Growing bitcoins circular economy with @bdgbertdegroot

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

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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.

Alright, 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.

I got to have a conversation with Bert from Bitcoin Bloom a couple of weeks ago. I've been a bit slow getting this one out, but it was well worth the wait. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Bert is helping to build this Bitcoin circular economy. And what I really love is that he's starting local. He is taking Bitcoin miners and using the heat to grow beautiful flowers that he then sells only for Bitcoin.

He's delivering these flowers to Bitcoin as having conversation with people on the ground and helping the community around him understand Bitcoin and start mining. Before we start, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been reaching out, messaging me, asking questions, sending sats, and all the interactions are really appreciated.

I also want to thank everyone who has been buying the samurai hoodies and helping support free Ross and also the seed signer t-shirts and helping support seed signer. It's really cool to see these open source projects and things that really matter, get the sats they deserve.

I'd also like to thank my sponsors. I'll start with foundation devices. I had Zack and Bitcoin Q&A both on the show together. This was really good to just get a rundown of everything that they've been doing over the last six months and also to get some insight into this new passport.

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So if anyone is thinking about it and they're not quite sure because of the privacy trade-offs, you can always reach out to me and I'd be happy to answer any questions. I know a couple of you already have.

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Next up, we have fast Bitcoins. As everyone who listens to this show knows, there are a couple of ways to stack sets. You can mine, you can buy no KYC in cash or you can use an exchange. For people who do want to use an exchange, I can highly recommend fast Bitcoins because they really do care about the privacy

and security of their customers. They do everything they can to keep you safe and they also really push you to take self custody. They were the first exchange, I believe, in the world to have lightning withdrawals and they have a team that is always one step ahead.

If you haven't already listened, you can go back and listen to my conversation with Danny Brewster and after listening, if you decide you'd like to sign up, just go to fastbitcoins.com. And as always, you can always reach out to me and ask any questions.

Enjoy the show. Is it working? Can you hear me? I can hear you loading clear. Finally, I'm so sorry about that, mate. We ended up starting half an hour late. Yeah, but it's not your fault, man.

I just cannot work out what was going on there. In the end, I just kept closing it and restarting it and eventually it's worked. I guess it must be something on their server side or something.

Yeah. It's nothing you can do about it, right? One of those things. But yeah, thanks for coming on. It's been delayed before 'cause you were not very well. Were you feeling bad tonight or what?

Quite okay, but my voice was not in perfect shape. And I have to say that today, my voice is again not in perfect shape because yesterday I was allowed to play volleyball again because there's no QR code at the sport hall here.

So, yeah, so we had a good drink after, let's say. Wow, so I didn't even know, like, obviously, I've got some Dutch friends, but I didn't know how restricted it was that you couldn't play volleyball.

Still, that's crazy. Yeah, so what happened was I went when they just restricted with the QR code, all the restaurants and the Netherlands and also the sports institutes. So I live in a very, very small town in the Netherlands.

So everybody knows each other and then we have this, yeah, local guy who basically babysits the sport hall here. And he was really, really checking up, like he was standing at the door waiting for us to come in and I was like, yeah, I'm not going to show any QR code because I don't have one.

I was like, yeah, you are not allowed in. I was like, really, so you're taking my sport that I'm doing since I'm five years old from me? Seriously, like, yeah, that, and I play together with my dad, you know, my dad is 68 years old.

So how many times do I get to play with my dad, you know? So my dad was really emotional, you know, like, oh my God, they are like, yeah, it hurts, you know, when they take your freedom away in that way.

So yeah, it was a special moment when that happened and being able to play again yesterday was then really a nice moment, like, oh, I bet. You must be very good then if you've been playing since you were five.

No. (laughing)

I always enjoyed the, after the volleyball the most, you know? I don't know. Socializing part is the most fun part. That's the same with me and skiing. That is such a shame and it's happened to people all around the world and, you know, you touched on something really important now.

It's like the time that you have with family and friends and loved ones and there's a limited amount of time that we have on this planet and it's the worst thing that you can do to someone, you know, and they've not only been stealing our time, literally with our family and friends, but they've also been stealing our time

because they've been taking away everyone's hard earned work and their store of value and thieving people through the currency at the same time. Pissing in your face while telling you it's raining because what they're saying is, oh, we're doing this for everyone's protection and we have to do all this spending

because of COVID and it's just such a clown world. And, you know, I guess that's why we lurk, where we do and spend our time with Bitcoiners and why you're doing what you're doing. So we'll get onto that, which I'm really excited about because there's so much talk about these big businesses coming in and all this bullshit that really,

to be honest, doesn't interest me whatsoever. And then Mr. Crown reached out to me and said, look, I've got this friend and, you know, here's what he's doing. And I was like, that sounds wicked.

