Mining bitcoin on solar with @theGianMendoza

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.

All right, you ungovernable misfits. I'm your host, Max. Everybody knows that Bitcoin is useless, worthless, and doomed to fail. But what if everyone's wrong? What if it's the system that is doomed to fail?

Join me as I speak to some of the brightest people in the space, and slither to the deepest, darkest depths of the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Thanks for tuning in for another day of Club Minor Month. Today's guest is Gian Mendoza. I really enjoyed this episode. It was great to chat to him. And it was good just listening through again because we recorded this about a month ago.

We have just so much content coming out, so many prizes. So, do keep a look out. Today, we are going to be giving away an S9. Make sure to check Twitter to find out how to win this. And also, make sure to go to ungovernableisfits.com and check out all the content that we've got on there,

all the articles, all the shows, and all the giveaways. I want to thank everyone who's been retweeting and using the hashtag #plebminemump. It does help us get exposure. It helps people understand why pleb mining is so important and make sure that people who would be interested don't miss this opportunity.

I'd also like to thank everyone who has been streaming Sats by these podcasting 2.0 apps. It really does help us this month because every single SAT will be going towards the postage and shipping for the prizes that we'll be giving away.

It's great to have you guys communicate and ask questions. And please, we want more of it. We want everyone as involved and included as possible. So gives a shout and we will answer any questions that we can.

I also want to thank Foundation Devices for sponsoring this show and also sponsoring this month. We're going to have Bitcoin Q&A and Lily on the show very soon. So if you have any questions about Foundation Passport, please do get them in and we will get them answered on the show.

We're also going to be having two giveaways of Foundation Devices Passport. So make sure to look out for that. Do not miss that. These devices are absolutely incredible. If you just can't wait and you want to buy one of these now, you can on foundation devices.com and you can get an additional $10 off if you use the code bit by bit.

If you haven't checked it out, go to foundation devices.com. And if you have any questions at all, you can ask me or the two. I'd also like to thank FastBitcoins. They are an exchange based in the Isle of Man.

And they have an awesome team. This team is so cool that they allow me to do this pleb mining month, allow me to talk shit about KYC and be as honest and open as possible. They really do care about Bitcoin and they will do everything that they can to keep you safe if you do decide to use a KYC service.

They were the first people to have lightning integrated into their service and they're always a step ahead. If you have any questions about the trade offs with KYC versus non-KYC, you can reach out to me.

And if you are gonna go that route, I really can only suggest these guys. Go to fastbitcoins.com. Hey mate. - Can you hear me this fast? - Yeah, I can hear you now, but you do sound a bit like you're down the world.

- Yeah, I don't know what's going on here. I gotta, yeah, just switch it over to my head. - I'm wearing my AirPods right now, but I'm not getting any audio. Okay, I can hear you now. - Okay, cool.

All right, well, it's not the world's best audio, but we'll work with it. I can do some fucking around and make it sound better. We will get there. - Yeah, I'll have to invest in some more gear.

- But yeah, welcome to the show. We haven't spoken before. I spoke to John and I said, look, can you gather me the plebeest of all plebe miners, the people who really have their boots on the ground and are building the most interesting stuff out there?

And you were right at the top of that list. So I've been looking forward to having a chat and seeing what you've been doing. - Appreciate it. No, I definitely feel honored to be a part of the plebe group he's got going on.

John reached out to me about a month or so ago, 'cause I know he's gonna do that conference with the Crypto Mayan Conference, but I know that kind of fell through for reasons I'm not too sure of.

But nonetheless, I'm glad we still got something going with this group of plebs and looking forward to contributing. - Yeah, well, it's really exciting for me because I'm not someone who's really dipped my toe into mining other than getting scammed by Compass.

I've never managed to get a machine up and running. I've bought a couple of S17s all years ago back in like 2018, but I was too dumb to get them working and I was living in a little studio flat and they were just ridiculously loud and just yet and didn't work.

So I never managed to get myself set up, but it's been a niche. I've been wanting to scratch for a long time. And as I've become better friends with John and some of the other more plebe miners, it's just becoming more and more apparent that more people need to be doing this.

You've got so many of these huge warehouse miners and everything that's happening in North America, but I think it's important that this decentralizes and that people aren't so scared to dip their toe in, especially if they've got relatively decent power rates.

And so I've been checking out your YouTube and you've been documenting what you've been doing. And this is just what's so important so that people can see that, you know, actually this is possible.

This isn't something that's unachievable. And it seems that all of you guys, like once you start getting involved with it, it becomes really like quite an obsession. - Oh, yeah, absolutely.

No, it's just one of the many rabbit holes that you saw down when you get involved in Bitcoin. And I guess just a little bit about my background. I've been watching this space probably since about 2016 and finally got invested more or less for the number go up factor back in 2016, early 2017.

And from that point, you know, it was more or less, you know, the price was very interesting, but then you dig into technical side of things and realize how fascinated the mining industry is.

