Home Mining Mafia with Jon

Hello, and welcome back to Freedom Tech Friday, a live and interactive show taking place every Friday at 9AM eastern, 2PM UK time across the ungovernable feeds. Each week, we dig into the latest FreedomTech, including Bitcoin, Monero, encrypted messengers, privacy tools, and anything in between.

Basically, anything that can help you take back some control in today's digital Panopticon. This show and the topics we cover are powered by freedom.tech, a daily news desk that uses AI to monitor hundreds of sources so that we can continue to bring you the signal every single week.

I'm q and a, and I'm head of customer experience at Foundation. And I am joined by Seth, who is COO at CakeWallet. Max, head honcho at the Ungovernable

Empire, is otherwise engaged today. He's sadly snowed in at the North Pole, got no Internet signal. So Yeah. We're flying solo, so we we've drafted somebody else in who's arguably much better if if you agree with the better looking.

Freedom Tech Friday is live and interactive, so make sure you help us steer it by commenting live, pre submitting your questions, boosting on podcasting two point o apps, and just sharing the show with your friends.

Top support for last week's show covering the freedom.tech launch comes from, again, welder Ian, who also sent in another 2,222 sats and once again said absolutely nothing. But this time, he sent us a kiss emoji. So thanks, Ian.

Without further ado, let's dive into the show. Seth know me Seth and Max, but Max is not here. Seth, are you well? I am doing well. Yeah. I it's been an interesting week, always. All of the AI security stuff is fun because we get a a nice blend of

new real reports and people who clearly don't understand anything about security or code thinking that they find critical bugs. So it's been a always a fun back and forth. Oh, plus there's dude who tried to extort us yesterday for $8,000 a month for public bugs that are already on GitHub.

So, yeah, never a dull moment. Never a dull moment. Neat. You're like in a swag movie.

I know it, but it was it was I never had that happen before. So he he offered to bury the report if we paid him $8,000 a month, and I just sent him to our responsible disclosure policy. Did he send you a video with the with the, Guy Fox mask and then you don't give us $8,000 a month. He

he he went with a different approach. He sent clips of Vic on podcasts talking about Zcash as apparently the bad thing. So I don't Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm not sure. It was it was Cool. It was fun.

Well, Seth, I I feel your pain. Our, I'm using echo at here, but our vulnerability disclosures have gone through the roof as well. You know, people have found a clunker and pointed it at at a website and gone, find me anything you can, and 99% of them are are all useless.

That's not to say that there isn't some, you know, useful stuff that comes up every now and again, but there is a lot more traffic down that avenue. So I feel your pain. Well, let's try The nice thing is they're they're good at finding supposed vulnerabilities,

and they're also good at validating if a vulnerability is real. Yes. So when you actually know the code base and you know how it works, you can leverage them to much more quickly check potential

So what so what what color what color hat do you give these people, these clankers that are testing your stuff? Like, there's white hats and red hats. They get a different color hat now. This is a new thing.

Well, Fable doesn't wear any hats because it's too scared of anything. If I even ask you questions about, like, Tor or Monero or PayJoin or Silent Payments, it's like, I don't know. It's a little too scary. I'm gonna have to I'm have to downgrade you. It doesn't wear a hat. It wears an n 95 mask.

Yeah. I see. Here you go. Yeah. Well I think otherwise, though, generally white hat. Generally white hat. Okay. Good. Good. Yeah. Bon's saying, Seth, you have legendary patients. I've, I agree. I've seen some of the the Twitter discourse this week, which we won't waste any time diving into. But, yeah, I agree.

I I I commend you for how you handle some of the concerned roles. Well done, mate.

Alright. I'm gonna we're gonna bring on our our guest. If you've been around the ungovernable feed for a while, you will know that today's or you'll be well acquainted with today's guest. Although calling John a guest doesn't really sit right because he he's part of the furniture, isn't he? Let's be honest. He's family.

He is a well established member of the crew who's been on the feed more times than we can count. And honestly, it had been too long since we caught up and found out what he's been up to. For the newcomers, John is arguably one of the the most known nonsense voices in Bitcoin.

And today, he's gonna be on home turf talking things he knows all too well, which is mining, home heat, etcetera. We're gonna dive into it all.

John, it's, an absolute pleasure to have you back. Thank you for sparing an hour out of your day to to come and join us back tonight. How how are you doing, sir? Oh, I'm doing really well. Yeah. I'm I apologize to everybody for you know, we we we dropped the Meshadel show and we dropped the Action News show. Everybody

most people in the sphere know, the Ungovernable Misfits sphere know what I've been up to because we've done a number of shows explaining that, what happened with the the the gas well and and other things I've been working on.

So if you're a new listener, hi. I'm John. You can go back and listen to many, shows that I've done, but Max and I's relationship started with the Pled Miner month where we featured small scale, medium scale, home miners for the most part, who were doing lots of different creative things. And we featured their stories, and

that went on to a much bigger show, Action News, involved in the Meshadel. So what have I been up to lately and why have I kinda dropped off the Ungovernmental Misfits sphere besides a little appearance here and there was, you can go back to our shows where we talked about me building a natural gas plant

and Bitcoin mine. So that took up a lot of my time over the past year. In the past few months, I've been working on another project that I cannot disclose to anybody else because it has nothing to do with Bitcoin, and it's more private sector things.

But I'm back on the show to talk about mining and, to feature other people's stories and to talk to you about heating and if that's practical. And if we could, into alternative sources of heating besides Bitcoin mining because I think unless you're a nerd and really into this stuff, it's probably not something that you should do.

Love it. This one question alone could probably fill up the next hour, so feel free to to cut some corners along the way. But, like,

what the hell is it like building a Bitcoin mine? Like, I know that's a very open ended question, but you've literally lived and breathed it. So I'm very, very curious to to find out the, you know, the main pain points, what what was easy, what was surprised you because, you know, I'm from,

the People's Republic Of The United Kingdom where it's illegal to own an air conditioning unit. So, mining is is is put a dot on the landscape.

