Mining bitcoin and heating homes with @coinheated

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. 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 this space, and slither to the deepest, darkest, depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Welcome back to another episode of Plebmine a Month. As you know, this month has been extended because we just had so much incredible content. I'm sick again, but I've changed things up. So rather than having a flu, I'm now vomiting and shitting.

So it's good fun here, but the content continues. This was an incredible episode. I really enjoyed recording it. I have got another one with Coinheated and AI Pro Energy coming very, very soon.

Close to finishing the editing on that one. So be out in a couple of days. So just another massive thank you to everyone who's been involved in Plebmine a Month. Thank you so much to everyone who helped with sponsoring it.

And also thank you to my long-term sponsors. Foundation devices who aren't making. Oh, fucking hell, I can't speak. Foundation devices who are making my favorite hardware, they are fully open source, have an absolutely beautiful design and a world-class team.

They have just hired Seth for privacy to join their team. And yeah, I'm very excited to see what comes of that. If you haven't already seen these incredible devices, go to foundation devices.com.

You can use the code bit by bit to get $10 off your purchase. And we still are yet to release the pod I did with Bitcoin Q&A and Lily, and also to run the two foundation devices that we'll be giving away that will be coming soon within the next couple of weeks.

I'd also like to thank FastBitcoins for sponsoring this show, allowing it to continue and supporting it even though I continue to bash on KYC. There are very few companies out there that I would trust to send my friends and family who don't want to listen and don't want to do things to know KYC route.

These guys really do things properly. They don't do any extra bullshit compliance that they don't have to, and they really do care about their security. I have a lot of respect for this team, and if you are going to go to a KYC service, then it really does need to be a good one.

Check them out at fastbitcoins.com. Enjoy the show. - Coinheated, can you hear me? - I can, hello. - Hey, so it sounds like we're both a bit jaded and not prepared for the interview properly, which is perfect, we can ramble away.

- Such is life. (laughing) - I've just poured myself a glass of wine because every other pod I've been doing today, I've been making a cavity air of coffee, and then I suddenly realized like, walk after the airs of coffee, this is not good, you're jittering all over the place, so a wine has been cool.

- Let's see, we're pre-lunch over here. It's 11 o'clock in the morning, and I'm still going on my third energy drink, so, you know, catch 'em now. It's all good. (laughing) - Well, welcome to the show.

It's nice to have you on. - Kishi. - Thank you for jumping into this mining month. I know that from the pleb miners that I speak to, they have a huge amount of respect for what you're doing, and yeah, it's just great that you wanted to get involved and help other people.

That's really, really cool. - Well, when I started in all my stuff, I was just kind of doing my own thing, and I didn't really even know much about the scene, and I just kind of seen what other people were doing out there, and it all started with a video of my swimming pool being heated,

and then somebody found it, and then they posted that, and then all of a sudden, I'm supposed to be on Twitter for some reason, and then everything just exploded, and it's just been a fun ride, and I just do it because I enjoy it, and really, I'm a pleb at heart, if you will.

I'm not in it for huge gains, and mad money, and whatnot. I like making stuff, I like doing stuff, and I like helping others, so if it wasn't for everything else that everyone else has done so far, I wouldn't be where I'm at, so I'm always thankful for everyone that's done all the wild and crazy stuff, like the first person thought of,

"Hey, I'm gonna throw this asic in oil, "see what happens." - Yeah, well, you mentioned there it's not about the money, it's about making things, and building, and that's the thing that really keeps pulling me back in, and it's the reason for this mining month is that we've got something really special here,

something incredible, and the more that we get plebs mining at home, the more we decentralize things, the stronger the network becomes, the more chance we have of succeeding, and yeah, without people like you documenting what they're doing and helping others, that just doesn't happen, and it's not something that is pushed really

by a lot of the main channels, or the ways that people first come into Bitcoin is not like, get yourself an S9, start tinkering around, learn how to mine, is go to an exchange, go buy Bitcoin, and it's gonna make you rich, and it's not what this is about to me, and it seems the same for you.

- Yeah, same here. Yeah, I started mining back before the pizza incident, and I tried it for a couple days, and it was all like command lines and tags, and I didn't know what the heck was going on, and after a couple days of work, I think I figured I had 12 cents worth of Bitcoin, and there was no exchanges yet,

and I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this? Then I gave up for a decade, and then I kicked myself for the rest of the decade, and then finally in 2020, I'm like, "Screw this," and I'm so tired of saying like, "Oh, I missed out, oh, I missed out, oh, I missed out," and then I'm like, "Nope, I'm good,

"I'm not missing out anymore, I don't care, I'm all in." And that's just kind of where I've been, and it is still so early, and people are like, how many major dips has gone through now? It was that first one, I went up to like 20K, then it crashed to like 3K and 6K, and I went around there for a long time,

and having gone through all that, just even watching it, I was like, "All right, it's here to stay." There's enough people in here that want it and will hold it no matter what, so just the decentralization that nobody runs it, except for everybody, is like, all right, cool, I'm in.

- Yeah, it's beautiful. So you were in very, very early then. - Yeah, and I wish there was maximalists way back then, they would have been told me like, "Dude, hang on to this, it's good stuff," you know?

