Bitcoin circular economy and hash the torch

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back to another day of "Pleb mine a month." This episode was recorded about a week ago. I've been very behind on the editing. But it was awesome. I got Chet, John, and Carl on the show.

We talked a lot about the Bitcoin circular economy. This was a great example of hash the tool happening in the real world. Chet drove down with an S9 and set it up for Carl in exchange for some fresh produce.

It's a great story, and I think you're gonna really enjoy it. Before we start, I just want to say thank you to everyone who's been contributing to "Pleb mine a month." Writing articles, jumping on pods, doing the bite-sized bitcoins, and any participation has been very much appreciated.

Thanks to everyone who's been screaming sat on Fountain and sharing this show with friends and family. Also, a big thank you to Foundation Devices for sponsoring this show, and also for giving away two Foundation Devices passports this month.

Shortly, I'll be recording with Bitcoin Q&A, and Lily will be asking them as many security questions and privacy questions as possible to help people who are mining at home. Keep their stats secure and they're privacy protected.

If you haven't already checked them out, go to foundation devices.com and use the code bit by bit to get $10 off. If you have any questions at all, you can reach out to me or the team. I'd also like to thank FastBitcoins for sponsoring this show, and for providing services for anyone who wants a KYC on RAM.

They are the only exchange that I know of that would allow me to speak as freely as I do about the dangers of KYC. And it just goes to show that they really do care about this space. They will do everything that they can to keep you as safe and secure as possible if you do use their services, and they have a lot of respect for the team.

If you do decide that you want to use a KYC service, you can go to fastbitcoins.com. You can ask them any questions. They will look after you. And if you have any more questions about the trade-offs, you can reach out to me and I'll be open and honest.

Thanks so much to FastBitcoins for allowing this show to continue and check them out if you haven't already. Right, we're all in, I think, aren't we? - I'm in, I can hear you. - Yeah, we're here.

- How do I shout? - Yup, does that sound all right? - Round noise, I don't know. - Is that a squeaky chair? - Yeah. - That's where I'm at, probably. I'm in a little studio up in the working space at the hostel.

- Okay, we'll let you off then. - Just try and sit still. - Don't you turn something down or? - No, you're good, just, you know, take a shot of whiskey or something and. - All right, hold on, I'm gonna get off the chair then.

Hold on, maybe take a toke and calm down. - All right, there we go, we're good. - Chet and Carl, it's very nice to chat to you finally. I said to John at the beginning of the pleb mining month, can you find some of the plebeest, proper Bitcoiners that you know?

And I haven't had the pleasure of speaking to you yet. He's told me a little bit about you guys and yeah, I'm really looking forward to digging into your stories and what you're doing and just wanna say thank you for joining us.

- Thank you. - Yeah, thanks, I'm excited to be here. - Carl, we've had a little bit of a chat before in my telegram 'cause you actually joined. - You joined? I can't even fucking think of-- - The Mestadelle. - The Mestadelle, yeah.

(laughs) You joined the Mestadelle and yeah, you reached out to me before, so maybe we start with you. What should journey been like and how is it that you found your way to the Mestadelle and how is it you found your way to the pleb mining month?

- Well, I guess I just been, while I started posting on Twitter more, Twitter is ultimately how I got connected in here through John, but I started posting on Twitter more because I had recently discovered that there was a Bitcoin meetup close by to me, actually less than 20 minutes away.

I was, I lived about two hours from Chicago and I was at that time thinking about heading all the way to Chicago just to get involved with some Bitcoiners face to face through these meetups and once I found the meetup real close to me, then I decided to become more active on Twitter and start connecting with people,

both online and offline in one way or another. John liked what I was posting about my homesteading journey, all of the food I was producing, the way I was grazing my sheep, so on and so forth and he thought I'd be a good fit for the Mestadelle group to start discussing some of the more, some of the aspects of regenerative agriculture

that I'm doing here. - Yeah, that sounds like a perfect fit. I must say I've really struggled to get enough time on the Mestadelle recently, but how have you found it so far? - Well, I came out, I joined the group and I listened to the first initial podcast discussing some of the goals or concepts of the Mestadelle

and it jumped out to me right away that a lot of the ideas that were being discussed could be done on Bitcoin as far as creating these contracts to share our properties as bug out locations from one person to another, using Bitcoin as more of a document, not necessarily as a peer-to-peer cash, but actually for creating contracts

for creating forms of governance, that sort of thing. So I came out messaging about that right away and it seemed like everyone was busy with the PLEB minor month at the time, so I haven't really been able to play in there too much, but I look forward to discussing some of those concepts

like how can we use Bitcoin beyond just this new form of money? - As a lot of you guys know, I'm kind of like a permaculture voyeur. It's something that I want to get into, at least starting with the chickens and now the cow and stuff like that.

So seeing Carl's posts on Twitter, we're very interesting to me and he's very active on there and does lots of different things, not just with the sheep. He's rotationally grazing the sheep and making maple syrup and just doing all these cool things, lacto fermenting pickles and stuff like that.

And I thought, I really need to start interacting with this guy, he's pretty neat. And getting to know him a little bit more, he's always willing to help people out when they're asking questions, he's kind of right there.

And I thought, boy, this guy, he belongs in the Mestadel, let's get him in there. So sorry, Carl, we haven't been particularly active in the Mestadel, but a lot of the members they're working on different projects, not just PLEB minor month, but two of the guys are working on a...

- An app that is, are we allowed to talk about that yet? - Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah. - I think we can talk a little bit about it. - We have some friends that are working on the Peach app, the peer-to-peer exchange kind of app, they just released it in Riga, so I guess we're allowed to talk about it.

But trust us, Carl, that when things start to get colder and everybody gets bored and they're in their house, the Mestadel's gonna start lighting up. So we're definitely glad to have you in there.

- Absolutely, and I really wanna spend some more time there, maybe after this PLEB minor month has finished and I've maybe had a week off, it'd be good to do some more Mestadel pods and stuff like that, so I need to spend some more time on it because the idea behind it and everyone involved in the group is fucking awesome.

- I just wanna say with something real quick, Maxit. Carl, when you had jumped in the Mestadel, you, one of the first things you were asking was trying to extend your ethernet there, whether it be on a long ethernet cable or to do some kind of Wi-Fi bridge because you were trying to get connectivity out to your yurt that you run on solar.

So that kind of sparked something in my mind or at least I cataloged that in my mind and then when I connected with Chet, the piece has started to come together. - Yeah, I guess I was asking what are my options here from getting the Wi-Fi from my house down to the yurt?

It's funny, I ended up actually doing the opposite and I put the Starlink at the yurt and I'm beaming the Wi-Fi up to my house now through a Wi-Fi bridge. But yeah, because of the Mestadel, that was, you gave me the actual correct terms to search, to find the information that I was looking for to get that going.

And the reason why I wanted to get that going was because I got a quote from Kaboom Racks about picking up an S9 and plugging it in to my solar system here that's powering my yurt in order to take advantage of the free power.

So yeah, then John, you got me hooked up with Chet and I guess that's where Chet comes into the story here. - And to Chet. - Yeah, no, it was a pleasure. I had listened to Max, I don't know, back in March or so, he had a kind of welcomeness down and I've always liked him and what they were talking about, really touched a cord with me.

And then I was on it, mining disrupt and listened to you with Max, John, and what you guys were doing in the plug mining month. And I just was like, the heartbeat of the home by Sarah really, really hit home with me.

And I was like, try to be a part of this. Yeah, it's the best one ever. - And so Chet, you saw that, or you listened to that pod with Max and I announcing the plug mining month or plug miner month, we keep messing up the hashtag, but it is plug miner a month.

And you immediately reached out to me. I think we were on the Midwest Bitcoiners Telegram group together already and probably interacting back and forth. But once you had reached out to me and kind of told me, hey, I'm really interested in this and whatever help you need, let me know 'cause I think that's just the kind of guy you are.

