Mining bitcoin with Barnminer

Bitcoin is close to becoming worthless.

Let's go!

Now, what's the Bitcoin? Bitcoin's like rat poison. Yeah. Oh. The greatest scam in history. Let's get it. Bitcoin will go to fucking zero.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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

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

Welcome back to another day of Plebminer Month. Today's guest is Baumminer, and it was awesome catching up with him. We recorded this about a month ago, and I'm just doing the intro now. It was really good to listen back, and this guy's just doing so many incredible things.

As are so many of the people involved in this Plebminer Month. I really am blown away with the caliber of people who have joined us in a helping with this month. To everyone who's been entering the competitions, screaming sats, leaving reviews, sharing with friends, and everything else you've been doing, I really do appreciate it.

It helps more people find this content. It gets them away from the scams and the NFTs, and the bullshit, and the price chart, and helps them understand, hopefully, what really matters. So thank you for everyone who's been doing that.

And today, as with Everyday in Plebminer Month, we are going to be having a giveaway. Make sure to get onto Twitter and onto ungovernablemissfits.com to find out more info. And for anyone who has any questions about the previous episodes or this one, they want some information.

We have a team of mining wizards on hand, so please do get them in and we'll answer as much as we can and help in any way 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 team. 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.

If you have any questions about the trade-offs with KYC versus non-KYC, you can reach out to me. And if you are going to go that route, I really can only suggest these guys. Go to fastbitcoins.com.

- Hey, mate, can you hear me? - Yeah, I can hear you. It looks like I lucked out. It's got my earbuds and the Yeti working. That's what it said anyway. - Yeah, you're coming through, you're sounding good.

You're sounding good. This makes a change. This is nice, that's editing for me. - Yeah, perfect. It came to my office because it was quiet and then as soon as I pull up, they're mowing and you hear the guy with the weed whack come by the window.

(laughing) - It's always the way, isn't it? Someone's always mowing or building. - Yeah, you're in construction or something. - Well, you should be used to the noise now with the mining you've been doing with these things whirring away, deafening you.

- Yeah, definitely. - We got most of the stuff moved to the out building to the barn, which is nice, but I still have, I had some extra capacity in the garage, so why not? So that thing just runs all day all night and you can hear it humming.

I'm gonna be glad, glad when I get to move it out though. It's a little loud. - How many are you running now? - So I have seven, I'm completely maxed out. No pun intended, I'm on my residential electricity.

But I got about running about 100 amps. I have 200 amps worth of service to the house. So about half of that goes towards mining. So I'm in the works with the power company to get another 400 amps, which would give me, I'll have to disconnect what's in the barn and reconnect a new service.

So to give me about probably 20 is what I'm shooting for, that's the end game. - Cool, and what do you run? Do you run Bitmain or do you run the WhatsApp miners? - I have both, I guess I started with a WhatsApp miner and I figured I'd try them all, or not try all of them, but just try the two main ones.

And I think I'm gonna, I've got, see three, S19, JPros, and then four WhatsApp miners right now. I think I'm full on the WhatsApp miners. - Yeah, it seems to be the general consensus is like, people say they're a bit more expensive, you can't update the firmware yet, but they're bulletproof,

and that that's what you want is the reliability. - I like them, I mean, a lot of guys do, a lot of guys that I know that have larger farms, I call them mini farms, but they're still big, like one megawatts, they run the S19s, but they're a lot more efficient, but it seems like they're tinkering with them a lot more, that's for sure.

- I guess if you have like a massive warehouse and you've got engineers on site, then maybe it's not so much for a problem, 'cause you know, having one engineer there, if you've got thousands of the things and you know, okay, these are the things that go wrong with them, and we've got the spare parts, et cetera, that is fine,

but I think like if you're doing more of a pleb mining sort of thing, you probably don't wanna spend your whole time fixing stuff. - Yeah, if you're a tinker, I think that's fun, 'cause you know, you can put the brains, or you can put some firmware on it to tweak them, but it takes a lot of work, it's a lot of tinker,

and if you're busy, I think kind of, let's set it and forget it, kind of guy, so I can run off, I can travel, not have to worry too much about them. They do come in, a lot of people don't know though, they do have three settings, so what's miners?

They have a normal power mode, and a low power mode, and then a high power mode, so they do their factory firmware, has a couple adjustments that your am miners don't have right off the bat.

- Okay, well that's pretty cool, so if you're running somewhere that's really hot, I guess you just whack them down a little bit. - Yep. - That's interesting. So you said you don't like tinkering, but I'm looking at your sub stack at the moment.

Did you build this barn yourself? - So we did, we planned it, I didn't do all the work myself, we did a little bit here and there, so we planned it, got it permitted, order the kit, you know, or all the materials, but had a group that puts in those posts, those posts are pretty dang big, so we hired somebody to put the frame together,

they framed it for us, covered the roof and stuff, and then we kind of filled in the gaps, got some electricity with a little bit of help, and dug some trenches, and put some of the metal on it, so it was kind of half and half.

- It looks very cool. So the shed will get retired, and the barn will be used for all the mining, is that the kind of idea? - Yeah, the goal originally was just to build a barn, and then somehow it ended up turning into a loft up there with some miners, tell you what, really started, it was about the same time we were planning the barn,

I was looking into mining, and then I got caught up in one of those hosted companies, purchase some, repurchase some, yeah. So it's kind of a good thing, I can't name it. Because of the NDA, you could guess which one it is.

