The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP - Jaran Mellerud - The Future of Bitcoin Mining

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Jaran Mellerud joins the CBP this week to discuss Bitcoin mining. As more nations are adopting the notion of using Bitcoin mining for a new source of revenue, the future of mining could make a slow transition away from the publicly traded miners. Bitcoin mining also provides a new way to heat homes and businesses during the cold winter months. If you want to learn more about Jaran, he can be found on X at https://x.com/JMellerud or visit the Hashlabs website at https://www.hashlabs.io/ From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord: https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer. D-Central Technologies - https://d-central.tech/ Your home for all things mining! Whether you need a new unit, a unit repaired, some support with software, or you want to start your own wife-friendly home mining operation, the guys at D-Central Tech are ready to help. With industry leading knowledge and expertise, let the D-Central team help you get started mining the hardest money on Earth.

and welcome i have with me jaren mellerud and jaren all the way from norway how are you jaren how's it going over there i'm doing very good thanks for having me no problem at all just wondering how are things going over there in norway is the political climate changing like it is in the rest of the world or is it things are pretty stable over there it's changing i would say changing slower than in the rest of the world norway is always lagging a couple of years behind the rest of the world it feels like um but we have had a very socialist government for the last like three four years and now it's completely changed and it's like a right wave coming over Norway now so it's also changing in Norway yeah there's a wave that's changing this is a pendulum that swings one way another

and globally this is going on and if you think it's going to continually go this way it won't because eventually it will shift back the other way this is the way things work unfortunately but or fortunately anyways for people who are unfamiliar with your work, I'd like maybe to give a little background. Who is Yaren Melroud? So I'm a Bitcoin miner. I started out as a research analyst analyzing the Bitcoin mining industry. I have a background from energy management, studied that in university.

And then eventually I met Alan Mahmetatov from Kazakhstan and he ran a mining operation in Kazakhstan and he wanted to go more global so I joined him in Hash Labs last year along with a third co-founder Marek and we built Hash Labs. So yeah, I live in Norway, mining in many, many countries. Tell me, what does Hash Labs do? Do they provide services to people that want to build out and scale up Bitcoin mining operations? Yes, we do hosting. So if anyone wants to host some machines, we can provide that. We do hosting in several countries, Norway, Finland, Ethiopia, Indonesia also coming up now. So that's

what we mainly focus on providing hosting solutions for Bitcoin miners. And then we also do some self mining as well. We are like a long term vision is really to be a provider for the energy industry to provide mining as a service to the energy industry for energy companies who want to make their own operations more efficient by the use of Bitcoin mining. So who's typically the customer? Is it retail or is it commercial that is coming to you looking for services? We have both retail and commercial customers. I think average size of our customer is about 30 or 40 machine per customers. We have some customers with even only one machine and then we have some with like 1000 machines. So it's very different. And Kazakhstan is no longer a destination for

setting up Bitcoin mining operations. I know it was at one time, but that's no longer the case. Yeah. Kazakhstan was the second largest Bitcoin mining country in 2021. So there was a huge growth there. And that's when my co-founder, Arlen Makhmatov, started the operation in Kazakhstan. He did. He worked in Glencore in Beijing for many years and is very familiar with the commodity market. So he was get the idea to start mining Bitcoin in Kazakhstan because they have very cheap electricity there. And unfortunately, there were so many other miners who got the same idea to start mining in Kazakhstan in that time. So the market became overcrowded and basically the electricity grid hadn't been taken proper care of during the last 20 to 30 years

since the Soviet Union collapsed. But the grid operator, which is government owned, they had been kind of putting it under the rug and trying to hide the fact that the state of the grid couldn't accommodate that much demand so on paper it looked very good but in reality it was not good and mining revealed that so they had to mining basically overloaded the grid in the end and they had to get rid of the industry. So they introduced many laws and rules that made it very difficult to operate there, like taxes on electricity, also banning mining within certain times of the day. You have to buy it in a specific electricity market only for miners where there is not enough electricity. So it basically meant that mining in Kazakhstan went from being very, very lucrative to being almost not possible over the span of a few months. But now it's making a comeback now.