Like that's proper circular economy stuff. So for anyone who hasn't already found what you're doing or doesn't know you, do you wanna do a little bit of a rundown of what it is that you've started and why?

- Yeah, so we are in, it's called the Node Runners Group. We also have a website, noderunners.network with the best Bitcoin content. So in that group, we have some real Bitcoin maximum

lists. So what I was doing was I started helping people out for mining. So I just ordered some mining machines and yeah, some people wanted to get in from this group. So I helped install one at someone's workshop.

So he heats the workshop with the miner. Then I started to also build some boxes to reduce the sound. And I got it reduced up to 40 decibels which was really good coming from 85 with the miners.

So use that in a workshop and in my own home. I started to heat my home with the miner. And then came along someone that was heating his greenhouse with natural gas. But the natural gas prices exploded.

And my uncle where I was babysitting his house said, "Hey, you have to come along because at the greenhouse, I bought some electric heaters and so we can reduce the natural gas use in this greenhouse for this family that he was in that sense supporting."

And I was like, "Okay, this is the perfect time to put the miner in because it's the same wattage of heat for the old electric heaters as I will give with my miners." So let's put a test set up into this greenhouse and just pay for the electricity and give them the heat for free.

And that works out for me and it works out for them. So yeah, and then after this test period of a couple of months already now, I thought why should we not then also sell the flowers that we are growing on this little webshop that you can actually pay for with Bitcoin?

So yeah, one of the guys in the node runners group set this up with Bitcoin pay server. We can accept Bitcoin payments and people started to order flowers. So two days ago I drove to all the way to Daevinter which is like in the middle of the country to deliver some flowers for someone who had some flowers before on the Bitcoin meetup

which I just handed out to some people and they were so beautiful that he did an order again because the flowers were so nice. So yeah, I delivered them there, it's really fun to do. So full vertical integration of mining, growing flowers and then yeah, spending your Bitcoin on it.

This is the way where it should go, right? Absolutely, this is the dream, it really is. And I imagine you get to meet some really cool Bitcoiners along the way if you're doing deliveries and catching up with people.

It's a great way to actually find people who care about the circular economy because I'm kind of starting to change my view on a lot of the way that the space is going and anyone can use Bitcoin for whatever they want and it's their decision.

But I don't think that just stacking a load of sats and then sitting on them forever really helps the network or really helps stop like these crazy regulations from taking hold. And I think that what you're doing is really, really beautiful because you're supporting the network by mining, you're getting no KYC sats if it's done correctly

and then you are creating something beautiful, you're creating flowers which you then sell to other Bitcoiners and round and round it goes. And that's the dream. Yeah, it's incredible to see.

I'd love to see more of it. Is this something that you'll keep just in Holland or? Yeah, for now with the flowers, it's really difficult to send them. So what happened a couple of weeks ago is I tried to send them via normal post service or package service and then the delivery was delayed.

So it took four days before the flowers are delivered. Yeah, then they're dead. So yeah, you can't, like with flowers, it's a fresh product, you know. So but then the next idea is, and it will take a little bit of time, but you know tulip bulbs, right?

From the knowledge. Yeah, we keep getting reminded in the financial times. Yeah, everybody knows the story of the tulip bulb. And this bubble, the tulip bubble is something we can ship internationally.

And it's possible. And the fun thing is that yesterday I set up a miner at a greenhouse that actually grows the tulip bulbs. And yeah, of course we are going to move in that direction. But first, the family that is growing the tulip bulbs

has to get familiar with Bitcoin mining because it's a process, right? It's not like you just walk in and then we do this. It's something that needs to be built up. But yeah, that's the next step for me, definitely.

What's the process been like for you getting involved in mining, figuring this out or setting them up in greenhouses and all over the place? Like, it's not a simple thing. And there are some good guides out there, but it can be pretty intimidating for people.

Like, did you just think one day, like, fuck it, I'm just going to do it and you've just worked it out and gone with it? Has it been a fun process? Has it been stressful or like, yeah, what's it been like for you?

Yeah, it's always the 10,000-hour rule, right? If you want to master something, you need to spend at least 10,000 hours on something. So my last few years have been Bitcoin as much as possible and then I want to know everything.

