Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:01 Did you know that Bitcoin uses as much energy as some entire countries? Bitcoin has a massive network of miners called ASICs that require a lot of energy to mine and secure the Bitcoin network. So,

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1:08 Okay, here's the problem. I can't like start a podcast with you without the BDE music. Dun dun

1:16 dun. We need some music to intro with. Hey, everybody, welcome to Chuck Yates needs a job, the podcast.

1:24 We're doing something cool here at Digital Wildcatters. We're doing the Empower Conference later at the end of the month, and it's Bitcoin mining, meeting the energy business. I've just gotten a

1:34 lot of questions about it from folks. What does this mean? What's it all about? So I thought I would have the creator of the conference on the podcast, Colin McClellan, CEO of Digital Wildcatters,

1:47 just so we could talk about it to clear it up, what it's all about and the like. So Colin, welcome on. Yeah, I feel one. We got a lot of space here in between us I'm kind of nice. I'm sort of

1:59 liking it. You like this face.

2:03 So I think that. Chuck, you and I have had a lot of conversations on Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining over what the last year or so. And it's a really fascinating topic. And I really like the

2:20 discussions that you and I have because we come about it from two different angles, right? Obviously your background in private equity and investment banking. And then my background from a

2:30 technological perspective, I think that you and I have been a pretty good team in terms of bringing the whole picture together. You know, with Empower, we saw a need in the market because we saw a

2:45 lot of oil and gas guys and energy guys getting into Bitcoin mining, especially over the last six months or so. You know, it's pretty recent. There's been a lot of people talking about it and

2:55 working on it since 2017 saying, Hey, how can we take wasted flared gas out in the Permian Basin? And create some economic value from that and they started turning to Bitcoin mining. And so

3:08 essentially they were able to take this product that had no value and convert it into electricity and then mine Bitcoin and turn it into hash rate. So you start seeing a lot of this and I think in

3:18 the downturn, you know, let's call it 2020 and then 2021 people really started looking at how can they extract more value from their asset when you have low commodity prices And so I think that it's

3:31 kind of been this,

3:33 it's kind of this perfect storm of different external factors that have contributed to Bitcoin mining becoming a very big thing in the energy industry. And one was yet breast commodity prices. But

3:45 then you also had a run up in Bitcoin too, you know, over the last year, Bitcoin went up to 60, 000. And so I think those two things combined got a lot of people talking about it. And there just

3:55 wasn't a place for energy companies and Bitcoin miners to get together I remember, you know, eight months ago. I think it was roughly eight months ago when there was an annexation of Bitcoin miners

4:06 in China and they're all getting run out. I was taking some Chinese miners to natural gas sites up in Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma. And so pretty stark contrast between cultures. You have these

4:17 Chinese guys with their Binance crypto backpacks. And then on the other side of the table, eating lunch, you had all the Oklahoma boys from EFT, all my redneck friends that are oiling gas. And I

4:28 was like, man, this is a reality show that we're shooting here. But that's the reality is that you have two worlds colliding. And there's never been a place for these people to get together. So

4:37 that's why we decided to build Empower and really make it the go to mining event that's focused on energy. So I'm going to say this punchy, like in 30 seconds, but it took me about a year to figure

4:50 out all these pieces. You know, being a board member of an oil and gas company, this was lost on me. But one of the core competencies of an oil and gas company is quite simply whenever you have to

5:03 go access the cheapest source of power you can. Right. I mean, duh. Well, when it comes to Bitcoin mining, I think the second point that it took me maybe six months to figure out is, and I

5:17 don't mean to disparage any Bitcoin miner out there, but at the end of the day, a semi-smart engineer and an oil and gas company in two weeks can figure out how to go mine. Yeah. I mean, I don't

5:29 want to say it's just plugging in computers, but to some degree, it's plugging in computers. There's definitely nuance to that. I mean, there's

5:37 things that you learn and experiences you get with mining Bitcoin had a commercial scale, but you're exactly right. Oil and gas infrastructure and operations are 10x harder than Bitcoin mining. And