Well, I got raped by one that everyone should know by now, which is compass mining, who completely fucked me over. It was an expensive mistake that I won't make again, but have to learn from it, for whatever reason you can't say, but maybe it's the thing.

- I can't confirm or deny who it was, but let's just say we had a mutual issue. But luckily, I got out of it, I took delivery of one, I basically, they were supposed to deliver on one, it was supposed to be up and set up, they didn't.

So I called them, I took possession of it, and then ended up canceling the rest of it. So I did, it was somewhat made whole. I lost my time value of money for a few months on the deposit, but it just, it kind of slingshot me into, well, what the hell am I not doing this at home?

Obviously the rates weren't the same, but I soon figured out if I added more, I could get my rate down, and I got my rate down to a reasonable rate, I mean, I dropped my, I was at 12 cents a kilowatt hour, and now I'm at eight, so.

- Very nice. - Why not? - Yeah, and you can learn this expensive mistake, which is like, just because the rate is cheaper with a hosted miner, you might not pay for it now, but you're gonna pay, so.

- Yeah, one way or the other, yeah. - Yeah, one way or the other, nothing's free in this life, and if it seems too good to be true, it probably is, and you're better in control of it, so.

That's really cool that you've, you've not been put off by it, and then you've gone and done this. What's it been like for you going from, oh, I can just leave it hosted and just walk away to actually getting your hands dirty, getting involved and building this out, because it's quite a feat.

- Yeah, it's been a huge learning experience. It's been great though, you know. I can't say that I did it all by myself, because there's just so many resources available through Telegram or Bitcoin, Twitter, that helped me out, 'cause you got so much stuff going from just paying somebody a monthly fee

to figuring out electricity and air flow and figuring out what to do with your heat, and networking too is a whole new animal, and none of this stuff I had any experience, and I could swap some electricity outlets around the house, but figuring out what goes where and how to set your panel up.

It's been a huge, I don't know, I think I've had more education in the last two years than I've had in five or 10 years, to be honest. (laughs) - More than I learned in my attempt at college many years ago, that's for sure.

- Oh, it's always the way, like getting your hands dirty and having to work something out that is like mission critical and it's gonna cost you money if you fuck it up, is a pretty good way to learn quickly.

- Yeah, it's been a journey, though, but I think the coolest thing is that just, I've never been into social media before Bitcoin, and then once I got on there, it started getting interested in mining and reaching out to other people.

There's so many people available just that would stop doing what they're doing to call you and help you figure out a problem or teach you something. So I just use that to my advantage, to help build, but I honestly couldn't have done it without having the people helping me on.

- Well, we've got quite a few of them on the mining month, the plebs who are always there to help people always have the good information and it blows me away just how kind people are but their time is pretty amazing because you've got so many incredibly skilled people.

They're already busy building out their own stuff and a lot of people have fiat jobs on top and then just to sit down at the end of a long day and be like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna answer some questions.

I'm gonna help this other person out to mine, which effectively some people in the fiat world would probably see as competition, but they don't, they're like, no, I'm gonna help you. It's crazy.

- Yeah, it really is, you think about it 'cause I was outside walking, I was talking on the phone with somebody who offered to help me and I'm like, man, this guy is my competition. I mean, he's not really because he owns a thousand miners, but I'm like, this guy's like, stop.

He gave me his cell phone number of all things and then he's just talking through air flow with me 'cause I'm trying to figure out how to cool things off. You know, it's amazing. Yeah, it's no other field you would think, you know, where people come together who compete against each other to help each other.

- Do you think that just comes down to what I see anyway? It's like a lot of the people who are mining. They're probably digging the deepest into Bitcoin. Like you have people who just go on, I've heard about this Bitcoin thing, I'm gonna buy it, I hear it's gonna go to a million or whatever they hear, Michael say, to tell them

and then they go, oh, just sit on it. Whereas the miners that I speak to generally seem to have a deeper understanding of the implications of what this can do for the future of them and their families.

And so they seem to be a bit of a different breed than I'm thinking, well, are they so helpful because they understand that it's not about me competing with everyone else, it's about making sure that this goes forward and that things decentralize.

- Yeah, I would think that's an excellent statement. It's pretty accurate. I think the next logical step for me after I started running a node and, you know, I got a node in the box and that was, you know, I didn't learn anything, I plugged it in and I learned something when it broke.

It seemed as if it broke. Yeah, I had to figure out what the hell, what is this thing doing? So after I had help from somebody else, helped me fix it, but after I dug in, I rebuilt it, I built a new one, I have two or three of them now.

But the next logical step was mining. So just to dig deeper down the rabbit hole to figure this whole thing out. So yeah, absolutely. - Yeah, it's amazing what you learn. Like, I'm not a particularly techie person, but, you know, it gets that stage where like, "Oh, I heard I'm a second-class citizen "if I'm not running a node."

Right, I better learn how to do that then. And then, like you said, you learn and then it's like, oh, well, one's not really enough 'cause I wanna try this new one and, you know, now I wanna have lightning and now I wanna have this.

And so you're always digging into something and learning and the amazing thing that I've found in this community is, like, when you have a problem and you reach out and people help you, you often end up then becoming really good friends and it tends to go full circle.

