TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #371: In-Person Maximalism with Rod Bitkite

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Join Marty as he sits down with Rod to discuss Bitcoin Park, building businesses, and the trials of mining. Follow Rod on Twitter Follow Bitcoin Park on Twitter Listen to Builders In Bitcoin Join the Bitcoin Park Discord Shoutout to our sponsors: Unchained Capital Braiins HodlHodl Upstream Data TFTC Merch is Available: Shop Now Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel Clips YT Channel Website Twitter Instagram Follow Marty Bent: Twitter Newsletter Podcast

what's up freaks it's your boy marty here to introduce this rip of tftc i sat down with my good friend rod bitkite co-founder of the bitcoin park in nashville tennessee host of builders and bitcoin podcast where he sits down with builders and bitcoin to talk about what they're building why they're building it how they approach the business aspect of it He's maintaining Bitcoin TV. He's a Bitcoin miner. Very underrated Bitcoiner. I'm ecstatic I was finally able to get on this side of the camera.

He's doing a lot behind the scenes, especially for the Nashville community. Our good friend Matt O'Dell is lucky to have him as a partner at the Bitcoin park. This episode was brought to you by dick pills. Does your dick not work? we've got a pill for it go to dickpills.com

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you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free 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. Can it be used in a positive?

Like the Sixers, that John on the Sixers, you know, shot lights out. Yes. Did you see him hit that John in the fourth quarter? Oh, changed the game. Changed the game. Did you see him D up that John? Oh yeah, that John was, he was bussing. Yeah, he was bussing.

Oh man, I don't even know what bussing is. We're getting old. No, that was, I mean, I went to high school in North Philly. And that's the right room when I was in high school. I think that's when John started becoming popular in the Philly area. It was like 2006 to 2009. All the kids who lived in North Philly would come.

They started saying, John, we're like, what the fuck are you guys saying? we all picked it up and this was when you were at like a catholic school and so yeah yeah nice we're live by the way are we really oh yeah oh sick ninja launches on us nice thanks logan for that yeah here we are did you ever think after where's the first time we met in brooklyn at the what was that hotel called the ace hotel or no it wasn't the ace it was it's across the street from the williamsburg hotel um i vividly remember one time and may have been the first or the second time i met you it was with your colleague and ck was like you

gotta go meet this guy marty or not no no sorry i was going to meet you we're going to talk about some stuff outside of bitcoin and then i think i came back to ck and i said hey i met with uh morty benton this other guy i think we can oh me and duane we got uh yeah we got that was the first time we met we got lunch we got lunch at a really nice place by the way in like the south street seaport area or whatever in new york uh and i was like oh these guys are sharp blah blah we should figure out a way to work with them and ck is like dude you met you had lunch with marty bent he's got this amazing podcast and he does like this rabbit hole recap i honestly i think it was like maybe like our first like 10 episodes or something you were doing i was like oh shit i

gotta yeah this had to be like 2018 yeah where were you at that point you were in nashville still i was still in nashville going back and forth between new york and nashville still quite a bit. Um, I moved to Nashville in 2013 and that's where like I joke with a couple of the colleagues here that are traveling back and forth, uh, between New York and Austin. I could tell you flight plans left and right, which is just sad. Uh, whether you're flying United, you're going into Newark or you're doing the Delta at the LGA. I could tell you schedules of from 7am, 10am to 11 1 p.m 4 p.m you know when i got stuck like with whether uh weather and so on i'm like all right got to get to atlanta got to get to detroit because i was a delta guy and so you got to be

able to get to those hubs and then you could easily get home if you needed to wherever the heck i was but um but yeah no i was in new york uh yeah just catching up with you and i mean the bitcoin scene there was fire i was actually funny enough going to meetups and i'll be going to new york like you and matt or maybe matt was doing his cold card workshops do you remember that a chain code and then i would fly in and he was like yeah there's my friend from nashville tennessee coming to new york for a cold card workshop and uh those were fun times they were now i have the timeline of our interactions because that was the lead up

to Bitcoin 2019. Yep. And so for any freaks who don't know, Rod has done a lot in the Bitcoin space. He's doing a lot. Founder of the Bitcoin Park

in Nashville. You're running Bitcoin TV as well. All with Matt as well. Bitcoin TV with Wiz and Matt. Yep, for sure. Before that, you were with BTC Media running the conference.

and that's that's the the bar in Brooklyn I'm thinking about that was funny it was me you and Matt oh that's right I don't think we can talk about that story please can we please

go for it Matt and I were sitting the lead up it was like literally you probably should not have flown to New York because like the COVID hysteria was just picking up and you were trying convince me and matt that bitcoin 2020 was still going to go on and we were like it's probably not going to happen yeah and well i mean just i love stories so we're just probably going to talk about

stories for the whole time like not this is hope you guys were doing rhr growing and so on and i pitched the idea of doing a live uh rhr on the rooftop of 2019 for you guys you guys are like okay yeah i don't know how it's going to work but sure and then i was kind of i um and i think that was your first live rip and it was your first live party rip and then you know fast forward to today every time you guys go to a conference or a meetup or whatever you guys are doing live rhrs and party riffs which is just awesome yeah we had we had one trial run in new york before bitcoin 2019 but 2019 was certainly the first to go crap there's like a crowd here yeah yeah sitting on picnic tables it was me matt pierre francis francis and bitcoin sign guy yep yep and then that was

that's when i knew i was like this this community is pretty special and how did how did you get into it man i uh so how did i get into bitcoin um i you have some kids i now have a number of kids and uh i got three and a fourth on the way goals your uh your dad goals here i gotta catch up come on um but uh i was working in tech you know yeah companies that went under companies that went public or got acquired blah blah i don't know i just was like there's got to be more to this whole like legacy and kind of what i'm doing and uh then i just started to like read in about bitcoin and crypto and seeing like how crazy this is and honestly like in 2011 2012 like my friends were like hey you should get into bitcoin it's kind of crazy i'm like oh really tell me how to

get into bitcoin like oh you just go on craigslist and you go buy some like you know bitcoin i'm like go fuck yourself what are you talking about go get a job go pay your taxes i was like a very like you know, status guy. Um, and then in 2013, 2014, um, I just got married. We gotten acquired by a big tech company. Life's pretty good for me, you know, uh, traveling between Nashville and, uh, New York. And then a bunch of younger guys on my team are like, Hey, you know, you should get into this Bitcoin thing, like open up a Coinbase account. And I opened up account. I didn't do anything with it. I'm like, you guys are just gambling on these stupid ass Bitcoin thing. Go be productive, you know, get it, you know, pay your taxes, whatever. And, uh, then not only until

like 2017, uh, that bull run when my father-in-law, my best friend and my brother all like within a week, we're like, Hey, are you into this whole, I know you're in tech, you know, blah, blah, but like, are you into this whole Bitcoin thing? I'm like, you know what? I need to like dig into this the next you know for the next year i was just traveling around to meetups conferences absorbing as much as i could and i said you know what i need to just figure out how to work in this space and so that's where we are not only are you working in it now you're doing some incredible things i mean you got bitcoin park obviously we're collaborating on some mining stuff yeah you want to talk about that yeah i'm bullish on tennessee i'm very bullish on tennessee i don't

want to give up too much alpha but there's some interesting things going on in state tennessee everybody's coming to texas even though i live in texas uh i'm mining up in appalachia we are mining in uh tennessee uh that's for sure i think uh so the backdrop you know my kids are born in nashville tennessee so number generations so i'm very long nashville so uh it's a lot easier for me to do these like kind of crazy projects like a bitcoin park and uh mining in the state of tennessee um but our energy mix is really interesting especially with the tennessee valley authority a lot of nuclear and coal i think the stat was like something like 45 and someone needs of fact check me and keep me honest but i think 45 of the uh energy produced is nuclear from the

tva or the in the state of tennessee or the from the tva that sounds about right to me so how cool is that when you look at you know each of the energy grids or energy production by state and having that type of mix in your home state and having nuclear as an option that's pretty badass to be it's it drives a lot of certainty that's for sure in a world in which energy infrastructure is becoming less uncertain by the day totally and uh you know to go all the way back to your point like getting into bitcoin like you know the journey is like you know you kind of like want to learn you're just every single day i'm learning something new but you go now my time capital and reputation is all in on bitcoin i mean that's what i'm doing and to the

point where now i mean professionally i'm mining bitcoin at some significant operations that we're doing you know a 10 megawatt facility is not too shabby and i say all that because if you're into bitcoin mining it's like playing multi-level chess my zhong go and games that you don't even know the complete rules to and are learning on the fly i mean it's unbelievable every single day like you could have a a ppa a power purchase agreement and you think, I mean, you should have it all legally, you know, from a legal standpoint and a, and a op standpoint really buttoned up. But if you miss something and you maybe missed a variable rate, you know, that could uptick based on whatever reason you could be effed or okay.