It's regulated and kind of stable now. And there are some regions in Kazakhstan which actually have electricity surplus and we see now that the industry is growing in that in these regions and probably will continue to be a significant place for mining but we are not mining in Kazakhstan anymore because um Alan facility, which he built, is unfortunately located in a region which doesn't really have a surplus of electricity. So that is shut down for now. What happened to all the equipment that was there at one time? Was it just relocated to other parts of Kazakhstan where they now have excess electricity or they were they sent abroad to other jurisdictions that probably have a lot of excess electricity because they had a lot

of hash power at one time so I'm wondering if you know what happened to all the equipment yeah it's like probably more than a hundred thousand machines in Kazakhstan probably much even much more and a lot of this equipment has been stranded in Kazakhstan because of course many miners they you always have the hope that things will improve next month or in two months so then you just keep the facility and like hope that things will change very soon so a lot of the equipment was just stranded there because of operators who had hoped that it will change and improve. Unfortunately, it didn't really improve that much. And also some equipment was moved to Russia, like over the border to Russia.

And yeah, some have been exported to other countries as well. But a lot of stranded machines there. Now, in terms of where hash rate seems to be growing, Ethiopia and other parts of Africa seem to be growing significantly. And there's the dam that they've set up in Ethiopia that's generating a heck of a lot of electricity and excess electricity. And they're just diverting that to mine Bitcoin. I want to hear your thoughts about that project, because it seems to have been getting a little bit of news

within the Bitcoin mining community, but I don't think a lot of people really hear about that. So I want to hear if you could just provide some background on that, whatever you have, or your thoughts and so forth, because I find that to be a rather interesting story. Yeah, so we were one of the first companies entering Ethiopia in the beginning of this year. So when we entered, it was not at all a story in the news.

Ethiopia just started to grow. But Ethiopia is a very interesting case study for how actually a country can use Bitcoin mining for their own good. So Ethiopia, we have to remember it's a very big country with a very very powerful government it was a communistic country for many many years and this attitude is still within the government so they want to control everything and they are very very powerful so this is one thing and since it's such a centralized government, it also means that they can form the industry according to the benefit of the whole country. And I would say that they have done that with the mining industry. So they have a lot of surplus electricity from this. It's called the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which is the largest

hydropower plant in Africa. It has a capacity of around eight gigawatts once it's fully built out, which is enormous. And Ethiopia is a very fast growing country. So they will have a very large growth in their electricity consumption. But this will take many years to, it will take many years to it will take many years for this consumption to increase so during this let's say the next 10 years whatever a lot of these hydropower plants would have been unutilized if it wasn't for Bitcoin mining. So they basically had two choices. Either they could export the electricity, which they actually is doing, or they could just export it by the use of Bitcoin mining, just mining inside the country. And they're utilizing a combination of that.

So right now there is around one gigawatt of mining. And this serves as a way for them to monetize their electricity. So the National Utility of Ethiopia, which is called Ethiopian Electric Power, are selling a lot of electricity to Bitcoin miners. And if it wasn't for mining, they would be 100 percent dependent on the neighboring countries to buy that electricity. And Ethiopia, like the build out of this dam is very controversial because it allows Ethiopia to fully control the water flow of the Nile, which of course the downstream countries don't like. So I would say for Ethiopia, mining mining is a very very strategically important industry because if they had to sell all their electricity to neighbors maybe the downstream countries would

would not really like that and they would try to to encourage the neighbors to not buy that electricity, for example. So mining gives them a lot of power and is very beneficial for Ethiopia. The industry in Ethiopia's mining is growing, I think, fastest in the world. In Ethiopia, it's enormous growth there, and there will continue to be growth over the next few months and then I think it will have a little bit break because most of the there will not be so much excess electricity anymore so they have to basically not give out more electricity to the miners also I can mention that there is a lot of um most of the miners in ethiopia are chinese so because

the chinese have been um have been doing business in ethiopia for like 10 15 years so they really much know the country in addis ababa the capital there is even a china town and we design everywhere and and it's pretty cool actually and they have have like an own building, like a hotel, like a huge hotel where all the Chinese miners like to stay. So we know most of the Chinese people operating there because Alan in our team speaks Chinese. So yeah, it's very much driven by Chinese investments. And also these providers of electrical infrastructure to the utility of Ethiopia.