(laughing) 'Cause I was actually doing it, but I just didn't understand it back then, and I wasn't in any of the groups, and a friend of mine just told me like, "Hey, you should check this out," and I think I mined a block at 25 or something, and it was so long ago, I barely remember, but I remember specifically like playing around

with it for days and then thinking like, man, this is like 12 cents worth of whatever, and like, why am I doing this? It's just wasting my time. (laughing) - Yeah, well, like you said, there wasn't this kind of movement of maximalists and people explaining all the parts, and it's really all the bits together, isn't it?

It's like, it sounds like you're obviously a more technically minded person to be doing this. - Yeah, I've been in IT for a long time, and so, you know, I had spare computers around, and GPU mining was like just really early, and it was super buggy, and there's only like a very few cards actually even worked for it,

and so still CPU mining was possible, solo CPU mining, if you can even believe that, it was like actually possible. But yeah, times are changing. - And so now, obviously, this is becoming really quite a competitive market, and more and more people are entering the hardware, obviously getting more and more sophisticated.

- Absolutely. - Thing that really interests me, as someone who I have a couple of miners running, but their host did, so I feel like I'm not really, I can't actually say I'm mining. - It has a good disconnect, I know.

- But I'd really like to start in the UK, and the thing that I have to do here, to offset some of the cost of the electric, 'cause it's so high, is I have to use the heat. - That's it. And that's what really sparked everything from me is, you know, I was so, I got it in 2020, and I got an S9 on eBay.

It was like 180 bucks shipped, and they put it in a cardboard box with no packaging at all, nothing, it's just loose in the cardboard box, and so it arrived, and like both of the fans were damaged, and then like, it took a photo of it, and I'm like, you forgot to add packaging, like what?

And then they just refunded it, didn't want it back, I'm like, okay. And then I just sat on it for like two weeks, in case they changed your mind or something, and I'm like, well, you know what?

I might as well just plug it in, this stupid thing worked. It was like, yeah, I removed all the broken bits of the fan, and it was like only held on by two screws, 'cause the other two were broken, and it just started hashing away, and I got it to heat my workshop at this workshop.

I just installed this really nice 6500 watt space heater, and I was looking up at it and like, it's really nice and warm and so useless, you know, and then I got the S9 and turned that on, and I'm like, whoa, this is like running a shot back 24/7.

And so, you know, the proof of concept worked, and that it actually generated the heat for the space, and then I got into immersion almost immediately, and then the rest is history. - How has that journey been?

You obviously start with an S9, you realize, as you said, you know, it is a useless heater, it's a dumb heater, and then you make that connection, and you're like, fuck, it makes me call.

- I think light bulb, yeah. - Yeah, 'cause so what was next? - Obviously, in Florida, you don't want heat, it's not a big deal, but, you know, I'm in Minnesota, and we get down to negative 20 Fahrenheit, so, you know, it gets cold.

- And as soon as, you know, it was funny, I remember a friend of mine was even talking about when S9's were first coming out, we were looking to pool our money to get an S9, and it was really like a hesitant to make, okay, if this magic machine makes money, and it makes so much money, who's selling it, you know?

It's like selling an ATM that gives free money, it's like, oh yeah, it's an ATM machine, and you get all the money for free, and it only cost you this much, like, well, why wouldn't you just keep it and run it yourself then?

- Yeah, exactly. - No, it's like, it just seemed too good to be true, and yeah, in some respects, it was, you know, it's true, it was making money, and, you know, then there was the huge dip, and, you know, a lot of people lost money on that, but once I really understood what Bitcoin itself was,

and why it was making money in people converting it back to fiat money, and whatnot, then it really all came together, like, okay, now I get it, and then it's just using that way of heat, and I got one of those, oh, what is it?

I think it's Drake, where he does it like, no, I don't want this, and yeah, I want this. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - And so it's like the coil heater, the resistance coil, you know, just the loop of metal that gets hot, and it's like, no, I don't want that, and then the other one's the ASIC, and it's like, yes,

this is literally the easiest way that I explain it, profitable heater, and that's it. I mean, that's the simplest thing. Like, even if you just get an S9 or anything, and you want heat first, like that's your thing, like you live somewhere, you want heat, you only use it in the winter months or whatever,

you're still better off getting something like that, where you're offsetting something, even if it's a small amount, you know, it's like, all right, just turn it on when you want heat, turn it off when you don't, and not a big deal, don't have to hash all the time.

You still get something, and you know, for myself, it's, I'm looking at it like a 10 to 15, maybe even 20 year hold. And so I'm not worried about how much is worth today, because it's the exact same thing that I did when I first started mining, like, man, it's like $10 today, I made like, whoa, big deal, $10,

and that would have been the same thing way back then. Like, if I had gotten $10 worth of Bitcoin, I'd have like a thousand Bitcoin right now, and it's like, oh, frick, you know. (laughing) That was nothing though, it wasn't even, you know, it's barely worth a penny or something, and it was so trivial that nobody even wanted, you know,

and so now when you think of Sats, and it's like, oh, you know, I only got $10 in Sats, like, yeah, but in 10, 15, 20 years, you're gonna look back and be like, oh man, why didn't I do that?

