All right. What's up everyone?
It's your boy Opti, we are back for another interview.
I got an exciting one for you guys, in my opinion from what I
hear an absolute legend in the mining space so I am super
stoked to get this conversation going for you guys forgive me.
I think YouTube is acting up, but I am 100% positive.
We are streaming right now. So, shouts out to every single.
One of you guys hanging out with us.
And without further Ado, let's just get into this.
What's up? JP is JP.
A Barrack absolute legend in the space from what I hear with Nico
and I'm super excited. So, how you doing today?
Supergirl, great. Thanks for having me on nowhere.
Without further Ado, let's just get into it bro.
So Nico tells me that you were mining Bitcoin from a laptop,
tell the people how that was. So I did download the tools to
mine Bitcoin on my laptop, but I was already too late back then
it was GPU. In fpga mining were just
becoming a thing and I fell into the butter file a basic trap
which was this company in the United States and said they were
going to make a 6 and they said it's going to be two weeks and
two weeks. Turn into two years and finally,
they shipped my Bitcoin a sec. But I was GPU mining back in
2014, 2013 time frame and then got into large-scale theory of
money in 2016. Wow, butterfly Labs OG amazing.
Well way before my days but I have heard the stories Of the
butterfly labs. And I think they'll be some
parallels. I'll probably bring that in a
little later for everyone. But since you've been around in
the Bitcoin mining game for so long, what's your view on the
current state of Bitcoin mining and maybe even a little tidbits
of way you think it is going. So, I think right now, Bitcoin
mining is in a unique opportunity to grow and succeed
in the power industry and playing in the power markets,
more than it has in the past. You know you have the it
infrastructure. Was passed last year, that's
really pushing forward. This development of green clean,
renewable energy that has no fuel.
So that means they can sell energy into - price points,
Bitcoin miners across the Midwest are taking advantage of
that and they're able to then participate in demand response
markets which is when you turn off your Bitcoin mining rigs
because you're not using energy or you're able to able to take
advantage of it because the prices of energy are negative
and then actually getting paid to use that energy along with
mining Bitcoin. So this provides a great
opportunity for large-scale minors to grow their operations
in the midwest, in Texas because of all this cheap solar and wind
that's being subsidized by the federal government will allow
minors to have a lower cost of deployment or lower cost of
operations when it comes to mining each Bitcoin.
So I think it's a great time to get in the industry and its
really it is maturing utilities are more eager to talk to us as
Bitcoin Miners and we're coming up with some collaborative
relationships that are symbiotic for us in the electric grid.
Of it. If there is someone out there
thinking about mining, would you recommend that they go all-in
right now or maybe wait a little bit during this the tail end of
this bear Market that we're seeing?
Yeah so I think Bitcoin machines are priced based on the amount
of Bitcoin it's going to drive over the course of the the
lifespan of the asset. So right now with the price
crashing down to twenty-five thousand dollars, do machine
prices could start if it stays here for a little bit.
Could start to change and could start to go.
Down farther than where they are today.
That's really the key time to be buying machines because B Main
and mikrobitti. There are taking an effect in
account that having event when they are pricing these machines
out, just like you should be as a minor.
So either now over the next month or two is a good time to
get in, because if the price starts to run these machine,
prices are going to increase just how it always works.
You have to be buying when you think Bitcoin is, is underpriced
undervalued and that's when you want to be allocating Capital.
Do you want to go all-in? Now, it's a hard question to
answer. I would say doll.
Cost averaging unit a Bitcoin miners is a smart move and then
also deploying Capital after the having for the having run up
where you can collect an extreme amount of profits because two
things occur, people can get on infrastructure, fast enough in
the Bitcoin price runs up faster than you can build new data
centers which allows the existing minors to make more
money. Love it.
Absolutely love it. I want to Circle back a little
bit. You were touching on the this
bear market and Bitcoin mining and energy and it Really seems
like this, this cycle. The last couple of years, has
really ushered in the idea to for energy producers that they
need to get on Bitcoin mining, if they want to continue to make
profits moving forward, what's your thoughts on all this?
And then I have one follow-up question to this.
That I really like to ask friend but what's your thoughts on this
bear Market? Being kind of like the
quintessential energy market right now?
Like I feel like Bitcoin Miners and the Bitcoin narrative in
general is Into like the big-name energy producers, and I
think everyone is waking up to what we understand about
Bitcoin, mining and energy use in general.
Sure so Bitcoin mining provides an alternative energy Market or
an alternative energy customer and not as a Bitcoin mining
itself but Bitcoin itself and extracting.
These new Bitcoins can be denominated in cost per megawatt
hour. So the electric industry, when
we saw electricity, we price electricity were using a
megawatt hour which stands for million kilowatts of energy.
So a ton of energy is a unit. And what's happening is the The
market prices of non-fuel based sources of energy, which is wind
solar are lowering the price of energy for the other people on
the grid. Those are your private Nat gas
operators. Those are your coal plants.
Those are your nuclear your hydro.
So they're getting less revenue on a per megawatt hour basis
because of these subsidized energy sources such as wind and
solar which are like I said selling into the market just to
get a tax credit not necessarily even to make money on the
energy. While those other guys, they
need to find a way to pay for that asset and to amortize that
asset. So they can go from selling to
the market, to selling to bitcoin, by simply building a
Bitcoin mine and they can understand that.
The Bitcoin customer is never going to go away and the price
that Bitcoin is going to pay you in terms of dollars per
megawatt-hour. Yes, that's going to change and
yes it will always go down over time but it allows the operator
to have more flexibility or instead of Selling their load to
the grid for, let's say, $25 a megawatt hour.
They consult to the Bitcoin Network for 60 or 70.
And that's a massive increase in returns for an industry.
That's used to deploying hundreds of millions, billions
of dollars of capital. So it only makes logical sense
that the energy operators, the energy, producers come into the
Bitcoin mining space in order for them to amortize assets
faster in order for them to generate further gross margin in
order for them to participate in.
