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Discovering Bitcoin with Max Gagliardi · Discovering Bitcoin

0:01
Yeah, I see the world through an entirely different lens.
0:06
It doesn't just give you confidence, but it gives you
0:08
hope. Take like we're squandering our
0:12
energy, our life force. So Bitcoin is changing that.
0:16
For me, it's like it's healing energy.
0:20
It gives you a kind of of a stand feeling, right?
0:28
Deep and deep and deep in the immortal works of the doors, the
0:32
time. To hesitate us through.
0:36
Discovering. Max, how's it going, man?
1:03
It's going well, thanks for having me on.
1:05
Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome.
1:06
It's always weird connecting with names.
1:11
Well, you're not a name, but strangers on the Internet.
1:15
You know, like I grew up in a world where you shouldn't talk
1:18
to strangers. And.
1:20
And yet here we are, 150 odd episodes in.
1:26
There you go. I think it's good.
1:28
I think it's good you got to meet people and you know, I've
1:31
had a lot of luck with doing the podcast and meeting folks and
1:35
I've ended up making real world friends with people that are
1:39
wants just strangers on the Internet.
1:40
So it's been overall net positive I think.
1:43
Yeah, this is true. This is true.
1:45
Always building, which is what you do, right?
1:50
Yeah. So background is working the oil
1:52
and gas industry and you know, that kind of is what led me to
1:57
Bitcoin and we'll get into that but do other stuff as well.
2:01
And like real estate, you know, we've done some development type
2:05
stuff, vacation cabins, things like that.
2:08
There's a popular vacation spot here where I live and we've
2:12
built some homes there to rent and done some some land type
2:16
stuff. I've also dabbled with Bitcoin
2:18
mining as well as some software type endeavors on the energy
2:24
front, On the oil and gas front, we built a software platform.
2:27
So kind of done a few different things, but my main things
2:30
always been oil and gas and and energy broadly.
2:34
And really, a lot of it's revolved around the intersection
2:37
between energy and monetizing energies, which is what piqued
2:41
my interest initially when I learned more about Bitcoin.
2:45
Interesting. Well, let me ask the question,
2:48
how did you discover Bitcoin? Yeah, I was doing a pot.
2:52
So back in 2020, like a lot of people was looking at ways to
2:57
how the world was changing and was going through a period of
3:00
time where we were kind of stuck at home and decided, hey, I
3:04
should. Well, I didn't really decide.
3:06
My brother pushed me to do a podcast.
3:08
He's like, man, you've got real world experience building a
3:11
company and you know, you know folks, then you could probably
3:15
get some interesting people on a podcast.
3:17
And so I didn't really have a social media presence, but he
3:21
convinced me that at the time given like the world being kind
3:24
of locked down, that it was a good way to to reach out to
3:27
folks. And so start a podcast called
3:29
Talk Energy. And really it was focused mainly
3:31
on, you know, the first handful of episodes, a lot of oil and
3:35
gas stuff and then energy broadly, everything from nuclear
3:39
to renewables to oil and gas, geothermals, really anything in
3:43
the energy space, energy markets.
3:46
And from that podcast, Scott had folks start reaching out to me
3:50
from the Bitcoin community and specifically made friends with a
3:57
few guys like Marty Bent and Tom Azaria who were doing Bitcoin
4:01
mining. And Marty has his podcast that's
4:04
a popular Bitcoin podcast, but he ended up collaborating with
4:07
those guys on an episode and then they we just started
4:10
talking on the side. And it wasn't just them.
4:12
I had a number of miners reaching out at the time looking
4:16
for stranded natural gas that they could use to power
4:19
generators and in my Bitcoin with.
4:23
And so that was like my first intro into and at that point I
4:26
knew, you know, like a lot of people who knew about Bitcoin.
4:29
I have friends and, you know, even family members that had
4:32
been bugging me about like everybody has a story, right,
4:34
where someone's like you should buy Bitcoin.
4:36
And at the time, you know, I think the last, the first time I
4:41
looked at buying it, you know, the price was really low.
4:44
I mean, it's a couple thousand, I think something like that.
4:46
And but it was really hard to get set up back then.
4:49
You know, you had to like do all these things and move money
4:52
around. And I just remember like never
4:53
getting around to it, like creating an account within
4:56
Exchange and there's never doing it.
4:57
And then you watch the price go up and up and you're like, Oh my
5:00
gosh, I should have just done that instead of being lazy
5:03
because all these people. Told me to do it that I know are
5:05
smart people that had been in it.
5:08
So I you know, I knew about it a little bit, but had never really
5:10
gone deep down the rabbit hole. And what really initially peaked
5:15
my interest was just looking at the conversion rate at the time
5:17
between you know what a price for MCF, which is you know, the
5:23
price natural gas typically by M MB TU, which is the heating
5:26
value. MCF is like the unit of
5:28
measurement, the volume, but looking at it either on an M,
5:32
MB, TU or MCF equivalent of what you could mine Bitcoin with
5:36
versus what the price of natural gas at the time when I was
5:39
looking would sell for just in a normal market.
5:42
And it was, you know, something like 10X more valuable to mine
5:47
Bitcoin with that unit of gas than it was to sell it into a
5:51
market. And so that was pretty eye
5:53
opening. And it was just like, I've spent
5:55
my career at this intersection between energy and monetizing
5:58
energy. And primarily that has to do
6:01
with like negotiating the agreements to sell your products
6:04
like natural gas and oil, you know, building the
6:07
infrastructure that's needed, like pipelines, compression
6:11
processing plants, things like that to get the molecules to a
6:13
market. And so I knew very much what the
6:18
economics were to, for example, build a pipeline to connect a
6:21
gas well and process that gas and sell it to a market.
6:25
And so that's what I've been kind of my niche in the oil and
6:28
gas industry. And so somebody who's spent
6:31
their whole career kind of calculating what, you know, how
6:33
much you can sell energy for and then looking at the at the time,
6:37
pretty eye popping multiple on how much more of that energy was
6:40
worth if you converted it to Bitcoin.
6:43
That's what really got me looking at it saying, OK, if
6:46
this is real, then I need to figure this out.
6:49
And obviously mining economics change hash rates gone crazy.
6:54
You know, the price of the of the ASICS he fluctuates up and
6:57
down. So it's not a static number, But
6:59
at the time the economics were really good and it was when the
7:03
price had pumped and hash rate hadn't quite caught up to that.
7:07
And so that led us to doing some advisory work and some
7:11
consulting for some Bitcoin miners that were looking to to
7:16
place data centers, mobile data centers in the oil field and did
7:21
not like it was relatively small, you know, power, I think
7:25
the first deal we did was like 3 megawatts.
7:27
So it wasn't huge numbers. We weren't doing like GW or
7:31
giant, you know, 100 MW type facilities, but but it was, you
7:35
know, somewhat sizable for the folks that we were looking for.
7:39
And so did a number of those placements.
7:42
And then we also, I had some friends that own some gas that
7:46
was disadvantaged and so did some of our own Bitcoin mining,
7:49
ended up building our own data centers and, and deploying, you
7:53
know, just some small deployments, doing some mining.
7:56
And, and so anyways, that's how I got into it.
7:58
And really it started out from the wanting to, you know,
8:01
monetize energy and being really fascinated with that.
8:04
But then ultimately just somebody politically that's
8:08
always had kind of a libertarian dent a little bit, you know,
8:10
sort of like some of the other principles around bitcoins.
8:14
And just to, you know, the more I learned about it, the more I
8:16
just liked Bitcoin in general as a as a technology and as a
8:20
saving the mechanism and and so and transactions too.
8:24
I've actually used it transact. I know a lot of people don't.