That's always how I lived. So yeah, mining is then something that you have to do because you need to understand what this is, what's going on in your guest. Recently, Kono Alchemist, I had contact with him, he helped out.

But also, yeah, the internet is amazing, right? I was alone on this journey. So found people and step-by-step learned a bit more about Bitcoin mining. And yeah, even in that group, you know, we ordered miners together, right?

That's amazing. And also that we are all small miners, right? So we're not on the fiat gigantic scale and with loans and all these kinds of things now. We are sovereign Bitcoiners with, yeah, just trying to create some non-KYC stack for ourselves.

And I like this direction. It's, yeah, you get people along on the journey and it's very pure. Yeah. It's the real auto DCI, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, with actually, I call it the also risk aversion, in that sense, because if you get hold of electricity

at an okay price, like the friend of mine that has this carpenter workshop, he had a contract, an electricity contract of 60 cents per kilowatt hour. So we brought the miner and he's like, oh my God, this is not going to earn me anything.

Like this will cost me so much money. Yeah, change your energy contract, right? Yeah, normally I would have never paid attention to it, but now I will because I consume more electricity. So he dropped his costs significantly and now also for his home and workshop use, all the costs are down.

Just by diving into this Bitcoin rabbit hole with the miner. So it has such a positive effect if you can get cheap electricity, which you normally can if you up your energy use, then also your cost of living goes down.

So it's a win-win. Especially if you can use the heat, that's a big one, because then you can offset your cost elsewhere. You know, it depends where you are in the world, but like for example, most of Europe is pretty cold here, especially in the winter, and so you need heat.

And so then if you can use the heat from the miner, then that's perfect. Especially when we have the rising cost of energy, like it's really difficult here to make things work. That's why I'm so impressed that you have.

Like, you know, you see lots of people in America where they have lower energy costs and they can just whack these things into a garage and get five cents a kilowatt hour. And I don't want to take anything away from them.

It's still fucking awesome. And like I have huge respect for anyone who's doing this, but it is a different level because when you've got, you know, 30 cents, 35 cents a kilowatt hour, it makes things really difficult.

Yeah, how are you sort of managing that? Is the offset, is the heat for the flowers and then the flower sales and that kind of works itself out? Or have you managed somehow to get some sort of special rights?

Is it still working out to be profitable for you or are you just thinking it doesn't really matter because you believe so much in Bitcoin and you want the sats? For me personally, it's the latter.

So I pay a higher electricity bill. I got new contracts in for the locations I mine personally. So not the greenhouses, I mean, not the workshops. So I set up or, but this is a floating energy contract.

And I was shocked like last week we hit 70 cents per kilowatt hour. Like, oh my God. So that's very, very painful. I also reacted on Steve Barbour, you know, from upstream data. Like we are hitting 70 cents a kilowatt hour here.

Like this is, you can't mine on this ridiculous energy price. It's impossible. But it goes down quite rapidly again and especially when the summer will come in, electricity prices will drop almost to zero.

When we have an immense amount of solar and wind energy, the prices drop significantly. And that's the moment that the guys I have the contract with will pin it at a low price. And this low price will be below 10 cents, I'm sure of that.

But also for the greenhouses, it's below 10 cents. So large consumers, especially in the Netherlands, that's also why you see the Google and Facebook data centers in the Netherlands, the electricity is extremely cheap if you're having a large scale operation.

So I'm still amazed that nobody has set up really large scale operations in the Netherlands. But yeah, let's see if that's going to happen, if the regulatory environment is changing. I was just about to say, I think maybe that could be wise, like the tail risk of setting something up anywhere in Europe at the moment

with the crazy bullshit that they're spouting. I would not feel comfortable. Like, yeah, smaller, smaller operation. I mean, firstly, in my mind, smaller operations are better for the network, for the people, for everyone, like because they're much easier to attack these massive companies with regulations.

- The rent sugars will come. (laughing) - Oh, yeah. Oh, we know arguably they're already here. And yeah, more and more will come. And I think that's probably why they're thinking maybe not going into Europe.

But then it's like, I see it as a bit of a battle. It's like, we know they're going to come. We know they're going to get captured. And then so there's no point in just like people saying, oh, well, that's a done deal then, let that slide.

People have to get creative and think of ways of doing it like you're doing, or think of ways of like, I've said to people for ages, if you've got a business and you're writing off the cost of your electricity through your tax bill, put a fucking minor in your business, like especially if you need heat,

because you can write it off anyway. So what's your actual cost of electricity is zero. It's zero. And so how many businesses have you got around Europe and around the world who have been absolutely decimated, especially small businesses from all this COVID nonsense?