In the energy markets and the demand response markets and in
order to them to help all shareholders.
So I think it they should be and they are and it's only going to
grow in as they move in this space and as we Bitcoin becomes
more accepted that it's not going to go anywhere.
Couldn't agree more. Yeah, one of my friends, Mike
Hobart. He's very big on the idea of
like, like, say what you want about Bitcoin, about what it
does to the individual, but I think people are really sleeping
on the idea of energy companies getting into Bitcoin.
On and basically opening up a whole new market.
And that's really going to be one of the biggest and most
profound changes in, not only the world, but in in the Bitcoin
mining space in general, and here's a, his kind of, it's not
really a Trolli question, but it's more of a thought
experiment. What's your thoughts on energy
companies becoming Bitcoin miners, or rather Bitcoin?
Mining companies becoming the new energy companies.
I think I would say most people like to get excited and say yeah
Bitcoin mining companies, we're going to be the next energy
companies. The problem with that is that
energy companies, they are rooted in our society, both on a
contractual level in a regulatory level and their
remotes are huge. So for Bitcoin mining company,
to go from someone who's operating data centers in that
skill set to being a power producer, even a private power
producer, let alone a Scylla T is is a huge change in business
now. Is it impossible?
No. Are we going to see it?
Yes, especially as Bitcoin in the economics behind Bitcoin,
mining become more apparent as we see forward-looking and
forward-thinking individuals in the energy industry.
Especially one that moves very relatively quickly compared to
your large independent investor-owned utilities so the
electrical coops anyone can come.
Min, they could be joined the board.
They could convince the board to invest in in a substation for a
low-interest loan from the government.
The government USDA provides loans to these utilities that
are Community owned and for about two to three percent
interest. At least that's what has been
historically. And so that would allow them to
build out massive infrastructure and attract some of the biggest
Bitcoin. Mining players in the area to
suck up, cheap power because power is sold at the same price
across all of these markets. So, when we have an And P
settlement which is when the energy prices settle across all
of my. So which is an energy Market in
the midwest. The price is all going to be the
same and then it's going to be subtracted or added more, add
more dollars to the cost based on the congestion.
So, based on how many people are trying to sell energy into that
one spot and how many people trying to use energy?
So I believe there are places on the grid where there's a ton of
congestion, a ton of new demand or ton of new load was added but
not enough demand. Enough electric demand there
compared to what we need to be. So there's a huge opportunity
for a power producer to come in and play the Bitcoin mining game
and do it well and do it at scale and even if they don't
take the risk of Bitcoin mining, they could still increase the
amount of energy they're selling from you know let's say a
million kilowatts or 10 million kilowatt hours a year to 100
million 20 million very quickly with the addition of even just
one large substation, let alone thinking about how do we make a
gigawatt substation like the Rockdale facility with Wyatt, if
you're having forward-thinking energy, producers, looking at
that with like I said, cheap government, Capital cheap
government debt. It's, I mean, you can't compete
as a Bitcoin miner with that so it's open.
But I don't know how many people are going to take it and take
the risks per se and and have the experience and the knowledge
and the willingness to want to do that.
It's easy. And a lot of these electric
cooperatives. They're they're older older
folks who don't necessarily understand the value of Bitcoin.
You might think it's a fad, and, and they're going to miss out on
the opportunity because it's, it could be huge.
And it could bring a ton of jobs to their local community, but
it's sad. Yeah, 100th day of the playbooks
their home saying. Yeah.
Agreed, agreed. And, all right, well, we kind of
jump straight into the energy is but for some reason, I'm, I'm
hearing the ante Bitcoin mining person in my head right now and
they're just asking the same question.
Can you justify using so much energy to mine?
Bitcoin? What would you be your response
to this? Considering we are seeing so
many of the corporate press tried to, you know, continue to
smear Bitcoin mining. If there is someone out there
that is thinking the same thing. Maybe you know, maybe we need to
go to proof of stake. Like why justify the energy use
of Bitcoin mining? What do you usually tell someone
out there that is a Bitcoin mining skeptic?
So what I'll say is there's a great thought Airman about
bricks and moving bricks from one location to another and then
moving the bricks back to the same location.
Now, if you look at the definition of work, you could
say that there was no work, that was actually done because the
bricks didn't move. And that's really what we're
trying to prove here with Bitcoin mining is what is work?
We can sit on our laptops, we can write a paper.
We can talk about how we're going to have the best marketing
plan. We can discuss, you know,
anything. It comes to like intellectual
work but when it comes to work on the physical level, it's very
does this work? Or does it not?
The bridge built and is the bridge safe, does it?
Do its job or was it not built and it doesn't work.
And so that's kind of what we're doing here with Bitcoin mining.
Were abstracting away this ambiguous definition of work and
making it so that anyone in the world can prove that they are
working by using electrons and those electrons prove that this
work, this computation, this mining process is being done.
And that. I work as a real cost to it and
that's very important if the work doesn't have a cost to it,
then the underlying asset can lose its value.
And it doesn't have value to actually acquire it which means
that you're creating it for free and out of thin air and nothing
is created for free. So Bitcoin has this beautiful
process which allows minors from all around the world to deploy
these systems to use energy at resources that are stranded and
the Why they're going after the stranded resources because they
have to compete with everyone else to pay for that same
electron. So the ones that have the
cheapest energy are the ones that are able to compete the
longest and so that provides a Bitcoin miners with the
incentive to go after low-cost stranded energy.
That no one else wants that's already being wasted.
A majority of energy is wasted on the electric wires.
It's dissipated. We can't store energy like we
can store oil or gold so a lot of this energy is wasted but
we're already easing it. So what I would say is that
using energy is a fundamental is provides the fundamental value
of y. Bitcoin has gone up every four
years. It's fundamental to the having
cycle and it's fundamental to the game theory of why Bitcoin
is the best most secure currency in the world.
Get them love it, JP and love it.
Very very simple way to get the point across and we can take
this this conversation in a lot of different ways right now.