Your entry point was a hundred, $100 a terahash machines on a futures order for, uh, you know, a year and you're just sitting on that and you levered, levered up, uh, bye-bye. yeah it's i mean i've been falling down the mining rabbit hole for you helped me get into it by the way four years now and there's like you said there's there's so many variables a lot of people in the market are unaware of going back to that ppa putting my 1031 cap on and like having to diligence different mining operations and talking to people like ppa stuff and i'm like is this they're like this is the all-in cost i'm like are you sure that's the the all-in cost and many times people will think they have an all-in cost and it's nowhere near nowhere near it what actually

happens totally and that's where i think like someone needs to meme the bell curve of like the dumb asses like me on the left side which are like just give me my all-in cost per kilowatt and i know how much i'm going to directionally mind give me my all-in what is the all-in yeah exactly like all in no backseas like i'm literally paying this based on the efficiency of the miners that i have and then uh how are we going to hold this accountable on a month over month basis um yeah it's just it's it's it's not for the faint of heart that's for damn sure especially right now especially right now like i i really don't know how these i want to make sure i'm these publicly traded mining companies that and i need to do more

diligence on them like looking at their you know financial results or quarterly earnings results like how are they going to survive if they've loaded up on this amount of because there's four quadrants by the way i think about mining in four quadrants there's the the best quadrant which is total exahash goes down bitcoin price goes up we're dancing we're drinking we're having good time and the second the other quadrant is like uh total x hash is going up and then the bitcoin price is also going up still good you know because we're we're making our uh margin there and the other quadrant the third quadrant being the total x hash is going down bitcoin price is going down relative based on a percent base okay still not great but still we're making uh money the

baddie quadrant which one was smack right in the middle of is total x hash goes straight up bitcoin price going straight down so you better have some good discipline you better have some strong ppa agreements you better have some strong teams that are uh know how to run the miners efficiently um there's again going back to that whole thing of like you're playing my zhong uh go chess on a multi-level basis every single freaking day yeah and there's so many variables like you described like the asic price when you buy it how you buy it i think that's been one of the big lessons the last two years for a lot of miners is futures orders probably aren't the best way to go buying spots is not too difficult and even if you have to pay

um a little more per terahash for for a miner the fact that you can get it delivered in two weeks and plugged in that in a very efficient miner yeah that time cost of capital is turning out to be very important um the time from purchase to plug in i think i saw a tweet from you and i was i wanted to ask you this off air but we'll ask it on air um you i think you said you're alluding to that in a couple years the price that price per terahash is actually going to increase yes i could see because the mining manufacturing is going to slow down based on uh not fulfilling these orders or something like that well so the mining bitmain and micro bt right now since we're in a bear market and a lot of miners are growing under other miners are simply not deploying

capital they're not buying the inventory that micro bt and bitmain have all of it and that hurts their revenues and their production is highly dependent on their revenues and their profits so actually leasing the foundry floor to make the chips in 2023 and 2024 they have to go get those leasing agreements signed in ink now and tell them like hey we need this much space we're going to make these many chips and what we're seeing right now is that the revenue and the profits for micro bt and bitmain predominantly aren't where they need to be to get the same amount of foundry space that they have in the past and so that tweet that you're mentioning that I wrote is I could see, foresee,

if we rip, if the Bitcoin price recovers in the next 12 months and mining becomes another meme, you have energy companies begin scooping up all these distressed assets, you have other large miners who are better capitalized and better positioned to capitalize and scooping up these distressed ASICs.

You could see the vacuum on these distressed assets that's sucking things up rather quickly at some point in the next three to six months. So all that supply gets ripped off the market. We rip into a bull market, head into the halving, and if micro BT and Bitmain don't have that space to build chips as demands skyrocketing, and this is all dependent on the Bitcoin price going up.

Yep. And this is just a theory. I could be wrong. No, dude. But you could see yourself toward the end of 2023, middle of 2024, where the perception of Bitcoin in just not only the mining industry, but more broadly, globally, in the financial sector, in the energy sector, shifts on a dime. And everybody's like, oh, Bitcoin's here. It's not going anywhere. At that point, 2024 will be 15 years old.

And people are like, all right, we need to get exposure every way possible. um which puts a run on a6 which drives the price up and then the manufacturers won't be able to keep supply up so i could see like a slingshot we go down yeah that's right the slingshots we yep you know like to 10 to 15 dollars a tower hash and then we'll start slowly climbing at some point just i mean people were talking about last year when we were running up towards 60k and everybody was thinking $200,000 conference day. I wonder who said that. There was, I mean, there was discussion

like in the raging bull market last year, like, oh, we're going to see $200 a terahash. And that proclamation may have been correct. It just may have been a few years too early. That's right. Yeah, man, I love Bitcoin so much and I'm addicted to hash, you know? And it's just, now I dollar cost average

into like miners as much as i can into and like i gotta give a shout out to denver bitcoin adam he helped i mean dude the community is so freaking amazing you can pick up the phone and talk to so many people over the last couple years consistent and reliable energy cheap consistent and reliable energy is the home run when you're talking about mining and you gotta work to find that um because now if you're plugging in at like nine cents a kilowatt and you bought like a s19 pro that's like running 95 terahash with not the best efficiency you're probably i think you're under right now basically you're in the water right now and uh again it's not for the faint of heart because and you look back and you're like oh i should have just bought bitcoin at that point in

time um matt de souza uh rest in peace he actually had you know he was i think on stefan's pod and he said something really interesting like i think in 2017 or 2018 he's like the bitcoin miners are the most bullish uh bitcoiners out there yeah i don't remember if you know remember that but like i mean we're basically buying this hardware that does one thing mines bitcoin uh we're putting up a lot of capital up front that we could have otherwise just bought bitcoin and it's our belief that we're going to make this margin and we're going to accumulate more bitcoin over time at a lower price point than the spot price yeah and this is again mining is not for the faint of heart to get into it especially with the newer jet machines you have to have

like a five to seven year outlook oh totally you get to foresee this period that we're in now and just mentally tell yourself when you first get in, okay, we're going to get to that one quadrant where price is going down and hash rate's ripping. Buckle up. You have to stomach that storm, batten down the hatches, and just not get... That's the thing.

When I advise companies that I'm involved in with how to think of this, it's just scary when you're in the middle of the storm, but you have to recognize that you're in the middle of the storm this two shall pass. It's not freaking out. And the other thing is just having, it's easier said than done, but having the discipline, especially on the financial side. Cause like if you're at 60 K you know, Bitcoin price, like everyone and their moms, you know, buying miners and then you know, overarching sentiment is like, China's definitely turned them off. We were plugging them

in, you know, we're each state is bullish and we could talk about the state or states, you know, how they're looking at incentives to for miners. I get it, but then it's like, oh, it's kind of like gambling in a way. Oh, I'm going to pull a HELOC on my miners. I'm going to put a HELOC on my Bitcoin and then I'm going to go double down on these miners at $100 a terahash or 100 plus dollars a terahash

and then on a futures order that I'm not going to even take possession of for another 12 months. Oh, and by the way, all that infrastructure that's being built out that was supposed to be done, you know six months ago is another delayed another six months yeah it's just well i think that's part of what we're seeing with the screaming hash rate right now is that the infrastructure that was being built in this state finally got done after oh in texas yeah after many

delays and like you're talking about like a multi-year infrastructure build out with all that sunk capital tens of millions of dollars and i feel for those miners that just had to turn on the beginning of october with hash price being where it is and like having no other option like hey we've spent two years building this out and all this money we've got to turn on dude so much of you like the last four years uh and i want to say like tftc always has like a slight mining bent here and there because you love mining like same thing with the park like uh the meetups we do topical monthly meetups and so on but i really dig into the mining uh topic and like i'll blow that you know agenda out because it's just so interesting to me yeah i mean it's the most

fascinating part of bitcoin in my mind obviously there's many fascinating parts but this inherent connection between the physical and digital world and not to use a cheesy pun but the proof of work necessary to actually plug in machines that are doing bitcoin's proof of work is immense i think we lean into by the way the proof of work always especially in new conversations it's like proof of work we are doing this work here when you're hosting a meetup you're doing work here when you're you know creating something like a commons here uh parker and the team here doing that it's like they're doing the work here to make it happen rather than just you know larping and talking about it there being about it which is um very bitcoin in my opinion yeah that reminds me of a

thread i was reading from andre nevis from zebedee this morning where it was basically like yeah what are you going to do you know like this last tweet he quoted uh lisa um she's so sharp yeah she's like yeah you can talk about it but like are you going to be about like what are you doing to actually make it happen stop talking about it happening like what are you doing to make it happen totally and and i will say this if you're not technical like there's oh i'm not in which i am not uh at all um there's other ways and i think like not to change gears here real quick but like even organizing your own meetup in uh your town like uh your friends are organizing bitcoin john which that's how we started on the whole bitcoin john thing uh in philly i think

november is the first one november 7th yeah nice hell yeah you gonna go to it oh yeah oh hell yeah flying home for like yeah dude bitcoin meetups are so dang freaking cool whether it's like a couple people at a bar to like a hundred people that's topic or a bit devs that we had last night with a shout out to ben carmen justin moon and buck parley for organizing it like going to those or helping organize those in your local community uh will be extremely rewarding in my humble opinion like matt and i one of our first real events at the park was this event called grassroots bitcoin where it was just through telegram and dms we just meet reaching out to bitcoin meetup organizers we had over a hundred people show up in september at the park and it was just like

trading ideas networking with each other sharing our experiences um bitcoin meetup organizers are rare breed yeah it's it's essential to the grassroots movement i mean again being about the actual grassroots movement it's totally and that's the one thing matt and i are really proud about rabbit hole recap specifically it's turned into this new bitcoin meetup announcement platform dude what you and matt have done with rhr uh is such a insane legacy um it's like legacy documentation and you guys are doing this for in for bitcoin in your in your way if that makes sense meaning like how like the conversations week over week over a week and it's not a podcast i really believe it's a show that people are tuning into both your personalities but more importantly

