TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #325: Texas beef and decentralizing the food supply with Texas Slim, Cole Bolton, and Parker Lewis

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Join Marty as he sits down with Texas Slim, Cole Bolton and Parker Lewis to discuss the decentralization of our food supply. Get Tickets to The Beef Initiative Conference Learn more about The Beef Initiative Purchase meat from K and C Cattle Follow Texas Slim on Twitter Follow Parker Lewis on Twitter Shoutout to our sponsors: Unchained Capital Braiins HodlHodl

What is up, Freaks? It's your boy, Marty Bent, here to introduce this rip of TFTC. Sat down for a person pod today. Texas Slim, Cole Bolton from KNC Cattle Ranch here in Austin, Texas, and Austin's own future mayor, Parker Lewis, talking about the Beef Initiative Conference in Kerrville, Texas this weekend. If you can get there, get there. The beefinitiative.com. Beefinitiative.com.

one of those you should be able to find it important stuff going on right now guys your problems aren't going to be fixed by the politicians we're going to have to fix it ourselves the beef initiative is doing great things

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let me talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean that's part of the bull case for bitcoin if you're not paying attention you probably should be probably should be the studio is a lot different than the last time you guys were here man this is awesome it's really really good it's a very good use of space yeah we were bumping knees in the corner over there by the way we were yeah it felt kind of 70s to me yeah it was but this is much this is a step up what does this feel feng shui feng shui yeah feng shui master right here

yeah it took us a little bit but i learned that parker lewis is one of the most anal retentive people i've ever met in my life when we were organizing this studio i just want your studio to be beautiful it is beautiful thank you do you wake up at night having anxiety because of his anal retardedness no i did we were sprinting for the bitcoin takeover and the week leading up to that there was a lot of pressure to get it done we got it done it looks wonderful sometimes you just need that uh galvanizing force to bring things together yeah and that's what we're here to talk about is a galvanizing force uh curvil texas this saturday the beef initiative conference we're here to talk and continue the conversation we've been having since what

october november yeah first of october i believe was the first time we spoke yeah and um we've got the first beef initiative conference this weekend things are going crazy around the world we're bringing parker in because parker's been getting very passionate about this particular subject and again i told you guys i want to start with you parker because you seem to have a sense of urgency in regards to the food issue that seems to be growing you are getting very passionate about it um which is not surprising but it's just like it's been interesting to watch you be like yo we need to secure our beef yeah i think i think about it in a broader context i mean i think first off marty you interviewed slim in your old studio on the porch um must have been january

february maybe brought him back before then it was like november yeah it was it was it was the fall so yeah and then um you guys uh both cole and slim recorded in the studio um before it had the you know the progressive feng shui but uh then uh slim had organized an event with cole at cooper's and you know it's a kind of a combination got a chance to sit down with with both i'd spoken on the phone with Slim before, but then spoke with Cole and Slim over in our office and then went to that event. And I think on the Bitcoin side, we recognize that there's a lot screwed up about the money and there's a lot screwed up in terms of the broader financial system, but that it is the money and the money printing that creates economic instability and fragility. And that

I think a lot more people are feeling that on a day-to-day basis just through a lot of the things that are happening in the world, economic unrest, seeing here at home out of control inflation, and that kind of my framework of thinking about Bitcoin fix the money, that a lot of other things get fixed as well, but that there are really three foundational goods to an economic system. there are ultimately more than three but that money food and energy are at the center of all of it and that we've been helping to run the hughes and bitcoin meetup it's like i have i think it's an imperative to get the energy industry to understand bitcoin because we've got to continue to get oil out of the ground natural gas out of the ground and get power and energy resources to market but just as important to that is food um and when we had the event at cooper's um not only getting a chance to hear both slim and cold talk but also you know after that event bought a couple steaks from coal over the lightning network and then went out uh after the bitcoin takeover we

bought steak uh you know probably 40 pounds of meat that we cooked up for a bunch of bitcoiners but when i think about the importance of it it is you see things happening in china you see things happening in um in peru there's a lot of unrest all over the world and that it makes a whole lot of sense to eliminate a lot of the unnecessary layers between us and our food suppliers and that not not to be a prepper but i do think that there are obvious and critical points of fragility and instability in supply chains and if you can remove unnecessary layers and go directly to the source and um and i think that it is also important that we help educate people like cole on bitcoin and he's he's educated himself but that more people like it and that's what this

weekend's about uh but it's also the reverse it's educating bitcoiners on the importance of the work that people like Cole and Slim are doing. And then the reverse is also true, helping them understand Bitcoin because people that don't have Bitcoin are going to get wrecked. And we want the people that have critical aspects of our food supply chain