As time goes on, it's not only becoming more obvious that Bitcoin works and that people want it, but it's also becoming more obvious that it's necessary, and I think the thing is, you know, you've got a group of people who are very passionate about this who, you know, we lurk on Twitter and we have these kind of conversations,

and as time passes, it gets to a point, certainly for me, I'm thinking, well, there probably will be a time that I'll sell a little bit of Bitcoin, like, you know, I'd like to be a family, I'd like to have a home, I'd like to have these things, but it would take quite a lot for me to do it

because I'm thinking, well, this is my way of defending myself. This is my way of actually saying to your governments around the world, no, you can fuck off. Like, I'm not, this is not right, and so that's what I love about this mining space is, like, of all the people who are really trying to build

and defend the network and do things properly, like, it seems like it's these pleb miners who are just out there just going, all right, I'm gonna get these KYC free sat, I'm gonna do things properly, I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, I love that about this community.

- Yeah, totally. And, you know, another thing I really like about Bitcoin is that absolutely no one can stop it at all. I mean, yeah, governments can ban it, but it's like, you know, it's like banning the internet, it's like, well, you know, great, you know, like, you know, just China's an example, they got the great firewall of China

and they ban all kinds of stuff, there's ways around everything, you know, somebody in China can get to Facebook or whatever other things are blocking. It's, you know, with a VPN or this or that, you can't actually block it.

It's just technically impossible because of how distributed it is and that there is no central authority. And it's just phenomenal that there is none of that. I mean, it's such a best use case scenario of, you know, open source and it just being available to literally everybody.

And nobody has a better advantage than anybody else. And yeah, I get like, you know, ultra miners like Windstone and Riot and stuff. You know, they got, you know, hundreds of thousands of miners or whatever.

Yeah, they put their money in and they got the advantage, but they don't, they're still playing the same game that we're playing just with a lot more resources. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that sort of stuff just doesn't interest me as much because it's not, when I see smaller operations,

people have lots of issues that they've got to iron out. And as they try and work out these problems, it then helps 10 other people. And then that person helps 100 other people. And so you have this network effect where, you know, someone's working out, like you've just said, oh, well, all heaters are useless

unless they're miners, you might as well have something there. And people are going, well, hang on a minute. When these S9s drop to, I mean, such low values they are now, people are probably thinking, you know, I've got a garage I want to heat.

It might only be for half the year, but if I'm buying this machine as cheap as I am, I'm going to learn something and I'm going to be warm. - And that's it. Yeah. And it's like, I mean, I don't know what they're going for now, but you know, they dropped like 50 bucks or something.

You know, it was such a trivial amount that it's like, you know, you can turn it on for a while and you can use the heat, you turn it off, big deal. Maybe you only get 12 cents in a day, you know, if that, and that's fine.

But if you're just doing it with that mentality of, hey, in 10, 15, 20 years, I'll turn back around and be like, dang, I can buy, you know, a new Lamborghini now with the space heater that I used 20 years ago or whatever it is, you know, it's like, and what you really have to have that long-term look at it, I think,

'cause there's so many crapto coins out and it's like, I just want to get rich tomorrow, right now, if that was next, you know, leverage, ah! - You know, great, fine, good, whatever, have fun with all that, but you know, what I see in Bitcoin is just so much more stability over the long term that it's the only time in my life

that I've actually saved money and I consider it a money because that's really the only thing that it does. You know, it's not smart contracts and securing your NFTs and what it, you know, it does the one thing really, really, really well, and that's it, and I love it.

- What do you think happens if this succeeds and people can actually store their time properly? Do you ever sit and think about how it changes the world? - Yeah, you know, there's, it's definitely a deep thought and it's like, you know, with El Salvador actually having it as legal tender, it's a fascinating thing

'cause it can just kind of be out in the open and be like, yeah, you know, I'll actually spot this with you on the up and up and it's pretty cool. I've actually purchased things directly from people with Bitcoin directly and that's really fascinating experience to be like, just completely looping out

the fiat experience and be like, here, you know, I earned this and this is X value to me and I got a fairly good example of an item that I bought and so it was a collectible and it was pretty rare.

One went on sale and it ended up being, oh, it was like there's a .18 Bitcoin at the time. You know, it's like a few thousand dollars and like, man, that's just ridiculous. And so it came down, another one came along like six months later or something like that and the price of Bitcoin had changed or something

and the fiat value of this item went up but the Bitcoin value was .13 this time. And so when I look at it, I still think I got a better deal despite the fiat value being higher, I spent less Bitcoin on the same amount of thing and it was like the first solid example of my actual life where I was looking at something like,

I paid less for the thing because of value of Bitcoin, you know, it's like, what do they call like a deflationary asset? So the same things cost less and less and less over time instead of inflationary where, you know, like, low for better was a dollar and now it's $2 and now it's $5

and whatnot, like, I actually got to watch that in process for an thing that I actually wanted and then I used Bitcoin directly to purchase that and it was just, it was awesome. And then that Bitcoin came from miners that were heating the things that I wanted hot.

So it was a pretty big, like, oh, the whole ecosystem all came together for me and like, oh, yeah, I totally get it. - This works. - It works, it actually works. - Would it be doxxing to ask what the collectible is?

- No, I don't think so. It's a Kielera, hopefully I say that, right? And we see it in text, but so it's an artist, I don't remember his last name, artist Max, like, M something, humanity's really exquisite hardware wallets, basically is what I'll call them.