staying up to date on bitcoin in the hour or two hours that you guys cover it that then inspires a meetup organizer to actually start a meetup it inspires somebody to go and go do summer of bitcoin and then participate in that program or maybe inspire somebody to go to chain code labs and work out of that office or go to a cold card workshop or whatever it may be um i probably in the minority but i think we need more podcasts more meetups more events more stuff to get people in the meat space world together uh interacting around bitcoin agreed no and your idea for bitcoin park like thank you for syndicating rap obviously matt is a co-founder of bitcoin park and uh we have some some ends there to get our our programming on on the tvs during the day but your

idea to like make the tv like just you're not gonna play cnbc or bloomberg it should just be bitcoin content all day throughout the park absolutely and i was talking to parker yes or this morning as well as yesterday like you guys have great tvs this common space is so dang cool and it's like even if it's on mute and then someone's like oh can we turn it on and just listen to you guys talking either the live show or a recording show and then there's all these other shows too, that you can then like, I got to give Josh, uh, who's our new community ops manager at the park, a big shout out. He's like made the park what it is, uh, and will be. Um, and he's just such a nice, amazing person, but he'll go around and like set up

different like, uh, shows on the TVs. And especially when it's Thursday, typically, uh, and you're like, you're about to go live. It's like on every single TV, which is a fun little like treat for uh folks at the park that are members yeah that's that's been another fun trend to watch is it's so weird because yeah the start out was a podcast like matt and i didn't start doing video i remember because i overed do you remember i actually called you up and i was like hey what uh you were you thinking about doing video at all like i feel like that's like the next natural play you're like ah no we're like a podcast blah blah blah and the next thing you you guys are just like i mean we're doing video we're in a studio now i gotta give you a lot of

credit this studio is badass thank you like the design everything this is super comfortable i can't take all the credit shout out to kaylee from unchained and she's the community manager at the commons and parker we call him the uh the feng shui king he was he was very involved with uh, a lot of the design of the room and then shout out to Mitch next door, you know, to hang out with these lights. But no, it's been a group effort. And that's something, I mean, with COVID and recording from my father-in-law's bedroom for two years, that's one thing I desperately missed was when this started in New York, every single episode was in person. I was like desperate to just get that back it's so much better without my cat totally and i'm very thankful that you're

having me on i mean going back to the park i mean it just we got and that's where i think i did like a tweet all right i know i did a tweet but uh terminus now in atlanta uh shout out to steven delorme they got a co-working hacker space for bitcoiners uh pub key that's about uh i don't know if they shout out thomas yeah yeah okay cool uh they have the twitter account they're tweeting So I think it's going to be, he loves, he loves the free press. Go to pub key. Okay. That's going to be freaking awesome.

I mean, awesome. If you can get on their telegram somehow, some way and see the photos of what they got cooking in New York is going to be so bad-ass and I cannot wait to visit actually gives me a reason because I'm reluctant to go back to New York. Cause I think it's like, it is what it is. Um, living there for 10 plus years and you as well. like we remember new york the way new york was so amazing and now man i just i want to remember new york the way i remember new york and i don't want to go back and be like oh really you want me

messed up this way and locked down that way yeah i went back july or august of last year i drove up for a lunch meeting i was just like ah yeah i was in soho it's like this is not what i remember that sucks but yeah anyways so pub key um then there's uh redding bitcoin center out in redding california shout out to those guys we got obviously the park here you got uh pleb lab you got the commons and a chain code in new york and uh when i said more pods more events more meetups we just also need like more of these like little spaces too don't go over your skis like me and matt have uh i do not recommend that um but like make your own little space um and start with a bar start with wherever and uh get folks together completely agree but i'm happy that you guys went over your

skis because bitcoin park is sweet let's talk about the act like you got who was the band that owned it before okay so uh um it's an incredible space thanks man uh so florida georgia line was this like country poppy band. Um, you probably know some of their songs, uh, and they had the space. They had a, what is two buildings. So there's one coworking building and then there's like a, uh, publishing recording studio and a retail shop in the other building. Um, and I got to give them a lot of credit. They put in the, all the little touches that they made were insane from the sound treatment to the car. I mean, we have a freaking coffee bar in one of the buildings, which is pretty wild powered by Ibex Mercado dude and so like just going back to the experience

totally like I okay so when you come into the park you know you want to buy uh uh we have very discounted rates on me like I think a LaCroix is like a dollar a Fiji water is like two bucks and uh a beer is like maybe like um you know a couple bucks or whatever and uh the only the only currency you can use is bitcoin at the park you know it's not like you go to Europe and use well, they probably want dollars now, but, um, but that's cool. We have Bitcoin art infused, uh, throughout shout out to Dennis. Who's the art director over at Bitcoin magazine. Who's like been curating a bunch of amazing, um, our pieces throughout. We actually have a black box, uh, uh, rig with an S nine in there. Um, it just, you gotta, I hate even talking about it because

you got to just come visit the park and see for yourself so yeah we just every month we have what i want to do is have always a at least one if not two community uh meetups or events that is open to the public like come on so we now have a nash bit devs which uh is an another amazing story but we do that uh then we'll have an open house which is our bitcoin monthly topical meetup and then we'll try to do like it's like kind of like a bitcoin week if you will for the month and then we'll do like a a summit if you will like a two-day maybe ticketed event actually our first one is going to be this mining summit in january 12th and 13th and um i think it could be pretty special because you know this is not similar to like the meetup experience you could

have it like be very very social and we'll just meet at the bar and just talk and chat that's great or it could be very very technical to bit devs or it could be like in the middle where it's topical plus networking plus you know whatever i think where these events because you alluded to like in 2019 creating the bitcoin conference and it was like i think 1200 people which was like maybe 2000 i was like whoa we got this many people here this is crazy now that's like kind table stakes a lot of these events which is also great but i can see where there's going to be a contraction where you want to get as much high signal around a specific topic so you may be in the variable that we have or the constraint that we have is our time like where do we spend

our time and uh you just can't go or i mean i have more kids than bitcoin so i cannot go to uh, you know, travel in the world like I used to, to go to meetups and conferences. Um, so I think having focused, um, events and meetups, um, can go a really long way. So these longer tails. So like in November, we're doing a Bitcoin and public policy event, uh, which is also really interesting. Um, December we're doing with partnering up with slim and doing a Tennessee Beef Initiative. By the way, you're coming up for that, I believe. I am. Yes. Yeah. How cool is that the U.S. Cattlemen's Association, which I think you had Brooke on the pod. Okay. And, uh, I need to, I need to catch up on that. It's on my download list. Um, he's holding the U.S.

Cattlemen's Association annual event in Nashville, Tennessee, December 8th through 10th, which is just okay amazing so what we're going to do is december 7th we're going to have a community meetup an open house called like beef and bitcoin where anyone can come and we'll have ranchers producers bitcoiners talking and then we'll do the tennessee beef initiative slim and i still need to iron this out but the 8th and the 9th we'll have a cattleman's feast and then like four workshops um that slim will be running um and then that 10th actually and i hate this plugging all this stuff but i think it's somewhat interesting uh seed signer keith and seed signer are going to come into town and they're going to do a hands-on workshop so i can see going like

up a level you know at the commons at pub key at terminus at reading bitcoin center at chain code is like these specific, or at Pleb Lab or at the park, these specific topical focused Bitcoin initiatives that people come in and whether it's 10 people, 20 people or a hundred people, super high signal, highly dense, highly productive in that regard. Yeah. And like you said,

it's becoming harder for me to travel as well. And so it's beautiful to see all these local meetups and you don't have to travel anymore because that was a thing. We had to go to San Francisco to go to the Bitcoin conference to meet Bitcoiners, had to fly all the way to Riga, had to, if you're in the... Berlin, Tel Aviv.

I mean, we were going all over the place. Yeah, people were coming from all over the tri-state area to get to the BitDevs in New York. Similarly here in Austin. When I first got here, it was just Austin, but now we have Houston and Dallas. And so people were coming to Austin from these areas, and now they have their own meetups that they can go to

and not have to travel three hours. So it's definitely happening. And I think we know just because we've seen it up close. I've been going to BitDev since 2015, so I've seen the momentum grow for seven years now, more than seven years, coming up on eight years. My first BitDev was like January 2015. So awesome.

And like what's happening now, like all over the place is astonishing to see because the momentum builds and builds and builds. And I don't think people really grasp how much the in-person interaction drives a fire under everybody's ass to go do something. I feel like my pre-kids, pre-Bitcoin life was very analog.

