EP66 The spidersilk-reinforced mining-op with @HodlTarantula

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison.

The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

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, everyone. This is actually a recording from a couple of weeks ago.

I sat down and spoke to Hoddle Tarantula. Some of you might recognize him from Twitter. He is doing off-grid mining. It's something I was very, very interested in. And I'm so glad I had him on.

Had an awesome discussion. We talked about Bitcoin, guns, and freedom. It doesn't get any better. So I really hope you enjoy this discussion. And before we dive in, I just want to say, if you're not mining, if you're not going KYC route, then make sure that you check out my sponsors, Coin Floor UK.

If you're going to trust your information with anyone, if you're going to use KYC, make sure that it is someone you can trust. Use the link in the show notes for a discount on the DCA service.

Enjoy the conversation. (upbeat music) - Hoddle Tarantula, how are you? - I'm doing well. How are you today? - Yeah, really good. Thank you, really good. Been looking forward to this conversation for some time.

They have been stalking your Twitter and thinking, "Fucking hell, what's this Tarantula doing?" He's got all sorts going on. He's mining all over the place and all these different locations.

And it looks fascinating. So I'm really looking forward to digging in and finding out a little bit more. But like I said to you, off air, there's no video. This is a very privacy focus on this.

So I will try not to dox. You tell me what you want to tell me and leave out what you don't. But yeah, it looks interesting. - Respect. I, yeah, because I run an online retail shop and I am doing multiple other startups and business ventures.

I like to keep my face kind of off the screen, if you know what I mean. - Yeah, that's smart. - So where do you want to start? - Well, yeah, I mean, I'd like to dive in and start with why mining.

Because this podcast, I've never really gone too heavily deep into the mining side. It's something that fascinates me. It's something I've tried myself and fucked up royally. And just something that I think is so important and very much misunderstood by a lot of people.

So so many people would just say, oh, just don't even bother with it. Like honestly, just buy, it's not worth a hassle. Just don't even think about it. But for me, like, what really I find fascinating about it is that you can get these no KYC Bitcoins and you are basically dollar cost averaging

all the time that you're mining, which seems fantastic. But I don't really understand much past that. So it'd be cool to know what led you to want to start mining and how did you find Bitcoin in the first place?

- Well, I guess we'll start with what led me to Bitcoin in the first place. That was the allure of the get rich quick shit coin, actually, because I had actually known about file sharing, decentralizing everything like that through music, pirates bay and other stuff like that.

But I never really looked into Bitcoin back in 2009 or even into 12 or even as far as, can't hear you. - Hey, hey, I'll cut you back again. - Oh, there you go. - What happened there? Was it the internet cut out?

- It's very possible because I live remotely, like literally where I live is far away. It's... - Okay. - Yeah, I like to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and in regards to walking out my front door and just shoot my gun if I need to or whatever.

So that's kind of where I'm at. Sometimes my internet does cut out. - Yeah, that's cool. Well, I lost you. - Where'd you lose me? I apologize for that. - That's all right. It's okay. I lost you around.

You were just saying how you'd found Bitcoin and you hadn't found it right at the beginning and then you cut out. So I didn't get that far in. - Oh, okay, okay, okay. Understand, sorry for the long gap there in the podcast. - That's okay.

- So the introduction was where I cut out then, right? That was through YouTube's shit coinery. Did you get that part? - Yeah, I got the shit coinery bit. - Yeah, and then so then I found through that the common denominator that everybody was asking for was Bitcoin, and I see like, okay, well,

if that's the only thing these people are asking for, they don't want my checking account number. They don't want my debit card number. They don't want me to mail them gold in exchange for a receiving address or a key set.

It's Bitcoin, that's it. And so I saw that and to me that something to that, right? So I went further and I found out what is Bitcoin originally and read the white paper. And then after that, I was hooked.

I was done because I've dealt with PayPal. I've lived in other parts of the world. I've stayed in other countries and I've dealt with financial institutions telling me where I can use my money and that I can't use my money.

And it's like, I'm just trying to buy food, you know? And they're putting the brakes on me and it's ridiculous. And they just feel like they're gods with all the power with their abilities to control my money when they're actually breaking all the rules and experiencing billions of fines themselves.

It's just absurd. And so I was in love with Bitcoin when I found out what it was, you know? At that point, the libertarian in me said, it's time to figure out how you can support this and drive it.

And because I'm somebody who likes technology and used to work in an automation and robotics facility for an e-commerce distribution center, I actually, the mining aspect of it really appealed to me because I want to know about the inner workings of this technology and so then I've read about the mining

and how it is actually a way to provide security to the network for my peers, which to me is awesome because I always want to help somebody else. You know, if I thought it was my internet cut out on you again.

- Yeah, so I've got you now. We cut out at, you were saying about supporting the network through mining. - Hey, maybe we should start over. We're only 15 minutes in. I just linked up my phone to my Wi-Fi because I got Wi-Fi through satellite and it never cuts out.

- Okay, fine. Well, I can edit the other bits together anyway. So if we just start with-- - Oh, okay. - So it's fine, it's honest, it's not a problem. So I got as far as you wanted to work on supporting the network, you realized mining would be a good way to do that and then you cut out.