5:48 so it's natural. You look at Ryan and Justin up at J Energy in Wyoming. I mean, they were oil and gas guys. They partnered up with a Bitcoin miner, I believe, back in 2018 because they had some

6:00 stranded gas on a asset. Yeah, they were on the powdered river basin and they couldn't flare because the government wouldn't let them. Yeah. And so they had to figure out something and so they

6:09 partnered up with another miner and they sold their gas to that miner. And once they started seeing it, they're like, Shit, we can do this ourselves Started. seeing the economic return and

6:19 they're like, Hey, why don't we become Bitcoin miners? And so they became Bitcoin miners that just happened to know, have knowledge on operating oil and gas assets. And I think that that's what's

6:31 really cool about what we're seeing is that you're seeing a bunch of energy guys turning into Bitcoin miners. And so it's Bitcoin mining first, energy production second. They happen to have that

6:42 intrinsic knowledge and intimate knowledge of producing energy and operating those assets But yeah, I mean, look, oil and gas guys are really good at finding cheapest source of energy. And I think

6:55 that you've always put up a pretty good point of. You tell, you have an analogy if you were to take a shell map and put it down later over a Bitcoin mining map, it almost overlays perfectly with

7:08 the shell plates. Yeah, no, because it was the third aha moment of figuring out Bitcoin mining was

7:17 you have a BTU when you produce natural gas, let's say, and you run it through the processing plant, and every day you make the decision, do I strip out the liquids? Do I sell the ethane

7:29 separately, or do I just sell the BTUs down the pipe? That is second nature to an oil and gas company, something they do every day. The same should be true as mining, because it's actually even

7:40 somewhat better in that you buy your miners, that's your cap X, right? And at the end of the day, the life of your miner is based on how much you use it, right? He is the thing that destroys the

7:53 minor. And so if they have a four to five year life. If you're not using it, you're not destroying it. And you just run the BTU through there and you say, if I convert this to power and I mine,

8:06 then should I do that? Is that economically better than just selling the BTU down the pipeline? And that leads to, you know, you can get paid that night if you convert it to Bitcoin - So, I say

8:16 instant settlement too. You're not waiting on net 90 payments or whatever, you know, payment terms may be on your gas or NGLs And so it's actually instant settlement, the second you settle it or

8:28 sell it - And the second thing in dirty little secret of ESG that maybe we shouldn't share with the world, but you throw things in a pipeline, that's actually worse than handling it at the site.

8:40 Generally speaking, when you think through emissions and the like, and so being able to mine on site is actually good from that point of view. And so I've always sat here And whenever I have this

8:54 discussion with my private ex - with your friends a year ago. They're like, Huh, what are you talking about? Nine months ago, Well, maybe if we had some flared gas, but we don't have flared gas.

9:04 And I always used to say, No, it's a BTU. Decide what you want to do with it. Last three or four months has been interesting, and folks have saying, Hey, will you tell me about that again?

9:13 Because at the end of the day, I think you're right that we're ultimately all the energy companies. Even midstream companies should offer that You know, they often -

9:23 They often - They often -

9:30 They often - They often -

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9:52 often - They often - They often - They often - They often - They often - They often - They often - But when you look at Bitcoin mining, it's almost comical how similar it is to oil and gas extraction.

10:00 I mean, you have an underlying commodity. So whether that's oil and gas or whether that's big. You love a little volatility with oil and natural gas. We got volatility for you, baby. So we're

10:10 talking about the two most volatile products in the world right now. Oil and gas in

10:16 Bitcoin, but it really is a manufacturing process, right? I mean, you're saying, OK, we can mine and extract. Bitcoin at 20, 000 to Bitcoin. That's marginal cost. And then OK, if Bitcoin's

10:29 40, 000, 60, 000, that's how much economic value there is. If you're actually selling it on the market and then go towards payback. Get a go towards payback to your capex and then now you have

10:41 hedging products. So you know, as you and I talk about a lot, there's six months worth of CME futures available So you have some. Now starting to build up. You can trade the next six months and

10:55 the next two December. There you go. So we're sitting here in March, so you're able to trade April, May, June, July, August, September, and then December this year and December the next year.