Any small business has been destroyed. All the big businesses have done very well. And so everyone knows that they're getting fucked over. And so it's time to fight back and just say, no, I will, I'm going to buy a minor.

I'm going to write off the energy costs and I'm going to get some sat and I'm going to protect my business and my family. If more businesses do that, this thing can really decentralize. And that would be a really exciting thing to watch play out.

- Yeah. And you touch the point of who helps these people out and who shows them this path. Because that's what I feel that my journey is for the upcoming years is helping people out, especially on this part that you're just explaining.

But what I see here, I live in a very rural, small township area. And what you see here is that all farmers are angry with our government. I don't know how that is at your place, but yeah, the amount of rules that have been put here, I have a little bit down the road here.

I have a dairy farm. And they said, okay, yeah, we don't dare to build a new stable because if we do the regulations change and then your investment is just worthless. So we don't dare to invest in our dairy farm.

Yeah, it makes you sick, right? People can't do anything. These families have been many generations in the same business. There's no margins being made. And they are sick and tired and many stop.

Yesterday also, that's the nice thing. If you play volleyball with, yeah, my father has, so it's the boomer generation. You get to sit at the table with the boomer generation and then from my old team, my generation, which is a bit younger, and you get a nice mix.

And then you hear all these stories of all these farmers that are stopping now and then that there's this 30 billion euro pot of money to make farmers stop in the Netherlands. And you think, oh my God, what will this do with the electricity consumption?

Can you imagine like more than half of the farmers quitting? That's a huge amount of energy that's actually will become available. And all these farms, they have solar panels on the roofs.

So they will pump it back into the grid for almost nothing. So what I see happening in the upcoming years with this pot of money, just being there for these farmers to being bought out is that we get an abundance of electricity, but there's nobody going to pay for it.

So if you bring miners into these farms, just a couple, it doesn't have to be much, but for these families, this could be a great income because at the moment it's just it's really zero. So I hope in this region that this will help out and then bring it to the butcher,

to the bakery, to the vegetable shop, the small shop owners which are having difficult times already and then everybody starts to pay in Bitcoin. So that's where it has to go. It's a sad state of affairs to see businesses that have been in families for a long time being wiped out through regulation.

I literally was moved a week or two ago. I have this guy, mechanical engineer, who's been doing some work for me. I've been building an airstream, like a renovating a 1960s airstream. And well, this guy is like, he's about 75 years old, proper rural guy, he's been running this workshop on a small farm since he was like 20.

Big old geyser, like six foot four, built like a brick shit house and he was in tears the other day. He's a tough bloke, like I've dealt with him for a long time and he was in to it. I said, "Are you all right?"

Like, "What's going on?" He said, "I've got to fold the business." I can't, I can't continue. I was supposed to retire a couple of years ago just before COVID, but I couldn't because it's just really wiped us out.

Now I've got all these new regulations that I've got to jump through. I've got all this paperwork. I had this visit from whatever inspection, whatever agency it is, just to run this fucking workshop.

He said, "I've got paperwork coming out my ears. I've had to hire a lawyer. I had workers here who they now don't think should be here and blah, blah, blah." And all this stuff. And he was just like, "I can't cope with this.

It's not like it was in my day." He said, "When I started this business, I went to the bank, I shook a manager's hand." He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm starting to be a mechanical engineer."

He said, "Oh, I'll tell you what. I don't suppose you could fix this gate I need fixing." He said, "Yeah, I'll do that for you." He said, "That was my first customer." He said, "Do you want an overdraft?

Do you want a loan? Let me set you up." And I had personal contacts with him. He said, "Now I go in. They interrogate me. I have to fill out all these forms." And he just said, "I just fucking, I cannot do it anymore.

I'm folding." And that was like a terrible thing to see because I'm thinking this is a guy who's 75. He's worked his whole life hard. And now rather than retiring and sort of enjoying his life and the final years, which probably won't be very long, instead, he's got to sort of leave with his tail between his legs,

tired, feeling like he's been beaten up and just leave the whole thing. And that's a common theme. - Ned, in the hamster reel, it's painful as hell, but what the Banksters did as you're pointing out.

- Yeah, the Banksters and the bureaucrats and all this bullshit and it's just not the world that it was 50 years ago. And a lot of people have said this recently. It's like we're not actually trying as Bitcoiners to do anything that hasn't been done in a lot of ways.