- Right, so I wanted to support the Bitcoin network because I realized it's true financial freedom. You know, what it is is it's perfect way for us to saleably store our time, our efforts in across space and time.

It's nothing we've ever seen before in history. I knew I had to support it going forward and being that I was involved with the automation robotics and stuff like that in the past. I knew that I'd be able to figure it out eventually, even if it was just through trial and error, A/B testing and failing,

I'd be able to push through and succeed. I had no doubt in my own abilities in regards to that. So I just knowing what it was, I needed to know how I could support it and drive it, you know?

And that's what mining was for me. And that's why I got into mining. At first, I saw Bitcoin. Yeah, I thought, okay, I'll get rich first, right? Then I thought, wow, this is way more than that because of the crap I've dealt with in other countries in regards to them putting the thumb on me in regards to my finances.

When I'm just trying to buy something to eat and it just kills me. And so I knew having to support this and help it and grow it was very important to me, you know? - Yeah, that's a feeling I've felt very much myself as well.

This is not just about money. This is something so big. Something that is, at the end of the day, it's about just putting your middle finger up and saying, fuck you to everyone who has taken the piss, everyone who is trying to put down normal people, to hold them back, to restrict us, to control us.

And at the end of the day, they can't win with this. And it's the most exciting thing when you think about that, when you think about their smug little faces and that smirk being wiped off their faces because at the end of the day, this is just better system and the fucked.

- It is, and the thing is, is all the fudge comes because of their fear of loss and that loss is control of power, period. I understand that because, you know, if you've ever been in a situation where you were having a lot of fun in the past and you, all of a sudden, got involved with a couple babbies or Johnny Law

because of that, you are now experiencing fear in a real way because you're about to lose your power and your power is freedom of choice over self. And when you're facing any type of trouble, that is a real consequence.

And so if you've ever had, you know, the fear of loss, you know, that you get angry and you get scared. And that's where they are. They're angry and they're scared. Because they see that literally, like Christine Lagarde said recently, even if there's a small escape, it's unstoppable.

They literally have to destroy every single node down to the very last one and then pray that nobody reinitialized core across the globe somewhere else and just hit, that was, hit the right ports on, you know?

(laughs) 'Cause then it's over again. They just lost again. It's just, they gotta restart the battle again. And it just, what it will do is it'll make Bitcoin stronger, you know, 'cause that's what exactly will happen.

It's been over a decade now and it's happened countless times. There's no reason that it won't happen again. And if anybody tries to bring the thought about the internet, we got Blockstream.

If anybody wants to, you know, we got the Blockstream satellite. They want to bring the thought about the, oh, they'll shut down the power systems. Well, sorry, we mine now Bitcoin off grid through natural gas and utilized satellite relays.

So we don't actually need them. If they want to try and mess up the pools, we've done solo mining before. We don't need a pool. So it's like, game over, guys. You better join or fall. That's it, you know?

And in America, their institutions, they're starting to recognize and they're starting to pick up the pieces. And, you know, the office of the comp controller, they gave them the permissions to allow the banks to start doing their little thing with it.

And they're all still scared, though, because it's new tech, it's frightening to them. It's hard asset. It's easy for them to lose because they're not familiar with it. So what you got is, you know, you got a slow entry and where they want to issue a lot, a slow entry to a space that's very tightly controlled

on an asset that is not controllable. So you're going to have a lot of fear in regards to entry, I think. And you're going to also be dealing with the fear of loss from the actual central bankers that issue the re-hypoticated funds that are out there and everything else.

Because if we're pegging things to Bitcoin now, man, people are going to start becoming insolvent publicly. And it's going to be outrageous in proportion to the extent that it's going to cause societal repercussions long-term, you know what I mean?

If things change over that way, that's why you hear people say that a hyper-Bitcoinization economy could be detrimental to society. And I think that it has a lot to do with why. - Yeah, I completely agree with that.

I think the thing is that it's not the hyper-iconization that causes the problems, the problems are already there, the problems are there because of the old system, the problems are there because of these greedy fuckers.

And at the end of the day, Bitcoin wouldn't be here if they'd have just not been so stupid and greedy and evil. - Well, you're hitting the nail on the head, so they say. They got statistics from 1930s cost of living and you got statistics of today's cost of living.

And if you look at where the wages have changed pace through the '70s and when we started to all of this, at least from the '30s going forward, they started changing up and becoming all these greedy, conniving, thieving career politicians and corporate driving, cut the wages, keep the top healthy in fact, it is just long-term,

it turned into something ugly. They lost their ways and Bitcoin brings it back in. Problem is is that it's ain't enough for everybody, so you know what happens. It forces people to do things they wouldn't normally do.

And in a system where they think that they can just print print print, all they're gonna do is just keep driving the inequality. And really, you're gonna end up with people that say, "Oh, well, Bitcoin was not equal because we're not getting "at that cost and everything."

But at the same time, it wasn't like nobody told them, people gave the information and said, "Take it or leave it." That's like Satoshi said, this is what it is. I don't have time to explain it to you.

