Bitcoin Mining for the Streets with @Diverter_NoKYC

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 to Pleb Minor Month. This is an entire month dedicated to home mining. And what better place to start than with Diverter? He wrote the legendary mining for the streets, and he is very active in both the mining and privacy circles.

We'll be hosting a copy of mining for the streets on ungovernable misfits.com, so make sure to check that out if you haven't already. During this month, we will be having prizes and giveaways every single day.

I want to give a huge thank you to all the incredible companies and individuals who have reached out and offered to help. Brains, kaboom racks, crypto cloaks, crypto cloaks, eu, anchor huddle, brinky, peach, foundation devices, ASIC fan shrouds, and SF for individually sending some sats.

Thank you so much to all of you. It is a massive help, and everything that you send on to us is going on for prizes. Our hope is winning these prizes will give people the push they need to start hashing at home.

To everyone who's been screaming "sats" on fountain or breeze, I want to thank you too, because for this entire month, every single sat that you send to me will be going towards postage and helping get these prizes out to people.

Value for value is incredible. And this month, I think that there's nothing more valuable than to see plebs plug in these miners, get hashing, and really start to decentralize this network.

I'd also like to thank Foundation Devices for sponsoring this show, and also for sponsoring this month. They are giving away two Foundation Devices passports. I'll be giving information on how you can win these, and I will also be having Lily and Bitcoin Q&A on the show with me and Jon to discuss mining and privacy.

Foundation devices are absolutely incredible. They are beautifully designed, they are fully open source, and an absolute pleasure to use. If you haven't checked them out already, go to foundation devices.com.

If you decide you want to buy one of these, you can use the code bit by bit, and you will get $10 off your purchase. And if you have any questions at all, you can send them in, I'll have them answered by Lily or Bitcoin Q&A.

And last, but not least, I have fast bitcoins. Fast bitcoins are an exchange based in the Isle of Man, and they are the only exchange in the world that would allow me to talk as frankly as I do about KYC and its dangers.

Some of you might listen to this, and you might decide at the end of it, I've weighed up the options, and actually you know what, I do want to buy KYC. And that's fine. If you want to do that, and you understand the risks, you can go to fast bitcoins, and they are an incredible team.

They will do everything that they can to keep you safe, and they will push you to get your stats off exchange. That said, make sure you do understand the trade-offs, and don't hesitate to reach out to me or to the fast bitcoins team if you have any questions.

These guys really are the only people I feel comfortable sending anyone to if they make that decision, and I just want to thank them again. This whole month is about home mining and informing listeners about their options.

This information could potentially push listeners away from a KYC service, yet these guys are still sponsoring the show. To me, this just shows how much they care about bitcoin and how much they are trying to push real signal and get away from the bullshit and the noise.

I really do respect these guys, and if you want to check them out, go to fastbickcoins.com, and if you have any questions, please do reach out. Enjoy the show. - Diverta, nice to have you back on the show.

It's been far too long. - Yeah, at the be back, man. Been a long time. - Yeah, it's been far too long, and I was speaking to John. As you know, we've got this mining model really trying to push this idea of people home mining, people getting away from the KYC traps and to push back against some of the bullshit, and I was thinking, well,

where does this all start? For me, where did I first hear about home mining? Where did I first really start feeling this pushback? And I was like, why the fuck have I not spoken to Diverta?

This is the current mother I need to get him on. - I'll tell you what, I'm very excited to see you guys putting this together. I think you've got a great partner in this, somebody that's really out here doing it.

That's not a technical specialist. He's not a mining specialist. You know, that's kind of the whole point. That was the whole point of me even writing this stuff, is I'm in no way should perform qualified to be writing this stuff.

So I seem like the perfect person. But yes, the past, I guess we're looking at what, two and a half years or so now, since I wrote mining for the streets, there has been so much that's happening.

So many people have taken back their power in my view and stopped handing over their identity to these exchanges to participate in this supposedly permissionist network. So yeah, I'm very, very excited to see all this happening.

- Yeah, well, I think all of us need to thank you for pushing this forward at a time where it was not the dumb thing. At a time where everyone was just saying, buy on the exchanges and don't bother with mining and you put out mining for the streets and I wanted to just read a little bit from the top of what you've written,

which is don't fall victim to the narrative pushers that would have you believe mining is too hard, too expensive or better left to the big players. Sounds an awful lot like the same thing bankers and governments tell the masses about fiat money and economics now, doesn't it?

It really holds true, like, it's exactly what's happening now. Filling warehouses full of miners and we know they're gonna get cucked, it's inevitable. And people are saying, oh, well, it's too much hard work.

It's, you know, just buy the sats and it doesn't matter. And, you know, for something to still be true today or even possibly more true today than ever with all the pushback we've got. You know, that's really a reason why we're pushing back.

It's a reason that me and John are doing what we're doing and mainly hats off to him and got like 25 guys who have jumped in the telegram group. Really awesome guys who are building real stuff and I'm kind of the village idiot who's just learning along the way and trying to promote it, really.

Yeah, that's amazing. And, you know, the entire purpose behind me riding this thing, you know, it's, I go back and forth because obviously I wrote it because I wanted people to read it and I wanted it to have an impact.

But it's one of those things where it's like, it's like taking a half quart shot in basketball. Like, obviously when you took the shot, you meant to make it. You meant for it to go in. But you didn't really think it was gonna go in, right?

You just kind of threw it up there. And that's kind of how I feel about this thing. Like, obviously I wanted it to have some sort of impact on people, I wanted it to at least change the way that you thought about something for a moment.

To just get one other perspective on home mining because at that time, it was just totally bleak no matter where you look, complete and total discouragement. And, I mean, if there was somebody out there pushing home mining back then, you know, a couple of years ago, I certainly didn't see it whenever I went looking for it.