So there's the public key on the outside and the private key is within this art piece and the only way to get the private keys to completely destroy the art piece. And so it was really this first fusion, I mean, that I know of, of art and Bitcoin and I know there was a lot of coins in that time, like just a regular coin, you know,

metal coin and you have a peel off sticker and you can just peel it off and then you get your thing and that was one thing. But as far as I know, you know, the I know of this piece was one of the first ones, like the purpose was you put it in and you just don't ever take it back out again

for a ample amount of time until you're willing to say, I am going to destroy this art to get the Bitcoin off. Interesting concept. Right. And so, and it was done so well. And I mean, it's an exquisite piece.

And I mean, it was just perfection. And the one that I wanted, it was from 2015 and it's a one Bitcoin piece. And so, you know, back then, I think I don't know what it sold for exactly. It was like 500 bucks maybe or 1,000 bucks or something relatively trivial.

But, you know, when when I got it, it was an unfunded piece. So there's still not one Bitcoin on it yet. It's a but, you know, like I got it sometime around one, like the kind of like 60,000.

So it's like, if it were funded, if somebody just had bought it and like, you know what, I'm just going to slap this $300 worth of Bitcoin on it or whatever it was, it would have been like $60,000 plus dollars down and it's like, man.

So my new goal is to fund this at some point and actually complete that vision that the artist had of, you know, you put it on there and it's there indefinitely. And obviously you can sell it to somebody else as a whole piece, they sell them funded, but the absolute security that that is funded

and has not been tampered with is so absolute that it's like, yep, absolutely guaranteed 100% not possible to get that private key out without completely and totally ruining the art piece.

- Yeah, I love this when you see art and Bitcoin merging. I don't know if you ever saw 21ism, but it was a collective that me and a few others ran where we were really trying to show the artists in Bitcoin and show their work.

And it was something that we were fascinated by because the quality of the work that's been coming out has just been getting better and better. I think we were the first people to show Fractal Encrypt work.

- Yeah, I mean, it's just wild seeing that stuff. It's like, man, the level of detail, the attention that just absolutely accurate and it's just mind boggling. - It seems like it's the perfect space for artists as well because there's a massive sweeping generalization, but most artists that I speak to are pretty freedom loving people.

As a general rule, a lot of them don't fit quite into the box that you're supposed to fit in in society. They're a little bit outside of that. And they seem to fit very well with this Bitcoin ethos, which is just slightly outside the system or fully outside the system for some, and a bit free thinking.

And yeah, I'm loving seeing what's coming out. It's one of the most interesting parts for me, outside of the tech in general, it's something that I like to keep an eye on. - Absolutely. - So back to the more techy side of things.

Obviously, we talked about how you first came in and then revisited Bitcoin in 2020. Where are you going now? Because I looked at the channel on Bitcoin TV. I've seen the things that you've been telling me about.

- So, yeah, I got really heavy into it all the way up until about like end of 21. And then I moved into a new house. So I sold my old house and I moved everyone, had a child, my last child.

- Congratulations. - Yeah, I'm 47, so I mean, it's like, oh dear, it's another one of these things. (laughing) You know, but no, I mean, it's all positive, but all these things combined. So I just kind of, I took a little break for a little while, not to get out of the space, but just, you know, for a little bit, just like, all right,

let's get some of these other stuff done. And now the summer is kind of starting to wrap up a little bit and things are settling down, kind of getting my head back in the game. And so in this new house here, the goal is to have it completely 100% basic heated.

I said, I'm in Minnesota, so we have a very strong need for heat. And having this whole plate, you know, I'll be here for a long time, I know that. So I don't mind actually doing things that would cost money or, you know, or significant retrofits to make this entirely a security because, well, I'm not at this point.

So that's really my next thing. I've done some stuff, you know, I have a lot of ideas, but as just one person, there's only so much I can do. And that's kind of what I like about the community is like, I like to just kind of throw stuff out there.

And there's so many other people that know so many other facets that maybe they can even run with it. And that's awesome. So yeah. - That's the thing is to be able to lean on and ask questions from people with very specific knowledge is key.

'Cause, you know, not everyone can do everything. You know, not everyone can be a software developer and a plumber and a heating engineer and an electrician. And as you go through all of these steps, there's always something it seems to learn in the mining space.

- Oh, yeah. - Even if you've managed to set everything up and everything's working and you're heating your home, then there's other things to think about, like your network security and privacy, things like that.

- Absolutely. Yeah. You know, and I came up with this tank design for ASIC. So I got completely obsessed with designing a tank around the ASIC rather than having a generic tank to put whatever kind of ASIC in soon.

And I came up with a design that works really, really well. And I've been trying to get it into manufacturing with some guys that AI pro-energy. We got a joint venture going and great guys to work with don't have a negative thing to say at all.

It's been a fun experience doing it, but it's so much work. There's just no way that I could have ever have done such a thing alone. And even with this team of people, it's like, man, this is really a lot of work to do.

So, you know, like when I say all these other companies and even people that have come before and have done all these things, like I have a lot of respect for everything that they've put into the space on their own and brought in because it's just a, it is a huge amount of work.

But get it out there and see what happens. - So working with these guys, like you said for a specific minor, are you thinking to produce these for different models or is it just one model you're going with?

- Right, so I started with S-19s and when I look at what's out there right now, there's a lot of amazing stuff. And everything out there had an oil pump and the oil pumps from the bottom, it goes up through an overflow over the edge and then back through a liquid to liquid heat exchanger, which is usually a braised plate heat exchanger.