You take it or you leave it. - Yeah, and everyone's on the same footing. Everyone had the opportunity to spend the time to understand this stuff, to learn about it, to take a dive and the majority of people can't be bothered.

They're too lazy, they're not intellectually curious or they put themselves in a little box of what they mean to hold them. It doesn't get them views and it doesn't get them likes, so they're not interested.

- Yeah. - If they can't post it and get an instant response that'll drag the dopamine in their head that tells them, "Hey, this is good," then that's not really long term, probably gonna stick with people.

That's how people have become programmed, it seems like over the years with these phones and stuff. I mean, they're great, but at the same time, they can be a curse. I mean, I've seen guys sit around for hours, they're automation jobs and instead of doing preventative maintenance work, they're just scrolling on their phones saying,

"Well, if it's gonna break, "it'll fix the dinner, it'll break, "but it ain't nothing happening now." Well, you know what, you can go throw some oil on there and maybe it'll run for another couple of months before it does break.

It's what's called preventative maintenance, but the whole of society has lost their way, it would seem like in regards to life preventative maintenance and like you look at your finances, how do you wanna store your wealth?

That was one thing that Bitcoin taught me about was real economics and how money is conceptually what we are willing to accept for our time, our value time across, you know, distance of time and space, right, in our efforts.

So if I'm looking at something like learning through the economics that I got into through Bitcoin and I'm no PhD, but if I'm storing my wealth in something that's perpetually like getting inflated away, then like Michael Saylor said, you just, you got an ice cube and it's melting, what are you gonna do with it, you know?

Throw it out the window, get rid of it, get something hard, you know? - Trade it for something that stores your time and yeah, like you said, that's the most important thing. The most scarce asset really is our time and our energy and when we're working harder and harder as the years go on and we're getting less and less for our time

and the price of properties going up, the price of food's going up, price of education's going up and you can't store your value because everything's being inflated away. When you realize that, or for me anyway, like when it clicked, when I understood really the financial side of Bitcoin, I was angry

because we know that they're fucking us, we know that but when you really know, when you know how, that's when, this is why I do the podcast, this is why I love speaking to people like you, people who are just saying, no, fuck this, I'm just a new system.

Yeah, finished, no more and build something new and that's why I was scrolling through your tweets the other day and I saw a picture, you had your Polaris quad and you got all your ant miners in there and you're shared and I'm just like, yes, this is what it's about is actually building something

and having that off-grid life and not being controlled and just living, spending your time that we've got which is limited in the way you want and not have some fucking dickhead in a suit telling you what you can and can't do and can and can't say and it's exciting, like this whole movement gets me very, very excited

about the future and what's to come. It's really fucking exciting. Oh man, it gives me an amp up, dude, I want to go out and just, obviously just going outside and yo, send me the same, pop out, how?

I mean, I started talking about that Bitcoin man, it's get out, man, get out the way 'cause you never know what's gonna happen. We just come outside and blow off, man. Shit. (laughing) Just like that.

Was that the gun cracking off? Oh, yeah, man. I like it. That's how we do it. If I did that where I am in England, I'd have a police car here in about one minute. (laughing) Well, fortunately we got the two A and we're far away, we're out in Three Man's Land still, so we get talking about Bitcoin and get excited,

you know, like I said, watch out. (laughing) I like it. No, it's important and it changes, like it changes your view, I think. The more you learn about Bitcoin, the more lessons it teaches you has changed my perspective on many, many things.

It's completely changed the way I look at the world and it sort of like it lifts the curtain. It allows you to see how things really are and what's interesting is it's doing the same thing to thousands of us at the same time and all those people seem to be all meeting on Twitter.

We all seem to have a similar view. We're all wanting to build stuff and collaborate and change things and that's cool because it makes you feel less lonely. It makes you feel like you're not the only one who wants the change.

You're not the only one who's fed up and it's nice to have a little bit of a community, a little bit of a group who just say no. You know what? You know what we call that here in the stateside on the other side of the pond?

We call that there. - Where's that? (laughs) - When you got a group of people all together that are talking about a thing. (laughs) But no, it is cathartic sometimes when you're going through the roller coaster of a bear market and you're dealing with all the fun and everything and then you see

some hardcore maximalists on Twitter come through and blow it all out of the water. You know that that's cathartic and it's like therapy for the newbies and like the plebs out there who's their first run on it, you know?

- Yeah, that bear market feeling. Did you like, again, I'm trying not to doctor you at all but did you come in in a bull run or did you come in in a bear market? Like what's your main experience been like?

Did you have times when you're waking up being questioning yourself? - Well, actually, because I understood the file sharing and everything, once I read the white paper there was no questioning, you know, whether or not it was gonna succeed, like whether or not it was gonna remain a viable option, like I knew it wasn't going away, right?

Just how it could be taxed always first, like kept my eyes, you know, glued to the screen, like trying to keep up with stuff like that or instances where I'm just trying to project my own personal finances long term and then you never know when things are looking bearish.