It was the exact opposite. So to get something out there and to have it fall into the hands of people like, you know, McConnell Alchemist and then to see what he's done since then. And the amount of people that he's inspired is probably, you know, it's probably exponentially higher than the ones that I have.

And, you know, that's exactly what the whole intent was. You know, I'm in no way shape or form was trying to be some big influencer or anything. Here, just let me take a look at this. Let's see if this makes sense for you.

And then to watch it now take off and this resurgence, you know, obviously in the beginning, home mining was all there was. And then we hit this, seems like this corporatization period, you know, when we had the big price run up and all the ICO booms and everything was becoming very corporatized around that 2017 area.

And in my opinion, it's just kind of hung around. If not even gotten worse by now. So, you know, to have this still, it's still very niche, don't get me wrong, but to have a stronger niche group of people that know what they're talking about, they've done their own research, they're not just trusting me or anybody else.

And they're going out here and making something work for themselves. And they see the importance, not only of owning Bitcoin, but of owning Bitcoin in a way that makes you feel the most powerful.

You've not had to hand over any of your identity. You've not had to, you know, compromise on any of your principles. You've not had to make yourself known for whatever list that we know they're compiling.

And, you know, you can just, there's a lot of strength, there's a lot of power in that knowledge. So, the main pushback that has always been, as far as I could tell, since the ASIC boom anyway is, that you'll just be better off from a financial standpoint, if you just buy Bitcoin and hold it.

And, you know, there are so many more arguments to that. You know, when we're talking about what kind of Bitcoin are you buying? Are you buying on Coinbase? Because I would make an argument that, you know, that's worth less than the SaaS that you're mining.

So, there's so much that goes into it. I just wanted people to look at another side, right? - I can't remember who I was speaking to the other day. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but give it 10 years, I think that the no KYC SaaS are gonna be worth two to three times more money, or two to three times more purchasing power.

Because I do see there's a fairly large chance of us having this whole bullshit, blacklisting, whitelisting stuff. What's gonna be more useful? Coins that you can actually own and control and stick to the ethos of Bitcoin or cupped coins that you can only spend a fucking coin base.

- Sure, yeah. I mean, I don't know very many black market goods that are less expensive than, you know, their white market counterpart. And, you know, a lot of that goes to the permission aspect of it.

You know, if it's just like a convenience trade off with privacy. Sure, you know, the thing that you use is, you know, maybe more convenient, it's easier to use, but you've sacrificed your privacy in order to do that.

So is that, you know, is that really worth it in the end? And, you know, I made an argument towards the end of the piece. I've kind of read back to it in the last few days just to kind of give myself a little refresher on what I wrote and see, you know, how much did this thing hold up?

And honestly, I was pretty surprised myself. One of the last paragraphs where I'm kind of wrapping the thing up and I'm talking, I talked about, you know, there, this is when the stock to flow was really big.

And I said something about, you know, if you listen to the people on Twitter, they'll tell you that, you know, Bitcoin is going somewhere between 55 and, you know, $280,000 in the next couple of years.

So, you know, if you believe that to be true and you make your move today, because back then when I was writing it, you know, miners and the hash price, you know, the amount of Bitcoin that you could earn is almost identical to what it is today.

So, you know, what my argument back then was if you make your move now, and if you are really bullish on this thing, you really do believe that, you know, it's going to continue to appreciate in price and in power, if you make your move now, then by the time everybody else foemos in, and, you know, to buy in miners and all, yeah,

I want to get down on that thing, you're already having nice stack of stats piled away and you're a seasoned veteran by that point. And just looking at that and thinking about like people like Econo after this, that was, you know, one of the first ones that really came out and was like,

"Hey, I read this guide, I went ahead and took action." And then we had this huge price run up where mining was super profitable for a while. You know, several times I made points that like this is not going to stay, it's not supposed to be like this.

You know, mining is, I just said it in the paper, the difficulty adjustment is specifically supposed to keep mining very low margin. You know, the whole point is, can you get it to an area where even if you are losing a bit of money every day, is that slight premium or you know, everyone look at it that discount

for not handing over your data, is that worth it? And so, you know, I argue that it is and I still believe it is. - Yeah, I mean, I totally agree with you. And that's really why we're doing this push.

And there's a few things there. It's like, okay, even if the margins are small and even if it works out that you would be the same from buying from an exchange and even if the governments don't come after people by some fucking miracle or even if there aren't data leaks and people don't get $5 wrench

and all the other problems that are almost certainly going to happen, even if none of those happen. The fact is, if you get involved in the mining, you learn a fuckload and you meet some of the coolest people that I've ever met.

I found that with the privacy circles. So when I first got in, everyone was like, oh, don't deal with the privacy guys, they're fucking loonies and blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I'll find out for myself.

And sure, like some people are loonies, but they're lovely loonies and they're people I genuinely believe want the best for this system. And I've met some of my best friends through these privacy circles and people I trust the most out of anyone on Bitcoin Twitter through the privacy circles.

And what I'm finding is I'm finding the same type of characters in the mining circles now. So I'm not really wanting to spend my time anywhere else. And there's this weird like melting point where I'm having like John was saying to me the other day.

He was like, you know, I know a fair amount about mining now. Like I feel like I'm getting to grips with this, but I could really do with some help with the privacy stuff. And I was like, cool.

Well, I'm going to chuck Q&A and chuck him into the telegram group and see if he can help with some bits and maybe I can help with some networking stuff. And there's so many people who can jump in and help.

And there seems to be this kind of, I don't know, like people are leaning on each other now and starting to teach each other now. And I think when those two groups really, when there's that melting point with those two groups, it's unstoppable.