And, you know, back then I was interested in mining as well, but I was living in an apartment, just got out of college and wasn't really feasible. And I think a lot of people are kind of going through that phase now where, you know, you hear a lot about mining going on on the industrial scale,

but on the industrial scale and on the home mining side. And they don't realize how complicated it is once you do get involved, but once you're, you know, you dip your toes in, you get a minor hooked up, whether it's an S9 or if you just want to ball out and get an S17 for your first one, you know,

there's a lot more to it than just hooking up your miner. And as you mentioned with your experience with the S17, yeah, they're loud, you got to deal with the heat and the many difficulties that come with, you know, actually setting up the infrastructure to get these miners running 'cause they're not just running on your standard outlet,

you know, you need to run like 220, 240 in order for these machines to be, you know, efficient. And yeah, so once I finally got into the mining space, I fortunately, you know, number went up, I got a house, started the whole family thing, but realized my garage was a little silent, so I decided to get a couple outlets hooked up

running some miners and, you know, the funny thing is, as soon as I got my first S19 hooked up about just over a year ago now, I turned it on and, you know, my wife walks into the garage, she's like, turned it off.

Like that, it was just absolutely loud. There was no way that was gonna be a sustainable solution in my house and I live in an HOA too, so it's not like, you know, a lot of these guys, you know, fortunately have a lot of land or, you know, some of the guys that you follow on Bitcoin, Twitter have more, I guess, sustainable way of mining,

whether you have a cooler environment or you're not in an HOA, but unfortunately, you know, I'm in the dead heat of Arizona and I'm in one of the most strict HOA's out there, so my solution was to first mitigate the noise issue.

You know, the heat extraction is relatively simple to, you know, solve, it's a matter of just getting, you know, large fan pulling enough air through your machines and there you go, but the sound denting is quite essential and that was my first tackle to, or first hurdle to kind of overcome,

mainly because, you know, happy wife, happy life and I invested too much in the machine for it to just sit around or, you know, send it off state lines to get hosted somewhere else, so that's kind of where that rabbit hole started.

Got my first one hooked up on, say, June of last year and, you know, there wasn't a lot of info out there as far as, especially with the S-19, those that were fairly new, especially for us, plebminers, there wasn't a lot of video content or anything out there talking about how to even hook it up.

I know there's maybe one or two guys on YouTube, but I figured why not record something, see what happens, so if others like me wanted to get involved, you know, there's some content out there.

And fortunately, it worked out and, you know, hopefully a lot of people learned, you know, how did the basics of getting something set up in an air-cooled system like I did? And then eventually, you know, going to an immersion system which I have set up and torn down and now I'm in the process of rebuilding again.

- Obviously where you are is relatively hot. What was that like, you know, once you've managed to suppress the noise, were you still, like, sweating as soon as you walked into your garage or, like, how much of a difference did that make having a minor running?

- Yeah, there was definitely instances where I had to run the minor and then I didn't realize how hot it would get, so I'd be shutting it back off. As a matter of fact, I think within the first week that I finally solved the noise issue, I was at work and I got a notification that my minor had shut off.

And sure enough, it was probably 115 degrees outside and it was one of those thermal overload settings that kind of triggered and essentially the minor shut off. So, you know, back to the drawing board, I wasn't, again, familiar to welcome too much with the equipment.

It's kind of just going as I, you know, learning as I go and just doing some simple research on, you know, what these bigger farms are doing, what some of these guys are doing with GPUs 'cause there's actually a decent amount of content with the GPU miners out there.

And just adding a 16-inch exhaust fan, keeping my garage door cracked up a little bit was enough airflow to keep the miners quiet or cool. So that was my solution for the air-cooled system.

I'm really basic. I mean, just throw a fan in, open the garage a little bit and there you go. So fortunately with that, you know, I had a relatively quieter minor home setup and, you know, the air-cooled system was working just fine.

However, you know, once it does get passed 110, 115, you do have to find other solutions 'cause even inside your garage with enough airflow at the end of the day, the ambient operating temperatures of these miners, I believe Bitmain says on their specs is about 104.

So I was fortunate enough to still run them even up to 110, but on those, you know, handful of days throughout the summer, it just still wasn't cutting it. So I ended up just putting a mini slit unit in my garage and I know a lot of guys out there are gonna be like, "Oh, that wasn't a cost effective way to do it."

I understand, but one of the things that, you know, I had other reasons as to why I wanted to put a mini slit in there to cool my garage. I like to do a lot of work on my truck and stuff like that.

So it just made more sense at that time. But, you know, you can go with an evaporative cooler or, you know, an EVAP pad that runs, you know, trickles water down like a porous surface and that's one way to kind of cool your environment.

- Doesn't it also affect the amount of hash rate you can put out? Like you can overclock or underclock, depending on the temperature. So like, 'cause I've heard a lot of people who are using immersion can get more juice out of these things because they're running cooler.