I just, I knew that I know it's not going to zero is just something I knew because I understand how a decentralized noted network operates. I know that, you know, maybe it'll go to underpinnies but back under like 50 years from now or something horrible happened but I knew that it wouldn't go to zero

and then, you know, what it's capable of and what it actually is, the merit that that holds is I knew that, well, it's just gonna be a bumpy ride, you know? I'm not saying that I'm some kind of profit but I mean, if you understand technology that's behind this, like Christine Lagarde said,

if there's even a small escape or a leak anywhere, there's no way it can be stopped and it's true, you know? The only reason that other decentralized file sharing opportunities in the past have fallen is because the individuals who were behind them were known, right? If you look in history, you see that they were able to traverse the code

and find out the origins and get the people involved and pretty much shut it down. This is way beyond that, way beyond that. - There's no point to apply that pressure too. - Exactly, so when you remove the weak links in the chain like that, you know, you got something hard, it's you can put faith in it.

And if you understand the technology underlying Bitcoin that fully you can put faith in that it's gonna keep going. Doesn't necessarily mean it's always gonna be 30,000, 40,000, 3,000, 10,000.

I mean, you know what I mean? Something horrible could happen. Everybody needs funds for something. Maybe it goes back down to three cents. Probably never will but the thing is is I'd highly doubt it'll ever go to zero.

So I mean, it was hard to hold through some markets, bear turns, but it, you know, long-term conviction and faith and just listening to, you know, other people who had been in the game since 2010, 11, 12, just reaffirmed my own personal convictions and just helped me through the bear markets and stuff.

'Cause like you asked, when did I come in? Well, I got introduced into shitcoin back in mid '16 into '17. And that was, I took an L on that of 25K and that L had me so angry. I understood that, well, what's going on here, you know, is the only thing they're asking me for is Bitcoin.

And so when I seen that, you know, we went through that already. But once I read about that and got a firm understanding of that, I decided to start buying in. It was into that bull run. And I didn't sell out.

I kept buying in up until like the $19,000 price. And I was in the red for a good, longest time but because of what it was and I knew what it was all about, I just kept stacking. Yeah, me too.

I bought into tops and then I just kept moving, you know? Yeah, if you own long enough timeframe on it, it doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. And if you're pricing things in, if you're just looking at how many sets you've got rather than what that is in a USD shitcoin, then it doesn't matter.

It just holds. Absolutely. That's right. I mean, I was fortunate to be smart enough to pick up work as an automation tech doing to keep some dry powder on the side. So when we hit 3,500 back in March last year, man, I killed it.

Let's say I got more than 10, but less than 20 Bitcoins on that run and Stood. I was making up for all the differences that I missed in regards to buying the top back in 17. But even hell, even if I was still in the red, I'd still be doing this just because of my principles on what this is.

I think that's what separates people. I think that makes it much easier to hold when it's out of principle. It's out of wanting to change things. It's wanting to be able to say, fuck you.

It's all of those things. And then actually the price doesn't matter so much. People have asked me the same thing. It's like, oh, what if it dropped in half? What if it dropped in half again and again and again?

We know, where would you sell? It's like never, never, never sell. Because even if it goes to one cent, I'm never selling. I'll still be buying because it's my way of saying, fuck you. And there's so many people I want to say, fuck you too.

And this is just the most efficient way of doing it. - Well, it not only, well, that is a beautiful part of it. But also I got family and other parts of the world that are hard working honest individuals.

They pay their tithe from their blood and sweats the government every quarter, just like I do. And they still, because it's insane in other countries, even worse than here, the inflation, the money manipulation and everything, they, sometimes they ask me for help.

And I do not want them to have to deal with the bull that they're gonna have to put up with going to the bank. Where'd this money come from? Why are they sending it to you? Like, this is my family.

If I want to give them something to help them, you do not need to fill out a 50 page report. This is absolutely absurd. I mean, what gives? It's nothing in our history that would say that we're doing some illicit activities.

It's not like we're on some type of, well, we are all probably being watched by the state and the feds, but currently, we are not on any type of criminal watch program. So there's like, get off it, you know?

But Bitcoin, when they text me that, you know, hey, look, we're going to travel from like, okay, we just had a bunch of protesting going on over in India because of the farmers, right? I have family that was traveling from Amritsar all the way down to Delhi and they needed money to help them to get there.

I sent them Bitcoin. 'Cause fuck, I know a bank ain't going to make it happen and the amount of time they need it. They need petrol now, not two days from now or a week from now and you know what I mean?

And it's the middle of the night, Bitcoin. - It's incredible for those sort of things. Just that ability to move value around the world is insane. It's with no permission. Like it's, it really is, it is really world changing.

And what's even more exciting is when people are doing what you're doing and getting this no KYC Bitcoin, which I see is a real problem because so many people are piling in using KYC services that they're not caring about their privacy.

And these things catch up at the end of the day. But when more people and I hope more people take this view of like, you know, mining and no KYC and all this stuff, like it does reach a point where they have to just give up.

They're not gonna be able to continue to monitor it. They're not gonna with tools like Samurai and Whirlpool and these kind of things. Things are gonna get very, very difficult for them to interfere in any way.

