Bud bunnies, bitcoin and permaculture

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 deliver to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back. Today's episode is with Carl. He's a mesh dodeleian, and he was in the pleb mine a month. If you haven't listened to that episode, you can go back and put a link in the show notes.

Carl has a really interesting setup and some great takes on both Bitcoin and self sovereignty. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I hope you enjoy listening. Before we kick things off, I just want to say a big thank you to Urban Hacker for supporting the show.

If you haven't checked out his incredible project, you can go back a couple of episodes and listen to our interview. I'll also be having him back on the show very soon after I've had my demo on his game.

Also, a big thank you to Mr. Crown for keeping the ungovernable misfits website looking fresh. If you haven't already checked it out, go to ungovernable misfits.com. There's articles, pods, bite-sized bitcoins, and merch.

If you're new to the show and you're taking self custody for the first time, or if you're a long-time listener and you're thinking about upgrading your setup, you really need to check out Foundation devices.

They make my favorite hardware and they have an absolutely world-class team. I mentioned them in this episode because I really do think that they are the best out there. They're so simple to use and they have an onboarding service for anyone who wants their hand held.

Not only that, but their fully open source and they're absolutely beautifully designed. Check them out at foundation devices.com and you can use the code bit by bit to get a $10 off. Also, a big thank you to FastBitcoins.

In this episode, me and Carl talk about the trade-offs between KYC and non-KYC sats. Although I push people towards no KYC, my friends, my family, and listeners, I do understand that not everyone is gonna do it.

Or maybe you are gonna do it, but not quite yet. If you are going to give your details to a KYC service, make sure that they're a good one. Remember that you're giving over to your personal identification.

They also want to know how much Bitcoin you have unless you put it through Whirlpool and then it's harder for them to track after that. So if you are gonna use one of these services, I can only suggest FastBitcoins.

I know the team well. I know they do everything they can to keep your information secure. And if anyone has any questions about the trade-offs, feel free to reach out to me. Check them out at fastbitcoins.com.

Enjoy the show. - Hey, how's it going? - Yeah, all good, mate. Nice to have you on. We obviously had our little chat when you came on with chat. I have to say, like your whole set-up sound really interesting and I've been meaning to get you back for a while.

So it was just a chance to get to know you a little bit and you're set up and a bit of your background, really. - Sure, where do we want to start? You want to hear about what I've learned now that I've been using not mining with the extrasolar power at my yurt or do you want to start at like how I got involved in Bitcoin to begin with?

- Why don't we start at where you are now? You're set up and I know you're selling some produce for Bitcoin and you've got your farm there. So maybe let people know what it is that you're doing and then we'll get into the sort of origin story and all that as well.

- Cool. So I am on a 20-acre homestead in Southwest Michigan. I've been doing this for about seven years now. I think I'm starting year eight in April. I kind of got into the mining aspect with the solar setup at my yurt through starting at going to the Bitcoin meetups.

There was a local Bitcoin meetup here near my place and then from there I met Sid who was doing a tour from meetup to meetup all across the country and he ended up staying at the yurt that I had built and from there I sort of got inspired to.

Once that kind of really made me realize that, hey, this Bitcoin culture, there's people out there that you can meet, it's real. And so from there I started getting a little bit more interactive on Twitter and then John kind of stumbled across my Twitter post somehow and he got me sort of involved in some of the Telegram groups

and through all of that he connected me up with Chet 'cause I was interested, I had mentioned to John like, hey, I'm interested in trying to figure out how to look a miner up to my solar panels so when my batteries are full I can be using that extra power to mine Bitcoin.

And it just so happened that Chet was also in Michigan and he had an S9 that he was willing to order for, do a value for value trade. And so we ended up, I gave him some of the stuff that I was growing here on the homestead in exchange for the miner.

We had no real contract built. He was just gonna show up, help me get started and then I would give him whatever he felt was valuable enough for what was worth it basically for that interaction.

And so since then that was, I can't remember if that was in late July or August sometime around then. And so I had a few summer months to really play with the miner, I've just got an S9 and what I've been doing is I dialed down with brains the wattage so that I ended up finding out that about 500, 550 watts was what I could handle

with this one kilowatt solar setup that I was using. And I could run it for about four to five hours a day on a good sunny day. If there's clouds, no quite, I couldn't do it at all. The reason why I found that sweet spot, you would think that you could dial down the wattage so that I could run it for a longer period of time

but the efficiency of the miner got so low. Like for example, when I had run it, when I was running it at 350 watts, I wasn't even getting like two and a half tera hash out of it, at 550 I could get almost six or a little bit better.

And so that was like that sweet spot where I was mining for this shorter period of time but actually contributing more hash to the network for the power that I was using. And so really what I've realized is that AI either need more solar panels or more batteries in order to really make the duration that I'm mining more reasonable.

It really has opened my eyes to sort of the limitations of a solar power system. I really didn't think that the clouds would have such a great effect on how much power you could be taking an obvious and hindsight but I figured it's still light outside.

I can see with my own eyes so therefore there should be some power coming into the panels. But really in a cloudy day, I'm getting almost no power on the batteries. And so if I scaled up the panels, then sure, I would be able to probably get enough to continue mining.

And I think that's honestly the cheapest route. And what I do with this year is I rent that on Airbnb. I offer this clamping experience. And so I did find too that the guests, while I was upfront about the fact that the solar power is not guaranteed, it's based on the weather, they were obviously a lot less happy

when they run out of power at midnight. They're drinking, playing cards with each other and then the lights just turn off because it was a cloudy day that day and the batteries couldn't get topped off enough to make it through the night.

And so rather than increasing the size of the battery storage, which is pretty expensive and the batteries are, they don't last as long as the panels, their longevity is shorter. If I just double the size of the solar array, then I can increase the chances that I will have a topped off battery bank at the end of the day.

And plus I'll be, when the battery bank is topped off, I'll have that much extra juice to be pushing into this S9. - Yeah, that makes sense. I always wondered with the solar panels, they have a pretty good life cycle on them from what I understand.

So does it make sense if you've got enough land to buy older panels, which maybe aren't quite as efficient or you need a larger surface area, but buy them cheap used rather than going for new stuff, or does it not quite work out that way?

- That's something, it's interesting to think about. I haven't really considered it until you bring it up right now. And I guess, so another aspect that I'm sort of looking into with sort of this regenerative, like what kind of energy do I have on the property that I can convert into electricity to then mine Bitcoin with?

And I've known about this wood gasification technology for a long time, but there was never really an incentive to take the leap and really figure out how to do it. I've got biomass that I can burn all over the property.

And so I guess I could start thinking about the comparisons between, okay, if I take my effort and build one of these wood gasifiers to then take all the prunings from my trees and deadfall and burn that, use the power to mine Bitcoin, use the heat to do other things with like preheat maple sap, oil maple syrup, heat a greenhouse,

use the power for all different sorts of things versus finding cheap solar panels. And the thing with the solar panels is you do need wires to connect them all together. So there's some logistical stuff involved with that where where do I put the panels up?

Can I be grazing my sheep underneath them at the same time? I'd have to figure out the other advantages to the panels just beyond mining the Bitcoin, which since we've just started discussing it right now, I haven't thought about it too much, but it's actually a pretty interesting concept.