That was really exciting. And I knew that you were in the Midwest Bitcoiners group and I had already had Carl kind of catalogued in my mind and I immediately made the connection because it is something that Carl and I were texting back and forth a few weeks ago that you don't have to bring religion into it, but I'm a believer.

But however you wanna believe, I think there is some kind of hand guiding a lot of these connections and these relationships. So there was just like, here's the timing. It all happened right at the same time.

You were inspired by that pod that we did. I'm already been talking to Carl. I'm inspired by Carl and the things that he's doing. And these connections just got made somehow. So Chad, you wanna talk about how you reached out to me and what we talked about on that first phone call.

- Honestly, John, I don't even really remember. I just know I was so excited. And I was like, these guys, these are my people. Like this is where I belong and what, you know, I consider myself a pleb.

I live on the lower end of the spectrum by the US standard and I just feel that doing anything I can for Bitcoin in any form is what I have to do. It's just a calling. Like you said, it's something that the hand of God has moved me and yeah.

- So Chad, like, what is your background as far as Bitcoin is concerned? What do you do? I know that you're a miner. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? - That's about it. I mean, so I started, I was living out in the woods in California back, you know, for the last like nine years or so, I'm a gambler.

So the gambling site that I use started taking Bitcoin. And I was like, I gotta, you know, I gotta find out how I get this or what it is. My bank would let me buy it through Coinbase in a couple other places early on and then Cash App came out and I started buying with Cash App and Jack Dorsey.

I know a lot of people don't like that, but it's easy. It's, you know, you gotta give the guy credit. And so I started buying in 2019. I stopped the shit coin in and all that kind of stuff.

And then early last year, I was either gonna try to really study nodes or I wanted to get into mining. I figured mining repair is really what I was gonna focus on. Back then, what would compass and that's really not mining.

It's, you know, you're not hands-on. You don't get to control your machines back then. I couldn't even choose the pool I wanted. I had to go with whatever pool they gave me. - It might as well be cloud mining just with sort of owning a machine that you have no access to.

- Exactly. And I was like, I gotta do, I gotta get more involved. I was in some Telegram channels. I ended up getting scammed out of like 0.223 Bitcoin. What I thought was gonna be a mining deal.

I was gonna get some miners. And then I finally came across Kaboom racks. I got led to Kaboom racks by Tarantula Hado. From there, I drove to Phoenix. I was like, I gotta go see these guys.

I'm not gonna send anything or any more money without seeing the miners. And Nick and those boys have been really, really good to me. - Yeah, we just got off the line with Alex recording some bits with him.

And that's a really good organization down there. But you kind of said it like, "All right, I'm interested in this. "I'm gonna drive to Phoenix." And that's the kind of guy you are. Right now you're down in Guatemala, doing a project down there.

Can you kind of talk about what you're doing in Guatemala? - So back at the Bitcoin conference, I met a guy named Wild Bill and we hit it off. We had the same, you know, we're talking about biofuel, trying to use it, the bio waste to get energy.

We're just talking with, energy is the holy ground, right? Energy is everything in Bitcoin. As you start mining, once you start mining, you quickly, quickly figure that out. You know, you hear a lot of people that, "Oh, it's not energy, it's not this, it's not that."

No, it's 100% pure energy in the purest form. And that's what I've been searching for for the last 18 months. I went to Costa Rica last year, looking for power. But anyway, I met Wild Bill down at the Bitcoin conference and he knew this guy, Patrick, down here.

That wrote, "Thank God for Bitcoin," with like Jimmy Song and those guys. And he's like, "We're trying to get a bio digester project going down here." And I was like, "I want to be part of it.

I'll do anything I can." He came down a couple of months ago and bought a little 7,500 watt gen set. And all the, there's like 17 towns around Bitcoin Lake or Lake Ataland. And they were all dumping their used cooking oil into the lake and polluting the lake.

And it's, you know, there was some algae that grew like last year, the people got really, started getting really scared. So this lady that runs a school started this Friends of the Lake and they started collecting all that oil and they've been taking it into Guatemala City.

Haven't really been getting paid for it. And it's like a three and a half hour drive each way to the city to dispose of this oil. So we figured we could hopefully use that oil, start collecting it and try to run a diesel gen set with it.

And yeah, we're, we've ran two, two S9s. I just brought an S17 and S9 down in country. And I'm going after once I get down recording here and we're going up to the, to the site and going to set them up and see how long it's going to take us.

We're going to try to run it 24/7. I'm going to have to go up there probably once or twice a day to refill the cooking oil. And we're also filtering the cooking oil, right? You can't just use the, the French fry scraps and stuff.

You've worked on that through a centrifuge. Exactly. And then yeah, it's pretty archaic, but we're working, we're just trying to figure out a good process. And then I think we can implement these little setups everywhere in all these little towns around here and, and there's no need for that waste oil.

It burns cleaner than diesel. Yeah. That's fucking awesome. There's a lot of talk about incentives in Bitcoin. If you want people to do things, you need to set up the incentive model correctly.

Bitcoin's done that perfectly. And it sounds like what you guys have done there is perfect as well because where someone would otherwise dump it. Now it's easy. They can still get rid of it.

And something good comes out of it. So that's fucking amazing. We try to give them some sats. We're pointing a lot of hash towards the school. The lady that runs the Friends of the Lake runs a, has a school down here that she's trying to grow.

So we're pointing a lot of the hash towards them or all the hash towards them to hopefully get a new building, buy a building to, to get a proper, a proper education school set up. And my friend, L.A. Azar, our friend L.A. Azar, he's kind of like the point man down here for, for Bitcoin Mago.

He's taking the kids up to the shop. It's in a little machine shop, just up the hill from the school. And he's taking the kids up there showing them the centrifuge, how to clean the oil, the gen set, putting it in.

Today, I'm going to show him how to like load, load brains on an S9, some of those types of things, like tech things on the computer so he can start showing the kids those types of things on the back end.

The slush pool account, the hash, how to splash firmware, all that kind of stuff. So you put in the blue collar work to make Bitcoin mining accessible to everybody and to make Bitcoin mining successful, especially at the blue collar labor pleb level.

The real pleb level, like where we care about it, not so much in the institutional aspect of things. And I think that's the characteristic that kind of really drew us together, Chet, and both being kind of rust belt guys, you being from, if I'm allowed to say.

Go ahead. You being from Michigan and Karl also up that way. So when we first started talking, things were kind of exciting between the two of us. And you're like, yeah, I'll do whatever, man.

I'll do whatever I can do to help. And obviously, you do that. You drive all over, you fly all over the world to make Bitcoin successful. And you were kind of inspired by the fact that we were giving away some machines.

And you're like, I got a machine to give away. And that's when I made the connection between you and Karl and me, and here you are trying to do things for Bitcoin and to help local people in the environment.

Those aspects were right in line with permaculture. So we had kind of got the idea for you to go up to Michigan and meet Karl and see what you could do to get him set up with mining. Yeah, he's got a nice setup up there.

The mining year is the first for me. And solar was also a first for me. I'm not a huge ESG guy, but his solar setup and what he's doing is really impressive and awesome. I have to tip my hat to him.

Karl, what did you think when I came up with this idea to send Chet your way? Well, it sounded like a-- I mean, it's a great example of how once you've really joined the Bitcoin network and you're talking with other Bitcoiners and you're trying to cooperate and collaborate with each other.

I mean, I was going to have to spend-- well, first of all, significant amount of money on the miner itself, significant for me, and then also the time that it was going to take me to teach myself how to install brains.

What are the new mistakes that I need to watch out for? The fact that Chet was right there and I was able to catch him on his way out of town, essentially, to come over, plug the miner in.

He had already loaded brains up onto it for me and just helped me direct-- I had somebody there who he was giving me his time and I was able to ask him questions and really fast-tracked me getting set up to where the technical aspects were now taken care of and now I can start to tinker.