- Oh, yeah. There's already a lot of overlap. That's for sure. You know, it's, it makes sense in both areas. You know, you're solving a lot of problems with privacy and you know, or a lot of privacy problems with mining.

And so when you start solving privacy problems, you start thinking about other privacy problems that you can potentially solve. It's like anything else in Bitcoin. You open up the door and then when you start walking through, you're tumbling down another rabbit hole.

And it's easy to do. And I've argued for a long time, you know, there's a lot of unnecessary rabbit holes that I see people fall down all the time, especially in privacy circles, matter of fact.

You know, it's that it becomes more about seeing whether or not you can do a thing as opposed to, does it really matter that much? And who else is going to do it with you? You know what I mean?

I mean, for privacy to be effective, you need peers, you need partners, you need a crowd to hide in. And so if you're the only person talking on some random encrypted app, well, then what the hell good does that do?

You're encrypted to yourself, congratulations. You know, so this overlap is very, very natural. It makes a lot of sense. And I think it's only going to continue to grow. I don't know exactly what it's going to take if anything to get any of the bigger players ever to really care about privacy.

I don't think they're the same type of people that we're talking about. You know, there's a real clear delineation between what you would call corporate minors and your home minors. And it's always going to be like that in my mind.

There's never going to be an overlap in those two groups or very rarely, I should say. - Incentives. - Yes, yes, very much. And what you're going to find with the home minors is very much the MacGyver types.

You know, the ones that they may look out and say, okay, I'm losing a little bit of money here mining this Bitcoin, but what if I could capture the heat from this thing? And we've seen an explosion in that stuff from the immersion stuff that like people like CoinHeated and those guys are doing, it's amazing.

And then we've seen, you know, people heating everything, swimming pools, their homes, just greenhouses, everything. And suddenly, you know, you're not even losing money anymore because you found a way to knock out a different expense.

So it's always going to be those types of people that really have the best experience of home mining, I think. - It's so innovative. In the last few weeks, none of these have been release checks.

They're all going to come up in the mining month, but tech engineer with what he's doing with the scaling up and down of his minors and keeping his pool at a constant temperature. CoinHeated, I did, obviously, who's been doing it.

Barn miner I had on and Michael Schmidt, who's been doing it for quite some time as well. And all these guys, they're just like, you know, they're getting paid to take showers. They're getting paid to go and swim in a nice pool that's heated to the perfect temperature.

And it's like, this is where the real innovation is. And yeah, sure, you have these big miners and they've got warehouses full of them. And of course, the incentives are for them to comply because they get the cheaper money and they don't want to rustle any feathers.

And you see the same outside of mining as well. You see the big accounts who talk a certain book and they don't, again, they don't want to draw any attention to themselves. But to me, that's not really Bitcoin.

To me, that is like, it's like stock investing. It's like, you know, you can go make money in lots of different ways. It doesn't have to be in Bitcoin. But to me, it's like, if you're in Bitcoin, it's like, you actually want to make some change.

You actually want to do something where you take power from these fucking psychopaths and you want to be able to have control of your lives. And that's what I'm finding. And I think, especially through Europe, what I've been saying for a while is everyone in Europe here, right?

They say, well, there's no point because the costs are too much. You know, we're paying probably like 40 cents a kilowatt hour. It's fucking mental and it's about to double again. It's just, it's mental.

- Wow. - At the same time, you've got loads and loads of small businesses that have all been raped through the COVID hysteria. And so they're all struggling. They don't get these big, lovely loans that some of the corporations get.

But guess what? They can write off the energy costs. So what I'm saying to people is, well, hang on a minute. If you have a business, you know, you have a garage or you have a workshop or someone who's doing some of the more blue collar work, it's like you could actually have all of this written off.

You get your energy for free. You heat your warehouse 'cause it gets fucking cold here in the winter. - Yeah. - Where's the loss? You have free energy. - Right. - I'm starting to think that maybe that's the way that Europe goes because, well, unless people are pirating the power and you have enough people doing that for other operations,

but you know, you can do that to some extent that you're gonna, you use too much and people are gonna know, so you can't really get away with that. But these businesses where they have big warehouses, it's an absolute no brainer 'cause it's like, you need to generate heat.

You're gonna use the power. You're not paying for it 'cause it's coming off your taxes. Literally, why wouldn't you? - It makes perfect sense. Yeah, and there's so many different random problems and things that Bitcoin mining can solve.

I mean, you know, even looking at like the methane capture, you know, the flare gas, all this stuff, it's just, it's amazing. The versatility of Bitcoin mining enables so much. But it only does that if you know a little bit about it, if you're just crazy enough to take a chance on it because, you know, let's not forget,

this is still magic internet money. I think a lot of people, oftentimes we get in our little, you know, Bitcoin bubbles and we talk to each other and we're not outside talking to other people as much.

And, you know, we've begun believing this thing's bigger than what it is and more people know about it than what they do or more people especially have trust in it than what they do. That's the big one that I feel like so many people miss.

The trust that it takes to, you know, go out and work a 50, 60, 70 hour a week job and take the money that you just busted your hump for. And instead of keeping it or spending it on something that you need to take it instead and put it in this magic internet money, you know, there's a level of trust that's required there

or insanity, whichever one you wanna choose. And, you know, so I think we get away from that a little bit and we start thinking that we're further along than what we are. There's obviously been a lot of great strides, you know, but we're seeing right now, we haven't even been done to enter really into the pushback stage.

We're, I mean, we're barely dipping a toe in the water, even with this tornado cash thing that they did on Ethereum, just sanctioning a tornado cash, which is unprecedented with what they've done, with the overreach that they perform.