8:27
But. So yeah, that's how I that's how
8:29
I got into it and happy to take it.
8:31
Further, different directions. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm curious to
8:35
learn. I I know that there are a myriad
8:38
of different ways you can monetize energy, but for my
8:42
super left of the bell curve point of view, Bitcoin mining
8:49
seems to be probably not the easiest, but certainly the most
8:53
direct. Would that be a true thing to
8:55
say? Well, it's very direct because
8:58
the interesting thing about Bitcoin mining is that it can be
9:01
located pretty much anywhere you have, you know, even just a
9:04
little bit of Internet connectivity.
9:05
So most, you know, most, most of the way energy is priced is
9:11
you've got a market price, which there's some kind of hub,
9:14
whether that be like, you know, Henry hub here in the United
9:17
States for that's kind of the main index that natural gas is
9:19
priced on. Or you've got places like
9:22
fishing Oklahoma where there's a lot of oil storage.
9:25
And so whatever the the products are trading for it, those major
9:28
hubs that would be like your index price for the price you'd
9:31
see like on a ticker when it says WTI for oil or, you know,
9:36
for example, Henry hub for natural gas.
9:38
And so around the world, you've got these different indexes and
9:41
that's kind of the market price that you see.
9:43
But really like, that's not typically the price you're going
9:46
to get paid because you have to get it to that point and you
9:50
have to build the infrastructure to get to that point.
9:52
So if you're producing a molecule of natural gas or
9:55
barrel of oil, there's a bunch of cost involved.
9:58
Take transport it or move it to where it needs to be to get to
10:02
that index price. And so whether you have to put
10:04
the oil in a truck or put the gas on a pipeline, there's all
10:08
these deductions that you get charged along the way to get it
10:12
there. And so where is with Bitcoin,
10:14
you can really that's a source of demand that's mobile and they
10:18
can be moved to where the energy is AT.
10:21
And that's why it's so powerful for monetizing, you know, wasted
10:24
energy. If there's a hydroelectric dam
10:26
that's, you know, producing a lot of energy that's not being
10:29
used, you could build a data center, but you know, Bitcoin
10:32
mining facility right there. And so it is a very direct way
10:36
to monetize energy because you can cut out all those
10:38
transportation costs and all those, you know, other factors
10:42
and get it right to where the supply is located.
10:45
The other thing that's interesting is also just the
10:46
payment with Bitcoin mining. I mean, you get rewards
10:51
depending on what pool and how you're, you know, how you're
10:53
mining it, you get rewards everyday so you can get paid and
10:56
you know, almost like real time basically in terms of getting
11:01
the money in the door, which is also pretty unique for
11:04
monetizing energy because you know, typically there's like a
11:06
production cycle and there's an accounting cycle.
11:10
And so like, if you, you know, produce a well for a month, you
11:14
have to measure all that production.
11:16
So from the 1st of the month to the end of the month, you got to
11:18
see how much volume you produced of natural gas or oil.
11:22
And then after that, there's another month that it's like the
11:24
accounting cycle to where then they have to account for that
11:28
and then you get paid. So you may not get paid for like
11:30
60 days or more after when you actually, you know, produce the,
11:35
the energy. Whereas with Bitcoin, if you're,
11:37
you know, putting it into a generator and turning that into
11:40
electricity and mining, with Bitcoin you're getting paid
11:43
almost in real time. So not only is it you're pulling
11:45
the, you know the demand directly or very close to where
11:49
the supplies at, you're also getting your payment much
11:52
quicker than you would selling energy in a normal way.
11:56
So do a lot of your peers actually that, that maybe I'm
12:03
going to say PSPS in the energy industry, in the energy sector
12:06
that don't quite grok the benefits of Bitcoin and, and
12:12
what you've just outlined there. Because I can think of a couple
12:15
of instances. Like, for instance, there's this
12:17
guy I discovered a little while ago who was trying to set up
12:23
some like, you know, like micro hydro facilities.
12:29
And I mentioned Bitcoin just off the cuff and was like, you know,
12:34
because he, he, he said something like, well, you know,
12:36
we're trying to raise, I think it was like in the, in the era
12:40
of like $7,000,000 or something to sort of complete the project.
12:43
And this thing had been lagging for at least 10 years or
12:46
something. And I just happened to mention,
12:48
I don't know, really like, I can't explain the full technical
12:51
details of Bitcoin mining and how it would work, but I
12:55
effectively said something similar to what you've just sort
12:57
of explained. And as soon as I mentioned the
13:00
word Bitcoin, his mind just shut off and he was just not
13:03
interested in carrying on the conversation.
13:05
And I was like, damn, like this is an opportunity where, OK, it
13:10
might not like monetize straight up to the tune of $7,000,000,
13:15
but you will start to monetize the project immediately,
13:21
effectively. Do you run into that kind of,
13:25
what's the word cognitive dissonance?
13:27
Is that right? Something like that.
13:28
You know that that sort of, yeah, you get, you get
13:31
sidetracked or distracted by the word, well, Bitcoin, and you
13:34
associate it with crypto. And then you just kind of shut
13:36
off and you're just not open enough to pursue that line of
13:42
thought. I, I definitely think early.
13:45
So this was probably 2122 time frame and it was very much like
13:51
that. You know, you had people that
13:53
would hear it and think it was just some kind of a scam or
13:58
didn't really, like you said, their brain just kind of shuts
14:00
off. I do think that over the last,
14:02
call it five years, it has become more, I don't want to say
14:06
mainstream, but it's definitely been around long enough and
14:10
there's been enough people that have done Bitcoin mining in the
14:12
oil field to where it is not as of an abstract idea is it was
14:18
call it 545 years ago. You know, people now either have
14:24
been around somebody that's pitched it to them or know
14:27
somebody that's done it enough to where they realize, OK, this
14:31
is a real and valid use case primarily like with stranded,
14:35
stranded energy. So like the example what they're
14:38
doing, the mini hydro type project.
14:41
I mean, it's hard to underwrite a, an energy project just to
14:46
just for Bitcoin because of the fluctuations in the price,
14:50
because of the hash rate going up, because of the, you know,
14:54
just the cost of the, of the hardware and how that can
14:56
fluctuate. But it is a very good use case,
15:00
I think for some ancillary or some piece of the monetization
15:06
pie. So like, if you're drilling an
15:07
oil well and it's really expensive to get a gas pipeline
15:10
there and that gas is stranded, then Bitcoin makes a lot of
15:15
sense because now that you know, the entire project economics
15:18
aren't resting just on the Bitcoin piece, that's almost
15:21
just like. A nice little upside piece that
15:22
goes with it versus, you know, because you're making your main
15:26
money off the oil and the gas would have other just otherwise
15:29
just been wasted. So I, I think it's, it's come a
15:32
long ways and you know, there for a while it got really
15:36
popular and people were, you know, I was getting people
15:40
reaching out in, in the oil and gas industry as well as on the
15:43
Bitcoin side. I mean, it seemed like every
15:44
week somebody would reach out on social media or reach out, you
15:48
know, call me and say, hey, like we've got this project.
15:51
Like I want to learn more about the Bitcoin side and how we
15:53
could use that for the economics here.
15:56
I would say today it's, it's still there.
15:58
Like I still probably now it's probably more every, you know, a
16:02
couple calls every six months or so, people asking about Bitcoin
16:06
stuff. But I've seen a huge shift now
16:08
to AI data centers and there's a lot of people chasing the, the
16:14
AI front. So it.
16:16
But I, but I will say that it's, it's definitely more mainstream
16:20
or more people have more knowledge about it now than they
16:22
did back then. Back then, it was like you had
16:25
to just explain what Bitcoin was to even get the conversation
16:28
started, you know? Isn't that so?