It was more transactional. Like, oh, I'm going here. What's my benefit? Like, what am I getting out of it? where i went into this digital like right when my daughter was born and i was like digital like oh my god this is this is real world now and also similar like feeling with bitcoin even though i truly believe bitcoin is just a tool that enables me to live the life that i want to live um i do like going to a bit devs like especially in new york and shout out to jay who's a absolute

legend um he like actually i'll maybe it's tell the story about how nash bit devs came about um which is a fun little story uh we did grassroots bitcoin awesome we had like bit devs or bit devs organizers from raleigh uh san francisco chicago new york and i'm probably atlanta and i'm probably missing a couple other ones all in town and then casey shout out to Casey Rottermoor, he's like, after two days of just like hanging party and so on, I'm exhausted. Again, he got three kids and four, the fourth on the way, and they're all going to be four and under. So like, that's kind of freaking help. Um, the, uh, I love it. I wish your wife too. She's the best. I mean, like that's a whole nother conversation. The, the most important

decision you're going to make in your life is not, you know, getting into Bitcoin, Bitcoin is whatever, to be honest with you, and don't, you know, vilify me, whatever. But like choosing the person you want to spend the rest of your life with is like the most important decision you're going to ever make in your life. So you fuck that up,

it doesn't matter how much Bitcoin you have. I think we're lucky we made the right decisions. Yes, we did, buddy. So then going back to the story. And so Friday night, Casey's like, hey, I'm still in town. I'm leaving Sunday or whatever. I'm happy to host a Learn Rust workshop

for anyone who's in town and like culturally in nashville we i've been trying to figure out ways to get more developers more technical people involved with our meetup um and i was like all right dude i'll set up the meetup page i'll send the tweet i'll do all that stuff but like i i don't even know if like one person will show up or a couple people show up he's like oh no it's all good like that's totally fine even if one person shows up and this is why my point is just do it is so key even if you don't know the direct benefit so uh steve myers who uh uh recently he's the maintainer and contributor to the bdk project uh recent nashvillian love steve um he's such amazing steve too such an amazing person miss you steve um you'll see him in december yes and

january for the mining summit um anyways he's like oh yeah i'll be there i really want to you you know, do that. And then we had Nate from, um, uh, before bacon one, uh, the North Houston Bitcoin meetup organizer and a voltage, uh, uh, guy, uh, he showed up and then Evan from the Raleigh bit devs showed up. So I was like, Oh shit. Okay. We got four bills. And then there was one extra person that showed up this guy, Matthew. And so we'd been hanging out for the past four days, but then Matthew shows up and I'm like, Hey, Matthew, good to see you. and we sit down and then case is like hey how about we go around and just explain like what we're working on what program we like writing in and i'm like a freaking you know

larp in the room i'm like uh i'm just learning like you know html no but whatever and so like they get to matthew and math and oh i don't think i've actually even told you this story which is matthew gets there he's like i'm really interested in this bdk project and seeing how ways to contribute and steve and i looked at each other like there's steve right there he's like in my language that i write in swift i actually developed some apps and uh i don't know if you guys listen to like rhr and marty and matt but they actually marty talks about it talked about which was very kind uh my block screen app dude matthew is in in nashville building out that uh app and uh i hope he's okay with me talking about this because he's just awesome and uh and he uh i was like what the

heck's going on here and he's been to a bunch of our meetups and that's why i think there it is dude shout out matthew shout out matthew over block height 759 691 heck yeah and uh he's such an amazing person anyways long story long uh i leave and then steve and matthew start chatting they're like hey we should start a bit devs and i was like hallelujah because that was like one of like our dreams me and matt like it was to figure out how to have a a bit devs in nashville without like being overly larpy because it just wasn't in my wheelhouse so long story long uh just do it yeah just do it and bit devs are so high leverage like i mentioned i've gone i'll be eight years into my bit devs journey and again i'm a larp too when it comes to developing but

due to the newsletter and yeah the show i like i think i'm like i always went at first like i went to bit devs two years before the show started but going to bit that's probably gave me the confidence to start the show and the newsletter dude last night you're contributing to the conversation and i actually learned a lot in terms of how a bit devs with justin buck and Ben up there, you need the audience participation, having some core members like the Lisa's, the Tony's, the Brian's, the super test nets and yourself that are kind of engaging in the conversation, which is just, it was phenomenal. So kudos to you, man. I mean, I just asked this because you were asking many questions, by the way, not just

like one question. I'm curious. I have to talk about this stuff. I'm like, how does this actually work? Again, don't want to warp uh and that's actually been my cheat code in this space is bit devs because you get to go ask the people building the so it actually works dude totally and that's like if you're out there and you're like i can't go to bit this i'm not technical i'm not i can't write a line of code i can't even write html css but i can conceptualize how bitcoin works after eight years ago to bit devs and just the osmosis of hearing the terms over and over and over again and asking questions that's why local community local bitcoin community is so amazing like the park will i mean

there's a still a very high probability it fails uh but it is the stop dad it's just you can't have that mentality well uh but it's so fascinating having a community supported initiative and seeing how like i'll have like people that have been coming to meetups and so on they'll be like helping change out the toilet paper cleaning up this or like helping like we have general guidelines to enhance everyone's experience when they come because you're coming in from maybe austin others are driving like hours to come to uh our meetups right so we have general guidelines to enhance everyone's experience so i think they're five now it used to be three but now it's five which is you know we're here to talk about bitcoin the capital b the monetary network as well as bitcoin

the lowercase b the reserve asset what we're not here to talk about is alt coins nfts lfts crypto blah blah blah totally fine there's another meetup for that but for this two hours we're focused on bitcoin the capital b and bitcoin the lowercase b and then we have a no photos and video policy just so that everyone feels comfortable um uh being there uh the third one is actually i was telling parker this like we have a like keep side conversations to zero just because on the acoustics because you want everyone who's here to be able to ask a question hear a question from the audience and engage the conversation and then the other two are just now having the buildings it's like pick up after yourself and park freely wherever except the church parking

lot next door to us but like similar to austin i feel like austin has the same vibe culturally people are so respectful if you just give them like help them with the guidelines of what you're trying to build I mean people are folding up chairs after that we're done with our meetups putting them away they're picking up stuff they're getting napkins and wiping down I'm like y'all are the freaking phenomenal people I mean as I mean I don't want to call it a club but like it's very you're creating I don't want to say culture either but like hey you're coming to this you're a part of it totally like having this is like hey you're a part of this and they feel ownership you're not here every day if you come month in a month out yep like you are like

we're all doing this together it's yeoman's work um the small things like folding up the chair and cleaning up after yourself like it it's insane like when you build it like there's like this gravitational force where you feel ownership around like the community aspect and especially i mean you i saw the aesthetics of like last night i mean every single person just is looks feels it is different but the common denominator is bitcoin and you immediately have that common language with that person and respect and curiosity and you know the list goes on um and then being in real life like it was funny our first meetup dr fomo who's our in-house mining expert uh this was back in august of 21 and uh he's just like i'm just happy to be out

of my house out and you know wherever he lives and just talking with other big look local bitcoiners like this is just great and then you kind of continue to expand on that which is uh phenomenal so that's why i'm i'm very bullish on commons i'm very bullish on these kind of spaces um to continue to grow yeah as am i it's it's happening again like you said like there's just the conversations are just and we could do fun stuff like i mean i don't know if i can tease something or is it cool to tease like an idea oh yeah let's talk about the idea um we need a great fomo let's create some fomo um so like we have this amazing space uh we have a good i mean if you go to meetup.com forward slash bitcoin park even wherever you are in the world i i do recommend

join and just to stay up to date and if you can attend rsvp and come on um we can do some i think fun stuff too um because it's really interesting like bitcoin being the common denominator amongst us like there's other pockets of interest like whether you're into i don't know cycling or or hunting. But like, I think, and I didn't listen to this RHR, but so many people hit me up. Do you remember in 19, when we were at the conference, then we went and played golf, me, you and Matt. And I think like, was it you or Matt that got so smashed that he couldn't even almost barely got on the plane? It was Matt. Okay. We played, I think 36 holes. We drank all day and we had a ton of fun. And, um, but like, there's so many golfers and, uh, like those are the, by the way,

it's funny, like the two things I've been in Nashville now, 10 plus years, and I'm going to be in Nashville for the rest of my foreseeable life, raising a family. Um, and hopefully that raising, uh, helping, uh, with my kids when they have kids in Nashville. And, uh, the two things i picked up were hunting and golf like those are two things i just never did now i'm i like enjoy hunting and i'm a terrible golfer but i really enjoy it so one idea i have is like we matt and i've been talking about it and also btc aaron um is having like a bitcoin golf invitational event where it's you know you uh you have like a captain uh or like a team lead and you kind of create a foursome and then you build maybe like four foursomes and you raise money to help support

the park potentially, or, and by the way, all of our, uh, paid events that we do, there's always going to be something, uh, giving back to the open source community. Like we definitely have a, uh, cost associated with running the park. It's a very high cost. Um, and once we, you know, we're getting to cover that, but there'll always be something going back to, uh, the open source community. Um, so yeah, I think like having, I think we've got the location. I think we're thinking spring, summertime. Um, I already got, you know, like even if I was like a captain, let's say I got my friend, uh, who's a under the radar Bitcoiner, but he's a musician, uh, country musician, Jake Owen. Uh, you know, Jake, like, okay. And, uh, he's a good golfer

too. Dude. I think he played at Florida state. I want to say, I mean, he's a legit golfer. We golf together i'm a 16 or 17 handicap he's like probably uh two um so he's on my team by the way um and uh i think and that's the other cool thing is i think we can probably get like a good crossover of like bitcoiners and entertainment uh entrepreneurs artists musicians you know together and then the we play golf yeah and then the other thing is like you know if you don't participate in golf but want to attend maybe there's like a ticket that you can just like drink beer and like walk the course with us and you know when justin moon's in his backswing you can just heckle him all the time and uh yeah people don't know justin

stick and hit the sticks yeah i bet he can hit it a long way yeah yeah no jaco and he's i mean he's golfed with the foreplay crew a bit i've seen them do videos together that's what i'm thinking Who's the foreplay crew? Like Riggs, Frankie Borelli, Trent. They're the golf show. Oh, on Barstool? At Barstool. They've had great success.