Were you finding that was affecting your setup when it was running as hot as it was? - Yeah, well, when I initially got started, none of this firmware was even out yet. You know, I think coin heated barely was becoming famous at that point.

You know, he's kind of an idol in this space as far as from the home liner setup. And at that time, there wasn't even any firmware. So I couldn't do any type of throttling down or throttling up with those S19.

So it was more or less, you know, shutting it off remotely with, I had a smart PDU just, you know, abruptly shutting it off if it got too hot and then shutting it back, you know, turning it back on when it was cool enough.

So pretty much, I was at that point, not able to run on the hottest days, probably four or five hours at least of the day, which was quite a bit of inconvenient, but now there's a lot of solutions out there and you have all these aftermarket firmwares from brains to Venish or Venish, however you want to pronounce that,

that allow you to overclock and underclock. And it's great to overclock, especially in the cooler climates. You know, you can crank these things up to 130 tera hashes on the stock PSU, no problem.

And as far as underclocking, that's what I do now. So my whole process has evolved quite a bit since I first got started during that whole, during the past probably years. So I've actually had a 22 kilowatt solar system installed on my house, which is extremely large compared to the amount of power draw that out,

you know, a typical home would be pulling. And when I had pitched this to my solar guy, he's like, what, why are you doing this? Well, I have these computers that just run 24/7. So we ended up working on the specs and put a 22 kilowatt system up there.

And I originally sized that for just one minor, but just like everything in this industry, it's, you know, it's addiction and I got another S19 in there. And yeah, I mean, the system works pretty well.

So during peak hours, I have my miners throttle down. I underclock them. And so my solar system's overproducing, sells back the excess solar to the grid, which offsets my overall costs quite a bit.

And then during off peak hours, you know, ramp these miners back up to as hot, you know, as high as I can get them, even during the evenings, it's still, you know, high 90s, low 100s. So I can't, unfortunately, overclock them all the way to up to 130, but I can still get them up to like 110, 115, no problem.

And now, you know, in the process of building out a immersion system that will utilize a cooling tower. So we'll see how that goes. But it's all DIY at this point. And hopefully I don't burn up on my hair in the process.

- That's really cool. So the solar system obviously will be running during the day with the machines under clogged. What do you do when the sun goes down? Do you have like big battery packs or do you just literally switch over to mains?

Like what's your setup doing there when the sun goes down? - Yeah, I consider doing the battery pack system, you know, in combination with the panels. However, it just didn't seem cost effective.

You know, the costs of run a battery system that would take the entire load of these two S19s would be quite big. And the ROI on, you know, getting a battery pack setup to accommodate this just didn't seem like it would make sense.

So I just fell back to the grid. And when the minor, you know, the sun goes down, the miners just run strictly off of what, you know, tied into the grid at that moment. - Do you guys have relatively decent grid power?

Like the cost crazy where you are or, I mean, everything seems cheap to me being in the UK. We're paying like a equivalent of about 45 cents a kilowatt. - Oh my God. - Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's like we just get raped is absolutely horrific.

So that's why, you know, you'll hear a lot of the European mining plebs are like, you know, how do we do that? They've got to find very clever ways of trying to offset the heat and doing all sorts of stuff to try and make this work.

But from what I hear, it's like, you kind of have to be 10 cents a kilowatt hour to think about being profitable. Are you guys managing to buy off the grid at less than that or? - No, actually, I'm right at that threshold.

So I average in probably around 10 cents a kilowatt hour during off peak and then on peak, it ramps up to 14 cents a kilowatt hour. So it's definitely not the cheapest out there. And that's one of the reasons why I decided to go with the solar system because once it's during on peak, you know, the solar system at that point is offsetting,

you know, the load to the grid. So I'm not really getting charged during those on peak prices. More or less, I'm actually selling back during that time. So it helps off quite a bit. And I think if I, when I did the math at the end of the day, it's about, you know, with me selling back to the grid

and running 24/7 while I also powered down a little bit during the on peak hours, I think I'm about just over eight and a half cents, maybe nine cents now. But yeah, it's definitely hard to find, especially for us pleb miners, you know, competitive rates if you're not in Georgia or Kentucky, Texas, you know, it's really hard to do that.

And I think that's what a lot of problems people are having right now is, you know, it was all fine and dandy when Bitcoin was at $60,000. But now when you're barely mining, you know, if you've had equipment on order for quite a while or been waiting to get the electrical infrastructure up and running, and then now prices, where it's at,

you know, I think today we're around like 23,000 somewhere around there. It definitely is a, can be a little daunting at times 'cause you're like, I just invested all this equipment. You know, I don't have necessarily the best energy rate.

This even makes sense at this point. And I think a lot of people are gonna go through that cycle right now. And hopefully, you know, there's ways you can offset that by either recapturing the heat or if it's just more of an altruistic kind of endeavor and you just wanna be part of the network and mine, no matter what the cost.