And then that goes back through, but then you have to flip the cards around because the cards have to have the flow going in a specific way because the cards are made for a specific flow direction.

And if you don't flip those over, then all your cords are facing straight down and then that doesn't work. And like, why, you know, it's awesome that we've started this way because somebody had all the thought of like, wow, let's throw this thing in oil.

Then they found out like, well, if you don't have the flow going this way, it heats up too much because of this and then this and then this. And so taking all that stuff that's been found out so far, I'm like, okay, but what if we just got rid of all that stuff?

And I just got completely obsessed with a loop of oil and you know, the way that my mind works is I just took this asic in the air in my mind and then I threw a oil loop that is just floating in free space and air.

I'm like, how do I, I can see how it would work. And like, how do I package this into a tank and eventually came up with the design that I have and instead of using an oil pump, it just uses the fans and the fans move the oil and it actually works really quite well.

A lot of people are like, oh, you can't use the fans. I'm like, well, you know what you can. It works actually pretty good. I've had, I've actually never had a fan failure in oil except for one specific brand, but I take it back.

There is one other one. But generally speaking, it's worked out quite well for me. No oil pumps, no oil rated lines. Heat exchangers built into the tank itself. It's an extremely small footprint and it's specifically made just for S-19s rather than having a, you know, just a catch-all for whatever.

- When you're saying about these fans, you mean the fans that are already attached. So you're not spoofing or doing any of that stuff. You are literally using the fan that comes with the machine.

- I am. Now, to be fair, the fan, you do have to either spoof a signal back if you want to use stock firmware, which I think is silly because why would you want to run stock firmware when you're doing immersion anyway?

That's a different problem. I use brains. I just like it. It's open source. It's a great bunch of people. But, you know, there's other firmware out there. I'm not saying like, this is the only way to go.

But what I found is that the fans run, if you power them at 100% and then you just ignore the, whatever the signal's coming back, it moves a solid amount of oil through those heat sinks on there.

And it actually keeps the chips significantly cooler than a slow flow rising up. And that's what I've gone with, so. - Very interesting. I would never, I mean, I'm not an engineer. So- - Even if I- - But it's just in my head, I would think, oh yeah, that wouldn't work to have the fans.

But now you say it does make sense. - And so what I did is I did a bunch of searching on immersion and I looked way back into, I mean, like stuff that was years old for computers. And these guys ran this computer and I think it was mineral oil, but the concept's the same.

And they left all the fans on the CPU cooler and stuff. And they said they ran it for like two or three years and never had a problem. And so when you really think about it, you're like, oh, the load's too much.

And I go, but it's an electric motor, you know, it's like, and it's literally perpetually lubricated. So it's not like a wear issue. And even still, you'd still know about a fan failure and you can just replace the fans.

So what makes more sense? It's just leaving the fans on, throwing the whole thing in there or spending a half an hour removing all the fans, flipping the cards around, flipping the control board around, flipping the PSU back around, having oil rated lines going to an oil rated palm, going through a bracelet heat exchanger.

It's like, it was so much more complex, right? And then like, yeah, pop it in an SD card of brains, plop it in the oil, and then you're done. That's it. All you gotta do. Like keep it simple, stupid.

Yeah. And so that's what I can help with. And so is this what John is running? Yeah. Okay. He's got one of the very, very first ones and I've been kind of working with him on that. And so with AI Pro Energy, they wanted to try these steel ones.

And that really just, that was a exercise in production failure. And like I said, it's nothing against those guys. We wanted to try it, it came from overseas. By the time we got it, they were just all rusty and we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

But then I decided, I'm like, you guys, we're just gonna do this out of aluminum. It doesn't even make sense to try with steel. Material cost is trivial, you know, it's like, maybe it's like $200 difference material cost to go from steel to aluminum, big whoop.

You know, at the time, these six were still $10,000. So you're talking about $60,000 of hardware and we're worrying about $200 worth of material. So what, you know? Absolutely. I've seen from your videos, it looked like to me, just a fish tank that you were using.

Yeah, and so, yep, and that's where it started. And that's where I teamed up with the AI Pro guys is, and that's where I was doing my testing with fans and I was using the Brace plate heat exchangers.

And that's where I was like, okay, this works, but this is so silly. And then that's when I got completely obsessed with this idea of this floating swirling asic in the sky, you know, and like, how do I capture this?

And that's, it was those fish tanks running in that way and I just would look at them and I'd try and understand the oil flow. And, you know, I had some facing one way and some facing the other way and, you know, I was trying all kinds of different things in those videos.

And that's what eventually led me then to the tank that I designed. I don't have any, any in fish tanks anymore. And what's the downside of using a fish tank rather than aluminium? Well, you know, it's not precisely designed.

It absolutely worked for me. There's no exact downfall that I know of the, what I looked for specifically was fish tanks have silicone sealing. And so that does not react in any way to the oil.

So all the seals should be fine. And that was still true for the amount of time that I use them. You know, there was no real downside that I could see other than it wasn't purpose built. And so when I did purpose built stuff and I actually made the tank exactly for the minor, I got a battery efficiency and better offset

in taking that heat out. Okay. And actually in those fish tanks, I still have an oil pump going through the bracelet heat exchanger. So that wasn't as an ideal of a setup in that. But, you know, it could be done that way.