But even as unprecedented and unbelievable as that move is, that's still, I mean, not even scratching the surface of what, you know, an actual adversarial environment would look like. And so, you know, I just, I don't want people to get, you know, into this complacent mindset.

I see it all the time that, you know, Bitcoin is inevitable, this thing is inevitable. Well, no, it's actually really not at all. And, you know, this thing, like just for example, I'll go back to this tornado cash thing.

I saw a guy did some analysis on it because they're basically blacklisting any address that, you know, tornic has withdrawn from or received from tornado cash in Ethereum's account-based system, long story short, within like four hops, you had, I think it was over 90% of the Ethereum network

was within four hops of a tornado cash recipient. So, you know, inadvertently, one single sanction, one single targeted sanction can potentially cripple an entire network if you're running on these compliant rails.

And so, it's the same thing with mining is there's one area that, you know, we haven't even really begun to see pop up, which is smaller pools. I think that's something that's gonna be pretty inevitable.

I think the regulation that's gonna be coming for the mining pools themselves. I mean, any day, I just expected every day that there's gonna be some sort of, especially in the United States KYC regulation in order to hook up to a United States-based pool, I don't see any way around how you're gonna have to do KYC to do that.

And when that starts happening, and the jurisdictional arbitrage is gonna start kicking in, you know, and people move their pools around, and now we're in this country, and you can only hop for so long before I start, I think we'll start seeing some smaller pools potentially popping in, we'll see hopefully some advancements

in the way that we structure our block templates. I don't know whether that's stratum V2 or something else, but there's still a long way to go as my point. And so I don't want to get so deep into this, well, just by Bitcoin thing, because that inevitably leads to the most convenient route to doing that, which is gonna be a KYC exchange.

And that's not a good future, in my opinion. - Yeah, I completely agree. And I like how you frame it, Bitcoin is not inevitable. Bitcoin is definitely our best hope, but it's not inevitable.

If we get complacent and you let everyone on Twitter keep, you know, marketing the same bullshit and hyping the same bullshit, then we lose what this movement's about. And like to me, that is what it is, it's a movement.

It is a way of saying, fuck off, we're not playing by your rules anymore, we've got our own game. Unless you have people who are willing to stand up and fight for it, we probably inevitably do end up with some sort of shitty version of what we originally had.

And people like to sort of act tough. You know, everyone says, oh yeah, fucking come and take my coins. It's like, well, yeah, how many times have you been in that situation where you've had someone threatening your life?

- Thank you. - Yeah, it's not gonna happen. That's not me saying it thinking I'm really tough. Like if someone comes here and they threaten my family and I'm gonna spend the rest of my time in jail, I'll probably fold.

Like in all honesty, like I probably would. Like I, you know, I really care about this, I really do, but do I wanna spend the rest of my life in prison if they've got me and they're gonna hang draw and call to me?

I don't know. I mean, I'd like to think I'd stand up to it, but I don't know. And they have incredible power and incredible reach. And I guess unless you stay a few steps ahead and start thinking about what can happen, that is what will happen.

And we've got a new pool that I saw the other day, terrible with names, but we've got them on in a few days anyway. We're gonna chat to them. And they're starting to use pay nims for the pay outs.

And I don't know too much more about the pool right now, but I'm like, that's a pretty cool step forward. You know, that's something that is helpful for people. And so there is a lot of bullshit out there, but there's a lot of good as well.

- Sure, that's a lint coin pool is-- - That's the one. - Yes. - Yeah, lint coin pool. And if I understand crap, I'm pretty sure they're a US-based pool. So they would be one that I would be concerned, you know, that they would be facing regulatory headwinds in short order.

However, here's the point about them implementing pay nims. Obviously, it's a good thing for users. It can eliminate address reuse for minors with no manual intervention. You know, right now you can prevent address reuse if you're a home minor, but you have to manually go into whatever pool you're using and change your withdrawal address.

- Yes, I do it every few weeks. It's a fucking pain in the audience. - It's just a pain. And so, you know, you should not have to do that. We have this thing that works perfectly fine. Bit 47 works perfectly fine.

You connect it up, once you're connected, you don't ever have to ask for an address again. You don't ever have to manually change it again. You're just going to receive to a fresh address that only you and the mining pool know.

You know, it's a no-brainer, but nobody's done it to this point. Why? Well, they don't have to. You know, it's not a problem yet. You know, nobody really cares that much. They'll play lip service to privacy, but they don't really care that much.

So, like I said, I do think that if I'm right and they are a US-based pool, I'm certain I'm almost positive they're going to face regulatory headwind. But the fact that they've implemented painters beyond helping their users is a great sign of their trajectory.

And oftentimes, trajectory in this space gets overlooked or hand-waved off. And it is one of the clearest indicators that you can have about what someone will do when the problems come. We've seen many instances, I won't really go through here, but many times where a trajectory was very clear if you paid attention.

It was very clear that, you know, if someone has you go over legal documents to use their product, when there's no actual need to go over legal documents to use their product, that's a sign of trajectory right there.

All right?

It's not a difficult one. So it's stuff like that. So these guys saying, "Hey, we care about user privacy. "Here's this tool that we can use." Boom, we're putting it in there. That tells me they're more likely, and at the very least, to not just roll over whenever these guys come and say, "Hey, we need to know all the information

"about all your miners." I'm not saying they won't be forced to at some point or shut down. I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying I don't think they will just roll over. And that's because they give off these signs.

So it's important to be picky about who you associate with, and especially who you give any sort of information about, I mean, for example, if you're mining without using some sort of networking privacy protection, like a VPN and you're mining at home, so your home IP address is going to that mining pool then.

So I mean, it's just one piece of data. It's not your name. It's not the nail in your coffin or anything, but it's a very powerful data point. And so you need to be careful with who you hand that over to.