They're Chinese. So all these Chinese miners have the contact with them. And for them, it's very easy to buy electricity and find the properties and operate there. You've traveled to Ethiopia or to Addis before, it sounds like. Yeah, yeah. I've been there many times. We do operate in Ethiopia also. Okay.

And in terms of then the knowledge over there, I guess with respect to Bitcoin mining and the extent in which it's being rolled out in Ethiopia, I think it's pretty much contained to the people that are involved with it's pretty much contained to the people that are involved with it, the government officials, the electrical people. I guess the general public really doesn't have an idea that their country is mining Bitcoin. Is that correct? Yeah, it's correct. Because Ethiopia is such a large country. It's like way over 100 million people living there. So they don't really like mining is a big industry there, but it's not like anything that gets people's attention there. And of course, you can read about it in the local news in Ethiopia as well.

And more and more people getting interested about it. So we get from time to time requests through our contact form on our website from Ethiopians who want to start mining or who want to work for us and yeah we also we hired a few Ethiopians also for like for example our lawyer is at the opian he's very, very good. So some people are reaching out and yeah, they understand that this can bring some benefits to the country. So I would say they're very open to it in Ethiopia compared to in Norway, for example, where I'm from. It certainly incentivizes the energy generation, electricity generation and expanding upon that. And that's something I want to talk about a little bit.

But I just wanted to have a couple more questions to do with the dam, the generation electricity over there and the use of it. Ultimately, they're a business. The government may not be totally business, but they're there to maximize the profits from this endeavor. In terms of how much revenue they're able to generate in terms of per kilowatt hour, are they able to get more out of it, more dollars for mining Bitcoin right now or for selling it abroad? I'm just wondering which of the two is more lucrative or is it kind of just a tough question to answer? It's actually a very easy question to answer.

They get much more from Bitcoin miners. So the electricity tariff for Bitcoin miners is like, let's say, between three and four cents per kilowatt hour. And when they sell the electricity to the neighboring countries, I can't remember the exact number, but it is at a significantly lower price than what they get from selling it to Bitcoin miners. And keep in mind also when they sell electricity to the neighbors, they have to build out so large transmission lines over hundreds of kilometers. And that's also very, very expensive. So Bitcoin miners can just connect directly to the substation. They don't have to build out these transmission lines. And they buy the electricity at a higher price.

That's fascinating. I think that's rather bullish for the Bitcoin mining operation over there and maybe others similar to that around the world. Because I look at right now we just had to having less than a year ago so the the rewards are much less but also if you look at the subsidy that like what we're getting um like how much people are paying for transactions like look at like the last bunch of blocks i haven't checked in a day or two but we got to as low as one sack per v-bite so there's really not much that people are so in terms of like the incentive to to mine bitcoin if they're making more money mining bitcoin in this environment than they are selling electricity i think that's

for them and maybe others it's rather bullish because in terms of how much people are going to start paying as the block space becomes more scarce in the future. It should go up. Yeah, it should. And of course, like in the future, Ethiopia will have a tremendous economic growth and also the neighboring countries. So then they might actually be able to sell electricity at a higher price than Bitcoin miners pay. But right now, it's quite beneficial to sell to the Bitcoin miners. So the way you're envisioning it, it's kind of a stopgap measure. It just gives them the ability

to generate electricity, to sell it right now at a decent price. And once the demand ramps up, then they could scale back what they're directing to Bitcoin mining. So it's just basically it's a stopgap measure until they reached the total eight gigawatts in terms of capacity and consumption. Is that correct? Yeah, I would say so. Probably Ethiopia will have a very large growth in their electricity production capacity over the next, let's say, 20 years because there is a huge untapped potential of hydropower that is still not developed yet. And so even if the consumption grows, like internal consumption grows to like the capacity right now, there will still be even more production capacity in the future.