And I've been, someday I'll get back to tinkering around and see if I can do one of those fish tanks with the same concept that I have for at home mining, you know, I'm just kind of open to source because it's just off the shelf stuff.

It's like, hey, if you want to do this, give this a whirl. - I'm only wondering because, you know, you might have someone who's listening to this and they're thinking, well, you know what?

I have an old fish tank or I know someone who has one or I can buy one on Facebook marketplace for... - Brand new, they were 50 bucks. I mean, brand new fish tank. - Oh really? - Yeah, 40 gallon breeder fish tank is $50 brand.

It's like, I mean, it's so, it's so simple. And yeah, especially if you just want to play around, the very first one I had, I think was it's either 10 gallon or 20 gallon, I don't remember offhand, but very small.

And, you know, cost me, I think 100 bucks to fill it up with whatever oil I was just using mineral oil with the S9 because I didn't even know about Bitcool and other things you just knew about mineral oil.

And so I was like, oh, it's actually a works, I love that. - And so when you were thinking about people mining with oil, rather than air cooled, you were mentioning that you use brains and obviously there's the ability there to tinker around.

Are you finding that you can get more hash ray out of these machines, get more juice out of these machines and still keep them, you know, keep the longevity there? - Well, I mean, the longevity is an interesting thing.

So I can't really speak to that too much because it's going to depend on how far you push it. You know, if you're keeping stock power in nice cool temperatures, most likely it's going to last a very long time.

If you're just getting completely silly with it, like I'm doing right now, there is a, well, I forget who posted it. Somebody posted up basically a hash ray challenge like, all right, let's see if you can get max hash ray and who can get max efficiency, just the two are not synonymous.

So I'm like, all right, I got these machines in oil with chilled water coming in, let's see what we can do. And I got up to S19 110, got up to 180 something jarash. Ooh, yeah. - Wow. - Yeah, but the efficiency goes down to like a 17.

You know, it's like 42 watts per tera hash instead of like 29 or something. But you know, it's the trade off, like do you want to do it? Are you just, you know, balls to the wall, got a hash max right now?

Cool. There you go. There's your, or do you want like, man, you know, I'm just squeaking by and I want to spend as little as possible, but understand I can get a much smaller reward. And then that's cool too.

- It's an interesting trade off because it changes things quite a lot because for example, if you're thinking, well, I want to be reserved, I want to spend as little as possible, which means I can't get as much hash rate.

Someone might then think, well, actually, if I was to get older hardware that's used and then have it in immersion and tinker around with this software, then suddenly a machine that should be hashing 110 does 180, well, maybe one that should be doing 40 can do 80.

And then you get a lot of-- - Oh, absolutely. I've done this with a 17s too. And so I had a 76 tera hash machine. If I had a better power supply, I could have powered all three cards, but in testing, I took out one card because the power supply was a limiting factor.

But I powered two cards at 3,300 watts to 68 tera hash. And so that would have been, I think, a 102 tera hash if I had been able to have more power to it. But even in the last 19, they said, if your goal is just maximum Bitcoin return, regardless of cost, I mean, to a degree, why not?

We got two years to the next halving. What if, is it worth it? Would you rather spend that much money getting maximum on a Bitcoin right now? Or do you just want to wait until the next halving and get even less?

And that's everyone's individual call. Both case points are valid. Just depends on what you want to do with it. Yeah, it's a difficult one to weigh up as well, because I guess it's hard to know, actually, well, how will this affect the longevity of the machine?

Because you won't know that for a few years. If you do buy an older machine, you just absolutely balls to the wall, like, is it going to die in a year? Or if you didn't do it, would it be OK for five?

But as you rightly say, with the halvings and everything else priced in, it's like, well, I'd be personally, I'd just be saying, fuck it, just get this thing cashing as much as possible, as quickly as possible, just do it.

Yeah. And that's totally valid. I've overclocked computers for eons, all the way back to the days when you would actually change a jumper on a motherboard to change the clock multiplier for your processor.

So I've run stuff overclock for a long time, and it's going to depend on how far you go and how cool you keep it. I mean, that's really the two major factors. If you can keep it properly cool, and it's not just absolutely insane, you probably won't have a problem.

Not saying you won't at all, but the chances are, it should be all right. I've taken an S9 to 2,400 watts, and it was running at 950 megahertz, which was just-- I don't even remember what the hash there was, but it was almost double the clock speed, because I think stock-- don't quote me on this, but I think

stock is like 525 megahertz, and then it went up to 950. So not quite twice, but-- And it was just like, OK, cool. We're doing this. In oil, I could handle it, because it was cool enough.

So these S19s are very similar to the S9s in their stability. S17s were a hot mess, but the S19s just seemed to be like, yep, all right, we're going double speed. That's fine. Whatever. Well, that's good to know.

I have a couple, because everyone seems to say about these wattsminers being more stable, and that seems to be general consensus. And a lot of people I've heard say, or I'm not sure if I'd want to run S19s, but from what you were saying, maybe that's not correct.

Everything that I've seen in the S19s are going to be the next S9s, in the sense that that's the staple one. That's the one that's going to be around for a long time. I've had S17s. Most of what you saw in those videos were probably all S17s.