16:31
I, I find that fascinating that someone it, it's, it's easier
16:36
apparently to grok AAI data centre than it is a Bitcoin
16:42
miner. I, I guess now that I say it out
16:44
loud, it I can, I could see why, but, but the point being, you
16:51
don't know how data like if, if you, if you're in that, in that
16:56
sector, you probably don't necessarily know how a, a, a
16:59
data centre works, whether it has anything to do with AI or
17:03
not. And you certainly don't
17:04
understand how a Bitcoin miner would work.
17:08
It doesn't really matter. It's just can I generate some
17:12
revenue off the back of this, right?
17:15
Right. Yes, Yeah, exactly.
17:17
So I wonder what that hang up is.
17:19
Well, I mean, you, you just mentioned that it's kind of not
17:22
as as much anymore. But yeah, certainly, I mean,
17:27
certainly here, you know, in, in Australia, our energy sector's
17:32
incredibly rich and, and, and plentiful, but the appetite and
17:40
the cognitive appreciation of even just AI data centres or,
17:52
you know, God forbid, Bitcoin is, is like a, is like a pipe
17:56
dream. It's kind of like there's that
17:57
old adage of, you know, the US sneezes and, and Australia
18:00
catches the cold or whatever it is.
18:03
It, it, you guys are like probably at least 10 years into
18:06
the future with respect to this sort of stuff.
18:09
Then I guess most anywhere else in the world, generally
18:15
speaking. But yeah, it's, it's just funny
18:18
how you can grok a data centre like you can, you could, you
18:20
could, you could pitch an AI data centre and get a much more
18:24
favourable response than you could, you know, a stack of
18:29
Bitcoin miners. Yeah, I think Bitcoin, it's
18:32
interesting because it's it solves different problems for
18:36
different people. And I think that in the US,
18:39
because of the banking system that we have, and, you know,
18:43
we're not one of these countries where you've got the
18:46
hyperinflation problem. I mean, there's certainly high
18:48
inflation, higher than they say it is.
18:51
You know, the government says it is, but it's not like some of
18:54
these other countries where they've seen their currency
18:56
collapse. It's not like some of these
18:58
other countries where you really don't have access to banking.
19:02
There's. Really bad, excuse me, really
19:04
bad payment rails and things like that where you can't like
19:07
just get access to things that we just take for granted.
19:10
And so I think in some of these other places, you basically can
19:14
see Bitcoin and look at it and immediately see the benefits.
19:18
Where is here? Someone's like, why wouldn't you
19:20
just then know the money? Why would you just PayPal?
19:22
Why wouldn't you just go open a bank account?
19:25
And it's like there's so many, you know, billions of people
19:28
that just don't have access to that.
19:30
And so I think that with AI, it's an easier pitch because
19:34
people have used cat GPT. Yeah, they've used these
19:38
different AI platforms. And so their head, their mind
19:40
immediately goes to like, oh, I can see that this is useful.
19:44
Whereas with Bitcoin, unless somebody's you know, experience
19:47
those issues are taking the time to study the network and the
19:52
scarcity aspect of it than they may just, it's not an immediate,
19:54
it doesn't click for them as quickly as something like AI
19:57
would. Yeah, OK, that makes sense.
20:00
Now I I'm finally grokking to the fact that you are in
20:04
Oklahoma, which there's two things there.
20:07
So I used to listen a lot to macro voices and they would
20:11
always, yeah, call out the spot price of Cushing.
20:15
Yep, Oklahoma and I, I never understood what that meant, but
20:19
I was like, I guess 'cause so you mentioned that and, you
20:24
know, are you, have you ever, have you ever met PEB Island?
20:28
I mean, he's the associate professor of entrepreneurship at
20:33
OK State. If you ever run into the man,
20:36
what's his name again? PEB Island.
20:39
I don't think so. I've talked to the
20:40
entrepreneurship department, actually one of the, I was
20:44
talking to them last year about doing maybe some adjunct
20:48
professor type stuff for helping out with the program and kind of
20:52
died down. I need to reach back out to
20:53
those guys. I don't think I talked to him.
20:55
I talked to the, I think it was the head of the entrepreneurship
20:58
program or the Dean of it. But yeah, that's cool.
21:01
I have to look him up. Yeah, he's, he's the Super based
21:04
Austrian economist doesn't quite get Bitcoin, just kind of one of
21:10
those those Austrian econ guys. But he's yeah, he's awesome.
21:16
Anyway that that could be, I don't want to give you work or
21:19
anything or homework, but maybe you could be quite crucial to
21:24
his understanding of of Bitcoin and we could have a little bit
21:28
more better interaction. It's tough with the.
21:31
It's tough with the. Academic types, I mean, like,
21:33
that's the thing about Bitcoin that's been really interesting
21:36
to me is to see the people that have dug their heels in so hard.
21:40
And I don't know if he's done this or not, but folks that just
21:43
still even today with everything that's going on with the, you
21:47
know, the giant ETFs, fastest growing ETS in the world and the
21:52
amount of institutional investment.
21:54
I mean, I think this week they said that Harvard bought like
21:57
all this Bitcoin for their endowment.
21:59
It's one of their largest holdings.
22:00
You've got insurance companies buying it.
22:03
You've got financial advisors now allocating, you know, a
22:07
portion of people's retirement savings towards it.
22:10
You've got the president of the United States and this current
22:13
administration passing, you know, regulations and, and
22:17
talking it up. And even with all the things
22:19
that have that have happened in the last, you know, couple of
22:22
years, people are still just so either they are anti Bitcoin or
22:29
don't hear, they just still dismiss it.
22:31
And for me, it was like looking at all the people that have been
22:36
talking about it for all these years and then seeing that
22:38
they've been proven right in terms of the price appreciation
22:41
and the adoption. And then having to look at
22:44
yourself in the mirror and be like, these people are clearly
22:46
right. Did all the stuff that they said
22:48
was going to happen has happened.
22:51
You know, how am I really smarter than than all these
22:54
other people? This is a multi trillion dollar
22:56
thing. Like, I don't know, it's just
22:58
it's crazy to me that people still seem completely on the
23:02
other side of history with Bitcoin.
23:05
Yeah, Yeah, it's, it's a yeah, I think it's, I try not let it be
23:10
a source of frustration, but it is definitely a slight source of
23:14
frustration, particularly as you just outlined like it's, it's
23:19
clearly doing all of the things and with the benefit of time,
23:23
you can see that it does all these, it has all these
23:27
incredible benefits even just like a small allocation.
23:30
It's almost like at what point would you just not by a little
23:36
bit? And if it all goes wrong, we'll
23:39
like, I don't know, let's put, put 2%.
23:42
You've still got 98% put into wherever else you want to put
23:45
it, right? And, and who knows that two
23:48
could, could either work out or it couldn't.
23:50
Who cares? Like it, you know what I mean?
23:52
It's, it's, it's, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense.
23:56
It's not, it's not a rational reason to not own some.
24:01
And yeah, it, it just, it constantly baffles me.
24:05
And the other thing is like, I've got to stop trying to
24:07
actually advocate for it, particularly online.
24:10
I just do it mostly if I'm, if I've got 5 minutes to spare.
24:13
But it's it's not a productive use of my time, that's for sure.
24:19
Well, it's hard. I mean, like if even in the oil
24:21
and gas side, when I was trying to talk to people about mining,
24:24
the people that were open to learning and learning about
24:28
Bitcoin would spend the time and have like, you know, and even if
24:32
they did spend the time, they would go through a lot of them.