to be able to continue to get that to us directly. They deliver a value to us and we can deliver a value to them. It's a very symbiotic relationship. And we need the Bitcoiners and the cattle ranchers all to come out to Kerrville this weekend. Yeah. And one thing you said there is

like cutting out unnecessary layers of the food supply like actually getting closer to the source and getting closer to the source of the sea but that's honestly like one thing that has been extremely powerful since not only the conversations that we've had but since you've been going on the rounds and many podcasts in your own is go shake your rancher's hand like that's a meme that has really picked up and i've just seen it on twitter people tagging me and being like yeah i went and shook my rancher's hand this weekend. Like it's, it seems like you're having an impact and the momentum is just growing towards Saturday and beyond. Well, it's kind of funny whenever you say something like that, it's so simple, but what it is, it's, it can be very complex with people's

belief systems or their access to human contact or understanding about, you know, what a rancher does, who a rancher is. And it creates a conversation that people seem to be that they're they're really attaching themselves to because whenever you do go shake your rancher's hand for one you're going to meet somebody that's pretty impressive two you're going to understand that the rancher is actually they've been a hell of a lot more decentralized than we as bitcoiners are and that they can teach us a lot so there's a lesson to be learned into shaking that rancher's hand and if people are ready to start having you know human relationships again and you know a lot people got caught into this virtual digital space and so what it does it brings a human aspect to

everything and once that happens you're going to understand that there's a new market access to human contact and to your food so it really comes together pretty organically and you know holistically that's been around forever yeah and from the ranchers perspective when we went through my cut sheet was that two or three weeks ago for i just bought a half cattle from knc and one thing you mentioned on the phone is that the retail demand is so strong that you're you're able to not that you wanted to but you're able to support more retailers as opposed to wholesalers and that's better for your business and probably a good sign that more individuals are getting into this type of interaction with their ranchers yeah and i mean that's exactly what what my direction

and my position is with the Beef Initiative and with the Bitcoin network, it's been a network of people that have been extremely supportive and they've been spreading the word and telling more and more people. But what's happening now is we're getting constant, constant purchases.

I met with a guy Saturday. They've bought a couple of what's called our freezer builders. They're like an eighth of a cow. They've bought two already. And I'm like, hey guys, have y'all tried a half? Went through how much space it takes.

It's going to save you money. And then I was like, hey, by the way, because of the Lightning Network. Now you can pay me in Bitcoin. Bam, done. And they were super stoked about it, but they're trying every daggum cut that we can offer. And what we've watched is it's just continued to build

even to the network of people that aren't in Bitcoin. And so this is a starting point to introduce them to the importance of Bitcoin and everything it stands for. But aside from that, we're getting more and more traction and people just taste the difference. It's a different taste profile. It's a different methodology behind it, but we're not reinventing the wheel. We're just bringing it right back to the consumer.

And the biggest change is by aging beef. It does wonders. It does wonders to your palate, and it does wonders in the way in which you cook it. You're not seeing your hamburger shrink from 16 ounces to 7. It's a whole lot different. And I think a lot of people are just getting excited, hopefully as much as I am. our business has grown we've been very blessed and very fortunate because of being able to be a part of podcasts like yours and and work with parker and y'all's network it's been astronomical

well parker and i have been having a lot of fun whipping up some of the different cuts what was the last one we did the leftover from the takeover and we cooked up a sirloin yeah we did a full primal ribeye roll after the takeover and then i think two tenderloins and then leachman brought down elk and bison so it wasn't wasn't 100 bitcoin bought but um but yeah i think a couple weeks ago we fired up that that full sirloin it was fucking delicious we did it right over the fire um in my backyard and it was you were surprised at how tender it was yeah it was phenomenal yeah and and i honestly look at it and again i it's not from a prepping sense but like that idea of shaking your rancher's hand like i want to have a relationship with cole and i want to figure

out how i can be helpful to him he could be helpful to me but that you know back at the you know kind of covid lockdown things people things started getting scarce on uh on store shelves and even if they're not getting scarce you can you can physically see the degradation in the quality of the product at the same time that the price is going up and if i have a relationship with cole and if you have a relationship with your rancher that you're going to be taken care of that you're, you're a phone call away. And if you take care of good people, they will take care of good. They will take care of you. And it's, it's a, I care less about price and I care about making sure that, um, that I'm, you know, like there is a self