They're finicky, they're fussy, they're dreadful to work with. They technically work sometimes. S19s, people say like S9s are just like-- they're just a tank. Somebody shipped me one with no packaging at all.

And it's just being-- They just got a stamp on this. Yeah, and I just plugged it in and be like, cool, we're hashing now. And it's like, oh, yeah. And so what I've personally seen so far from S19s is similar to that, is that they're made to go beyond what they're currently set to by default.

I was having a conversation the other day with Michael Schmitt, and he was saying to me, I don't know if this is something you know about or whether I've got the wrong end of the stick. But he was saying that, in theory, there is a way to take the heat from a miner and make that create cool air or cool liquid.

And I'm not sure exactly how that's possible or if you've heard of it. But when he was saying it, I was thinking, well, if that is possible, is there not a way then to create the heat, use the heat, and any excess heat, then creates the cooling, which then cools the machine?

Yeah, there's a whole sub-community, I would say, almost of using the waste heat to somehow generate electricity or something to turn back into the system itself. And I don't get too much into that.

It's a fascinating thing. Your temperatures are only going to get up to about 120 ish degrees, 140 if you're doing direct oil temperature. And you're not going to power a steam engine because it's blow boiling.

So there's a bunch of other things that have been talked about. One thing, if I'm completely fascinating, is this-- I don't know precisely what it's called-- but basically, cow poo and stuff, they take into this thing and then they put it into some sort of a large bin.

And then it creates heat and stuff, gives off methane in that methane or whatever gas it gets off. They run it through a generator and then that produces electricity. And then what I've been told-- and again, don't quote me on this.

I'm not the expert on this at all-- but is that the warmer that mixture of waste is, the more gas it gives off, the better the whole system works, in which case you get more electricity, in which case you feed back another system again.

It's fascinating because you've already got the waste anyway. You already want to get rid of that. It's similar, but not the same as the flare gas issue that the oil fields have, where they're already burning this excess fuel because they don't have a way to get rid of it.

They're on the middle of nowhere that can't pipe it. Or whatever the problem is, they have all this extra fuel in the middle of nowhere. Great, stick some basics out there, off you go, problem solves.

Yeah, it's amazing to watch all these ideas play out. And just how innovative this space is, and it really is seem to fix a lot of serious issues. And when I think about it and sort of see, oh, where will it be in five years?

You've seen how this space evolved from when you first started messing around with Bitcoin to now. I mean, where the hell are we going to be in another five? Well, that's it. I mean, a megaphone, that was barely a thing.

There was-- I remember people were rushing out with S9s, like, out of Thailand or something, just like there's these shacks and places with stinging cords running under tarps in the middle of nowhere just for the cheap power to just bizarro things.

And then now we've got places like Windstone. It's like a proper facility. There's still kind of crazy stuff in the middle of nowhere, but it's come such a long ways. And I'd love to see more of an industrial use of the waste heat.

So in manufacturing facilities, like if you've got like plastics or a great example, there's a whiskey distillery here in Minnesota. And we were talking about preheating their groundwater.

So they take up thousands of gallons of groundwater at like, I don't know, it's cold temperature. They bring it all the way up to like 180 degrees, which is close to boiling. And instead, you could put that in the holding bin, or tank.

So you're holding tank. You could preheat it to like 120, 140 maybe. And then you just have that last bit to do. We would save a huge amount of money just in burning gas that they would otherwise use and you're making Bitcoin.

Even if you had to sell some just to offset the electric, you're still on the profit just by, even if it's a complete break even, you're not out by paying, when you're burning gas, you get nothing but the heat.

And don't get me wrong, it's a useful thing. But wouldn't you rather have something that has heat and Bitcoin? - Yeah, exactly. And creating Bitcoin and whiskey has got to be a good day. - Yeah.

- Yeah, they host the local meetups here. Sometimes it is, so that's pretty cool. - Very nice. And so where do you wanna hear from people? Or what do you wanna hear from people? Would be a bad way to word that.

When people are thinking of starting mining and maybe they're listening to this and they've had this morning month and they're going, fuck, I can hear what this guy's doing and what he's done.

This sounds, maybe to me, it's pretty out there, it's way beyond what I've done before and I'm sure a lot of the listeners like, what kind of questions do you wanna hear? - Sure, I don't know about what questions but my takeaway is there's two ways to get in.

Obviously if you just buy it, that's one thing, that's great, get it off the exchange, learn self custody. Number one, just full stop right there. If you're not doing self custody, figure that out first.

Just do that first. Make that your first priority. If you keep it on an exchange, assume, you just have an Iowa, you know, especially after this, if you ask, "Oh, well, Aluna and all these other ones going under," if you have your Bitcoin on an exchange, you don't have Bitcoin.

Learn self custody, learn what it means to do a restore, you know, if your whole house burns down, how are you gonna restore that information, you know? Let's say, you know, you're real smart and in 20 years, you got 40 million dollars worth of Bitcoin and you kept your seed phrase on a piece of paper

and it just went up in flames, not smart. So self custody, learn how to do it, learn how to do it right. It's really not that hard, it's just not. And there's a ton of people out there, myself included, that will answer questions on it all day long.

Next step is, do you really wanna get into mining? And, you know, mining doesn't make sense for everybody. If you have a condo in a high rise in Florida, not really a good fit, you know, you don't want a bunch more heat and you don't wanna have a loud machine in your condo and it just doesn't make sense.