Like we're just trying to go back to a time where people could have an idea, run a business, live their lives without being interfered with every second of the day, every decision they wanna make.

There's someone there interfering or with their handout wanting to be paid, blocking anything from being done unless you're a massive corporation. And yeah, just fucking sick of it. And so that's why I don't really want to see these massive miners come in.

I mean, they're going to anyway, but I like to see smaller operations. I like to see these people take their power back and say, nah, fuck this. Like, I wish I could say to this old boy about mining.

I have tried, actually, 'cause he has a load of solo and he has a big farm. But he just, sometimes where someone's too defeated to even listen, it's that, unfortunately. But there'll be a lot of people, especially if they have, like, their kids are taking over the farms or they have someone who's just, you know,

got a little bit more time to think about things. I think, like you said, when you've got all this power and you've got people having to close their businesses, I think these miners are gonna go in and it would be amazing to see.

- Yeah, and the only way to achieve this is, people need to have a positive view on Bitcoin. And I think this is the most difficult thing to accomplish in the normal world around this. Like, the most shared article here in our surroundings was, I think, a month ago,

a miner in the city of Aintov and who lives in, yeah, like, yeah. Lot of houses on a small area, really in the city. He put 600 ampers of miners in his house. So what the energy company had to do is they had to open up the street, the entire street, nobody could access their houses anymore.

And this got in the mainstream media. - Of course it did. - Yeah, there's a Bitcoin miner. All these people can't get into their houses. This guy is taking more energy than the 40 houses in this area.

What the fuck is happening? This is a waste of energy. And now, because this was like the most hyped article on the local news also, of course. Omaru Brabant, which is the southern area in the Netherlands where I live.

Came up to me, he said, "Oh, we're making a video on YouTube, mainstream." So also on the mainstream television, local television, southern Netherlands television. And we are going to investigate this mining because there are so many questions around this.

So is it okay, we come in contact with you and you show us the greenhouse, for instance. Said, of course, and we can maybe twist the story into something a bit more positive, right? Because yeah, if only this negative part hits the news constantly.

And people get a not so good view on Bitcoin. So I'm happy that mainstream is actually now reaching out and wanting to cover a bit more. So I hope we achieve that. - That's awesome. It's great to have the opportunity to try and change people's perception of it.

Because the funny thing is, and it's the same, when you first start getting into Bitcoin, you're trying to explain why this money is better than the previous money and why maybe people should think about having some of it.

And it's very difficult to change people's views because I don't know, I mean, I guess it's different. And so that scares people and they've been very much conditioned to think a certain way.

But I think that one thing that we have on our side is that people are losing, I mean, people are losing more and more trust with the governments. And the way that things are going, there's only a small percentage of people who the government are doing anything useful for the rest or just getting fucked.

And so as that gets worse and worse, the more positive we can show the things that we're doing, like you can say, look, I'm running this business and I'm creating flowers. And look, I'm a good person.

I'm not causing any problems. I'm paying for my electricity. I'm securing a network, which allows freedom for people anyone can join this network. It's like, when people actually look at what we're doing, they think shadowy super coders and loaded people who just want to get rich quick.

And then you actually see the people who are really here and really building and it's so far from the way that we're painted. It's completely the opposite of the way that we've been painted.

And I think it should start to draw people in once they realize, no, the narrative you're shown on the news is a lie. - Yeah. And the only way to do that is show it physically, physically out in the real world.

And as you're saying, the distrust in not only government, but I think large entities in general. So I think most people distrust Google, they distrust Facebook, they distrust banks. So in general, if I look in my surroundings and all the people I interact with,

there is distrust. But nobody knows how to circumvent this state of being. They still have this belief that this is just the way it is. There is no other world out there. And yeah, we need to show this other side

of the coin, which is there. Bitcoin is there. But it's very difficult to grasp for people because especially if you're a bit older, if you live in this world as it is now for your entire life, you can't imagine anything else.

- It's almost like the people who do remember what it was like before you had such cumbersome regulation and such total control. They're slightly too old to do the technical side and understand things.

And then like the people who were younger, but maybe could wrap their heads around it or could do the more technical side of things, they've had it very comfortable, I suppose you'd say, like all the assets that they've had have worked very well for them.

They had a fairly peaceful time. They don't really see so much to complain about. And so they're not wrapping their heads around it. So it's almost like it's slightly too late for the older.

Like if I sat down with all my grandparents dead now, unfortunately, but if I'd have sat down with them and said like, you know, what do you think about being questioned every time he goes to the bank?