How can I maximize the utility of this miner for my given situation? Now I'm starting to think about how long per day can I use it with my setup? What are some ways that I can use the waste heat?

Where's the best place to put it? All those kinds of things, rather than just getting set up and getting going. Carl, can you talk a bit about this, you, and a year? Sorry. Can you talk a bit about the year and what it's used for and how much wattage you have on the roof, how much solar

and are you using batteries or how are you running this thing? Sure. Well, I bought the year it used and I took it down. I kind of sat in a pile for a while and then I spent the last couple of years putting it back together.

My intention, our original goal was to use it as a daycare here, as a little homestead daycare. But the regulations on that prohibited us from using the yurt in that manner, so we decided to turn it into an Airbnb rental.

We're already doing a rental out of our house and so we figured, OK, we can just add another rental onto the property and it was prohibitive to get power down to the yurt from where my-- it's about 250 feet away from my breaker box.

And so it was very expensive to put the wire in and expand our electricity service. So we decided, why not just take the 4A into figuring out a small solar system? And so we ended up with 330 watt panels, which gives us about a kilowatt of solar.

And then we ended up just using-- I found an inverter from a neighbor of mine and then I bought batteries from Indiana. It was amazing trying to source all the different pieces. And luckily, they were all close enough within an hour's drive to get them all.

I picked up the panels and grand rapids, so on and so forth. But so we got about a kilowatt of solar and the yurt is completely off-grid. We're using gray water catchment for the water that people use here.

Guests have been staying nightly to enjoy the area that I live in. There's plenty of wine and beaches close by. And it's a less than a two-hour drive from Chicago. So we just added the yurt as a feature to our property.

And it gives me the chance to take people on a tour and teach them and show them about their regenerative agriculture and permaculture practices that we're doing here and expand people's awareness of this stuff.

The greatest thing is I've got the miner in the outhouse right now, mainly because I needed to put it there to connect it with the ethernet cable to my router, which then beams the Wi-Fi up to the house.

I had to put the router there in the outhouse to get it to reach. Anyways, the people are seeing this miner in the bathroom and they're saying, what is that thing? What is that machine? And that's a gateway for me to talk about Bitcoin with them.

So I'm now able to include Bitcoin in the conversation immediately when I'm giving the tour and discussing the permaculture practices. Perfect orange pill opportunity. I always think that these kind of things, like when you can show someone, when they can feel or play and understand in that way, rather than you

just sort of think blowing the fuck out of them with a load of bullshit, people don't care about that. But if you're like, oh, yeah, this is the machine. This is earning me a certain amount of money and I run it off the solar.

And they can sort of understand that this thing has utility. It's much easier to orange pill. And I mean, a lot of the few guests that I've had the discussions with so far since this setup is pretty new for me, their interpretation of Bitcoin was that it was bad for the environment because the mining was utilizing too much power,

taking power from the grid. And so my example shows that actually Bitcoin mining incentivizes the use of this stranded energy. I mean, if I didn't have the miner plugged in, I'm essentially throwing power away when my batteries are topped off.

Now I could find other ways to use that power like pumping water but I think that Bitcoin, is probably the best thing I can be doing with it right now. - And also you want to sell some of your wares and your food and your maple syrup and pickles and sheep for Bitcoin.

So this is, here's something tangible. It's like when you want to orange pill somebody, that's the hardest part, like Max was saying, is they can't touch and smell and feel the Bitcoin so they don't really understand it.

Whereas cash, they can feel all that kind of stuff. So that's a nice foray into, and here's Bitcoin. And by the way, if you want to buy any of my stuff, I will accept Bitcoin. - Yeah, I always ask if they have Bitcoin.

No, we had a vet come by to check out our horses and I asked if we could pay her in Bitcoin. And she said, "Oh no, we can't accept Bitcoin yet." And I thought that was an interesting way to phrase it.

She said, "Oh, her and her husband were just joking about the fact that the price was enticing to start making a little Bitcoin stash, start stacking a little bit." So I feel like there's a lot of people who are just on the edge and these sorts of conversations will help push them in that direction to where they say,

"All right, I've heard about Bitcoin enough. It's time for me to start figuring this out and get involved." - Savi vet. - Yeah, I think that's the key. Just get involved. Just get your hands on the machine and get involved.

I think that's the key. - It's like it's crazy, Chet. You know, when you reached out and you were inspired and then we had a conversation and you go up there and you set this thing up with Carl and here's the butterfly effect.

Like whether you know it or not, Chet, your willingness to go out there and meet people and talk to people and stuff could have possibly orange-pilled a veterinarian. And we don't know where that butterfly effect can lead.

So let's backtrack a little bit. You and I have a conversation, you agree. I hook you two up. What did you talk about on your first conversation? Like, hey, this crazy motherfucker wants us to get together for some reason.

How do we do this? How did you guys coordinate the logistics between each other? - Yeah, after you set us down or, you know, made the introductions. We just hash out a date when we could meet up and it worked out where I was in Michigan going to the Bitcoin beach, need up camping, the overnight there in Ovid.

And from there, I went and saw Carl and he took me on a tour of his homestead. And I'm really looking forward to the part where he gets his horses and he's got a little like carriage that he's gonna pull people around and do these wine tours with.

He's got a ton of wineries around him. And I'm really looking forward to going back and doing that and seeing where he's gone. And, you know, the in real life friend that I made here and he's gonna provide so much knowledge for me too.

Like it's value for value both ways all the way around. Like, given him this S9, he's gonna provide so much solar discussion and talks. Like he's already had people on Twitter, you know, giving him how to do, you know, maximize his length of his battery, you know, discharge and all sorts of things.

And it's knowledge for me to gain too. And that's the main thing is knowledge. Just gain in knowledge. - So Carl Chet shows up at your farm. What was that like Chet's kind of a character?

Did you guys hit it off right away or is there a little bit of a, kind of a meet and greet? - We pretty much got straight to business. I mean, I think from my time was pretty squeezed so we didn't have the whole day to just sit there and play around.

But it went pretty quickly and it's very interesting when you even just, we had a few short phone call conversations just to figure out when we could connect and what would make sense. And I just had a few questions of what I needed to have ready to make the process go as smooth as possible.

So just, it wasn't really an uncomfortable situation having someone you never knew and only talked to it a couple of times on the phone to your property, especially involving with Bitcoin, like a lot of people say, oh, you gotta be careful that these people are trying to scam you.

I mean, Chet's been scammed himself. And so yeah, it just did feel very natural. We were friends right away. I mean, right from the get-go. Through our conversations, we realized that we had a lot in common and had done a lot of similar things.

I mean, Chet does a lot of driving and I have done a ton of driving in the past before I've been kind of married down to this property, but I lived in my car for over six months, traveling all over the place.

So we had a lot to relate to each other right away. - Yeah, it was pretty smooth. It was, you know, get out the car, said hi, and next thing you know, we're hooking up the miner. He showed me the property.

It was pretty quick and pretty good friendship, pretty early on. I'm pretty open to Bitcoiners. Like I said, I've been scam before. Somebody uses Bitcoiner, wants to learn about Bitcoiner, you know, uses Bitcoin just as a word.

How I'm instantly open and related to you. Like we'll chat. - That is one of the beautiful things about how we all, there's no, there's a lot of hurdles people have to get over when they first meet with each other.

90% of those hurdles are already jumped over by the time we all meet each other. So we can just get right to something actionable. - Yeah, you understand that there is a lot in common already and that there's like a very few people in the world who think in the same way.

I've been doing this podcast for like three years now. I've never had to fall out with anyone. I've made so many incredible friends and people that have helped me and I've helped them. And the whole Mejdell theory just plays out.