It's, well, first of all, it when you're doing all of the work yourself and you don't really have any money to pay anybody else to come and do stuff, it really involves just learning a lot of different industries,

You know, to get to briefly explain what I'm doing is I have a pipe in the ground that is connected into a void in an old shuttered coal mine that is called a coal bed methane gob well. If you tap into the high side of the coal mine, all of the methane kind of collects into the high side of that coal mine.

And that pipe goes to a a compressor, and that compressor pulls out all of the methane. Once that, gas is pulled out, it gets dried, it gets filtered, it gets regulated down to a usable pressure, and it gets put into generators. Most of the generators there are, Chevy three fifty,

engines converted over to natural gas. So pretty much what you do is you you take off the intake and carburetor and put a new intake and a more simple carburetor on there.

It's actually pretty neat how that that carburetor works. It's just one disc that opens and closes to mix the air and gas. It's it's almost more simple than than a gasoline carburetor. That turns over the engine, that engine turns over the generator,

and that generator supplies electricity to the miners. And then whatever gas I don't use, because it isn't like I I can change the RPMs on the compressor itself to to put more of a vacuum on the coal mine and suck out more gas.

But if I do that, if I'm not consuming all of the gas, I either have to vent it, flare it, or push it back into the suction side of the compressor. So the first thing of building a Bitcoin mine to learn from me, because this was not an on grid mine, was learning about the natural gas industry

and just figuring out that. Just trying to combine my years of experience in in telecom and just fixing things and doing stuff and applying that to learning the the natural gas industry. And even then, it's different too because it's not it's not just regular natural gas. It's it's coal bed methane.

So that's kind of a different more niche part of of natural gas. And then becoming better at fixing engines, you know, it's kind of the guy that that could pull off, you know, swapping out an alternator, do brakes, stuff like that, like mid level maintenance stuff. But now we're tearing engines apart and putting new engines in.

So it's been a real learning experience and and, you know, time. Time and effort and sweat, I think that's something that you can apply to to anything besides, Bitcoin mining. So when I when I talk about the the Bitcoin mine and gas well, it's more often nothing to do with mining.

It's it's it's about natural gas. It's about engines. It's it's about heat and temperature. And it's like, oh, yeah. By the way, I have these computers, you know, connected to these generators, and I I have to do something with them too.

It it's my least favorite part, to be honest with you. I am curious and obviously to the point at which you're comfortable with sharing. How the hell does somebody come to, owning a natural gas well?

Okay. Sure. I I'll I'll I'll tell this. Like, I don't know the whole I I've always been, like, the least private of the ungovernable misfits family, haven't I? I'll tell you anything. I don't care. You're the face of the show. Yeah. Yeah. The only one that shows it.

Okay. How did that start? Well okay. So a buddy of mine down the street from me, Mike, was starting up a gas company in, like, North Central Pennsylvania.

And all throughout the previous year, I was trying to find an on grid site here in Western Pennsylvania. Myself, two buddies of mine who who you know from the show, but I won't disclose that because I don't have their permission.

We're trying to find an on grid site in Western Pennsylvania. We had meetings with Duquesne Light. That's that's the electricity provider out of Pittsburgh. Met with a real estate guy who was really into this, and he was gonna get his company. This is the largest real estate industrial real estate firm in in Pittsburgh.

And everything was a go. And then that real estate guy ghosted us. And then after the meeting we had with Duquesne Life, they were like, oh, yeah. We'll give you all the listed substations and and this is not. They kind of ghosted us and it dropped off. And now I had worked on that for, six months.

And I was getting oh, no. Actually, that guy just called me who I was talking about was on that team. I guess he doesn't listen to Freedom Tech Friday.

And so I just I had directed all of this energy towards finding an on grid site. And a good thing we didn't because the pricing's really it's it's kind of there in Western Pennsylvania. It's it's kind of not there.

I I'm actually glad that it that it went this direction.

So I had done all this work, and my buddy Mike down the street is a real estate guy. He's a land man. He's a natural gas guy, and they own a natural gas company in in North Central Pennsylvania. And he's like, yeah. We got a couple wells that we're not able to to tie into our pipeline, and we can't get the right away.

And I said, well, maybe we can get some generators up there and do some Bitcoin mining. So we said, okay. Let's let's figure that out. So I called a buddy of mine. His name's KT. And

he was he was already into the natural gas Bitcoin mining for for quite some time. And I said, hey. Can you can you take a call with me and get on the phone with these guys? And we kind of kind of explained Bitcoin mining

to them. And and we did and we had a meeting with them and then we had another meeting and they they started to understand what we were doing and see if it was right for them. Now listen, on on natural gas, if you're selling to pipeline, honestly guys,

if I could sell to pipeline, I would drop every single fucking one of these Bitcoin miners and and not ever deal with it. That is the absolute truth because it is just it is just so simple to deliver that gas to pipeline.

Okay. Rather than than maintaining, at this point, five generators in an environment where Bitcoin mining economics aren't great. Mhmm. And the only thing that I would have to work oh my god. My life be so easy.

I was saying to this to the guy that I bought the well off of, Mark, who's who's an an an older guy and he's retired and we'll get we'll get to that part.

He's like, you know, maybe you can maybe you can get it to to Range Resources. That's about like a mile away from me. I said, Mark, if all I had to do was to maintain that compressor, I I just can't imagine.

Anyway, if you want to insert Bitcoin mining into somebody's natural gas operations, it's it's not like, I don't know, just just putting another piece in line. It's it's a huge learning curve for these guys.

And they they honestly don't most of them don't wanna I shouldn't say most. I mean, everybody's kind of a nerd. But as far as the management side of things, I'm not sure they're interested. If you were to talk to techs, they'd be like, sure. I'll I'll fix an engine. I'd love stuff.

Anyway, back back to that meeting with them. We we had a big meeting with them, I don't know, three years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Three three years ago before I was going to Lake Satoshi. Was supposed to I was gonna leave for Lake Satoshi early early on in the morning.

And we had, like, a two hour long meeting with these guys, and they're like, I don't know. We'll see. And then so I went to Lake Satoshi, had a great time, came back, had a meeting with them like that Tuesday, and they're like, we we're we're not gonna do it.