Like go find some old busted up panels that are still producing some power, make a sheep shelter, like make a shade shelter in one of the paddocks for the sheep, run those lines to the charge controller at the yurt.

And then now I've got extra juice to be mining some more Bitcoin with. - Yeah, I do see people like replacing panels and you quite often see like, you know, a house has got 20 panels on it.

And then suddenly they're doing a remodeling and those things often like go for fuck all. You know, then they're putting the newer, more modern, thinner, lighter, whatever, better panels.

And it's like, okay, they're better. But say these are 30% less efficient, but if they're five times less money and you've got the space, well, it makes sense. And you know, with pleb mining, I feel like you just have to be scrappy in that way and just try and sort of find an edge.

'Cause you know, you could do that. You can go and find like 10 panels, 20 panels. That's not a problem. But these larger miners can't go and do that because they're not going to go and find somewhere that has 100,000 panels.

It's a different game. - Exactly. Yeah. And I think the key factor there for me would be figuring out what can I be doing with the panels and the power from them beyond just getting it to my Bitcoin?

Can I use the shade from the panels to keep my sheep cooler in the summertime? With the extra power, if I need to, would I be using that to pump water? Stuff like that. So the reason why the wood gasification is particularly attractive is because that's taking something like, you know, an energy stream that I already have

that I'm not really currently utilizing to its fullest extent. And the heat, it can be really valuable from that wood gasification process. Now I've got power on demand where I can be producing that power at night.

I can, you could theoretically, if you size it, right, be running that miner 24/7 at whatever power limitation. And if you'd be able to find a different balance with your waste flow and the energy flows that you have.

So that's really where my head's at right now is really working towards getting a small gasifier set up so I can run like a little two kilowatt generator with it and really start playing around.

And once I learn a little bit more, maybe scale that up. And who knows, if you can mine Bitcoin, why can't you power your house? You know, the power of my house is obviously more important than mining Bitcoin to me.

And then if I can power my house by burning the wood, that's naturally growing on my property. I think that's a pretty big win. Anything extra, now you're making sats too. - Beautiful. Is it like a large film, small film?

Like what's the size of this thing? - I'd say we're at a homestead scale. We have about 20 acres, 10 of which is pasture, 10 of it is wood, primarily sugar maple trees. And so we've got a flock of about 20 breeding cotodden use sheep, which we raise for lamb.

We started off everything that we're kind of doing here. We start off doing for ourselves. If we're successful at it, we scale to the size that's appropriate for our property and then sort of sell, try and sell and monetize the excess.

And so the sheep are a big component of our like revenue stream. Now this was the first year where we actually had a large enough flock to where we had all the meat that we could use for the year as far as lamb is concerned and plenty extra to sell.

And so another thing that we're doing, like I said, we have the sugar maple trees. I've been adding more taps year by year as I get better at figuring out the efficiencies in how to boil that sap down, how to filter, how to concentrate the sap and turn it into syrup in the most efficient way.

And so this is the first year that I think, well, every year I've basically been doubling the taps. And I did 35 taps last year. So this year I'm gonna do 60 or 70. And another cool thing that we have two half linger draft horses.

And so this year I think I'm also gonna build a little sleigh, a little sled to then harvest the sap with. So I won't be needing to burn diesel fuel for my tractor to actually get the sap either.

- Awesome. So what they'll pull you around and you'll go and collect with that? - Yeah, they'll just pull a little, we collect in 55 gallon barrels. Last year one collect I would collect about once a week and that would be about 100 gallons from the 35 taps.

- Wow. - And so, yeah, it really, the trees do pump out a lot of sap when they're flowing. And so yeah, we just, instead of driving around with these barrels on the tractor, I would just use the horses to pull the barrels around and fill them that way.

And that's good, I mean, that'll give the horses something to do in the wintertime in the past, we haven't really worked them too much in the winter. So I think they'll enjoy it. Once again, we're feeding them hay to keep them going anyways, so why not get some work out of them too?

And so we've got the maple syrup business. That was actually one of the first things that I started selling when I was going to the, when I started going to the Bitcoin meetups, I thought, well, I'll bring a few jars of syrup and see if anyone wants to pay Sats for them.

And it was very popular to the point where now people are saying, hey, when are you gonna have more of that syrup? 'Cause I sold out of it. And so we're producing maple syrup. We have a rabbit colony, which is primarily just for our own meat consumption.

And we symbiotically grow our cannabis in with the rabbits. So what the rabbits do is they weed and fertilize the cannabis. We plant the cannabis in a way which excludes the rabbits from being able to eat the plants and just kill them entirely.

And then the cannabis actually gets so large that the extra cannabis can feed and grow the rabbits. And so we're producing a system of rabbit meat and cannabis in one that really doesn't require too much inputs.

I had some composted horse manure to give the cannabis a little bit of a boost and I water them to get things going. But once they're established, that system just kind of runs on its own.

And we do feed the, don't get me wrong, we do feed the rabbits like weeds and tree trimmings and other stuff in a custom grain mix to keep them growing wells. But it's not, they're not totally 100% fed on the cannabis but it does supplement their diet to a significant degree.

- And is that all just done outside or do you have to have the greenhouses or? - It's completely outdoor, yeah. So I start the cannabis plants in like late, well mid-March maybe. Last year I kind of messed that up.

I got greedy and I wanted to try and get them outside sooner and ended up freezing my starts and I had to start from seed all over again. So this year I'm gonna, you know, I've learned from that mistake and I'm gonna have some that I'm gonna keep inside growing that I'm sure will make it and then try and get greedy with the ones outside

and give them the earlier start. And if they make it, they make it. And that way it won't be totally down and out. Yeah, so we plant the cannabis out in right around May. That's when early May is when our chance of a heart, a killing frost is pretty much over and we let those plants grow outside in the sun

until about late October or November is when we harvest. And we just see how big we can get, how big they can grow. We're following all the laws here in Michigan for the recreational, recreational grow.

We're not like able to grow. It's really kind of cost prohibitive to do a grow at our scale and actually be involved with selling it wholesale or doing even one of these micro, I forget what they call it, but where you can sell the cannabis directly to customers.

So we're just producing the cannabis for our own needs. And that was one of the problems that we were trying to solve is like growing outside the plants get pretty big and you can grow a lot more cannabis than one family really could realistically consume.

And so it's like, what do we do with all this extra stuff? I can't even give it all away. So we decided to turn that into rabbit meat. And it's, I mean, I think that, well hemp is a very high quality animal feed.

So this cannabis is also a very high quality animal feed. - Done question, but they don't eat the buds. Presumably they're just like eating the stalks and leaves and stuff like that. - They will eat the buds.

But like I said, I'm happy to sacrifice some. They can't reach it all. These plants get, one year we were really successful. The plants were pushing 15 feet, 15 feet tall and 15 feet wide.

- Whoa, that's massive. - But they don't get high if they eat at any way, do they? - No, yeah. You need to eat to activate the psychoactive properties of the cannabis. - Okay, that could be interesting.

- I have heard that they do, they're able to store the CBD's in their fat. And so when you eat the rabbits, you're getting some CBD elements as well. - Wow, very nice. I've never heard of someone having rabbits in there with them that's new to me.