selfish component to it. It's, um, you know, look after, make sure that if things do become economically less stable, um, that you have those relationships and that, uh, that it is symbiotic And that if you make that investment of time, like if we help ranchers like Cole understand Bitcoin, their balance sheets are going to be preserved through the degradation of money. And they're going to be able to accumulate more heads of cattle. They're going to be able to accumulate more acreage. And that's incredibly important in times of economic uncertainty and instability. Yeah, which it seems like are upon us. I mean, when you talk about, uh, Russia, Ukraine, wheat's not getting, uh, out of that area

here in the U S our, our wheat crops are, or what the last number was like 30% are good or in good condition last year was something like 53%. It's shit. Um, you know, hell, even our grass crop is terrible. I was telling Slim, you know, we were fortunate. You can see a huge difference right now, especially for people that practice regenerative. When you're doing rotational grazing with animals, we've had, I think, a quarter inch in the last eight weeks in Austin, which is well below our norm. And so I have pastures I haven't had cattle in in eight weeks that actually has grass.

But, you know, I'm having to rotationally graze and kind of pray that it starts to rain because it's going to get even more challenging. when you're talking about or parker you were talking about shortages in the food supply it's not necessarily that we don't have beef available the problem is is you're going to see a glut hit the market again because people like right now when when you have no rain it's not just us the west coast has been in a drought colorado in certain spots has been in drought the panhandle it's a whole nother monster and then all of central texas i mean hell it's burning up and and it's really dry. So what happens is we start to thin our herds.

Well, the first thing you do is you take your old cows out. They're the ones that are going to be hardest to carry from body condition. So you start killing them. Most people don't realize most of the ground beef that you eat at restaurants, that's coming off a 13, 14, 15 year old cow. Well, the problem is we've already done that.

COVID killed a lot of them. So now ranchers are even going to the younger, the oldest of the younger part of their cows, right? So we're harvesting them. we're turning it into ground beef we're sending out to the restaurants and the the balance between your your calf crop that is what you get your your steaks and all your good cuts out of versus your utility meats is going to start to shift and be out of balance so then either a beef is going to have to get it really expensive because now our herd sizes have dropped they've dropped almost 10

percent or c someone could inevitably manipulate the market which god forbid they've been doing for three to four years now so it could poison how they've been manipulating it um i can go into a long-winded answer with that but long story short our hacker who who harvests the cattle that we take i i send them 30 steers in theory they take them they harvest them they're making anywhere from 800 to at one point during COVID, almost $1,200 a head. And as a rancher, when you take out all of my costs to get that animal to that point to harvest in the commercial side of the ledger, I was making six, $700. And when you figure on a volume basis, most people, the average herd size is 14. So you put in a whole year's worth of work. You can do the math on that

to make what eight nine thousand dollars that shit doesn't make any sense oh let me throw in labor on top of that and if you figure labor i worked for a negative margin now my herd size isn't 14 i'm much larger um and and i keep investing in in more and more and more and trying to better our herd but it basically took any incentive for the average person that bought of ranchette West Austin to own 10 cows, it took their ability to make any money out of it. So it just had to be a glorified hobby, just like buying a ski boat. All sounds great, but now let's just say the traditional model. Hey, historically, you could go buy a round bell around Austin for 85, 90 bucks. This year, if we don't start getting rain, not to mention traditional fertilizers

through the roof, you're probably looking at 140 to 150 per bale. And one cow is going to go through it every two to three weeks. So you put the money together, they're going to be at significant losses. And so, yeah, we've been at the mercy of someone else telling us what our products were. So even when our input costs were getting higher, they weren't paying up for that product. Instead, they were actually paying down and taking all the profits away from us. That's how I got into this business and that's why I'm ready to change it. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like it needs to change, especially when you mentioned hay going up because of the rain shortages that are leading to less hay and then fertilizer and diesel. Let's dive into those specifically. How

bad is that? I mean, we've been hearing that it's pretty bad, but you guys are closer to that scene. And how bad is it? Well, everybody knows the global stance on the fertilizer. The thing about fertilizer is it's going to be very inflated in the United States no matter what. And that's something that Cole gets to see, you know, every day. As far as it really affecting the United States on the side moving forward, that's yet to be seen. But the one thing there is, there's always contingency plans with somebody like Cole, what he's doing. We had a great conversation today.