But you're talking about the having cycle and I really want
to pick your brain. Rain considering you've been
around for a few Cycles. What do you think we are right
now in the current bear Market cycle?
Not to get into price speculation but as a seasoned
vet, what are you feeling right now?
What do you thinking at and what are you looking forward to?
I'm honestly feeling right now. Flash crash I think there could
be a flash crash to like you know twenty one twenty two
thousand we're at 25. It just dropped a thousand
dollars today. So I'm we've always seen this
massive flash crash before the run-up.
Now a lot of people including I myself thought that could have
been FTX in 20K and we could have been out of the woods where
we got, we're hitting the support right now at 25,000 and
if we don't hold the support you know we could see definitely
that flash crash come and and that's where I'll be buying even
more coins and going going long on the market because then
you're ready for the ride all the way up to, you know, 250 300
wherever it stops, who no one really knows.
But you're up for the ride, you know, all the way up Bitcoin.
I think I've read somewhere that, you know, out of a year it
has nine or nine days that it moves, It more than 10% or
something crazy. It has these massive days in
most days, it just sits there. It just either sits there flat
or goes down. So I think that we're still you
know, to or years plus has having hasn't happened.
So we're not going to hit an all-time high, I'll tell you
that. But once that having happens,
you know, anything is game. Because the economics of Bitcoin
of changed at the minor level the machines that are mining
that are unprofitable going to be turned off, players are going
to have to shut off equipment and and the Gang you know, keeps
going keeps playing but network key.
It's tick-tocking away one block after the next, but that's my
thoughts on the price right now, you know, don't over leveraged,
don't spend money. You can't get, but I keep
stacking sad sigh iPhone mode a little bit impersonal here.
You know, fought two thousand dollars with a Bitcoin on cash
app right before this because I was like this price this price
of a Buy price even if I've been in some 70 dollars a coin you
know, still get that paycheck and got to put it somewhere
because US Dollars on holding value as you know, absolute Chad
Bitcoin. ER but I think this is this is
the point that I It seems to be missed by a lot of newer
bitcoiners and it is the idea that Bitcoin miners are the most
bullish ones on bitcoin because you guys have to put so much
Capital behind your mining Farms, your mining setups and
you guys are in it for the long term.
Whereas if you're just buying Bitcoin you know you can very
easily dump that Bitcoin for Fiat games but as a Bitcoin
miner it's not that easy to just dump all your infrastructure and
change on a whim on what you're going to do.
And you can feel it's palpable how bullish a Bitcoin miner is
on bitcoin, the asset and the network moving forward.
And I think it's because you understand what this does for
the energy sector. What this does for society, what
it means to just hold onto an asset that cannot be debased and
you're like, like me, I've bet my life on bitcoin.
I'm sure you felt the same way. It's like, I put everything in
on bitcoin and there's no turning back.
And I think a lot of people miss that very simple.
There is no turning back and we're deploying of structure for
5-10 years. We're not deploying it for a
week without deploying for six months.
That's our investment Horizon, that's what we're looking for.
When it comes to these contracts, in this land of
humans were signing because we know that Bitcoin mining is not
going to go away. It's not run by a CEO.
It's not run by a board. The protocols not going to
change even how no matter what the media says and even know if
they're like it's the worst thing in the world the Bitcoin
community. E and the code will not change
and that's why you're able to invest.
The capital are able to invest to know that this Market in this
opportunity is not going to go away.
Let alone the value of just building Rackspace to run the
amount of computing power. We're going to need for AI.
And for these other uses of compute where Bitcoins can
easily be repurposed for for that type of operation.
Absolutely love it. All right, I want to go to this
pin tweet that you have on your Twitter because it is a Few
years old now, so I'm sure you're going to have to update
it. But I'm going to connect this
with the current hash rate. So you have this tweet here,
it's pinned on your Twitter at JP Barak on Twitter.
You go today, the Bitcoin computer is 100,000 times more
powerful than the top 500 supercomputers in the world
combined. And I really want to segue this
into what we're seeing happen in the hash rate right now.
It seemingly continuously going to all-time high and I'm just
wondering what What are you thinking?
As a Bitcoin, miner watching the hash rate, just climb and climb
and climb? Even though the price is
dropping, what? It's like a Bitcoin miners are
crazy, we know why, but for the people that are uninitiated,
what is going on here? You know, let's go, baby, go.
We're the chip factories in Taiwan.
They continue to produce chips night in Night Out, Asic miners,
continue to get shipped across the world pricing of miners are
going to To drop until we see that price turn around and in
Turnbull. So it's the name of the game.
People are stacking SATs. There's still a significant
margins to be made. If your well-financed if you
have access to energy in the 40 40 dollar per megawatt hour
range, you can still provide a great return even with a flat
bitcoin price or three, or four percent cut every month.
So the operators, who are here for the Long Haul.
Like I said, who aren't checking the difficulty every day or
Checking the price every day. They're deploying infrastructure
for the future. They have a multi year Horizon
and they're investing in extra hashes today especially the pub
goes, especially large private operators, large, family
offices. The people who were, you know,
not going to invest in the, The Bull Run or the people who are
putting Capital to work today. And it's sad because retail is
usually left out because they're like, let me buy in at the top
and not buying at the bottom because it's an emotional
decision. When the reality is Usually
buying today because the price is low versus when the price is
high. And I think that's what we're
seeing here. We're seeing incremental value
being deployed to the network you know every day, every day of
the year. Yeah, it's human psychology is a
very weird thing. You know, when it drops, I will
wait for it to go lower when it pumps the like, okay, I need to
buy some. But anyways, you mentioned
retail and getting some exposure to bitcoin and in the past at
least, from 2018 I forget what it was like around 2020 hosting
mining gets a real bad rap because of some real you know
not up to par companies. We're not going to name names
but as someone that does. Host mining what would you tell
someone thinking about hosting mining?