In normal life is not the same. Like in normal life with normies and dealing with their fucking retarded ideas on things. I just, I get very frustrated. Like I don't enjoy my interactions with the average person and that's what's so great about this Bitcoin world is like it cuts through all the bullshit.

It's like, are you freedom loving? Generally, are you hardworking? Are you prepared to sacrifice your time and effort for something that's meaningful? And you cut through all these layers which in normal society people hide quite well.

And generally you know when you shake the hand of a Bitcoin or it's like, we're pretty much on the same level here. And it's very, very nice to have those interactions. It's refreshing. - Well, I've had this idea kind of recently that when you start to really physically meet up with Bitcoiners, either by going to the Bitcoin meetups

or get into a more private chat situation like these Telegram groups, it really does feel like these people are more like your neighbors. I mean, in my area, I'm fairly rural. I only have a few people down the road for me that I can reach out to for help if I'm having a problem with something and vice versa.

And so we tend to rely on each other, help in each other out quite a bit. And it seems like once you start interacting with the Bitcoin network in that way, now you have all these new neighbors.

And now not everybody is necessarily going to agree on every single aspect, but there's enough in common to where everybody is motivated to cooperate and coordinate with each other. - Well, it's almost like there's this built in incentive mechanism, which is that you want other Bitcoiners to do well because they hold Bitcoin.

In a very, very basic level is like, you want them to do well because they help Bitcoin. You kind of all want to help each other in that way. Like, whereas the fiat system is very different, it's all like everyone jumping on top of each other and doing anything they can to win.

When one Bitcoiner wins, everyone wins. And so it's a, I guess it's just like a very different mindset. People are more willing to spend their time and there's not really this idea of competition, even within the mining sector, which to be honest, I'm kind of surprised about is that miners are very willing to help out other miners,

although it's a completely competitive market. And in theory, they would actually be wanting that person not to do as well, 'cause they're gonna do better, but actually it's a complete opposite.

People are willing to spend hours and hours and hours helping each other and tweaking and giving tips. And I think it all sort of boils down to the fact that this isn't just about how much money can I make.

It's how much can I change the world? And how much can I make this a place that I want my children and grandchildren to be in? And it's a pretty special thing to watch. Like I said, I've been doing this a few years and I've met my best friends from doing this, like the greatest people I've ever met in my entire life have been Bitcoiners.

Regardless of what happens to the price, even if this thing crashed to zero tomorrow, I'd be like, "I still won." - Yep, that's the kind of thing about miners though. We win, we win Chet, we win in the end no matter what.

- No matter what. - That's the special thing about pleb miners especially because we kind of realized that our collective hash rate really isn't that much. So onboarding a guy with saying a peta hash, well, that's nothing to compete with the big guys, but collectively that's essentially what we're trying

to do as pleb miners is compete with the big guys as a collective. To say that you're not going to change this protocol, you're not going to vote on something different. Well, we just had a discussion with Jan about voting and stuff like that, but you understand the point that when the state attack comes

that we can all kind of band together and we know that we have a brotherhood here of pleb miners and we can resist the state attacks. - Yeah, that's maybe a good, sorry, I was just going to say, there's maybe a good tangent to go on is like, why is it important to have these pleb miners?

Because I think the view of a lot of people is, oh, well, the big boys are coming in and a load of hash is going into Texas and that's fine, just let them get on with it. And to a lot of Bitcoiners, I think, you know, mining is seen as something completely separate to their little bubble.

It's incredibly important that this thing is decentralized. Again, like decentralization is a huge buzz word within Bitcoin and the greater like crypto space. But really, if we don't have the miners decentralized and if it is just with these big corporations, these big companies that have thousands of miners

in racks, in warehouses, long-term, it could be a real problem. So why do we all think it matters? Why are we here and what are we doing? - One more time, John, I'm sorry, I missed that. - Oh, that's all right, that was good, Max.

- Or Max. - That was me. (laughs) Can you not tell the difference between my beautiful English accent and John's, I don't know what to call it. - That's the Midwest. - Did you catch any of my nonsense driffle that I was talking or not?

- Well, I know you're talking about decentralization, right? And I think, yeah, we definitely have to keep everything. The more we can get the plug miners in and the home miners and get miners in homes, the better off Bitcoin will be in the long run.

That's the bottom line. - You know, we're talking about decentralization and the themes that we all enjoy here, you know, permaculture and regenerative agriculture and mining and Bitcoin and stuff like that, they're all running in the same direction.

Carl, what you're doing is decentralizing food production. We're decentralizing mining, it's the exact same goal. - Yeah, there's a, well, and recently, I've not really been looking into mining too much until recently, until being involved with all this.

And so I didn't realize that these plug miners, their situations are a lot like setting up this permaculture, regenerative agriculture style homestead that I'm working on here. Every plug miner has a different situation and different advantages to their situation and disadvantages.

And so obviously everybody's gonna be motivated as a plug miner to help each other plug miner out to maximize their situation because you have something to learn by helping somebody else.

As Chet was saying, you know, from him coming over here and trying to set up a miner on a solar system which he'd never done, he learned something from that. And it's kind of a situation of the high tide rises all ships.

Now the other thing I was thinking about too is that these large-scale miners, that's a lot like model culture, agriculture, right? Where you've got this very efficient setup but it is not resilient.

It's easy for something to come and crush that, stop that there's a lot of problems that can rise up there. Now if everybody's mining at home and everybody's using heating their hot water heater with a miner, yes, that makes a much more resilient system.

- Exactly, Carl. And you know, we do it for different reasons. It's like it's not all altruism as to why we wanna decentralize something or why we want to make something that we believe in like, you know, healthy food production or Bitcoin mining resilient.

We do it for our own motivations, our own personal motivations. But I think as long as we kind of keep others involved in that process, thinking about others in a certain way that our motivations will be more pure in nature.

So I kind of wanna get back to the real story though of you guys meeting and you said you met and you just kind of got right to work. Chet, if you don't mind just describing the process of setting up an S9.

I know that seems like between you and I were like, oh, that's nothing. You just plug it in and you just point it out of pool and stuff like that. But hopefully there's a lot of people listening to plebminer month that don't know those kind of basic things.

So if you could just kind of give us a kindergarten class on setting up an S9 and then maybe go a little bit further and tell us what is unique about setting it up on solder or Carl's particular solar situation.

- Yeah, so to set up an S9, pretty much you need power and internet. S9s can run on 110 volt. So they're plugging, you can plug them in anywhere. We went over there, I wanted to check his inverter.

We looked at his inverter, his batteries were full. So the sun was out. So it's charging the batteries. Went inside the year, made a little spot for him on the desk to start out. And then after a while, I think he realized it was getting a little too hot in there.

But yeah, you just, you plug it in. It'll come up, you put in your passwords, usually root and root, and the minor will come up. Well, you have to find the IP, right? So you can use, there's IP reporter, if it's a S9, you just hit the back, you download the IP reporter from the Bitmain site.

You hit that and it'll give you the IP. If you don't have that, you can go on like your Starlink, it'll show you what the IP is, it'll show you what the minor is, where it is in its IP. So you put that into your browser, it'll pull up the login, the GUI, the interface, you log in.

And then from there, you can pretty much, if you're using, I like the brains on the S9s. I think it's a great operating system for those that are firmware. And within brains, you can go, and we had to underclock, 'cause he's only got a thousand watt solar system, right?

So in S9, if you're overclocking it, you can get it up to, you know, 1,600, 1,600 watts. Those are usually, you usually hear of people having a fire or burning something up when you do that.

- Yeah, they're pushing it. - Yeah, and so we wanted to underclock. I like underclocking. I think it preserves some of the life of the ASIC, or the ASICs, you know, on there and the chips in there.

And yeah, from there, you go into your settings, your configuration, and you'll put your pool. So you have to go get a pool. You can go to, really, any pool, but if it's already using brains, you might as well use formerly slush, but now brains pool.