So I think there will be um there will be a function for bitcoin mining for for many many years in ethiopia um but uh but yeah it's it's like uh always because hydropower plants they need to be built out in like like almost from zero to 200 percent so and it takes so long time to build them. So you will have to have some kind of consumption that can monetize this, always this capacity before the country

internal consumption increases towards that. Are there any other projects globally that is similar to this, that is being rolled out or at least thought about because i don't hear of anything but you have your finger in a pulse more so than i do so maybe you might have some insight into this i would say that um ethiopia is um

yeah there is one more i think so there is a bhutan and they are also like uh thinking the same way like ethiopia doing and um they're using bitcoin mining to monetize their electricity in the same way hydropower also but the difference is that in bhutan the government is actually um i think they're actually mining themselves but in ethiopia that what I know, the government is not directly mining. They're just selling the electricity to the miners. Right. Right. Yeah, it's an investment firm of the Bhutan government that's mining Bitcoin.

And from what I remember, they have excess electricity during certain times of the year. And they have a deficit of electricity other times of year because it is being there's hydro dams over there. So the water flow sometimes enables them to generate more or less or whatever. I think that's what it is. So they're not mining all year round. It's just based on whenever there's an excess amount of electricity being generated. So I'm taking it that the Bhutan government government they never reached out to you for any advice or any uh no no unfortunately not they uh they're working with the bit deer which is a very large company publicly traded and it's uh even larger than hash labs and i think they're happy to work with them

how about in scandinavia is there any growth over there in terms of how bitcoin mining operations i know that um gosh i forget the company name is one in canada um oh man i totally forget the name they used to mine a little bit of ethTH as well besides Bitcoin. They're using the excess heat to heat businesses and homes in some Scandinavian countries. Gosh, it's Hive. That's the country. Yeah, Hive. Yes. Yeah.

So I'm curious, like, what's going on in Scandinavia with respect to Bitcoin mining? How is the business model over there working? And is it people picking it up, people using it? Like, just curious yeah i first of all scandinavia has been one of the longest standing bitcoin mining countries in the world so in scandinavia people started mining bitcoin in like 2015 2016 and it's been going on since then and that's a very long time in mining because money countries they just have mining for a few years and then it stops like Kazakhstan for example but Nordic is very stable region in the world and I would say that there hasn't been a lot of growth in Norway

and Sweden and Finland Iceland the last few years it's been very stable so like for example in norway um i can tell about the benefits of mining in norway and the disadvantages so i'm norwegian we also mine in norway first of all norway has the perfect climate for mining and probably a very similar climate to canada like especially the coastal regions of Canada. So very cold winters and very mild summers. And we have a lot of hydropower in Norway. So hydropower is completely stranded in the north. No one else can actually use this hydropower.

And the government, this is a a disadvantage the government has been very anti-mining the last few years they even tried to ban it in 2022 but they failed and now they're trying again to ban it and i'm really sure that they will fail again um and but keep in mind that this is a very socialist government and the next government will be a very right-wing government. So I think it will be a little bit more friendly towards mining. And also the stability of Norway is an advantage because it's kind of opposite of Ethiopia. You know, Ethiopia is a very centralized large government, just like Norway. But in Ethiopia, the government can decide whatever

they want to do you know they can change the rules in a few weeks in norway they can't do like that so even if the government doesn't like mining miners can still mine in Norway. There is nothing they really can do about it. So that's a big advantage. And there is a large demand for heat in Norway because it's so cold here. So we are trying to help out to heat some buildings and homes in Norway. So we will launch a project in February which will heat three commercial buildings

in the north of norway and so this is the future of mining in the nordics it's really heat reuse and then finland we also mine in finland there we have a heat reuse project that utilizes hydro-cooled machines to heat a city of 15 000 people so this is a mining operation like one container that is basically connected to a district heating system providing the hot water from the machines into the system which is again pumped into the city and um and this is what is interesting about Finland is that since Finland is in the EU, we see that the EU is actually incentivizing Bitcoin mining. Because the district heating plants are being pushed by the EU to reduce their consumption of biomass and natural gas that is imported from Russia. And the only way they can do that is by utilizing the heat from Bitcoin mining.