Like, what should they be looking out for and what is the
best way to go about this? So when it comes to hosting
mining you want to look for an operator who has been in the
Yield for multiple years, you want to look for an operator who
has a contract, a hosting contract that's going to protect
you during a downward Market. You also want to ensure that
you're not committing to a long term that you're not able to pay
the power bills. For, let's say you're going to
commit to a year, you're in those contracts are committing
to paying that power bill every month of the year, even if the
host is not able to run all your machines and being up and
running. So, what I would say for most
people in their hosting bills is you want to ensure that you're
hosting bill is based on the electricity consumed and not a
flat monthly rate because that's how you can get it run into
issues and where your profit and loss can be out of whack.
Now, when it comes to running a consumer-facing hosting
business, it's something that we decided not to do.
And why we won't take five or ten hosting machines.
Is because the amount of work, it takes to handle every
customer every client. So we focus on larger hosting
transactions for that. Exact reason or something called
manage mining program, which is for the guys with 10 machines
with 15 machines, still making a significant investment of 100
thousand dollars in plus. But the difference, there is
that we are custody in the Bitcoin for you.
And then at the end of every month, we say, the price of
Bitcoin is this. We're going to we're going to
send you. We're going to debit the power
bill debit our fees, and we're going to send you the Bitcoin
and then it's yours to hold. So there is no power bills.
The customer support is a lot less.
There's no The contract is allows us to make sure that we
can work with you throughout the relationship and you're not
going to default on your your machines, because there is no
way to default because it's the top line revenue that's get
subtracted. So, those are all things that
we've focused on over the years, to make the hosting experience,
a better experience for the little God.
And then recently, we've launched something called a reg
CF which stands for regulated crowdfunding, and we worked with
the first one with Josh Terry B fault.
Josh tray bit fault, raised over six hundred thousand dollars,
Josh, cherries and influencer in the idea of bit vault is to
allow anyone to invest at $100 into a Bitcoin mining company.
That's going to by minors, can have a flat management fee and
it's going to have an exit strategy already built into it.
So you know how you're going to get your funds out and it's
funny, I don't know if you knew this, but core scientific last
year had the most amount of money spent on private jets out
of any public company and Oh, it's like you're investing in
these Pub codes. If you're, you know, if you're
if you're playing with a hundred two hundred dollars trying to
buy stock and then their executives are just blowing
money, you know, right and left, especially in a bull market and
you have no control over such as a shareholder over that.
It's what we did with the reg CF in the default was we wanted to
give transparent pricing to the investors to the reg CF holders
and that allows for anyone to invest its $100.
Even unaccredited investors, can invest up to two thousand
dollars and depending on your how much you're making.
You can invest more and that's going to be available on Wii
funder. I'm going to be launching my own
bit Vault or I'll be managing it for up to 10 years.
I can't talk about the offering off the platform but I can
mention that if you want to learn more about it it'll be on
We fund or.com. JP Barak bit Vault or the
people's mining company and it should be live in about I would
say at the end of the month of June so definitely check it out
if you want exposure and want to have me as your manager of the
portfolio of Bitcoin, miners Bitcoin in cash.
And we're gonna be doing some really cool.
Things with a dividend. So since that's those are the
three programs we have it in mining store, and how we handle
the hosting situation and customers.
And the important things to look into a host or comes down to the
contract, comes down to the experience, comes down to that
power rate. And and those are the three most
important things, interesting. So just to be clear, this is not
one of those early 2017. Cloud mining things is it.
Exactly. And that's what I love about it.
It's not because a cloud minor thing is you're owning A, you
know, the option to get Tara hashes delivered to you in
Bitcoin and and that's a security and that's why they
got, you know, red-handed and got in trouble for it.
So what we did is we said okay what is the existing security
law in the United States? That would allow us to solicit
Securities online and that's called the reg c f and we built
a company specifically for that operation.
And then we work with influencers to have them, bring
on help their fans out and start to stack SATs where they own a
share. So where there are owning equity
A in a Bitcoin mining company that buys Bitcoin miners holds
Bitcoin and distributes dividends to investors.
So they are still part of a common Enterprise and they're
still a shareholder with a vote and with the voice.
But the difference between a cloud hashing contract in this
one, is that with, as a shareholder, they own the
underlying assets. They get the depreciation on the
miners, they get the cash flow, they can sell their share after
one year. So those are things that we that
the rates, they have process allows versus if you own a cloud
house and car Back once the heart contracts done, you'll
have anything else other than the Bitcoin that got mind and
sometimes and I would say usually that's actually less
than the dollars that you put in.
And the reason why you make money and Cloud hashing was all
because the price of Bitcoin went up and you would have been
better off just buying Bitcoin with that money.
Interesting, interesting. Okay, I want to Pivot a little
bit here because you did bring up the whole political landscape
in regards to bitcoin and Bitcoin mining in general, you
caught up the body and administration you bought up the
Securities laws. I do have over here on your
Twitter right here about the right to mine law right here.
This one is a Montana. What is your view on the
political landscape right now in regards to bitcoin and Bitcoin
mining in the US as someone that's been around for a long
time? Like what are you thinking is
going on and maybe, what do you think might happen in regards to
Bitcoin mining? So we are definitely getting
more political pressure. More political eyes than we have
ever before in the Bitcoin mining industry.
And that's because we've grown and the the large industry
players have definitely stepped up to the plate, allocating
Capital to the right parties. In order to Lobby the
politicians into passing bills that we need to pass to protect
Bitcoin, miners the right to mine bow.
Build that Dennis and Satoshi action fund or passing are
amazing. I think what he's doing.
State-by-state level is really showing a lot of opportunities,
and showing the need for protection to have a clearly
defined in the law. It's much easier to fight the
battle. When you have your foot, in the
door, and have law, drafted and legislation passed versus having
to fight that without any legislation, or with
legislation, that's negatively, impacting your industry.
So I really appreciate Dennis and Satoshi action, fun?
If you're not, if you're not aware of what they're doing,
definitely check them out. They're great cause to the
industry. Now what?