- No, you're right. I gotta say that if people are trying to do their no KYC stuff just so they can avoid, you know, what do you call it? Dealing with the government tax situation, you're gonna end up in a lot of trouble because of how Bitcoin technology works.

You know, being able to look through the blockchain and everything is kind of, is not advantageous to most people to try and do that because they're not technically advanced enough in regards to covering their UTXOs and tracks, let's say.

You know, like let's say somebody wants to use Samurai or Wasabi and then they might actually send funds that were coin-joined to one wallet and then not realizing that they might have gotten another wallet on an exchange dusted, not notice and then send that Bitcoin to that wallet that had those coin-joined coins sent to.

And they're just the purpose of all that, you know? - It's hard. There's some nuances that you need to know about and some, you just gotta know about the technicalities in regards to what you're doing or else trying to do something, you may end up getting in trouble, you know what I mean?

But, I mean, I am all for no KYC when it comes to me getting, we call it home invasion type experience because the exchange got hacked and they weren't, you know, good with their security.

Like literally my house, we're armed to teeth. Like nobody's business. We got, and I'm about to install a turret out in the front lawn and have that thing raise up out of the ground when somebody approaches.

No. (laughing) - Let your hackers be where? - I, oh no, I was, I don't play with Ledger. Cold card Wasabi, thank you very much. - Yeah. - Yeah, Ledger, just no more. But I started with them because it was like what everyone used and I've used cold card for probably the last year or something like that.

And it's just worlds apart. And what Ledger have done is just fucking ridiculous. And, you know, like what you're saying there, you're like, oh yeah, I, you know, I'm gun to the teeth. Like if I had that list, now, if anyone has a list and it's got a holdable tarantula on there, just fucking avoid that house.

Come to mind because I live in England, we're not even allowed guns. Like, we can't protect ourselves. You know, I might have a hammer or like a screwdriver, but you know, it's. - You're gonna take the L, you're gonna take the L so I don't have to take a body.

(laughing) - But yeah, I mean, we can't protect ourselves. And, you know, the police that are supposed to protect you are fucking certainly not going to either. And that's one of the big issues is like, you know, we have this nanny state, we have this, you're not allowed to have any sort of control.

You're not allowed to protect yourself if someone breaks into your house, all this stuff. And that's, that's when you sort of hacks. - You can't protect yourself if somebody breaks in your house?

- No, literally you're not allowed a gun in the UK. You can have a, you can have a shotgun, but you have to have a special license and have some hunting land to go with that shotgun, huh?

- Yeah, exactly, exactly. So it's, it's not great. Like, and the general view of England in England is like, everyone just watches the BBC, everyone just believes whatever's on the news. So their view is, like, comes about.

- Oh no, I understand that. I have, I have an uncle who is a professor over there. I don't, actually I think he's retired now, but his two sons come over here sometimes and they absolutely love coming to my house because of the things you mentioned.

You know that they're like, oh, you just, you don't see this over there. And they, they say that it's very impressive in regards to kind of those kinds of rights actually, rights to information and rights to protect yourself.

- Yeah, it's important. And as well, I like this whole Citadel theory stuff and like trying to have this regulatory arbitrage and, you know, giving it some swing soon that, you know, people will start moving because once you've had a taste of that sovereignty, you want to go the full hog really.

- That's real, that is real. Once I figured out what Bitcoin was and what it meant in mid 2017, I could not get into it fast enough. I mean, I wasn't able to get into it until almost, it was like, yeah, December.

Into December, it was horrible because I kept getting cut off by my banks. Every time I'd go to send a couple grand out, they'd, they'd, they'd stop the transaction and then I'd be waiting for days and days, like a week would go back 'cause it's seven days, anything over like five, 10 grand.

So I would go days and waiting to see what's going on with this money and then all of a sudden, a week later, it would show back up in my account because the bank canceled the transaction.

They waited for it to go out four or five days. Then they decided that, no, we don't trust those people who you're trying to do business with. So we're gonna bring that money back. But we're gonna make you wait four days before we actually put it back into your account.

So a total of like eight to 10 days has gone by now. And I still haven't been able to buy my Bitcoin. And this happened, so I went, I'd go to a different exchange and try to send it there.

And it happened again. It literally, from the time I really, really found out, like, and needed to get into Bitcoin, I probably would have been obtaining it faster if I would have just, you know, went and straight bought the mining equipment, but I wanted to experience it first.

And so I wanted to buy, you know, buy a few thousand dollars first and then I wanted to use a little bit of that to buy some mining equipment, right? 'Cause I know that also when I tried to buy mining equipment from overseas, I got my transactions were bought by the banks again.

So even when I tried to buy it, the same thing would happen. So it was like probably mid-17, middle of December and 17 when I finally was able to get actual currency on doing exchange and then actually was able to start getting my mining equipment and stuff and really, like, I started out with R4s

and because those were what I could do cheaply and get enough of on 110 power than I upgraded my power. I did S9s and then I had to upgrade my power again. I got almost, I got like 600, I'm running like 600 volts now and I got, oh, just on the home farm, we got dozens kicking but like out in the field,

there's a lot more, there's hundreds out in the field but I got partnering out in the field. So things are going swell there, you know, if you're going to do anything real great, truly great, you can't do it alone, it's impossible.