So I get off the phone and KT calls me and he's like, well, how do you think that went? I said, not well, honestly. I'm pretty frustrated. We're trying to build a, you know, a mine and do all this stuff for, the past year and I just keep coming up after roadblock after roadblock. I'm I'm so sick of all of this.

And he's like, yeah. Maybe someone will come up. I said, yeah. You know. You know. So I know we're trying to get to when I bought the Bitcoin mine. I've told this story before, but it's a good story. So you're gonna hear it again, and then we'll get to some Bitcoin mining heating stuff. So

I get off the phone with KT, and then I had a prayer call with my buddy, Daniel. And Daniel and I actually, I hadn't had a prayer call with Daniel, and he had texted me, like, a few weeks early. Was like, you know what? The Lord Lord put your your your name on my heart. Let's have a prayer call. So we did, and this is the reason why.

So we get in a conversation, he's frustrated about life, and I'm frustrated about life. And as we talk to God and and, you know, we ask for just, you know, guidance. Where where do you want me to be pointed? I get off the phone call with him, and KT calls me back and says, check your email. I I got something for you.

So I check my email and at first, it's like a house, you know, like a $2,000,000 house, like an 2 hours north of me that has free gas. And there's a there's a little genset in the basement. And I was like, oh, Yeah. Right. Because I can afford that $2,000,000 house.

And then he says, no. The the other part of that email. So I'm looking at the other part of that email and it is a a natural gas site that now KT doesn't know exactly where I live. I just always tell people Pittsburgh, but I don't live in Pittsburgh. I live 35 miles south of Pittsburgh.

And, you know, he's like, oh, I think this is this is somewhere near you. It's in your general area. So I look at it and it's somebody selling a gas site in as the crow flies, it's like four miles from my house.

So if that wasn't serendipity, if that if that wasn't God intervening, I don't I don't know what. And so it was it was obvious to me that that's where I I need to be pointed. If it just like sat down on my lap. Here's all the work. Work, work, work, nothing. Work, work, work, nothing. Work, work, work, nothing. Ask God for for guidance.

Boom. Here it is. Here's what you're gonna do. Right here. It it's undeniable. Four miles from my house. And so it was a it was a, coal bed methane gas well. I'll explain how that works.

And it had been running there for, I think, like, thirty years, twenty five, thirty years. And it was getting kicked off of pipeline. The reason it got kicked off of pipeline is because the local gas company injected mercaptan,

and that's the smell that you smell on gas. So that's a that's a methane well. It's got no smell at all. My my other gas well is just a conventional well that does have smell. So I can inject smell like by by blending in my conventional well into my coal bed methane well.

But that doesn't work for the gas company. They need much more smell. So they had injected mercaptan at the site there and their the site was off and they came and filled the tank and the mercaptan went the other way into the equipment. So when it fired back up, boom. That smell went everywhere.

There were, like, 90 trouble calls for a gas leak in the two townships down there. Sorry. Sorry for burping. And so the gas company was like, listen. It's our fault. It's not our fault. It's your fault. We don't know. We're gonna kick you off a pipeline. You're small potatoes now.

Where back in the day, that gas plant used to to matter, but now with fracking, coalbed methane and conventional gas is kind of I don't know. It it's not sexy. It's not exciting. The investment's not going there.

They want to spend a shitload of money fracking and have a shitload of production and then drop that off and then borrow more money and drill another well and more pipeline, where there's actually a good resource in in COVID methane and conventional wells here still. So, anyways, they they kicked it off and and the the

the owner was like, I'm old. I'm done with this shit. He's got he's doing well, you know, that he doesn't have to worry about that project. But that was his first project on his own, Mark.

And so he, he had his, nephew, Jim. That's my land man. Jim Stout's a good dude. Hey. If anybody's looking for gas sites, if you're looking for data center sites, you're looking for Bitcoin mining sites in Western Pennsylvania, and you need a good gas land man,

let me know, and I will refer you to my buddy Jim because he's he's a damn good land man. So Jim was actually the one who called me when I inquired about this site. And

here's where Ungovernable Misfits comes in in. And he's like, hey. I'd I'd looked at your your LinkedIn. It says Ungovernable Misfits, and I I went to you guys' website. And he's like, I'm I'm a libertarian minded guy, and I I looked at all through your stuff, and and I'm totally down with all you what all you guys are into.

And he's like, you wouldn't believe how many weirdos, Bitcoin mining weirdos have reached out and tried to buy this site. And and they've all just been kind of scammer crypto bros. And he said, but I don't know. Like, you you seem cool.

So we met up. I told them my story. They told me their story, and I bought it. But then I had to convert it over because it was going to pipeline. I had to convert it over and put in all the work to

regulate it down to the point where I could feed it to generators and push it back into the suction side of the compressor. Whereas before, everything used to just sell to pipeline. So, like, when I say, like, I would take all this Bitcoin mining stuff the hell out of here and just sell the pipeline if I could, I I absolutely would.

I just I can't say that enough. Anyway, that's that's, that's the story with with the gas well. That's that's how one gets to own a gas well. It's just pretty much just buy it. Yeah. That that's fascinating. It's it's something that's completely otherworldly to me.

And and, you know, thank you for sharing that the ins and outs. That's a very, very interesting story. Looking back now that everything's set up and, you know, you've already expressed that that there are some headaches and stuff, any regrets? Would you do anything differently? You know, if if somebody else is

you know what? It's under that. You do? You're fucking sick. Well, that's that's the ungovernmental misfits audience, isn't it? Yep. Yep. Soaking for punishment. Sick, demented motherfuckers.

Yeah. Okay. What would I do differently?

I don't fucking know. I think I I would definitely try to go for one big generator.

You know, I've got a buddy, Blue Hills Dan. He's kinda he he does the same thing with lots of different generators. And he's kind of a a madman, and I think he likes all that stuff. But I don't know. Maybe I would try to borrow the money to do one big generator because I don't I can't I'm not consuming all of the gas that I can produce.

So I can produce a 120 mcf a day, and I'm only consuming about 40 now. So the rest of that, have to push back in and run at a lower RPM. And if I run it out the compressor at a lower RPM, then my fan doesn't spin fast and it doesn't cool the gas as well.