I think, Bitcoin mining, and how it can be regulated, I believe
that Bitcoin mining is an extension of speech code has
been protecting the United States for many years and code
is what is running on these computers.
And so I would argue that any entity or organization or
governmental body that tries to Define what you can and can't do
with electricity, what code you can and can't run.
Is it is explicitly. You know, making controlling
your speech which is protected by the Constitution, so I
believe that that's an important aspect of Bitcoin mining.
And I believe that it's going to be very hard to regulate it
because of that kind of framework that we've built in
the u.s. here protecting computer servers.
Now, utility they also have to have non-discrimination Clauses.
They can't discriminate against a customer because they're using
their energy for Bitcoin mining, or they're using their energy to
grow pot. They can obviously, SLI arrest,
the person growing pot if it's an illegal state but they can't
arrest the person for running computer software mining Bitcoin
because the act of running that software is not illegal and
there's no illegal things being produced effectively.
So that's how I'm viewing the climate when it comes to
regulatory environment and I believe that it's going to be
wins more. The more wins we can put on the
board with the right to mine deals.
Across all the states running nodes running miners.
The better. It is for For the community and
the energy industry as a whole lot of it.
Super bullish. I really like how you said that
because I agree 100%, I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
That they're picking winners and choosers telling us how we can
use our electricity or not when we bought it on the market for
fruit, you know, fair value. It's like wait, what is going on
here? It really seemed like the powers
that be are hell-bent on stopping Bitcoin, mining or
rather, Bitcoin adoption, in general, and it's like, guys, we
bought this Energy. It shouldn't matter where this
energy is going, but you're making a big screen by another
subsidizing it right. You're spending so much money to
subsidize has energy. Taxpayers are subsidizing it.
Why don't we use it? Oh wait, we don't need you to
use it. So it's a, it's crazy.
Absolute Madness, kind of on the same on the same wave.
I did see on your Twitter that you've had some thoughts about
Gary Gensler. And what's your, what's your
thoughts going on with GG over there?
My thoughts with Gary Gensler is, you know, provide regulatory
Clarity and certainty when it comes to border security is when
it comes to offering US security.
That's why we had to go the route, we win.
I've always wanted to provide a mining contract or part on the
left, people who in parts of a minor or let people own and then
a tea that's going to represent a minor.
But all of that becomes a security.
And so that's why we went the route of the reg CF is because
we said, hey, there's a compliant framework, we can work
in and yes, it's slow. Yes, Has more fees but we can
successfully solicit Securities. Allow people to get money
exposure and open the market up to everyone versus, you know,
having to own a full machine, which is what a lot of these
mining contracts are doing. Now when it comes to the debate
of is everything but Bitcoin and security.
I think we're seeing how that debates going and I think that
it's not helpful for the crypto community in the United States
that we are regulating these exchanges and were really Sleep.
Paving the way for the big Banks to come in and custody the Next
Generation or the next waves version of crypto by stomping
out coinbase. And some of these big guys, I
mean coinbase was I believe the third or fourth largest bank by
market cap in the u.s. when their stock was growing.
And it shows that the incumbents they're scared, they are scared
that. These companies are going to eat
their lunch, the people are going to hold their value and
their money and crypto that they're going to take it out of
the bank and that they're not interested in traditional
assets. And when enough people say they
want to opt out of the system, awesome.
It causes systemic issues which can cause massive runs on the
banks or massive runs. And as we saw with long-dated,
treasuries, and mismatch of liabilities and assets for these
Banks. And that's a scary thing.
Because if we lose Faith as a country in the overall Market in
the overall banking system, then there is a lot of things we take
for granted could, you know, could go to chaos and could blow
up and effectively? And so you don't like to go down
that path. But the reality is is I think
that we're going to keep deflating the dollar.
And the only way to protect yourself from that, which is
what really matters is to buy scarce digital assets.
And in my opinion, Bitcoin is the one and only scares digital
asset because it requires the mining process.
And yes there are other coins like poww coins like Litecoin
that are out there. But Bitcoin is the one that is
not going to go away no matter what because it is so large and
so much backing love it. Okay?
Again I'm hearing the the shit koiner the Army out there
thinking man, what about proof of stake is proof of steak
better than proof of work. What would be your response to
that proof of steak better than proof-of-work?
Proof of stake? Puts the power of consensus in
the hands of a few, in the sense where you have people coming
together on a site and they're just like mining pools, right?
But there and they stake their etherium and they're and they're
getting rewards and they're providing consensus to the
network and that's all Run on the existing infrastructure.
It's not like people are running their own servers and everyone's
running their own computers to provide staking Services.
Now they're going to AWS, they're going to Microsoft,
they're going to IBM and so you're literally consolidating
the the processing power per se or the Opera the the server
level only in the hands of a few big players.
And so that's where I push back on POS.
And when it comes to proof-of-work, yes, there are.
R mining pools. Yes.
A few of them have a lot of hash rate but it's a much different
because the infrastructure is what matters, a minor a binding.
Pull doesn't matter if it has no minors and minors can always
switch mining pools very quickly.
It's a quick like it takes you can move over you know 100
million dollars for the miners invested or 1% or 2% the network
by just the click of a button. And so with that type of
Mobility proof of work I think is superior.
Not only because it creates inherent value for communities.
It creates jobs Jobs in the area and it's making an impact on
these rural areas that, you know, the Rust Belt that lost
manufacturing jobs overseas, and that, that have the need for
employment for especially for young men across across the
country. Yeah, couldn't agree more.
I mean, as someone that's been in Bitcoin, not as long as you
I've been around for six years I think is this year.
We know the that Bitcoin is incentivizing energy, used clean
energy, whether That is wasted energy or like what we saw this
year even nuclear energy. So what's your thoughts on
plugging in a six into nuclear power?