And you save some percentages and fees. So that's just more SATs for them. And once you get your pool info, it's pretty easy. Every pool gives you an exact, you know, copy and paste URL to put into your pool configuration.

You put that in, you can name your miner if you want. I think you named it year to something like that, so it knows where it's at. And from there, it's running. We went into the configuration tab and we underclocked it.

I think, Carl, what are you underclocking it at now to maximize your battery discharge through the night? - So what I've found is that I can't underclock it below 400 watts, even if I set it on brains to be less than 400, my watt meter is telling me that it's pulling 400 still.

So that's actually been a little bit of a limitation to where I can only run it from like 11 to maybe three o'clock. And then it'll eat up some of my battery storage. And then I have to go from three until the sun goes down to charge that back up.

So that way my Starlink router doesn't drain my batteries completely throughout the night. And we have no internet when we wake up until the sun comes up again. But yeah, so 400 watts is what I'm able to clock it down to and utilize that.

And I've just been actually solo mining with it for now until I've got it, you know, all the kinks really figured out and I can have a consistent usage of it to then I'll figure out how many sets I can get per month or per year based on the current difficulty and all of that.

It's fascinating all the factors you have to consider and Bob and Webwith as a plug miner to just maintain your hash rate and the relevance of it. - Yeah, we gotta be scrappy. So what solo mining pool did Chet get you set up with and probably Kano I guess, right?

- Yeah, yeah, Kano pool. - Chet, why do you like Kano over CK pool? - Yeah, I have no preference. I host with a facility buddy in Georgia and he turned me on to Kano pool. I think pools is a sticking point, right?

It's a pretty centralized area of Bitcoin mining and anything I can do to decentralize it. So I point a couple of miners to this pool that we haven't hit a block in like 319 days or so. There's only like 7.5 peta hash on it.

But when we do hit a block, my payout will be much more significant than mining with slush, right? Yeah, just to try to keep it decentralized. - Chet, when you said you listened to me in a Kano speaking, I think from memory, we were talking about CK pool.

And I think at the time, there was like three times that CK hit a block within like a week or two. CK just did two years ago. - Yeah, I think that's our sixth one of the year, which is pretty impressive.

- Dr. Kahn, call of us. - So as a gambling man, you said earlier, you're a gambling man. Do you know like the odds on running like an S9 on a solo pool? What are the odds of hitting a block and what's the payout?

Like, is it a thousand to one, 10,000 to one, a million to one? Like, what's the odds on it? - I've seen a few different, different equations, but I think if you're running like a solo S9 with 10, 10 tera hash, I wanna say it's, you know, it's like a million days or something.

- Yeah, it's not so much about one in blank chances, but like what Jan Chopin was saying to us the other day, Max? Yeah, it's a when thing. Do you have the runway enough to run that machine for a long enough time and statistically, you should hit a block in X amount of time versus whatever your hash rate is.

- And of course you do, mining with solar or free oil, then it's like you have an infinite runway because there's no cost other than time. - Exactly, I'm thinking about when I set these up today, I'm gonna talk to them and be like, "Hey, do you all wanna take a gamble?"

And like, this pool are, you know, - Come on guys, you're gonna know when to hold them, know when to fold them. - Well, it's up to 123%. So it should be any day. So with 10 peta hash, you should hit a block ball every 280 some days, approximately.

So we're at three something and we're 123%. So it's gotta be coming soon and I'm really looking forward to that. - Shit, is it like watching that slot machine that the old lady has been putting coins in and then when she gets up from that seat, you rush in real quick?

- Oh yeah, you know, every block that comes across the ticker, you know, there's the telegram box and stuff that you can see everyone. And I'm just waiting for that day when I see Cano pool and it's just gonna be, we're gonna rejoice.

- That's kind of exciting. - I do feel the draw that if I was to set one up in my garage that I would want to do the solo mining, it does seem more exciting. So if you're saying 10 tera hash is every, what 1000 days, did you say?

So yeah, it's probably even more than that. - Okay. - Is that three years? Yeah, it's probably over three years. - Okay, so if it's 1000 days for 10 tera hash, then it's a hundred days for a hundred tera hash.

So if you have a relatively new machine a hundred days, it's three times a year. That's not bad. That's not bad. Like that's doable. If you're gonna stack anyway and you're paying for the cost of the energy, then why not?

I guess that's a good question. Why not if you're a home miner? Because you might not hit. That's why. That's why for me at least. I mean, you're only talking about statistics here. You know, so yeah, I would expect to hit in X amount of days based on my total hash rate here at home.

But what if I don't hit? In real, that's like a personality issue. Like I'd never go to the casino. Sarah and I can't stand going to the casino. It just makes us sick or stomach, you know what I mean?

But obviously, Jets got the appetite for that kind of thing. So you could-- - I think I do too. But John, if you're saying, if you're saying you have 100 tera hash machine, then statistically it would hit three times a year, right?

I think it's higher than that. - How much higher? - I would say probably the 100 tera hash would probably be like around 1,000 days. The 10 is probably gonna be like 10,000 days. - Oh, it's okay.

It's 1,000 days, so three years. So three years for 100 tera hash machine statistically, but you're talking about people who are hodling. So they're talking about 10 years. Like most people you talk to are like, I'm holding for a decade.

And so if you could afford-- - Listen, Max, but that I only go off on this tangent here, but like so that's always been my intention throughout the years that I'm never selling, I'm never selling, even got like a bite-sized Bitcoin coming out where I make that proclamation, never selling.

But sometimes I have to, whether it's to-- - Sometimes you have to. - Sometimes you have to, whether it's to build out my infrastructure, and that's to say that you're gonna have these same machines all the time that you don't want to grow in your mining operations or do anything different.

Like how would I ever pay for all my immersion stuff if I didn't sell or anything like that? - No, I get that, but what if times gets tough. But yeah, I'd see if you're in some situations where like you have some kind of a power source, like you're always talking about pirating power or you're down at different lake in Guatemala

and you have this vegetable oil or you have these solar panels up in Michigan, then yeah, that definitely is the use case there. - I'm only banging on about it because when Chet said, this is the best way to decentralize the network.

And I was thinking, well, yeah, it is. And so if someone has a massive operation and they throw one miner into a solar mining pool, that makes sense. I understand if they don't want to do all of it.

And I get it from what you're saying. It's like you wouldn't want to put all your hash there because you have family and it's, you don't know that you're gonna hit a pool and it could be five years, 10 years, 15 years, and you still don't hit.

So I get that. But for people who are, say, running one machine or two machines and they're garage or wherever, and they are pirating the power. And like you say, like I do bang on about that, there's so many growers around the world who pirate their power and they have to do it that way so they don't get caught.

Maybe you have people who switch across and they run a couple of these machines and they go on a solar mining pool and actually over time it's better for the network and it's better for their pocket.

And the same for all of these companies, that these small companies that have been shut down for lockdown and everything else that's gone on over the last couple of years, it's like, well, you can write that power off.

And if you need the heat, especially in Europe, in the winter when it gets fucking cold, it's like, you get free power. So why are you not doing that? Or solar or oil or anything else? So I guess I'm kind of thinking, it seems like less people solo mine than maybe actually could.

And it's just like a done deal that you've joined the point. - The reason why I'm solo mining is also because I actually have, because I've dialed down the wattage on this S9, I actually don't put a contribute enough hash rate for it to make sense for me to mine with slush pool because by the time I would get enough,

I've accumulated enough sats to do a withdrawal and the fees that I would have to pay to withdraw, it would take me over a year to mine enough sats to actually finally do my withdraw. And I'm imagining that in a year's time, the difficulty is gonna go up so much that I will just never mine enough sats on slush pool

to actually withdraw any sats into my own custody. And so in my situation, I have a better off utilizing the waste heat to maybe dehydrate some fruit or things that I have here, garlic powder, so on and so forth.