And then it overheats. Engineering issues. I one big generator. That's I'd go for the gold, I I guess. And maybe, like, get a bunch of people to come in on it and raise $500,000, you know, and build it out well. I I don't know. I don't know, Q. That's a really tough that's a really tough question.

I'll let you know in, like, another year. Okay. Alright. How how long has it been open functional to this point? Wait a minute. Total time or when did I start thing? I thought you're gonna say define functional.

Yeah. Right. Oh, man. October of last year is when I Okay. I I I I fired up the first generator. Nice. I bet that was a good feeling there. Right? Oh, dude. Yes. Yes. It sure was. I just couldn't I, like, I wanna I wanted to cry. The the the kid that helped me all summer, Dylan,

I don't know. We hugged each other. You know? Yeah. And that's not gay. It was no homo. 100%. That was a dude that was a dude hug. Like, we almost had tears in our eyes because we we put so many hours and blood, sweat, and tears and Mhmm. In in into that site. And then I I feel like that summer that he actually turned into a man.

Know?

Nice. It felt great. Alright. Well, I I wanna move us on to general mining stuff because Me too. You and Max and the and the shows that that you guys used to put out on a, you know, couple of weekly or monthly basis depending on which show it was. That was my into

the mining sphere, and, obviously, those haven't been happening recently. So I am so out of the loop. So I wanted to get your take on, like, the current state of affairs. Obviously, price is down, hash rates falling off a off a cliff from from my uneducated

perspective at least. Like, what's your what's your take on it? Like, you know, what what's how do you see the mining landscape right now? So I was gonna go to mining disrupt this week, actually, which is why we scheduled this for

for this Friday because it was gonna be like, I got back from mining disrupt, and here's the latest on on Bitcoin mining. And I canceled my trip. I just so slammed here at at at home that I was like, I don't know if if this is worth it. And speaking to people that did go, the the LingQoin team went,

Alex from MegaMiner went, and they're just kind of updating us in in the, Pledminer chat. And they're like, it's dead here. And then, Avril from from, Altair Tech said it was, all AI talk from from what he he didn't even go. He he sent his, his worker, Chris, from from Altair Tech down there.

And, I think

I I know where the industry is going because I talked to to movers and shakers in in energy. And as we know, it's it's all about energy. And everybody's trying to pivot over to AI. Why? Because there's stupid money there.

You know, with Bitcoin mining, you have to you have to still be tied to to sound economics. It's it's detached from

it's detached from that traditional way of doing business where it's all about borrowing money. Where's the big money going? Where can I get a a grant from the government? You know? But Bitcoin mining, you're still tied to financial physics.

And I think a lot of these companies are like, I don't wanna do this anymore. I don't wanna have to like, here's here's my my negotiated electric electricity price. Here's Bitcoin mining efficiency for these particular Bitcoin mining.

Here is hash price, which of course is is your most point your most important metric. Hash price, hash price, hash price. If if you're a long time Bitcoin miner, that's what you care about. Or hash value if you're a long time Bitcoin hodler. So now hash price is the amount of dollar denominated Bitcoin you get per your hash rate per day.

Hash value is how many sats you get for your your hash rate per day. So if if if you're hodling for a long time, then you just want those sats in in your holding and you're not worried about giving up a dollar.

But if you're a traditional Bitcoin miner, well, you gotta pay your bills in in dollars, and so that's that's the price you care about. Now now hash price has been suppressed for, like, a year and a half.

So I think a lot of these Bitcoin mining companies are well, we have the experience. We know how to negotiate power purchase agreement. We know how to do demand response.

Of course, response is is scaling your electricity usage up and down, turning off and on at the demand of the independent system operator. They tell you to shut down because they're having an event because they've decided that there isn't enough base load on on their network, on their grid, and we need somebody who is going to be flexible

and turn on and off. So Bitcoin miners are saying, we know how to do that. We know how to get the best price. We know about electrical infrastructure. We know about cooling these things off and taking that waste heat. We can go into that and and do something with it. And so that's a huge experience for the data center people, which

what I'm finding out from friends of mine who are talking to these data center folks is they are loaded and they are stupid. And so they think they can they can get a data center built in one year and, we want one year of build time and 3¢ power.

Now go find us land. And then they're kind of running into the the realities that Bitcoin miners have solved for a long time. So I think the industry and I think a lot of other people think so too is that a lot of the big guys are going to go towards AI.

But why wouldn't you? I mean, re really? What why why wouldn't you? If if if if if dumb money is coming to you and say, hey, you know, we're part of an investment group and you've got this, you know, 10 megawatt mine, 20 megawatts or you have the availability of the power, maybe it could be distributed in in a in a region.

Here's the thing here's the thing with data center folks like, dude, you don't have to have all of your compute there in one giant freaking building. You can have it a little bit more distributed and that's, you know, like our friends at Linkcoin

started a company called Load. It was flexible compute. You know, Mehdi had this idea years ago. Why do you need to have a data center all in one place? You could have it in Texas, in Canada, in North Dakota.

You know? So he he he created load and and and boy, I think load even that was probably I don't know. I I I thought, like, wow. That's really cool, Mehdi. Load sounds like a good name. That's really cool, l o d.

I didn't see it back then, but now now I do. I I think being in gas. Like, if you have a gas site and you do not want can't connect it to pipeline, you can just have a small data center site here and another small data center site and use load to to to do the your your flexible compute to come combine the compute altogether.

So anyways, regionally, I I think these data center folks could could partner with Bitcoin miners and and take it over. And then so that really opens the doors. This where I this is where I hope things go at at at least. This is where I have my my family's life savings tied tied into is that I hope the big guys start to drop off

and I hope where there's power that all this dumb data center money will go to to at least in until it crashes because money doesn't know where else to go. Like, if you were all smart, you would go into Bitcoin, gold, silver, commodities.

I'd I'd buy, you know, a gas plant for for instance. You know, natural resources are are still gonna be there. Tech is is kind of, you know, that that used to be the place where where you put all your money, and now it's going to be into this tech data center thing. And as we all know, anybody knows that this is this is going to burst,

and, maybe it'll pivot back. But in the meantime, I think a lot of these big guys are gonna kinda reach for that brass ring. And, hopefully, hash rate drops and hash price goes up and maybe even Bitcoin price will go up. I don't know. I'm not gonna try to predict that that side of things. Just keep it it steady at mining.