You need to know, or at least have a good idea of who you're dealing with. - Yeah, I think that's a big one. And it's one we're going to be pushing all the way through this month is, I know a lot of home miners who don't use a VPN.

I know a lot of home miners who are revealing their IP address and to take all of those steps and do all of this work to get this KYC free Bitcoin and then to reveal something that really is quite intimate, it's quite personal, it's quite trackable for certain entities if a government gets hold of that

and they decide, oh, I want to shut down all these home miners, it's no trouble for them. And so these are the kind of tips and tricks and kind of what this month is about because you know what it's like?

You get into this rabbit hole and there's just layers and layers and layers of things that you have to break through to understand. And a lot of it's very complicated. And you know, most of the people who we're dealing with have day jobs, like they have families, they have shit they've got to do.

And like, they can't spend the whole lives, like some of the like Bitcoin philosophers, you know, they do fuck all else, you know what I mean? You can tell they do nothing else. You can tell that they're here and they're like, oh, how do I sort of string a sentence together that makes me sound like I have an IQ of a thousand?

And they'll sit there for a week and then they'll ponder on it and they'll release that out to the world. And they're like, oh my God, you're fucking amazing. But you know, the home miners, they're not really doing that.

And so how much they need to have the information. So what my hope is that people can come for this month and they can listen and it's going to be as interactive as possible. So people can ask questions and people will be there to answer and we've got a really cool team who have got loads and loads of skills, you know,

welders and plumbers and all sorts of really useful skills. And so my hope is that at the end, people can kind of come up with a plan where they can say, I've been thinking about home mining for a long time.

I now have all the information I need. I now have a list of people that I can ask questions. I can now join these telegram groups. And there's really nothing stopping me other than finding the sense to buy the hardware and plucking it in and that they don't miss these things because you could go and do it and set up the miner

and then you're like, oh fuck, I've just found out. I've got to run a VPN, I didn't know about that. - Right, yeah. - Yeah, and you know, you're absolutely doing it the right way. You know, I've made this point before but I think it's an important one.

The people that, you know, normal folks want to learn from, you know, I think there's a misconception where people think that, you know, the quote unquote normal people, the players or whatever, want to learn from the experts in the field.

You know, give me the blue check marked experts and that's actually not true at all because as you said, what an expert is more like they do is come in and use technical jargon, talk way above people's head, assume people know way too much and it's just not as useful.

Now when you're talking with somebody that is not a quote unquote expert, the only reason that they have knowledge is because they put their hands in it and figured it out. Not because they studied it at some four year university and wrote a theoretical dissertation on it and it, no, they just said, I think I can do this thing

and they got it in, they got it to their house, they plugged it in, they realized it was way louder than they thought it was and then they figured out some type of way to deal with that noise and then they figured out some type of way to deal with the heat and they figured out some type of way to deal with their electricity and, you know,

not because they were experts but because, you know, it was necessary and those are your teachers. Those are the people who are able to not sound like they're condescending down to somebody whenever they're meeting them at their level because they're at their level.

They just have a little bit more knowledge about this certain particular thing and it's much easier to take in that data, you don't feel nearly as defensive, you know, when you're talking with a really, really smart person, a lot of times your instinct is to get kind of defensive, like to prove how smart you are too, you know,

I know what that word means, you know, you don't want to be wasting time doing that. There's no point in an IQ dig measuring contest, we're just trying to pass it on an ill knowledge here, you know?

And that's what I'm so thankful for about me being able to not have to be like the face of this thing for lack of a better term. You know, it doesn't matter at all who wrote mining for the streets two and a half years ago.

It's completely irrelevant at this point because, you know, as cool as it was at the time or as good of a guy as it was or whatever, it could not matter less. It's almost like who Satoshi is.

And I'm not comparing myself to Satoshi before. That gets out there. What I say to that? I'm saying, I'm just saying, I'm just saying, it's almost as irrelevant as it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

- I know you may. - It's here now, you know? And you've got other people that are taking this thing on and they're taking it to levels that, you know, I didn't expect, I didn't, you know, anticipate any of this, you know, so to see, you know, econical activist and then you get guys like John on here and this whole group of people

of just misfit characters, you know, that just all come together around this one thing and collectively the knowledge that is possessed within that group is immense. It's amazing. And so everybody that listens or, you know, partakes in this month long event, everybody is gonna be able to come away with something.

And that's what's important. - I think so. And like you say, like, even if it's just giving the nudge and pointing people in the right direction and then inspiring people, I mean, econical alchemist, obviously we've mentioned him a couple of times on this pod.

Every time that I speak to him, every time that he's come on this podcast, he says, "I wouldn't have done what I've done "without diverter." And econical alchemist is, I mean, he's fucking mind-blowing.

The stuff that he puts out is- - Aladdin. - I mean, he is one day I will meet him and have a beer and hopefully he'll be there as well. And I very much look forward to it because this guy is just fucking putting out incredible content.

And again, he'll put this out and he's gonna inspire the next and the next and the next. And you were saying about, oh, who's the expert? The experts to me are the people who are really putting the work in, who are trying new things, they are finding innovative ways to make this work, they're not the blue checks.

Someone early on in my life, when I was very much on a wrong path, they've helped me a lot. And one of the things they said to me about experts, they said, Max, do you know what an expert is?

An X is a has-been and a spur is something that will leak under pressure. Don't listen to them. - I liked it. - And they're right. - Yeah, they're absolutely right. - They are right, yeah, they are right.

And we're not, the whole point of this thing is not to impress anybody with your qualifications or your degrees or anything like that. It's just to say, here, look at this cool thing I did, maybe it'll work for you.