and it was basically you know within regenerative farming another thing people have to understand is the fertilizer really you know it's something that you're not dependent on as much and so you take away these little touch points of vulnerability like Parker was talking about there's so much creativity within this type of system that comes at you as far as coal and the regenerative you know the beef initiative things that happen like this on a global scale we only get bigger and stronger because of it because we're proactive and we're keeping our you know our fingers on the pulse of what really is going on and but i don't want to speak for cole because he hears it every day as far as the fertilizer like locally you know within the state and then across the

united states you know i think i'd hate to try to quote fertilizer on the cast because god forbid it changes every two days like they're making us lock in and your bids only as good for 24 hours but a few weeks ago fertilizer i just was shopping around just just to get nosy and see where we're at so a year ago fertilizer would have cost about 200 bucks a ton um two weeks ago is it 1150 dollars holy shit so 550 inflation when you ever bit and so what you have is you have a lot of traditional commercial guys or hobby ranchers that historically have grown their own hay well hell this year they're not going to put out fertilizer um and then you have guys that have historically just for grazing purpose have put out just a light amount of fertilizer this year

they're not there's the math does not work so you're going to see hay costs go up and then furthermore just because of fertilizer but then you add in the the lack of of rainfall and it's just going to make it harder and harder and so i think you know for me this year what we did we went in and we, uh, we tear gated, um, I can't even tell you how many acres and, and we've gone in and done that. Uh, we're allowing, you know, the natural compost process to take place. We went in with, I took these big, huge tractor tires, chained them together, pulled them behind a truck. And I started scattering all the cow shit everywhere, uh, just to take our old piles of pastures that historically, um, you know, had just been grazed on and really driving that back

into the soil and for the pastures that were able to get rains we're seeing a significant change it's really funny we actually put a bunch of compost that was given to us on one pasture it's got a bunch of johnson grass and johnson grass isn't your perfect hay choice but you can look at that pasture as you drive right by tesla everything's freaking brown or it's just it's choking and the damn johnson grass is almost you know two feet tall but it's all compost and it's amazing what it does the fertility in the soil so more and more people are starting to catch on and i think it'll make a difference this year it's going to be challenging for all producers um it's it's going to get hard yeah with this in mind though like how hard is it

to like attain like a significant scale of farmers using compost or manure regenerative practices how quickly could they scale up to like this year may be hard could it be less hard next year or it could be less hard next year with better rainfall um you know the hardest thing is people are no different y'all been to the ranch i mean we took a rock quarry that if y'all went now you'll see cattle all by the road too. Um, and so what we've done is, is been able to go in plant and reseed and I'm rotating as much as I can, but I only have so much acreage right there. If I want to keep growing, I either got to find more leases or find other ways to grow my herd, uh, either, you know, with, with other, I've been fortunate. I have a good friend that,

that, uh, has thousands of acres that I'm leasing or that I'm paying for my cattle to be on at different times. Right now I'm not having to, but I will here in the near future. And so being able to find those outlets for other producers is going to be key. Or, you know, here's another thing with regenerative. You can take it a whole nother level where you're moving cattle every two to three hours, but with average herd size of 14, you can't make a living anyway doing that. So it don't matter if you want to practice regenerative, you're going to have to have another job because 14 cows won't pay for itself right so we've got to get them connected with more and more producers and joint forces uh to be able to really streamline this process and is that part

of the beef initiatives goal right now yeah it's always been kind of the goal from the beginning it's just something that you slow step into and kind of educate you know within talking to cole and a lot of other ranchers you know jason rick of rick ranches up there in colorado uh j uh justin up in the panhandle everybody has this philosophy that it's hard for people to grasp kind of like what we just talked about the importance of fertilizer the importance of the seed the source of the seed of how we're getting here to where we are so we said we need to start talking about the vertical integration into our food supply so it starts with the soil then it goes to the grass then it goes to the cow of course then the producer then a producer to the processor to

the processor to supplier to market access to the consumer us basically once we can start telling that story of every one of those touch points you know he was cole's talking about how easy is it for somebody to transfer kind of into cole's protocol well we haven't talked about that that much but that's exactly where we're going with this as far as the beef initiative people going to come through it's going to be a gateway to be able to do things you know you you look at certain people and they don't understand basically what food is for starting, you know, what are we talking about here? We're talking about dense animal protein. We're talking about something that comes from the earth, from the minerals, and it comes from something that is

a protocol that these guys have mastered. So everybody in the cattle industry, you know, they get, there's some people in the cattle industry that gets a bad rap, you know, because they're under this umbrella of maybe Monsanto and Bayer. They're doing what they're basically taught you know this is how they were educated and it's it's through time that they've basically been captured by this chemical industry apparatus so let's look at that and say okay well they're still freaking ranchers you know they're still trying to do a job and guess what they're starting to point their compass in a different direction the reason they haven't is that i've seen is that we didn't have that vertical integration philosophy and kind of chart that we can kind of say we got