- Yeah, it just kind of was one of those things where we had a problem of where do we, we didn't want to keep our rabbits in cages anymore. We wanted to build this colony and place for them to be outside and have their own space.

And we just couldn't figure out a place to do it. And then there's just something that click like, hey, you can put rabbit manure directly on plants and it's not too hot and the plants can access that nutrient right away.

And so we're like, maybe the rabbits can be passively fertilizing the cannabis. And then once we realized they would eat all the weeds down too, it's like, whoa, the rabbits are doing two pieces of work for us to help us grow this cannabis.

And the trick was just figuring out how to keep them from killing the cannabis entirely. Another thing that we're doing, we grow perennial, so with our sheep, we graze rotationally. So we're moving the sheep in different paddocks every one to three days.

And our long-term strategy with that is to have these perennial fruit trees and perennial vegetables in rows in between the sheep paddocks. So theoretically, you'd have a strip of grass, a row of trees with perennial vegetables growing underneath, and then another strip of grass and another row of trees.

And you just graze the sheep in between those. And it's the same concept, whereas the sheep are passing through eating the grass. They're keeping the competition of the grass down for your trees.

At the same time, they're leaving their manure and urine there, which can then, we were able to harvest that passively. And that's passively also fertilizing the trees. - Yeah, I love this kind of concept of thinking a little bit deeper about farming and produce.

And I guess, again, a bit like the mining, when you've got a homestead, you have to be smart about how you do things. You have to make the most of everything that you've got on there. And would you class that, what you're doing then as permaculture?

- Yes, yeah, oh yeah. So permaculture is the framework that we're using to design all of these systems. I think like, for us, it's like, we're practicing permaculture, we're homesteading and practicing permaculture, and then you could consider the products that we produce regenerative.

So, but to me, the permaculture is the true framework and essence of the ethics that we're trying to follow here. And then we end up with something that's regenerative as a result. - Yeah, it was funny.

I'd never heard of it previously. And then obviously when speaking to Chino, early days of setting up the mestadale, and a lot of the discussion was around permaculture, and then speaking to Joel and others as well, it was just like a little bit like Bitcoin to me.

It was like, well, this seems fucking obvious. Like once you wrap your head around it, like, why would you ever do this any other way? It seems so obvious, but you never hear about it. A lot of friends and people around here, they're all into like the organic scene, and there's a lot of talk about that kind of stuff,

but the permaculture stuff is never ever mentioned. It's just not. And I do wonder why, whether it's like, almost like a technology or an idea that's suppressed in some way, because it seems, well, you're doing it, it seems to be working for you.

Have you got any thoughts on that? Like why people aren't doing it? - That's a good question. I think it's just, there's, so permaculture is kind of like free open source software in a way, where it's just these guys in Australia came up with this framework in order to create what they thought would,

if you implemented these three ethics and 12 principles, and you applied that to growing food, building community, building business, all these things, that the result of that would end up with a culture that is permanent, or put another way, a culture that could persist through time.

It would be a very resilient culture that would take a lot to destroy it. Now, the issue with that is that there's no marketing department for this, a lot like Bitcoin, or open source software, so it just has to grow through basically proving itself.

People have to see what I'm doing, my neighbors, people on the internet have to see what I'm doing, and see that it's successful, and say, hey, we should try and start doing it this way too.

There's, like with the organic thing, there's a certifying, you know, there's rules, and marketing behind it, and I think that it's, it's just gotten, it's been able to get in front of people into the cultural lexicon a little bit more easily because it's being blasted out there through these news channels, and media channels, and stuff.

I guess that's why I think. It's just gonna have to take time. More people are practicing permaculture all the time. I think more and more people have heard of it. The other thing too is that when you start implementing permaculture, it's not really like a, now I'm certified permaculture, it's just a sort of a lifestyle almost,

or a gradual process of continuously refining and building your systems. So there's never really like, you can't just prove to somebody with a certificate that you've got permaculture produced goods and services.

That makes any sense. - Carl, I'm an idiot. I just driveled on for like five minutes, and I had my microphone muted. - Oh no. - Yeah, I don't know where you got to, but I keep muting it 'cause there's loads of background noise at my house, so every time I stopped, I was thinking, "Oh, he's gonna say something here."

And then it was silence. And I was like, "Oh, I'll drivel on for another minute." (laughing) - Yeah, I mean, I should have said something. I thought you just lost the connection, Ron. - Sorry, no.

That's good. I kind of ended off with just, yeah. The difference I think between permaculture and organic is that there's a certification for organic, which makes it a little bit more easily presentable to the general population.

You can, it's something that people can understand a little bit more easily, rather than permaculture is very great. There's no real rules to say that one person's practicing permaculture and another person isn't.

It's very subjective to the individual. - I like that. And I think that's the big crossover with Bitcoin. You have people who are technically capable and who've been involved in Bitcoin for a long time, but they're now starting to think very carefully about what they consume and what they feed their families.

So to have different people from different sides, being able to share these ideas is important. And much the same, like there's no certification or there's no point where you're done. It's just testing ideas, seeing if they work iterating.

It's constantly moving. I think that that crossover is really important. And I think we're just gonna keep seeing more and more of it. - Yeah, I mean, I think Bitcoin is really kind of missing piece to really push permaculture as a concept forward for people to start utilizing it.

There's this idea that if it's permanent culture, you need permanent money to facilitate that. So like the idea that Bitcoin is this money that will theoretically persist for hundreds, thousands, who knows how long of years.

If you have money that creates that foundation, now you can start to build a culture around it through these ethics and principles that can also persist and becomes very resilient. - And the networking as well, being able to go to Bitcoin meetups, being able to have access to people who generally are kind of thinking along the same lines,

maybe don't have so much trust in these organizations where they used to buy their food from and it gives you access to that group very quickly. And you have that kind of common ground. You're like, okay, we agree that this is the medium of exchange.

It's easy to do trade with and also people are very willing to like give tips and advice on how to help each other. Or that's been my experience anyway. - Yeah, and there's no, once again, there's no rules around the proper way to use Bitcoin.

You can get as creative as you want and how to utilize this protocol and this network. Similarly with permaculture, you can get as creative as you want and how you apply your idea of the three ethics and 12 principles.

- I'd love to start getting involved in permaculture, I've been saying it for years. I guess one of the things over here is, I asked you, oh, is it a big farm? Is it a small farm? You're like, oh, you know, small, like homestead, about 20 acres, like to me here where I am in England, 20 acres of land is fucking expensive.

So like the idea of having that much land in this part of the country is just like practically impossible. But at some point, I would love to get involved and start doing, I've had like vegetable patches previously.

I've done that kind of stuff, but it kind of worked out that the amount of time and effort I was putting in, it just wasn't worth it for me at the time. I had, what were they? They're probably like six foot, no, they're probably like eight foot by four foot.

I built them up from railway sleeper. So they were all like raised beds and I had four of them. But anything I grew just got absolutely annihilated by slugs, beetroot did quite well, all my lettuce or anything like that.

I grew, it was just absolutely destroyed. I had some like mint and some other bits, but yeah, it just, it became, I don't know, a little bit more effort than it was worth for me, but I would like to do it again.