They're like actually very well integrated into the pro golf scene. Like they're becoming like a media stalwart in the golf scene. And I've seen Jake do videos with them. I'd like to get Caleb out there if I can. texted him last night caleb fucking responded my text bro you're busy sunday conversation dude that is actually a uh so go back to like content side there's like pieces of content that like i i in my head schedule thursday it's our hr now sunday for that sunday conversation with caleb that he does i like you're so funny they're so good i mean they're so freaking good um but

But Caleb and, yeah, like the four of us should then be on a team because that would be super dope. That would be a phenomenal team. That's so new. I think we can do more than four teams. I think we could do more than four. Yeah, I mean, now it's like, all right, what's the appetite for planning and organizing all this stuff, right?

Because it's like a fun idea and I want to have fun. Maybe we reach out to the four because they do their Barstool Classic. I'm not sure. I think they've organized a lot of events so we can pretend, I mean, who knows if they would be open to us being like, Hey, how the fuck do you run it? Well, I think I got the, I got, I wouldn't tease it if it wasn't like more baked, uh, because it is pretty baked. And I think we got it from a backend ops perspective.

Now it's just the volume of people just to manage, because I do take a lot of pride and responsibility in the fact that if you're going to come spend time with us at, uh, one of our meetups our pop-ups our open houses our summits and so on it is the best use of your time and best experience possible so doing this for the first time i kind of want to like start a little bit i mean fuck it we could be like it may be like a 32 team like battle royale and it's like here we go and we got brad seneca and the tigers showing up like holy shit we've got to rope off the gallery. Oh man. You want to talk about going over your skis? This is talking about going over your skis, but, um, you got to dream big. We got to dream big egg. You know what? If we, if we can

nail down this foursome me, you, Jake and Caleb, and then like getting like, let's say Matt and, uh, BTC Aaron, like get a crew, uh, by the way, slim, he was on my pod and I was telling him the whole hunting and golf thing and he's like rod you know i was uh i played golf i was like what slim you played golf he's like i played willie nelson uh smoking a doobie drinking a six-pack golf back in my day i was like damn i was like well you want to captain up this like golf idea uh we're working on he's like absolutely so slim could uh i can't imagine slim in golf shoes not cowboy boots hey we will have uh come as you are well depending on the course we have uh there may be one course where you gotta actually like you know uh dress up dress up a little bit

but um i can't wear vans like i did in san francisco i should have not have wore a van there either i think we walked the 36 oh yeah we walked 36 you were a little late a little disheveled like bags were coming into the car we had a tea time that we needed to get to and uh we just rolled right to the the first tea pipe drives and went going that's why golf is like you know four hours of just like fun with like you know your friends uh and then you come back and they kind of hang out it's it's if you can commit the time and make the time it's it is fun it's a lot a lot of fun i've since then i use that 36 hole experience as a kick in the ass to get better have you gotten better i think so okay i need to play more

consistently though i have been playing a lot more um not down here but when i go home for the summer my father-in-law has a like a running saturday morning oh that's fun it gets 40 times so four yeah wow so the group range is anywhere from eight to 16 people depending on the weekend who can play it's all hop in that like two or three times a summer when when i can get away yeah so i will maybe we can get this would be a good action item for folks just because it may be like the four of us that are interested in this and we're totally off but um we have a discord and we could probably put in the show notes but i have created a like channel just for the invite calling it the invitational and see who's like, like interested, like, and just like emoji or

just message there as well as the meetup page. I'll create like a placeholder, um, just to see what the interest would be. Am I a boomer for not ever have gone on discord yet? So I will say this no. Um, and I was very reluctant to do this whole discord thing. Um, but like the way the park is organized, it's a community supported, um, uh, space. So we have members that pay an annual feed that then have key card access and a number of other benefits and then we have a broader community that's like global that wants to stay involved or stay up to date in uh the park because we have all these like smaller initiatives that are going on and steve myers who's probably my age maybe a little older than me uh suggested discord and because like bdk ldk um a number of

other you know uh projects use discord for chat i mean like you know bitcoin design community uses slack other you know there's other tools or whatever so i was like eff it we're gonna commit to discord and just go there um and then yeah it's been it's been really good i think we're up to almost 160 or 100 i mean almost 200 people that are involved in the the discord um but similar to anything in life like going back to that whole proof of work it needs maintenance it needs curation it needs like involvement like you know even commons or the park you need people there working and building and so on um so that was my long-winded way of saying no you're not a boomer it's just i'm reluctant to like add another messaging app or another thing to ask people

to sign up and do um and that's why i'm taking more uh ownership and making sure the experience there is better like so going all the way back to the shill of the the invitational uh i think you know joining the discord and then staying up to date and involved in the in the uh leading up to the event um you get the behind the scenes rather than just constantly like i look at twitter now as more of a broadcast like i suck at twitter um you guys are so good at it but i just look at as like retweeting meetup organizers and then broadcasting and then being my reply guide to my friends, uh, tweets. Um, and that's it. Then like having more dialogue, uh, intimate dialogue on like a discord or a Slack or a, you know, a telegram group, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, obviously those chat apps produce in environments conducive for more well thought out conversations and that's the other thing it's like uh be where the yes we are by the way boomers too but um be where the younger folk are playing and i do think they're playing in the discord world so there's these ways and i'm still studying and learning this like with the announcement channels and all this other stuff like shout out to lincoln who's the head of the vanderbilt blockchain club he comes to now our nash bit devs and like in his defense everyone's like i probably people either assign me as a bitcoin maximalist or a bitcoin minimalist because i can you know what i say it's like depending on how you interpret it but like for lincoln's uh

defense he didn't have a bitcoin resource to like leverage and utilize like within the nashville world you know there was more blockchain focused uh crypto stuff that was supporting um their initiatives and so that was what they were learning now we have the park and they him and Abe and others can now come and participate in Nashville devs, participate in our meetups and participate in all these other events. And I bring this all the way back to the discord is because then you can combine these like discord worlds together, uh, whether it's integrated on, I think on like these announcement channels or like maybe open up different channels with each other. Um, and I think it could be pretty, pretty cool. And I just don't want to be the Steve Buscemi

meme where i'm like hey young kids like how do you do fellow kids they're just like talking like uh fr fr which is like i learned this for real for real or something like that oh yeah for real for real no cap bosses we bussing we bussing marty we are we're bussing hard i'm over 40 years old oh god yeah dead ass oh man but um so yeah but like i because i've been to the park two two times now and it seems like the the city like every time i go there seems like there's somebody who works for like a really big business that's not bitcoin related or as part of the city government or the state government is involved it seems like there's like some buzz around bitcoin

park within nashville and people are becoming more aware of it and you're making a concerted effort to get nashville businesses more involved with bitcoin totally um that's thanks for bringing that up because like bitcoin is hard still but it's also very easy for us and like when we're in it so much uh speaking for myself i take it for granted but like shout out to beck's coffee as an example they're a family-owned uh coffee roaster local coffee roaster and they uh we buy the coffee uh beans from them and uh we buy bags and now they uh accept bitcoin they have an ibex terminal they come they're gonna actually be at they're gonna be either at bit devs or the open house in two weeks and, uh, uh, serving coffee and then having their little terminal and

they, they, they, uh, charge people and people pay with a lightning and how IBEX works is lightning in on chain out every night. And then it'll assign the cost basis too. So you have like nice reporting and so on. And, uh, again, you know, you could go to the first parameter, KYC, no KYC, but as a business, you're paying taxes and so on. you want and also this new area we want to make it as easy as possible for them to onboard and then have them go down their own journey and so then they uh have an on-chain uh deposit where

does that deposit go to we set up with the river account and the river account goes into their uh account they assign the cost basis there and they see the accumulation go on uh which is pretty pretty dope um and then they'll send me a zap right invoice and then i'll pay that on-chain uh invoice uh back to them for the beans or the bags that we've bought and then that'll go into a uh that's a river account as well um it takes a lot to interact and make this happen and in and i brandon who's the father and the owner of the business i mean he's an amazing entrepreneur an amazing roaster is he an amazing technical person that knows bitcoin no but he's curious enough that he'll lean in like our trade-off between him coming like about once every two

weeks and bringing beans and sitting down with me for an hour is he teaches me about coffee because i now aspire to make the best cup of coffee i can make and i'll teach him about bitcoin and like get them all properly set up and so on um uh but you gotta also have like that's why michael atwood god bless that guy he's done such great work with oshi and going hand to hand with these businesses you need people to lean in and so doing these meetups and having the space that could be a force to bring people in so that they can feel good to lean in so like going to lincoln over at the vanderbilt uh uh blockchain or whatever club he calls it um like being able to have him come over to the park and like meet with steve meet with matthew meet with p and like

have that relationship on the more technical side, having Brandon and, um, Heidi from, uh, slide hustle, having resources at the park to be able to ask their Bitcoin related questions, I think goes a long way. And then, which is another story. Um, if we got time for it, which is, uh, like the, on the policy side is really interesting as well, because at first, you know, these guys, like they would see our meetup numbers and then like, I'm running for office and I want to talk about crypto. I'm like, uh, hard stop. We don't know anything about it. And I've actually like always told them, like, we don't talk about politics here, but then there was like, they kept on showing up to the meetup. And that's where if you show up and you like are