This is incredible. Actually, the EU is incentivizing mining in Europe right now, but I don't think they even know that they are doing that well given their stance on bitcoin and bitcoin mining recently they put in some new rules micro rules into place or it just it seems like there's always resistance from the eu government so to see that somehow in one way shape or another that they're incentivizing this i find it to be fascinating and actually kind of comical in a way. And with respect to like the heat generation, and so HashLab is directly involved with providing heat for businesses,

residential, commercial, whatever, that want to use that to heat their location. So HashLab is directly involved in that. Is that correct? Yes. Yes yes we're providing heat in finland and soon in norway got it and in terms of then government resistance with respect to that i i you were mentioning that there was a time when uh in norway they were anti-mining what was the rationale for that yeah what did they use to say why we don't like bitcoin mining the rationale is um always changing so first it was um basically first it was that bitcoin mining

is a dirty industry and then um they understood that this rationale is stupid because in norway there is like 100 renewable energy and bitcoin mining is not like more dirty than other industries so they understood that this was stupid and they can't use that rationale so then they switched to that there is not enough energy in northern norway but that rationale also um didn't really work because everyone knows that there is like more than enough energy in northern norway that there is a market for electricity and the price is very low so then they moved on to the third rationale which is had a little bit more substance and that is that we need to build all these new green industries in the future and they will need electricity so we should not let the miners take that electricity from all these new green

industries and i think that was really what uh why they didn't like mining at in the first place is because this green trends transition which was kind of on the peak in 20 i would say 2020 2021 um part of that green transition in europe was that europe should be self-sufficient with battery production um green steel like they have some concept called green steel in Europe, and hydrogen, all these new things that should support this green transition. So the idea was that this would be produced in the north of Norway, north of Sweden, utilizing all this renewable hydropower. The problem was that the miners are so flexible, so quick, so they managed to always get in front of these big projects in the line of electricity. So that was a big problem

for them. And I think they, this is just speculation from my side, but I think that they lobbied the government to basically try to ban mining and make life harder for miners because they're competing with them for electricity. And it hasn't really worked for them so far. Like mining is still feasible in Norway. No one can stop miners in Norway. And now we are seeing all these green projects they're failing one after the other they're falling like dominoes so for example in close to where i'm from in northern norway there was like planned one of the largest battery factories in the world

that completely failed like they said that they were going to create like 5 000 jobs it in the end it was like 50 jobs created and they they will even disappear in the next few months as the project get removed and then in northern sweden they also had some similar project which was even worse and green steel project and they even needed to like import this steel from china or something like that because they have the ability to produce it there so all these projects are failing and that means that there is not not really a reason for the government to be anti-mining anymore because who else are going to use that electricity like the green projects that failing despite all these subsidies they got of billions of dollars even

they fail and they can't operate there so there is no no alternative users of the electricity in the north of Scandinavia. Like no industries want to be there because it's just like one, these countries are kind of difficult to operate in. You have very high salaries. So all industries would rather be in China. And it's remote. You can't even build like AI data centers there because there is not enough redundancy. So mining is the only thing you can do with electricity in the north. So I think the future is very bright because of that fact.