And the whole idea is that that person that you're talking to, maybe they'll pick one or two good things that you gave from them, but it doesn't quite work for their area. So they innovate a couple of little other areas.

And then they put something out, hey, here's what I did with that. And it's just, it's a network effect. It just goes and goes and goes and there's no stop. And even seeing now the price has dropped back down to where mining is, like I said, basically right at the same sort of level that it was whenever I originally wrote this thing,

even through all that, like the enthusiasm has not dimmed. Of course, you've probably got, you've got some people out here that are disgruntled, I'm sure that they bought at the top, but you have that with literally anything.

If you buy anything at the top, you're probably gonna be pissed about it for a little bit. But in this particular field, I think there's even more hope in that because a lot of these things, first of all, you know, there's a big difference in looking at it through Bitcoin terms and looking at it through dollar terms.

And I still think that's very undervalued. And a lot of people don't do that enough. But just as an example, I mean, if you bought one of the new S-19s when Bitcoin was, you know, at $60,000, you're looking at, you know, 0.17-ish Bitcoin at that time, you know, for, and that's like a $11,000-something-dollar miner.

Well, you would pay very near that amount in Bitcoin if you were to be buying it now, you know, not much less, you know, in Bitcoin. So, you know, even though the dollar amount has drastically changed on paper, what you would actually pay in Bitcoin really hasn't.

If you spent your Bitcoin at the top, even though you bought something, you know, you got the maximum purchasing power out of your Bitcoin. So, you know, the thing that people get caught up in, you know, obviously we're still living in a very fiat world.

You know, we can't pretend that fiat just doesn't exist anymore and that it doesn't matter. You know, I can't stand that either. People act like, you know, if you bought Bitcoin with, you know, your life savings in fiat and it dropped 60%.

Oh, well, you still got such a, such amount of Bitcoin. Well, no, that doesn't really help. You know, let's not, let's not pretend we're not living in the real world here. But, you know, I made the case back then that a home minor in particular must have the most bullish outlook on Bitcoin.

Now, that you can take that to mean in dollar terms or you can take that to mean in power terms and, you know, change the world terms. You can take that to mean in, you know, gonna actually have an impact because I'm still at this place where if this thing really does begin having a real impact

and start doing some of the things that we think it can do, which is mainly draw power away from them and give it back to the individual. If that's the case, there's just no way that they're just gonna let this power go and just shrug their shoulders.

Hey, yeah, we had a good one. You know, let's just adopt Bitcoin. What do you say, guys? That's, no, no, that's not gonna go like that. So if you believe this thing is as powerful as, you know, what we believe that it is, then you're very bullish on Bitcoin.

Even if the price doesn't rise astronomically, you're still very bullish on Bitcoin because you think that this thing can have the impact of actually changing the power dynamics of the entire world.

And that's, you know, I don't think that's too grandiose of a statement. If you get enough people that really understand what they own, I think the more they understand it, the more they'll begin to look for ways to sever their identity from it and, you know, stay off of their list.

You know, like I said before, it's one thing, if you're a targeted individual, you know, if you're a target of the FBI or the NSA, you know, we're not really talking about that because at that point, you know, it's a problem.

What we're talking about is your ability to resist coercion. All right, if you see people around you getting, you know, whatever subpoenas or even getting arrested or whatever, whenever they say, hey, you need to custody this Bitcoin at Coinbase exchange.

Otherwise, you know, it's illegal to self custody, which I think is a very real possibility. So say we see that going down and you see your neighbors getting these subpoenas and getting these letters or getting visits from law enforcement or whatever the case may be, you see the examples, are you more willing,

are you more able to resist that coercion if you know for a fact, your name is not on that same list that your neighbor's name is on? That's a no brainer to me. Obviously, if you're not on the same list that your neighbors are on, then you are more able and likely thus more willing to stand up and say, you know,

to yourself, no, you don't know, I'm not turning it in. That is a real come and take it situation. You know, when they have your whole identity, there is no come and take it. It's, you know, you get an email and they'll take it.

- Yeah, yeah, and I do see it going that way. I don't know what the timeframe is. You know, is it a year, is it 10, is it 20, is it 30? - I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that's going to happen.

Like you said, you know, if you have ultimate power, if you have the power to literally steal time, you are not going to give that up. Like it's like, it is the ultimate power. Why would you and the people who have it are fucking mental.

They're not just going to go, oh yeah, that's all right. I'll just retire and I'll just sit on the porch and I'll just chill and one day I'll die in no way. - You know, the other thing is, yeah, sure.

If the FBI or some of these three letter agencies, they want to go and find us. I was speaking for myself here, like, I like to think my privacy is okay, but it's nowhere near good enough.

They could find me and I'd be fucked. You know, I'm not Satoshi. I'm not a fucking, you know, I'm not a fucking genius who really thinks this thing through. Like I'm just doing my best. I'm muddling through and trying to put content out and trying to learn, but, you know, I'm a fucking idiot.

I'm just trying to do my best. They find me. You know, there might be some people who can do it, but the point is that you can still avoid some of the other lists. Like, you know, I think people maybe discount the fact that they're saying, oh, well, you know, governments are going to fall and everything's going to be terrible.

It's, you know, they're going to be fucked and we're going to win. We, it's like, okay, play that forward. When you win, you have all of these police officers and military and everybody else who are trained.

They no longer have jobs. They have nooses around their neck. They have bills and they have families. How quickly are they going to look at the lists with your name and IP address and details and go, oh, this rich fucker has 100 Bitcoin.

How quickly are they going to come to your house? I think people discount that and it's like, believing in one hand, that's definitely going to happen. They're definitely going to lose power.

And in the other hand, ah, yeah, be fine. You know, I can use the exchanges. It's not really a problem. And it's like a lot of the people who are doing this mental gymnastics are the think boys in the space.