I love it. I mean it's a very low-cost
stress generation Source. I think that there's a future in
it and it provides the ability for the nuclear plant to provide
a consistent output of energy and then mine Bitcoin on the
side when the energy is not being used, but nuclear has a
lot more granularity in something like natural gas or
coal. So, in that gas and coal, they
are, would say or more advantageous to the variability
that they have, when it comes to a generation Source, the nuclear
nuclear if you want 1,000 megawatts, You go, right?
If you want 900 megawatts, you go left on the dial and that's
just the beautiful nature of nuclear.
One thing to add about nuclear energy, that I think is very
interesting and people to look into more is the reason why
nuclear energy is not more proud of prevalent in the United
States is because of one definition on how we regulate
nuclear energy. So every governmental agency
regulates nuclear energy by changing the definition of
allowable. So, when we build a nuclear
power plant, we have to build to the minimum allowable amount of
radiation. And what we can do, or what The
Regulators do in my belief is that we change the definition of
allowable to be so hard and so hard to comply with during the
production and building of these plants that it becomes almost
impossible and for them to be built cost-effectively versus
someone like the Navy who has a different definition of
allowable allows them to build very effective nuclear.
Submarines nuclear aircraft carriers and allows them to
deploy their Fleet on this amazing energy source.
So really looking at the definition of how are we
defining? What is allowable?
And obviously we want to have safety procedures but when you
make the definition of allowable so much harder to comply with
it, makes it unprofitable for us to build new nuclear and sadly
just take so much longer. So I'm hoping new tech comes out
and I'm hoping that we can get more clarity from the regulatory
bodies and make it clear definition of the Amount of
allowable radiation the future. Absolutely love it and and
you're kind of bringing up a narrative that I hear a lot
coming out, not necessarily from bit corners but those that are
anti Bitcoin or anti Bitcoin mining.
And we talk about it all the time.
It's the incredible Hoops that bitcoiners Bitcoin companies and
Bitcoin miners have to jump through to basically justify
what we do. So what's your thoughts on like
the whole ESG green energy? Narrative that I think is going
to come down very hard on bitcoin miners.
We've seen, we're seeing like the initial grumblings of this,
but I think that this is one of those narratives that is going
to definitely be weaponized against Bitcoin Miners, And
there's going to have to be a huge PR move against it, like
our boy Pierre Richard and his trolling of the New York Times
absolute Legend, but what's your thoughts on all this?
Yes, I think esu's environmental sustainable and governance.
So when it comes to environmental we are using
strand energy. You know, Bitcoin mining can be
used to capture methane gas. Bitcoin mining can be utilized
to provide wind and solar consumption wind and solar.
Yes. Bitcoin mining can also be used
at a coal plant because every electrons created is a lever
electron is equal. It doesn't matter what it was
created from. When it comes to governance, I
think Bitcoin is a significant better way.
It's definitely better way to govern the people to govern the
amount, the, the money the system at whole it provides more
protection there. And so, I think that, yes,
they're going to use the guise of ESG to push down the fact
that using energy is bad. But that's the fundamental
difference of understanding how he condom he's function.
How values created is it all comes from energy.
We are made Up of energy, everything around us is was
created with energy that metal pen, you use, or that laptop,
you have was made from energy from a furnace, from a coal
plant, from a nuclear bomb, whatever was, and then it came
into your physical existence. And so, yes, we're bringing more
awareness to the energy usage of our planet, but it's not
necessarily A Bad Thing to use energy when it's a productive
use of energy, if anything, The worst type of energy is building
energy in the middle of nowhere, where no one needs.
And it just goes to the pay, the larger, you know, companies
BlackRock Vanguard State Street and the large energy companies
are the ones profiting and benefiting from it, which means
that a select few people are are effectively taxing or not,
effectively taxing but a select few people are benefiting from
these tax incentives and whenever we have these massive
incentive packages, we know that causes inflation.
Chin, and inflation is taxation without representation and
that's a serious problem is going to become even bigger
problem for everyone. As we move forward in the future
as inflation, is not going away and cost of goods and services
is only going to increase. Yeah, I I'm a little more left
left side of the bell curve. I'm just like more energy good.
They want you in the stone age's, we need energy to improve
society and push Society do anything.
Yes, it's incredible. How that is.
Just a pain, like the average person.
They're like the the ESG narrative is, is framed in the
idea of do less, or as anyone that wants to prosper, it's
like, no, we should be doing more to improve our lot in life.
Like, how are we The Crazy Ones? I agree completely.
I think that's what with a I it's going to explode because AI
allows everyone to have a personal assistant to have a
tutor to be able to really enable technology to work for
them. Now, if there's a great book
called The sovereign individual, and I'm listening to it right
now for the first time and they talk about the invention of the
microprocessor, which took away the power from nation states and
gave it to the people. AI is only going to accelerate
that you know by 100. So what we've seen with the
power of our phones and u.s. microprocessors and being able
to compute and communicate across the world.
So this is only a trend that the nation states are losing more
and more power. And individuals are going to
have the ability to make a bigger impact in the world with
both Ai and microprocessors. Ie computers.
Love it. Super glad you brought up AI,
but before I get into that, we absolutely love the sovereign
individual. But I did find this tweet here
on your Twitter. And it's very interesting that
we're seeing a lot of crypto shit.
Coin influencers, pivoting from their crypto to Ai.
And your Tweet here is if you are an AI pivot to energy and
the Tweet was deleted that you quote tweeted.
So what is your thinking here and, and what exactly is going
on? So someone else that if you're
in crypto pivot to AI or something, and I was like, you
know, what, a I pay with to energy and that was really
because of the amount of capital coming into the body and combine
infrastructure. Act in the amount of really
investment going into construction jobs, going into
high-tech, going into these solar panel manufacturing, wind
power manufacturing. There is a significant amount of
tax savings for deploying energy that, you know, could be a
capital could be spent otherwise.
And so the government's directing, this capital in the
energy markets. And so, if you're an
entrepreneur, whenever there's Capital moving in One Direction,
there's value to be captured, there's systems to be built.