24:35
You know, you go through the natural questions like what if
24:38
the government bans that are like, what if you know, like all
24:40
these different things, like what if it gets hacked or what
24:42
if whatever. And then you explain to them,
24:44
report to them a resource to don't understand why that's
24:48
either not going to happen or something that's a very low
24:50
likelihood of happening. And then eventually they come
24:52
around to it and maybe they are bought in and they're like, OK,
24:55
I get it now. Or maybe they're not, but they
24:57
at least took the time to, you know, actually spend on trying
25:02
to learn about it. Whereas there's other people to
25:04
your point where it's like, this is kind of just a waste of my
25:06
time. Like you've already taken this
25:08
position. You are nothing's going to
25:11
change your mind. It could be at $1,000,000, it
25:12
could be at $100 million of Bitcoin and it wouldn't matter
25:15
to them. They're still going to have it
25:17
that, you know, maybe at that point they would change.
25:19
But in my mind, I don't think that they would because there's
25:21
some people that are just not, they don't want to have a good
25:24
faith, try to understand it. You know, at that point it's
25:28
like, OK, well, I'm just, I'm wasting my time trying to
25:31
explain this to you. Yeah, that good faith discussion
25:35
or, or conversation I've, I've had, I've had a few.
25:38
But yeah, it is, it is just interesting how even with the
25:44
benefit of hindsight and time, the this thing is still doing
25:47
it. And I mean, a lot of a lot of
25:50
dividend Bros, or you know, what do they call it, passive income
25:55
Bros, they will sort of point out that it doesn't have any
25:58
dividends. It doesn't have any.
26:00
There's no, like you can't generate cash flow effectively
26:03
off of it. You kind of can, but that's a
26:06
little bit more complex than that.
26:09
But yeah, it they just, I don't know.
26:13
Yeah, they just dig their heels in.
26:14
And who knows, that maybe $1,000,000 a coin, it might make
26:19
a copper, but who knows, man, we've we've seen some wild stuff
26:22
over the last five years and there's still a lot of
26:26
reluctance to admit fault on. Yeah, Well, it's just like this
26:32
whole thing around what's intrinsic value.
26:35
And to me, it's like, or they'll make the argument like, well,
26:39
it's only worth what someone's willing to pay.
26:41
Like more people have to want to buy it for it to have any value.
26:45
And then I'll make the argument. I'm like, yeah, but that's
26:47
everything, right? Like that's stocks.
26:48
That's, you know, real estate. That's gold, right?
26:52
I mean, like more people have to buy it or want to buy it for the
26:55
price to go up. If not, then the price would go
26:58
down. And they're like, well, it's
26:59
different. It has cash flow.
27:00
These things have cash flows, whatever.
27:02
And it's like, well, gold didn't have cash flows.
27:05
And it's like gold is, it's a monetary asset because it has
27:10
all these principles just like Bitcoin has.
27:12
I think bitcoins has better principles, but yeah, I mean
27:15
like it's just they try to twist into this narrative that.
27:20
It. Can't be, you know, just because
27:22
it doesn't have a dividend or doesn't have cash flows that has
27:24
no value. It's like, well, I lived
27:26
through, I lived through a bunch of crazy market events.
27:30
Like when I graduated out of schools right around the great
27:33
financial crisis, I saw a lot of assets that, you know, people
27:37
thought had value that turned out to not have much value,
27:39
especially when everybody was freaked out and didn't, you
27:41
know, there was no buyers. I lived through just recently,
27:44
like the 2022 banking crisis in the US and, you know, some of
27:49
the largest bank defaults. And what did that show you?
27:52
Is that your money, even though you thought you had money at a
27:54
institution, the money really wasn't there.
27:57
And when everybody tried to come and get their money at the same
27:59
time, you realize that's just an IOU on the screen and not
28:04
actual. But not actual money that's
28:06
there because they fractionally lended that out.
28:08
And so I think people have to come to their own conclusions
28:11
eventually, whether that be through a lived experience like
28:14
a banking crisis. But I know people that banked
28:17
with Silicon Valley Bank and their company did and they're
28:19
freaked out, you know, they ended up ended up working
28:22
because the government bailed them out.
28:23
But but ultimately there is something to be said about a
28:27
monetary asset, whether that's Bitcoin or even gold that you
28:31
can hold and self custody and not have to rely on somebody
28:35
else or an institution to go in to get it, especially in times
28:39
when the the system is shaky. And I think that there is value
28:43
for that, right? I think there's a value around.
28:45
A monetary global network that you can send and receive funds.
28:49
I mean, like I've had podcast editors before that lived in a
28:53
country where they're, you know, they're like, oh, can you do
28:56
like a wire through like Western Union and all these things and
29:00
have to set up an account, link my bank And I'm like, Hey, do
29:02
you take Bitcoin? They're like, OK, sure.
29:04
And just send them bitcoins. They're in like less than 10
29:06
minutes. So I mean, like, you know, you
29:09
can and then people be like, oh, the price goes up and down.
29:11
I'm like, they can sell it for their local currency, right when
29:14
they get it right. I mean, like they don't have to
29:16
hold it if that's what. But I was able to transfer that
29:18
value across the world and I was able to do it very quickly.
29:21
Like if you and I wanted to transact, I can almost assure
29:25
you the easiest way to do it would be to use Bitcoin.
29:27
We would wouldn't have to go through any institutions.
29:30
I could just send it to you, right, And use this network.
29:33
So there's 100% value there. In my mind.
29:35
I just think that people have to come to that conclusion and see
29:38
it for themselves. Yeah, you got to actually
29:40
experience that, that that ability to do that it, it, that
29:45
is pure magic, right? Just the fact that you can just
29:48
transmit that money instantaneously, effectively
29:53
anywhere in the world as long as you have the right app on your
29:57
phone. That's it.
29:59
Yeah, it's been nice. Tell me a little bit about the
30:03
opportunity cost you with respect to real estate, because
30:06
I know that you've, you tweet a little bit about this.
30:09
Obviously you, you're deeply in the oil and gas industry, but
30:12
you're building across real estate as well.
30:15
And just, you know, if, if I dive into your, your Twitter
30:19
profile, you've got the Mountain Fork Resort there and that's
30:23
something that you're actively promoting.
30:25
I'm curious to learn, being a person that clearly understands
30:29
and, and gets Bitcoin, what is the appeal of real estate?
30:35
Where, where, where, where does the appeal of real estate reside
30:39
in relation to Bitcoin? And therefore, you know, you
30:43
allocate capital to project a say the real estate and
30:48
therefore don't allocate a certain portion of that capital
30:51
to to Bitcoin or is it get to a? Yeah, I'll, I'll let you answer.
30:56
Sure. I mean, I think there's, there's
30:58
clear pros and cons with real estate is an asset class versus
31:03
an asset like Bitcoin. And I'll try to outline some of
31:06
the pros and the cons and compare and contrast it to
31:09
Bitcoin. But you know, the nice thing
31:10
about real estate is that it is a, in theory a scarce asset
31:16
depending on what type of real estate it is.
31:19
You know, if you like, for example, by some waterfront
31:23
acreage like this river project that we did and it's located
31:27
right next to a National Park or National Forest.
31:30
I mean, where you know that that's never going to change
31:32
because that's clearly something that's controlled by the
31:36
government. They're not going to make, you
31:37
know, that's a, it's a natural landmark and you know that you
31:41
own waterfront acreage. It's right up there by the
31:43
National Forest and it's a popular tourist.
31:47
Destination and people enjoy the natural beauty of it.
31:49
That's a relatively scarce thing like the you can't just make
31:53
more. You can't make a New River, you
31:55
can't make a new plot of land right there.