So the people who and people are like, oh my God, they have a thousand IQ. And it's like, no, or they might do, but they're still fucking retarded because it's going to happen. - Right, well, you know, it doesn't take, you know, a psychic to figure this stuff out.

You don't have to have any foresight at all. As a matter of fact, you can just look to history, recent history, there's plenty of empirical evidence to show that at every single time that Bitcoin has been in a position to actually have an impact and take their power away from them, what's happened.

Look at the Canadian truckers. You know, they took away their finances. They took away their ability to finance. And they said, ha, ha, ha, now your protest is over. And they said, oh yeah, we'll take Bitcoin.

What happened? It's not difficult to see whenever the shit hits the fan and they really figure out, holy shit, I can't actually stop this thing. What do we do? It's like a drowning person.

They're just scratching a clawing for every ounce of anything to save them, to save their power. You know, and if you have someone that's drowning, they're gonna grab literally anything to raise themselves up.

So when they're drowning in the loss of their power, that's it, there's gonna be scratching and clawing and gnashing of teeth. And they're gonna pull out all the stops and then we fast forward just a little bit to this tornado cash thing, for example, even though it's not Bitcoin, it's very relevant.

And suddenly we see that they essentially, they've just done something that they've never done before. They've sanctioned basically open source code and arrested a developer of open source code.

Not like a company head or a guy that wrote the code. Maybe he received some fees from the service. You know what I mean? He's that they've drastically overstepped wherever they've gone before.

And that just further illustrates the point that when their power is actually challenged, you know, when something's happening like, you know, North Korean money is being, to use the quote unquote, longer through this, you know, privacy application, what do they do?

They're just rewrite the rules. They own all the pins. If you're looking at the laws as they're written today and saying, oh, yeah, well, that means five, 10 years from now, when everything's crumbling, they'll have to abide by these laws.

Well, no, they own the pins. They own the paper. They own the gabbels. They own all the stuff that dictates what these laws are. If you think they won't rewrite whatever they need to rewrite or find whatever loophole they need to find, that's what's gonna happen.

So the least you can do is not be the lowest hanging fruit. The least you can do is not be sitting on a completely warrantlessly accessible list that can be obtained with a simple email. That's the least you can do, you know, if you really believe in what this thing's doing.

Now, if you're speculating on Bitcoin, if you're buying Bitcoin because you think that it will appreciate in USB price and you hope at some point, you know, in the near future to sell it for a higher price and make more dollars, you know, okay, whatever.

Like, you're not really gonna care about this. And there's probably plenty of people that even that will listen to this that will probably think we're, you know, crazy conspiracy theorists and pressures or whatever.

I'm sure, even seeing the evidence in front of their face, ah, ah, ah. But, you know, that's fine too. I'm not saying that, you know, Bitcoin should be permissioned and who's allowed to buy it and who's not.

What I am saying is understand who you are and be very real with yourself and what you believe and what you're actually doing. And if you do actually believe in this thing and you have a principled stance or reason that you're buying Bitcoin because you want to have a part in changing the power dynamics of the world,

there's just, I just don't see any way that you can in your mind justify handing over your entire identity to the very people that you're trying to take that power from, you know. It'll never make a sense.

- Yeah, basically the two ways that I see this can be combated is circular economies. It's what I've been really enjoying like seeing more people starting to actually interact and spend their Bitcoin and interact and buy and sell from each other.

That's something that's happening more with the people that I speak to day to day. That's pretty cool. I'm liking seeing people say, okay, well, I'm trying to onboard my butcher or I'm trying to onboard somebody that I deal with day to day and explain to them, you know.

Maybe you have some of the same problems I do. Maybe you don't trust your government. Maybe you think that some of the tax laws are a bit fucking disgusting. Maybe you feel like you've been squeezed a little bit too hard over the last few years.

Maybe you feel like you don't trust the fact that your pension is actually gonna be paid out. Whatever it is, there's a long, long list. And some of these people, my view is that if they can be onboarded and they can say, okay, cool.

I see this as like a cash and maybe some of it's off the books and maybe it's a little bit of savings under the mattress. And I can dip my toe in and I might do 5% of my business through this.

And I see that starting to grow possibly. And the other thing that I start seeing to grow is like this mining side. And I kind of think that the two of them again go hand in hand. And so like I was saying to you before, like three days of the week, I do 15 hours a day in a truck and I drive all around the country and I deliver roofing.

And it's fucking boring and it's hot. It gives me a chance to listen to all the different audio books and everything else that I wanna learn about. And so I sit in these vans and I deliver to small businesses.

And these small businesses generally have warehouses. And most of the time I get chatting to the former and I get chatting to somebody who owns the business. And it's always the same complaints.

How you doing? Oh, fucking hell. Hanging in there, mate. All right. Fucking rates have gone up. Electricity's gone up. COVID locked us down and we're barely hanging in there. Let go of the forklift driver.

I'm doing all of that now. So I'm unloading you and blah, blah, blah. And you're like, that sounds a bit shit. And there's a part of me that's thinking, I wanna take this guy to one side and say, listen, you could start mining here.

I can see you've got space heaters running 'cause it's cold here. I understand that you've got these problems. I can fix that. Maybe not all of it, but I can help. The problem that I have is I'm the idiot driver.

I don't wanna say to them, oh, well, there's this magic internet money and blah, blah, blah, blah, because they'll just be like, fuck off, why don't wanna listen to you? And secondly, by doing that, I docked my identity.

You go around and you speak to all these different places and they're like, oh, that's the Bitcoin guy. Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. And so all this stuff that you're doing of trying to hide your identity, then suddenly it's like, well, what's the point?