And then getting those free chances at hitting a block mining solo. - That would be quite the story if you hit one. I would be quite the story. - Yeah, it would be quite the story. That's something that we, I believe you had mentioned that, Carl in the mesh to tell something about the payouts.

And I said, "Well, we had just talked "to meting this area from Lincoln Pool." And I said, "Well, let me ask him." And I jumped on their telegram group and asked them, "Would you ever guys ever consider "lowering your payout?"

And he's like, "Well, that kind of makes it difficult "if everybody keeps screwing around "with their payouts all the time." And I said, "Well, how about like a voucher "where like once or twice a year you're able to take "whatever payout you want kind of penalty free?"

And I don't know, maybe it's got some wheels spinning in some guys, but you gotta be able to treat the small scale miners, even on the smallest scale well. You know, make some exceptions for people every once in a while.

I know that you're running a business, but there's more to Bitcoin than just running a business. - More than 100%. - Well, I actually had an idea on that too, 'cause it seems, it seems like, yeah, it puts the pool operators in a tough situation to make exceptions for people in certain situations.

- Yeah, it's supposed to be, you know, rules, not rulers type of thing. But what, is there a way to create a subpool where like, I've got my four tera hash that I can have running for a few hours a day, and then maybe my neighbors are in the same situation or whatever, and we can pool our hash rate together

and then collectively point that hash at, let's say, slash pool, and then slash pool pays out to one wallet, and maybe this is where some other, you know, other ways of utilizing Bitcoin come in, where then we can split those sets up amongst each other over lightning or whatever, you know, to mitigate those fees of transferring it around.

- Yeah, you can do that pretty easily. You would just have the same account and those different workers. Like, you know, you can have one account with workers distributed all over the place.

As long as you point those workers to your account, you know, dot, and then dot worker name. So yeah, that's relatively simple, Carl. So the thing is, then I would have to trust the people that I, I mean, obviously like, so if I just contribute my hash in with Chet, and then I can trust that Chet would pay me out appropriately

for how much a hash I've contributed if there was a way to track that recording. But yeah. - I was just gonna say, we can give that a try if you want. I can give you one of my, one of my slash pool accounts.

You can add it to that, and then I can just give you the payouts for your minor monthly or whatever. Here we go, another pleb minor month miracle. - I don't think you'd even need the trust necessarily.

I think what you could do is you could open a lightning channel and have split payments between the people that entered the pool on the same account. And so the anything that then hits that account automatically gets split partitioned to each person who's joined it.

So you could have five, 10, 50, 100, a thousand different plebs or joining that, and they would all get their payout as soon as that hit their wallet. I think that can all be automated. - That would be really cool.

I'm definitely interested in experimenting with some of those sorts of solutions for these, 'cause I'm a person that just, I'm probably never gonna, unless I expand my solar system, be able to produce more than four tera hash for five hours out of the day.

And so it makes it difficult for me to get those few hundred sets that I'm theoretically earning actually out to me. - The perfect person to ask about this is Chino, and obviously he is a genius with lightning and they run the Ring of Fire, and they understand all this kind of stuff way, way, way better than I do,

and I'm pretty sure it's possible. So that's something we can ask in the Mestadel, and I'm almost certain it can be done with ease. - So John, when I'm in Guatemala down here, there's like 60 some businesses around the lake that are accepting Bitcoin now.

So yesterday I got to use my Bitcoin for all my meals, for around the drinks, whatever I wanted. You're coming off as more of the HODLER. You wouldn't be keen on using your SATs in a circular economy.

- No, not whatsoever. I want to be a HODLER purely. - Sure. - But I do have to buy machines. I have to buy gear with Bitcoin, especially like if my overtime isn't there, then I'm dipping into the Bitcoin to do the things that I need to do.

The immersion project is costing me a lot of money because I'm doing it a way where I can harness the waste heat and hopefully build something that people can understand and see and touch, or back to that see and touch thing, and able to scale that out to different small businesses and stuff.

So to me, that is the circular economy because I'm putting it back into Bitcoin. I have been using Peach for the past month, so I have been kind of selling there to help out the Peach team.

So I do sell here and there. This is kind of a newer thing for me to sell, but I would rather not. But I do participate in the circular economy right behind me. I have a Mr. Crown print, his Game Boy mining print.

I'll buy hats from Bitcoin hat guy and no Bitcoin. I certainly bought my share of clothing from ungovernable misfits. So yeah, no, I do participate in the Bitcoin circular economy and this is something that I believe in for quite a bit, which is why I thought it was so exciting to get you and Carl set up.

And I think I even said, "Hey, whatever payment you'll take, Chet, for the S9, it doesn't have to be purely you just giving him an S9. Maybe he can give you some maple syrup or something like that."

And that part really excited me 'cause especially Carl talking about going to the Bitcoin meetup and selling some maple syrup. That was like a really cool thing for me. But I just want to kind of go back to the setup thing.

Carl, you said you can get about five hours. Now, this is summertime now. So I'm really interested to see what you're going to get in the wintertime. What are you guys doing to cut off that machine?

Do you just have it set up to a mechanical timer or something more advanced? - Well, it's very rudimentary at this point. I literally just walk down and unplug it. - You're walking around the farm all day anyhow.

- Yeah, I'm always passing by 'cause I come by and I charge 12 volt batteries that power our fencing as well at the year. So I'm often here, I'm always passing by it. But in the wintertime, that is actually when I would be doing more of this food processing.

And that's also when I might be able to take advantage of the heat in my house. And so that's the cool thing about the S92 is it's very easy to move this thing around and just plug it into the wall and put one of those shrouds on there and duck the heat into over a mesh.

I can start drying stuff out and heating my basement along with, so I'm getting usage out of the heat. At the same time, I'm mining some Bitcoin, even though I'm paying the 16 cents a kilowatt hour or whatever my power rate is, it's worth it because I would be spending that power to dehydrate with the dehydrator anyways.

I think it's also interesting that I could use it in the yurt. When it's dialed down to 400 watts, this thing is not loud. It's just like any other fan you might have going in your office or blowing to move air around in the room.

So it's very easy to heat the yurt potentially to supplement the propane heat that I would be using in there in the wintertime. Now that's only when I would have guests there and that would have to be just for a few hours a day to maximize the sun.

- Perfect, hell yeah, I appreciate it. Hey, Trancha, I gotta let you go though. I'm back on this and I'll call you a little bit, all right? I appreciate it all. - That's a fake phone call.

(laughing) - And business owner. - Sorry. - Oh, I was just talking to Huddle Tarantula, another famous Bitcoin plebs. - Ah, yeah, he just put out posts. He's looking for a deployment team in North Dakota.

- Go. - Yeah, pretty young man. - Oh, she's got 39 megawatts out there. It's gonna be a pleasure in that game. - He's the first and last person to shoot in the middle of a podcast with me.

- He's an interesting fellow for sure. He's a good one though. - Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. I was like, what the fuck is that? I was like, oh, I'm just shooting. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, no big deal.

(laughing)

- I've forgotten what we were. - Well, are you gonna use the interim recording, or just we just wanna start, go from one to three. Skip number two. - I don't know. - I guess we decide I'm about five whiskeys deep now.

I don't know what that is. - I'll decide for you, skip number two, and let's just skip back into talking about kind of Bitcoin circular economy type of deal. You know, and I believe Chet was asking me if I sold and you know, I'm a pure hodler and simply for reasons of practicality, no, but in my heart I want to be.

- Right. - And then I think we kind of talked a little bit about spending sats in Chet. When you go out with folks and they wanna put something on their card, they'll give you sats. Can you explain that a little bit?

I don't know if we got that on the previous recording. - Yeah, so it's like, like I've created friends, like you're saying, we only hang out with Bitcoiners now or supposed to Bitcoiners, right?