11:07 Yeah. Not a lot of liquidity out, but at least some. Some. Yeah. And I think one, when you look at oil and gas people, I think oil and gas industry is one of the most capitalistic industries

11:19 out there, right? And when you start presenting it as a number thing, you know, you don't really need to understand underlying principles of Bitcoin or why Bitcoin's important. I think you do.

11:32 Like you do, you should, but technically you don't. All you need to know is, hey, we have X amount of dollars that we're spending on CapEx. We're going to have these miners out here. Here's

11:41 what our OpEx is going to be. We can lock in prices, do whatever we need to do on the side of hedging and boom we can make a profit over. Um, you know, two years, whatever that number may be.

11:53 It's really easy. Numbers came, but I think that you're actually starting to have a lot of people. Understand Bitcoin a little bit more. If nothing else, they understand that, Hey, this isn't a

12:04 fed. You know, it's not a gimmick. On Twitter, you know, about a year ago, I'd still have people been like, Oh, really we're going to waste energy on a fake currency. And my response is it's

12:15 a trillion dollar asset class. How's that? How's that fake? I would love to be that fake.

12:22 100 and it's only going to grow because of network effects and supply and demand. I mean, very basic economic principles. But, you know, I think one thing that I've had a lot of people have been

12:36 skeptical of Bitcoin and trying to understand what it is. And I think a lot of people think about Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency. And you know, I've had this discussion a lot to either think about it

12:46 as a cryptocurrency or a store of value. maybe I can get so gold - And that's like me on my cell phone paying my ATT bill with it - Yeah, you like it. I've got this bottle of water here. You know,

12:58 you want to buy this bottle of water from me. And so that's all a lot of people think about it. And it really hasn't been how Bitcoin's been used. But here's how I think about Bitcoin is that

13:11 Bitcoin, the Bitcoin protocol - Well, hold on one second before you do that. 'Cause I think there are two things before you get to your point - Okay - Cryptocurrency, then two, there's a slightly

13:21 related but different element of store of value - Yeah - Meaning, you know, there are only gonna be 21 million bitcoins, just like gold, I mean, that really had no utility other than it

13:33 marginally look attractive on the queen's neck - Yeah - Gold was our store of value because there was a limited amount. And we all agreed, okay, we can represent this much value by this many ounces

13:45 of gold There is a thought that. Bitcoin, at least early on, would be a store of value because there will only be 21 million. Yeah. I mean, gold historically has been used as a store of value,

13:57 like you said, limited supply. But what is the number of that supply? No one knows how much gold is on the earth, right? We know how much Bitcoin exists. It's 21 million. It'll never be more

14:08 than that. And 90 of it is already mined in circulation. And so I guess, to that point, if someone's not familiar with Bitcoin and how the process works, should have actually got our Bitcoin,

14:24 our miner there, brought it here for videos that people could see on camera. We're like, Real Bitcoin. Yeah. So legit now. I will admit, we were kind of scared to open that around the digital

14:37 log adders off. This box shows up. That just could be a bomb. Is it ticking? Could be a bomb. Is Alberta? Did it come from Canada or Denver? Plenty of people that'll send bombs to digital water

14:51 catters.