Well, I know 'cause they'd say to me, they'd go, ah, they get so angry 'cause they're like, I just want to draw 1,000 pounds out because I want to pay my builder or I want to do whatever.

And I'm being questioned all the time and I can't do anything. And I could see the frustration because they were used to being treated like a human being. Whereas I think that's sort of like middle ground, they actually have become accustomed to the fact that, well, I'm a piece of shit and the government owned me

and subconsciously, anyway, at least, they think, well, it's just the way it is and I can't change it. But there is this now or this group of millennials and zoomers and people who are sort of getting more information from alternative sources.

And I think that's where we really need to capture their imagination and show them that don't just see that there's issues in the world and then go towards socialism or Marxism or that everyone's bad and to hate everyone and all this bullshit that I see everywhere, which really doesn't, like, there's no,

they don't come up with a solution, they just say everyone's bad and then cry about it. So it's like trying to, I guess, direct some of that anger and actually shed light on why, why are things actually bad?

You can almost put, almost always point it back to a small group of people benefiting greatly while everyone else is having their freedoms and their money taken from them. And that's happening, I feel like it's happening, it's starting to get there at least.

It's inevitable, if you get the inflation with such high numbers, everybody's in such pain. Yeah, it's there, it's in plain sight. So the Dutch Central Bank, the class cannot, the yesterday, I think.

Yeah, it was yesterday, he announced that we might see inflation of 9.5% in the Netherlands for this year. And that's, we have been constantly underestimating what we as Central Bankers have been doing.

That's what he says in the Dutch Financial Times, like, wow, like, red flag guys, like, and there is another person which I tried to push, his name is Lex Hochtine, to push him on the What is Money show, for instance, with the Robert Breedlove, because that's quite mainstream.

He has been in Dutch podcasts, and he was, he almost became the head of the Dutch Central Bank, but he's an Austrian economist, right? So, well, and this guy, he's like, on podcasts, like, really saying, like, he's not with the Central Bank anymore, he's like, they are not even taking the foot

of the of the gas pedal, like a rate hike, and also in the US of 0.25, where we just saw that that's not, that's not taking the foot of the gas pedal, right? You're not even close to breaking.

So, this is going into a direction, we, yeah, this is as wrong as it can get, and he has a lot of examples about it, but it's all in Dutch. But if you see a central banker, like, coming out like this, you think, oh my God, what is going to happen?

And when this pain hits everyone, and that's currently the case, like the people that go to the supermarket here, if I hear my aunt, yeah, I paid for meat, I paid 50% more than two years ago, and you know, they really count there every Euro they have.

So, they are in pain, and they start to see what is happening, but yeah, they can't get the link right yet. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - We have to keep on hammering on that, and the more people that do it, and you get along, we could create a parallel system,

and we could create, yeah, could get into safety, and especially like Germany and the Netherlands, if you look in Europe, they had a very, very conservative way of doing central banking, and there was almost no inflation.

They were very strong currencies, and now that these countries have joined the Euro, everybody feels that this is going terribly wrong, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, where they had such a non-inflationary way of doing central banking, where their currency really held value, yeah, the people here don't know what to do with it.

They're not used to it. So, yeah, they will be struck this year, for sure, in the sense of pain, and I hope that they'll take them a little bit along the Bitcoin path, because it's our safest way out, and best way out, actually, of the Euro in my opinion.

Was it finance that first brought you into Bitcoin, or how did you come across this? Was it something you were already feeling things are fucked? Like, what is going on? I need to find something, or, yeah, I mean, how did you come into this?

The COVID pandemic made it click for me, but... You saw what the central banks were doing. You saw the companies that were being saved, the endless stream of money being injected everywhere.

So, no work and free money, yeah, that felt like something that's not possible. And I had my apartment that I sold,

and put the gains in, in Bitcoin. I thought it was the only way to not... To not feel the pain of what is coming. And now you see it, eh? And, yeah, it's my broad interest that brought me here, but, yeah, I don't understand that more people see this,

like, that this is a safe haven. So, yeah, you say your broad interest sort of brought you here. Is it like a tech background or a finance background? Because the thing I found is that people have to be very multidisciplinary.

They have to have a certain type of brain, and a... Beyond, yeah, beyond sort of knowledge, it is that it's curious to the point of obsessive that you have to be to keep going down the rabbit hole and keep unraveling things.

And even on top of that, you have to be open to the idea that everything you thought you knew is wrong, and be humble enough to accept it. Yeah, I was always a bit curious. So, in primary school, when I was 11 years old, I did my talk in front of the classroom about the stock market.