you covered here at the soil we got you covered here at the grass we got you covered here at the cow and now we got you covered with the producer we've got a protocol guess what now beef initiative and oh and a couple other people in state of texas we're ready to say we got the processing centers now so what is that doing well that's now allowing us to be suppliers and we've just created a new market access that the rancher that is kind of trapped in that apparatus they can say hell i'm going to go over here and do this because i'm going to know my customer they're going to come shake my hand yeah and when you were describing this to me the last time we spoke it had to be right before miami so like three weeks ago yeah now at this point like you guys

are competing at like a certification level correct like it's going to be yes and people you're going to be an option up there with the traditional processors that that people can oh yeah 100 i mean you know that goes into knowing the law knowing the certifications uh cole knows him like the back of his hand he probably started learning when he was seven about the type of certifications are out there in ag and ranching so there's there is a roadmap there and we've created the on-ramp and you know we're making you know making sure that the beef initiative is that gateway and that's going to give a lot of damn empowerment and confidence to not only to the rancher to the grass producers to the animal producers everything is going to give it to the

consumers and one of the things that thing that i'm seeing the most is how excited people get about it because not only you know is your nutrition levels just you know improving a thousand percent your lifestyle is changing a thousand percent you know your money system you get to where you know we're talking about sound money sound health sound communications for a sound future and it's all tying together and a lot of it's been because of the beef initiative because i went and shook this guy's hand so and that's the beautiful thing about this is that it's not hard it's just you got to put a little intentionality to it and you got to go up there and have some good conversations and that's why this has been very rewarding very fast and

comes time for the conference we are going to have a call to action to tell people and they're going to basically take away if they want to have food security for the next 10 years pay attention to the beef initiative so what can we expect this week well how are the at first before we get like what is going to happen on saturday like how are the ranchers how have they been uh what's their perception to the idea of the beef initiative and this conference specifically like intermingling with bitcoiners right banner like hey why are we doing this i'll give my perspective from the beef initiative guy and well call is a beef initiative guy too but he's you He's the rancher.

But what you see, I'm up in the panhandle, and that's a different beast up there. We have a lot of different types of ranchers in the panhandle. The grass is robust in different ways. So those ranchers up there, some of them don't want anything to do with me. And that's understandable. I get it. They're making a level. You've got towns called Hereford, Texas, and it's got four of the major global processors in that town.

they've got something going on there but then you got justin you know trammell of tear bloom where you know he's loving everything that happens he opened up his processing center he is everything of that vertical integration i was telling you about so people are starting to look at him other ranchers are starting to talk to him people are asking him hey how do we do a processing center here in the state of texas so you're going to get a lot of it in the beginning some people told me get the hell off their damn land is what they did but now you're starting to see an adoption and whenever i had somebody out in california he's he's ranching out in california and he we're continuing talks he said i cannot believe how how familiar each of us are as far as the

bitcoiners and the ranchers he goes i had no idea so the reception's been kick-ass as far as bring bridging that gap of understanding of the cultures but everybody's operating on the same damn ethos they just don't know it yet yeah that's very similar to how you described your interaction with Bitcoin or something in the past. And so, Parker, how can, like, I think you, we've discussed it in the past,

Slim and I, Cole and I, Slim, Cole and I, but I don't think anybody can articulate what Bitcoin can do for somebody's balance sheet business and the future of their business. Then you can like,

how would you describe Bitcoin's ability to help ranchers specifically with what they're doing i mean ultimately i don't i don't think it's unique to ranchers but i think that what i've experienced going all over the state country explaining bitcoin to people it is on one hand people whose labor you know when coal's pricing out you know the cost of a head of cattle and then adding in labor that um that not only do they feel most directly their money not working for them and and there's certain things that are uncontrollable cole's talking about we're in a drought you know just the actual production of hay is less so that's going to have

a natural um you know kind of impact on general prices but if that's happening at the same time when your government's printing a shit ton of money and that producer's costs are going up because it's not just things that come directly from the land, that ultimately people's time is scarce and that their proof of work to be able to deliver goods and services to market is tied ultimately to their time.