14:53 But you have what are called ASICS. And all of these are, these ASICS, they're just computers that were designed to mine Bitcoin. That's all they do. So just like you have CPUs, you have GPUs,

15:04 you have ASICS. And you know, the couple of popular ones are, you know, Bitmain's, you have S-19s and what's miners. And anyways, these miners are continuously hashing. They're sitting there

15:19 computing. And what they're doing is they're working and they're consuming energy. It's a proof of work. And they're sitting there trying to solve this puzzle. And when they solve the puzzle,

15:30 they unlock a block and they're rewarded that Bitcoin. So you know, Chuck, if you and I had two miners, I have one plugged in, you have one plugged in their consuming electricity. and working to

15:45 discover that block and be rewarded Bitcoin. And you can get into pools and how those things work, but ultimately that's how mining works. And

15:56 they also verify transactions on the ledger. So if I send a Bitcoin to you, it has to go through the network. The network approves it. It adds it to the ledger and that ledger is immutable. It

16:08 can't be changed over time And so the ledger is secured by the Bitcoin network. Bitcoin network, you can just think of it. It's the largest computer network in the world. Her most reliable

16:19 computer network in the world has a higher uptime than AWS, Google, any of these companies. So it's a decentralized computer network. Got them running all over the United States, China, Russia,

16:33 all over the world. And so, 'cause that's the key to it is basically the computing power is creating the block chain. that's storing the record of every Bitcoin who owned it, where it went, and

16:46 also there's a hundred percent transparency on that. And that's what allows it. And that's one of its attributes. That's what allows it to be decentralized. There's not a central entity behind it.

16:55 All it is is a network of computers that are working to verify the ledger. And to do that, they have to have power and electricity. So there's proof of, that's the concept proof of work that comes

17:07 into that I mean, that's what really secures the Bitcoin network is that you have all these computers around the world that are working to achieve that. And that's the, to the point is that is the

17:21 store of values mantra of there only going to be 21 million of them. And we can see where they all are. You can see where they are. In this blockchain. And

17:32 way more detail than we need to get into here But basically it's almost impossible to go back and corrupt the. the blockchain because it would take more computing power than it's on the play. Yeah,

17:45 I mean, yeah, it's virtually impossible to do that. But yeah, I mean, you're looking at basic economic principles of supply and demand. There's limited supply and demand continues to increase

17:57 over time. And, you know, on that point, like, got asked a question the other day, well, yeah, we'll only know volume of Bitcoin trading his dropping If you look on the other side, percentage

18:07 of people holding their Bitcoin in cold wallets continues to increase. So people are actually trading Bitcoin less and holding it in cold storage long term. So, you know, I think that Bitcoin is

18:23 really easy to understand when you say, okay, I can own a Bitcoin, even though I can't hold it here in my hand, you know, you got to get through this concept that you're not holding it in your

18:33 hand You physically, tangibly hold a digital asset that can't be caught. The ledger says that you Chuck Yates own your Bitcoin. No one can take that from

18:47 you - And I can get into my digital wallet by my unique code that only I know - Your keys - Yeah, your keys. So it gives you, for the first time ever, you have the ability to fully control custody

19:02 of your assets. So

19:06 you think about that and then think about,

19:12 you know, I wanna go back to the network real quick because I think that a lot of people - 'Cause this is where you, in fairness to you, you're the first person I've heard this from and I actually

19:24 think it's pretty powerful. It only took me about nine and a half months to become a believer of you saying this every day. But this is interesting about the network and what you think the

19:34 possibilities are there.

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20:26 Yeah, so what I think about the network, what I tell everyone about Bitcoin is

20:32 Most people take Bitcoin at face value as a speculative asset, right? They say oh, I'm gonna hold this and maybe it'll go up or I'll trade it and it'll go up and it goes down It is volatile, but

20:42 the value of Bitcoin is in the network And so if you look at the Bitcoin network this decentralized network of computers all across the world I Look at that as the infrastructure for the next

20:55 evolution of the internet And so if you go back and look at how the internet was built yet a series of protocols, right? You had IP HTTP, you know IP allowed all of our computers to connect to each

21:09 other Okay, we have them connected, but we really can't do a whole lot So then you had HTT protocols which were second later protocols stacked on top of that that allowed us to build websites send

21:19 content and interface with each other on our computers. If you look at the Bitcoin protocol as the base protocol, layer one, now you're having applications built on top of that. So like we were