And together, it's actually nice because we were talking about the banksters, but when I grew up, the robobank, which was the bank in my town, was actually really nice. As a small kid, you would open your bank account there, you know, and start saving.

But when I was 11 and I wanted, because my father was doing some stuff on the stock market, I wanted to do my speech about this. And I asked my teacher, can we go to the bank to open an account, and then we can buy some stocks with the class?

And so she said, "Okay, yeah, then I come along." And the bank, the director of the bank in my small town, she said, "Okay, every gilder that's being put in, "we will double." And then at the end of the year, we will sell the stocks and then we will see if there's a profit or loss made.

So I think half of the class, we were with 30 kids, 15 kids, invested, and everyone did one gilder. And there was only one stock on the Dutch stock exchange, which was Antonov, which is actually quite funny because the big Antonov plane that we saw wasted in Ukraine is on the news again, but at that time,

Antonov was on the Dutch stock exchange and it was one gilder per stock. I still remember at that start of the school year. And with these 15 kids, we put 15 gilders in and then the rubber bank doubled it.

So we had 30 gilders and we put it on Antonov and at the end of the year, it was one gilder 10. So we had 10% profit. So we got 33 gilders and all on our bank accounts, we got that money in and it was really funny to see like how does this work and what does investing do.

And that was already, yeah, when I was 11 years old. So also, by the way, really positive experience with the bank back then because it was personal as you were just also talking about your friend that had a relationship with the bank.

And I think in local communities, this was really the case. The banker determined where the money would go in the surroundings and see what is good to invest in. This is gone. But this curiosity, yeah, that has always been there.

And in the end, I became a civil engineer but also not really working in that field because I ended up in the container logistics, totally different path again. Always curious and always wanting to find out everything in my surroundings.

So I think that that's something that you typically see with people that are interested in Bitcoin is that they are rather curious people. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And it's really refreshing to find something that for a curious person, you can continue to be interested in.

I don't know if you found this, but like certainly for me, I've tried and done and learned about so many things over the years and things don't tend to hold my interest that long. Like it gets to a point where I go, yeah, all right, seeing that done it, yeah, I'm not interested anymore.

And you move on to something else, whereas with Bitcoin, because there's so much to it and because it touches everything, you never find yourself getting bored. Yep. This is a rabbit hole.

Finally, you find a rabbit hole that you can, yeah, that you can keep on exploring without getting bored. Yeah. It's nice. And like because there's so much, like for someone who is non-technical coming in, maybe if you come in more from looking at this as an investment, you start to learn that, you see why it's so good as an investment,

then you start to go down other rabbit holes. There's always a chance to say, well, actually, I'm going to learn something a bit more technical. I'm going to set up a node, or I'm going to set up a hardware wallet, or I'm going to start mining, or I'm going to, whatever it is,

and it is endless because all of those things keep improving as well. So it's, yeah, it's amazing. And because you have so many other curious people, like you said, oh, you know, reach out to a kind of alchemist, and he help, or whoever it is, there's always someone there

who you just have to ask generally, like, look, I've got stuck here, or I was just wondering about this, and people are keen to help because, you know, it feels like we're one big team because it's a group of people who have said, we've had enough of the way the system is.

We're all incentivized financially for this thing to work because, you know, most of us are all in, and, you know, if this doesn't work with folks. And so we want to help each other there.

And I just want to see change. So it's very different to the fiat world where there's a lot of selfishness, there's a lot of jealousy and bullshit that I see. That doesn't tend to really happen here, and that's really refreshing, and it feels like that's the way you get shit done.

Yeah. Yeah. When you trust the people around you, it's really easy to work and get things done. And this is such an important part of what I now notice. Francis setting up this website where Koon helped me out on setting this up

with the Bitcoin Pay Server in this Bitcoin landscape, which is at the very, very beginning of time. But yeah, we know how we value our time and how we can help each other out in an optimal way, I think.

And this landscape will expand. And it will expand quite rapidly, I hope. At least in my surroundings, I think that is going to happen. Like I said, clear goals for this year. Like one of my goals is that my butcher here is going to accept Bitcoin at the end of this year.

And I will really try to make that happen. These kind of things, I think, are important steps into the Bitcoinization of your surroundings, and you'll have to create it yourself. It's hard work because you need to be consistent.

And you've got to go in and buy steak every day for the next year and eventually just help you. At least once a week. And of course, that's not bad to do because it's really nice to have fresh meat a couple of times a week.