And I believe that, G is a great opportunity for the I think with
AI we're seeing that it's going to be hard to build a moat.
You know the big companies are coming to Congress saying we
want to be regulated and Congress is like or the spike
the committee's are like we've never had an industry come and
say we want to be regulated. This is weird.
Why are you guys asking us? And the reality is that they
want to be the banks of a i they want to make it so you have to
go to open a, i Microsoft, you know, Google one of those three
Facebook to get. You're AI license to run your
AI. The reality is I don't see.
A, I'm moving in that direction. I see the open source Community
accelerating. The pace of development of these
models dramatically and they already are doing it.
And I see open source owning a eye and making it so that
everyone can run this, an AI system on there, you know, on
the computer which means that there are little modes that you
can bill. If you're working in a, I got
three different ways tradition. If you doing something very
different than what everyone else is doing in order to build
a moat in order to build value, we're in the energy space.
Is you're looking for cash. Cash flow.
There's real electrons. Moving.
It's an investment into the infrastructure in the physical
world, which has more defined returns and cost associated with
it. Well, well, I absolutely love it
cuz I am also kind of an agreement.
I think the The Narrative of like AI is going to steal our
lunch and take all of our jobs. I think it's a little misguided
and dystopia and I always look at it the same way like
technology is here to improve our lives.
And I think a I will Inevitably improve our lives in a way.
We can't even imagine like, humans are very adaptable and
now we have this new technology that's going to make our lives
even better. Like, I don't know if you use
chat gbt guys, but like, it's pretty fucking awesome.
It's pretty cool to do the things that you want to do very
quickly. Anyways, I don't market
Jerusalem wrote, a great, great article, and I called why a, I
will save the world and he starts off with every student,
will have it their own personal tutor.
That never gets tired that is able to work on the child's pace
and with the child through these different new learning, as
they're learning these core skill sets that is going to
change everything. We know.
So AI has a potential to be all of our serve Butlers and take
all of this raw computational power kind of like the ability
to execute on an idea much faster than without a i before.
So, I'm a big proponent of it and of keeping a decentralized.
Absolutely love it. Okay.
Pivoting a I'll bit right now, again we already got your price
speculation but what is your? I don't know, two-year, future
crystal ball telling you about Bitcoin, mining moving forward,
the next two years. Like what are you looking for?
What do you think is in the roadmap ahead and then to tack
on top of that? Do you still believe that having
cycle is intact? I do I still believe that the
having cycle is intact even though we didn't, you know, hit
a hundred thousand dollars. I think that has more to do with
the amount of fake Bitcoins that were being sold or paper
Bitcoins by, you know, ft x and others then.
So that's my thoughts on on them having and the four-year cycle.
I do think that it plays dramatically into the price of
Bitcoin as we see the float, a Bitcoin is that amount of
Bitcoins I haven't been so Old or moved for over a year is only
increasing. And when that floats,
eliminated, when the price runs as I mentioned, it runs on only
a few days a year and goes up dramatically.
That order book is really, really thin.
So you know, long-term next two years, I think Bitcoin
development. I don't know where ordinals are
going to go. I hope there's more clarity on
the ability to provide cash flow from the SEC through these
ordinals assets. I hope there's more technology
built on on Lightning, you know, I think social media was a great
first step but there's a lot of Interesting opportunities out
there, people are looking like so I think is sonoda Sy.
N OT a Adam helping people settle Energy payments using
lightning every day or every every 15 minutes.
So it's a huge amount of opportunities out there to build
on the Bitcoin stack. And with ordinals, there was a
lot more interest in from developers in Bitcoin, which is
this core kind of, you know, slow-moving technology, which
may be be opening up. To The Wider Public public.
And The Wider developers, love it.
So again, we're picking your brain, hear someone that's been
in the space for a long long time.
But what do you most bullish on right now?
In General, on bitcoin, like what gets you the most excited?
Considering you've been doing this for almost a decade?
The most, you know, what gets me the most exciting is waking up
everyday and in building new mines and working in local
communities in the Midwest. And and I Were and bring it on
young young men and young women and allowing them to have the
opportunity to service these facilities have high paying jobs
working in an environment that is productive for their mental
health and really leading a group, you know, there's a red,
it something recently that there's really two ways you can
grow as an individual. The first one is to have kids
and be a parent and I'm still too young for that and my
opinion, the second one is to run a company and be an
entrepreneur. So I think, you know, for me,
I'm really focused on On I'm just I'm just building a better.
Better processes better team in more accessibility so if I had
to go back to answer the question of what I'm most
excited for, I have to have to toot my own horn a little bit.
I think I'm really excited for the ability for people to get
into these infrastructure streams if it's Bitcoin mining,
if its energy wherever they're, you know, wherever there might
be but get into real cash flow that's going to pay a dividend
and and be able to do that through the reg CF process.
So always exploring exploring what that looks like.
You can explain how to make that an easier solution and do one
day launching an app, where provides influencers, the
ability to work with our fans to provide them, a clear investment
in an infrastructure project, that's going to pay dividends
for them, for the rest for 10-15 five years, depending on the
investment. But the Bitcoin space you know,
it's it's not the same old same old but it's meant to to not
really change too much. Yeah, it's stable on purpose.
This is a feature, not a bug. Ugh, don't need any flashy
thing, exactly. This is this is what people miss
all the time. It's like, you don't need a new
dopamine rush to understand why you love Bitcoin.
And why is stable monetary policy is so exciting and and
not only exciting but so needed in the world right now but I
kind of want to go back to what you're talking about.
Are you getting more interest recently from from people
looking into Bitcoin mining than in the past?
Or is it just like a slow grind up?
People are waking up to the idea.
Oh wait, maybe I can you know, make a career out of this
Bitcoin mining thing. I would say that the people who
have seen the Playbook before the people who have done it
before. They're definitely allocating
Capital. People who are, we're not seeing
in a loads of new people come in the industry.