21:33 just talking about, Bitcoin's not really used as a cryptocurrency. You know, I'm not buying products, bottles of water from people using Bitcoin. It doesn't really work in that fashion. But now

21:44 you have a second layer called the Bitcoin Lightning Network. And the Bitcoin Lightning Network, I can send you. I'll give you an example. I just sent 200 to Jake I owed him some money for

21:54 whatever, sent 200 to him on the Bitcoin Lightning Network. And so how that works is I made a 200 transaction. Someone else paid someone else 100, someone else paid someone else 50. And it wraps

22:07 all of those up into one wrapper. And then it pushes it to the Bitcoin network as one transaction. So with the Bitcoin Lightning Network, I was able to pay Jake 200 instant settlement. He got it

22:19 the second I clicked the button, cost me 0 I can send it to him anywhere in the world. And that was facilitated by the Bitcoin network. And if I wasn't clear there, I sent them US dollars. It

22:31 wasn't even Bitcoin. I sent them US dollars using the Bitcoin rails. And so if you start thinking about what all can be done on that,

22:39 everyone talks about web three, they talk about decentralized applications. They've gone and they've built numerous blockchains. There's thousands of blockchain projects out there. A lot of people

22:52 are familiar with Ethereum, for example, but all of these things can be built out on the Bitcoin protocol. The other day I saw a project that came out that allows you to build websites,

23:02 decentralized web applications on the Bitcoin protocol. And there's always a lot of pushback, well, yeah, Bitcoin's old technology. It's old Bitcoin technology. There's faster blockchain

23:13 applications out there. And the thing is, if you look at how the internet was built, the internet wasn't built on the fastest protocols. It was built on the ones that were adopted first. and

23:24 adoption really is the name of the game. And for that, Bitcoin is the king of blockchain protocols. And it's also the only true decentralized application. Ethereum, every other project has a

23:37 central team behind it. Bitcoin is the only one that runs autonomously with

23:44 a decentralized network. So people sometimes, they may have a hard time conceptualizing that, but what I point to is look at AWS, Amazon Web Services. What is your value that you place on that

23:58 business? It's worth billions of dollars. It powers the internet. I think AWS controls, or they host 30 plus of all the activity on the internet. That's how I think about the Bitcoin protocol.

24:10 It's an infrastructure play, and it's the infrastructure to build out the next evolution of the internet. And that is enabled by Bitcoin mining. And then Bitcoin mining is enabled by access to

24:22 cheap energy. So that's how it cascades down and how getting a molecule out of the ground or capturing wind or solar, I think that we're going through this paradigm shift where economic value and

24:37 energy production are becoming so closely tied, hand in hand, that it's just so different from the way that the world has worked up to this point. And I think it's extremely revolutionary and

24:49 extremely cool to think about So summarizing real quick what you said, in effect, you basically said the Bitcoin network being decentralized, the only true decentralized network out there. In

25:01 effect, you're going to want to own some Bitcoin of some sort because

25:06 that's in effect, you're rent to participate in that network. And the utility of being able to run through things ultimately through that network is going to be valuable. And that's interesting

25:19 because you and I I went and met with a very sophisticated institutional investor. And their question was, I can't figure out how to value a Bitcoin other than just speculation. And that's the

25:31 first time, your answer is the first time I've heard something other than, well, it could be a store of value, it's better than gold - Yeah, I think that if when people ask that, like what can

25:43 Bitcoin be valued at? And a lot of people, they look at the markets, they'll go to Coinbase or CoinMarketCap and they'll look at volume of Bitcoin and what has Bitcoin price done over time. But if

25:57 you really look at the amount of hash rate that has come online, and you can Google this, you can Google Bitcoin mining hash rate and you can find all the historical stats of how much hash rate has

26:06 come online, that's where the value is. The value is how secure is the network? These Bitcoin miners are incentivized by mining Bitcoin, right? So the higher the price of Bitcoin goes,