And that's cool too, you know? Non-KYC Sats are always great. And I think there's gonna be a premium to that at some point, but you know, that's kind of the risk you gotta take, you know, especially if you don't have the most competitive energy rate.

- Yeah, let's get into that a little bit because that's definitely a theme but this show is privacy and trying to acquire KYC Sats and the importance of it. And so this is something that I say to a lot of people, especially the European plebs who are thinking about mining is yes, you know, it could potentially be

for some of us more cost effective just to go on a Coinbase or equivalent and go and hand over all your information and they keep that on file and you buy your Sats and you never know who's gonna knock at your door.

You never know what's gonna happen in the future and you are gonna be tracked and traced for the rest of your life most probably. And certainly there's a record that you bought them, even if you do use a tool like Whirlpool or something like that.

So you said there, you know, these Sats are likely gonna be more valuable. I also agree with you. I think that these Sats are gonna be, you know, some people say, oh, it's worth 5% or 10% premium if you're going to an ATM or buying no KYC.

I actually think, you know, if we look at this in the long term, we go maybe 10 years out or 20 years out, they're probably gonna be worth double or triple. That's how I feel because, you know, what are you gonna be able to do if a lot of this gets captured and the KYC creep gets worse

and you have this whole blacklisting and whitelisting stuff. You're gonna have a load of Sats that can only be used between approved users and on Coinbase and all this sort of bullshit. And then you're gonna have the real Bitcoin and those are gonna be a hell of a lot more valuable.

Is that something that you're calculating in? Therefore you're not too worried about the cost? - Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great point. At the end of the day, you know, what was a great example is that Canadian trucker protest, you know, the idea that a civilized place like Canada who you would have never imagined would enforce

an action like that against their own citizens to restrict payment, you know, that happened last year and without any hesitation the government did that. And it's not far off to say that, you know, if any other type of protest were to come about in the US or the UK that wouldn't happen here.

So at the end of the day, yeah, there's definitely many reasons as to why you wanna get non KYC Bitcoin and mining is the easiest way to dollar cost average into it. You know, even if it's not the most competitive rates and you can afford not to sell your Bitcoin to, you know, acquire these coins.

You know, I think at the end of the day that makes the most sense, especially, you know, for myself, I just, my wife and I just had our first kid, he's four months and part of his retirement now is I got a little ledger for him that it has some stats going through on a regular basis.

And that's him, he has no idea what that is now and hopefully, you know, 10, 15 years down the road or when he's out of college or high school, you know, he can look back and he has this money under the bed so to speak and, you know, he doesn't, he doesn't need to report to any government agency.

I don't know where the world's gonna be like in 10, 15 years from now. Hopefully everything's fine, but, you know, everyone has to do their part to make sure that, you know, they're secure no matter what way regulation goes.

So yeah, I mean, it's like whatever that value you put on that coin and that privacy, you know, I think, like you said, it's gonna be way more than 10, 15%, especially if these requirements to, you know, KYC and track all these coins in the future gets implemented.

Yeah, I think this is gonna be almost invaluable and you'll probably see coins trading two or three times what the market value is. - Yeah, I totally agree. And then on the other hand is like, even if you make that bear and I think you're right, but even if, say, we're wrong and there is no difference

in value and, you know, you effectively financially, technically, you'd have been better off just buying on an exchange because I don't think it's gonna be the case. But if it was, then you still are making sure that you help decentralize the network.

You're still doing something to improve Bitcoin security. And yeah, you could say, well, you should only be doing what's best financially for yourself. But I don't actually agree with that.

I think that, you know, this movement is more than just making as much money as possible. This is really about trying to make some change and trying to take power away from governments who are doing the disgusting things they're doing around the world.

And so if you believe that, then probably the best thing that you can do is to mine at home. And so, you know, that's a big part of why we're doing this month is like, you know, you've got so many people who are spending their whole lives on Bitcoin, Twitter and talking about all the different ways that Bitcoin is better than other money

and why it's so important. But it's like, well, maybe your time would be better spent actually building something and actually mining at home. That's how I feel anyway. Like I feel, you know, I've spent a lot of time talking about it and learning about it.

And, you know, I'm sure it's the same with you. You get to a point where you go, it's hard for me to be more bullish. It's hard for me to think that there's a better system than there is now.

So there comes a point where listening to another podcast talk about why this is better money, why it's going to go to a million dollars of coin, blah, blah, blah. It's like, you're probably just actually stroking your ego here and just telling yourself how smart you are, where you would be better off building.

- Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, the bear market's a great time to see, you know, who's actually building and who is just riding the bullish bandwagon and talking about price the entire time.

You know, this is not my first bear market now. And you definitely see the characters come and go who just were all superficial and then the ones that were silent or actually putting their head down and building.