People will always help each other out. And it's like, oh yeah, you helped me with this. I helped you with that. And all the different skills end up converging. You just have this group where it feels to me often, like, if I just pick up my phone and I wanna reach out to people on Bitcoin Twitter or people in Telegram, I'm pretty sure

they could fix anything. There's not really anything where I think, my group of people that I can reach out to, my mates on here, there's something they can't fix. That just doesn't happen.

- No, yeah, it's like I've got resources in the palm of my hand from around the world, basically because of this community, it's insane. - So what was the first things where you're setting this up and you had issues?

Like, can you remember certain times where you were like, oh fuck, I've bitten off more than I can chew here, or I've got a real issue, and can you remember who reached out and helped? - Yeah, I could remember.

I think it was initially figuring out air flow, how to keep these things cool, because I live in the state of Florida, in central Florida, so we're subtropical, right? So we have two things against us.

It's hot as hell, and it's humid as hell. So you've got this big metal barn sitting in the sun all day. So how am I gonna keep these things cool? So air flow was the biggest concern of mine.

So we're trying to figure out how do I keep this giant building cool. I reached out to, well, actually somebody, I don't know, I think it was in the mining wizard's telegram group, and it was a guy that happened to have a large farm in South Florida.

I was like, well, holy shit, this is the perfect guy right here. So he kinda helped me, he talked me into spray foaming the building, and then we talked about air flow and ended up putting the fan up at the top with the gable end, and then figuring out how much intake we needed down below.

So that was the biggest challenge is the air flow. I think for electrical, I had help with the professional. I had electrician come in, 'cause I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I didn't wanna fry anything.

I killed myself, one of the two. - Yeah, best to avoid that. And so with the air flow, when you're having two fans and one for inflow, one for outflow, are you still then running the fans that are on the machines as well as the other ones?

Or are you disabling them or spoofing them, and then just using the bigger fans instead? - I know, yeah, for the air flow, it's basically I have a passive intake. I've just got an opening at the barn roll-up door.

I have a 10 by 10 roll-up door, and I think it might be in the sub stack. I think I've updated it. But basically I had my neighbor build me a screen enclosure, 10 foot by two foot, and then I threw some filter media to keep it cool.

So that's the intake. And then the big fan and the gable end is about 4,800 CFM. So that pulls the air all the way through that opening and then shoots it out. So the miners still have their fans.

So miners still do their job keeping themselves cool. And then I just, the building does its job by keeping the building cool. Just provides the environment for them. - Cool, and I'm assuming being where you are, you don't have any use for this heat.

Do you just let it go? There's no sort of use for it. - There is a use if you had a pool or a spa, but I don't. That's about the only thing. I could pump it back in. I do have plans like Schnitzel does to heat my water heater, but that's down the road.

That's maybe after phase two. Yeah, my options would be a pool heater, which you don't really need in summer. So you'd be kind of making a giant bathtub. But you could use it in winter though, it'd be helpful.

And then just to heat your home, your home water. But we never use our heater in our home. Maybe, I don't know, twice a year, we might turn it on. So the others are the only two options unless, I don't know, drying some beef jerky, something like that.

- Yeah. I've seen people doing these kind of things. It does seem like maybe there's something a bit more, I don't know, more generally useful like that, like drawing meat or I was gonna say like having a greenhouse, but you won't even need that 'cause if you had a greenhouse, you basically are living

in a greenhouse anyway, so that's not so useful. But yeah, I mean, that's the thing for like us Europeans is we have to think for certainly where I am, like it gets pretty cold. You have to constantly think about heating and heating is getting expensive.

So this heat from the miners offsets some of the cost and that's how we have to do it. Is there nothing for you where you've thought about maybe switching at some point to immersion or is the setup working as you want it and there's no tweaking use of the fill you need to do now?

- I think immersion would be my next step, but I think I want to kind of master air first until I get into spending the money on the infrastructure for the immersion. I think it's a great tool.

I'm not sold on spending all that cash on it. Maybe if I had a larger farm, I think I would, but I definitely want to tinker with it. I want to throw some of them in there. But the whole goal of the barn was to be a barn first and then minor second.

So right now I've got them up 10 feet high. They're out of my way. So if I start throwing immersion in there and I got a bunch of crap in my garage that's not in the barn, it kind of defeats the purpose.

I wouldn't mind having four or six down there, but the goal is to have a workshop as well. So for now it's just air cooled. - And what sort of is the workshop just used for like general projects that you do for yourself or is that like work stuff?

- Yeah, just general house stuff. Basically I do want to put just an area to get away. Our house is kind of tiny and we have a two car garage. I like the park in the garage. The wife doesn't, she's got a truck.

But just need some space to store stuff basically. We got three kids in a teeny home and running out of room. - A lot of man's space. - Yup, some quiet space, but it's not so quiet anymore.

There's things making noise. Noise cancelling headphones is what you need. - Yes, I think eventually the goal is to finish that out. So I will, directly underneath the A6, I'll have something built out and I might do, you know, wall that in, put some insulation and try to quiet it down.

Maybe air conditioning if it works. I don't know, we'll see. - Yeah, it's always that balance, isn't it? Of like, what's the absolute perfect setup versus the costs? And like, is it worth the time and the money to do the immersion?