We're seeing smarter investors, we up their positions, you know,
dollar cost average into their machines and invest capital in
it. But like I said, sadly people
want to keep want to allocate Capital when it's when it's
exciting, when the price is going up versus when the prices
down. And and so that's just that's
kind of what we're Seeing today oh man Gotta Love human
psychology. It's that's my favorite aspect
about all this stuff but anyway it's let's use the last couple
of minutes JP and because I want to be mindful of your time,
stick it around an hour, but what are you working on?
What do you want? The people to know, where can
they reach you and all this good stuff.
And then I got one last question because I saw your also in the
Bitcoin content game. But let's go with what are you
working on right now and what do you want the people to know?
Sure. So what I want people to know is
keep stacking SATs every day and put some stats away and don't
sell them. No matter what.
Like wait 20 years, make a promise to yourself that you're
going to put in the safe and you're not going to look at that
paper wallet. It's something that I regret
doing and back in 2013 is you know, selling Bitcoin at hundred
fifty dollars, a coin or whatever and not holding on to
it longer. So I recommend everyone doing
that because the prices were talking about today twenty six
thousand dollars a coin ten years from now.
Now, those numbers are going to look insanely small compared to
what there will be. So that's my advice to everyone
is put away the Bitcoin so you can actually sell it.
You can't use it and you can't touch it.
Effectively what I'm working, honors, the red cof working.
On deploying new facilities, really hiring, and training.
The right staff to run each facility and building out a
process or a guideline on how someone can come into our
organization. At the mining stores of
technician level one with very little experience.
Variants. How they can go from making
twenty two dollars, an hour all the way up to making $40 $50 an
hour has a key employee in the business and as a operator and
owner. That's that's where my focus is.
I want to make sure that my team has clear responsibilities and
clear outcomes and outlines of how they can succeed in perform
the best and how we can succeed as an organization and really,
you know, one stepping foot in front of the other just
deploying megawatts across the Midwest, love it.
I absolutely love it. Okay, well you did talk about
the mining store so let's give it one last plug before we roll
this out. What are you doing over there at
the mining store? And what do you guys offer over
there? Yes, we got the manage mining
Service. As I mentioned where you're
going, it's a profit-sharing. Bitcoin mining solution, we do
out for normal hosting and then we help large clients, build out
and operate their own sites and own them.
This is the first facility there on the screen that we ever built
in Iowa. And we've been doing projects
all across the nation. And it's an exciting time.
I'm also on Tick-Tock as well and making content on Instagram
and if you haven't checked out those videos, they're very it
can be clicked Beatty, definitely check them out.
Some of them are trying to get more useful but it's my
intention to build like a thousand fans and to really
start sharing the information and knowledge that I have over
the past 10 years and let the world know why it's important.
So that's what I'm excited for. Love it.
I'm glad you touched on the Bitcoin content game because I
think this is Is a much-needed area.
It's like hey you know I may not be a developer, I may not be a
miner but I'm doing my best to try to spread that signal wake
up more people and have them hold Bitcoin and kudos to you,
bro, because I know that, you know, it is not as easy as it
looks to make Bitcoin content or content in general.
So what's your thoughts on bitcoin content right now?
I mean, I love it. Keep make it like, we have a
formula that works really well for viral videos.
For mining people love to understand that computers can
make the money and the those videos seem to do really well.
So definitely check them out. I had a video, get 37 million
views on just my Tick Tock, and then from there, and BC reached
out, I was like, last year. Hey come come on dr.
Phil and explain Bitcoin mining and Bitcoin to dr.
Phil and so, I had an amazing experience last January and the
ability to do that. And I'm hoping more
opportunities like that can come up.
I'm able to share the knowledge base that I built in simplify
Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining to to the masses and I'm excited to
continue to do that. Wow amazing talking to dr.
Phil about Bitcoin mining. How did I not know about this is
incredible. Absolutely insane.
Your Pub, the videos I could I could at this point.
But oh man. Well before I go, how did he
respond to? It.
I mean he was it's a similar. Like I can't touch it.
I don't really know what this is but he was very open and dr.
Phil, I mean, he does three shows a day so he is reading
from the teleprompter, you know, question after question his
reaction is natural and but he is everything is built around
him and we had a show it was an hour hour long me and four,
other guests and I was actually negotiating or kind of standing
up for why Bitcoin was valuable and then had someone on the
other side say or was you know like dog shit and it was the
worst and I had to Explain to him.
No, no no, that's not the case. And like this is why it's
valuable and so we're going back and forth so they made it into a
pretty good drama you know as as dr.
Phil does. Yeah, they kind of expect it got
to expect it with dr. Phil anyways.
Alright, let's let's plug your Twitter will plug mining store
one more time and then we'll roll this out.
So we don't take up too much of your time because I'm sure
you're a busy guy. I appreciate it.
Thanks again, guys. Love it.
All right guys, go follow him on Twitter.
JP Barak mining, store.com. You already know the deal.
Get in touch with him. All your DMs open.
Can people get in touch with you?
Are you a man of the people? Yes Tammy said medium is they're
open on every platform Instagram and Twitter of the best.
Let's go. All right guys well hey JP
really appreciate it. Hang out for a minute and I will
roll this one out and then we'll let you get on your day.
All right, guys, really appreciate it.
I hope you guys got something from this one.
I absolutely blew my mind. Super bullish, not only on
bitcoin, but Bitcoin mining in general, obviously.
But I really loved a lot of JP's take, especially at the end.
Bitcoin content. Creation game is the next level
and he's on dr. Phil amazing.
All right, guys, well hey, we'll be back for our normal show
tomorrow. Like subscribe.
Share it. Make sure you get this one to
your normally friend. Maybe your parents are against
Bitcoin mining. Maybe your girlfriend is like,
why are you spending all your money on a 6?
Well, I think we got a video for you guys.
Anyways, appreciate all you guys will be back tomorrow for the
normal show. 1210 12:15 p.m. eastern time on YouTube.
Peace out, guys.