And if they do not have a form of money that aligns incentives and that is equally as scarce as their time, that they're constantly going to be on a hamster wheel. And that is ultimately going to lead to ruin. This will ultimately going to lead to their inability to get goods to market. And so I think that

when I think about what it means to ranchers is it means ultimately finding a form of money and finding ultimately a group of people that can help them understand that money that aligns all economic incentives. And when they do that, uh it's not just you know like first and foremost is going to protect their balance sheet right uh and and what that balance sheet really is is just storing the value that they've produced up to

a point in time um if the value that they've produced up until a point in time deteriorates which it is deteriorating when a you know bushel of or a barrel hay cost goes from 100 to 150 or a ton of 20 to 110 200 uh well or 200 to 1100 yeah that was that was fertilized but it was like 80 to 150 right yeah that that is your dollar deteriorating that is that is that is not all just a magical fact of us being in a drought um and that the more that people can understand that there is this alternative that they don't have to continue to opt into this economic system that works in opposition to their interests um the better it is for them and it just so happens that they're a really critical foundational part of the economy that most people take for granted

and that if bitcoiners can spend their time educating a group of people um there aren't many more important people than people that are supplying their food um so i think in terms of the investment and this this kind of good and and very um symbiotic investment of time um will extend beyond just food but but but i think it like to me it's food and energy um those those are the two most critical i'd rather you know spend my time helping people understand um understand bitcoin that are critical to the things that we consume in our day-to-day lives rather than you hedge fund investors in new york city yeah no it's it's funny money food energy and you were talking about vertical integration and we've i've told you i don't know if i've talked probably about

this on the podcast but i've got a mining operation up in northern tennessee and it's like off-grid we call it moonshine mining up in appalachia but you go up to the the hut we bought a hut from steve barber you have miners in a hut pulling off an abandoned natural gas well and there's cows just eating off the land right around it and like when you talk about vertical integration oh yeah not only can you do it from like the ranting perspective but if you have land natural gas on it or energy like you can control your money your food and your energy in one spot which is like crazy to think when you talk about like the hyper decentralized energy money world that ross stevens described in his newsletter a couple years ago like it is very much possible

today and i can see it coming together not only with the beef dish but i feel like the beef initiative uh and ranchers with who have energy on their land are going to collide with the mining industry and you're going to have like this crazy closed loop i'm waiting for it you know because especially here in texas in tennessee it's always great you know in tennessee and texas get along really well but the thing about uh the the combination of energy and land and cattle ranchers in um in the state of texas there's a lot of ranchers that are land managers you know they have access to land well they you know sometimes they have pipelines going through their land they have those gas wells on their land you get all that over you know the top of

texas up in the panhandle there's tons of natural gas up there and so what has not happened yet is that basically understanding that case study with what it is and how to accomplish it once these guys have got the education and they kind of understand it on a little bit deeper level that's going to come like floodgates it will open up well and think what that does for society you say get to the sources source of the seed all the time like you're distributing the food supply energy to a certain extent you're democratizing not democratizing but you're distributing against many more smaller producers uh and then you're using that energy to to create sound money or not create it but facilitate it and secure it and if you're taking the power away from these large

food conglomerates these large bank banking institutions and the large energy producers at the end of the day because you empower the little guy to actually utilize all those resources uh bitcoin may be like the final piece of that puzzle uh particularly mining well then that's That's the most important thing for everybody to understand is, and we always go back to this, and this is a good way to understand value within the ranching, and I'm going to let Cole kind of, after I finish this little statement, is that you go up to somebody that produces animals, and say, let's say produces cattle, and you say, where's the value of that cow?

You can't, nobody can say anymore. You cannot say where the value of that cow is. um it's changed throughout the history especially in texas in the late 1878 all the way up until here the value changed from the land to you know the land itself to the cow itself to commodity prices to grains to you know all kinds of different factions a lot of times it's in the usda insurance policy whenever we say that it's all right we're going to put the the value of that cow back into the cow and we have a protocol we have kind of a case study that we want to talk to you about and we're going to tell you the why the why the bitcoin and why that this is possible and why we

know it's possible because we understand what you have gone through and why you do what you do let's talk about that let's open up this conversation and once we do that in in one thing that the beef initiative has to do is we are and i'll talk about this a little bit later is providing the rancher the the sound education that they haven't received yet because they don't understand the why behind it so you know as far as that is concerned you know cole's got you know just as much to comment about that as i do because he understands it and he you know he he was fast to you know the clarity of the possibilities you know i've been i've been fortunate because i came into bitcoin and probably i mean yeah i wish i would have came in 10 years ago but i came in

still at a good time so just talking about some of the slight increases uh parker that you were going on. You know, one of my arguments or not arguments, one of my sell points to other ranchers for Bitcoin has been like, look, I was selling beef, sold a half, right? For 1500 in December or November. And I think Bitcoin was at 38,000. So now I'm looking at three, $400 in growth by leaving it in Bitcoin. So, you know, there are times where unfortunately I have to turn to Fiat with my company. I try not to, but my diversity, I'm not at 100% right now. But for me, I was able to withstand inflation. And now I've also been able to withstand potential losses that I had down the road by leaving it in Bitcoin. Because two weeks ago, we were looking at 46,000, 48,000