- That's been kind of to that point too of trying something and then seeing that, oh God, there's this predator, this problem that I just can't solve the problem to that. In a similar way, we started off trying to grow like a lot of, 'cause we have the space, we tried to grow a lot of vegetables.

And to our problem was is that we put in so many that we couldn't keep up with the maintenance on them and instead of getting one nice big pepper plant, we had 50 small, barely producing anything pepper plants.

And so like in that situation, it's like darn it, you spent all the time to build these really sweet beds and then the stuff that you're planting in them is being attacked. And I think I heard you describe this problem in a different podcast as well.

And there was some discussion around like, well, you could get ducks to eat the slugs. Another option would be that you kind of found a solution and that's like, well, let's just plant stuff that the slugs don't eat.

And you just have to change the perspective on like, okay, I can use these raised beds to grow these kinds of things, but I know what won't work because I just can't deal with the slugs. And then maybe you find a different way to produce those vegetables, whether it be lettuce or anything else in a way that you can be

as interactive with it enough or protected enough that the slugs can't get to it, put it in a different place, something like that, you know? - Well, these were like SAS or Marine Corps slugs.

They were like the best of the best because whatever I did, they would get round. You know, these beds were raised three and a half, maybe four foot off the ground. I wrapped copper all around them.

People are like, oh, they can't go over copper. I was like, oh, I'll wrap the fucking things copper then. That did nothing. I'll put beer out. So I put like a pint of beer on every corner of every bed and they would be absolutely full with slugs most mornings, but it was everything was still eaten.

I did everything. I had gravel between all of them. People are like, oh, they don't like going over gravel, bullshit, they were fine with that. They were like parachuting in or something, just fucking destroying everything.

So you're right. It's just, I think the answer was admit to feed. Slugs are better than you. Do something else. - Yeah, just plant something that the slugs don't like to eat. And there's just, I think when it comes to growing stuff, there's, man, there's more stuff that I'd like to grow than I can.

The other cool thing is too, is like if you, like those things that you can't grow because you have a slug problem, well, surely somebody nearby would be able to grow that. And then maybe you could figure out what they can't grow, but you can.

And now you can exchange these different things together. That's a big part of permaculture too, is sort of building, well, the people care aspect and building a community. Knowing your neighbors and having some sort of small economies between them can be really beneficial.

For example, one of my neighbors, he produces more hay than he can feed his cows. So he's selling it, but he also likes lamb. And so I offered one year to say, "Hey, would you discount my hay if I give you a lamb at the end of the season?"

And it turns out that he was interested in that lamb so much that the discount on the hay was actually worth more than the lamb if I were to sell it. Because the hay is, once again, he's already producing it.

So it's not worth that much to him and the lamb is worth more. So it's just one of those like little micro economy things between neighbors that both people win in the end. Another instance is that my, another neighbor down the road, he had a stroke, he couldn't work his fields the same way that he normally would

and they have been overtaken by weeds. And so at the same time, we have been going through a little bit of a drought. So my pastors weren't recovering well enough to keep my sheep grazing there.

I had to figure out some, either I was gonna either feed them hay, keep them in a dry lot somewhere or move them somewhere else. And so I just ran, I happened to run into him and we got to talking and we worked out this deal where I could bring my sheep over, graze down all of his weeds, give my pasture time to recover.

And once again, both of us got a win out of that where the weeds were on his fields were managed to where he didn't have to spend the time and deal with it. Plus I left a little fertilizer there for him too.

And then I had a chance to let my pastures recover and save the money from there, keep myself from having to spend money feeding my sheep hay. - Mm, yeah, I love that. It's like keeping all these transactions offline.

They're all peer to peer. No sats are being exchanged, it's just finding. I need this, you need that and building these relationships. I really like that. - Yeah, and it just, you just build a, those kinds of interchanges start to snowball to where now the one neighbor where I graze the sheep over there,

somebody dropped off a rabbit hutch at his place and he said, "I'll take it, but I don't know what I'll do with it." And then he gives me a call and says, "Hey, someone just dropped off this rabbit hutch, do you want it?"

Sure, and he'll just, you know, it's trash to him, but it's something useful to me. Like for example, my other neighbor, he's getting older and he feels uncomfortable sweeping his chimney.

So I'll sweep his chimney and then in exchange, he's willing to come over with this nice lock splitter that he has for the back of his tractor and split wood with me so I don't have to split it by hand.

There's just a lot of these little, once you start living in an area, I guess, I don't know, maybe my neighborhood's different, but I've definitely been trying to make an effort to build these relationships and everything's getting better because of that in our little local, hyper local community.

The final example I'll give, and this is to the vegetable garden, two doors down for me, my neighbors have 14 greenhouses. They do annual flowers in there and then vegetable starts. And so when I first got started gardening, I was trying to grow everything from sea, do soil blocks, do, and it was so damn hard,

it took so much time and I failed a whole bunch at it. And once I realized all I had to do is walk two doors down and spend 10 bucks and get all the vegetable starts that I needed for the whole season and my neighbors would do that work for me, then all of a sudden it makes a lot more sense to let your neighbors do some stuff

that you're not good at doing. And actually, an economic, now I would be exchanging stats in that situation, but it's good that it's there and I will certainly take advantage of it. - Yeah, it's great to have those relationships, especially I think a lot of Bitcoin is maybe it's the people that I spend the time with,

but we have a bit of a concern about the way things are going in the world and to have those relationships if things really kick off, it's invaluable. Start having problems with power being shut off or lockdowns or any of the other bullshit the governments might wanna pull.

It's really important to have those relationships and that network of trust and then it's really important also to have an unfuckable money. So the two of those hand in hand put you in such a good position for the future.

- And yeah, to that point too, so my neighborhood is a little bit mixed where we live close to the beach, to where it's close enough to where people from like the city of Chicago will have their summer homes here.

And so they're only here maybe a few weekends a year. So a lot of the houses down the road are empty most of the time, but then there's still the core group of neighbors that we all get to know and interact together.

And what ended up happening during the lockdowns of COVID, a lot of those people that were part-time ended up spending several months out here, but they didn't really know any of us very well.

And so the one neighbor, once again, who had the stroke, he was saying like, yeah, these people, if they get hungry and stuff, they're gonna need to come to me. I'm the one who has the, even though they have all the money or whatever, I've actually got the stuff that they need in this situation.

And once you have those relationships built already, you start thinking about actually working together rather than saying like, okay, you're kind of from the outside here, you gotta give me a good reason to go out of my way to help you out.

I'm already working together with this group here. Just another example of, if you build this tight community locally, you build a lot of resilience there. And that's one of these concepts in permaculture.

Permaculture goes way beyond just trying to grow stuff efficiently. - Do you have any thoughts about where things are going? Or are you not too bothered? 'Cause you're like, well, whatever kicks off, I'm pretty well insulated and I've got a support network and bring it on.

Or do you have any concerns? - Well, I had been thinking that things were going poorly for a long time. I used to live in, well, I lived in Chicago for many years and then Los Angeles after that.

And the reason why I left was I started thinking about even just natural disaster type situations, like, what if there's an earthquake here? And where I'm living, what's my plan? And how do I get out of here?