But just the fact that the overall hash rate will go down if these big guys come off. And then maybe the medium scale guys, know, like myself and and many others way, way above me. I'm, like, right here on the medium scale and then, you know, mid district there.

Maybe we can make more of a more of a profit.

Yeah. Did you think if that prophecy kind of fulfills itself that it could be you know, if you've got some capital on the sidelines, it could be a good point at some point in the next, I don't know, six months, two years to pick up some miners relatively cheaply? Because if these big guys are coming off off the network

that, like, presumably, they're not using their Bitcoin miners to do AI stuff. Like, they're have to sell those machines and free up some of that capital. Right? If this comes to fruition, then there's going to be a glut of Bitcoin miners on the market, and I don't think there's a market for them.

You know, just just to ship one one Bitcoin. We should really have Alex and Nick on sometime. I don't know. Maybe I'll just nope. I'm not gonna think about new shows.

Fuck. I don't wanna talk about this other project, so I won't. I'm not gonna talk about this other project. But I was talking to Alex and Nick about logistics, let's just say. And really, unless you're shipping a pallet of miners, it's tough.

It's tough. Like, I don't I don't know how Nick and Alex at MegaMiner do it. I don't know how Altair does it with with shipping, but they figure it out. Really, I think with these these resellers that they're logistics experts almost as much as they are Bitcoin mining gear experts. And I think there's going to be a glut of machines.

It's gonna be difficult to to unload them and probably scrap prices might come into play with Bitcoin mining gear. I mean, it's cheap now. It it almost should be cheaper, but I think we're gonna see a a flood on the market. But I I don't know. I'm I'm, like, really terrible at at predictions, which is why I'm I'm poor.

On on the hardware stuff, that was a pretty good segue actually. Like, there used to be a lot of fanfare about the the, you know, the the frontier and the latest

miners that come out, you know, they're all Yeah. You know, that next next bit the next step in efficiency and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We used to do it on the show all all the time. Yeah. I I just don't hear it anymore. Is that because

the the the the rate at which the efficiencies are coming out or or being upgraded is is, like, dropping off a cliff? Like, what what's your what's your take on that? If you if you had, a company that was into building computers, would you put all of your effort into a a diminishing return?

Like, it used to be a it used to be a big deal when you came out with a machine. And then this is what Bitmain does is they come out with a new machine, which they probably have. They probably had these and now this is a part of the industry that I that I don't pay that much attention to.

But I'm and so I'm just speaking extemporaneously and there's probably some dork on here. I'm like, this guy, don't know what he's fucking talking about. But if you if you were Bitmain and you had, like, these orders in the foundries for, you know, space to produce your chips and you used to sell your machines at at $6

a pop, There were s nineteens that sold for $10, maybe more. An s 19. I can get an s 19 for $50. I get people send me s nineteens for free. They're like, hey. Know what? Yeah. A good friend of mine is like, I'm shutting my hosting stuff down.

Do you want my machines? You can give me, like, a couple grand for all these machines. Sure. I'll take them. If you can't you can't get rid of them. I bet if I said, hey, man. Can I just have them? I'm poor. You'd be like, yeah. Sure.

S nineteens were $10, and now you you you can't get rid of them. Well, that's the way things go. I mean, s s nines too. I've given away so many s nines. My buddy, Chet, had, like, a pile of s nines,

you know, on a desk that he's repairing, and everyone he repairs is like, anybody can come down here. I'll teach you about mining. I'll give you an s nine. Just the strangest, coolest dude.

Just repaired piles and piles of s nines. You you couldn't give them away. You nobody'd show up to your door. You couldn't ship them. I gave away so many s s nines. The s s 19 is is is now the s nine. And so if you were if you were Bitmaim and you used to be able to sell your gear for lots of money, and now that mining is depressed

and people used to be able to sell those old machines, you know, they were just about a year or so old. There was still a good secondary market. You can ask Nick about that.

And so they could get rid of them and get new machines in there and get the tax write off. That's I think new sales have really slowed down. And and I have been out of this side since I stopped doing the action news show, but I what I understand, the new sales is

has gone down a lot. So if you're a Bitmain, what would you do? Would you keep putting money into the s 25 and, you know, 5% efficiency? Or will you just keep the miners that you have and mine them there in China? And that's exactly what they do when they produce produce a machine. They they mine on it first.

They're always they're always gonna be way ahead of the game. Mhmm. Bitmain.

Kinda like the Did I answer your question? Sorry. Yeah. You did. You did. You did touch briefly there on on, like, HomeMiner switch, again, seem to

have much more of a groundswell around it maybe three, four years ago. And again, I I'm just not seeing it at the moment. Like, is that what what's driving that? Do you think? Is it energy cost?

Because it seemed fairly common for for people in the ungovernable sphere to be, you know, have an s nine or, you know, at least one or two units just plugged in on grid, and they were, like, happy to be at, like, breakeven levels because they were getting no KYC stats.

Like, is that even still happening these days, or is it just, like and and if it's not, why why do you think that is? You, like, make me wanna cry.

Those are good days. Those are really good days. You know, that's when the whole Pledminer thing started, and everybody was was so I don't know. Just the the vibe was great for for for Bitcoin mining. I feel like that was a you know, at this the peak experience for me, at least, because I I wasn't part of the community the community

before before then. And then the Pled Miner thing took off, and everybody you're right. Even guys in in, The UK and and in Europe, you know, I'd I'd know node runners in in in The Netherlands who were running stuff, running s nines, and I can't imagine the pricing, electricity pricing in The Netherlands is any good.

In The United States, everybody was doing it. I mean, s s nines. So they did the s nine lending program where where where, you know, BarMire created. We ship you an s nine, use it for a while, you learn, you package it back up, you ship it to somebody else. They they learn. It was really, really exciting times.