26:22 you're going to get online because people are building out mining infrastructure, putting money into it. So it just becomes this flywheel of where the network becomes more secure. The price goes up

26:33 because mining difficulty becomes harder. One, if there's all these miners coming online, that means that there's less Bitcoin to go around. And then you have having events where every four years

26:44 or so, the mining difficulty increases in the amount of Bitcoin halves So it's really genius system. Whoever created. Basically, they want to block every 10 minutes. Yeah. And they adjust all

26:58 the factors to make sure that. Whoever created the idea of Bitcoin is a fucking genius to say the least. And it's just really mind-boggling to think someone came up with the system. But as the

27:12 network continues to grow stronger, the price of Bitcoin will continue to go up. And you buying Bitcoin and owning you're

27:20 financially incentivized with with the miners, right? And you're essentially buying ownership into the network and you're saying, hey, look, I think Bitcoin is going to be the base layer for the

27:32 next evolution of the internet. I think that there's gonna be all these second, third layer applications built on top of it. Here's my economic incentive to own a piece of that network. It'd just

27:43 be like, if I got to buy a piece of Amazon Web services and then I was financially incentivized to hold onto it, as I knew all of these applications, we're gonna be built onto it and there is gonna

27:53 be more demand for AWS, that's how I think about it. And I do think that that plays into, it's a store value. I think it'll go up over time. People ask me, well, what do you think it's going up

28:05 to? I don't know, I'm not comfortable saying what it could go up to because whatever number I say is gonna be wrong. But what I do believe is that this is gonna be one of the fastest growing

28:15 industries, Bitcoin mining, over the next couple of decades And I think that the US is going to be the leader in Ashrate, Texas specifically. You look at your hot states, like a Texas Oklahoma,

28:28 Wyoming, North Dakota, where you have access to direct energy production. Well, and that's what you and I've been talking about around here, creating our checklist of if you want to be a minor,

28:40 and you want to have your computer running the most over the next 10 years. Because like we said, it's designed to put a block up every 10 minutes, and to the extent a lot of miners flood in, some

28:54 are going to get kicked offline and not going to be able to mine. I mean, that's just economics. Yeah, it becomes a game of lowest marginal costs. Exactly. So you and I have come up with the

29:04 checklist, and every day we're adding to it, deleting to it, subtracting to it. But it's lowest power cost, regulatory environment, the ability to potentially run off renewables outside the grid,

29:19 And we've kind of got our working lists, it's maybe up to 10 or 12 things right now. And that's to your point that you made earlier. When you say where do all these 10 to 12 things exist, it's out

29:30 in West Texas. And when you look at the great shale map, where's the best acreage? The acreage for Bitcoin mining just overlays it almost perfectly. Yes. That's why I think having this event in

29:45 Houston, Texas and the energy capital world is so important because that's the transformation we're going to see. Yeah, I mean, everyone has their Bitcoin conferences in Miami and don't get me

29:56 wrong, I love Miami, but no one's producing energy in Miami, right? I mean, the energy production is happening in Houston. This is the energy capital and that's what makes our event so special.

30:06 And you have people all over the world flying into it because they're excited that they get to come - We're getting DMs from Prague, Czechoslovakia. Tell us about Monahan Texas because we're looking

30:18 at a quartering there. Yeah, we're about to have an influx of people going out to West Texas. But yeah, I think that that's.

30:27 I had someone reach out to me a month and a half, two months ago, and it was like, Hey, I've got someone that has access to 3 cent kilowatt-hour electricity in Russia. And I'm like, Why would I

30:37 want to do that? Yeah, I'm like, What would I want to do that? Regulatory risk there seems so high. And now you look at what's happening at the world. Now say two cents maybe. So I think that

30:50 regulatory, you know, talking to those Chinese miners, that's something that's really big to them because they're like, Hey, we have the axe thrown down on us, so what's the regulatory

30:57 environment? So I had an empowering. We've brought in Ted Cruz and people from Real World Commission and lobbyists because we want to see how are people talking about Bitcoin. And you know, you