And what do I do? I'm kind of on my own. Didn't really, at that point, I didn't know how to produce a lot of my own food or I had no energy, like no generator, no solar panels, nothing like that.

Just my car and my bicycle and some stuff. And so, since that was in 2012 and since that realization like had been pretty big trouble, if even something as simple as an earthquake happened and we didn't have power for two weeks and I couldn't get to the grocery store or whatever, I've been working towards building up my own solutions

if something like that were to happen. And it just so happens that the world has trended in a direction which makes having those sorts of systems set up more and more valuable, it seems. I mean, we were joking when the COVID lockdowns happened that like, man, if things get too much worse,

we're gonna have to be careful about people coming, trying to come over here and hang out, you know? 'Cause we're the ones with the freezers full of meat and the live animals out on the pasture and we got the generator and we've got all this stuff access, we have access to it.

And a lot of the people that we know were living in cities and they would've been in pretty big trouble if they couldn't get food from the grocery store on demand anymore. Nobody had even a spare can of tomato sauce in there, you know, people were living week to week, every couple of weeks, just get the food that they needed

and expect that it would always be there. And I think even still, for my discussions with my friends about that, like saying, hey, it's pretty easy to just, for a while, buy two of whatever you normally buy that will be shelf stable and stash that and then start rotating through it

once you have a stock for a couple weeks of food, whatever. It sounds like a good idea, but I don't think many of them have even implemented that practice. - Food's fucking expensive, that pay comes in, then mortgage or rent goes out, the energy bills have gone up, everything's gone up and even if you say something

as simple as whatever your weekly shop is buy it twice and then like, well, I can't. Or I don't have anywhere to store it 'cause I'm living in a tiny apartment. I mean, again, and maybe there's a little bit different in the States, but people are struggling out there and they also don't seem to believe

that things can get that bad, that power can be shut off or that food, they can't get ahold of food, even though they've basically just experienced it like a year ago, yeah, people are back to like, ah, it's gonna be fine.

- Exactly, I keep with my pals, I just, I said, you know, if this is an awake up call, I don't know what is and apparently it wasn't. So, but yeah, we are always trying to work towards increasing our resiliency to unknowable things happening and just making sure like, we'll always have the water,

we'll always have some sort of a little bit of power generation, we'll certainly have food, we'll be able to heat our house, those types of things and when you have that set up, that does give you, once again, like to the point of not making much money, you don't really need a lot of new income coming in

and you have a lot less of this subconscious stress, I think, my mind is a lot more open to be solving bigger problems than just my basic necessities. - You started the Homestead before you found Bitcoin, right?

- Yeah. - Yeah, so do you think that that had something to do with, you know, the fact that your mind was more free and unable to think on other things? Do you think that's a reason that you got into this or was there something from like earlier on in life where you were like, you know, either fuck these politicians and banks

or what was it that attracted you and pulled you into it? - Well, I think I kind of peripherally knew how powerful Bitcoin was at solving some of the problems, some of the things that I think are the problems with the way current government structures are set up, societies are set up, but I didn't really fully understand it

because I hadn't interacted with it much. I mean, I think that it's hard for me to remember exactly, but I remember watching the Occupy Wall Street protests when like, that was kind of right around the time when people had the ability to livestream right from their phones and I remember I was working

a late night job and just watching these protests happen and I wouldn't be surprised if there was some mention of Bitcoin or I was exposed to Bitcoin at that time. That was very, it's like Bitcoin had just been launched or released or discovered however you wanna put it.

And then I was obviously exposed again when the first $20,000 all time high happened and I had a lot of friends playing the number go up game and at that time I didn't have two nickels to rub together to play it, which was very intriguing.

See these, all your friends kind of doubling their money every few days, you're like, wow, that seems sweet. And so how I ended up ultimately getting to be such a, like now I feel like I'm really trying to participate in the culture of Bitcoin, in the network of Bitcoin, I have a very strong, like I believe that Bitcoin is,

like many of the people listening to this podcast, a huge solution to a lot of the world's problems and how I ended up there, it was very strange. I meditate after lunch every day for about 20 minutes.

I was meditating and this was right around, right after the whole market crash for the COVID crash or whatever it was in March of 2020. And I sat up from the meditation and I just had this impulse in my mind check the price of Bitcoin.

I hadn't thought about Bitcoin, nothing, I don't know if it was like some subconscious thing that I saw on Twitter or somehow somewhere about Bitcoin, but I attribute it to this meditation, like telling me, look at this, you know?

And I saw that it was, the price was enticing to get involved and obviously a lot of people get involved in Bitcoin at first for the number go up and I'm no exclusion to that. And so I thought, well, here's my chance.

Now I can be joining the club of these people letting them, having their money double every day. And so I figured out how to get some. And through that process, you start to realize like what Bitcoin really is, what the technology is capable of, what it could be really used for, then all of a sudden the number go up becomes like

just a byproduct of what the true reason to participate in Bitcoin is. And once again, it relates a lot to this, these permaculture principles and ethics. And that's, once I started learning a little bit more like that, that's when I realized Bitcoin and permaculture are like the same, you know,

they're cut from the same cloth, essentially. And so yeah, that's how I got it. Just meditation told me and then I just leaned into it really hard. And I think the cool thing about getting into Bitcoin at that time was that there's a lot of really good informational resources to guide me 'cause I didn't have anyone to talk to.

I had to go on YouTube and find podcasts and go on Twitter and teach myself all this stuff, but it was out there waiting for me. Whereas in 2017 or 2018, whenever that was, I don't think that there was much.

- I can tell you there wasn't, it was a fucking disaster. Or it was very hard to find it maybe is more fair, but there was a lot of YouTube scamming fucking idiots. I do feel like definitely now there's a much better job as being done.

- Yeah, and I guess that brings up this concept in permaculture of succession where ecosystems or even systems that you design, it's very tempting to try and farm a field for corn. And as things change in the environment, you are trying to adapt your system to maintain its capability of growing corn.

So this idea of succession is that you take that feedback of the change and you try and adapt the system to be ever more efficient rather than make sacrifices in order to just maintain it doing what it's doing.

And so with Bitcoin, I feel like the number go up stuff and the lack of information was like one step where it's just like, okay, let's just, the number go up just gets people interested.

And then once you start learning a little bit more then you wanna participate and then you start contributing this information out there. And then because that information's out there, that opens up the door to new participants who have new ideas.

And the whole way that people utilize and think about Bitcoin is just continuously growing and changing, it's succeeding from one step to the next. And there's been some talk a little bit about or I've seen it that like this whole idea of, obviously we wanna try and get new people to not be involved with KYC.

But I still think that there's like, these on-ramps are ways for people to get access to Bitcoin and then start their journey and go through this successional process too of growing as they learn more.

- Some of those people will get burned and then they change the way they do things. At the moment, one thing that's really exciting to see is like this circular economy stuff starting to take off a little bit more.

People selling produce for Bitcoin or services for Bitcoin. That's really cool to see because that's like a nice way for someone to get in or, you know, home mining and that's the way they get their first SATs.

But it is pretty difficult to convince someone to use some of these peer-to-peer services. There's things like Peach, which are making it much easier, but it's still really very early days.