Bitcoin. Well, I took that time to take some of those earnings that I had to do to pay for my operating. But holy crap, it appreciated in value for me. I wasn't losing money on my dollar. In fact, I made up some of the costs. I've been taking a butt kicking on for a while. So for other producers, I look at it on a much broader basis. I say, okay, most producers don't have a 401k. A lot of ranchers don't have retirement. Retirement is the real estate. And a lot of folks have that mentality. In old school West Texas in the panhandle or in South Texas, it's I have pump jacks, that's my retirement. For those that don't have that luxury, this is where I would encourage how we can try to build their own personal wealth, their own security. Better yet,

maybe finally have some retirement besides just the land. And for me, that's where Bitcoin really stepped in. Or hey, better yet, guess what? Hopefully in the next couple of years, you also have an engine to where you can trade trade land with bitcoin and there are a lot of things coming it's a perfect time to launch it it's it's aligned really really well but no different than us you know bitcoiners want to stack stat or sats producers we want to start stacking our our production level we want to start stacking our calves our calf crop we want to start stacking and quit just being cowboys or just ranchers. We want to be farmers.

And there's so many other things that we can stack up that aligns perfectly with Bitcoin. Yeah, and I think that, you know, when I think about this weekend, because I do want to hear kind of, I've talked to someone about this, but his goals for specifically Kerrville, but then broader kind of bringing

these two communities together, but also helping people understand exactly what will be going on on Saturday, but that someone is not ever going to store their wealth in Bitcoin without understanding. If you do not understand why Bitcoin stores value over time and you only interact with it on the TV screen where it looks like it's a stock trading like any other financial asset, you will never want to, or you will never be in a position to be able to sell your goods and services directly for Bitcoin. But if you start to acquire that

knowledge of why bitcoin stores value over time why it is a better form of money um it's the idea i wrote about and bitcoin is the great definancialization you you can just be that rancher you can be that farmer and you can put it in a form of money that aligns incentives with you aligns in that that that element of time is scarce and bitcoin is finitely scarce there will only ever be 21 million and that when you start to see people like cole where it's like oh i can actually go across town and take stake take whole primals and you take half a cow marty and convert it directly for bitcoin you also help people understand outside of that circle you can't go do that with treasuries you can't go do that with uh real estate you can't go do that with

apple stock there is something fundamentally different about this economic good called money and and bitcoin is simply a superior form of that but it's difficult to understand and you have to do work to be able to understand it. And that's what I hope to achieve this weekend. Yeah, and the conferences, I never planned to do that. As far as one thing I did see though, was that we had to get the awareness of education. We had to define what the whys are

because we can go around all day long and say, you take Bitcoin, why don't you take Bitcoin? People don't understand the why behind this. What we're bringing to the conference is the why is there to be finished? of why do we have to have a new form of food intelligence? Because every one of those touch points right now,

as far as our food intelligence, as far as supply chain lines to the chemicals that are putting into it and everything. Well, the conference is going to explain that. We're going to have doctors at the conference that are going to speak to the why of pure animal protein is the best form of nutrition that you can feed your children and yourselves.

How do you get out of a food ditch? How do you do that? How do you get that sound health that I talked about? we're going to of course talk about sound money i mean even cole's a vp of a banker and then we've got you know all the bitcoiners you have parker coming and speaking so we're going to have that sound money discussion well once we get past the sound health with the you know nutrition and the doctors then we're going to go into sound communications i mean you know that's something where i come in as far as the networking skills that we have to develop the type of technology

you know knowing adam you know podcasting 2.0 kind of where everything's going with that that decentralization of communication, which everybody's going to leave that conference going, well, shit, I have a call to action to change my life and I'm going to start with the source, the seed of my nutrition. And providing that education in this type of form, the conference,

because they're going to be national conferences. We're going to have the one in Kerrville, starting in Texas. We're going to have one out in Colorado in July with Jason Rick of Rick Ranches. And then we're going to have in September, I've talked to Will Harris. We're going to be out at White Oak Pastures in Georgia, South Georgia.