31:10 have Ted Cruz and Governor Abbott and all of these people. supporting Bitcoin. And you say what you want about Texas and Texas politicians, but they know when there's an opportunity for economic

31:22 growth. And I think that they're getting behind it and supporting it. And you have big deals that you and I have been sitting here talking about mining off of net gas or solar or off-grid And. I

31:34 think that there's a lot of applications for off-grid mining, but state of Texas is cutting deals with miners for on-grid applications too And they have these power purchase agreements that say, hey,

31:45 we'll give you access to cheap electricity. But when there's increase in demand, you guys got to cut off power to the miner so that we can reroute electricity. Because I don't think it's crazy to

31:57 say that a lot of the renewables being built on the Texas grid right now, at least some of the value or some of the compensation for building that's coming from Bitcoin mining. Yeah, I mean - It

32:09 just is And so I mean, it's not a Republican Democrat. at issue. It's actually a uniting issue because it's going to lead to more renewables out there. I mean, you look at what's happening with

32:21 energy right now and the energy crunch that we're in. I mean, there's no argument that we need to increase energy production from all facets, right? Whether that's oil and gas, wind, solar,

32:32 hydro, geothermal, and unfortunately, you know, some, you know, let's take a big wind turbine farm on West Texas You may not get built if it doesn't have enough takeaway capacity to get the

32:45 electricity that it's generating transmitted to the grid. And that's a case that happens all the time in West Texas. You know, you might make ex gigawatts of power on any given day and you only

32:58 have 60 takeaway

33:00 capacity for it. So you just have this wasted energy. Now, if you have servers out on your site, you have these ASICS servers. Now, hey, if there's not takeaway. You can kick on the servers

33:13 and you can take that energy and mine Bitcoin with it and extract economic value from your asset. And now you have instant settlement on that as well. And then you can send that Bitcoin anywhere

33:25 around the world and do whatever you want with it. You can either hold it on the ballot sheet, you can stake it, you can sell it, you can do whatever you want. And so I'm actually a big believer

33:34 that Bitcoin mining will enable the building of renewables because it made green light some projects that just didn't make sense beforehand. I think that it'll have a big part in load balancing, you

33:46 know, or costs that a massive problem with load balancing. And I think that Bitcoin mining, you know, some of these projects that they're cutting with miners on grid, we're going to play a big

33:57 part because, yeah, we'll give you access to wholesale electricity when we have surplus. But hey, when we have a demand spike, you guys got to kick off so that we can reroute electricity. That's

34:06 a win-win for everyone So I think that people are starting to understand that and.

34:13 understand the mechanics of Bitcoin mining and how it can help and then also understand that a Bitcoin is a real thing. And it's a real asset. And to be honest, it's just it's ungovernable. It

34:25 doesn't hit. It's a decentralized network. No central entity can't control it. And ultimately, I think that's really good for humanity. So that's why I get passionate about Bitcoin and just world

34:39 colliding I was passionate about Bitcoin before I understood the mining component and the energy component. And so now my worlds are colliding where cryptocurrency and energy production are coming

34:52 together. And you're starting to see a lot of tangible momentum and traction coming into the space. In the Yates family,

35:01 Bitcoin mining story is Charlie, unbeknownst to mother and me was Bitcoin mining back 2011, 2012, right when it comes out. gets eight Bitcoins, winds up buying a pair of fake Yeezy tennis shoes

35:18 from China, puts on the Yeezy's, steps in a puddle, they disintegrate. And what's that? 250, 000 to 100, 000? They're at the Bitcoin. Yes. So no. And that's actually a good point because

35:33 it's Charlie mined off of a laptop out of the house And you used to be able to do that because difficulty was low. The network had to start building up, right? There wasn't a lot of competition on

35:45 the network. And now you look at these ASX and the S19, super efficient, 110 terahash second. And

35:57 the technology that is coming into the space Intel just announced that they're coming out with their own ASIC line. And so gone are the days where you can mine off of your laptop and be competitive