And I think, like anything, it's really hard to express to somebody the importance of all of these things like early on because most people are just thinking, "Oh, cool, number go up." And it's only when you spend loads and loads of time thinking about Bitcoin and thinking about its implications that you start to decide,

"Ah, fucker, I wish I hadn't abused KYC," or "I wish I'd have generated my keys offline," or "I wish I'd been more private in this way," or "I wish I'd have done this." "I wish I hadn't had told people down the pub I'd bought it."

You know, whatever it is that people wish further down the line, we all have mistakes that we make. You never get to where you are without making those mistakes in the first place, so there is no perfect solution.

- Yeah, and I think that there's just, in some senses, there might be so much of this discussion around the best way to get involved in Bitcoin and the right way to do it, that it turns off people that are on the fence.

They get a little too worried that they're gonna make these big mistakes and they never just get involved to begin with. There was another point I wanted to make to that. Oh, and that's the cool thing, too, about these, as we're putting this information out there, having these discussions, we're building cultural capital

that is gonna help guide new participants in the network to avoid making some of these mistakes. - Yeah. - These memes and stuff that we're building are gonna fast-track the newer participants into getting to be using Bitcoin and what we might think is an ideal way.

And well, obviously we're figuring that out constantly, what the ideal way to use Bitcoin is, but that's besides the point. - Yeah, I mean, it's an individual thing as well. People can use it however they want us.

I'm kind of, I'm against the whole pushing and attacking people for using it a certain way, like just fucking focus on yourself, it doesn't matter. I have my ways that I wanna use it. I have my feelings on things, but I'm not gonna push someone.

If someone wants to come in and they literally care about number go up and that is the only reason they want it, that's fine. I don't know what I want, but it's fine. And maybe they changed their mind further down the line, but you can't stop them from buying it.

So let it happen and everyone benefits anyway. I mean, I would like to see, I'd like to see all these on-ramps close down at some point, whether it's through regulation or there's a better product that makes it so simple, peer to peer and people realize or whatever the reason, but in reality, I just don't think it's gonna happen.

And so it is what it is. People just need to learn and just put that information out there. That's why I'm constantly on this podcast, just like saying to a just fucking stop buying KYC, try and think about using something like Whirlpool and think about labeling and think about these basic steps that you could take

because it protects them, but not everyone cares. - No, and I've been attending a lot more Bitcoin meetups. I'm probably approaching a year of really going to Bitcoin meetups every month.

And sometimes as many as three, you know. And so at the beginning of my Bitcoin interaction, the concept of figuring out how to use BISC and all this stuff to get the non KYC to get Bitcoin in a way without having to provide KYC was a little challenging and a little overwhelming.

But now that I'm actually involved with people face to face, peer to peer, the idea of getting Bitcoin from somebody I know is not very far out of reach at all. So my perspective on how I use Bitcoin has changed drastically by attending these Bitcoin meetups.

And so yeah, as we build this cultural capital as the culture emerges through meetups in different ways to let people use the Bitcoin the way they want, I think people will start to realize that the KYC stuff isn't really, it's actually the least ideal way moving forward.

The other thing too is that what's really cool is like, you can have, because Bitcoin is inherently synonymous, you can have your KYC interaction with Bitcoin and then you can have your identity that is got a totally different non KYC interaction with Bitcoin.

And if you keep those two separate, then you have two identities. You can play all the rules of the KYC system and use the Bitcoin that way. And then you can at the same time simultaneously be using Bitcoin in the non KYC way.

And as long as you don't make those two things crossover, I don't see any, you can have your social security number, regular, full name identity interacting with the way that the system is currently operating.

And you can have your non KYC synonymous identity that's operating with this like soft work where you're following the rules and ideologies of the Bitcoin culture. - Yeah, I think a lot of people do that and not everyone admits it, but a lot of people do that and they have their separate stashes.

And there's just people on the extremes of both ends. Some people only want their KYC verified blue check Bitcoin and some people only want Bitcoin, Bitcoin, which no one knows they have and everything else and they're very private.

And so there's this sort of middle ground where I think a lot of people are there and depending on what happens in the world, people will slide further down one end of the scale. I think if things start really kicking off and Bitcoiners start having knocks at doors and some bad stuff starts happening,

I think then more people will lean towards no KYC. So it's kind of one of these things like the harder the government push, the harder they make it for people to get hold of Bitcoin and the more difficult they make Bitcoiners lives, the more likely people are gonna say, oh, well, I'll take these extra couple of steps to get the no KYC.

And especially if they're mining at home, that's the ideal, that's like the perfect bit. That's a big part of why I've started this new show with John is I just want more people to be considering mining at home because it's just such a good way for someone to start.

I'd love to see more of that. Like the first sat, someone gets it because it's their mining payout. That would be beautiful. - Yeah, and when you really start to, well, first of all, I want to say that I love the format of that new show, that it's segmented.

- I just sent about the co-host. (laughs) - But beyond that, I love that there's so much information out there now to flip the idea of Bitcoin mining around a little bit. And you first want to be using the energy to do something productive that you want, that you'd be using the energy for anyways,

and you're getting these sats as a byproduct. If I'm gonna try and dry my clothes with a Bitcoin miner, well, the first, I'm already drying my clothes with electricity anyways. But now, if I can turn it into a Bitcoin mining clothes dryer and I'm drying my clothes, and I'm getting a rebate, basically, on my power usage in Bitcoin.

And so you're not necessarily losing, you're not mining unprofitably, you're just getting a rebate on your energy usage and you're making your energy usage actually more efficient. And so this kind of concept, I think, is gonna really open the door to a lot of people starting to do home mining.

It seems like there's just a few, what crypto cloaks is doing and making the enclosure for the S9, so then it's like a pretty looking space heater instead of, for me, I've got an S9 behind me right now.

I turned it off for the interview, but I was using that to heat the office up. It's like, if I could have an enclosure that makes this thing portable, where I can easily move it from room to room and don't have to worry about twisting the PSU too much and stressing out the machine, it's just one nice little unit that I can move around

and I plug an ethernet cable into it and plug it into the wall and now it's mining Bitcoin and I can dial in the wattage that I want pretty simply for my phone. Man, talk about making it accessible to everybody.

- Yeah, it's definitely going that way. People are just innovating all the time and I don't think we're that far away from someone saying, "Oh, that seems like a good idea. "Yeah, I have got a space heater.

"What do I need to do to set it up?" And somebody being able to do that very quickly and easily without stressing. Again, a few years ago, well, first of all, the narrative a few years ago was don't even fucking bother.

Don't think about mining. There's no point just by Bitcoin is pointless and that was like the narrative or at least what I heard and many others I've talked to. That was the thing and it does seem like there's a bit of a renaissance going on.

- Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the phrase, it really goes to the phrase, the problem is the solution. The reason why people were saying don't mine is because they were thinking about the heat as waste and really the heat, that's the problem but it's the solution to your problem if you need heat.

So now that that concept or that way of thinking is out there, I think it's just gonna continue to grow. You can't unsee it once it's revealed that way. - Yeah, completely agree. So friends, family, are they on board?

Are you struggling to win the mover or is it just kept yourself? - I'm in a little bit of trouble because I was shopping from the rooftops on the way up all from 2020. So it takes people a while before they really jump on board, you know, figure out how to start doing it the way they wanna do it, buying it and everything.