Is it worth the time and the money like putting in cooling systems and all this kind of stuff? Because I guess in a lot of ways, you could look at it the other way and just say, well, if I have the space and they're keeping cool enough, as it is and they're still hashing away, well, wouldn't I be better just spending the money

on more hash rate? And I guess that's always that trade off of like efficiency versus just getting as much hash as you can online. - Yeah, I agree. I think what I'll do is I'll max it out and then if power rates go up, hash rate goes up, then I'll need to rethink how do I become more efficient?

That's the name of the game, right, efficiency. So I'll build it up and then once I hit that wall, I'll work on it. - So when you first started thinking about mining, what sort of led you to go down this route?

Like, why was it mining? Was it straight into mining or were you already stacking? Were you already into Bitcoin? - Yeah, I'll be interested sort of know how you got here. - Yeah, at first it started off just Bitcoin.

I think I started about my first Bitcoin kind of right after the '17 crash. When, you know, I had, of course, I always, everybody has that friend that was buying it, you know, in 2014 told you about it.

I didn't look into it until later and I started buying it and I started getting into the Bitcoin casino for a while and figured out just kind of, yeah, everybody goes through that journey of, I think, oh yes, everybody goes through the journey of shitcoining and then figuring out what the,

you know, most of them are scams and what the hell am I doing? And then kind of went Bitcoin only, went Bitcoin only and got a node and I think from the, after I got the node and ran the node is when it just seemed like the next logical step for the learning process and it took over from there.

- So were you already kind of like into the self-sufficient stuff and libertarian ideals and, you know, a lot of the stuff that goes along with a lot of Bitcoin as certainly the ones on Twitter?

Were you already thinking in this way and wondering if there was a way out of some of the crazy shit going on or did you sort of just get slapped in the face by it once you got into Bitcoin?

- I think my ideals were pretty much lined up with most of the guys I know in the space, pretty, pretty independent. I was, you know, it's interesting because the older you get, I feel like the less, the less progressive you get, I don't know for me anyway.

I think it just, I've had similar thoughts. I kind of was a gold bug before Bitcoin and, you know, had read the creature to, you know, the creature of Jekyll Island went well before Bitcoin.

So I kind of had the new, new, new scam that the Fed was up to prior to Bitcoin. So if it, it just fit perfect. - Yeah, I think there was quite a lot of people in that position where it's like, you know that there's games being played.

You know that it's not right, but there's no real answer to it. And I guess gold is kind of the next best thing before Bitcoin, but you kind of know it's still being fucked with. And I guess a lot of people just searching, they search so long for it.

You kind of think, oh, well, there's no other option. I just have to kind of accept it. And you know it, but there's not a lot you can do. And I feel like there's so much more people who are waiting to find something and they just haven't realized it's Bitcoin yet.

There's so many people who are like, yeah, I just want to have control of my life. I don't trust what the government are doing. I know they're fucking with my money. I just don't know what to do about it.

And they put it on the back burner and it's hard to break through to them. But I just feel like there are hordes of people just waiting. And this is exactly what they're looking for. - Yeah, I would have to agree.

But it's hard to cross that level. I think I run into people all the time that see the same thing. But they don't trust the network or they don't trust. I guess you have to put a lot of trust in the system if you're going to dump your money into it.

And that's what worries a lot of people. I think that's what the hardest problem I have, orange bill and people. I'm not a big orange biller. But if somebody asks, I'll do that. - Yeah, it's like refining the message to meet the person you're orange peeling.

I'll always find this the way forward. I always found that early days, I was running around like a dickhead, just like shouting at everyone, just going, "Yeah, this thing is going to kill off the government.

"They're not going to be able to control us. "Ah, fuck the system." And everyone's like, "We don't want that." - You're a crazy son of a bitch. - Yeah. - Don't listen to Max. - Yeah, they're like the boomers who have the money.

That sounds awful. We trust our government, we love our government. And so, you know, for those people, you either refine the message and give them the sort of sales pitch on why they're going to be more wealthy.

Or what I've started to do now is leave them alone. I don't want them to have it. So I will now find people who I'm like, "Okay, are you freedom loving? "Are you someone who actually want beside me?

"Are you someone who I think is going to invest their sats "in the future to make a better world? "Are you someone I actually like?" And then if they are, if they tick off all those boxes, I'll be like, "Okay, I'll speak to them about this."

But for the most part, I'm just thinking, "Ah, fuck it. "I can't be bothered anymore." - Yeah, I think I'm the fuck that I can't be bothered guy. I'm just not a good salesman, Max. So I just don't go, I'm not an evangelist.

But if I'll throw that out there and if you want to ask me about it, I'll teach you about it. - Mm-hmm. - So the people are like, "Oh, sorry, go ahead." (laughing) - Yeah, go ahead. - Now I was gonna say I've got, so we've got a local guy that I buy my meat from.

He's not the rancher, but he's the guy that he's the butcher, right? So he gets all the, he gets the meat from everybody and then he sells it to the community. I deliver it to you, right?

So we've had the Bitcoin conversation a couple times and he's just not there yet. But when he's there and he's ready, he knows he can come and talk to me. I'm not gonna keep pushing him though, but I'm just trying to pay him in Bitcoin.

He's just not having it yet. (laughing) - You planted the seed. - Yes. - And when people come round, I assume you have some normies in your family and friends group. When they come round, do you show them the mining setup?