31:57
Now there's things that can change.
31:59
Regulation wise. They could.
32:01
You know, there's all kinds of negative externalities where the
32:03
government could do something, they could pass a new tax or
32:05
they could do whatever. So there's risks there with it.
32:07
But in theory, there's some scarcity to it.
32:11
Another piece of it that's really beneficial is just
32:14
there's so much wealth in real estate that the system is truly
32:18
designed to promote those types of investments.
32:21
So for example, the the tax benefits for real estate, if you
32:25
own a house or a property, you can get all kinds of tax
32:31
benefits like being able to take depreciation, which can offset
32:34
income, lower your taxes. You can get incredibly,
32:40
incredibly favor favorable financing terms.
32:42
I mean, everybody ripped on the 50 year mortgage.
32:46
And I agree that a 50 year mortgage is probably not a great
32:48
idea for a lot of people because but if you think about it, it's
32:52
kind of mind boggling that you could borrow money for 50 years.
32:56
It probably a very low rate. I mean, you know, maybe today
32:59
it'd be six 7%, but it, you know, in the future, if rates go
33:03
back down, it could be 4-5 percent.
33:05
You can borrow 50 years with a hard asset, pledges, collateral,
33:10
you know, in terms of what you could borrow against Bitcoin, I
33:12
mean, it's a, it's a very advantageous, you know, there's
33:16
not many things you can go out and lever up like that and get
33:19
those type of financing. Terms.
33:21
Especially for like a normal individual, right?
33:23
Like if you're a big corporation, you can go get
33:26
corporate debt, corporate bonds, whatever.
33:29
If you're Michael Saylor, sure, you can lever up and, and get
33:33
very favorable lending terms with Bitcoin, but for the
33:35
average person, the most favorable type of leverage or
33:38
debt you could ever get would be with real estate.
33:40
So, and I think another piece of it is that it's, it's fun.
33:44
I mean, at least the type of real estate that we've done,
33:46
it's, it's creating an experience.
33:47
It's creating a, a place where you can go with your friends and
33:51
family, enjoy yourself. You get to build something.
33:54
You can see it, right? I mean, it's like oil and gas.
33:57
You're drilling a well underground where you're laying
34:00
a pipeline. There's not much to look at.
34:01
I mean, it may make money, but if you go out and visit a
34:04
pipeline that you built, you're not going to see anything.
34:06
It's just going to be a field, right?
34:07
So it's underground. So there's something about like
34:11
building something and seeing it when it's done, taking your
34:14
friends and family enjoying it. And then obviously the cash
34:18
flows that that those can generate now.
34:20
Now that's like the the positive things with real estate.
34:23
The negatives are that it's illiquid, right?
34:26
So if you have like a piece of land.
34:28
You can't put that in a hard wallet and take that with you
34:31
and move from the US to Australia.
34:33
You can't sell it easily in theory, like you have to find a
34:37
willing buyer. The transaction has a lot of
34:39
friction. You've got to basically go and,
34:42
and there's all these middle men, idle companies and real
34:45
estate agents and you know, all these folks in the middle.
34:48
It can take you a long time. And if the market turns, then
34:51
you may not be. Able to sell it for the price
34:53
that you want to sell it for. So that's something that that is
34:58
a negative. The other thing is that there's
34:59
a bunch of headaches with it, right?
35:01
I mean, like you do you have a rental property that people are
35:03
vacationing in and you know, the heater goes out or the air
35:07
conditioning goes out, you got to get that fixed or the
35:09
Internet goes down and people want their money back, they want
35:12
a refund. So there's always some kind of
35:13
headache with having to manage that.
35:17
And so I think that like those things have to be weighed and,
35:21
and ultimately it's like, can I use this other business?
35:26
Like if, if the end goal for somebody is like, if their
35:28
favorite way to save money is via Bitcoin, then it's like, OK,
35:32
well, what happens once you've put all the money that you can
35:36
allocate into Bitcoin? You have to, you have to
35:38
generate new money to be able to buy Bitcoin, right?
35:40
So like whether that whether your business is being a
35:43
podcaster, whether your business is oil and gas or whether your
35:46
business is real estate, ultimately it could be a way
35:49
doing these other things can be a way to generate new Fiat
35:52
income to then be able to acquire some Bitcoin.
35:55
And so real estate for us is it's something that it was a
35:58
size, it's been a side project and a passion project thing.
36:01
It's not my full time thing that I do.
36:03
I've enjoyed it. But you know, as we have gotten
36:06
later on and had some successful projects where we've been able
36:10
to monetize those into the future, you do scratch your head
36:14
sometimes and think, well, man, I could have just bought some
36:16
Bitcoin. And like, for example, if we
36:19
were deploying capital in 2022, you know, bitcoins up 5X since
36:23
then. So you know, you probably would
36:26
have been better off. Have you known what you know
36:28
today just buying some Bitcoin with that?
36:30
So I mean, there's trade-offs like I enjoy it, but I do think
36:35
that at the end of the day, if your goal is to accumulate and
36:38
buy some more Bitcoin than you, it's always good to have some
36:40
kind of business entity that you can create Fiat with and then
36:44
convert that into a long term sort of wealth via, you know,
36:48
Bitcoin. Yeah, I guess there are some
36:51
intangible value to be found with respect to, but what you do
36:59
online in life, you know it's not.
37:00
It shouldn't always be dictated by accumulation of things
37:08
really, whether it's Bitcoin or not.
37:10
Like there's there's other things to do with your life than
37:12
just accumulate shit right? You know.
37:16
But the nice thing about Bitcoin is that like it's so and just
37:19
really like other financial assets too.
37:21
I mean, you could lump gold or stocks into this to some degree,
37:23
but but the nice thing about it is like what I like about
37:28
Bitcoin and why when I look at like my growth bucket of owning
37:34
an asset that I think is going to grow in value, I like it
37:36
because it's simple. And I know people think it's
37:40
like really complicated and it's not that complicated to me.
37:42
It's like, I can't tell you what Nvidia's earnings are going to
37:45
be this week. I can't tell you, you know, how
37:48
many, whatever, how many iPhones Apple's going to sell.
37:52
Like, you know, there's a bunch of, I don't know what the Fed is
37:54
going to do with with Ray interest rates and how that's
37:57
going to affect bond prices. But what I can tell you with a
38:00
pretty high certainty is that there's only going to ever be 21
38:02
million Bitcoin, that the network is going to stay
38:05
reliably secure. And it is something that if you
38:09
own a piece of it, you're not going to be diluted.
38:11
And guess the Fiat value may swing up and down.
38:15
But over a long enough time period, it's a very like set it
38:18
and forget it type of investment.
38:21
You know, if, if gold prices go to 10,000 an ounce, then like
38:24
you better bet people are going to find more gold.
38:26
They're going to dig more gold out of the ground and supply
38:29
will flood the market. Whereas with Bitcoin, if it goes
38:31
to 1,000,000 bucks, like sure, there might be more sellers at
38:35
certain points because people want to take profits, but
38:37
they're not creating any more of it.
38:39
And so that to me is just like a very easy to wrap my head around
38:43
thing where it's like I've worked hard just for my time and
38:47
you know, I've, I've spent my time and my effort to create
38:51
Fiat. And so it's like, and that's
38:53
being debased, which we know. And it's like the government's
38:55
just going to print more money. And so can I take that time and
38:58
store it in an asset that I know can't be debased?
39:01
And that's a pretty simple trade, right?
39:03
Especially if you have a long term horizon.
39:05
Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a bit of a no brainer, really.
39:09
Quick break just to say, if you're enjoying the show and
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39:15
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39:51
How has discovering Bitcoin changed you?