- They buy the talk. - And so yeah, I have a lot of friends and family who are still hanging on but they're kind of like, hey man, I thought, you were telling me all this really positive information about this thing and I'm kind of stuck here under water now getting patiently but we'll see.

I think that ultimately what I realized is that at that time when I was trying to get everyone else involved, I think it was more for, I just wanted to have somebody else to be so passionate about Bitcoin with.

And so now that I've been involved in these meetups and I'm a little bit more integrated with the culture of Bitcoin, I don't feel the necessity to like orange pill every person that I meet.

- Just having people to speak to is the, that's the whole reason I started this podcast. I was just so fucking desperate to have somebody didn't tell me to fuck off when I started speaking about Bitcoin.

Now that I do it and I have loads of people I can chat to about it, I don't want to talk to anyone else. Like I don't want to talk to normies about it 'cause it's so frustrating. It's like it's the same stupid questions and like rebuttals and they're so confident in what they already think

but they don't really actually know what they're talking about and it's actually just frustrating. So yeah, having those people to speak to, I think definitely stops you from being the annoying, shilling maniac Bitcoiner.

- Yeah, and the most recent example I have of that, I've been trying to think about how can like reputation be built on Bitcoin? Like how can you use Bitcoin to prove that you've been a good business or a good customer?

And so I had this kind of idea of, and I'm sure somebody's already, this is probably somebody else's thought of it too, but having a system where you could escrow a certain amount of sats or give a rebate as a seller, like, okay, you bought something for me if you leave a review on my reputation, then I'll give you some sats back.

So I was trying to explain this structure that I had thought of to my wife's family over the holidays and they were just kind of like, that sounds like social credit score and why would you wanna do that as a business because Bitcoin is so volatile, why would you?

And so they were just kind of like, I couldn't even have the conversation with them because there wasn't this underlying understanding of Bitcoin to begin with. So yeah, it just becomes very hard to even, like once you see Bitcoin in a deep way, you just totally look at the world differently.

And then trying to express yourself, people are not seeing things through the same lens and it's like everything's totally distorted. The conversations get like even coming down to like the definitions of inflation and what that means when you say it.

All these words, people have one understanding of them. And then once you know through interacting with Bitcoin, you just can't even communicate anymore. It's really crazy. - Yeah, I just think sometimes it's worth just closing your mouth.

I think that's what I've been doing at least the last year. I'm really, really careful about who I bother to spend time speaking about it with like, I really have to weigh up like, do I really like this person?

And if I do really like them, then there's a chance I'm gonna speak to them about it, but I certainly won't be opening conversations with normal people about it. Because the other thing I've found is like, if you tell someone about Bitcoin and they buy it and they get into it and they make money from it, you get no thanks at all.

Like you never, no one's ever gonna thank you for that. It's their idea, they're brilliant and fuck you. And if it starts like you're experiencing, like the price starts going down, everyone's on the phone too with problems or if they have a problem with their self custody, it's your problem and it just adds this extra stress.

And it's like almost like in the bear markets, then it's like, you're not carrying the burden of my sats, have less fiat value, you're actually carrying everyone else's burden as well. And it's like all the downside and no upside.

So yeah, as much as people are like, "Oh yeah, you need to shelter everyone." I'm like, "Ah fuck that, I can't be bothered." - Yeah, I'm actually having that exact problem too with the self custody thing, you know, now that FTX has caused this whole wave of people realizing that, hey, my Bitcoin's not,

actually all that they've been saying is true and my Bitcoin is not safe on the exchanges. And so I've even had some pals that have the cold storage wallets and stuff and they just neglected to do it.

And now that there's like this real good reason to, they find out that they forgot important things like their pin code or, you know, and it was me who was the person to walk them through getting that stuff set up, thinking that they would be taking it as seriously as I was.

And so yeah, once again, the problem is mine now to like help them solve these issues. And so it's like big lesson learned there. You really, people need to sort of be on their own path and you can't push people and hold them along with you, you know, they need to just go at their own pace and make their own choices with it.

Yeah, my new thing that I do is if someone, like I've got quite a few people who bought Bitcoin, especially like more boomery people who actually did listen to me and they've bought Bitcoin and they've left it on exchange.

And now I'm like, come on, you need to get this off. What I now do rather than saying, oh, I'm going to sit down with you and set it up and then you need to stamp this into steel and blah, blah, blah.

And I know I'm going to spend an entire day with them and they're going to fuck it up and it's going to be my problem. All I do now is just say, order a foundation devices passport, book a session with Bitcoin Q&A.

And if he fucks you up, it's his fault, not mine. And that's it. I just pass it all on to him. I'm like, he can have that problem, not me. Well, if he's offering the consulting, he wants to do it.

So that's great. Well, that's, I mean, that's a big thing. I like what they do there is you pay an extra, I think it's $100 and you get an hour with him. And he just goes like from absolute step one all the way through and make sure people are comfortable.

And I think for like newbies, especially like the more boom-rich, non-technical people to have that's invaluable, even when I first came in. I'm not, I'm not actually, although it might sound it from the show.

I'm not completely technically illiterate, but the amount of times I was reading through guides and shitting myself at the beginning over a million different things and just being unsure.

And there's so much anxiety that comes with it. You just think, well, actually, just having someone who really knows what they're doing is not a bad idea. - Yeah, I think we're definitely in this transition between now we may be moving into this new era of like, more of the plug and play stuff,

the obfuscation of all this technical information that you need to understand, having people and businesses that you can crawl upon, that you can trust to assist you when you do have problems.

Yeah, I think it's even like with the hardware stuff, there's more and more nodes in a box, there's more enclosures reminding, all these things are just like clearly moving really fast in that direction.

And so yeah, maybe it is a little bit easier for us to just sit back and refer people to these solutions that are a little bit more meeting somebody else's style. Like I am very much, I wanna dig in, do it myself.

If something breaks, I wanna try and fix it myself before I call for help. A lot of people aren't like that. And I fail to recognize that a lot of times. - Yeah, well, I mean, this is the thing.

I think a lot of Bitcoiners are like that. They're tinkerers and thinkers and they like to sort of break things and put them back together. And like you say, most people aren't like that.

And even if they are like that, a lot of people just don't have the time or they think they don't have the time 'cause they feel their time with useless things. But the difference between sort of a couple of years ago and that was just massive.

Like I can say to people who have a decent stash, they need to have self custody and they don't wanna sit and do something. And be like, go and buy a Ronan Dojo Tanto, plug it in. That's it.

You don't have to do anything else. Go and buy a foundation of devices, go and have someone talk you through it. That's $100, but it's well spent. Like, I just do that. Whereas before, it was like, go and buy a Raspberry Pi and then go and buy this list of other parts.

And then you need to put this together and then you need to flash this. And then you need to get into the command line. You need to type this and do that and this and then it won't work. And then they can actually, you know, and it was just like, it was a fucking nightmare for a non-technical person.

No one was gonna do it, but the fact that you can now, yeah, you wanna spend a bit of money to do it, but a normal person can just plug and play and go and be private and do things properly is pretty exciting.