If you're up here in Minnesota or, you know, off in the UK or, you know, in any other cold climate and be like, "Yeah, I could use some heat." Or even if you have a swimming pool, you know, heating your swimming pool year round.

It's, you know, even in Florida, I know they actually have heaters for their swimming pools 'cause it's not cold, cold like it would be here in Minnesota, but it's like, oh, you know what?

Having a nice warm pool, you can still use an ASIC to heat the swimming pool and have warm swimming water. But the amount of investment into that, when you get into something like that, it's not trivial.

So think of how much time you really wanna spend on it. Are you into it because you like to tinker and you like to have fun? Or do you just wanna have a solution and just be done with it?

Steve, over at Upstream made the black box, which is just awesome 'cause it's ruggedized, industrial grade, heavy duty, monstrous, noise suppression thing for air cooled. And it's so simple that anybody, any home user can handle it.

You could just stick it outside, you plug it in, you call it a day and you're done. And for an average home user that just wants to run it without using the waste heat, pretty good. But, you know, if you have like a garage or something, you can just put it inside and then get some heat inside.

Once you get into things like heating a swimming pool and immersion, though, the complexity goes up exponentially. And it does become, you know, it's a big project. It takes a good amount.

So there's no prepackaged ready to go. Well, I shouldn't say there's none. I'm sure there's stuff that's coming out there, but it's not as simple as just taking an air cooled Asik, plopping it on a countertop and plugging it in and then, you know, walking away.

- Do you think it will get there eventually? - That's really a tough one, because if we look at what Asik's have been, it's purely maximum throughput. That's it. That was the only intent is absolute maximum hash rate period end of story, whatever it took.

So you got ultra high speed fans. The form factor is just more or less arbitrary form factor. Now, they are coming out with these water cooled ones. You know, there's the S19 Hydro. They actually had an S9 Hydro.

It's not well known, but it did exist. Interesting concept. Basically just have a water in and water out. That would definitely alleviate the heat issues, but you still have took it up to a radiator somewhere or get that heat back out somewhere.

The S19 Hydro is three phase power. As a wacky Americans with our feet and inches don't like three phase at home. We use single phase and it's more strange because we use two separate single phases together to be a dual single phase, whatever, anyway.

So no love for the three phase power supply, S19 Hydro see them in the US. Okay. With that aside, do you think that moving to Hydro with these miners is something that would be smart or do you think now with the leaps forward that you've got with immersion cooling and the things you're doing and others are doing

that it's kind of irrelevant? There's definitely been debate on that. There's, I see two schools of thought. So if you're looking at a data center-ish style setup, a water cooling setup that has very tight controls of temperature, yeah, that definitely makes sense to do a straight hydro.

Now, if you're talking about an oil field in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota where you can get to negative 40 and then in summer you get all the way up to like 105, you know, just wild swings.

Having something in immersion completely eliminates the risk of dust, debris, moisture, anything else that would have gotten into those miners even with the best filter, it really insulates it against all those elements.

So if you're talking about a hostile environment, I still think immersion compared to Hydro would be a better way to go. I've seen water cool stuff and I know that if you have enough temperature fluctuation and humidity you can get condensation and condensation on machines is just not too good.

- Yeah, it doesn't sound so good. Also, the other thing I was thinking is if you're building out like a purpose built warehouse or something like that and you're doing this at a large scale, it would make sense to me logically that you buy these machines and you put them into immersion rather than pay the extra for the water cooled

on every single machine that you buy. You know what I mean? It's like that would be more cost effective. - Yeah, and they're new enough that I've not seen enough of them. BitMan has a minimum order quantity of 190.

So that's, you know, and really they only even warranty it when you use their amp box or whatever the, basically they sell the whole container as is with machines built into it and it's its own purpose built setup thing.

That's fine and good. - What's minor came out with theirs? It's more like a standard rack setup and it looks to be a 2U, it could be wrong on that, but some more standard form factor, but again, just water cooled and it's a water block.

And if you have temperature control and you're not having crazy wild temperature swings, I think it could work very well. One thing I don't like about the BitMan setup is on each and every single minor, there are 14 individual water connections per minor.

That's 14 points of failure for every single minor. And then just like, and you have 190 minimum, that's a lot of connections and a lot of points of failure. 2,660 individual connectors with 190 with 14 H.

So, you know, in immersion, you have a water in, a water out, am I saying anyway? That's it, two connections per six minors. So, it's a third of a connection per minor instead of 14. - Yeah, that sounds better to me, to be honest.

I wanna say thank you for taking your time, not only to come on the show, but documenting everything you've been doing and being as active as you have been and getting involved in this mining month, it really is great to have you on board.

And I would urge anyone who's got questions to reach out and speak to coinheating and all the other guys. - My DM's always open and, yeah, my DM's always open and I try and respond. So, you know, if you've got questions, reach out.

If I don't know, you know, maybe I can put you in the right direction. - Excellent. All right, cool. Well, yeah, thanks for your time. It's been really good chatting and-- - Yeah, appreciate it.

- Yeah, I thought it was gonna be a dumpster fire after all my coffees, but I really enjoyed it. - Yeah, likewise. - Cool. Well, if you just stay on the line for a couple of minutes and I'll make sure we get the audio.

But yeah, thanks again, mate. - You got it.