You know, they'll be the ones in the next bull market where people are looking up to. And I'm not to say that that's where I myself or, you know, any of the plez that are trying to do, that's in the day, you know, mining in itself is hard work.

For anyone that thinks it's just plug and play, it's really not. It's sure if you want to mine with compass and do that, whatever, man, if you want to do that, that's fine. - Don't do that.

- Yeah. - I don't do that. - That trust me, you can do that. - So, you know, anything that's worth it is hard work. And this is the perfect time where people are gonna put their head down and actually get to work and building.

And yeah, you know, I've been on Bitcoin, Twitter, long enough to see, you know, figureheads come and go. And it really is disappointing when you just see the same talking point over and over.

Like, yeah, Michael Taylor's great. You just find the dip, whatever. But it's like, dude, that's all you ever do. And you're just kind of pumping your own bags. Like, how are you contributing?

Or how are these other, like, a non-out there just shitposting that time, entire time? Like, what are you actually doing to improve the network, to secure the network? Like, are you running a node?

Like, come on, man. Like, shitposting is fun, but like, that could build something while we're here. - Yeah, exactly. It's why I spend so much time with the privacy guys and more of the miners and people like that.

It's because it's where I can actually learn. I get to spend time around people who are doing things that I don't yet understand how to do or do as well as they do. And so having these sort of conversations allows me to improve.

And you're right, listening to Michael Taylor talk, you know, it's fine. And he's a very, very good salesman. But there comes a point where it's like, you just don't need to hear it again.

You really don't need to hear it again. You know where this thing's going. And if you know where this thing's going, then try and improve it. Even if you're listening to that and you're just improving your security setup or improving your privacy or whatever it is you're doing, it's like, you should at the end of that month

or the end of that year think, okay, I've taken a step forward and not just tell everyone around me a load of stuff that sounds smart and say, you know, thermodynamics or say something like that.

It's like, well, that's not actually useful. So yeah, for anyone who's listening to this, what are your tips or like things to avoid? Because people are going to be listening to this and considering getting into mining.

That's what the whole month is about. Like, are there any things that now you look back on and you think, ah, I wish I'd have known. Like if you had one tip that you really would want to lend to people what would that be?

- Yeah, well, you know, my background in general is in construction and per academia. I have my mechanical engineering degree. So I felt pretty equipped to tackle this challenge of, you know, setting up a, you know, a mine at home.

And then, you know, we can talk about this later, but I plan on building out a bigger facility here in Arizona. And, you know, at the end of the day, whether you're doing it on a small scale, like one or two miners at your house or you're trying to do something big, it's hard work.

You know, I mean, that's what makes Bitcoin great is you've literally proof of work. And I think mining is the epitome of that. You literally have to, if you want to run a miner, especially these new gen S19, you know, or newer, you need to get into the electrical infrastructure all set up, you know, you gotta make sure

that you're going to be able to manage the heat. And even then, you know, you're constantly troubleshooting if you don't get the right hashboard working or something like that, it's not easy work.

And that's one thing that a lot of people, I think, got into this space within the past year, just hoping to just plug something up and it runs and then bam, they realized, oh, I gotta deal with the heat or, you know, now I gotta deal with the noise.

And it just kind of puts people off when they weren't anticipating all this extra work that's involved. So yeah, if you're going to get involved in this industry, it's proof of work, man.

You gotta be able to buckle down and, you know, take on issues that will arise and, you know, address them and get over them and then move on to the next phase of it. And whatever your ambitions are, if you're just looking to DCA or you want those non-KYC coins, yeah, it's gonna be work.

So don't go into thinking that it's gonna be easy just to set up a miner. And that's one of the things that, you know, unfortunately, people ran to come before and now it's buying them in the air.

You know, you've had, yeah, I know so many people that decided, oh, well, you know, I could buy miners and invest in the electrical infrastructure at home and do that, you know, but I think I'm just gonna go with this easy, you know, turnkey solution.

And yeah, nothing in life is that's worth it, it's easy. And that's kind of what we saw. - So free. - And so hopefully now you're gonna see this more localization of whether it's hosting or just mining at home again, you know, I think that's gonna come to more fruition and hopefully we'll take away some of the power

that's been given to these bigger, or bigger miners and people are gonna do things on a more local scale. And that's kind of one of the things that I'm working on right now is, even though it's gonna be really hard to get this up and running, getting a, you know, a hosting facility out here in Arizona, so that my fellow pledge out here,

at least in the southwestern region, can actually come to my facility and, you know, say, look at their miners, make sure it's running and, you know, that's theirs. And it's not, you know, all the way across states or in Russia or some shit like that, that, you know, was sold to them by Compass.

- Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think the draw for a lot of people was there. It was like, like you said, it's simple. You plug it in and people are thinking, "Oh, it's a big company, so it's safe."