And it makes me think like, where are we gonna be in a couple of years with the mining and also with all the other security and hardware? I think we're gonna see some big changes. - Yeah, and I mean, imagine if you maybe in 2017, you went all in and you kept it on the exchange and everything and all that.

Now, there's not that information out there. When you start to have doubt, like, oh, this exchange could fail or there's some fun happening right now. Instead of figuring out like sacrificing a little bit of the value of your stash to get the tools and systems to help you secure that properly, you sell that shit, right?

And so now I think because people are realizing, oh, I need to get my Bitcoin off the exchanges, but I don't really have the technical expertise or confidence to do so. There are tools and things available for them to assist them in securing it properly, rather than them just saying, fuck it, I'm selling it, you know?

- Oh, I have it. - Yeah, yeah. - So I think that's like, it's just gonna be, I can only see more and more people using Bitcoin in this more self custody way. It's just, there's just so many tools out there to assist people now.

- Yeah, it's all exciting stuff. Anything you're looking forward to in 2023, anything you got your eye on or building or wanting to change? - Well, I think that what I'm really working on is moving into, so right now my main revenue stream is this ecotourism through Airbnb.

I host people looking to either come out and enjoy the wine country near me, enjoy the beach near me, see my animals and sort of see my homestead. And so like, that's not really the most resilient thing to have as your main form of revenue.

It's like, I'm kind of dependent on the marketing from Airbnb to put my place in front of people, to get them here, if Airbnb sees to exist, maybe there's some other options. But once again, like, I just, I'm dealing with people who aren't coming to my place necessarily to be at my place.

They're coming to enjoy the area and my place is kind of an afterthought. I want to transition into focusing more on this educational aspect where I'm sharing, now that I have some experience and know some of the successes and failures that I've had, try and help other people who are looking to get involved

in homesteading, in permaculture, in self-sovereign tech or just self-sovereign lifestyles in general, helping to facilitate them getting there. And so I'm in June, I think, I think in June, if I can't get my shit together, maybe it'll have to be in the fall.

But I'd like to do a little micro summit here, maybe 20 or 25 people. I'm working on an intro to permaculture course that will be a few hours, like three hours long. And I'm going to start offering private tours for people just want to come out with their family or a group of friends and book a tour here.

They don't have to be a guest necessarily to gain access to that. And so that's really the big step that we'll be taking here this year is facilitating more of the educational component of our lifestyle.

- And do you think you're going to be leaning more into hosting Bitcoiners, rather than just general public? Or do you have any thoughts on sort of bringing more of your income through the Bitcoin stuff?

And you said you're going to a lot of the meetups and things like that. Do you think that it could get to a stage where it's not Airbnb, it's word of mouth with Bitcoiners coming and buying your produce.

Do you ever think that transitions completely? - I do. And you know, Sid, who took this road trip from Bitcoin to meet up across the country here in the US on his Harley. I've stayed in touch with him a little bit and he's kind of the one who really has pushed me into saying, "Screw it, I'm going to try."

'Cause he's like, "Dude, I think I'm going to be back around. And if you do one of these like little weekend workshop things, I want to be there." - Yeah. - And then I did a podcast previously on Bitcoin rapid fire.

And somebody contacted me from there and said, "Hey, can I come stay?" You know, I want to check your believe it sounds cool. I want to like actually see it. And so I've realized, and then plus from going to the Bitcoin meetups and actually having some interest in like we sold several lambs to Bitcoiners

from going to the Bitcoin meetups this year. And I've also been giving these presentations at the Bitcoin meetups like on the eight forms of capital. I did that at in the Southwest Michigan meetup, the Grand Rapids meetup and the Milwaukee meetup.

And through doing that, people are like, "Hey, if you're ever doing something at your place, I want to go." And so now I realize that there is demand there from the Bitcoin community to learn.

And I think that like my, how I want to sell tickets for this first summit because it's so limited in the number, I don't really need to post it on Twitter or put it up on my website. I think I can just individually meet person to person from the meetups and sell the tickets one by one and do it that way.

And yeah, so it's going to be moving way more into this peer to peer economy through Bitcoin. That's really where we're headed the way I see it. - Yeah, I completely agree. I think it's moving that way.

And especially for the sort of produce you have, it's absolutely perfect. And also for people staying, like people do travel for these meetups, people are looking for getaways and stuff like that.

And it's much better you do that than give a percentage of your money to Airbnb and deal with all that bullshit. Like if you can do this peer to peer, it's perfect. I'd love to, if I was able to get into America, I'd love to do a trip all through America.

And that's the sort of thing I'd be looking for. Like who do I know or if Bitcoiners have got places and try and do it that way rather than stay in hotels, you want to sort of experience and meet with people.

- I think for somebody looking to travel that way, it's becoming really more and more a possibility. And I think that by staying with Bitcoiners, you're going to end up at a lot of really cool places.

Anyways. - Yeah. - I've got this kind of idea too, through the Bitcoin meetups that I've been going to, I'm starting to get pretty tight with a lot of these people, and staying in communication with them outside of the meetup as well.

They're becoming real friends. And so I've got this recent idea of like a Bitcoin ski club where the group of people can all kind of pool their money together to get like a cheap flight or a cheap charter bus or something, and then just go and crash some like awesome Bitcoin focused place.

Like we could all get a bus down to Bitcoin park and Nashville for some event, and pool our money to stay at an Airbnb together, or like head to one of the, head to El Salvador for something, or head to the Bitcoin lake in Guatemala or whatever.

I just see that as more and more of something that I'd like to try and do. I think it'd be a lot more fun to go on vacation and hang out with Bitcoiners the whole time, heading to like cool Bitcoin destinations, rather than just, you know, spend all the dough to just end up in a normal place, do the tourist trap stuff, you know.

Yeah, well, there's a lot to look forward to. Hopefully one day I can come and visit. I'd love to see what you're doing. And it's been really good just to have a bit of a catch up, you know, I don't lurk in the telegram groups that much.

It's hard to get to know people in there, but it's been a really good conversation. And yeah, it'd be good also if you can, I don't know if you're selling outside of the meetups, whether you have like a website or anything to chill, you know, for people who are listening who might want some blam or anything else.

Yeah, right now I'm really peer-to-peer only. So if you want something, you're gonna have to find me, get in touch with me directly. We are focusing on shippable products, the maple syrup, technically I can ship that.

We're gonna be trying to do some Bitcoin mining dehydrated garlic powder next fall. So we're gonna have some products available that are shippable, but if you're in region, you know, within the, you know, Chicago land area or Michigan, you know, grind rapids area, we'll be able to meet each other and you can buy something from me.

- Very cool. Well, yeah, thanks for coming on, mate. It's been good to chat to you and we'll, I'm sure we'll catch up again soon in the Mashtadel. - Yeah, I look forward to it. - All right, cheers mate, speak soon.

- Bye. - Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that. And if anyone has any questions about permaculture, Bitcoin or anything else that's discussed in this episode, you can reach out to me and anything I can't answer, I can put you in touch with the right people.

We have a really good group going in the Mashtadel and there's just so much information there. If you haven't already checked out on governable misfits.com, go and have a look at the beautiful work Mr. Crown's been doing, check out the merch, check out the articles and everything else that's going on.

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Thanks again and stay ungovernable.