I think that, and you didn't really mention the word, but the stranded energy. You mentioned it earlier, but I think that is one of the biggest case uses for bitcoin in that there's energy that just there's no there's no need to there's no demand for it and it is being generated so what is the option right now until there's going to be demand in the future you know it's going to be bitcoin mining it's it's a perfect stopgap measure it could be permanent but at least at the very, it's going to be Bitcoin mining. It's a perfect stopgap measure. It could be permanent, but at the very least, it enables the ability to continue generating electricity and use it to monetize electricity. So that's the biggest thing. But it's not just stranded energy, like say in Northern Norway, but it's also other parts of the world, like Russia,

the Middle East, and so forth. It seems like there's going to be if there hasn't already been a lot of bitcoin mining operations being set up in those parts of the world what we hear about russia a lot of mining that's being set up over there but in the middle east not so much we don't hear a lot about it but i think some of it and this is just my opinion is being done under the table like it's not being reported there's no need to report it um I want to know if you have any thoughts about the Middle East and their role in Bitcoin mining moving forward yeah and that's I think your observation is correct that there is more mining there than what people think and because these countries in the Middle East are extremely centralized governments and they can do whatever they want.

They don't have to report anything. So there is a couple of operations in the UAE where they have announced everything because that's a project that is a joint venture with Marathon, which is publicly traded. So they kind of have to announce everything publicly. But in the UAE, I think publicly, there is like 400 megawatt of mining, maybe a little bit more. And then Saudi Arabia, interestingly,

no one seems to know about any mining going on there. But I think there has to be some mining there. Like Saudi Arabia is like the fourth biggest energy producing country in the world. So it would be really strange if there is not any mining going on there, for example. So yeah, these countries probably have more mining than people think. But again, it is very difficult to operate there because of the heat. And this is a big disadvantage of mining there. So in most countries, you can get away with mining even in places which are a little bit

hot like Texas, you can kind of get away with it but in in saudi arabia and uae there is it's like the hottest places in the world which makes it very difficult it's going to encourage more innovation in the bitcoin mining sphere and in terms of having the chips operate in a hotter environment or cool themselves faster in one way shape or another so it's just going to encourage more innovation. That's the way I look at it, because there's a need. And if there's a need, that's got to be filled somehow. And, well, let's see how the people at Bitmain and so forth decide to build things out and put money in R&D to solve this problem.

And I just want to just shift over to another topic. Do you follow a lot of the publicly traded miners out there, or are you just not really much of a follower of them in total? I did before, but not the last year. Okay. I'd love to know. I mean, I know you're about a year off since really following them. I'd love to know your thoughts about what's the future

of those publicly traded miners, because I kind of look at them and I see that it's going to be hard for them to compete, given the fact that a lot of them are just plugging into the grid. They're not generating their own electricity or are able to tap into something that's stranded, those are the ones that I think that are going to succeed moving forward. And these publicly ones, for the most part, I think that I don't see much of a future for them in the long term. I want to hear your thoughts if you have any. Yeah, I agree. I also don't really see a big future for them probably some of

them will survive and do very well but i think like now it's like 25 or something of them which is a lot and the industry is not that big so it's a lot with 25 companies probably there will be even more in the next bull market but i think over the long term definitely most of them will not do very well you can compare it to the gold mining industry because in gold mining like gold mining is huge in canada i think and you have so many publicly traded gold mining companies but most of them have not done very well over the last like 10 20 years there is only a few that do very well and then the rest is kind of just going sideways or actually decreasing and i think the same will happen to bitcoin mining companies once the industry stabilizes and there is the main

reason for that is that the publicly traded Bitcoin miners, they're really good at only one thing, and that's raising capital. That's their speciality. And in Bitcoin mining, you have to have other specialities in order to do well in the long term. have other specialities in order to do well in the long term like you have to be a good operator get access to very cheap electricity and just producing the bitcoin at the lowest possible price and get the best return on capital as possible and for example let's say that we provide hosting at seven cents per kilowatt hour, and then we have a publicly traded Bitcoin miner.

If you go into their financial statements, you can divide all their costs by the amount of kilowatt hours they consumed in a given quarter. And then you can estimate their cost per kilowatt hour of all the expenses and most of them have way higher cost base than seven cents per kilowatt hour so if if we are able to provide hosting at seven cent per kilowatt hour and actually make some profit doing that and then it means that we are actually more efficient than most of the public companies, which is kind of strange since we are a much smaller company. And this goes to most companies in the industry, like hosting in America, wherever, Canada. Let's say $0.07 is the average price.