And then you have other people like me who was like, "Oh, I don't think I actually really trust them that much." But I can't plug a machine in the UK without coming up with some elaborate and really clever scheme to reuse the heat and everything else because the costs of the energy are just so high that you really do have to be talking

about two, three X, the value, because it's just, yeah, it's ridiculous to do it. And so I took the pun and I got fucked. And so, you know, I have to learn from that and go, "You're an idiot, you fucked up and you have to accept that."

And then going forward, you have to find smart ways round it. And so it's interesting to hear that you're thinking about setting up something bigger and that people can actually use a hosting facility because I think that's a much nicer model because you've got, you know, this trusted pleb network of miners and people who know each other

after a certain amount of time, they build up a reputation. I have much more trust in the people who I know in this, you know, through Twitter I've been speaking to for years or, you know, people like John or whoever it is who are being able to host, you feel a lot more comfortable with that.

And like you said, you can actually go and see and check that the facility is good. And it's some sort of middle ground, I guess, but what sort of capacity are you looking at? - Now that you've gone, if you don't mind, now that you've kind of gone through this process of, you know, especially being out in the UK with the high energy rates

and going with Compass and then, you know, getting screwed, you know, what are your thoughts? Like, how do you see yourself pursuing mining if you do think that's feasible for you? 'Cause yeah, there's a lot of people in your situation too, whether they're here in the States or abroad.

- Yeah, so for me personally, I was at the time in a weird position where I said, I'm never gonna buy from an exchange again. My previous business was property and I sold off all my property to buy Bitcoin.

So I was like, I'm done. I'm not, this is not what I want to be investing in anymore. I want Bitcoin, but I don't wanna be, I don't want to be buying from an exchange anymore and liquidity on Bisk and Huddle Huddle and through like the plug networks wasn't enough.

So I was like, ah, you know, this was back in, when was it, June of last year where I was like, yeah, I wanna be buying here when, you know, you had that mass exodus from China and I was like, this seems like a good time.

Let me at least just buy a couple of miners and I'll do it through campus and I'll take the risk. And so yeah, that's sort of in the past that that's not something I would do again. Going forward, I would like, even though the costs are so high here, I would like to try and set something up just to learn at least.

So I've been sort of doting around like so for surfing for over a year now, not really had anywhere solid to set anything up. It's been a bit of a pain in the arse, to be honest, but I should be moving into something in the next sort of few months.

So my plan is to actually have something set up in the garage, just something basic, like running one miner and just do a bit of testing and play around and have that as my sort of DCA and a way for me to learn.

I don't think it's gonna be the most cost-effective thing, but it's a way for me to learn. And what I'm suggesting to a lot of other UK plebs is one, if you have a business, to consider if you need some heat to run a miner and then offset that cost against your tax, 'cause then effectively that is free energy.

So anyone who's running a business should seriously consider that. And then anybody who hasn't really got any respect for the laws, they should consider being a little bit of a pirate and seeing if they can have a set up where again, they get some free energy.

But outside of that, I think Europe is pretty difficult. - Right, right. Well, I'm glad that you're actually still trying to pursue it. Even if it is from not as profitable at the standpoint, but at the end of the day, you got to secure the network somehow.

And it's a great way to test and learn firsthand, that's for sure. - Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's just, it's such a big and important part of Bitcoin and I feel like I wanna experience it.

And I know there are such incredible people in this space and well, you can see now, like John said to me, this mining conference didn't work. And I said, oh, can we do something when I'm governorial misfits?

He's like, yeah, cool, puts out a tweet, puts out a message, sorry, just to say like to all you guys, would you spend some time to help other plebs and spread the message and help people learn and just look at what's happened.

Like you've all come up, you're all having conversations, you're all helping people. And the generosity with people's time is just mind-blowing. So yeah, I'm just excited to dive in and start learning.

- Absolutely, yeah, no, and I got a little bit of your interview with tech engineer. Yeah, guy sounds great, man. Like I've really stayed in touch with a lot of the plebs. Like I said, I have a four month old at home, so it's been a little hard to stay on top of anything on Bitcoin literally, but no, man, it's great.

All the resources that everyone's pulling together to get this done is awesome. And you know, thank you for hosting this too. I'm glad that it wasn't just stuck at the mining conference and John was able, and you were able to put this together to move forward.

But yeah, man, as far as, you know, what I see the future of Bitcoin mining turning into is I really hope just like myself, even if it's a small, Montage shop, like if people can start figuring out ways that they can host for friends and family, that's like the best solution.

You know, we're still decentralized in network and maybe someone that is a little more tech savvy or has the capabilities to, you know, run a couple of miners for their family or friends, that's the way to do it.

That's how I kind of see this whole evolution of home mining turning into, because yeah, like I said, it's a lot of work to get this stuff done. But, you know, if you have a little bit of know-how, get a couple of miners and outlets hooked up.