participating and by participating, meaning like in attendance and listening, and then maybe networking asking questions and so on and you're consistently doing that i'll lean in you know uh and help and so we had this one um i want to be careful what i'm saying so like one group within the government that um came and they're like hey we want to learn more about bitcoin because we're helping like some write some policy and uh shout out to dave zell and grant mccarty who are members at the Bitcoin Park. And basically Matt and I joke that they're like our policy advocacy group,

so we just bring them into these meetings. And they're like, we want to help you, Matt and Rod, with the park and grow it because I think it could be something great for the state of Tennessee as well as the local community. But I want to make sure we're aligned

from what our outcomes and incentives are. And they mentioned there's three things that we care at the legislator level and i think our constituents care about and this is why i'm even more bullish on on tennessee if this is true still take it with us until i see it play out which is uh liberty sovereignty and freedom so whatever policy we want we want to always go back to those three principles and i look at like zell and grant in the meeting i'm like either these guys are spooks or they're like gonna be our best friends and we can help these guys out and i do believe like that they

keep showing up and they keep being more involved and more uh i think they do see bitcoin the monetary network being such a tool for financial freedom and separating it from state control especially at the federal level obviously the federal level um i think they can see that uh playing out so recruiting more people uh to the state of tennessee and more businesses and by the way going all the way back to the heart our first like 30 minutes of conversation around mining i think we'll see and we'll play a very very very small role in helping potentially with the incentive structure to bring more miners and that um uh the more intellectual capital as well as financial capital to make those investments in the state of tennessee and that's where like

not to show the mining summit but like we'll probably have 150 people uh highly curated like kind of invite-ish only people and it's like four segments of people uh in the audience will be investors and policymakers and then participating as well as in the audience will be uh miners whether from at-home miners uh you know doing some amazing weird gnarly stuff to publicly traded miners that are building out one gigawatt, whatever farms. And then the fourth group is going to be energy producers, like from, you know, our friends at the TVA, you know, doing nuclear stuff potentially to Duke energy, doing their thing to, you know, a number of other energy producers, like really showcasing flared gas, stranded gas, like all these amazing things that

are happening. So whether it's solar or wind, you know, I want to learn all of it. I want you to, here's the platform. Here's your time. Showcase how this is amazing. So I don't know, kind of blacked out there, you know, Anchorman style or whatever movie style that was. But hopefully that was helpful. Old school. Old school. That's right. Yeah. No, I mean, I completely co-sign what you just said. This has been my thesis for many years now. I started putting out there in the beginning of COVID is that states are going to lead the way, particularly around Bitcoin. And Bitcoin mining is going to be a big part of it.

Bitcoin mining and energy sort of merging into one sector. And you're going to have states say, hey, this is obvious. Like these freedom-loving states like Texas, Tennessee are really leaning into liberty, sovereignty, freedom. And they lean in with that, the open protocol, the open network, the sound monetary aspects, which respect private property rights and people's ability to save money.

And then the energy is just like a cherry on top once you get in through the open source nature and the ability for people to innovate without any permission. And then it's like, hey, the way this works, too, is this physical and physical digital world connection via mining, which is very heavily dependent on energy. And then you get into, hey, here's how we take advantage of stranded gas that's otherwise being wasted or leaking methane. here's how we help you with on-grid congestion totally you need somebody to off take 10 megawatts of energy um over electricity from curtailment programs right to help out securing the grid stabilization i mean like it is so freaking fascinating especially i in my wildest dreams i would never thought i'd be in this world like there did i isn't it wild yeah i thought i was gonna be like a hedge fund boy that lasted a year and a half i was like i'm out i'm out yeah i know

it goes back to like you know our kids you got two amazing kids amazing wife i got three and a fourth on the way it's like what when they look back or they're on like their second grade and they're like you know going and saying hey this is what my daddy does it's like oh my daddy helps uh big corporations sell more stuff to people to consume and get more in debt oh yeah that's write great legacy documentation you know there well my daddy has a podcast where he calls people demons wait a minute is your daddy morning bed and that's that's that's big as my oldest becomes more aware and cognizant and like he starts interacting and like asking questions like shit yeah i've got a back catalog of a lot of hours of audio written content that you're

probably going to stumble across at some point in the future but that's you button it up no i so make do your own thing but my two sats would be uh if you're like so this is where i'm very i'm gonna sound like a shill but like i'm very cognizant of like the influencer like i'm gonna say this just to get uh engagement you know and i now i've identified like who that world is and there's probably a bunch and there are a bunch of people like that in the bitcoin world and they say they're bitcoiners but it's just so you can clearly see it's engagement farming then there's people like you i believe that are like you passionately believe it and you may come across as like uh more direct more extreme or whatever that may be and you're like ah you know should i

say this but you i feel like you you firmly believe it in your soul like this is what right with the information that you have based on the experiences that you're having and what you want to project the future to be especially for your kids this is what you believe in yeah it's true i do believe in everything i say it's not engagement farming it's a blessing and a curse i've got this inability to censor i just always have the urge to be like hey this is yep you might see this hello right now right here you're the only one that sees this am i crazy but you're not man i mean you got like arguably or inarguably the number one bitcoin podcast and like there's more and more people that are waking up um to separate like

your sign out front fix the money fix the world like that is i think so perfect and such an easy thing for people to gravitate towards and anchor off of and then you know bitcoin at the end of the day is just a tool i hope you go build a amazing business amazing family you know live a freaking happy and blessed life and then hopefully bitcoin preserves your future purchasing power such that you can live that life and enjoy it yeah man that's one thing i definitely want to dive into further with you is building a business because that's one thing oh yeah that's a good topic as i've come to know you over the last four four years it's something that's always you've always impressed me with is like your business prowess and how you approach

things and how you think through things like with the mining obviously um like getting closer with our partner in this and the way he describes how you help him conceptualize like how we approach this and getting creative with deals it's always been really impressive like how you're able to zoom out and think about building a business and doing it the right way getting the best deals yeah i mean thanks for that i i going back to those three things and i think wences casares said this and like by the way if you're new to bitcoin and uh just google wenceslas name and go listen to all of his old podcasts like he that guy was legendary um i was not around bitcoin when he was around it i wish i freaking listened to that guy um he said he gets he anchored me on this

whole time capital and reputation where you're spending your time where you spend your capital where you're spending your reputation and you know he was spending it in bitcoin and uh and on the business side i think it's very um like we only have a finite amount of time and i try to spend my time building uh mining businesses i hope profitable mining businesses uh really build out the park with matt build out hopefully continue to build up bitcoin tv with matt and whiz and then our group of these are like bitcoin related projects and then some other like techish investing real estate stuff that i you know do the most important thing around these businesses and i tell our friends you know on the mining side that we're doing with is like how do you

build compounding systems that continue to compound while you're doing not exerting the same level of effort over and over again so that's where it's like people are the most important asset so continue to curate and edit and finding the best talent that you want to more importantly work with like for example uh josh who's our community ops manager at bitcoin park this guy i mean he's a unicorn like i was like matt we need to hire a unicorn that can do pretty much everything as a bitcoiner um that gets it and can grow with us and i was like there's no way we're going to find this unicorn with all these things and the next thing you know josh he smiles more than i do and he just shows up and he just uh crushing it every single day and so like for

example like that mining thing by the way anyone thinking like the whole 10 megawatt i was just i'm a very small sliver of that whole 10 megawatt so it's not like some like big thing for me but um like figuring out and going back to the whole my zhong go you know uh chess analogy um figuring out the right electricians figuring out the right gcs figuring out the right all of these things and identifying that talent that they can fulfill on what they're going to say they're going to fulfill on is mission critical. So doing what you're passionate about and that you want to, and I'll say this, I know it's a little long-winded, but there's really three things I look at also on the business side. It's like, can I make money? Yes. Cool. Am I learning

something new? Right? Like this is stimulating enough because you can make money, but if it's not stimulating you're just like a whatever and am i having fun with the people that i want to have fun with if you can solve all three of those just continue to roll you may not make as much money like the park is not going to make as much money as other things i would be doing uh but it's really fun and i'm learning a shit ton like the people that are coming in and being involved with the park or like dude you're there and you're spending your time and i'm very appreciative of that but the people that you're meeting even at the park or even at the commons is like you know you couldn't do this elsewhere um and then on the mining side the same thing i'm learning like regulatory

capture to power purchase agreements to how energy is consistent and reliable to like oh let's look at the the hash boards of like a micro bt compared to a bitmain s19xp versus their m50s i'm like hold on a second i gotta check in on the geopolitical situation china and taiwan uh did i have russia and ukraine uh on my bingo freaking mining board of like uh just macro environment like you know capital markets oh and by the way europe supposedly uh is asking uh the miners to turn off their miners uh which is great for us by the way uh because i think it's like overall 10 of that that hash rate like you got to stay privy to where the hash rate distribution is on a global scale because like if one area upticks a lot you know that could that you need just be

aware of that versus one area you know like a china shuts off it's like gucci let's go plug even more in yeah it's like oh kazakhstan raising taxes on miners they're gonna unplug unprofitable dude it's so like going back to like you know the god bless that we're raising our families in places like a texas and in tennessee god bless that we're building businesses in these places because there's no way like there was a a mining company i think they were doing kazakhstan deals and russia deals and like hey you could go mine in russia and it's like four cents or five sense and like on paper it looks great because you're like oh wow my paper i would have a great return or whatever then it's like oh there's war going on between russia and ukraine and you know