Look at all the greatest men in history. Not trying to compare myself to one of them, but I'll tell you what, everybody who's participating in anything like this Bitcoin and developing and building.

- Yep, I got you again. I lost you at having a partner and yeah, and how the greatest men in history have partners. - Oh yeah, if you look at any of the men in history who have done truly great things or changed the world, you look at any of them.

They all have a handful of individuals standing behind them or with them that made it possible, you know. I mean, you got Jeff Bezos out there, did great things, helping people to get products with Amazon, right?

He developed that business, you know, that's pretty impressive, right? He had to have a board of directors with that, right? You got guys like Elon Musk and Henry Ford. They had ideas but they weren't, they said it's in a solutely no way any of these guys did any of the stuff they've done by themselves.

It was collective minds and, you know, principle and that directed these great movements and ideas, you know. And just like Bitcoin, if you're involved with developing or building and, you know, pushing forward this thing, then in my opinion, you're standing on the shoulders of giants with, you know, on par with the minds

and of the men that had the ideas to keep going with the things we had mentioned before, you know, like the electric cars and everything else. Yeah, you can't do it alone. Well, you can't do it as well alone.

It's always good to have a group or collective for people working together and we all have different skills and knowledge and stronger together generally. I mean, granted, yeah, I started doing mining solo kind of at my own, but before I was able to grow and like really get multiple peta hashes under my belt,

I needed, you know, better resources and, you know, additional manpower because it's a multifaceted operation. So it's not just plugging in a miner and then programming the miner and then you're off to the races.

There's a lot more involved with doing things off of the actual electric grid, you know. So with that, I wouldn't have been able to do what, continue to do what I'm doing today. But if I wasn't humble enough to admit that I might need some assistance in regards to building this out.

Because if I tried to go it alone, I probably wouldn't be standing here today. So that was another great thing. That is a great thing that Bitcoin taught me. It taught me to be more humble and to have a little more humility and to say, hey, I'm trying to do this and I'm having a hard time.

Can you give me a hand? That is difficult for people to do sometimes, you know. And when you are like, if you know how like the Bitcoin maximalist mentality is, we like to do things and we like to do things on our own and we don't like to be told how to do them, we just want them to be done very damn efficiently

and with a lot of quality, you know what I mean? And so if we're individual like that, who likes to be knowledgeable, sometimes it can be hard to admit that you need help with something, you know.

Yeah, definitely. Bitcoin brings that out in me, you know, more than other things in life have, I can admit. It teaches us a lot of life lessons for sure. And so this mining now that you're doing, you know, obviously you said you were using the S9s and it looks like from maybe the boxes, there may be S17s now.

Is this all stuff that you're running off natural gas or are you using solar or wind or like, what's the method here or a mixture? We're natural gases is the main and then I have a testing facility that operates off of the regular grid at 600 amp capacity.

So we're like, I'll pull a quarter megawatt off for just the testing site and then all the rest goes back out to the field. So with the natural gas stuff, you have just like massive generators, do you?

You have a load of generators that burn off this natural gas and convert that to electricity and then you run the miners off that? - That's affirmative. - It's very cool. It's very, it's such an interesting sort of section of Bitcoin that I don't understand that well, but like I had Marti on a few weeks ago,

I know he's doing a lot of stuff with great American mining, it's the same sort of natural gas idea. And some of the things that I've been hearing, just in terms of figures with the amount of natural gas that would otherwise be flared and just the amount of power that there is out there available is crazy.

Like it's mad that that would otherwise just be vented or flared and that now it can be used for it. - It's literally enough to power the entire country. It's insane. - I mean, it's insane.

You can power all of Norway off of off the amount of gas flared out there probably. But what those guys are doing with the flared gas is absolutely amazing. Marty, shout out and great American mining, those guys, they're always putting in hard work and we definitely appreciate what they do for the network.

The avenue that I go down and that my partner and I go down that we do a orphaned well acquisition or abandoned wells. So like these wells will be sitting too far away to be able to do anything.

Like they can't run a pipeline it costs too much money to get it to the grid, to get the gas to market. So it ends up getting abandoned and well, an abandoned well will leak out fugitive emissions like gas into the atmosphere through crevices and cracks and stuff like that.

Abandoned wells and notorious things for that. What we'll go do is just pick up that well and then go ahead and refurbish the head and everything coming off the well and clean it up, make sure it's tight and secure.

Drop a generator on there, make sure there ain't no leaks, leak tests or anything like that and we fire up. So we don't actually use flared gas in our operation. We're utilizing gas, like see 'cause flared gas I guess if they weren't making money off the oil, see don't quote me on this, I'm not 100% 'cause I don't operate with flared gas

but I understand it is wasted because they need to burn off in order to fulfill contracts and then also at the same, because they need to operate that well and that at the same time, they're not able to pull into market because of other production that's going on on site in regards to maybe oil production,

other fluid production and stuff like that. But don't quote me on that. So they're able to take and pick up that wasted gas, I think, off instead of pulling it through the LTs or the mid partnerships.