And the reason it was so exciting and the reason that that, Clem Fandango says it still haunts him how much he paid for an s 19 is because Hashprice was good. I mean, I I remember it was like, an s 19 was making it $25 a day. I think it was a I'll have to statistics.

We tell you the basics of hashing with ASICs, Bitcoin mining statistics. Check it out. I do miss the old show. Boy, we used to go over these statistics like crazy, but I can't remember at that time how much an s 19 was getting you. But I do remember $25 a day, but I think it, like, went up to 50 or something. 125,

and it was big. It was big. So in your mind, oh, if everything keeps going up like this and I pay $10,000 for for, an s 19 and I have 10¢ power at the time, and 10¢ power is, what, $22.40 a day.

3,000 watts 3,000 watts at 10¢ power is, like, $2.40 a day. And

if I'm making $50 a day on this machine honey, look. This machine's making us all kinds of money, and all we gotta do is run it in the basement. And your wife's like, okay. Whatever stupid shit you're into now. Before it was a car and a motorcycle and now this and the fishing and you get your tractor and,

you you know, it was like for for dudes like us, it's gonna make some make a little bit of money. Know? It's it's it it it's good. It it made money. And then and then so I believe that was probably most people's thought.

I don't know. I I'd have to I'd have to take a poll. Like, Clem, Bon, you were there in those early days. Why did you do it? You know, I I think, you know, probably, Bon. I don't know. A bunch of us were running s nines for for years before the the big China exodus.

That was the thing. That was the that was the impetus. The China exodus. Hash rate dropped. And look at all this money we're making. All this mining is moving over to The United States, and a lot of the PLUDD miners took that up too.

So if you guys can get to a keyboard, Clem and Bond, why why did you? Why did you do it at the time? Why why did, you know, how did you get in the the Pled Miner group? And we were making money. And so we're making money,

and then you're like, well, shit. Well, this heat comes out. You know, I've got this quote from Satoshi up here. The heat from your computer is not wasted if you need to heat your home. If you're using electric heat where you live, then your computer's heat isn't a waste. It's equal cost if you generate the heat with your computer.

If you have other cheaper heating than electric, then the waste is only the difference in cost. If it's summer and you're using AC, then it's twice. Bitcoin generation should end up where it's cheapest.

Maybe that will be in cold climate where there's electric heat, where it would be essentially free. So Satoshi said it, we're not we're not dumb guys.

We're like, hey, I'm making good money on this Bitcoin miner. Look babe, now we can heat the garage. I can heat your little office, little feet. You're always complaining that it's cold. And then so it it it's just natural for people to say, you know, guys like us.

That's efficient. That's smart. I'm gonna put a fan shroud on that Bitcoin miner. I'm gonna duct it somewhere. I'm gonna put an inline duct fan. I'm gonna put that heat where I need it. Okay. That's neat.

How can I make that more efficient? I will take it directly into my cold air return from my heating system. That way, my existing, HVAC system can carry that heat where it needs to go. Okay. But what about if it's 55 degrees outside?

Don't ask me what that is in Celsius q. It's a little too hot in the house. What should I do? Well, I can turn it off. I don't wanna do that. I'm making all this money from Bitcoin mining.

Okay. I can shunt it outside. Well, that's kind of a waste. I could use a little bit of the heat. I can scale it up and down and this is where, you know, firmware really really came into play.

So they were creating firmware to make things more efficient, like tune the chips, brains, finish. I was doing this at that time. Then I realized like, hey, well, I can scale up my fans. I can scale down my fans. I can scale down the amount that I am hashing.

Therefore, the the heat will go down. So besides the physical part of things with with air cooled and moving that air around, you started to get into the software side of things. So it's just just a bunch of guys thinking about efficiency and and what works.

And so instead of shunting that that air outside, I'm gonna reduce it a little bit. And then when it gets colder, I'll I'll scale it back up. So now we have smart thermostats connecting into,

you know, control boards and the systems and the Arduinos and Raspberry Pis and a bunch of stuff that I don't know about nor do I care. But there are lots of cool nerds in our group who do care about that kind of stuff. You know, you have like a guy that was on the show in the original Pled Minor recording Michael Schmidt

Schnitzel. If if you listen to fuck. What's the name of that puck? Puck. Pud two five six, he's often on there talking about his Libre board. And he was on our show years and years ago talking to Max about his story started about heating in his Airstream.

And that's another and this brings up another more memories. Oh, man. You know, diverters mining for the streets and and people putting Bitcoin miners in igloo coolers and and piping that in and out. Boy, that was that was good times. But it it has really progressed since then,

and, maybe we can get into that. Do guys have any comments? Hey. Well, I do wanna read this. Clem says, you nailed it, especially having to justify it to the wife, then looking stupid quickly later. Yeah. I I know your wife. I'm sure

she's kinda no nonsense. I'm sure she gave you hell for that. Bond says, especially, you said it just made sense, especially if you got an s 19 variant before they skyrocketed to 10 k. Yeah. Yeah.

Heated my home and was generating a lot of sats per pre halving. Diverter's home mining article came out at the perfect time. Yeah. Agreed, Juan. Yeah. I think, like, main question for me is it seems like the only thing I hear people talk about anymore for home mining is bid access, which I think is is a fascinating and very different

thing than mining at home with an s nine or s 19 or something like that. Like, why do you think that shift has been? Do you see that as a useful shift with, like, a a good long tail of helping to commoditize

home mining? Or I I don't know. It's been interesting that I don't really see anyone talking about mining with a full scale ASIC anymore. It's really just bit axes and variants of that and the weird drama that happens in that space now as well. Yes. Yes. Very good. Very good, Seth.

So all the longtime listeners of Action News know that I was probably one of the first people to talk about a Bidax because I was keyed in early on it from people around me, from from Scott, the the inventor of the Bidax. We were at a a conference together. I got a shirt, and I came back, and I I talked about the project.

He was buddies with a guy that we featured for a long time, Zach Bomstow. We did the first first interview with Zach Bomstow, the creator of the the Neword and and Loki boards. And that's something I should have mentioned in my previous comments is is is that's where things went with with with hardware

is you had the ability to scale up an external fan with this low key board. You had the ability to to that was the new board. The low key board enabled you to trick the power supply to using one ten. Anyway, Bidax.