36:10 Easy. that shows the evolution of the network and how it continues to grow and strengthen over time - And every blockchain that's added, or every block that's added, makes it that much harder to

36:24 corrupt. So yeah - Yeah, it just becomes more secure over time. And so I think that if you start to understand that, hey, the value is in the network, then you can kind of start to reverse

36:34 engineer and keys out, you know, what is your value on the Bitcoin - So we're gonna have to do more on that because that sounds really simple. But it took me like nine and a half months to actually

36:46 get that and appreciate it. We'll do more, but give me details on the conference. So it's gonna be March 30th through 31st at 8th Wonder Brewery in downtown Houston. So we've rented out the entire

36:60 brewery - And that place is just. cool. It's so cool. It's one there the other day and did a walk around not only with our team but with AV and the tents because we're getting those big 400 person

37:12 tents that they have like a Houston rodeo cook off and just got everyone together and I was like, man, they hit me. I was like, this is what 30 foot statues of the Beatles there. They've got

37:25 old seats from the Astrodome. Yeah, man. It's it's gonna have a South by South. Yeah. Just a cool setting. This is not your father's Bitcoin mining. Yeah, this isn't, you know, a new bet.

37:37 George our Brown convention center. I mean, this is going to be a good time. Live music, just a ton of cool people. I'm so like, I'm so excited because we made a slide of companies that people

37:48 are attending from. There's not another slide like it. It's like you got Conoco Phillips, Exxon, and then you got brains slush pool. You got Foundry, all of these different.

38:02 crypto, Bitcoin related companies, you know, unchain capital. And I was like, this is fucking awesome, you know, bringing these worlds together. And just like you mentioned earlier, it's like,

38:12 you know, you got Bitcoiners coming from Prague, like, you know, this is going to be a new world to them. You know, they've been to Austin, but they haven't been to Houston where, I mean,

38:22 this is the highest density city of energy producers. And that's what I think is going to be really special So kind of getting giddy talking about it. But overall, it's going to be a fun time and

38:34 there's going to be stuff for everyone too. So I had a lot of oil and gas folks reach out to me and say, hey, you know, is this something for newbies and like, absolutely, like you can come.

38:43 There's going to be people there that are presenting that are better at articulating Bitcoin than I am, you know, way smarter than I am. They thought about this more than I have. So they're going

38:53 to be doing, you know, Bitcoin 101. If you're a Bitcoin miner, there's going to be things on energy So there's going to be something for - anyone and everyone and ultimately just want to get

39:02 everyone together and have a good time. It's going to be a big part. We're talking what? 4050 speakers all told, at least? Yeah, at least. Different panels. Different panels coming from

39:13 regulatory finance, the mechanics of mining, energy production, energy can be broken down in oil and gas, solar, renewable. I've heard rumors that you're actually going to have me teach energy

39:26 101 to the Chinese miners and the project

39:32 was a lot more like miners. We're going to vlog it too because I want to see their reactions to you. Yeah, it's just weird dude in a hoodie telling me about energy. But yeah, no, I think that's

39:41 what's really cool about the agenda that I've seen and everybody can go to digitalwildcatterscom, pull up that

39:49 there's a link at the top to empower, see the agenda, the speakers and all and get registered. Yeah, get registered. Ultimately, it's going to be a lot of smart forward thinking people from all

40:02 different backgrounds. There's going to be something for everyone. We think that this is going to be a big event for years to come. So, we're pretty excited to get it going. And everybody

40:14 listening to the podcast, feel free to reach out to me at nimblefattygmailcom

40:20 and happy to answer any questions because it's been really interesting for me So, educational is whenever we talk about Bitcoin mining on the podcast, people send in questions about it. So, happy

40:32 to do it. Colin, thanks for coming in and tomorrow morning, BDE. I got BDE tomorrow. So, appreciate you giving me a chance to talk about this on the podcast. I'm excited about it. Well, you

40:43 are the boss. So.