Now, what we'll actually do is we'll go and it will pick up a well that's say abandoned because the production went down to less than what they're willing to take from the pipeline or capacity-wise or else it's just been abandoned because it's too far away for the infrastructure to approach, to get it to be profitable.

And in that case, those wells could just be venting gas into the atmosphere if they're not plugged. And if they're plugged, well, all the owners, they lose their assets pretty much that it's just a loss, a total loss for everybody.

So we like to help them by picking up that well and then going further and operating on it in a sense that we can produce and pay them the royalty, whereas otherwise it'd just be sitting there doing nothing.

- It's really interesting. And so is that something that at this stage, you're still having to be proactive to go and find people or are people now starting to approach you and say, look, we've got this place.

Would it be something you're interested in? Is word getting around that this is possible and that you guys can do it? Or is it literally a constant hunt of like, where can we find somewhere that's gonna work and then fit your needs?

- Well, I personally have not experienced any type of influx of DMs or phone calls asking me to quote them or anything. My partners are making, we have the making of a marketing team going on where we're gonna work on developing a system

that we can install and do for people as a service, but not as of yet. The people are still less than 1% global penetration on Bitcoin out there, it seems like, in regards to what we're actually doing, very few people are really in the know, it seems like.

I mean, it seems like there's sprinklings of information out there, but unless they're looking for it, it's not in their face, you know? So they're not really flocking to the party, so to speak, you know?

- Yeah, well, I guess that works in your favor for now. You're very early doing what you're doing and from what I understand, it can be very scalable. It sounds like these sort of abandoned wells, I assume you can get good, good kilowatt hour price and as long as you have the know-how and you can get out to these remote locations,

it sounds like it's a brilliant business. - Oh yeah, if you can make the track, it's worth it. Not only just because you're off-grid, supporting a decentralized network truly, making it more decentralized because we're so far away, there's absolutely no power for anything out there, you know?

We're making our own power, we're getting our own internet connection, we don't rely on any cabling. And so it just adds that much more nuance to the freedoms, how free Bitcoin is, you know?

How sovereign it actually is. Now it's totally off-grid with satellite and with this type of mining that has been procured over the last, I don't know, I'll say half a decade, it's an unstoppable force that is to be reckoned with by anything that stands in its way.

I think that it would be very foolish for any large financial entity or behemoth out there to think that they could put the brakes on something like this. If you look at how it's actually being done now.

- Yeah, I think it's without having some sort of facelbug or some sort of just thing that we can't imagine happening. I just, yeah, I can't see this slowing down, I can only see it accelerating.

And what's so interesting is like the financial incentive outside of all the philosophical stuff, outside of the revolutionary stuff, outside of the tech, outside of all of that, is that it's in the interest of anyone who wants to make money to do it.

And basically all humans are fucking greedy. So it would be crazy for people not to want to do this, to get involved in whichever way they wanna get involved and what you're talking about and what Marty's doing and anyone who's doing anything with the oil and gas industry or any stranded power, it may even be solar or wind

or whatever, if it's stranded and no one's using it and they haven't got the pipelines there, then what else are you gonna do? Like what else is there that can do this? And the answer I think is there's nothing.

- Well, and that's the thing. What would you put out there that would benefit society and not just be a consumption, an establishment of consumption? You know, I mean, if you're gonna put something on an energy source remotely, it better not be a damn chicken.

You know, like some kind of chicken stand or something, like a franchise, it needs to be something that can provide a benefit to society, like the energy itself would be providing. Does that make sense?

- So you're putting two good things together. You have something to benefit society, the energy source there and then Bitcoin. So you're just stacking good on good. - Yeah, it's incredible.

Well, yeah, it's something I really would love to try the mining stuff myself. I think what always puts me off is just the fucking cost of power here is disgusting. - Well, yeah, I gotta, I have a theory on that.

I've, see, I don't discourage mining and I don't tell people just buy and hold it. I tell people that you're better off to buy and hold Bitcoin if you don't wanna pay the premium for the power that it's gonna cost you to mine.

Because, or if you're just trying to do mining as a hobby, because mining at a loss is psychologically damaging for people when it comes to, you know, the dip, you know, 'cause then you're really paying for the dip now, you know, and sometimes people won't plug, which I don't believe in it.

I'm not unplugging ever. I mean, I'll go work at, I'll go back and work at another horrible corporate institution if I have to, but I will not unplug, you know? And now that I'm doing it off grid, I don't have to, it's perfect, so, but that's the thing there.

If you're a profit monger and that's all you're in it for is the dollar, then just, I would suggest that you just buy Bitcoin. But if you are passionate and you're here for the revolution like they say, then, you know, get into mining as a hobby.

You'll enjoy learning if you like learning stuff and, you know, that's a good route to go. And I don't mind helping people, if they have questions, they can always hit me in the DM, you know?

It's just, I've gotten away from GPU mining, I don't mess with that, but, I mean, helping people figure out ache issues and stuff, it's, you know, it happens. If I have time, I don't mind helping people.