Are they like, well, you know, what is this, or do they hear it and say like, what are you doing down there? - Yeah, they don't hear it, but I do show it. Like I've had, I ran into a buddy who I went to high school with or hung out in high school with recently.

And then we started talking about it. He's like, oh, can I come see it? So he came by to see it and he's, the seeds planted in his mine. He's like, wow, I can do this at home too. I'm like, yeah, man, I got one he can borrow 'cause I do an S9 lunar program.

Or a little Bitcoin meetup. So we do that just to kind of get people exposed in their hands-on, hands dirty. You can run those in your garage or whatever. So actually he just came over last week.

So he's asking for all kinds of information. I'm sending them links. So that was a cool story. Yeah, family members, they're kind of like meh, they're not sold on it, but yeah, I've had a couple of friends that I've showed and they're starting the journey.

Yeah, it's the ideal way in as well. Like finding a friend who's wanting to plug in an S9 and actually learn about how this network works and understand it. That's the ideal way in now. Finding someone who can just say, all right, I'll have a play and rather than just buying it and holding it and then calling you saying,

the phone call's gonna be very different. Like a normie who you onboard and they go and buy from an exchange, the phone call is either, oh, it's gone down in price. Fucking said I shouldn't have bought this.

Oh, God, why do you tell me to buy this? Or they're phoning you to tell you however they are. And so you only get one one or the other and they're both fucking annoying. Whereas if someone's borrowing a miner and they're setting it up or building a node and running that or doing something where they're actually getting their hands dirty,

then those phone calls are actually gonna be fun because you're like, ah, now actually I have this knowledge and I can help someone and they're actually interested in learning and once you've learned it, then you're gonna be like, oh, this thing is amazing.

Right, this is why I wanna keep my money here. It's a way, way better way in. - Yeah, it's all that other, that's the cool thing about it, all that other stuff comes after you build it. You know, after you learn it, I think you learn by building.

So I think it's a great entry versus buy and watch number go up. I really didn't stop looking at number go up until after I started mining. Now I just look at how many blocks did my pool get this day?

- You came in by the sounds of it if you said after the 2017 peak, you came in to a bear market. So you went through the pain as did I, had exactly the same experience and it's almost like, I don't know if it was the same for you, but I was trying to find out, was I a retard?

Am I a fucking idiot who's just bought into some Ponzi or scam or nonsense? Like, what have I done here? And is it worth me staying around? So those next couple of years of bear market and just watching the price dump and dump and dump and dump and then little pump and then dump and dump and dump was probably what gave the conviction

because it's like you spend all that time learning, even though the price is going down, it gets to a point where you're like, "No, I want to be accumulating here." You know, doing that for a few years and just seeing pain, I think then it means that when you have the volatility, like now, like the volatility,

you see your wealth going down so dramatically, it's like, "Yeah, that's all right." - It definitely numbs you. I think anybody's got to go through a full cycle to get a good grasp on how it works.

I kind of bought sort of buying as the knife was falling down. So I got half the pain, not all the pain and seeing it go back up and down. - Yeah, it's still painful at the beginning. I remember life waking up every morning and checking my little app that would tell me the price.

And I had all the shit coins as well, like the most stupid stuff. And it was like, "Oh, I just kept looking, just hoping," like just praying, "Oh, let one have gone through the roof." And then listening to like fucking tone veg and some of these, yeah, like, they're like-- - I guess, yeah.

- Yeah, and like trading. And it's like, "Oh, yeah, this is, it's on a nine. So this is going to now," and it wasted so much time learning that sort of stuff. It was absolutely ridiculous looking back.

But yeah, you then sort of find, "All right, where's the signal?" And I never got into the mining. There was no one at that time really or no one that I knew who was re-talking about the mining side a bit, or if they did, it was always like, "Oh, you don't want to do that.

You're best off just buying. Only the massive miners can make money. You don't even bother." And so I just kind of ignored it. But it feels like now there's this resurgence of people getting interested.

You got people like you who are documenting their experience and so many other guys who are involved in this mining month are doing the same. And so it feels like it's becoming like cool again and accessible again.

How do you think that goes forward? Like, do you think this is a trend that will continue and accelerate? - I think so. I hope so. There's been people mining at home since the beginning. But I think that it has become more popular.

Maybe not as much, I guess more popular. It's been more widely published, I guess, would be the word. 'Cause there's OGs that have been doing this forever. But I think now it's just, there's more people out there talking about it and sharing their experiences and teaching.

- Yeah, 'cause it seems, certainly for me, I remember it seeming like just, it wasn't accessible. It wasn't like, oh, I could go and find a good guide and oh, you buy this bit of hardware and you plug it in and this is how you set it up.

And, you know, I feel like now it seems like basically anyone can do this if they put their mind to it. Hardware's getting better, all of the software like brains and all the different options out there are getting better.

There's so many different ideas of what to do with the heat if you're gonna do something with it and all these communities just popping up all over the place. And so I'd like to think that we can get to a stage where the average person doesn't just say, right, I'm gonna go straight and buy on an exchange.

I'm going to actually learn like this. And, you know, I often wonder if there's gonna be some way. I know it's kind of been attempted. There's a company which has made like a node and a miner, like a very, very low hash rate miner.

I wonder if that will continue where you have people who, you know, you can buy something for a few hundred dollars or a thousand dollars and that's your in and you plug that thing in and you start earning and learning and using these tools.