Here. There I have one. You know you know who sent me this? Barn. Barn sent me this for a Christmas gift, and then he made the girls take a picture of me with my my Christmas present from him because I hate Bitax so much. And I don't I don't hate Bitax like Scott.

I don't I don't hate Bitax. It's fine. It's a fine invention. Okay. So what is what is Bitax? I almost feel like I'm gonna break this open.

Here. So Bitaxe is there is a chip from an s 19 underneath this, this fan. I don't if I bust it off of here. So underneath this fan, and it's got a little control board on it and a little display, and you send shares to the network on this thing. And it's real cute,

and it's cheap, and it doesn't cost much to run. And so if you're not into mining economics,

if you don't have by the way, in The United States power, prices have easily doubled for the consumer,

the the residential, since I started mining. There's no doubt at all. I I was on I was on at the time, I was on a 7¢ per kilowatt hour flat rate.

I abused the shit out of that flat rate. Like, they they never caught me. I mean, come come get me now. It's a little a little bit late. This was many years ago. But as I was on a 7¢ per kilowatt hour flat rate.

So you you couldn't you couldn't beat my pricing. You know? And and in Pennsylvania, you have the choice between supplier and distribution, and so the and I always mix these two up. But the ones that

supply you the power, they they've got a rate that they charge you all the time, and then they have, like, these secondary markets that give you the the supplier price. So there's there's two mechanisms into your electricity price. Anyway, long story short, I would say probably the average guy was, 10¢

in in this area. And then we'd hear guys in in different states and they're like, oh, I'm I'm 15¢. And then I did a I did oh, I did a whole big thing on on

oh, it must have been an action news show where I went to The UK, went to South Africa, Australia, Germany, United States, Canada, and I calculated if you were to run an s 19 for a month, this was this would be how much you paid in electricity and how much you you got for a sats and dollar denominated Bitcoin and so on and so forth.

And it didn't make sense in most places, but it made sense in United States. And then inflation comes and electricity prices start going up, and it really just priced people out.

But there was that's that that fervor and that sentiment that they still wanna do this kind of stuff and then, like, bit access is nothing. It's cheap. It enables you to do it. It's, you know, it's a closed sourced hardware, but an open source software or open source design. I I don't know. I I think people felt cypherpunk.

I think a lot of the bit x people were people that missed out on the s nines, you know, back in the in 2019, 2020, and missed out on the China Exodus thing, and missed out on the the Pled Miner home heating movement. And I I I feel like they were like, okay.

You know, I I can get this thing and I can participate in the network. And but for the as far as the home heating goes, Seth, like, you know, I remembered having schnitzel on once again. And, you know, he was talking about, oh, we can have individual chips and heated toilet seat and it you know, he did this. So

this this kind of enabled people to take an individual chip and and do things with it. So to me, that's that's the neat part. But I think it just came in at a time where maybe the PLEP minor thing was waning as far as the the big machines.

Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. It it made it more approachable for the people who hadn't done any of the heavier lift stuff. Like, if you're running an s 19, you weren't gonna replace it with a Bidax. Like, that was never

never going to be the path. But if you had never run an s 19 like me, even though I'd run MineroMinders and other things, BidX was a cool way to just kinda get your get your hands dirty a little bit, see what it's like. I'd I'd be curious to know how many of those

bid access that people have bought over the years are still actually being run. I know mine Oh, yeah. Mine may or may not, be plugged in right now. I think this one ran for about two weeks.

Yeah. Once the novelty wears off, you're like, oh, okay. I'm not sure what else to do here. I got other shit to do. Every time I come every time I come in the office, the thing will be down again. Was like, oh, Christ. Whatever.

I got enough shit to fix.

There's there's a bit of a spicy question coming, John, and I'm very keen to hear your your thoughts on it. Cortic has said minus or pool, bracket somebody else's node, is the worst thing one can do.

Agree? Disagree? Yeah. No. I was gonna say that I know it's Alright. Cortic, take this for instance.

I'm I'm gonna give you some some general real numbers. The total cost build for my mind was probably about $200,000. Alright? To run my mine, I'd say it cost me probably a grand a month, maybe 1,500 a month.

Mining to a pool and and and, really, what what is a pool? Okay. What and I mean, block template creation, that's that's a different conversation.

Mining to a pool is everybody collecting all of their hash rate together and getting paid out. I know you've this different different payout schemes, certainly. Jeez. That that's a whole another conversation.

But I have I have all this money that I have spent, my entire life savings, everything for this this family is is invested in, and it's the worst thing that I can do. I mean, God bless you, brother. It's the worst thing that I can do is mine to a pool.

No. The worst thing that I can do is to go out of business. That's the worst thing that I could do. So if I'm in a pool where I need to make money, that's what I need to do to to run this operation. I have to be profitable.

I don't have the runway to just mine solo and and and go with it. I don't I don't have that option. Now maybe a lot of the big miners do, but they still pool. So

I don't know if it's the worst thing you can do. Certainly, there's certainly worse things that you can do. And we've had that conversation on the show a million times. We were probably the first ones to talk about shit.

Borst. It's a guy named Borst who created a program where you could see who's creating what block template. And so remember that song I I made, the Ample family? Oh, yes. The for the Adams family.

So you you could go on there and you could see who's who's pointed what, who's using what block templates. And, you know, it was interesting and and, a lot of people were mining on amp ampull's template.

And so this is this is where I don't know. This is where the pleb miner thing became unfun. This is why I don't do the fucking show anymore, to be honest with you. Because when we used to talk about a bunch of guys in the garage with with beers and talking about their hot rods, like, yeah, you know, I did I I just bored out 30 over

on on this engine. Oh, yeah. I just put new carbon here. Do you want to see the stainless steel exhaust that I put? That's what it was like for the Pletminer guys. And then it's like, oh, you know, Binaxes and BIP one ten and pools and I don't know. It just became not fun, honestly.