I've been pretty busy lately that I've been going about a hundred miles an hour, it would seem like, but it, you know, it's a labor of love, so I don't, it doesn't seem like I've worked a single day since I left the corporate world and came to the Bitcoin overlay.

- That's very cool. That's, that's, that's very, very valuable, is that you enjoy your time when you're working. Like, I don't think that you can really put a price on that. If you're excited to go and be setting up these projects and exciting to be doing what you're doing, that's incredible.

Cause most people fucking hate their jobs. Like most people hate doing what they're doing. And if you can enjoy it, that's, that's awesome. - Oh yeah, I, I used to wake up early. And then before I'd have to, you know, even be awake and to get ready for going to work and the regular nine to five and now, and I used to just sit

and I'd be like looking at my phone. It was almost like cancer, you know? It was horrible, it was just depressing. I would just sit there and do nothing. No one, I gotta go do this noise and they're not going to compensate me anymore for doing anymore.

It's just going to be do this until you're 80. If we don't increase inflation past 30% over the next two decades and then you'll do it till you're 100. And then, or maybe not retire at all.

You know, some people die at work because they just, they're not able to find a way to store their value over time. And this is what Bitcoin fixes, you know? But now when I wake up in the morning, if I wake up, if I go to sleep at 9.30 because I'm tired, you know, I had a long day, I might wake up at 3 a.m., I'm going.

I'm out, I'm in the garage, I'm fixing minors, I'm checking the pools, I'm hitting the guns, I'm loading up the ammo, I'm getting in the truck, I'm going and I'm getting on the highway, I'm going to check my minds.

It's, and that's hit the farms and then it don't matter what time it is 'cause I know that I'm going to get out of this what I put into it and I always put in over 100%. So it's just money when I'm done.

- And you spend a lot of time on the road, like going in between all these offsite grids, it must mean a lot of traveling, I'd imagine. - I've, let's see, last week I logged 1,100 miles and well, let's see, it's 1,600 miles.

Three, yeah, I logged about 1,100 miles the week before last and then last week was probably around 700 miles and see, I'll travel to remote places and there might be four different sites all in one area, you know what I mean?

But that area might be two hours or three hours or like it could be two hours or an hour and a half away or even up to three hours from where I actually operate out of my home operation, you know, where I do testing and everything else.

- A lot of time on the road and what do you do in those hours? Do you listen to a lot of podcasts when you're driving or what's your? - I do. I listen to a lot of Adam Meister, Bitcoin Meister.

I listen to a lot of tales from the crypt with Marty Bell and Matt O'Dell. I listen to a lot of Preston Pierce. I guess, yes, Stefan Lavera. I listen to a lot of Brecky. I got, man, the list is so long.

Even, I even like to listen to good old Mr. Peter McCormack out there in Manchester or Bedford or wherever he's Bedford. I'll get it right for him. So he don't get his, get his knickers in the twist.

So we say,

he's a good guy at heart, I think. He loves talking about helping his mom and stuff. But man, he faints dumb on some things sometimes for his audience, I think, and it kills me. It just kills me.

But hey, you shout out to him too. Everybody is a pleve in this world and in my opinion, we're all equal. Nobody, Michael Saylor stands on the same, you know, stage that all of us stand on, you know.

The Gemini twins and weirdos involved in the shit coinery as they embrace Bitcoin. Initially, they're still equal. You know, everybody who's a Bitcoin holder is, you know, we are equal, in my opinion, you know.

- Absolutely, I love it. Well, listen, I don't want to take your whole day 'cause I know you got some mining to do. You got to support the network and do your thing, but it's been really cool speaking to you.

It's been really nice to find out what you're doing and I'm very envious of your freedoms and I'm going to keep stacking so I can have them myself one day. - Oh, you just took the words right out of my mouth.

I was going to say you keep stacking sats and the freedom will be yours. - That's it. - It's one of the beautiful things that it provides. I just, all I can say is just got to give it. - I lost you there.

- Oh. - You just said keep stacking sats. - Oh yeah, I was. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, just keep stacking sats and the freedom will come because that's what Bitcoin does. It might take a little bit of time, but Bitcoin breeds a low time preference type lifestyle.

So you should already be on board for a little bit of patience anyways, right? - Exactly, yeah, exactly. I will do, I will do, I will never stop sacking and you never turn off those miners and between all of us, we're going to change this world.

So yeah, thanks again, mate. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for doing what you're doing and supporting the network. And if you ever find yourself in England or I find myself in the States anywhere near you, it'd be cool to grab a drink.

- Absolutely, no problem. Be my pleasure. - Cool. All right, enjoy the rest of your day and we'll catch up soon. - Absolutely. Hey, I'm sorry to the plebes for cutting in and out on the internet there.

- Yeah, we gotta stay out in Free Man's Land. So, you know. - Just on your side, do you mind doing me a favor just in case we lose the connection and save your side of the audio just in case it gets lost with the connection.

- Sure, man. - Yeah. - What do I, will it just not go save? - Yeah, I'll stop the recording now and then we'll just, we'll hold on for one sec. Just hold on. - All right then.