Do you think that that's something that will happen or do you just think that it's gonna be the big A6 and that sort of thing just doesn't really make sense? - Yeah, I like that little node miner is a cool novelty.

I think it's a good step forward. I think it's what we're gonna see in the future. But I think what these guys are doing like with these water heaters, I think you're gonna start seeing a little bit more commercials/residential applications come online, you know, like heating, heating greenhouses with mining, it's gonna incorporate

into a lot of different lives, heating your floors. I think the heating application is just huge. I think that's just gonna be a technology that takes off in the future. Like all these experiments we're seeing with everybody, you know, putting heat in their pot tubs and pools, I think at some point soon

that's gonna be a commercial application. You're gonna be able to buy a house or put in that water heater that has that miner. Yeah, you're gonna spend 10 grand on that water heater but you know what, it's gonna pay for itself.

And then some. I think that's coming soon, no doubt. - I agree. I mean, I was chatting to Michael Schmidt the other day about this and what really brought it home for me was, he was saying, well, it doesn't matter if you've got a dumb heater or if you've got a miner.

If it's running on electric, the amount of wattage that goes through it is the amount of heat. He was like, it's just physics. It doesn't make any difference. And when he sort of drilled that point home, I was thinking, well, there is no logical reason that all of these heaters that are running on electric wouldn't also be mining

because you're already using the power. Why wouldn't you get something back? So I think you're right. I think as we see this progress, it just gets to a stage where it's like, you'd be a fucking idiot not to use one of these and to use just a dumb heater if you're using electric and not gas.

There's no good reason going forward. - Yeah, that thought crossed my mind when I was swapping out my water heater element broke and I had to go shop for a new water heating element and 4,000 watts is the rating on that heating element.

I guess it runs just under 4,000 watts. Like some of the bitch. I'm putting in a useless piece of metal when I could be putting in a miner. - Yeah, it's crazy. And you can think of all people who have already got stuff that's built and it's already their home set up.

Okay, that's fine. You've already done it. But when you're talking about new builds, if we push this forward like a couple of years, if anyone is doing a new build and they are not putting this in, they're buying something that doesn't produce Bitcoin that uses the same amount of energy and produces the same amount of heat is just dumb.

- Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. I think you're at a huge advantage if you're a home builder in a Bitcoiner right now. So you can incorporate that if you're building a new house or you've got your property where you're building them in, it's an empty pallet.

You can capture as much heat as possible. There's no reason not to. - It's crazy. What are the things that are exciting you at the moment? You're obviously deeply involved in this and documenting it and spending a time with a lot of these other crazy mining plebs.

Like, what do you see at the moment where you're getting particularly excited about it? - I think I'm excited just about, first of all, this month is great. I think what John's put together is an incredible opportunity for us to collaborate together and to teach and to provide more resources for more people to do it.

I really enjoyed being active in the Telegram groups and helping people. So I've started, I've had some friends that know that I'm mining. My accountant knows that I'm mining. I set up on a business just for the mining to take advantage of our horrible tax system, right?

So he's got, I've got him mining now. I've got my accountant mining. He's got more hashrate than I do now. And I'm actually, it's a swear to you. He's got a pet of hash. He's got me beaten.

He hasn't even been hitting this long. But originally we were gonna, so this guy, my accountant, he had a GPU miner and he knew what I was doing and he helped me set up my corporation for my home mining.

And he's like, well, I wanna do this. I've got real estate all over. Can we do a build at one of my properties? And I was like, sure, so we looked at it. And then the electricity rates didn't make sense for him.

But I've had, over this time period when I started mining met some larger miners and started to visit some other facilities, locally owned and operated, not large corporations. And we ended up setting him up at one of my friends' farms.

So now he's hashing. So I'm meeting another guy today, actually, to talk about he's got an office building and he's got an outdoor, he's got two story office building and he's got an outdoor patio, like a balcony.

So we're getting ready to put in. He's got extra capacity for electricity. He's got the space. He doesn't, we can deal with the sound and the heat and we're gonna put in the pad of hash on the second floor of his office building.

So that's kind of the new stuff that I've been drawn into lately. So I've been trying to distribute hash that small businesses. That's kind of been my new go-to thing. That's my new hobby.

Do you ever see this hobby becoming full-time work or? - Absolutely, if there's enough demand for it. Yeah, I would love to. - It seems like there's certainly gonna be enough demand going forward.

That's the thing is like being positioned as you are, being as early as you are and having the experience that you've got, it's like these things, I kind of think it just comes naturally.

Like at some point your accountant's gonna speak to someone in the cell, yeah, bomb miner helped me set it up and then someone else is gonna do the same and eventually your phone will just start ringing and people will say, I'm building a hotel, I need to do such and such, can you help?

And you can say, yes, you can pay me in sats. Thank you very much. - Yeah, absolutely, sats only. Yeah, this office, I'm excited about it. So I've been talking to the guy for six months probably and I'm going over there this afternoon.

So it's interesting 'cause I had two Bitcoin things going on today, so I had to talk with you and then I'm meeting with the office owner. What's interesting about him, I'm in real estate.

I've been in real estate for almost 20 years and he's in real estate as well. So I know warehouse owners and landlords, if you've got that extra space, that piece of warehouse that's not being used but you got capacity, it's kinda win-win.