That's that's why action is like, people say, like, well, you should still be in a space and fight in the good fight. I am. I'm fighting the good fight by investing all of my my life savings

into a natural gas plant where nobody controls me, where the power company just doesn't come in and say, okay, we've changed your power purchase agreement,

Where a data center doesn't come in and say, hey, we're gonna be your data center now. You're gonna be a data center and and not a Bitcoin mine. Okay. Yay. I'll take all the money. I won the lottery.

I'll survive. I'll still be here hashing. And guess what? Most of these people won't. Everybody that bought a bid action hot, not hash anymore. You never made an impact on the network. I'll I'll still be here.

Yeah. I think Sorry to that. No. No. No. No. I I completely agree with everything you said. I think where Cortex coming from is probably, you know, an ideological standpoint of, you know, mining centralization, which nobody's gonna, you know, hide behind. But, unfortunately,

that doesn't pay the bills, does it? And it doesn't keep the bailiffs from the door. It doesn't. You know, my my my If you if you care about mining centralization, then then make a pool. Parasite pool isn't isn't that one.

What's another guy? E e two I'm I'm sorry. I forgot all of the stuff, guys. E four pool. I don't know. He's he's he always posts like free samurai stuff. So he always repost his stuff. There there are guys. Create a pool.

Create a pool. If you don't like pool centralization, create a pool and then see what your hash rate is because I know guys that own pools and it's hard. It's hard to make a profit. You're just weighted. So it's maybe if we wait this out.

Alright? So so everybody switches over to the the data center model and maybe we wait it out. But it's really it's electricity price. It's your price to build your infrastructure. That's that's what matters.

So a lot of the let me read, Cortex. Stratum v two does not decentralized pool mining. Yes. P two pool for BTC wants needs development. P two pool failed because latency issues. There are some pools aims to build on this and fix the latency issues by using a d a g to coordinate like braid pool miners.

Well, I don't know. That's beyond me, brother. That's beyond me. The and and the hash rate doesn't come from

CK. He doesn't build mining infrastructure. I mean, the guys at Ocean, I guess, build some mining infrastructure, but they, like, took over Swan's mining stuff, and there was a big lawsuit. Remember we covered that on the show? I don't know. For the most part, the a lot of these you gotta compete with with,

Bitmain, getting all the brand new miners and mining over there under these different shell companies. You're you're really fighting it. So you just gotta be profitable. You just gotta keep it up. And then and then so listen. If there are a bunch of, like, you know, ungovernable miners out there,

maybe there will be enough of us in in a few years that we can create our own pool. And all of the block templates will be excluding what is that? OFAC guys. You talk about this much better than me.

You know, excluding certain transactions, and then you have to wait a day or two until the ungovernable misfits collection of pools do it.

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, we're unbelievably already at time. I know. Know. Know. Seth got jump and so do I. This has been great. I I especially loved the the the how does a guy own a mining well. There's some great clips in there. Love that.

It's been a pleasure having you back. I've seen your face and hearing your silky smooth voice back on Yeah. This is good talking for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Hoping to see you back on the feed sometime soon as well.

Let's let's wrap it up in a minute, but, you know, what's what's next for you? Where would you send people to to get started with mining? Would you even advise them to do that? Let's just wrap it up there.

Okay. I'll try to go as quick as I can. I did want to mention some people and tell their stories, but we don't have time for that. So please follow the following people. Schnitzel, s c h n I t z l, Travis Bitckel, b I t c k l e. Travis Bitckel is the best. Beevolved, b e e as in the bee buzz, evolved.

That guy have supported this heat harvest greenhouse project for a long time, so follow him. And I think there's a lot of cool stuff coming out. Plus he did, like, a pleb minor permaculture skull design.

So so look at at his stuff. Carl Rev Hoddle on Noster. He does not use Twitter anymore. He's always an interesting follow and has even worked on cooling projects with Zeolite clay. There are so many cool guys doing cool things in mining

and heat capture. I really wanted to go over the heat capture thing. We'll probably have to do another show and just focus focus specifically on on heat capture. Yep. So please follow them.

As for me, I don't I don't know. I'd I'd like to just drop real quick that Max and I will be spinning up another show. I'm not 100% sure on the name, but the working title is what do you reckon?

And so the what do you reckon show will be modeled off of Max calling me up and asking me dad stuff and saying, hi, mate. What do you reckon about MK Ultra?

I read this. What do you think? And I was like, well, I I read this book. I saw this documentary and this is what I think. And then we end up talking on the phone for about an hour, then we say, well, why don't we just do a show of that?

So it won't be anything to do with Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining, but the the topics will go all over the place, conspiracy theories, permaculture, parenting advice, whatever the hell we wanna talk about. That's what it's gonna be. We've wanted to do a show like that for a long time.

So be on the lookout.

I'm very much looking forward to that. And I'm gonna take the opportunity here to be to extend a request to listeners. If you want John's take on stuff, drop it in the comments. Not I'm not promising that we'll that everything will be covered, but if you want John's take on a certain topic or subject, then drop it in the comments.

Send us a boost and let us know. And I will study the shit out of it for you. There you go. That's quite the promise. Well, John, this has been amazing. As always, Seth, thanks for joining us, sir. Hope you your travels go well. And, yeah, the Crayon eater will be back with us next week, and

the trio will be back together. And we'll be back for for more of the same goodness at the exact same time next week. Until then, hope everybody has a wonderful weekend, and don't forget to stay ungovernable.

Thank you for listening to Freedom Tech Friday. To everyone who boosted, asked questions, and participated in the show, we appreciate you all. Make sure to join us next week on Friday at 9AM EST and 2PM London.

Thanks to Seth, Max, and q for keeping it ungovernable. And thank you to Cake Wallet Foundation and my Nim Box for keeping the ungovernable misfits going. Make sure to check out ungovernablemisfits.com to see mister Crown's incredible skills and artwork.

Listen to the other shows in the feed to hear Kareem's world class editing skills. Thanks to expatriotic for keeping us up to date with Boost's XMR chats and sending in topics. John, great name and great guy, never change and never stop keeping us up to date with mining news or

continuing to grow the mesh to Dell. Finally, a big thanks to the unsung hero, our Canadian overlord Jordan, for trying to keep the ungovernable in check and for the endless work he puts in behind the scenes.

We love you all. Stay ungovernable.