And most public miners, if they were to offer hosting at seven cent they would lose money basically and this is mostly because they have very large administrative expenses like salaries and and yet stock compensation all that stuff and and yeah some of them don't really even have that cheap energy so i i think even clean spark reported last year and i could be wrong if it was them they purchased a private jet and yeah i i thought that and i'm wrong if it was clean spark my apology but it was one of those publicly traded companies i thought it was rather odd that they would purchase a private jet because why would they need it? I don't know. It seems like they're living the good life and they're just taking advantage of all the perks that come along with being publicly traded or raising capital, as you say, is one of the –

Yeah. And also, like, now it seems like they – like, at least people who invest in these stocks, I think they understand the game now. And they understand that. But they're not in it for the long term, also. They just want to ride the next bull market. And probably then they will try to sell everything. That's the game, yeah.

Before, I mean, there's one last thing i want to talk about and um it's an ebook an ebook that you just recently published i think it came out in november and it's bitcoin mining secrets is the name of the book i want to hear more about it i want to hear you talk about it because I'm curious about it. Yeah. And that's a book that I wrote and it's really dedicated to people who want to learn. Like it's dedicated to beginners, but also like intermediates who want to learn about like the most important things they need to know in order to mine Bitcoin. And so this book is not like explaining like technically what Bitcoin mining is. How do you like it's a, you know, this complex mathematical thing. It's not taking that into the explanation and only like giving practical knowledge that you really need to know in order to successfully mine bitcoin um it's not really um not really about like the technical

aspects of running an operation it's more about the economical aspect like how do you determine which miner is the best you can buy like which gives you the best return on your investment? What should you do? Should you start a self-mining operation or should you start a hosting operation like hosted miners? Like how do you know which electricity price you can pay? Like simple ways to answer these questions that are the most important what's this how many pages is the ebook it's like i think 34 pages or something like that so pretty brief in terms of the target audience who you're trying to reach

with that book we're trying to reach um i would say all beginners and also intermediates and will there be periodic updates because if you're looking for if you're providing update uh information as what's the best right now in the future as things progress because the the bitcoin mining industry it's it's a dynamic one where you have new chips new rigs just are you going to be updating that book periodically or is it uh are you just too busy to do that because i think it has to be updated once per year got it that's awesome now just one final question i'm curious what are your thoughts on something like this is a bidax and i have one just running away i mean i know you deal with in a very large scale but I want to hear your thoughts about something small scale

that I'm just running here doing solo mining with a BidX and trying to win a lottery ticket here. I think it's a very nice way to learn about mining and to like, because you have to set up the mining pool, like you have to, like you can see the hash rate going and it's kind of cool and you can learn a lot about mining by doing that so i i really like that it's a cool little device and anybody out there who wants to get one and is thinking that they'll make money on it no it's not possible it's simply in my opinion it's best just to go

solo mining go for the uh try winning the rewards all yourself and uh good luck you probably never get it even in a hundred thousand years but who knows you might be one of the lucky ones somebody last year one bidax user was able to solve the uh the block and build a block last year and that was pretty cool got a lot of publicity publicity for bid axes all around the world. But that's a side to point. Yeah, Jarn, any final words before we wrap this one up? Anything, any last thing you want to talk about before we call this one quits? I would say, first of all, thank you so much for having me on this podcast.

It's the second time for me. I really appreciate it. And another point is if someone wants to reach out to me, please do. You can find me on Twitter and also through our website, hashlabs.io. We have a contact form. We provide hosting solutions if you are interested in starting to mine Bitcoin. And yeah, if you have any questions for me, my inbox is

open. Awesome. And I'll be putting all the links in the show notes below. So if anybody wants to go to it, it's just easily accessible. Just click away. Way to go. Yaron Melrude, I appreciate you coming on. This has been a pleasure. So yeah. With that, take care. We'll

be back on this again on Monday. So take care.