'Cause everyone knows who you are. So this is the problem. And so that's kind of the whole point of running this podcast is like, maybe I'm max bit by bit. No one knows the name. Maybe someone listens.

Maybe someone goes, oh, actually, he's got a good point. 'Cause electricity is free. So that could actually work. And yeah, I don't trust the government 'cause no one does. It's not like it's us.

It's not like, oh, it's Bitcoin is all. It's weirdos are on the internet. Every fucking person that I speak to who actually works and actually pays bills and actually has a business. They all have the same problem.

Listen, you have to be really, really deep into the brainwashing to not have noticed the last, you know, two and a half, three years to notice what's happened. And the way the government has treated its citizens, no matter what country you live in.

Now, I mean, it's a worldwide problem. So, you know, right now is like, it's peak onboarding time. Like everybody can see, everybody can understand an argument for Bitcoin right now. If ever they were going to understand it right now is the time they can understand it.

And so that's what I think is so good about in particular the types of people that you're bringing together here for this mining month. And that's because listeners are, as I've kind of said before, everybody's gonna have something that they're gonna be able to take away from this.

You know, it's not like everybody's being pushed to, you know, start a business mining to, you know, bring in 15 or 20 miners. It's not as if there's a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone, but there's someone in this group of individuals that are gonna be trying to hand out some information.

There's somebody that's speaking your language in here. Whether that's the guy, you know, like I've made it a point this whole time to consistently, consistently be done about how, you know, you can unplug a clothes dryer and plug in a single miner.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. You know, you do not have to scale up if you don't want to. You can plug in one miner and, you know, dollar cost average through your electric bill.

Nobody says you have to get more. Nobody says you don't. But, you know, I just want, I don't want people to feel like there's any set path here because there's not, it's very much uncharted territory.

And the whole point is we're trying to find the pioneers. We want the people that are ready to blaze this trail and towards something new. And so I think what you guys are gonna do for this next month is gonna have an impact that I'm quite sure you can't even imagine right now because I kind of know the feeling

and what it's like to kind of put one of these things out there. And maybe it's a hit, maybe it's not. I'm quite sure the environment's right. The people that you put together are right. They know what they're talking about, but they're not talking down to anyone.

So has a lot of potential. And I'm really, very excited to see where it goes. - Well, thank you, mate. And like I said before, thank you because I really do see you are the godfather of this.

And having you involved is fucking awesome. And yeah, I think you're right. I think that having all of these people who really are getting their hands dirty is important. They never, ever speak down to anyone.

They're some of the most lovely, helpful people I've ever spoken to. We also have the possibility with all of these giveaways that even someone might be listening to this and they're saying, well, fuck buying 20 miners or a warehouse of miners, I can't even buy one.

Well, you know, John's giving two S9s away. Kaboom Raps is giving a couple of S9s away. Cryptoclopes is giving a fan shrouds away. We've got all these companies who are coming here and we said, look, we don't want any Sats.

We just want you to give cool shit away so that people can listen and give it a go. That's the hope is that anyone from, from someone who has no money to spare, they could potentially get involved.

Even up to the people who say, well, fuck it. I'll go and buy 50 miners and I'll plug them in. 'Cause I've got a spare wing of my house and I'll just go and do that, you know. Whoever it is.

Well, yeah, and not only can that jump start somebody, but it really just kind of shows where the heart of this thing is, you know, and where the heart of the people involved in this thing is.

You know, there's really nothing to gain from giving this stuff away. You know, it's not like they're not asking for anything in return. There's no expectation in return. The only expectation is that, you know, you are interested that you want to know more, that you're entering with an open mind,

that you're not, you know, trying to shut down any sort of suggestions or arguments you're entering and you're looking at this thing with possibilities in your eyes. That's really the only requirement.

And so for them to see that the people involved, that's how they feel about things. This is how they do business. This is, they want you to succeed. I think that has a huge impact. And my greatest achievement, if I have any, is in my opinion, is that I am able to sit back now and not have to have anybody know anything about me

or have ever read "Miny for the Streets" and are still now picking up some of that same knowledge from someone completely new that I've never heard of. And there's people I heard right now that I've never met.

I've never read a single tweet of theirs, I'm sure. And they're putting out mining guides and helping somebody get started. That to me is like the ultimate reward. And so if this thing continues to spread, which I think it will, I think it's only become more important.

It'll be because of people like you and John and all the guys getting together and continuing this thing on. Not because, you know, some guy wrote something a couple of years ago. It's all the people that are continuing on this legacy that are really gonna have the impact.

So I'm very happy with it, man. I'm really glad to see it. - Awesome, well, as I said before, thanks for getting involved, mate. I really do appreciate it. It's been lovely catching up with you.

And hopefully during the month, maybe we'll catch up a little bit more, but yeah, thanks for all you've done. And one day when the land of the free becomes free again, and I'm allowed to step foot in your beautiful country 'cause I'm still not allowed in.

But one day, we'll go and have a bit. You unvaxed, undesirable. So I don't know what to do with you guys. (laughing) Yeah, but yeah, hopefully, you know, we get to get together, meet Eco together.

I promise you what you have in your mind, what you think he is, that's exactly what he is. You'll love it, like exactly what you're thinking. You're dead on. So yeah, great guy. - Awesome, yeah, thanks again, mate.

And we'll catch up soon. - Yeah, appreciate it. Thanks for listening, and if you aren't already following Diverter, go and do it now. Stop fucking around. Here's one of the best follows on Twitter.

I wanna thank him for coming on the show, and I wanna thank all of you for listening. If you haven't already gone onto ungovernable misfits.com, go and check it out. We're gonna have a whole page dedicated to this month.

We've also got the pleb mining shirts and loads more. Thanks again, and we'll catch you on the next one.