the way.

So I said, okay, well, I should retire them. Well, I found out quickly that that's none correct that that a lot of I try to do this simply because um I know it's it's late. We've been going on a long time we say this you know what I learned was that one happiness doesn't come from money.

No IT comes from, I think, the quality of your relationships and the fulfilment that you get from contributing to your family and to society and that if you retire and you think you're going to a goal for fish all day or drink in a collapse on the beach, you know, whatever. I think you will find a horse after your brief period. He probably do IT for a certain period.

There really is an happiness in this. And and I think that I honestly think we are programs to work now. Work doesn't necessarily mean you have to grind.

You know work can mean write a book, work can mean volunteer work can mean but you got ta be involved in something other than just your leasure. I think think as you get older, you could certainly have more of that. But like if you're if you're not on a regular basis out doing that stuff, this is my theory, for what it's worth, take you to leave.

My theory is that we are programmed to serve others and provide value to the world. And that is in our D N A, that our D. N A will at some point say if we are not doing that, i'm taking you out because you are a drain on your community and your family and the service is so you're going to have a heart attack, you're going to get cancer.

You're gonna is gonna take you out and I believe if you look at women, you know um I story for another day, I I still maintain uh a uh my license as a life insurance agent and so i'm familiar with x tables and all those sort of things in women clearly live significantly more than men。 And and like an asian woman, for instance, is the pinacle of the actual tables. The the the standard asian woman lives like in the eternity.

But why is this? Well, I think the difference between women and men in the in generalities is that as they get older in life, men have a tendency of a tendency. They get somewhat insulted.

They they will sit on the rocking chair theyll. They'll become very secondary. Not saying they're not involved in their families, but compared to the women, like the women, my wife and her grandparents, the way my wife, perhaps horror as a grandmother, is very hands on.

Lets just say like and and so I I think what he does is I think women live longer, not from a biological reason, but because they maintain their sense of purpose, which is often very family or and are not stereotyping when they I think they do that um and so um I don't believe in retiring. I believe in finding financial independence and then just working on those things that really give you satisfaction and contribute the greatest. So um.

I don't think we should ever retire and and we should just seek that place where we have the the able to do what we think services greatest and gives us the greatest for filming. And you want to go golfing a little more, fishing or whatever makes you for wonderful, but don't give that up completely. I think for a lot .

be I would think you would put IT in terms like you just want to control your time and how you use IT and be able to not do the things you don't want to do so so like there is that thing. I think people think action a in things do you enjoy? I've enjoyed this conversation immensely, bob. As always, i'll leave IT to you for any parting words. You most importantly, people know where they can find .

you and bear ford mining, thank you. Well, that find me a bear ford mining, that com and buber under sport BTC on twitter. But I leave. We talk today about a lot of things that might be scary, the coin, changing nation states mining laws over hash, right? Like all that, I want to make sure that we haven't left you in a dark place because I am extremely optimistic about bitcoin, an extreme optimistic about what you will do for the world.

Even like I appreciate you asking me the suicide question, I believe there's a whole bunch of people that will be with us that wouldn't otherwise be with us because of what we're doing in the quality of life of whole other people around world is going to improve that. A lot of society y's greatest problems are gonna fixed. And you bitcoin might not go exactly the way we wanted to go or think you should go, but it's gonna win and it's gonna have a huge positive impact on .

the has been so good. But and thank you are filling in wales, having their coffee .

bit and IT buck up. thanks.