you can't really do business with russian anymore like what happened to my minors can you guys send those back that's putin's now yeah there's putin's now uh but like even in the u.s i mean like the foundry team being in i think rochester new york right and those knuckleheads in their uh, uh, not foundry, but the politicians that are like, yeah, uh, we want to do a two year, uh, hiatus on and look at the ESG friendliness of, uh, mining and foundries like, wait, we are arguably, I mean, I'm putting it like whatever, you know, conspiracy theories you got about foundry, but like they went from zero to a number one mining pool in the world creating, I don't know how many jobs in rochester uh new york that you know and what they're doing and from a tax

basis for that community and then for them to get slapped in the face and say yeah we're gonna you know shut off mining or mining investments by a bunch of uneducated politicians who have no idea they're not leaning in they're not curious enough to know about that now i flash forward to tennessee in texas you know people are curious especially at the policy making aspect because why i believe and i hope this is continues to be the case which they care about liberty sovereignty and freedom where in these other places and you know i'll put on my uh uh marty jones hat uh which is like they care about power control and controlling what they have, uh, and continue to exert that influence so that they can continue to make money and maintain that power. Um, and we'll see what

happens. Yeah. I mean, I'm bullish on obviously Texas, Tennessee, but also just obviously we have Florida out there. So it's like Wyoming, Ohio, Kentucky, Oklahoma. And I think others are going to join the fray i actually wouldn't be surprised like pennsylvania yep goes a bit purple and a bit red and um you begin to see the natural gas markets they're opening up more i mean the stronghold actually that video is good floating around it's funny it was like six abc um which is like the philly abc local station like even in philly oh that's one of the most liberal cities in the country they were fluffing bitcoin mining using that that waste coal so shout out stronghold for that story in pennsylvania going back to the business side yeah definitely shot

as a stronghold i think thomas is also on the board of a stronghold i mean shout out to those guys it's it's such an awesome video uh going back to the business side like the the mining deal we have in tennessee together amongst a number of other folks um we have we created purposeful local jobs for these contractors that uh guys that are moving dirt to electricians to uh wiring to like a number of other folks we also have a number of folks that you know coming over from china helping with the hosting side and and you know like they don't really talk the same language right you know but yet the same language is the work and bitcoin and there's that bond i I don't know if you've visited the site.

I've visited it a few times, and it's just so inspiring to me. And I feel like, to your point around these states, I think it's going to know people are coming here and there's some apprehension around the locals, at least in Nashville, maybe as well as Austin, that it's like culturally it could shift. But if you lead with these incentives, if you lead with the current culture of family, business first,

you know and then like lower or less or no government i think that's the play and that'll incept over other states because they're going to say take those playbooks i think like a georgia a western pa and then a pa that just like you know goes over into the entire state and then all of a sudden you got like new york and california on their own uh on their own and And then all of a sudden you're like, wait a minute, 40% of our, um, employment basis is government jobs or maybe 60% and then 70%. That's not, we're like paying each other to then to tax each other just to like do that whole circular, uh, economy. Not in the good way. Um, I don't know. yeah no and it's that's the beauty that's why i think that's why i love mining the most and like my experience of great american mining and being on the board of cathedra and really seeing the free market solve the flare gas problem isn't it amazing and then obviously on grid is very

controversial um but there i mean on grid's a bit more nuanced where like depends on the scale And particularly like the rural areas in Tennessee where there's a lot of substations with excess capacity and need help with congestion. Like it makes sense at a certain scale there. And it's actually helping. And it's the free markets, literally us miners. Like, all right, where do we get cheap power?

Where can we do this at a certain scale? And at that local level, instead of increasing property taxes or increasing like sales tax or consumption taxes in order to pay for X, Y, or Z community effort, which they may need and want to do, but they don't have the funding, then you're adding in Bitcoin mining or this other business

to provide a new potential revenue stream because of that excess energy, if you will, that we otherwise would have gone to waste are now being vacuumed or swallowed by this company now that has a vested interest in that local municipality's success. Go forward. Yeah, and that's one thing about our strategy

that I'm really proud of. We've been very proactive talking with the local communities because there's been minors that have just been coming out of nowhere, plopped down and really disrupted. It's something we're hyper-cognizant of and want to work with local communities.

Hiring local across the board. Talk to the state government. that's one thing i mean we were discussing dennis porter's uh pack yesterday like obviously people have their opinions on him and his twitter personally but like i've talked about what they're doing with the pack and i like the team that's involved as well i think they're very sharp and know what they're doing they're focused on states and that's instead of the federal government where i'm uh i'm all for just focusing on states and just ignoring the federal government because that's conversations i've had not necessarily in tennessee but um with

other uh politicians across the country there are some states out there that are actively seeing what florida is doing specifically and they're like yeah we want to neg the federal government too like we want to harden our local economy so that we don't need to depend on the federal government. And I do think Bitcoin, the asset, the open network, and then mining, particularly with its intersection with energy, is an incredible vehicle for individual states to harden themselves against a bloated federal government that is the largest government in human history. It's making life materially worse off for not only every American, but people globally dude a hundred percent and that's where i think if you're thinking like what you can do

and if you're sitting on the sidelines you love bitcoin you're working in bitcoin or not working in bitcoin just like setting up the like a meetup and you'll see maybe it spawns off now you're you know potentially meeting with some local politician local business or the senator you know you'd never know um and then they being the resource for them to help on board it's like thanksgiving's coming up which will be an interesting thanksgiving conversation well again especially as the price looks like what was the price last thanksgiving was it like 60k let's check let's check let me pull it up um it had to be like between 40 and 60. what time are you going home uh i'm i'm good probably for another 10 minutes actually um dude there's so many um uh let me just make sure that

this is good uh there's so many um amazing bitcoiners in the world 65k god damn it god bless shit oh man that's the other thing like uh in matt's defense like i probably had the same not probably i definitely had the same enthusiasm like 200k like i'd break down like all right market cap of you know bitcoins uh what it was a a trillion right i think and like gold's market cap was 10 trillion so 10x the property like what are the five properties of money scarcity portability acceptability verifiability divisibility okay you're telling me gold's better than any of those uh than gold excuse me bitcoin oh rod bitcoin is more scarce oh no its perceived scarcity is there, sure. But Bitcoin has provable scarcity with 21 million. And they're

like, oh my God. So it was like, okay, 10X, then we go to 660,000. But again, that does Bitcoin a disservice. Look at real estate. And actually, I think somebody brought it up in Safe's conversation last night, but real estate's market cap is 200 to 300 trillion globally. All right. Well, real estate, even though I'm a real estate investor, uh, the problem with real estate is you can build up, you can build down. And if our friend Eli takes us to, to, you know, the moon or Mars or wherever we can continue to build. Well, also we have local governments, uh, that want to increase your property tax because they, for some reason, figure out the appraised value with, you know, how our money is not fixed right now. Um, uh, they want to

increase the property value. And that sucks. Uh, there's maintenance, there's repairs, there's loss of rental income. There's all these other factors and maintenance of that asset or with Bitcoin. If I hold it, you know, with 24 words in my head or with unchained or with river or in my own, you know, whatever wallet I'm holding that and maintaining it myself. Um, so what's that another uh from a 10 to so another 20x from there is 20 times uh you know 600k what is that 12 million so i was i was probably that guy at the thanksgiving dinner table that was like oh yeah we're minimum 12 million a coin yeah duh duh 10 years fuck it 10 years like next year bro you see those the amount of uh the price per terahash on those machines are like 140 for these new xp

machines it's gonna be great you should buy some of those too this thanksgiving everybody just stares at you what the fuck were you saying last year uh you still believe that well i've been through so many of these now yeah like yeah this is this is like so one of the off thanksgivings were like yeah you're wrong last year it's like yeah god i was wrong in 2014 too but so it's funny like the the place where jake and i will play uh some golf like they'll know me as the bitcoin guy And now Jake is the Bitcoin guy as well. And sometimes they'll like, you know, when the price is ripping, they're like, you know, like they're texting or they want to like learn more when it's like in the shitter.

Yeah. Sometimes they're like, oh, what the fuck, Rod? You know, blah, blah, blah. But like they'll ask still good questions. But sometimes they actually feel bad for me. They're like, oh yeah. Are you okay? You got all these kids, you know, like you got all this like exposure with your, Rod,

you keep saying your time capital and reputation is like all in on this Bitcoin thing. You're investing in the mining like this. Are you okay? Maybe I'll pick, I'll pick up lunch today. You know? I'm like, yeah, yeah, that's great. Please do. Like I do need the help. Um, but it's, you know, I, how lucky we are to be able to like, you've inspired me. I actually, uh, for my father in law wanted to learn more about Bitcoin. So I was like, Hey, I'll, I'll send you one article or one thing to read about Bitcoin every day. And then he was like, oh, can I forward this to my brother-in-law and a couple others?