And then so all that narrative that we're building throughout the year, people are going to see, hey, there is something going on here. And it touches every one of those touch points in my life that I know I need to be improving on. There is education out there to be able to achieve this. And there's on ramps now because I'm meeting the right people to do this. And so at the end of the year, really, if you look at what Cole and I and Jason and I all had the same conversation within a week and it's been a couple of months. But with that

vertical integration is that we, what we're really doing is as far as a group and as far as the initiative itself, the association of people that we're putting together, we're, we're creating a new American health initiative with that health initiative. The American rancher is leading that health initiative. And that's the beautiful thing about that, that we can stand up because we have the doctors telling us that we're right we had the money guys telling us or you know we're right the communication everybody can understand that within this decentralized thought process that we're bringing with these conferences you're the health initiative the united states is always been led by the american rancher and that gets away from all the deception the corruption the

misinformation and it creates a narrative across the country in one in less than 12 months that it's going to make some changes and people are going to come along and they're going to want to come see Parker. They're going to want to come see Cole. They're going to come and want to see you talk because, you know, every one of y'all are bringing the expertise

and that's what the Beef Initiative has done is brought all this together. Well, I think I can't stress the importance of, we live in a digital world, obviously, but getting in person and shaking people's hands and congregating to talk about a specific subject in person. We see it with Bitcoin, with Bitcoin meetups, like what you do here,

what we do here at the commons with bit devs like you guys running bit devs through covid we we yes i was running but what but like meeting in person like it creates this this word of mouth reaction and then you've seen all these bitcoin meetups pop up across the world because people are saying oh these these guys had so much fun these guys and gals had so much fun when they met up in person they were talking about bitcoin it seems like they were more productive uh interactions happen people meet in person and they go do deals afterwards like i i think this first conference on saturday is going to be a pivotal moment because it'll just maybe maybe not everything's an official beef initiative meet up moving forward but it'll it will invigorate people

to be like all right i want to do something in my local town to to educate people about going shaking their rancher's hands like it creates this like viral effect that does have profound effects it's crazy what you've done well the only way this could have been done is in the bitcoin space 100 and everybody needs to understand why do you say that because we're willing to make that change we're ready for innovation we we understand i tell everybody you know bitcoin exposes the truth because whenever you start leading with truth and you're you don't rely on the on the manipulation of media and advertising marketing and all that i knew that i had to start within Bitcoin community because the word of mouth networking, the type of people that want

to go out to the meetups and everything, this is grass fed and grassroots. Everybody needs to understand that this is, you know, everything that has happened up with the beef initiative right now has been done with very little capital. It's just done with people coming out and volunteering and helping me out. And so that's why I knew it was going to be successful, you know, meeting you, of course, in the early days and then meeting Adam, you know, how he, he, you know, with the no agenda you have producers we're having producers in the beef initiative now you know it's value for value exchange and we understand that as bitcoiners and so that's going to be the power behind this and when i say everything i just said was i talking about bitcoiners what

i'm talking about ranchers that's a question people are going to start understanding that holy shit it's the same thing so that's the beauty of it yeah and marty would i'll just you know kind of we're talking about like there is irrelevance and importance of people getting together um it's not just shaking your rancher's hand it's about people coming together when you put a lot of good people together in the same room can't exactly predict what's going to happen but good things are going to happen and that's our philosophy here at the bitcoin commons you know where we're recruiting uh recording this episode but you know tomorrow and the next day jimmy song is leading a programming class here we've got bit devs um on thursday night we'll go out to

curvil on saturday next week is the houston meetup one of my favorite things about the houston meetup is putting bitcoiners in the room with oil and gas people that that it is a different you've been there it's a different vibe than here in austin bit devs austin bit devs is probably the largest bitcoin developers meet up in the world um houston is a is a unique environment and i think that's what we're going to create, you know, not just here in the state of Texas, but putting the ranching community together with the Bitcoin community. And that, you know, my hope is that, you know, Bitcoiners will listen to this podcast and they'll come into BitDevs. And then two days later, they'll drive out to Kerrville and see what's happening here. Because even if they're not from

the state of Texas, they'll learn something. But hopefully Bitcoiners from all over the state will come out to Kerrville. If you haven't been to Kerrville, I haven't been to Kerrville in probably 15 years but i used to go quite frequently i'm looking forward to getting out to the texas hill country um but but particularly to bring together the bitcoin community with with the ranching community yeah my brother was just in here before we started recording and you were telling me about the drive out yeah well that's why i mean there was everybody asked me why curville i was like well have you ever driven to curville from austin and you know there's so many opportunities to get from curville to austin to curville that people don't know and whenever i used to live in austin

You know, I moved here when I was young and, uh, you know, that, that drive out there in any direction, 71, you know, 290, you get out to 20, 281. There's so much out in the hill country that people do not afford themselves. So I wanted to do about a two hour distance. And that has to be Kerrville because the thing about Kerrville is the Guadalupe river runs through it. It's out in the hill country. It's a fantastic drive.

You get to go through Fredericksburg. You can go out to places like Lucanbach, Texas. You can go through Mason. You can go through Llano.