And if you have family and friends that wanna get involved, yeah, host them at your house or garage or something like that. You know what I mean? It's a great way to get people involved. Matter of fact, you know, last year, when I was getting into this, I had some family members that wanted to get, you know, into mining.

And so I pretty much kind of walked hand in hand with them as far as the minor procurement, because it's really hard to buy miners. You know, at least from someone that you can trust. So, you know, I went as far as driving out to Wisconsin, or flying out to Wisconsin to meet my vendor at that time.

And so I managed to procure some miners from my friends and family. And we got eight machines up and running. And, you know, they haven't looked back since. And, you know, once you get past those hurdles of trying to figure out what exactly is required to get this machine up and running, you know, do all the networking that's involved.

After that, you know, it's kind of plug and play. Sometimes you have to do a little bit of minor management, but other than that, if you can get family and friends involved, a lot of these clubs out there have a lot of know-how.

So, you know, that's kind of a call to action and see if you can get your other family members, at least understanding about what Bitcoin mining truly is. And if you can host, you know, that's the way to do it.

- Yeah, definitely. So one thing I wanted to ask you a little bit more about has not that many people are using solar, is do you have any advice for people who are considering putting in a solar system and then considering using it for mining, any advice on either, like, the type of solar panels or the type of setup

or anything to avoid or, you know, anything like that, because, yeah, there's not that many people mining the solar that I've spoken to. - Right, so I think the biggest thing is, it's kind of like the barrier to entry.

It definitely is more of an upfront cost to do the solar system. There's a lot of financing options out there, and fortunately I got a decent terms online. So it, on a month to month basis, made sense to move forward with the solar system that I got.

But even more so, like, if you have to also buy battery equipment, you know, the upfront costs are gonna be quite expensive. But if you can check all those boxes and it financially makes sense for you, at the end of the day, you know, you're gonna oversize your equipment way more than what your household ever consumes.

And, but unfortunately, you're never gonna size your equipment big enough to completely offset your miner. These machines are just powerhouses running 24/7. So at the end of the day, you know, don't expect to completely cover your expenses with solar unless you're, you have a lot of land and you can put a lot of panels out there.

And at the same time, you know, it's gonna be a quite costly to get the batteries to store if you do oversize your equipment more than what your miners pull. 'Cause it is this fine balancing act where you only have so much sun in the day and throughout the day to actually produce.

And then during the off-peak hours, either you have a ton of batteries to offset that or you're just mining straight from the grid. But at the end of the day, from a sustainability standpoint, you know, whether prices go up or down in your jurisdictions, you know, at the end of the day, if you're mining during the time

that your solar panels are producing, you know, that's straight sun to miner energy right there. So to me, it made sense. You obviously have to adjust to your own situation and wherever you're sourcing your panels and batteries if you choose to go that route.

But at the end of the day, just know that, you know, it's not gonna 100% cover your costs to mine. And you just gotta make sure that you're nimble, whether you wanna do some curtailing methods with your miners, you know, turning them off, turning them on during on and off-peak hours, really just actively managing it.

Or you just choose to run at 24/7 and then during the off-peak hours, you know, when the sun's down, just use the grid and just keep going. So yeah, that's not a whole lot to it. At the end of the day, I know tech engineer has come up or is utilizing some controllers, I believe, to kind of manage his battery solar panel system as well.

So he's probably another great resource to look into. Other than that, you know, it's just more or less plug and play. You get the panels up, they only run certain hours of the day. And then that's when you really are your most cost effective at mining.

- Yeah, that's great advice. And then the other thing is you'd mentioned, obviously, doing a setup for hosting. Obviously, there will be people who will listen to this and they literally cannot set up a miner.

You know, there will be people who either travel constantly for work and they haven't got anywhere to actually physically house one of these things or for whatever reason, there will be people out there.

So this idea of having smaller hosting facilities through like trusted networks and stuff like that, although the absolute best thing is to have your miner housed at your home and you're completely in control of it, there is this middle ground where it's like, well, it's not at home,

but it's not at some fucking dumpster fire like compass. There's this middle ground where it's like, well, you're still decentralizing the network because I know that, you know, if someone's got a miner with you or John or someone like that, you're not going to be saying, let me make sure that I can put these UTXOs on a blacklist

and let me comply with every single thing ahead of time because that's what I'm going to do and be a good little boy. Like, you're going to do what you can to try and make sure this network stays decentralised and to protect people.

So can you tell me a little bit more about your plans with that? Like, how big a facility? Are you going for like, what's the timeframe? Are you doing that with Sonar as well? - Yeah, absolutely.

So the project has definitely evolved. I got started with the concept of this back in December of last year and more or less it's evolved from trying to build out a two to three megawatt facility.

Now it's kind of scaled down to one to two megawatts and it's going to be a mix of solar tied into the grid as well as an immersion system. And we're doing that immersion out here mainly because of the heat.