39:55
Yeah, I think that that's, I mean like kind of what I was
39:58
just talking about. It's really like it's this idea
40:00
that how do I store my? You know, it's like this whole
40:06
thing in life, like to your point, you said don't own all
40:08
these possessions. Like the possessions and the
40:10
things that you can buy can be fleeting, but ultimately I think
40:15
everybody wants to be able to. Trade their effort, whether
40:19
that's time or their abilities or a product or service that
40:22
they create, they want to trade that for value.
40:25
And so like, it's just become this very simple, easy, clear
40:31
cut thing for me that I'm like, Hey, look, I, you know, if I can
40:34
own some of this and I can own a little, you know, accumulate a
40:36
little bit more of it over time, that can simplify the future
40:41
because in the future you want to have value that you can store
40:43
and you can hold. And, you know, you just always
40:47
basically like so much of our life revolves around working and
40:50
thinking about the future, want to, you know, put away money for
40:53
retirement or for your kids and you just don't want to see it
40:56
get inflated away. And I think that really the last
41:00
five years has been such a huge eye opener for a lot of people
41:04
just around the value of a currency.
41:06
And what do you have today? I mean, I think I look back at,
41:09
you know, 2020 or 2021 thereabouts and looked at like
41:13
my year end statement from I put everything like on a credit card
41:18
and pay it off at the end of the month because it's easy to like
41:20
track all my stuff, you know? And so I went back and looked it
41:24
I think like 2020 or 2021 and because I was like, man, the the
41:29
everything seems more expensive, everything's higher and I
41:32
wouldn't looked and you know that monthly.
41:35
Those monthly expenses have gone up, but then you look at what
41:37
you're buying and you're really not buying more stuff.
41:40
I'm really not buying more food. I'm not spending on more
41:43
discretionary things. It's just everything has gotten
41:45
more expensive. But really what's happened is
41:48
your money has become worth less.
41:50
And I think that that has been a huge eye opener because we had
41:54
about like, you know, I don't know how many years worth of
41:57
inflation in a, in a span of a couple years.
41:59
It seemed like we had about a decade of inflation in the span
42:01
of like 2 years. I don't know if those are that's
42:04
the exact right math, but that's certainly what it felt like.
42:07
And so, you know, understanding that there is a way now to have
42:12
a hard asset that, you know, that's not going to get, we're
42:15
not going to create more of and you have reasonable austerity
42:18
that over time, I think that that will continue to maintain
42:22
its purchasing power. Now I can't tell you next year
42:25
what it's going to be or you know, whatever next week, but I
42:28
bet you in five years, you know it's gone up in value relative
42:32
to Fiat terms and what it is today.
42:34
So I think it's just a way that gives you some peace, gives you
42:36
some simplifying your financial journey to not have to be some
42:42
crazy financial analyst that can predict markets and bond spreads
42:47
and mortgage rates and dividend calculations, all these things.
42:51
It's like this is pretty simple. I can own this and I'm going to
42:54
be able to overtime store purchasing power.
42:57
Yeah. And I mean, you posted a, a, a
43:00
sort of like a carousel, I guess the other day you guys went
43:05
camping with your kids and the whole notion of simplifying the
43:13
future in with respect to just holding a little bit of Bitcoin
43:16
that is yours that you hold in self custody.
43:19
It takes the edge off of knowing that your kids are going to be
43:25
OK. You know, like you can kind of
43:30
at least be rest like you can rest assured knowing that in a
43:37
world where if inflation keeps getting worse and all this sort
43:40
of stuff, that your time and energy isn't actually being
43:42
diluted as well. So you can, I don't know,
43:48
actually do what we're supposed to do and provide a better, a
43:50
better future to, for, for our kids, right.
43:54
Yeah, definitely. Well, I'm like, I'm not one of
43:56
these people that it's not like the only investment that I have.
43:59
But to your point like that you have some amount that you feel
44:02
comfortable with that you know that in the future that I mean,
44:06
I think with a pretty high degree of certainty that will be
44:08
that will hold its value. And that does simplify things
44:11
and makes it, it just makes it easier because it's just so
44:14
right now the whole financial landscape is so confusing.
44:18
I mean, it's like, what do you do with money?
44:20
I mean, the markets are all time highs or thereabouts, you know,
44:26
bond rates, it's like seems like it's relatively safe, but then
44:30
you think about how much money they're printing and they're
44:32
like, is the government going to keep being able to borrow money
44:35
at the 10 year note of 4%? And if they're, you know, it
44:39
just seems like rates could go up again.
44:42
So that would lose you value And then you like, that's probably
44:45
right at or not even really at where real inflation's AT.
44:48
And then you've got like, and there's just so many things to
44:50
factor in real estate, you know, property taxes and insurance,
44:55
which we didn't even go into, but like the cost of ownership
44:58
is always going up. And so there's just all these
45:00
different things that are so convoluted.
45:03
And it's like at the end of the day though, if you especially
45:07
Bitcoin being off of its, you know, whatever it is 25% off its
45:10
all time highs. Like if you're somebody that's
45:12
dollar cost averaging, that's a great time, you know, and that's
45:16
why I recommend to pretty much anybody that wants to get into
45:18
it is to don't like FOMO buy, you know, a huge chunk like your
45:24
entire allocation right at once, because it could drop 30%, it
45:28
could drop 50%, right? So just set some aside and
45:32
there's plenty of great, you know, custodial services that
45:36
are Bitcoin only, like River and some others that, you know,
45:39
strike. And if you want, you can set up
45:41
a very easy dollar cost average and you can buy a little bit
45:45
everyday and then eventually if you want to move it to cold
45:47
storage, if you get comfortable with that, you can do it.
45:50
But but yeah, it's like a very simple, it's kind of like every
45:53
month I put money away from my kids college.
45:56
They have like a what we call 529 plan here in the US where
45:59
you can put tax deferred dollars into like a little college fund.
46:05
And you know, you can set it up to do whatever 50 bucks a month
46:08
or some small amount and you just kind of set it and forget
46:11
it. And then you look up in 18 years
46:13
after you have a kid and hopefully you've got enough in
46:15
there to pay for a portion of their college.
46:16
I view Bitcoin is kind of the same thing.
46:18
It's like I just, you know, at first I think I made the mistake
46:22
early on and it's all panned out now, but I definitely like FO
46:25
mode in, I've FO mode in before at the top.
46:27
I think anybody that's Bitcoin in Bitcoin long enough has
46:30
right? It's like you start buying it
46:32
whatever 1520 thousand and then it gets to 60 and you start to
46:35
freak out like, oh man, like this is going up way faster than
46:39
I thought. Like I need to buy more.
46:40
And then you spend 2 years with it being down and you're like, I
46:44
should have just like DCAED because I actually would have
46:46
had more Bitcoin had I just like held off in dollar cost average
46:50
instead of like buying at times when it was frothy.
46:52
So that's always my advice to people.
46:54
And this isn't like financial advice to people and do whatever
46:56
they want. But I typically, yeah, I
46:59
typically just, you know, recommend that you just like
47:02
kind of just set up a plan and then stick to it.
47:06
I don't I don't reckon anyone that's got into Bitcoin in the
47:10
last 12 months has has felt that that FOMO they've they've
47:17
probably bought bought Smashboard at the top or
47:21
thereabouts and and seen a drop. But for anyone that's been in
47:26
longer, is this this this sideways grind?
47:28
Is it just is, I guess. I don't know.
47:32
It's just funny. Yeah.
47:33
I don't know if I've got some friends who Smashboard the other
47:37
day and it was like, you can thank me for the drop because I
47:40
just allocated a bunch of a bunch of cash to this thing and
47:46
and now it's dropped. So that's great.