So we're getting ready to do, when I'm talking to him, he does investor meetups. So we're gonna do a presentation at his investor meetups on mining. So that's what we're going to talk about today actually.

- Nice. - It's exciting, yeah. It might be perfect timing for some of these property investors with the way things are looking out there. Maybe this is a way forward where they can kind of cover themselves a little bit.

I don't know if it's the same in the US but also was heavily involved in property here for the last sort of 15, 20 years and I've scaled out of it because I just see there's massive tail risk, but what I've seen around me is like a lot of the more boomergy types who took all their retirement money, they've bought loads of buy to let,

they're absolutely mortgaged up to the hill, they've got every loan possible going and what I see looming would just absolutely wipe them out. They've got no cushion, they've got no padding and if people stop paying, they are fucked.

Like absolutely fucked, whereas in America, if you've got low power rates, if your tenants aren't paying and you've still got mortgages to pay, well, this could at least help. - Yeah, it could hold you over, yeah.

Yeah, it could hold you through the downturn, 'cause we're reaching that peak right at the cycle of the real estate cycle. So absolutely, the accountant is a big real estate owners. I see a lot, the real estate owners kind of get it, I think.

I mean, yeah, a lot of them are leveraged to the hill but they see this as an alternative investment to them. And now they're not looking at it in SaaS, they're looking at it in dollars, but still you're getting there.

They'll be along the way they'll learn and figure that out, you know? - I think it makes sense to them as well because most of the property people that I would speak to would be thinking in decades, not years, generally.

So they've already got that low time preference. Like anyone who knows anything about property is like, you just need to stay on the log. You can't be fucking around and fall off. You have to be looking at this, you know, minimum 10 years and if you've got a way, you've got a way to out.

That's one thing. And then the other thing is they're looking at the yields on things and everything that they're calculating is, well, okay, what can I have flowing in? And then what is the cost of actually putting down money for this property?

And so I think their view is very different to people who mess around with a stock market or people who are like general business owners. It's, it feels like property to me. It's like you're buying units that produce you a certain amount of money.

Then you've got the appreciation of those assets over time. And like, the same kind of happens with miners if you time things right. And obviously then you've got your sat. I think you'll probably do really well with that.

I think it's like the perfect audience for it. - Yeah, it really is. They have a long-term time preference. So when they're looking at cash flows or looking at five 10 year cash flows. So it kind of fits their mentality, absolutely.

- And so then that spreads out and you get a load more pleb miners. And that's the thing that like for me this month is really about trying to find anyone who can plug in whether it's one machine or a hundred or a thousand, but people who are like individuals, not corporations.

And that's really where it starts to excite me is that like, there's so many people who are in this position and especially with what's going to happen with property. And there are so many people who have had businesses shut down and there are so many people who need to have something coming in.

And a lot of these people also can write off the cost of their electric. I'm pretty sure it would be the same in America as it is here. So it's like you have people who have units that they're not renting and they can write off the cost of their energy.

It is like the biggest net operator. - Yep, your hardware is deduct that cost as well. And then you depreciate them. So it's like, there's a lot of advantages. If you like, so you have a mini warehouse and you've got this shitty suite in the middle and nobody wants to rent it out.

Well, guess what? Throw some of you. You got 200 amps in there. You got three-phase electric. Oh, there you go. - Yeah, it just makes so much sense, doesn't it? And that's the thing is like, if the government start coming after people and these big mining warehouses, the first people they'll go for, and they will all bend the need.

- They'll be the first targets. Yep, they will. They want to start censoring transactions or whatever. They're going after the big boys. But if there's thousands of them spread around the world and little warehouses and people's homes, you can't hit them all.

- Yeah, well, I think, you know, even if they did, even if they made it their number one priority and they think, okay, we're going to go after anyone who's putting it on their tax returns, anyone who's put their head up and we know of, we're going to go for it.

It's like, it starts to reach, well, firstly, they won't find the people who haven't told them. You know, the people are properly off grid. They're not going to find them. But if they start going after thousands of property owners and people with businesses and people who are supposed to be upstanding members

of society, they're going after all these people. You would like to think that people are going to turn around and go, hang on a minute. What the fuck is this witch hunt and why are you doing it?

And you'd like to think that the narrative then would change and it's not, oh, Bitcoin is a bad. It's like Bitcoin is just normal people trying to survive through all the bullshit that the government have created.

And now they're trying to go after them for that as well. Fuck them. - Yeah, yeah, you've got normal voting people. You know, if it's spread across the globe with just normal Joe Smough, investor guy, you know, you're right.

Everybody's a target at that point. (both laughing) - Yeah, exactly. - That's what the hell's going on. They're attacking all these people. (both laughing) - Yeah. And so for the rest of the month, we, as you know, like through the Telegram group, we're going to be doing bite-sized bitcoins,

like little short-sharp clips to explain things to people. We're going to have people reaching out for questions and people who want some help setting up and all this kind of stuff. Is there any one specific that you'd like to hear from or anything that you think, like, okay, that's the sort of thing I want to handle

these kind of questions? - Just, I like stupid questions. I like people that ask questions that they think are stupid, but they're not. People sometimes get afraid of dumb questions, but I'll take anything.

You know, I got to give it to you though, Max, because these bite-sized bits, I think I told you this, but I'm trying to incorporate some with my kids. So I got three kids and I invited all of them to help me do a couple of these things.