It's just, to be able to have the same type of uptime, 24/7, 365 during peak summer out here is nearly impossible without immersion. I've done several different ways in Calx of trying to figure out, well, maybe we can do an EVAP, you know, evaporative method for the big curtain walls

that you see at like riots, windstones facility out in Texas, but you just deal with a lot of humidity out there. And to be frank, water consumption is a huge issue out here in the Southwest of Arizona.

I think we've been in a 20-year drought. You can look at the pictures of Lake Mead, the water levels are down. So water consumption is a huge factor for me. So we threw out the idea of using cooling tower and are looking towards doing an adiabatic cooling system tied into the immersion system.

And that's probably gonna be the most effective way to be able to maintain uptime, you know, during peak summer. And then during the winter time, we won't have to utilize water to pre-cool the air going into the dry cooling setup.

So that's kind of the preliminary plan, about one or two megawatts. And the idea is to utilize this site as more or less as a test facility to see how scalable it is to do it out in Arizona.

And the reason why I'm doing it out in Arizona, rather than setting up shop in a cooler climate, is the barrier of entry is really tough. You know, if we can manage to make Arizona work and be a profitable hosting facility, and I mean profitable for, you know, our clients.

We don't want someone to be paying $0.14 a kilowatt hour, right, at hosted rates. And they have all this money and equipment invested and they're not profitable, right? At the end of the day, it still has to be a competitive market.

So it's definitely been quite the challenge, considering, you know, I'm essentially by myself on this project, I got some family and friends that win on a plot of land. So we end up buying four acres right by a nuclear power plant out here in Arizona.

So our land is literally right up against the substation that's tied into a calibrated nuclear power plant. So it has a cool vibe to it out there. And we are hoping to break ground in the next two to three months.

But it's definitely going a lot slower than we had anticipated. Equipment is just, you know, extremely backlogged. And then once we are up and running, you know, the idea is to host probably, you know, for the first megawatt, it's going to be about 135, I'm sorry.

Let me think about the cows again. It's going to be closer to 200 miners, you know, allowing for overclock as well. So yeah, it's definitely in the works. And right now it's coming along.

Definitely wish it could be a lot smoother, but, you know, I just need to find a rich uncle that has a couple of million dollars to drop on this. - Well, that sounds awesome. You know, I'd love in the future when you're a little bit further along with it to have another chat, have you back on the pod and see where you're at.

I had a question just as you were talking about it, I was thinking, what about security? Like, how does that work? How are you thinking about that? Because presumably when you're doing a mining setup like this, you've got to think about like, okay, if we've got 200 miners being set up in here, what if we're attacked?

How do you work with that? Do you think about like just, oh, we have insurance or do you just sit out there with enough guns that anyone would be stupid to try it? - Well, fortunately we're in Arizona, so there's plenty of guns out here.

(laughing) More serious, no. No, there's definitely a lot of security measures we had put in place, you know, from remote, alarming, disarming, that kind of stuff. Fortunately, being right next to a nuclear power plant, you can see all the different types of monitoring systems that are out by the substation we're located,

as well as we're right next to a firehouse too. So it's, although we're pretty remote, we're right next to some critical infrastructure, so that's gonna be a deterrent in itself. And then as far as actually securing the property, we're gonna put out, you know, secure fencing, camera systems, that kind of stuff.

Consider the idea of doing more or less, you know, 24/7 security, but that's still kind of, we're playing with them numbers to see if that makes sense. And then there are many ways to track to the equipment going in and out of the facility.

Fortunately, with an immersion system, it's nobody really likes to get their hands messy. You know, dip in their hands and oil, that kind of stuff, but we can definitely put, you know, RFID trackers, so that way we know when equipment's moving inside the facility, that kind of stuff.

And at the end of the day, you know, the whole purpose of this is to kind of localize the posting. So my house is 20, 25 minutes left. So I can easily get to that facility at a moment's notice on top of, if there is already personnel at that center, the idea is to have, you know, at least constant personnel there.

- Cool. Well, listen, it's been awesome chatting to you. We definitely will do this again. Thank you for all your involvement in this month. I'm sure we're gonna be having some panels. We're gonna be having all sorts of questions coming in and everything else.

So I'm sure we will speak again during the month, but yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure getting to know you. And I'm excited to hear about the facility and how it all plays out. - Appreciate it, Nat.

Yeah, thanks Max. It's been a blast and yeah, I'll make sure to get some better audio equipment next time we hop on. (laughing) - That's a luck editing. I hope this is doable for you. - Thank you, mate.

All right, we'll speak soon. Cheers. - Awesome. - Thanks for listening. I really hope you enjoyed that. If you have any questions at all about home mining, please do reach out. We've got the whole team on Twitter.

You can use the hashtag plebminermonth. And make sure not to miss any of these amazing giveaways. We have an S9 being given away today. And we have something every single day of the month.

For all the info, go to ungovernablemisfits.com. And we look forward to hearing from you.