That's where the conversation leads to all the time. Normies don't get it. So when I go out to dinner now, it's usually with Bitcoiners and a lot of times we'll argue who can pay the bill and fiat so everyone else can give them Bitcoin.

Just a way to create another circular economy around yourself. - And so Carl, you also had some interesting questions regarding taking Bitcoin for payments and the security of it. And can you talk about that a little bit?

Maybe we can catch up that way. - Well, yeah, I mean, the most often times that I'm transacting with Bitcoin are at the Bitcoin meetups. Either I'm bringing something to sell and I'm getting sats for that or somebody else has come with something they want to sell and I buy it from them.

And I guess the question was if we're concerned about the sats being KYC free, should I be thinking about mixing those sats that I've received from somebody else? Well, I don't want to say mixing, but coin joining the sats that I've received from somebody else to protect my privacy or is it okay?

Should I consider those sats KYC free for me? 'Cause they're not attached to my name but they're attached to somebody else's name, potentially. - And Max, if you're there, if you're not too many, too many whiskeys deep, you were given Chet a little bit of advice on what he could do to mitigate that risk.

- Yeah, so I guess my advice is keep things in different buckets. So keep your fully know KYC sats that you've mined yourself and you can be sure that aren't tracked in one bucket, then keep another set of sats from people that you've accepted those from and label them.

So have they come directly from an exchange then on to me? Is there just one hop there or have they been coin joined or where are we at with it? So that'll probably be the start. And then when you get to a point where you want to spend those sats to then decide which ones you want to spend first

and just basically to look at it as whatever you spend from someone who sent you that, they can track. And wherever you send them where they're then merged with other UTXOs, they can then follow you.

So do you want the person who has just bought $20 worth of maple syrup from you? Do you really want them to understand and know everything about your full balance? Probably not. So keep them separate.

And then if you're going to be sending them on, where are you sending them and do you want people to know your balance again or where they've come from? So, you know, I think coin join is really useful.

I think it's a nice tool to have. And, you know, samurai wallet, I think is probably the best option for most people. It's relatively simple and easy to use. You can use join market if maybe you're a little bit more technical and you're willing to spend some more time.

They will have their trade offs. But yeah, I think it's very, very valuable to do that. At some point, the information people have on you and your Bitcoin could buy you in the arse. I don't know if that is a good explanation or just waffle.

That makes a lot of sense to me. I just hadn't really ever been thinking about it from that perspective that I always thought that if I got Bitcoin from somebody else directly, that because it wasn't attached to my name, that it's clean, you know, that there's no, there's nothing attaching that wallet

that I'm receiving it to that those keys that ever had any KYC coin for me in there. But it doesn't make sense in the long run that you get rid of those stats that could have touched the KYC services first and to do your coin labeling your UTXOs and keep it track of it all.

Just in theory, as an example, someone has sent you some stats and they bought it from an exchange and they get a knock on their door and they've kept records, but they haven't told you. And they say, I use that to buy maple syrup and I spend it with Karl and here's the dates.

And they grasp you up 'cause people do that. Then you get a knock at your door and they say, right, here's evidence that you receive payment from this person. And then we can see that you have merged that UTXO with a load of others and we can see that your balance is X.

That wouldn't be a good situation to be in. - It makes a lot of sense, yeah. - In my opinion, there's the levels of value for that. It's like, well, if you mind a block and you got directly paid out from the Coinbase transaction, to me, that's the most valuable set of SATs.

And then maybe next below that is whatever your pool payout is and however you paid that out. I believe in the future that we're gonna have an economy and say like, well, where did you get those SATs from?

They're worth a little bit more. We always say, well, you got a discount on those SATs, the ATM argument, you got a discount on those KYC SATs. It's up to you, Carl, I'll say like, well, I'm gonna have to charge you a little bit more 'cause I don't know where you got these SATs from.

(laughs) Yeah, I mean, it's a massive reason why I think mining and home mining and pleb mining is something that should be pushed more. There was a huge push for a long time, especially with a lot of the influencers of like, you want a DCA and you use SWAN or you use whatever, you know, the influencer is getting paid by

and going by from them. But at the end of the day, like the best DCA you could do is a properly set up home mining option. So, you know, every day you're running some SATs and if you do things properly, they're very private and secure and then you don't have to take all these extra steps and worry about things 'cause you've done it right.

Yeah, and once again, being part of the Bitcoin network of actual people utilizing Bitcoin, that's how you find access to the, like for me, it was a very intimidating experience trying to find a miner and not get scammed, either to know that the machine was gonna be used but still working well to know that I wasn't gonna send

my Bitcoin to somebody and then not receive the miner. Having that physical connection to real people to guide me through that process of sourcing the machinery and the equipment was a huge, it allowed me to get started going right away.

So, speaking of that Bitcoin circular economy and kind of back to the story of check coming to visit you and set everything up just to recap for everybody. You've got it in the yurt. You've got an S9 dialed down to about 400 watts or so.

You can mine for about five hours during the day. You manually turn it off on your rounds as you're making your rounds on your farm every night. You're hoping that you can hit a block on Kano pool over a period of time and then use those sets in your own circular economy.

So, after you guys had set that up, I'm sure you bullshit for a while. How did you guys settle on what the medium of exchange would be for Chet S9 and his services? What did you guys exchange together?

- Well, after taking a stroll around the farm, I could tell, is it gonna be in for a treat for sure? He's got a lot of good produce, good animals. We took our stroll, then we went inside and that's when we hash that out.

He had syrup, I wanted syrup. His salsa is some of the best salsa. It's got just the perfect amount of spice. I think that was about it, huh, Carl? - Yeah, you grabbed a peach off a peach tree.

That was looking pretty good. I gave you a couple heads of garlic, but it was really a situation of, okay, Chet says, here I've got a minor. This is the S9 and then I was kind of saying to him, well, here's what I got.

What do you want? Take whatever you want for it. And it was that value for value in that way where we didn't have necessarily a contract drawn up or anything in advance. It was just kind of hoping that I had enough stuff to compensate him for the minor of his choosing.

And then that way we didn't have to bring any Bitcoin into the equation even. - Mm-hmm. But is still a Bitcoin circular economy transaction? That's kind of the way I see it. You don't even have to exchange Bitcoin, but as long as it's a pleb for pleb thing.

I mean, essentially what Chet has a skill, he's got a mining skill. He has value to bring there. Plus he has a physical machine. And that kind of brings up a concept that I've been working with for a while, is, you know, my story is I started mining on my wife's computer in 2011 and then stopped doing it.

And I, of course, I mean, everybody's got a lot of, yeah, everybody's got a lot of regrets in the Bitcoin world, you know, but that's always been a big regret to me. Not financially, but I could have known a lot of you guys earlier in my life.

I could have kind of had my mind open in the financial sense a lot earlier. It isn't just the monetary value. It isn't just the Bitcoin that I could have had if I had kept down that path.

But if I had reached out, somebody could have passed on their knowledge to me. Somebody could have passed on a machine. I could have purchased one from them. So it's a concept that I've been working with and it's nothing new.

Lots of people do this kind of stuff, but I call it hash the torch, meaning you've got an old machine sitting around somewhere that you're not using. Look at what a big value that was to Carl.

And not just monetarily, not just a $200 machine or not just a small amount of Bitcoin that he's gonna get. He's never even gonna reach, you know, the payout threshold. But the knowledge that he's gained and the other aspects of Bitcoin that are now revealed to him just because you went up there

and gave some machine that was sitting around because you went up their chat and hash the torch onto Carl. - Yeah, I think your hash the torch is a really good analogy. You know, and I had been doing it.

I'd been doing a couple of meetups, right? Giving some S9s out. The one in Grand Rapids, I let a guy borrow one for almost a month until the next meetup. And then there's other guys. I know like Barn Miner and some of those other guys are getting into the same thing.