47:48
That happens to everyone that happens to.
47:50
Everyone. Yeah, it does.
47:52
It does for sure. Well, I mean it's like, you
47:57
know, everybody, I think the name of the podcast discovering
48:00
Bitcoin is like you got it. Like I think to sum up a lot of
48:02
this is you kind of got to discover in your own way, figure
48:06
out a way that makes sense for you and and really like the ways
48:10
that it'll. I think it.
48:12
To me, you got to be in it and around it for long enough.
48:15
I mean, there's an education piece of it, but there's also
48:17
just so like. Being in the.
48:19
Asset for a certain period of time.
48:20
I think I've been, oh go a little over 4 years now.
48:24
So I've seen it go from getting into it.
48:28
It's like, you know, 2-3 X thing in value, then dropping back
48:31
down, then again 5X thing again. And I think once you've been
48:35
through kind of that cycle and once you've done all the
48:38
education stuff, it just, it's like that.
48:41
There's lots of gifts and memes, but like the one where, you
48:44
know, Nicolas Cage and his hair is blowing in the wind and
48:47
there's like stuff exploding behind you.
48:49
It's kind of like, well, whatever, Like I've just been
48:51
through this. So yeah, the con air meme, it's
48:53
like you, you step outside and the wind's blowing and it's like
48:56
whatever, OK, Bitcoins down to 95 part of you.
48:59
Once you've been through these cycles, you get kind of excited
49:02
if you have DCA set up 'cause you're like, oh cool, like all
49:04
these, you know, DCA's are going to be buying more now.
49:07
And, and really the money that I've ever, it's not just
49:11
Bitcoin, but retirement savings also.
49:12
I'm traditional retirement savings, but it's kind of stuff
49:15
that you put away and you don't think about your like, hey, this
49:18
is something that in 30 years I'm going to check on it.
49:21
And that's what I told a lot of people.
49:22
I'm like, look, if I'm right and Bitcoin does what I think it'll
49:25
do, then in 25 or 30 years I'm be really happy.
49:29
And if it doesn't pan out, like you said at the beginning of the
49:31
call, it's like, Oh well, it wasn't like some I didn't put
49:33
like my 100% of my net worth. And I know there's people that
49:36
do, but that's how I've always viewed it.
49:38
It's just a long term kind of insurance policy.
49:42
Yeah, yeah, like the best savings account ever, basically.
49:48
Yeah, for sure. When you see it go up.
49:51
Yeah, go ahead. No, continue.
49:53
Yeah, I. Was going to say like when you
49:55
seen it, when you've been in it for long enough, I guess you see
49:58
the power of it. If you're in it for a year and
50:00
it has one of these 25% drops or 50% drop or something, it's real
50:04
easy to like get jaded with it and be like, this is crazy.
50:07
But it the time preference thing, it matters.
50:10
Like if you've been in it for long enough, that's when I think
50:13
you're like, because I have a lot of some of my friends and
50:16
people that got into it around the same time as me.
50:19
And now we just always joke because it's like that first
50:22
bear market you go through, you're like, man, this is just
50:25
brutal. But then after you get on the
50:27
other side of it, you're like, oh, this is just normal.
50:30
And I'm glad that I did that then.
50:32
And it's way more than panned out.
50:35
It just took a couple years, you know?
50:38
Yeah, it, it takes, it takes time.
50:40
You've got to pay the tuition. You do the work.
50:43
Otherwise, yeah, you just it, it it just you, you got to do it.
50:49
You can. It's like, I guess it's like
50:51
maybe it's not. I'm I'm sure it is like showing
50:54
up to a, a gas rig or an oil rig and expecting to get a a net
50:59
result straight off the bat. You have to you have to do the
51:02
work. You have to pay the tuition.
51:03
You have to learn the learn the hard way effectively.
51:07
Yeah, I'm sure there's people that just bought in like the
51:11
very bottom of 22 and have never really lived through it, but
51:15
most people have. Yeah, yeah.
51:20
It is what it is, man. It is what it is.
51:22
Have you, is there any particular things that that have
51:27
opened up your, your eyes, your mind with respect to how the
51:33
world turns or even maybe just yourself as well, like if you've
51:37
learned anything about yourself through this process of
51:41
discovering Bitcoin? I think like how the world turns
51:45
piece of it is interesting to me because it's really made me like
51:49
I touched on a little bit earlier, just try to look
51:51
through Bitcoin as a technology through the eyes of of other
51:57
people. And you know, I think it's if
51:59
you're like I mentioned, if you're somebody that's doesn't
52:01
have options for banking, and I've talked to people in in
52:05
Africa and other countries, like even on my podcast where it's
52:08
like they're using Bitcoin and you're kind of like, man, that's
52:12
crazy. I hadn't thought of it.
52:14
And it's just like you get so grounded in your personal
52:18
perspective, right? Like your own little bubble
52:20
wherever you live. But if you're somebody in one of
52:23
these areas that has a rapidly inflating currency or, you know,
52:28
you don't have the right to have, you know, banking rights
52:32
or even somewhere like China where like, well, flight is such
52:34
a real thing. Like that's why.
52:36
And if you're a wealthy person in China, I've heard from people
52:39
I know and people that are close to folks over there that they go
52:43
buy a nice watch or a nice piece of real estate somewhere else
52:46
because they really want to try to find a way to get their money
52:49
out of out of China. And so you start to think about
52:53
these other places in the world and really, it's not like it's
52:57
billions of people and you put yourself in their shoes and you
53:01
think like, man, this is really powerful to help a lot of
53:04
people. And I think that it's helped me
53:07
get into that frame of mind that I would have never otherwise
53:10
been in, thinking about the issues of other people other
53:14
than maybe like you see a headline or something about some
53:16
country that's going through hyperinflation.
53:18
You're like, oh, that sucks. Then you pass over it.
53:20
But when you spend the time to learn about Bitcoin, I think you
53:22
start to think about all these use cases and then even other
53:26
things that are more tangible to my industry, like the payment
53:30
terms thing, like I'm glad you brought that up earlier because
53:34
this idea that you could get paid instantly for your energy,
53:37
I'm like, man, that's really that's really powerful.
53:40
And I know there's some companies working on setting up
53:42
payment rails on the in the power space and the electricity
53:45
space to utilize Bitcoin and I think specifically the lighting
53:49
network on doing quicker payments.
53:51
So just so many ramifications with that, like credit and all
53:54
these things like if you're, you know, if you're waiting to get
53:58
paid for 60 days or 90 days from a product, there's like credit
54:01
risk there. I mean, there's just all these
54:03
other things that you start to look at the technology with
54:06
Bitcoin and think about how it could solve some real world
54:09
problems. But I mean but the killer.
54:11
Use cases that is just. You know, Fiat, the basement,
54:15
which I think the world is going to continue to see.
54:17
I mean, there's just no way around it.
54:19
Yeah, it's, it's, it's just not you.
54:23
Once you see it, you can't Unsee it.
54:25
And maybe sometimes people refuse to, to look, but you
54:30
know, it's, it's going to happen at some point.
54:33
Yeah, I, I, I don't know, I, I'm not as dramatic as like, I mean,
54:38
we've got $20 loaves of bread over here.
54:41
There's been reported instances of, of $20 loaf of bread.
54:45
So we're close, but we're not the world reserve currency
54:49
either. Yeah, well, it's like insidious.
54:53
I mean the debasement thing happens most of the time.
54:56
It happens slowly, at least if you're the world reserve
54:58
currency. It's not as rapid as some other
55:00
countries, but but over time it's it's like the exact
55:04
opposite of the Bitcoin thing. It's like, like I mentioned, if
55:07
you're in Bitcoin, you wait five years.