But yeah, it's important to take the people along. Like the butcher already has moon wallets, you know. He has some Bitcoin on it. But when I paid him some in some Bitcoin, the price dropped quite significantly.

So yeah, it will take time again before he starts accepting it, I guess. But yeah, I'm optimistic that that by the end of the year will be the case. But let's see. Yeah, let's see. And so outside of orange pilling everyone around you with the mining, what are you thinking of the coming years?

What are you planning? Are you going to expand the operation with the flowers? Or are you going to just try and find energy anywhere you can? Is this something basically that you're going to continue to build out?

I don't want to become a big company in fiat terms. So I really like that I can do whatever I want with my time and I can do it all by myself. It's really... Yeah, there's no headache and you sleep very well every night.

I really enjoy that. And what I enjoy the most is like last week when I went to the family that closed the tulips, is that they want to buy a miner themselves. They want to mine the Bitcoin themselves.

They want to use this heat in their greenhouse. That's the way I would like to see it. Like everybody is going to do it for themselves and then help them on this path. I helped quite some people with buying Bitcoin and also doing...

How to store it properly. Yeah, so I like that part of work, whatever you call it. But I like that the most taking people along this journey. And I also had that in my previous work field where I brought the first heavy-duty 40-ton electric trucks into the Netherlands.

It was a project where I worked on... At that moment I firmly believed that electric propulsion for trucks was an important step to make. And it made sense in the surroundings of that port where all the customers were within a couple of kilometers of the surroundings.

It made sense, but I really like to have a goal being set and where you can take people along into a story and then actually physically make it happen. And that is what I hope to do the upcoming years, is really install and quite some miners at people's places

that really want to become a sovereign Bitcoin and help them out with that. That's what I hope to do. That's awesome. What's your thoughts in terms of getting the hardware? Do you have any thoughts around what hardware you like to run and install and also how to get your hands on it and not get scammed?

You see people order these miners and get a brick in the post and all sorts of crazy shit like that. So, yeah, how do you sort of navigate that? Yeah, you have to trust people in the end.

So, for my mining, I use kaboom racks and kaboom racks is a trustworthy party. So, they delivered and if you build up a relationship in that sense, you keep to that relationship in my opinion.

And yeah, it's the same with hardware wallets or with your data, your personal data. I'm a reseller for the foundation devices, the new batch that's coming. I'm a reseller for the crypto tag.

People want to buy face-to-face or directly with me or then send it to a post box to keep full anonymity. People you help along with these kind of things, they want full anonymity. People don't have to know that some people have millions of euros in Bitcoin.

If you can help them discreetly with that, it's fantastic to do. And you need to have a trust base and being a trustworthy person to do this. And I hope I can be that person in my surroundings.

That's also why I called my company Bitcoin Brabant because Brabant is just a small province in the Netherlands. I just wanted to do my work mostly in my surroundings. I want to change the place I'm in, I want to get this to a Bitcoin standard at some point.

That's my life goal. And yeah, it's all about trust then and the people you get around you on this journey. I love that. Well, look mate, I think that's a perfect place to end this. It's a beautiful dream from what you've achieved so far.

I think it's very likely that you will get this done. I want to hear once you've properly orange-pilled your butcher and you've got everyone over there mining. It'd be great to catch up at some point in the future and check the progress.

I've got a huge amount of respect for what you're doing. I think it's really cool and it's been great to hear a little bit more. But can you do a bit of a shill for your website and any other bits that you're doing and where people can follow you and follow you on your journey?

Yeah, so my personal Twitter handle is B.D.G. Berkeley Road. My company, the flower company where you can order the flowers with Bitcoin is Bitcoinbloom.

Bitcoinbloom.com and the website where I resell the foundation device, crypto tag and also mining stuff in general. It's Bitcoinbloom.com. Okay, perfect. I'll link those in the show notes anyway.

Yeah, thanks so much and hopefully we'll catch up again soon. Yeah, thank you very much, Max. You're doing great work. I actually use your footbuster for the tulip family. Oh, really? That's good to hear.

You've got a lot of alchemist. That's why I asked you the question to put it also on the Twitter off bit by bit. So I can also share it on my Bitcoin Babant Twitter. It's a really good footbuster. I really liked it.

Awesome. That's great to hear. I'm really, really happy to hear that that's being used. And yeah, I'll share that when we get off the call. Yeah, really appreciate you, mate, and let's catch up soon.

Thank you for your great work. Speak later.