And just to do a five-minute bit with my daughter has taken hours just to go through and record it without laughing at each other and just getting, it's been interesting, trying to get her to do the research to figure out, you know, simple questions that were simple to me, obviously, but not her.

I think getting the kids involved has been a fun part, but specifically, any questions good, no questions too stupid. So I think the more questions, the better. I just enjoy helping people solve problems.

Have the kids enjoyed getting involved? Are they sort of learning a little bit? - They are a little bit, but I don't know. You know, when you're a kid and stuff, your parents do aren't that cool.

So, but I think they're kind of coming around. I've got my son helping me swap some parts now, which is cool, 'cause we can do something together. But my youngest daughter, I think all of them have played a small role in setting up some minors, either plugging them in or pulling them up on the computer and check them on them.

But they're slowly, slowly getting into it, but it's not as cool to them 'cause their dad does it, so. (laughing) - Yeah. - One day they'll figure it out when they're older though. - Yeah, when they're fixing hardware and they're getting paid their pocket money straight into their wallets,

then I guess that's maybe where it becomes interesting. Like, I can't tell you how excited I was, like, back in the day if I could go and, like, wash a car for, like, 20p. And I was like, "Ah, yeah, I'm gonna be a millionaire."

And you get, like, all excited and you're counting all your money and everything. But, you know, when you've got lightning wallets and has this thing becomes more and more useful, I think kids are gonna get into it just from that because it's gonna have more applications for them.

Like, it's gonna be something where they can go, "Okay, I can go and do this bit of work." It's like proof of work. I can go and do this bit of work and then I get these sats and then I can use it in this game or to do this or to do that.

And, you know, the kids of the future here, the kids are the ones who are gonna push this forward. So, I love to see this involvement. I think it's really, really cool. - Yeah, I think the value for value stuff, like the Fountain Podcast is pretty interesting.

And I think that'll be something cool for kids to see, you know, some sats streaming in for something they do or contribute to. I think that's gonna be a kicker for them once they start seeing.

You know, I can contribute to this and see some sats rolling in, you know, not necessarily of a podcast, but something they're contributing to. - Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. I mean, like, every day I get excited by Fountain.

It's not about the number. It's just like you're saying, "Ah, someone's just sent me a message "or someone's listening." And I can see that streaming in. And it's like a connection where I'm like, "This person's listening and they're sending me value."

Just that feeling of, "Oh, they actually value what you're doing here." It's really, really like, it's a special thing. It gives you a connection you wouldn't otherwise have. I think, you know, as you see that, like you said, it's not just for podcasts.

It could be that you've written an article and every time someone reads a few sats a cent or, you know, you're answering a question in a room and someone tips you a few sats for your time, whatever it is, it's just like, it's not about the value.

It's like, okay, it might be 50 sats. Okay, well, what does that really mean? Well, it's just like a token of appreciation and it feels good, I think it's really, really nice. And I think it gives you a connection that you never had before, which I think is one of the more important parts.

Like you said, it's not about the sats, the connection between you and whoever else you're helping out. Yeah, when we released this month because we're recording this ahead of time, but any sats that come through fountain for any show are all gonna be going back to listeners.

So I won't be taking any of them. They'll be going towards like prizes and merch and whatever else. And it just gives it gives an opportunity to be able to do stuff like that. It means that we can pay that forward and that's really cool.

That's great. Yeah, maybe I can find an S9 to give away. It'd be sweet. Ooh, that would be very, very cool. I'm sure there are people listening now who would be very excited about a giveaway like that, get someone to dip their toe in.

And as you know, this is very addictive and suddenly they'll be buying 10. Yeah, that's what happened to me. It started with an S9 and then now I'm shooting for 20. 20 big boys. Do you think you'll reach a limit or do you think this addiction will grow and grow?

And yeah, do you think there's ever a point where you'll go? I have enough hash. No, I don't think so. I think my goal is once the barn's full is to move to a larger building. That's the plan anyway.

I go and I've met these guys that have, they have these one, one, one to two megawatt farms. I'm like, man, this is where it's at. This is what I need. It just motivates me more. Yeah, that would be, I'd love that.

Like imagine just walking into something like that and then just, you just hear that noise and you just breathe it in and think this is my hash. These sets are streaming to me now. That must be such a cool feeling.

It's gotta be. Yeah, just visiting, just visiting there is amazing. It's on time. Well, for everyone listening, you might not be mining yet. You might be winning an S9 at the end of the day.

You can find a way to get to that sort of position. It just takes time and a bit of effort, but you've got the people around you now. So barn miner and everyone else that I'll be interviewing and everyone who will be in these groups, they're there to help.

So don't be afraid to reach out. Reach out to me as well. It's not a lot I can answer on the mining side, but I help where I can and yeah, barn miner, thank you so much for joining me and getting involved with this and documenting things.

It's been really, really good. Yeah, it's been fun. I look forward to it. So yeah, feel free to reach out to anybody that has a question, no question too stupid. Cheers there mate, we'll speak soon.

All right man, good talk. Thanks for listening and thank you so much to everyone who's been streaming Sats on the podcasting 2.0 apps and leaving booths and messages. It's really awesome to see and all of those Sats are gonna go towards posting these incredible prizes out.

Make sure to check out ungovernable misfits.com and we have an entire section on the pleb miner month. It includes the articles, the pods and the giveaways. Catch you on the next one.