I was like, oh, just give me their emails. I'll just be CC, I'm on the email, or CC or whatever. And then it started growing, they're like, hey, can you forward it, like include this person? So I did the whole wake up with Bitcoin thing, which is, you know, just a simple, like visualize Bitcoin, some stats about Bitcoin and like, you know, video and like one thing to read

and then like a little bit of commentary. um and that's been a lot of fun to do and i was inspired from the bent uh as well and then uh now like i mean dude when you get into bitcoin it's like you just want to do more in bitcoin and like and i need to pick your brain and this is not like this we can end the show but uh around starting your own podcast because i do think everyone has their own voice like should never maybe they should aspire to be as big as they want to be but like start somewhere and like even if it's just a weekly show that you're just asking like shout out to um uh kbn um uh knoxville bitcoin network he started a show called uh hard money hard knocks and where he interviews uh uh meetup organizers

shout out to casey and his co-host they started hell money podcast like all of these longer tail podcasts are very very fascinating to me and i think um they're going to continue to rise up and boost up the tftcs of the world and all these other folks because uh people are waking up to this whole like the money is broke broken and how do we fix it and questioning what is money uh and a lot more uh if you will yeah and that's i mean you've started a podcast now and i'd love for you to come on buddy i know we gotta next time i'm in nashville in december come on we'll rip it but no that's the thing like and i've told you we've talked about this like on the content side of things and that's my advice to anybody getting into newsletter writing or podcasting is just

consistency is key especially in bitcoin world and with the volatile price movement like that the hardest thing is to produce content in the bear markets because everybody gets disinterested downloads are tightly correlated with price and that's um we've matt and i i mean rabbit hole recap die hard bitcoiners so like that crushes and then at tftc um just naturally over the years i've gotten more interested in tangential topics and that's helped us keep our download numbers up like throughout bitcoin bear markets but and that's what you enjoy doing yeah i i'll say something controversial, which I think you and I would lean towards and Matt would, or I know it doesn't, but I actually do think there is a mix where advertising makes sense. Uh, and I, and I

do think value for value is going to be here and it's going to grow. Don't get me wrong. I love it. Like I love what Fountain's doing. I love what Evan's doing with Echo, um, and a number of Breeze with Roy. I mean, it's awesome and use it, utilize it and so on. If that's the preferred way of doing it. But then there's something with like, you know, and I got to give a lot of credit to you, which is like, you've been in the moment, you know, you're building your advertising base because you care passionately about like what those people are in that moment, what they're trying to do and accomplish as entrepreneurs is very difficult. Now market conditions, maybe they go the wrong way and so on, you know, shifting in and out of different advertisers,

but like that helps you because you're maybe utilizing their products and services and you want to help them um and you want to share that kind of story and then also change of value and more importantly and that's why i like the advertising model is i know where your incentives lie because you're fully disclosing who your advertisers are like where other people may like have some you know behind the scenes stuff and still have advertisers but still have behind the seeing stuff you know that are not maybe as disclosed if you will yeah we try our best to uh align um with advertisers that we grew with we obviously very publicly had uh some companies that didn't turn out to be uh great advertisers but we try to

right the wrongs and be open about that but i think in in that in your defense i mean i think even in that those scenarios you're publicly talking about like the good and the bad without like market conditions change people change and so on and so you're talking about them in a very open way um which i gotta give a lot of respect for where other people may lean in and try to defend all the way you know which you know i gotta give them respect on that aspect as well because they're the ones but they and it goes back to the incentive model which i do lean towards the value for value in general being the the end game but there's still value with the advertising model yeah no we try to practice what we preach i don't even mix i love unchained shout out to unchained

they've been with your sponsor yeah still with us unchained brains hodl hodl uh upstream crowd health right now um and i gotta and the other thing block stream oh block stream a radical recap yeah hell yeah dude that's awesome like those brands are freaking phenomenal and like and i think two things one i think there's going to be knock on wood more bitcoin focused companies so the pool of brand brands to support and help is going to increase which is just great the second thing is like you make it fun too so it's like not annoying where you're like and here's my next sponsor have you ever thought about you know uh genital dysfunction well is your dick not working i don't know why i just talked about that do you need pills are you

losing your hair on the way uh i'm not losing my hair uh according to my back and my head dick pill companies throw the money out there freaks trying to get it to us and i've held back i know you're all high t alpha males that don't need the dick pills so i'm not going to push them on you that's right i don't know if logan does these cut ups uh where you can go to segments but that should definitely be a segment you know on the youtube side yeah we've been talking about doing like a little 15 to 30 second teaser on the beginning oh wow video that'd be great for mine dick pill teaser for the show oh my god but um but you make it fun like even like from the brains uh to the other ones and and so on so like i don't know if like i'll ever go because right now it's not

like a focus right now, but I, I, I will say this. I really enjoy it. That's why I gave me the confidence to like, say, reach out to you and say, Hey man, I'm going to be in Austin. If you're, if you're cool and up for it, um, love to come on your show and thank you for that. And saying, yeah, let's do it. I mean, it's long overdue. You're you've been, you've been trying to like just linger in the background. I know. Remember the, so not other stories, but, uh, the park and bitcoin tv started in my garage oh yeah and we did a rabbit hole recap and you're like dude sit next to me and like join us this is a party rip i'm like no no man i don't have anything to say i don't want a moron you know and i'll just i'll help with the camera or whatever

and then i knock the camera over and i'm like looking at it like one of those memes like the kid standing over it i'm like oh shit well let's show your podcast a little bit more no it's a very unique um format yeah you're interviewing the builders in bitcoin so yeah so it's a it's a podcast about the people who bring bitcoin to life like you like the you know from slim to whiz to uh seed signer to a number of other folks you know like one thing you know with the park and we're very lucky so much at commons is not only do we have now more bitcoiners living in the nashville area we have a lot of bitcoiners coming through nashville and i'm like man and i like i get one hour of uninterrupted time to ask all my selfish questions around their projects products

services businesses that they're building in the bitcoin space and uh i get so much value out of it and um a shout out to tom who's my producer and editor of the show it's a recorded show like i this this is recorded right we're not like live streaming right now right didn't you launch that on your team i'm kidding i'm kidding um so we gotta edit bleep and whatever out now i'm just joking but um uh i gotta going back to the whole business side like a good compounding system where i can go plug in have a guest and say hey generally this is kind of like what i'm thinking about talking about like is that cool like sam abasi who's the founder of hoseki who uh i think he's in austin as well now yeah no he is dude he's fucking big break oh yeah legend like good like

quality bitcoin i gotta spend like a number of days with him awesome guy and like that's like you with tftc you get to spend you know with jokers like me but like amazing people like sam parker and throughout and just we didn't we checked our phone once to look up the price So we can cry a little bit, uh, what it was back in Thanksgiving last year. Um, but we have uninterrupted like hour, two hour conversation, which is awesome. I'll admit I did check my phone a second time, but that was to see if Caleb responded to my text. I wanted to give an announcement on there, but unfortunately he's hating me right now.

Hey, listen, you're our fourth Caleb. You're not even, you don't have an option. Yeah. Yeah. It's like when you're going to play golf and it's like, dude, you're our fourth. So like our foursome gets fucked up. So you gotta be part of our fourth. Yeah.

we're gonna recruit for that too yeah the just i think we'll call it the invitational like the bitcoin invitational bitcoin invitational um and i think we're gonna have some really quality gear too so like i'm very fortunate that i have a pretty good connection at peter millar and uh we're gonna get that millar let's go we're gonna get that that's the other fun thing it's like by the way not to go on back to the advertising uh uh side which is um uh logan what time is it right now by the way okay we got two i got a lunch with zach voll at 12 so shout out zach who's another austin-based bitcoiner um the uh oh non-endemic sponsors like meaning non-endemic be like non-bitcoin related man i are always looking for those

dude like shout out shout out to ammo seek to who ammo seek they came on for for a month oh okay want to find ammo oh find ammo ammo seek got it it's keeper's heart we're giving you free tick it's time to uh dude i actually do think there is like if we'll talk about this but i do think there's going to be some really interesting stuff like like cheddar which is a competitor like a newer gen competitor or was a newer gen competitor like cnbc those those amazing people put these dunkin donuts like cups on there like run by dunkin and i'm pretty sure dunkin pays on millions of freaking dollars just to have their cup on the table yeah you know we got a clean table got 1031 there you know that's a free spot a free spot for you put some uh whiskey or uh coffee i do think

coffee is a is a good one like that's what i want to do with like becks and others um but yeah i mean just like it's fun too like you know like if whatever you're consuming or use utilizing and you want to showcase and there could be some exchange of value or no exchange who knows but um yeah world is the world is bright man it is world is bright because we have people like you living in dude we're gonna win we're gonna win we're in the midst of the bear markets freaks could get worse we could drop lower we're the bear market i'm coming off pods i'm creating pods like this is crazy now now we're gonna go rip it's uh you can't lose with people like this even when the price is down okay rod again this was long overdue i'm happy you finally decided to come on this side

of the camera thanks man uh it's been a blast i mean those two hours was just like two minutes so i appreciate you buddy first of many let's do it man we're definitely have to do some in the lead up into the invitational and post invitation we're gonna have to do like a like literally the day the invitation will be all like bombed post and just like well turn the cameras on well the thing is like talk shit on each other hopefully we're not talking shit hopefully we're celebrating that's right but like we could have like a lot i mean there's like d if dlcs ever get to where i think they could get to like imagine if there's like live dlcs from like people that are on site as well as globally that are participating maybe there's like a live stream of like you know video

of shots and so on it's like all right who's gonna drive it further marty or rod we have an on the ground oracle yeah on the ground oracle that's like there and it's like 10 000 sats you know who pipes it further and it's like okay marty just rod topped it and uh marty piped it and it's just like that confirmed done and then it's just i mean that could be pretty dope live bets all right yeah we got this out there the the invitational now we got months to brainstorm around it let's do it and we can crowdsource around brainstorming on discord that's right maybe i'll go download discord oh yeah dude love to have you been all right enjoy your lunch with Zach.

Yeah, thank you. Tell them I said what's up. Will do. Peace and love, freaks. Tiki!