55:10
Odds are like if you went to a coma for five years and woke up,
55:12
odds are like it's going to be the Fiat denominated value is
55:16
going to be way higher. And you're like, oh, that's,
55:18
that's a great, that was a great outcome.
55:20
The same thing with like on the Fiat side.
55:23
If you are trying to save up to buy that house that you want to
55:26
buy or to get that thing that you want to get and you save up
55:30
for five years and then you look up and that thing is now 50%
55:34
more expensive. You're like, wow, like it, it's
55:36
just, it happens seemingly slowly, but like over time it
55:40
takes its toll. And that's where like, it's just
55:43
open my eyes a lot, especially around like housing prices.
55:46
I mean, home prices have just gotten so nuts.
55:48
It's like, oh, hey, we'll build that house.
55:50
We'll build that dream house. You know, one day in the future.
55:53
You look up in five years and houses are like almost twice as
55:56
expensive to build a new house and you're like, that's insane.
55:59
Like it is just keeps feeling like it's further and further
56:01
away. And so it's really open my eyes
56:07
around, you know, I'm not saying $1,000,000 isn't a lot of money,
56:10
but I'm, I could tell you like $1,000,000, you know, even 10
56:13
years ago or 20 years ago, like I started my career like 15
56:17
years ago in oil and gas or 16 years ago.
56:20
And what $1,000,000 is worth 16 years ago versus today?
56:24
I mean, you could, you know, there's houses now that are
56:26
like, you know, for $1,000,000, it would have been a huge
56:29
mansion. There's houses now that are
56:31
1,000,000 bucks that are like 3000 square feet.
56:33
Like nice home, but not like a crazy giant mansion on a bunch
56:36
of land. And so I've just even seen it in
56:39
the last 15 years with inflation and what it's done, that that's
56:42
when you really start to like view the world through that lens
56:45
and realize, like, man, this is a treadmill.
56:47
And it just keeps speeding up. Yeah, you're talking to someone
56:52
who lives in the probably the number one country for shitty
56:58
$1,000,000. We call them dog boxes over
57:01
here. You know, people, people buying
57:05
shitty apartments on like one of the lower levels for over
57:08
1,000,000 bucks. And then people tell me that the
57:12
money's not on fire. It's yeah, it's nuts.
57:16
And The thing is like once you once you know that and you.
57:19
But it's hard to communicate that and articulate it,
57:21
particularly to someone who genuinely thinks that, you know,
57:26
if they just, if they buy that shitty new build apartment, it's
57:32
it's going to go up. It's going to double.
57:34
Was it 7% every every seven years or so?
57:37
I don't know. I can't remember there.
57:39
It's, it's a religion over here, man.
57:41
Trust me. There's the it's yeah.
57:45
We we had one year where the house prices went up 25% within
57:49
12 months. That's crazy.
57:52
And I remember thinking, yeah, cool, so I need a 25% pay rise
57:57
or work 25% harder just to get the same thing that I wanted
58:05
last year. That's cool.
58:07
That makes sense, yeah. Well, it's like they say,
58:10
Bitcoin's volatile, but it's like, yes, it's volatile goes up
58:13
and down in Fiat, in Fiat terms. But the US dollar, it only goes
58:18
one way and that's down. Like sure, the exchange rate
58:22
versus a basket of other currencies, the dollar could go
58:24
a little bit up or down that way.
58:26
But in terms of purchasing power and it just goes down over time
58:31
and you just hope that it it goes down slower than it has the
58:35
last five years because the last five years, it's not that those
58:38
houses that you're mentioning are going up in value.
58:40
It's the the value of the currency is going down.
58:42
But that's actually what's happening.
58:43
It's like an illusion that the home is going up in price
58:46
because if you sell that same place.
58:49
It's like our house that we have has gone up, but if I sell it, I
58:52
have to go buy another one and all the other houses have gone
58:55
up too. So did my house really go up in
58:57
price? No, it didn't.
58:59
It's they all went up. And so that way that is just
59:01
like your money just became worth.
59:02
Less. Yeah, it's funny how people
59:05
don't actually understand that. Speaking of, what do you wish
59:10
more people knew about Bitcoin? I think that I wish more people
59:15
knew about the network aspect of it.
59:19
I think that people strictly look at it as like the token and
59:23
the, you know, the the Fiat denominated value of the token
59:28
is kind of like what people's main focus is on, especially
59:31
people that don't know anything about it.
59:33
They're like, oh, what's the price of Bitcoin?
59:35
And it's just all about the token value, but the but the
59:38
network and just how much energy is going into that network to
59:42
uphold it, How much, you know, work that takes in terms of the
59:46
computation power or the amount of energy, the amount of actual
59:49
man hours. It's like that was the issue
59:51
with mining and kind of why we stopped and wound down.
59:53
That entity is like takes. I mean, we used to have the
59:56
scale to make it worth the time spent for, you know, humans have
1:00:01
to go out there and like if, if an ASIC goes down or if the
1:00:04
generator goes down. You have to have people out
1:00:06
there servicing those units. You have to clean them out.
1:00:08
You have to do all these things. And so we think about the scale
1:00:11
of the network and it is truly global and that it has like, you
1:00:16
know, so much redundancy around the different people in the
1:00:20
different countries that are running the network.
1:00:22
It's like that to me. And they say it's not, you know,
1:00:25
people be like, it's not backed by anything.
1:00:27
I'm like, well, it's backed by a ton of energy, a ton of
1:00:30
manpower, people upholding the network.
1:00:32
There's so much that's going into that that makes it this
1:00:35
really decentralized, incredibly stable and just just this
1:00:41
fortified network and just that alone you if you start to
1:00:46
understand that you're like, man, this has value, right?
1:00:48
Like I, I can't tell you what tomorrow that Fiat denominated
1:00:52
value of the token will be, but I can tell you that it does have
1:00:55
value. So I just think that if people
1:00:56
could, you know, learn more about that side of it, they
1:00:59
would their eyes would really be opened around just really what's
1:01:02
upholding this token that everybody seems to be fixated
1:01:05
on? Yeah, yeah, the network's
1:01:07
severely underrated. What does Bitcoin mean to you?
1:01:14
I mean, I think like I've. Touched on it.
1:01:15
You know a lot on here. It's it's, I really think it
1:01:18
means this technology, like I mentioned, it has the ability to
1:01:23
store your your time and effort for the the value that you've
1:01:27
created. You can store it in something
1:01:29
that can't be debased. I think it means a future.
1:01:32
Where finance and really. Just the world's going to be
1:01:36
more interconnected and, you know, bypass the, the
1:01:40
traditional, you know, for example, Western Union and these
1:01:43
things like I think we're seeing the financial community opt into
1:01:47
Bitcoin now and, and, and other things as well, like stable
1:01:50
coins. But just in general, I think
1:01:53
it's shown that it's real. It's real and it's so to me,
1:01:58
it's like it feels a little bit vindicated because I took shit
1:02:01
along the way. And I still probably do from
1:02:03
time to time, but like it feels like it feels like I was right
1:02:09
and that my intuition was correct.
1:02:11
And, and I think it's going to continue to do what I know it's
1:02:15
going to. And that is going to continue to
1:02:16
get the network's going to continue to get stronger.
1:02:18
And I think over time it'll continue.
1:02:19
To go up in price. Right on, Max Thanks so much man
1:02:24
for spending some scarce time finding energy telling us the
1:02:27
tale of how you discovered Bitcoin.
1:02:30
It's been a pleasure to have you on, man.
1:02:32
I appreciate it. Thanks for having me.