- Yeah, 'cause Barn Miner has his S9 lending program. - Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot of people that are willing to help. Like you're saying, I mean, the Bitcoiners are some of the most helpful people I've ever met.

- And chat, you weren't the first owner of that S9, correct? You bought that used or acquired it from somebody else. - It was, that was straight from Kaboomer X. I have used, they have a good cleaning and, you know, ultrasonic and a testing setup that they do.

So they're, I mean, they're nice S9s. But yeah, that thing's probably been hashed in five, six years. - When you kind of want to know the story behind that machine, like, you know, people drive around in RVs and they put the stickers on every state that they've been in or travelers that will have a lot of the stickers of the countries

that they've been in on their luggage. That'd be neat to have that on an old machine. - Well, yeah, I think Carl does that. Still have my tag sticker on there. - Yeah, and well, and you could see on the, you could see how many were labels on top of it.

Like that machine has probably passed over many owners. If each one of those stickers represents an individual owner, I'm not sure, but you can assume, there is like a big thick stack of labels on that machine where it's been passed around quite a bit.

It's almost, I mean, I'm starting to see these S9s as sort of like the gateway into home mining where the, because you can plug them in and because they're easy to set up and so tough, they're just a perfect machine to get people started and learn the basics.

- Yeah, I would agree. I, you know, that's what you always hear, right? You hear people wanting to get like an S19 or something. And the next thing you know, they'll be posting in one of the forums selling an S19.

Whether it's the heat, the noise, the power price, something usually will get to them. And if you're jumping in, you know, spending that much money, you should have already tested it, right?

You should have made sure that you, you want the heat, you want the noise. Like this is for you. I was under the impression a while ago. Like when I first started that, mining was for everybody, right?

Like everyone should be mining. And then through Alex and some other people having chats and talks, maybe not so much, it's for everyone, but I still believe that like every single home and structure in the world will have a miner in it, whether they don't know what or not.

Like it would be second nature to them. They won't even know what's there. It'll just be doing all the things that need heat. - Yeah, just the distribution of ASIC chips and different elements, that's gonna be pretty exciting to see a play out the future.

And you know what, you're right, Chet. Not everybody can be a miner. Not everybody's set up for this, but at least when you hash the torch and you give somebody the machine, they know. And I'm sure that they learned a lot of lessons on the way and then encourage them to, okay, well, that didn't work out for you.

Hand it off to someone else. I'm sure you know another Bitcoiner that may be interested in taking this journey. So, Carl, now that you have the machine in there, I think we touched on it a little bit, but what's your vision for what that machine can do with the waste heat, especially on a regenerative agriculture, permaculture farm?

It seems almost unlimited to me, not just in a greenhouse, but where you currently have it making jerky like we've seen people do, drying things, getting the right heat for fermentation, if it's too cold outside, where do you see the waste heat reuse case there on your farm?

- Well, I've got, every situation's gonna have a different best use case for the heat. And I think for me, it will be to use it as a dehydrator. I've got, I'm currently, my freezer is full of fruit right now, completely full, and I need to make room.

So I can either put that in jars, a can it, or I could dehydrate it. And now that I have a dehydrator that also mines Bitcoin, sounds like a good idea to me. But yeah, I'm sure over time, I'll start to think of many other reasons or ways to use it, especially because it's so easy to move this thing around, that I can plug it in anywhere.

It's a fascinating piece of a computer, the idea that this computer holds it is relevant for so many years. - And if you want a good little video to watch on a dehydrator, there's a Twitter account named BusinessCat, and he had set up some kind of a S9 dehydrator there in his home, in his kitchen.

And it's like he's got an intake on it with one of those K&N, generic K&N filters, goes into the machine, then he's gotta pipe up to a dehydrator box with that he can pull shelves out. It's actually in the pleb minor, the pleb minor video collage that my daughter made, if you wanna check that out.

It's kind of inspiring. So Chet, now that you left Carl's farm, you guys did some exchange, I have to imagine you guys are gonna keep in touch even after pleb minor month is over. - Oh, for sure, he's definitely a Bitcoin friend.

I like I've told him, I can't wait to see the uses and the knowledge that he's gonna gain for me or bring to me, right? That's really what it's all about, is I just wanna know as much as I can about mining, and that's really all that I talk about or care about.

That's it. And so the more that I can, like your hash, your pass it on hash or what was it called again, sorry. - Hash the torch. - Hash the torch. - Hash the torch, yeah. - Hash the torch.

I think that's gonna be great. It's all about the knowledge and the more miners we can get in people's hands, like there's, I'm not that smart. And if I can help get it into people smarter than me and to see what they can do with it.

- I feel the same way that was one of the things I was most excited about is you get to see how creative Carl is and you have to be creative when you're living as a homesteader, that it's kind of life or death in a way.

So Carl, you're forced to be creative. You come from a creative background too. So it's just gonna be interesting to see what you do with this machine and we're expecting to see some videos and some innovations that none of us would have thought of.

- I also can't wait to get back out there and take a horse ride and stay in the year. He's got a nice setup. - Yeah, you're welcome any time. I definitely look forward to experimenting with it more.

And I think it's just like you were saying, Chet, that the more you can expose mining to people, plebminers, they are gonna be figuring out these little increases in efficiency, these little bits that they can improve their setup.

And you might be able to apply that, something they figured out to your own situation too. I mean, that's kind of a big aspect of permaculture where you're making these small, slow changes based on feedback.

But the more people that are doing that and iterating, the faster we learn how to maximize the abundance we can create. And I think that is definitely the case when we're hashing the torch with this amongst these new plebminers.

- And I'm also waiting for the call where Carl calls me up, he tells me he's got another, three, four solar panels that he saw. And he's like, hey, I'm ready to expand some more. Let's go, I'm excited for that too.

- It's on my list to call the power company and see what kind of power purchase agreement I can work out and see if I can get my power rate down in order to just plug miners into my house at this point.

I'm totally enveloped and interested now. - That's awesome. Well guys, thank you so much for joining us on plebminer month and it's been good to hear a little bit more about your stories.

I think I'm going to have to do a one-on-one with both of you because there's so much that we didn't cover. - That'd be a good listen. - 100%. There's definitely some big stories in there.

But yeah, I just wanted to say thank you and it really goes to show how much this plebminer month reaches out to people and how much the Bitcoin network changes people and connects people.

And yeah, it's been fucking awesome hearing a little bit more about what you guys are doing. - Well, thank you. I think all y'all, like Carl, John, Max, I'm so humbled, yeah, it's been a privilege to get to know y'all, work with y'all, do any project I'm humbled.

- Yeah, I appreciate it too. I, yep, just honored to be included in all this very happy to contribute however I can, iterate and move things forward for Bitcoin. - Brilliant and a big thank you to you, John as well, because without you, I wouldn't have been able to speak to Carl or Chet and this again,

just goes to show how these things work. Like one connection suddenly spurs off into 10 or 20 and it really is a network. So thank you for connecting me and everyone else to these people, it really is awesome.

- Absolutely, I'm happy to do it. And like we had talked about the other day, that plebminer month has kind of taken on a life of its own just because of these butterfly effects. And it's really cool to see the connections here.

I'm glad we had this conversation. - Me too. All right guys, thanks so much. And yeah, for the listeners, you keep an ear out because I'll be having Chet and Carl on for individual pods very, very soon.

Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed recording it. Thank you to everyone who's been listening to this on Fountain or any of the other podcasting 2.0 apps and streaming Sats.

Every single one of those Sats will be going towards postage for getting these incredible prizes out. Everyone who's been donating machines and everything else that we've been giving out, I really do appreciate it.

And a huge thank you to Mr. Crown for putting out such amazing imagery, keepingungovernablemissfits.com up to date with everything for this month. If you're not already following him, go and do it now.

If you need any help with design work, website work or pretty much anything else, he is the man. Thanks again, Mr. Crown. And thank you to everyone listening.